Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

  "Ghosting." This was a common technique for establishing a false identity.

  "Exactly. But mostly we know because the airline records the calls; I got the clip. Voice print matches."

  "Flight time?"

  "Little under three hours from now."

  "One ticket?" I was thinking of the sandy-haired partner.

  "No, two. Another fake name. That person's dead too."

  I told her I'd get back to her, disconnected and then gestured Freddy over and told him. He grunted. "Your girl data mines better'n my girl. Tell you, Corte, I might hire her away from you." He called the Bureau's Philly field office and briefed them. He disconnected and turned back to me. "They'll be on site in twenty minutes."

  "Subtle, Freddy. Call them back and tell them to be subtle. They need to stay invisible till the last minute."

  "They'll be subtle."

  I cocked my eyebrow.

  "I'll call 'em back." Then he gave me a rare grin. "You coming along for the hunting party?"

  I thought of Rhode Island. I thought of Abe. The idea of being present at Loving's arrest was immensely appealing.

  How badly I wanted to go . . .

  But I said, "I'll leave that to you folks. I'm going to head back to the safe house, keep an eye on my principals."

  "What for? The case's over with, Corte."

  "That's true, Freddy. But the fact is they still need guarding."

  "We got the sole primary in custody and the lifter's headed for the hills. Who'd they need protecting from?"

  "Themselves."

  Chapter 54

  THE ATMOSPHERE IN the Great Falls safe house suggested that what I'd told Freddy was true.

  I walked into the middle of a fight between the sisters. It was intense and even my arrival, presumably with vital information about the case, didn't deflect the jousting. Ryan was nowhere to be seen.

  "I was upset." Joanne slapped her thighs. "What do you think? People say things when they're upset they don't mean. Come on. How can you move out?"

  "I'd planned it already."

  "Not with Andrew," Joanne said.

  "He's changed."

  "Oh, please, Mar. Men like that don't change. They say they do, they recite crap from twelve-step programs. But they don't change."

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "He put you in the hospital."

  "Enough!" Maree snapped, waving her hand.

  After a dense silence both women turned toward me.

  I said, "I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes, tell you what's happened."

  Joanne looked once more at her sister, a glance both sorrowful and frustrated, and turned to me, dropping onto the couch.

  "Where's Ryan?" I asked.

  "Here," he said, walking into the living room. He was drinking coffee, it seemed, though I supposed it could have had whiskey in it. I couldn't smell any, though. He walked past his sister-in-law and his wife and took a straight-back chair in the corner of the room. He ignored the women and kept his attention on me.

  I called Lyle Ahmad and Tony Barr in as well and told the assembly, "We've got the primary and Loving's on his way out of town. We confirmed it was Zagaev. Not a terrorist issue, not directly." I looked toward Joanne. "He was trying to extract information from you and then sell it."

  Ryan Kessler said nothing, didn't even look at his wife.

  "So it's over with," Maree said. Then she added, "I'd like to go home--go back to their house--and get my things."

  I said to her, "I'm sorry, not quite yet. We don't have Loving or the partner in custody yet. I'm ninety-nine percent sure it's okay but I want to keep you here, until we do."

  I expected to receive a taste of the testy attitude Maree was serving up to her sister, or at least another Tour Guide comment, but she looked me over with a softening face. "Whatever you think best."

  I didn't know what to make of her agreeable nature.

  Or the coy smile.

  Ryan asked, "And my daughter?"

  I noted the singular possessive. Joanne must have too.

  "She can join us. Bill Carter too. I've already called him, and one of the guards I know there is driving them to a pickup location. I'll go get them myself and bring them here."

  Joanne's eyes grew still and I guessed she was thinking that either she or her husband would have to have some serious discussions with the girl about Stepmom's former career.

  I went into the den and sat in the office chair, which gave a comforting squeak. I learned from Freddy that the chopper had landed at the Philadelphia airport with the Bureau tactical team and that they were deploying in the garage and inside and around the terminal to begin surveillance. Assuming Loving was driving at legal speeds to the airport in Philadelphia, which I was sure he would be, he'd arrive within about ninety minutes.

  I then called Aaron Ellis, to whom I gave the final details of the case.

  He said, "Guess congratulations are in order."

  The word seemed to jar. I heard gravity in my boss's voice when he asked, "Corte?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Senator Stevenson."

  "Yes?"

  "He called me."

  I asked, "Directly? Not Sandy Alberts?"

  "That's right. He called about you."

  "Hold on." I rose, shut the door to the den and sat down again. Took a deep breath. Another. Then: "Go ahead, Aaron."

  "He was asking me questions I didn't know the answers to." Ellis paused. "I need the truth, Corte. Are you in Stevenson's sights?"

  I couldn't forestall it any longer. "I'm in his sights."

  "Go on," Ellis said grimly.

  I organized my response. Finally, I said, "After Abe was killed, I wanted to get Loving really bad. But he operates off the grid better than anybody I've ever seen. So I managed to get Loving's name on some lists."

  "So?"

  "It wasn't just watchlists. I added him to some wiretap warrant databases."

  "You added him." Ellis was nearly whispering. "You mean, there was no judge involved?"

  "No. I got into the integrated system myself. If I'd waited to go to a judge until we found him, it would have been too late. Look, it wasn't to collect evidence, Aaron. It wasn't for trial. It was just to find him."

  "Jesus . . . In the meeting on Saturday with Westerfield? He said they picked up the go-ahead order on a warranted tap. That was one of yours?"

  My illegally warranted tap.

  "That's right."

  "So when Alberts came in to my office to talk to you, what? He was fishing?"

  "I would guess so." I'd covered my tracks pretty well but in my zeal to get Loving I would have left behind trails about what I'd done. "He or Stevenson are probably tracking down instances of dicey warrants and some of them must've pointed to me. Alberts called Freddy too. About me specifically."

  I heard a creak. I pictured my boss rocking in his office chair. His shoulders were exactly as wide as the leather back.

  I said, "It's not going to matter to Stevenson that the Kesslers'd be dead now if I hadn't had the wiretap orders in place. I've been reading up on him. He's ideological. He's not holding the hearings because of reelection and he's not doing it to boost his party or for the press. He genuinely believes in law and order. And warrantless surveillance is a crime."

  As was, of course, forging warrants.

  I remembered my dismay when I read what I'd learned about Stevenson and realized he was the worst possible enemy: a powerful man with a deeply held conviction that he was in the right. Especially when the person he was targeting, me, was so clearly wrong.

  I'd felt dismay too at the fact that I'd found myself searching for a scandal or impropriety in Stevenson's life, anything I could use to discourage him from subpoenaing me--no, I'm not above using an edge like that myself. But there'd been nothing. He liked dating younger women, but he was single, so there was no problem there. His campaigns were largely funded by one of the biggest conservative political action committees i
n Washington. But all politicians' campaigns were backed by PACs; his just happened to be more flush than many others. Even his aide, Sandy Alberts, had been meticulous about severing all ties to all lobbying firms before coming to work for Stevenson.

  No edge to threaten him with.

  And there was nothing I could offer him to make him forget about me. I was exactly what he wanted to expose: an agent of the government working for a shadowy organization and playing fast and loose with the laws of the country.

  "Where did Stevenson leave it?" I asked.

  "He wants to know about cases you've run in the past few years, where perps went to trial."

  To find out if any lifters or hitters I helped arrest were convicted on the basis of illegal taps. I told my boss, "It was only Loving. There weren't any others."

  "Apparently that won't matter to him."

  No, it wouldn't. A single incident of a crime is still a crime.

  Aaron said, "You know if I don't deliver case files, he'll subpoena them. And he's going to get you on the stand in the hearings."

  Which would be the end of my career as a shepherd.

  And perhaps the start of a very embarrassing trial, which would possibly end in a prison sentence.

  "We're so close to Loving," I said, sitting forward tensely in the chair. "Please. Do the best you can to keep Stevenson--"

  My boss, normally as calm as I was, now snapped, "I'm doing a lot of fucking interference-running for you on this job, Corte."

  "I know. I'll cooperate with Stevenson completely--when Loving's in the can. I'll take whatever the consequences are."

  "You know this has put the whole organization in a real awkward position. We can't afford to be public, Corte."

  "I know, yes."

  "I'll stall for a day or two, if I can. But if the subpoena's delivered, there's nothing I can do."

  "I understand. Thanks, Aaron."

  I hung up and sat back, rubbing my eyes, feeling utterly depleted. What could I salvage from this mess? Even if I avoided jail, it seemed my career as a shepherd was soon to be over. I couldn't help but think about some of the assignments I'd run, about some of my principals.

  About Claire duBois.

  About Abe Fallow too.

  But then I recalled that, whatever happened in the future, the Kessler job wasn't finished yet. We still had Loving and the partner to nail. And we still had a case to make against the primary--and I'd make damn sure that it was completely buttoned up, independent of any bogus warrants.

  I found the transcript of Aslan Zagaev's statement, opened it and began to read.

  I led a more or less successful life here. Ah, but isn't success a moving target? I have been having some problems, financial in nature. The economy? Who needs rugs when you can't afford your mortgage payments? Who goes to eat at my wonderful restaurant when you must buy bulk frozen dinners at Sam's Club to feed your children? How could I make more money? Did I have any service I could perform? Did I have anything valuable that I could sell? Then it occurred to me. What if I could learn more about the operation behind the deaths of the Pakistanis in the deli six years ago? How valuable would that be? I remembered the woman who was the point control officer behind the operation to kill them: Joanne Kessler. Even if she had retired she would surely have valuable information or lead me to people who did.

  I made some phone calls, discreet phone calls, to a connection of mine in Damascus. I learned there was indeed an interest in information of this sort. A multimillion-dollar interest. A man there gave me Henry Loving's name.

  When I finished I sat back. He seemed pathetic. More than that, though, he was a fool. Why risk prison, where he'd be spending the rest of his life, for a bit more money? It seemed like a curious motive for somebody who wasn't destitute and who had a family, whom he will see, from now on, only through bars or bullet-proof windows. I could understand it if he were a true terrorist, or if he were being blackmailed . . .

  A thought occurred to me, resulting in a ping in my gut. I leaned forward fast and reread a portion of the transcript again.

  I remembered the woman who was the point control officer behind the operation to kill them: Joanne Kessler.

  Oh, no . . .

  I grabbed my com device and called Lyle Ahmad.

  "Now," I said. "I need you now."

  The young clone showed up a moment later, his face impassive, eyes watchful.

  "Yessir?"

  "Close the door. Where're the principals?"

  He eased the thick oak panel shut and stepped to the desk. "Ryan's in the back den, reading. Pretending to. He's been drinking. Joanne's in the bedroom. Maree's on her computer. In her room."

  "And Barr?"

  "Patrolling the back perimeter."

  I lowered my voice. "We have a situation. About Barr . . . I think he's either been turned or he's a plant."

  The officer's eyes were still. He was undoubtedly as alarmed as I was but, like me, he was approaching the situation calmly. The way I'd taught him. "All right."

  I explained my thinking. "When I told you and Barr about Joanne's job with Sickle, I described her as a point control officer."

  "I remember."

  "But that's unique to our organization; Joanne called herself 'anchor' on the hit teams. Zagaev, though, referred to her as 'point control.' "

  Ahmad was nodding. "How did he hear that term?"

  "Exactly. The only way was if somebody here had told him."

  "Barr."

  "And," I added, "Zagaev used Joanne's name. Sure, he may have been involved with the couple killed at the deli, but how could he have learned her name? Williams and the Sickle people would've kept it secret."

  I continued, "So Loving got to somebody inside Justice and learned that Freddy was sending Tony Barr to the safe house."

  "He got to Barr and turned him."

  Another grim possibility had occurred to me. "Or he's not Barr. He's an imposter."

  "And the real Barr is dead."

  The unfortunate but logical conclusion.

  I said to Ahmad, "Barr--or whoever he is--called Loving and told him we suspected Joanne was the principal and Zagaev might be the primary."

  The lifter would have realized he'd been handed the perfect misdirection. He'd tracked down Zagaev and forced him into agreeing to play the role of primary--probably using his family as an edge. Loving had briefed Zagaev about all aspects of the operation--the helicopter, for instance--and told him to convince us that Joanne was in fact the target. The Chechnyan had made calls implicating himself and then, when we caught up with him, confessed.

  Taking the pressure off Loving and the real primary.

  "But if it's true," the young officer pointed out, "why hasn't Barr done anything more than give information to Loving? He could've told him where the safe house is. He could've shot us all in the back."

  This was true. "I don't know. I've got to find out more. But for now, we've got to assume we have a hostile on the premises. Get all the principals into the den and stay with them. And call the detention center and get a message to Bill Carter. Tell them I'm not going to pick him and Amanda up yet. I want them back in the slammer until I figure out what's going on."

  "Yessir." He headed out the door.

  I stared at the transcript.

  Point control officer . . .

  How could I verify my theory? In order to get into the safe house Barr had passed fingerprint and facial recognition scans. So either he really was Tony Barr or somebody had gotten into the Justice Department's security servers--possibly an FBI employee or someone from any law-enforcement-related federal organization. I logged on to the Bureau personnel server, punched in the appropriate pass codes and looked over Barr's profile. The picture was identical, distinguishing characteristics, age. His prints were there--they were the sample that Geoff would have used to verify his identity. Everything pointed to the fact that the man here in the compound was Tony Barr.

  I called up another screen and bega
n searching social networking sites, typing in "Tony Barr" along with relevant demographic information.

  The world of Google . . .

  It took no more than three minutes to verify that we indeed had an imposter. The real Barr bore only a faint resemblance to the man in our back-forty at the moment.

  So Barr was dead and the imposter was one of Loving's partners. I tucked away the shock at this confirmation and tried to figure out what his purpose here was or what Loving was really up to. I had no answers.

  And to learn this I decided I needed some help.

  I debated for a moment and then placed a call.

  "This's Williams," rasped the voice.

  "It's Corte."

  "I know. Saw the number. I'm watching the dispatches. You got things taken care of."

  Meaning: Why're you bothering me?

  "There's a possibility they're not as taken care of as we'd hoped."

  A grunt.

  I explained the situation.

  Williams took this in silently. "You're still alive. So what's your fake agent up to?"

  "That's the question. I need to find out. But I can't trust anybody in the Bureau. There's a mole there, and they're probably monitoring what's going on at my outfit. . . . Do you have somebody we can use?"

  I found it curious he didn't hesitate. "Matter of fact, I do." He gave me a phone number. "Call him."

  "Time's critical," I said. "How close are they?"

  Williams offered a very expected chuckle. "A lot closer than you think."

  Chapter 55

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER I stepped outside, smelling the chill moist air, the aroma from a wood fire in the distance. Kids sometimes lit campfires in the park overlooking the Potomac falls.

  I recalled Maree and me, sitting uneasily--in my case, at least--on the rock shelf forty feet above the raging water earlier this morning. I recalled her kissing me.

  Then I forced myself to concentrate.

  Because the man fronting as Tony Barr was now approaching, vigilant as ever and armed with an impressive automatic weapon. I needed him to believe I had no inkling he was a partner of Henry Loving.

  "Tony," I said, nodding. The intense, quiet man joined me. His eyes kept scanning the property. I asked, "Lyle's inside?" So far I was keeping my voice calm and looking at him in ways I thought appropriate to these circumstance.

  "Yessir. . . . Any word from Philly?" he asked.

  What the hell was Loving up to? I wondered. I said, "Nothing yet. Loving won't be there for another half hour or so, at the earliest." Car keys jangled in my hand. "I'm going to pick up the Kesslers' daughter and their friend."