The food court in Pentagon City Mall was like every other food court in every city in the world. The same pizza, the same Chinese food, the same burgers. One thing that set it apart, Brandy thought, was its location on the bottom floor. Weren’t most such places on the top floor of major malls? It made sense here, though, because the Pentagon City Metro Station was only a couple hundred footsteps away. Located between the stops for the Pentagon and Crystal City, it was the perfect spot for meeting like this.
For 10:30 on a weekday morning, Brandy thought the food court was unusually busy-not that she had any current frame of reference. SecDef had his own personal chef, and as special assistant, those perks extended to Brandy as well, free of charge. When five-star food was available for free, why would she ever dine outside the E-Ring if she didn’t have to?
In order not to draw attention as she waited, Brandy sipped a Starbucks latte and nibbled on a cinnamon scone that tasted like sugared sawdust. Every bite needed to be chased with a sip of coffee to keep it from turning to concrete in her mouth. As a security hedge, she’d chosen a seat in the middle of the sea of identical white tables, figuring it would be far harder to sneak up on her. You don’t make your living tying up these kinds of loose ends without developing a healthy paranoia.
The personal meetings were a necessary evil. Every phone call into and out of the Pentagon was a matter of public record-if not the what, then certainly the who. It had been that way for as long as there’d been phones, she supposed, but previous administrations had never learned the lesson that was first etched in marble during Nixon years: Every electronic trail will trace directly back to the thing that you want most to keep secret. She could have handed over her cell phone number, she supposed, but she didn’t relish the likes of Jerry Sjogren knowing more about her life than he already did.
That left face-to-face meetings like this one. If nothing else, the shopping mall felt like familiar ground.
She spotted Sjogren when he was still on the escalator heading down, but she didn’t make eye contact. She dared just a brief glance, during which she noted that he was likewise avoiding any sign of recognition. This was the way the game always was played, though she didn’t understand why. Since they were going to be sitting together anyway, she thought it might make more sense to smile and wave like they were lovers.
Actually, no one would believe that. Jerry was easily fifty years old, and he was built like a bear. Thick gray hair covered his head, his ears, and his upper lip, and when he spoke he sounded like someone doing a disrespectful parody of a New England accent, complete with the nasal “ah” sound where there should have been an “are.” Although he was quick to laugh and grandfatherly in his demeanor, there was no doubting after two minutes of conversation that Jerry Sjogren was capable of all the things he was hired to do.
Brandy waited till his shadow loomed before she looked up from her scone. “You don’t look like a man bringing good news,” she said.
Sjogren helped himself to the opposite seat and leaned his forearms on the table heavily enough to make it shift. “There’s rarely ‘good’ news in this line of work,” he said. “If you know what I mean.” This was his grandfatherly side, patronizing at its roots. He somehow pulled it off without insulting her. “But in this case, it’s worse than it otherwise might be.”
Brandy felt a chill. “So we in fact lost him?”
Sjogren cocked his head and chuckled. “Well, that would have been bad enough, wouldn’t it? But it’s even worse. We didn’t just lose the kid. We lost the men sent to find him.”
She felt herself going pale and tightened her stomach muscles to keep blood flowing to her head. “You lost them? What does that mean?”
He leaned back, releasing his psychic hold. “Exactly what it sounds like. They’re gone. Misplaced. Disappeared. Poof. Sent them out, never heard from them, and then when I sent another crew to follow up, they got nothing but some bloodstains in the grass.”
“The boy’s bloodstains?” she asked hopefully.
He shrugged. “Red bloodstains. That’s the best I can do for right now.”
“Well, what happened?”
Sjogren laughed. “I guess I should have defined ‘poof’ a little better. I got no clue. They’re gone, the car’s gone. Everything. Gone.”
“How can that be?” As soon as the words left her mouth she knew that they were stupid. It made no sense just to keep repeating the same question with different words. “There has to be something.”
He conceded that much with a shrug. “There’s a campsite nearby that appears to be somebody’s house, but nobody’s home. I got people wandering around asking questions to see who owns it. That might be a lead.”
“‘Might’ is not a word my boss is going to like.”
“You’d rather I lie?”
Actually, yes, she didn’t say. That way when it all went to hell she could blame it on their contractors. “Do you think they’re…dead?” She nearly whispered the last word.
“They’re two tough dudes,” Sjogren said, cocking his head again. “I have a hard time believing that some homeless guy got the drop on them.”
“So why-”
“But it’s even harder for me to believe that they’re still alive but didn’t report in. They just wouldn’t do that. So, yeah, I think they’re probably not with us anymore.”
Brandy noted the utter aloofness in his tone. He might have been speaking about a couple of lost screwdrivers. “Do the police know?”
This time, Sjogren’s laugh was loud enough to draw attention. He let the moment pass, then leaned back and crossed his legs. “And just exactly what would I tell the police?” he asked. “Especially when I get to the part about why they were down there?”
She’d asked another stupid question. Thing was, she couldn’t think of any smart ones. Nothing was going as it was supposed to. “So what do you want to do next?” she asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“I’m not the one who fumbled the ball,” Brandy said. She was pleased that her tone sounded strong despite the panic that coursed through her body.
Sjogren’s features hardened. “I guess that depends on when you start counting, doesn’t it? Between you, me, and your boss, which one is tearing up the countryside to make an old problem go away?”
Brandy tried to return the glare in kind. “Of the three of us, you are the one being paid to make it go away. The rest of it isn’t in play.”
Sjogren’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time, Brandy realized that her paranoia was justified. This man was not accustomed to being told off by anyone. For it to come from a woman half his age had to hurt.
She held her ground, and his expression softened. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” he said at last, his tone as even and easy as before. “You heard about that jailbreak nonsense down in Buttscratch, Virginia, where the op went down?”
“The news said it involved someone suspected in the event.”
“We must have heard the same report. They said he had help from somebody masquerading as an FBI agent. Pretty slick.”
“If you say so,” Brandy said. From where she sat, slick was not the operative adjective. Disastrous came a lot closer.
“Well, have you heard the latest?” Sjogren went on. “Despite all the high-class help, they recaptured the guy who broke out.”
Brandy in fact hadn’t heard. She weighed it and didn’t know what to do with it. “Is that good news or bad?”
“Personally, I wish they’d shot the son of a bitch. What bothers me is the fact that they found him all trussed up and packaged for Christmas. Whoever broke him out never intended to keep him out.”
Brandy knew she should understand where he was going, but the pieces weren’t there yet. Rather than admit it, she waited for him to connect more dots.
“They broke him out to squeeze him for information,” Sjogren said. “He’s back in custody because he gave them something worthwhile. Otherwise they’d have killed him. As I understand it, he’s got some pretty good bruises.”
“Who was pressing him?”
Sjogren sighed noisily. “I. Don’t. Know.” He spoke as if to a slow child.
“What could he have given? You said he didn’t know anything.”
“Everybody knows something. In this case, he knows, for example, where the drop-off point was.”
“Where?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Good catch, she thought. “No.”
He smiled. “It’s the same spot where the kid was shot. Same spot where my guys disappeared.”
It dawned on her in a rush. “Somebody attacked them,” she said.
He acknowledged the possibility with his eyebrows. “That’s what I’m thinking. Jimmy Henry gave them just enough to figure out a big one.”
Brandy closed her eyes. “So, where do we stand?”
Sjogren made a show of crossing his arms and his legs. “Maybe we can find the guy that owns the camping gear,” he said. “If we do, I guess there’s a glimmer that we might be able to press him for information. Tit for tat. Quid pro quo.”
“Is it wise to bring another stranger into the loop like that?” Brandy asked. “I mean, just by asking the questions, you’re going to make him wonder…” She cut herself off in response to his overplayed look of patience. “Oh, of course,” she said, looking down. Answering questions would be the poor man’s last earthly act. “But you still have to find the body. Someone still has to take care of him. I still don’t understand what went wrong there.”
Sjogren grew uncomfortable. “Well, now, that’s interesting, too. We’re not looking for the kid’s body anymore. We’re looking for the kid. We think he’s alive.”
Brandy’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God.”
“I pressed our friend Mitch Ponder on it pretty hard, and it turns out that Jenkins couldn’t bring himself to shoot a child. Instead, he carried the kid out into the woods and pumped him with an overdose of sedative. He thought it would take care of him. He fired a shot in the air for the benefit of the others, and they left.”
“This is what qualifies for ‘professional’ in your firm?” Brandy asked. She wanted to regain control of the conversation.
Sjogren drew his forefinger from the crook of his folded arm as if drawing a weapon from a shoulder holster, and he pointed it at her. “You’d best be careful throwing that word around, missy,” he said. His cheeks and forehead glowed red. “Until you’ve done some of the wet work you order, you ought to keep your judgments to yourself. I’ll make good what needs to be made good, but you need to remember that you and your boss are two different people. He crosses me, I might take it. You cross me, and I might just give you an inside look at the kind of work I do.”
Brandy broke eye contact.
Sjogren said, “I’m going to sniff around to find this tent-dweller. The fact that he moved out without packing tells me he knows something. My not-insubstantial gut tells me that if I find him, I’ll find the boy.”
“And when you do, will you…” She let her voice trail off, confident that he would catch her meaning.
“You can pull me off of this thing anytime you want,” Sjogren said. “But unless you do, I’ve got a job to finish. You want me to stop looking and just let the kid go?”
Brandy closed her eyes and inhaled. How could it possibly have come to this? “No,” she said, her lids still closed. “I want you to finish it.” The words seemed to come from someone else. Seven years ago, when she was graduating from Georgetown with her degree in political science, the thought of ordering the murder of a child would have been inconceivable. Now she’d just done it for the second time in less than a week.