by Gene Riehl
The positron-emission tomography would use powerful subatomic particles to take pictures of his brain, incredibly detailed three-dimensional images. The medium the technician had injected was designed to circulate inside his brain and adhere to any amyloid plaque that might have formed in there. It would highlight the gummy substance that was one of the indicators for the onset of dementia, that could forecast the probability of Alzheimer’s as well. Just keep going, Monk wanted to tell the dye. Don’t stick to anything in there. Just keep on going all the way out the other side.
The technician applied a Band-Aid to the puncture site, then reached to a table to his right and came back with the head cage. Monk felt his body turning rigid as the man fastened the cage into place to keep his brain perfectly still inside the tube. Jesus, he thought. His brain wouldn’t be moving, but that sure as hell didn’t mean it was going to be quiet.
“Music?” the guy asked. “What would you like to listen to today?”
Monk tried to shake his head, but couldn’t. He’d taken the music last time but it hadn’t worked. “No,” he said. “I’ve got plenty to think about.”
“You sure? I’ve got you for fifty minutes today. It can be a long time without something to distract you.”
The son of a bitch had no idea.
“Okay, then,” the technician said. “Let’s do it.”
He pushed a switch. The gurney slid silently into the tube. Monk stared at the shiny steel just inches from his nose. His chest tightened, he could feel the cold sweat already bathing his head, could hear his heart hammering in his chest. He closed his eyes, then began to breathe in and out, in and out. He tried to think about Lisa, but couldn’t. He waited for Bethany to show up, but she didn’t. What came up instead was his latest disaster at the poker table. Christ, he thought. Two thousand dollars … and it could have been worse. If he hadn’t been careful to leave his credit cards at home, it damn well would have been worse.
And the money wasn’t the worst of it.
He’d lost more than money in Atlantic City. He’d lost the one thing he was counting on, the one thing that had sent him to the casino to validate. He’d been certain Baggy Eyes was bluffing. How could he have misread the guy so completely? He might as well have walked into Bally’s and thrown the money into the air. Or flushed it down the toilet at the SOG, and saved himself the airfare.
Maybe it was time to admit that Annie Fisher had been right about him from the very start of their relationship. That he needed the twelve-step program even more than his gambling-addicted ex-girlfriend did. Then he thought about the PET scan tracing the dye through his brain. Jesus. Gambling could very well be the least of his problems.
He decided to think about something else.
But before he could decide just what that might be, Monk found his mind returning to Thomas Franklin’s secret vault, the billionaire watching as Monk moved from painting to painting, looking for something—anything—he might have mistaken for having been there the night of the party.
Suffocated by the steel machinery pressing against him, Monk’s mind delivered images of startling clarity, so vivid he could almost smell the carpeting in Franklin’s vault, almost hear the gentle whir of fans and pumps attached to the air-conditioning system that kept the climate inside the vault a perfect combination of temperature and humidity, as free of airborne contamination as the chip-assembly building at Intel. He saw himself stepping up to each of the paintings, actually reaching out to touch several of the frames, using the tip of his index finger on one of the frames to wipe away a tiny streak of …
Monk’s eyes opened, but this time he didn’t react to the sight of steel just inches from his nose.
Dust.
He’d wiped away a streak of dust from one of the frames.
And dust was impossible.
Inside Franklin’s private collection vault, dust was completely impossible.
Franklin himself had said no paintings had been moved in or out of the vault, but that was bullshit. At least one new one had been brought in.
Damn it, why hadn’t he thought to check all the others for dust?
But one was all he needed, Monk knew, because this changed things … This changed a whole bunch of things, the least of which were the stolen paintings. The paintings could wait until Sung Kim was safely in handcuffs, and finally there was a way to make that happen. There was no longer any doubt that the road to Pyongyang led directly through Battle Valley Farm.
Monk’s legs began to twitch. He wanted to call out to the radiology tech, to tell the guy they could skip the rest of the PET scan.
Suddenly he had better things to do.
THIRTY
An hour after he made it out of the PET tube, Monk walked into the tiny office of assistant United States attorney James Campbell near Judiciary Square. It was a hell of a long shot to expect help from Campbell, Monk knew that much going in, but maybe he was finally walking around lucky.
Campbell sat surrounded by cardboard boxes crammed with files. They covered much of his desk, as well as the two plain wooden chairs in front of it, and testified to the fact that Monk’s longtime colleague was just as swamped as every other AUSA in the District. Monk shoved his way into the nearest of the chairs, sat down, and stared for a moment over Jim’s mostly bald head at the prosecutor’s “glory wall.” The Yale Law School diploma was the centerpiece, but there were another dozen or more certificates attesting to his excellence, and Monk continued to be surprised that he was still around. That Jim hadn’t gone on to greener and more lucrative pastures a long time ago.
Monk cleared his throat and Campbell looked up from the file he was scribbling in. He stared over the top of his half glasses. His forehead seemed to extend all the way over the top of his head, and it looked even more wrinkled today than usual. Monk had never noticed it before, but Jim’s thin eyebrows were a completely different shade of brown than his close-cropped beard. Monk waited for a smile from the man with whom he’d worked dozens of cases over the years, but there was none.
“Christ, Puller,” he said, “you should have called first.” He nodded toward the biggest stack of files on his desk. “I’m dying here.”
“Five minutes. All you have to do is listen. You can call it a break.”
“Three minutes.”
“Four. And I bring you a Coke afterward.”
Now Campbell did smile. He pulled his glasses off and sat back. A good sign, Monk knew, but four minutes wasn’t going to do it, and there was only one way to get more. Despite the fundamental weakness of his argument, he might just pull it off if he could set the hook quickly and deeply enough.
It didn’t work.
Even before Monk finished with his story, and what he wanted to do about it, Campbell’s round face was scowling.
“Damn it, Puller, I told you I’m busy. Whattya come in here with something like this for?”
“You don’t even have to leave your desk. All I need is your okay, I’ll do all the work.”
“My okay? That’s all you need?” Jim shook his head. “You walk in unannounced to ask for a search warrant for Thomas Franklin and I’m supposed to start writing?”
“Look, I know who Franklin is. I know who his friends—”
“You don’t know shit. None of you bureau guys do. All you see are cops and robbers. I’m the one who has to live with the mess you make.”
Monk stared out the single window to Campbell’s right, but wasn’t aware of seeing anything outside before he turned back to the AUSA.
“The guy’s dirty, Jim.”
“Prove it.”
“Give me a search warrant.”
“How about a primer on federal law instead.”
“I saw that painting. I can describe exactly where it is … and you’re telling me I don’t have probable cause?”
“Hell no, you don’t.” Jim Campbell put his elbows on the desk. “You were trespassing, for starters. You had no right to be in Franklin’s bedroom in th
e first place, much less inside that panic vault. And the other room? You had to push some kind of a secret switch even to see that one. Just by being there, you were conducting an illegal search.”
Campbell stopped for a moment, then shook his head.
“Fruit of the poisoned tree, Puller … the phrase ring any bells? Anything you might have seen once you broke into Franklin’s private collection is clearly and irrevocably inadmissible. Can’t be used as evidence, sure as hell can’t be used as the basis for a search warrant.”
He glared at Monk.
“How can you be so sure you saw the damned thing in the first place? A couple of seconds, you say, that’s all the time you had. How do you know it was even the same painting?”
Monk leaned forward. “Are you saying I imagined the whole thing?” Monk wasn’t about to go into his epiphany about the dust on the frame.
“What I’m saying is that we have two problems: your warrantless search and the phony ID you gave Franklin’s guards. Even if we wanted to argue that you stumbled on the painting accidentally, how do we explain that you were doing it as an undercover FBI agent?”
Monk tried to interrupt, but Campbell held up his hand.
“No way … no way in hell. It’s hard for me to believe you’d even come in here and ask.” The AUSA leaned back in his chair and laced his hands together behind his head. Monk recognized the posture for what it meant. Authority. Jim was no longer arguing. Now he was ordering. “You just don’t have what I need,” Campbell said. “You’ve got to bring me something I can use, but you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. I know it’s grunt work, but …” He shrugged. “I don’t have to tell you what it’s going to take.”
Monk had to nod. The man was right, of course, about the warrant, about the work involved. All Jim was doing was his job. Most people think the FBI runs roughshod over the law. Too bad they can’t see the process the way it really is … can’t watch FBI agents begging and pleading in offices like this one all across the country.
“Okay,” Monk said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
William’s eyebrows lifted as Monk told him about the dust on the picture frame in Franklin’s vault. They were sitting together in William’s Chevy Caprice on Twenty-second Street, just south of the State Department.
“Your mole,” Monk said when he’d finished. “How quickly can you contact him about this?”
“We can’t find …” William started over. “We seem to have lost contact with him.” He stared at Monk. “Have you been talking to the Hoover Building?”
Monk knew better than to be offended. Even with their history, William’s question was nothing more than routine.
“Not a word,” he said. “But that’s going to be a problem.” Monk paused. “I can’t go on much longer this way. I’ve got to cut the bureau in on what you and Carter told me. The C4 is directly related to Sung Kim and whatever she’s planning to do. And they’re both connected with Thomas Franklin. I can’t sit on that kind of information.”
“A few more days … That’s all we need. I’ve been up forty hours straight. I think I’ve talked to half the countries in the world in the past two days, and it’s only a matter of time till I get something we can use.”
“Even if you do we still need the bureau, and NSA. We’re too far behind the curve without them.”
“Carter’s still afraid of leaks.”
Monk nodded, but Carter was wrong. Their mole could only be protected so far. “Something’s close, William. The C4 at Dulles and BWI, the Franklin connection, the sudden quiet from your man in-country. Doesn’t spell it out in big letters, but …”
Monk shrugged. He didn’t have to elaborate for William. Much of what the two of them did for a living was based on hunches and leaps of faith, far too often on downright luck. A notable exception was a good informant. Of all the things William had mentioned, the sudden disappearance of his mole was the most disturbing.
“What about the C4?” William asked. “The bureau getting anything decent on those shipments?”
“Leads. Hundreds of leads … but they’ll take forever to run down.” Monk paused again. “That’s all the more reason I’ve got to tell the bureau. I can’t be the only agent knowing about Franklin’s ties with a North Korean assassin. If something were to happen to me …”
“If something happens to you, we’ll make sure your people get cut in.”
“If you’re still around yourselves.”
“Where else would we be?” He paused to stare at Monk. “All three of us?” William shook his head. “You’re the gambler. What are the odds of that happening?”
Monk looked through the windshield again. Now the sidewalk was deserted. He turned to William, but the man’s question didn’t deserve an answer.
“I’m going after Franklin,” Monk told him. “It’ll take me a couple of days to do the research, but the only way I can get to Sung Kim is through him.”
“I’ll be doing the same thing. I’ve already got calls out. Anything comes up with Franklin’s name connected, I should hear about it.” He looked at Monk, and his voice hardened. “I don’t need a cowboy on this thing, Puller. Do you understand what I’m saying? Are we on the same page about that?”
Monk took a breath and let it out slowly. Once again the question didn’t deserve an answer.
Parked in her Volvo wagon half a block behind William Smith’s Caprice sedan, a blond Sung Kim with wide-lensed sunglasses watched Monk get out of the Chevrolet and walk south toward his Saab. Her face was pensive as she waited for Smith to pull away from the curb. She gave him a two-car lead, then followed.
According to the traitor in Pyongyang—who’d been very reluctant to provide the information before he died—it was William Smith to whom he was reporting about her operations in America. Now Pyongyang had given new orders, but first she had to find out where Smith was working these days. Where NSA had sent him to conduct his mission to destroy her.
THIRTY-ONE
What with his unplanned meetings with Jim Campbell and William Smith, Monk was late for his noon-to-eight shift and had to join Team 3 in progress.
Today it was drugs … the absolute frustration of drugs: the wholesalers who sold them and the traders who bought and resold them to the pathetic bastards in the community who used them. Team 3’s job was to tail the local gangbangers to the buy site, photograph the deal, and support the task force arrest team when they swooped in at the end.
The Colombians were supposed to show up at four o’clock, but Monk had known better than to count on it. Three hours late was about right for drug lords … if they showed up at all.
Four o’clock came and went, as did the next hour, and the next. The Colombians finally left their rented house in the Southeast part of the District, Team 4 on them with the help of an airplane, following them to the warehouse district near Union Station, where Monk and his team were waiting. Waiting in vain, as it turned out, as it so often turned out in cases like these.
The Colombians were two blocks from the meet when something must have spooked them. There were four of them in a black Mercedes sedan, and the car turned right at the very last moment, away from Union Station before heading straight back to Southeast and their rented house.
“Three-o-one from four-o-one,” Monk heard on the bureau radio in the Saab, before responding to his signal number as team leader of Team 3.
“Go, four-o-one,” he told Debbie Glengarry, his counterpart on Team 4.
“Package put away for the night,” she told him. “See you at the barn.”
Monk acknowledged her message and laid the radio mike back in the console. He hated drugs, but not as much for the reasons he should have as for the days he’d spent like this one. You sit around watching for hours, days, weeks sometimes, waiting for the scum of the earth to transact a five-minute deal, and half the time the irresponsible motherfuckers can’t get it together long enough to go through with it. He loved SOG work—it was the closest thing t
o gambling for getting the juice he required—but drug cases sucked. He hadn’t seen tomorrow’s schedule yet, but he suspected it would be a reprise of the same thing. Monk shook his head. Maybe the bastards would try to cook up some meth tonight and blow themselves all the way back to Bogotá.
He stretched his arms and shoulder muscles. It was amazing how stiff you could get just sitting in a car for a few hours. He started the Saab and began the short drive back to the loft. He checked his watch. Almost seven-thirty. Lisa would be home. They could have a drink or two together before deciding on what to do about dinner. He reached for the phone in his pocket to call her, but it rang before he could get to it. He smiled. Lisa had to be thinking the very same thing.
But it wasn’t Lisa.
“Monk?” Kendall Jefferson asked before he could say a word. “I know you’re finished for the day, but I need some help.”
Monk stared at his tired reflection in the rearview mirror. “I’m on my way home.”
“I only need an hour?”
Monk made the translation automatically. In special operations terms, an hour meant at least three, and more than a few times could turn into an all-nighter. He could feel the fatigue everywhere in his body, along with his desire to get home to Lisa.
“Sure,” he said. “What have you got?”
“Chinese IO. All of a sudden he’s headed for the Kennedy Center. On his way to the opera.”
Monk wanted to groan. Another Chinese intelligence officer. The old SOG joke came to mind. What’s the point of catching a Chinese spy? An hour later you just have to do it again.