And the information about Morris and his habits that Miggie had come up with made the Aphrodite’s sting a tempting prospect. The idea was to flash credentials at the bartender and send him to the backroom till further notice, while Wade took the man’s place and kept Kevin safe.
It had begun at Nichols’ apartment, with Reeder talking Rogers through it, assuring her that they’d be right there to back Kevin up, should her roommate agree to play.
And he had.
She’d hoped that Kevin might have already disappeared into the world of his Virginia Plain friends, but Reeder had caught him at her apartment, still packing up . . . and eager to help.
Feeling steamrollered by Reeder, she’d faced Kevin privately and said, “You don’t have to do this. It’s incredibly dangerous, and you don’t do this kind of thing for a living like I do, and—”
“You may be forgetting,” he said, “that despite the trappings, I’m the man in this relationship.”
“Oh, Kevin, come on—”
“Then call it an equal partnership. And I’m going to hold up my end.”
And that had been it.
Now, back at DeMarcus’s pad—with Kevin along but out of drag, and Wade too, no longer in bartender getup—she and Reeder faced each other off to one side.
“You okay?” Reeder asked.
Her sigh seemed to start at her toenails. “As okay as possible when I’ve just been party to a kidnapping. That’s a federal offense, you know. And I’m on the wrong side of this one.”
Reeder’s expression was blandly blank. “Factor this in: Morris threatened to have you, and everyone else I love, killed. And his people have Anne Nichols. Or are you not in the mood at the moment to save the ol’ US of A?”
“Is that what we’re doing, Joe?”
“Make it the world then. Nukes on the fly aren’t that selective.”
She shook her head—not a “no” gesture, more trying to clear it. “I know we’re trying to stop something terrible from happening . . . but we’re so far out of my law-enforcement comfort zone, I don’t know if I know what’s right and wrong.”
“This isn’t exactly law enforcement, Patti.”
“No kidding!”
“I mean, we’re more working the espionage and counterespionage side of things, where the line between what’s right and wrong is, well, murky. But it’s still a line we have to walk. Or anyway, dance along.”
She held his eyes. “Joe, I just watched my boyfriend act as a diversion while Reggie Wade roofied a government employee so we could snatch the SOB. Does that sound like any FBI agent you know?”
Reeder managed a weak smile. “I’m just glad to see you loosening up a little.”
That made her laugh, but just a single “ha.”
“Kevin did very well,” Reeder said. “He’s a natural for this kind of work.”
“Am I supposed to say ‘thank you’ for that?” She raised an eyebrow. “He did handle himself well, and I think he’s a little proud of himself, actually.”
“He should be.”
Right now Kevin was tucked away in the bedroom where their guest, Lawrence Morris—currently blindfolded and duct-taped into a kitchen chair—wouldn’t see him.
“Kevin wanted to lend a hand,” Rogers said, no-nonsense, “and now he has. But first chance, I’m getting him the hell out of here.”
“Oh yeah,” Reeder agreed.
“So what’s our next move? A bank robbery, maybe . . . or would that be a step down?”
Reeder gave her a rare half-smile. “They have Nichols, and now we have one of theirs. Let’s go talk to our friend from the GAO and let him give an accounting of himself.”
“If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.”
Richard M. Nixon, thirty-seventh President of the United States of America. Served 1969–1974. First to resign from the presidency. Also served 1953–1961 as the thirty-sixth Vice President of the United States.
THIRTEEN
Jerry Bohannon, tie loosened, jacket folded up on the passenger seat, was fighting to stay awake. Every law enforcement officer in the world hated surveillance duty, and while this wasn’t technically that, it sure as hell felt like a stakeout.
Bohannon was parked in a Bureau Ford outside his fellow agent Trevor Ivanek’s place in Dumfries, Virginia. For a change, he didn’t have to worry so much about being spotted. All he was doing was waiting for Trevor to come home. There was even a convenience store nearby, so he didn’t have to monitor his liquid intake, and was sipping a coffee with cream and sugar right now. Of course, his boss, Patti Rogers, claimed a rogue element in government was up to no good, but frankly Bohannon found that a little hard to buy.
In fact, in this instance, he hoped Trevor would spot him, and also hoped he didn’t miss the guy if Trevor parked somewhere out of sight, the apartment building having no parking garage.
He got out the burner phone to text Evie that he didn’t know when he’d be home. She wouldn’t recognize the number, but she’d see his text: *A wn ts # Cs, J*, his personal shorthand for “answer when this number calls, Jerry.” The use of that shorthand would confirm it was him at the new number.
Evie was Evelyn Sullivan, the lovely brunette he’d met at a Georgetown bar a little over a year ago. Evie seemed the opposite of Carol, his ex-wife; this forty-something gal had a bawdy sense of humor and a go-with-the-flow attitude that included putting up with his weird work hours—all she ever asked was that she be kept in the loop. Not doing that had been a big factor in the breakup of his marriage.
As he waited, Bohannon sent his eyes up and down the street, which had been dead when he got here and still was. The apartment buildings had cars parked out front, and traffic was light. A couple was strolling at the other end of the block, and a dog across the street was barking at them. That was it for excitement.
Wishing Evie would call, he got out his tablet and went through the information he’d gathered on Secretary of the Interior Amanda Yellich. Her personal life was clean, her professional life exemplary, and the one thing he’d turned up was something of a happy accident.
Earlier in the day, he had visited Yellich’s condominium. The building’s doorman had told him the condo was empty, the Secretary’s things in storage in the basement waiting for some distant family member to claim them.
His FBI badge and a twenty had bought Bohannon ten minutes in the storage room with furniture, clothing, and boxes and boxes of books, the latter including a handwritten journal he almost missed. This he’d stuffed in his back waistband.
Bored in the Ford, he got out the journal and picked up where he’d left off. He took no pleasure out of paging through the dead woman’s private thoughts, which were frankly not terribly interesting much less revealing, and just cryptic enough to be irritating. One entry had caught his attention: JR hopeless case, still in love with his ex. Could JR be Joe Reeder, and was Reeder’s connection to the woman what sparked Rogers to send them digging into Yellich’s death?
Good God, was this shadow government Rogers imagined some offshoot of Reeder’s love life? Bohannon grunted a laugh.
Just then he came to an entry that made him sit up a little: My turn to sit out Camp David trip. Maybe I can kick back at home for a change.
So Amanda Yellich had been the designated survivor, left behind when the President and Vice President gathered with the cabinet at a single location. Now with Yellich dead, someone else would stay behind. Probably meant nothing, but the back of his neck was tingling—this was worth telling Miggie Altuve about.
He was about to send Mig a text when the phone vibrated—Evie was texting: *K*—okay. Quickly he switched screens and typed *AY not CD* and sent it to Miggie. He’d explain more fully as soon as he had a chance to call Evie and say that he’d be late, that in fact this case might tie him up for days.
That was when someone approached his window quickly, probably Ivanek.
Reeder and Rog
ers went over to Lawrence Morris, who was duct-taped in a chair on the kitchenette side of the big room; he wore a gray duct-tape strip over his mouth and a swath of black cloth over his eyes, the wire-frame glasses on the kitchen table nearby, his buy-two-for-the-price-of-one suit hardly rumpled.
Their guest appeared to still be out from the Mickey Finn that had been administered at the Mont Blanc bar by Reggie Wade, who watched nearby on another kitchen chair, looking loose-limbed in dark gray sweats.
“He really out?” Reeder asked.
Wade shrugged. “Could be. Johnnie Walker and roofies make one sweet cocktail.”
“Know anything that might bring him around?”
Another shrug. “Light a match behind his ear, maybe.”
A micro-expression passed over Morris’s face at the prospect, though with the blindfold, it was hard to be sure, his chin down, touching his chest.
“Well, let’s try this,” Reeder said, and ripped the duct tape gag off.
Their guest howled. It rang off the brick walls.
Reeder pulled around another chair. “That was your wake-up call, Lawrence.”
The man was breathing hard now, chin up, obviously awake. Reeder left the blindfold on the man.
Rogers, standing just beside Reeder, a hand on the back of his chair, said, “Joe—maybe we made a mistake grabbing him.”
“How so?”
“What if he doesn’t know anything? What if he’s too lowly a grunt for the other side to trade Nichols?” She was smiling at Reeder in a way that didn’t go at all with her tone.
“Good point,” Reeder said, voice solemn, smiling back. “That puts us in a bad place. I don’t want to end up with this son of a bitch on our hands.”
Reggie, amused, put plenty of nasty into his voice as he said, “That’s what they dig holes in the forest for, bossman.”
“I know things!”
Morris had joined the conversation.
“The only thing that really matters right now,” Reeder said, “is where our friend Anne Nichols is. Who has her, and what we have to do to get her back.”
“I don’t know anything about Agent Nichols.”
Rogers said, “You know she’s an agent.”
The blindfolded man nodded, still breathing hard. “But that’s all. I’m what you’d call . . . middle management. I don’t know every move. There are cells working various aspects.”
Reeder and Rogers exchanged looks.
She asked, “Aspects of what?”
Morris strained at his bonds, leaning forward. “I’m valuable to them! They’ll trade for me.”
Reeder asked, “Who will trade for you, Lawrence?”
Nothing.
Wade said, “You want me to get the shovel, bossman?”
“The board!” he blurted.
Immediately their captive’s face drained of blood; his mouth was hanging open like torn flesh. He had said too much and he knew it.
Reeder said, quietly, “What board would that be, Lawrence?”
“They’re . . . they’re powerful people. And they, they value me. That’s all you need to know.”
Reeder scooched his chair closer, the feet making a fingernails-on-a-blackboard scrape. He got the anonymous nine mil from his waistband and he racked the weapon, letting the mechanical music of it sing to the captive.
“You and your people,” Reeder said, “have sacrificed at least six Americans to whatever this cause is, and whoever these powerful people are. Do you think that hypothetical hole in the forest that my friend here mentioned couldn’t become very damn real?”
Lawrence shook his head. “I don’t . . . I don’t doubt you. But you people aren’t the only ones who can dig a hole.”
“Maybe not,” Reeder said pleasantly, “but we seem to be first in line.”
Reeder tore the blindfold off and the accountant blinked rapidly as his vision adjusted to the loft’s muted lighting. Morris’s eyes moved from face to face.
“You were saying, Lawrence,” Reeder said. “The board? Would that be a board of directors of some kind?”
Morris drew in a deep breath and let it out shudderingly. He was shaking. He seemed near tears. The information this minor figure had was clearly major.
Very quietly, he said, “A board of directors oversees certain activities.”
“That, Lawrence,” Reeder said, “is just a little vague.”
He drew in breath. Let it out. “It’s a group of patriotic Americans. As I said, powerful ones. Movers and shakers, you might say. Captains of industry . . . no, generals of industry.”
Rogers asked, “A right-wing group?”
“No, no . . .”
Reeder asked, “A leftist group?”
“No, no, you misunderstand. You underestimate. They have their own interests, but those are the best interests of America. These men are above politics, and yet they are the inheritors of everything our founding fathers put in motion.”
A little hysteria was in Morris’s voice now, the tears ever closer. Reeder hoped the man wouldn’t piss himself.
Reeder asked, “Does this group have a name?”
“It’s . . . it’s rarely spoken . . .”
“Speak it anyway.”
Morris swallowed. Barely audible, he said, “The American Patriots Alliance.”
Disgust clenched Reeder’s belly. How many evil bastards in history had wrapped themselves in the American flag? Or any nation’s flag?
Rogers asked, “Who exactly is on this board?”
Morris shook his head. “I have a sense of who they are, but not . . . exactly who they are.”
“No,” Reeder said, hard, his kinesics skills coming to the fore, “you do know them. Or some of them.”
Morris stiffened. “If I give you any names, I’m a dead man. And don’t threaten me with that hole in the forest again. Just go ahead and kill me. Because I would already be dead.”
Now when Reeder read the man, he knew Morris was telling the truth.
“If you don’t give us those names,” Reeder said, “what do you have to bargain with?”
“Your agent.”
Reeder, Rogers, and Wade exchanged looks. Back to square one . . .
“If I haven’t told you anything,” Morris said, “they’ll trade. If I talk, they’ll kill me, and you have no lever to get your agent back.”
“Portillium,” Reeder said.
Morris blinked. “What?”
“Portillium—hear of it? Know what it is?”
Morris shook his head. “No. It sounds made up.”
Shit, Reeder thought. He’s telling the truth.
“Well,” Reeder said, “it’s not a new additive in dishwashing powder. It’s a mineral, a very rare one, and almost certainly why the Russians went into Azbekistan.”
Morris squinted at Reeder, as if trying to get him in focus. “They . . . went to war for a mineral?”
“Does that strike you as unlikely? Haven’t we gone to war for oil? Someone on your board is responsible for sacrificing four CIA agents to that Russian invasion. Either your Alliance is in league with the Kremlin, or they’re trying to start World War III.”
Morris grunted something that was as close to a laugh as he could muster under the circumstances. “Make up your mind, Reeder! Is the Alliance in bed with Russia, or eager to go to war with it?”
“The frightening thing is, either is possible. Because as you said, these ‘powerful people’ do whatever it is that’s in their best interest.”
Another grunt of a near laugh. “You’re making all of this up. That mineral, portobello or whatever, you made it up.”
“Six Americans dead, Lawrence.”
He swallowed. “In war, sacrifices must be made.”
“We’re already at war,” Reeder said. “Your Alliance is at war with the rest of us. They’re calling it patriotism, Lawrence, but it’s treason. And you’re part of it. That’s how you’ll be charged—for treason.”
He could tell that Roger
s wondered where he was going with this.
“Murdered Americans,” Reeder said almost offhandedly, “including an assassinated cabinet member . . . you’ll be executed.”
The color left Morris’s face again. “Try to scare me all you like . . . I can’t give you any names. That’s the only thing keeping me alive.”
“You think the CIA can’t get those names out of you, if I turn you over? They’ll waterboard your ass from here to Tuesday, and then drop you into a hole so black you’ll never see sunshine again.”
“You . . . you won’t do that.”
“Won’t I? I think the boys and girls at the Company would love to have some time with one of the conspirators in the deaths of five of their people.”
Morris stiffened. “I’m an American citizen. You kidnapped me. When that comes out—”
Rogers said, “Who says it will come out? Anyway, you’re an enemy combatant we apprehended. Under the Patriot Act, we can make you disappear.”
“I was just . . . all I want is to be a good American. A patriot.”
“Well, Lawrence,” Reeder said cheerfully, “you screwed up.”
“Sounds like . . . either way I’m dead.”
Rogers said, “We can protect you.”
Morris began to laugh.
He laughed until tears began to run and Reeder and the two FBI agents did not bother to hide their surprise and discomfort.
Finally Morris, jerking against his duct-tape bonds, said, “You have no idea!”
“No idea what, Lawrence?” Reeder asked quietly.
Morris, laughing near hysteria, was shaking his head. “What you’re up against!”
Rogers said, “Enlighten us.”
Only his head leaned forward now. “They’re bigger than you can imagine. Branches intertwining, growing, flowing. The Alliance is everywhere.”
“Conspiracies on that level,” Rogers said, “are the stuff of madmen and pulp fiction.”
Reeder nodded and said, “The late Carlos Marcello had a sign over his door that said, ‘Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.’”
Morris had stopped laughing, although he came up with one last, “Ha! Wasn’t he in on the Kennedy assassination? Those who didn’t die kept as quiet as the ones who did.”
Executive Order (Reeder and Rogers Thriller) Page 16