Last Chance to Die

by Noah Boyd

  All of a sudden, she realized she was crying. Not full sobbing, but she could feel the weight of her tears working their way down her cheeks. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried, probably when her mother had died. She suddenly realized just how scared she was.

  Even if she were somehow miraculously cleared of the charges, her career would be destroyed. It had been hanging by a thread ever since her “attempted suicide.” Legally, people could be found not guilty, but within the pedantic confines of the Bureau she would never be judged innocent.

  Isolated like this, with no apparent end in sight, she couldn’t help but worry that somehow this case would be proved at trial. The evidence wasn’t airtight, but conversely she had absolutely nothing to refute it. The only thing that was keeping her sane was knowing that Vail was out there somewhere. If anyone could unravel this, it would be him. But there was a very good chance he didn’t even know she’d been arrested. She let out a short, hysterical laugh. It had been part of their plan to keep these arrests out of the public eye. And the last time she saw Vail, she’d sided with the Bureau against him. Then she was told that he had again been stripped of his credentials. Because she’d told him there was no possibility of a personal relationship between them, he’d undoubtedly left Washington by now, on his way to Florida, where no one knew how to contact him. Luke might have been able to track him down, but of course Luke wouldn’t know about her arrest either.

  Her thoughts were broken by the sound of the cell door opening. She stood up in anticipation of rescue, but it was the same female guard, her face stony as usual, who set down a metal tray and left.

  Assistant United States Attorney Fred Bisset had been put in charge of Kate Bannon’s prosecution the day she was arrested. The case against her had been damning, with one exception: She’d helped gather the evidence against the other spies that had led to her unmasking. But in all probability, Bisset theorized, she was trying to find any evidence against her and destroy it before it came to anyone’s attention. Despite everyone’s best efforts, she had steadfastly maintained her innocence. Then, an hour ago, he’d received a call from the United States Attorney himself, ordering him to get her over to FBI headquarters ASAP.

  That was why he was now walking into the J. Edgar Hoover Building with Kate, who was flanked by two U.S. Marshals, one male and one female. Bisset had made the decision that if she were handcuffed and brought into her place of employment, any remaining secrecy about her status would be destroyed. And that would certainly preclude any admissions she might be about to make.

  Bisset went to the receptionist, showed his identification, and told the woman that they were expecting him at extension 2117. She dialed the number and said, “Someone will be right down.”

  Within a minute Lucas Bursaw got off the freight elevator that was away from the mainstream traffic and held the door open. He was careful not to show any recognition of Kate, hoping to send her the message to do the same. “Mr. Bisset!” he yelled over to the group. “We can take this one!”

  They walked to the elevator, and as they got on, Bursaw moved to the back of the car. “We’re going to room 349.” He leaned forward slightly and pointed at the buttons. “Can you press the third floor, please?” As the female marshal hit the button, Bursaw slipped a small, folded piece of paper into the back of Kate’s waistband.

  When the door opened on the third floor, Bursaw said, “It’s to the right. Number 349.”

  Once the four of them were in the room and seated, Bursaw said, “Can I get anyone anything?” When they declined, he said, “I’ll be standing by in the director’s suite if you need anything. The extension there is 1207.” He wrote down the number and handed it to the AUSA. Then Bursaw closed the door behind him.

  Immediately Kate said, “I’d like to use the ladies’ room before we get started.”

  Bisset looked at the marshals and pointed at the female. “Okay, but she’ll be going inside with you.”

  “Fine.” Kate led the way, and when they got there, the female marshal went inside and checked it for avenues of escape while the male stayed with the prisoner. When she came out, she said, “No other doors or windows.” The male nodded. Once the two women were inside, Kate went into the stall and shut the door. She took out the note and read it: Tell them you’ll talk, but only after you apologize to the director in person. It was in Vail’s handwriting. “About time, bricklayer,” she whispered.

  “What?” the female marshal called in to her.

  “Sorry, nothing.” She flushed the note down the toilet and came out.

  Once they were back in the interview room with Bisset, Kate, for the first time, took a good look at him. He was in his early thirties, and even though he was severely balding, he kept the remaining patches of his hair closely cropped. Without paying much attention to his attempted banter on the way over, she remembered his using the line “I’m no fool—I graduated from Stanford Law School.”

  “What time is it, Fred?” she asked.

  Though he hadn’t noticed it before, he now detected some warmth in her attractive face. He quickly checked his watch and said, “It’s almost two.”

  Kate examined him more closely and decided that anyone who would cut his hair that short, drawing attention to the uncomeliness of male pattern baldness, was someone who probably had an inability to interpret common social cues, especially those of rejection. Book-smart with absolutely no people skills, something she suspected was going to be to her advantage. “I’m sorry, where did you say you went to law school?” She was careful to ask the question with just a hint of sarcasm.

  “Stanford. I thought I mentioned that.”

  “I guess you did. I’m just a little tired. Bet you were the top of your class.” This time the sarcasm was as obvious as she could make it. She glanced at the two marshals and could see that they were experienced enough in handling prisoners that all conversations around them were no more than white noise.

  “I made law review,” he answered, trying, but failing, to sound humble.

  “It’s pretty obvious how smart you are. Me, I just thought I was smart. I’m tired of all this. I’d like to make a statement.”

  Bisset straightened up, appearing as though he hadn’t been paying attention and wasn’t sure what she’d said. “You want to make a statement?”

  “Can’t get anything past you law-review boys. Yes, I’d like to make a statement.”

  “Now you’re being smart.” Quickly he dug into his briefcase and pulled out a pad of legal paper. “Where would you like to start?”

  “I’d like to start with an apology to my director, Mr. Lasker.”

  “As soon as we get your statement.”

  “I see him first or there is no statement.”

  “You’re the prisoner, Miss Bannon.”

  “This offer expires in five seconds . . . four . . . three . . .”

  Bisset grabbed the phone on the desk. “Okay, I’ll get him on the line.”

  “No. This has to be in person. Face-to-face. He’s been very good to me, and I owe him that much.”

  Bisset stiffened, and it took a moment for him to realize what had to be done next. He dialed the number that the black agent had left him. Bursaw answered, “Director’s office.”

  “Yes, this is Assistant United States Attorney Bisset. Miss Bannon has had a change of heart and is willing to make a statement, but first she says she needs to talk to the director.”

  “About what?” Bursaw asked, as skeptically as possible.

  “She wants to apologize to him.”

  “I don’t know if he wants to talk to her.”

  “She says she won’t make a statement until she can.”

  “Hang on.” Bisset heard the line go on hold, and then, within a minute, Bursaw came back on. “He said he’ll see her. Let me get another agent, and we’ll come down to get her.”

  Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door, and when the marshal opened it, Luke Bursaw was standing
there, and behind him was Steve Vail. Bisset said, “You’ll bring her right back here after she’s done with the director.” It wasn’t a question but an order.

  “The director says she’s got five minutes and that’s all,” Bursaw said. “So you’ll have her back in no more than twenty minutes.”

  The elevator car that Kate, Vail, and Bursaw got into had a half-dozen other employees in it, so they didn’t speak until they were out the front door of FBI headquarters. Kate said, “It took you long enough. I almost forgot what you looked like, Stan.”

  As they walked toward their car, Vail watched her profile in the clear winter sunlight, her breath clouding the cold air in rhythmic streams. She took a deeper, stuttering breath, her freedom evidently registering. “Actually, it’s Steve.”

  “I assume that since you’ve turned me into an escaped federal prisoner, you still haven’t figured out who’s responsible for setting me up.”

  “After looking at the evidence, I’d say your innocence is questionable.”

  “Then why did you break me out, Stan?”

  “I thought by now you’d be ready for a conjugal visit.”

  “Suddenly prison isn’t looking so bad.”

  They got to the car, and Bursaw climbed in. Kate grabbed Vail and turned him around, kissing him fully. “Thanks, bricklayer.” She got in.

  “Let’s see if you’re thanking me when this all goes south.”

  Suddenly her smile was gone, and her eyes started to well up. “Sorry, Steve, but all this is scaring me.”

  “You’d be a fool not to be scared.” He put his arm around her. Then he took out his credentials and showed them to her.

  “I thought you had to give those up to Langston.”

  “And who’s the one person in the Bureau who can rescind my being fired?”

  “The director?”

  “So you’ve got friends in high places. Plus, you’re innocent. Or so I’m told. I promise you you’re not spending another minute in jail.” Then Vail filled her in on his trip to Chicago and the shoot-out he and Kalix had been involved in. He told her about his phone call to the United States Attorney, with him posing as her attorney and Kalix playing the telephone role of his boss, William Langston.

  “Kalix did all that for me?” she said.

  “What about me?”

  “How many times do I have to thank you? You’ve really gotten needy while I’ve been in the big house.”

  “But unlike John I’m not trying to suck up to the director,” Vail said.

  “That’s a great way to talk about a guy who saved your life.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure you’ll find some way to get even with him for that.”

  AUSA Fred Bisset checked his wristwatch again. It was now exactly twenty minutes since the two agents had left with Kate Bannon, and it was starting to seem a little too long. He again called the extension the black agent had given him for the director’s office. It rang six or seven times before a female answered it. “Hello.”

  “Hello? This is Assistant United States Attorney Fred Bisset. Let me speak to the director, please.”

  “The director? This is the employees’ break room. Let me get you back to the switchboard.”

  When the operator came on the line, Bisset again identified himself and asked to be put through to the director’s office. He waited a moment, then heard, “Director Lasker’s office.”

  “This is AUSA Bisset. Could I speak to the director, please?”

  “I’m sorry, he’s in New York for a regional conference.”

  “Then can you transfer me to Assistant Director Langston?”

  “I’m sorry, he’s with the director.”

  23

  As Bursaw drove cautiously through the city’s streets, Vail asked Kate, “Do you have any idea what this is about?”

  “It’s all I’ve been thinking about since they came for me. I have no idea.”

  “Could it be something to do with the CIA?”

  “The CIA? Why them?”

  “It’s better if you answer my questions first.”

  “Okay. Let’s see, the CIA. The only real contact I’ve had with them was when I had Bureau liaison with them. I was over there almost every day. More there than at headquarters, actually. But I think I already told you about that.”

  “Ever have problems with anyone there? Any suspicions about anything?”

  “No, not that I can remember.”

  Vail took out the nine photographs of the CIA employees that Kalix had given him and handed them to her. “Do you know any of these people?”

  Kate went through them slowly, carefully studying their features, knowing that work ID photos, due to the regimented posing and general lack of quality, can be more difficult to identify. When she finished, she shuffled back and picked out one. “He’s the only one I know. Myles Rellick. He was one of my contacts there.”

  “Anything about him that didn’t sit right with you?”

  “Not really. Do you think he’s involved in this?”

  Vail explained about finding the CIA safe phone number, Calculus’s three Bryn Mawr Park visits, and how Kalix had narrowed the times down to the nine men in the photos. “You must have seen something, or at least they think you did.”

  “I don’t know, the guy was beige wallpaper. Nothing sticks out about him.”

  “You don’t need to dwell on it. Just let it roll around in the back of your head for a while. Maybe something will surface.”

  “Where are we heading?”

  “Thanks to Luke, we have a safe place to stay.”

  “Didn’t Bonnie and Clyde say that once?” Kate said.

  Bursaw said, “My sister is a history professor at Georgetown, and right now she’s on a sabbatical, in Portugal. That’s her area of expertise. She has an apartment near the school. There’s a car. I’m kind of in charge of maintaining both. She won’t be back until May for a summer course she’s teaching. It’s just a one-bedroom, but it’s well stocked with food. And she’s about your size if you need clothes.”

  “What about all the files and information we have at the off-site?” she asked Vail. “Won’t we need that?”

  “It’s all in the trunk. And we took photos of everything on the walls. I don’t know if they’re going to go public looking for you—and me, I suppose, since it won’t take long to figure out who helped you. But I don’t think they can announce to the world that you escaped, seeing as how they refuse to acknowledge that you’d been arrested. Lasker’s got Langston out of town for a couple of days, leaving Kalix in charge of counterintelligence operations, so the Bureau won’t be burning a lot of manpower hunting for us. And Luke should be cool for a while, because if they do try to identify Unknown Black Agent Number One, they’ll start at headquarters. No one knows about us being friends. We should have a couple of days before there’s any type of full-court press.”

  Bursaw turned off Rock Creek Parkway onto Pennsylvania Avenue and then turned up Twenty-eighth Street. Three blocks later he pulled up to a small apartment building. “This is it,” he said, getting out and opening the trunk.

  Inside his sister’s residence, Bursaw put the box containing the files on a desk in the living room and handed Vail the keys. “You’re now officially in charge of them.” He pointed at a large fish tank with a couple dozen disinterested tropical fish swimming around. “The car is a powder blue VW Bug. It’s parked in the garage. The key card to get in and out is over the visor.”

  “Are you going somewhere?” Vail asked.

  “I’ve got to go home, change, and go to the office. I hope you’re right and they won’t be looking for me. As soon as I put in an appearance and see if there’s any general alarm for you two, I’ll be back to give you a hand.”

  “Thanks, Luke,” Kate said, and kissed him on the cheek.

  Vail walked him out. “Is there an access code for your sister’s answering machine?”

  “Good idea. We can leave each other messages on it
if you go out. It’s 777.”

  “I’ll call Kalix and let him know what Kate said about the photos. It looks like Myles Rellick is our best bet, but I have no idea where to start. We can’t do surveillance, or a wiretap, or even search his financial background. This fugitive stuff isn’t as easy as it looks.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Especially since it’s for Kate, her being such a good friend and all.”

  “I told you, it’s complicated.”

  “The best things always are.”

  When Vail came back in, he found Kate looking through the bedroom closet. “Sorry we didn’t have time to get some of your clothes.”

  “I’d rather wear three-day-old clothes than a nice crisp prison uniform.”

  “Anything there?”

  “I’ll find something,” she said. “I’m sorry I got emotional in the car.”

  “Any CIA epiphanies yet?”

  “Not yet, but I’m too tired to summon up any real memory. I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep. You could probably use a couple of hours yourself. You look beat.”

  He smiled at her mischievously. “I could use a shower, too. This place looks like it would have a limited supply of hot water.”

  “That’s good,” she said in a playful tone, “because it sounds like you could use a cold shower.”

  After a couple of seconds, Vail said, “Kate, I’m sorry. This is all my fault. The whole thing was a setup, and you’re paying the price. I was so smug figuring out those puzzles. ‘Ariadne’s thread.’ I should have picked up on something.”

  “Like what? Everything was falling into place.”

  “Like their killing the moles, and just as we got to them. They knew just when to kill them—because they were sending us to them. That should have registered with me.”

  Gently she took his hand in hers. “I should be terrified right now, but— No, that’s not right. I am terrified. But with you here I know this is going to end well. So please, don’t stop being you.”