Joshua Weinstein sat in the Quantico conference room and looked out at the sere Virginia landscape. The trees were naked and the ground was tan. It's like Wyeth painted the whole damn world, he thought. A light breeze swayed the branches and moved the leaves in pointless patterns. The central heat huffed on and he looked at Dumars. "How's your room?" he asked flatly, his red-eye voice.
"The same as yours."
And right next door, he thought-anything to relieve himself of the worry and fear. What could they possible want with him? Did they know about Snakey by now? Impossible, but their jot was to discover the impossible.
Right after the call from John, he had ordered Dumars to abort their airport run and speed to the perimeter of Liberty Ridge. There, he had grimly overseen the claiming of Snakey and the package. He heatedly swore his people to secrecy, and arranged for them to book the body at county as a John Doe. He now had two weeks of grace from a deputy, calling in an old favor.
He had flown out John's prizes by courier jet, which landed them in Norton's lap approximately five hours later. Then, making a mock rush for the airport, he had ordered Dumars to stop their car on the shoulder, gotten out, lifted the hood and asked her to locate the fuel line. Joshua couldn't tell the fuel line from a battery cable but Sharon could. He yanked it from the pump then called Bureau Tech Services to come fix his car.
The next flight out was at eleven.
Now he was here, half a day late, quite literally on the carpet. He looked down at the unearthly shade of green, suitable for a camouflage pattern at best, exactly what you'd expect from the federal government.
Norton entered the room and shook hands. He reeked of after-shave and anxiety. His cheeks were bright pink, marked with the capillary exuberance of forty years of Scotch. His smile looked too jolly; his handshake felt too warm; his tie was too tightly knotted.
All the best appearances, thought Joshua. We're fucked. Even Norton knows it. Did they tell him about Snakey? Norton sat and they made unbearable small talk for five eternal minutes. What do they want?
Walker Frazee finally popped in, his bouncing stride enough to send a familiar buzz of horror up Joshua's spine. They all shook hands. Frazee was a short man with a boyish face and a smile so disarming you wanted to hug him. His suit was dark, cheap and years out of fashion, exactly the same color and cut that Joshua had always seen him in. His shoes were polished to absurdity. His hair was an effulgent white, cut with just a little touching the top of his ears. He looked to Joshua like a funeral home counselor, which Josh knew was a wholly inappropriate impression. Because, when the boyishness left Walker Frazee's face and he dropped his ingratiating smile, what was left was the zealous gleam of the true believer. Josh could see it in his eyes, as clear as the beam from a lighthouse on a black sea. It said: I am the vessel. I carry the word. Righteousness, and its sad obligation to the sword, was certified by the gleam. He never swore, never drank alcohol or caffeine, never smoked, never missed church, invested shrewdly and-it was rumored-tithed abundantly. His wife was breathtakingly ugly, as portrayed by the photographs in his office. His eight grown children were pillars of Mormon, spread out across the republic like the footings of a foundation. Frazee never stopped talking about his children. Crazy Frazee, went the gossip: One God, one suit, eight wives.
"Good morning," he said, pulling out a chair at the head of the table. "How was your flight?"
"Fine, sir," said Dumars.
"Long," said Joshua.
Frazee held his boyish smile. "Looks like you survived it well."
"The movie was about a plane crash in the Andes," Joshua noted. "I couldn't figure out if it was a bad joke or a good one.'
"Oh, I saw that thing," said Norton. "Where they end up eating each other?"
"That's the one."
"Not for the queasy flyer," said Frazee. "Agent Dumars, you're looking very well these days."
"Thank you, sir."
"And you, Joshua?"
"I'm thinking of buying a surfboard."
"Really?"
"No, not really. But the Orange County office is a beehive I'll say that. There's always too much to do."
"Nice job on the kidnapper buying the Ferrari."
"Dumb shit-oh, I beg your pardon, sir-dumb clod just walked in with the cash. We had people standing around acting like salesmen. I mean, he'd done it before."
"Astonishing, he'd grab a casino owner's daughter."
"Won't last long in the prison population," said Norton "Dumb sh. .. muck."
"Well, I can't say I'm not a little envious of you two, when I wake up to an October morning and the mercury is right a thirty."
"We don't have weather in California, sir," said Weinstein "We have nuance."
"I see." Frazee's boyish smile faded as he settled in his chair and looked at Joshua. "And you have Wayfarer?"
"We certainly do," said Norton. "Joshua and Sharon have procured for us documents relating to Baum's home and work.'
"I've seen them. Interesting. But no evidence to establish that Wayfarer was at the scene. They're undergoing analysis right now-nothing is certain."
Joshua's heart fell.
"What?" asked Dumars.
"The photograph is of Baum's property," said Norton. "We can establish that. Plus the sketch of the Journal grounds."
"Which proves nothing," answered Frazee.
"Then we'll close the loop," said Norton.
"How?"
Joshua thought that he moved in rather nicely. "Owl is digging much better than we thought he might. We've got Liberty Operations docs, and a safe that looks more than promising. We expect a. 30/06 caliber hunting rifle next, to work the engraved shells against. Getting the rifle out could be tough. But he's working Liberty Ridge like a gopher."
Frazee's brow furrowed. "I thought we established that the bullets fired at the victim didn't come from the engraved shells."
"Correct, sir," said Joshua. "We're hoping to find that they came from another gun in Wayfarer's arsenal."
Frazee nodded with undisguised irritation. "If Owl hopes to get inside that safe I'd like to know how. Can he bend steel in his bare hands?"
"He's been in just over a week, sir," said Dumars.
"How often do you talk?" he asked Joshua, ignoring Sharon.
"Every other day, sir. It depends on John-Owl-getting to the phone. It's out on the perimeter of the property."
"Why not closer?"
"We assumed Wayfarer would find it."
"I'd say that was a good assumption. Does Wayfarer suspect him, yet?"
The "yet" struck Joshua as condescending and fated, but he held his tongue. "Wayfarer's security man has jumped him through some hoops. He cleared them all, so far as we can tell."
"Fargo?"
"Yes."
"Hmmm," mumbled Frazee. He sat back and looked briefly at Norton, then Joshua. "Hmmm. You know, this Hate Crimes money doesn't come to us for free."
Joshua waited. He had no idea where Frazee was going or why he was going there. An abrupt one-eighty like this was why they called him Crazy. Besides, Joshua believed the Hate Crimes money did come for free, more or less, taxed out of a dazed populace and spent by bureaucrats like any other federal funds. It was beyond Joshua's belief that Frazee would have called them back to Washington to talk about money.
"Appropriations feeds us, as you know. As it does Commerce, State Department, etc."
Shit, thought Joshua. My joe kills an innocent thug in the southern California hills, and Frazee's doing Economics 101. The little dandy droned on.
"We're Justice, of course, so we see our precious dollar shared with such critical programs as the Weed and Seed Fund ii General Administration, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Trust Fund, and of course our friends, the Drug Enforcemen Administration. The House Committee cut us again this year, as you know. As you also know, the President bailed us out- partially-with the Federal Hate Crimes funding. We were asked by the Attorney General to streamline and cooperate between agencies. The idea was that we could be cost effective. They actually used the phrase 'more bang for the buck.' Well, we've bee: asked to liase with the other agencies, in order to stretch the Hat Crimes windfall."
"We've been liasing all along," said Norton. "What a word. We get our piece of pie, everybody else gets theirs. We always cooperate until everybody gets out of our way."
"That just changed. We're barely past one quarter of the fiscal year, and we-that's not just the Bureau, but all of us inside Justice-have eaten up the Hate Crimes funding like it was candy. C-SPAN aired our foibles before the nation, just last week Certain Representatives heard from their constituents, and the Inspector-In-Charge heard from the Congressmen. We've decide to joint task some of the operations where we overlap. There's Joint Task Committee and I am on it."
"Congratulations," muttered Dumars.
"So what are we supposed to do?" asked Weinstein. "Help INS run down aliens?"
Frazee aimed a crisp stare at Joshua. "You are supposed to arrest an assassin."
"We're working effectively toward that end," said Norton.
"Hmmm," Frazee grunted. He sighed and shook his head "You know, Norton-this isn't the kind of thing I'd have approved, if it had come across my desk to begin with. It's too risk too time-consuming, too expensive. Joshua, you don't necessarily need to know that, but now you do. Of course, it's beside the point. But the fact that I'm our man on the Joint Task Committee isn't beside he point at all. Are your fingers to the wind now?"
Joshua nodded. "We're wasting money."
"In the eyes of the House, yes. And let's face it, twelve million for Hate Crimes, even divided up by Justice, isn't just change. Would you say?"
"Not at all, sir." said Joshua. "But our total outlay for Owl is less than eighty-five thousand."
"Counting salaries it isn't."
"We're always working on something, sir. You can hardly figure that into overhead for Wayfarer." Joshua mustered his best expression of agreeability, but he could feel his Adam's apple bobbing and his ears growing hot.
Though it was hardly the point here, Joshua wanted to ask why the California Feebies always got shortchanged by the Bureau budgeteers. He thought of the Los Angeles office, so strapped for money that the agents actually shared rides on stakeouts. One of them was caught selling Amway products from the trunk of his Bureau Ford, then later busted wide open for selling Government information to his Russian girlfriend. But Josh knew the truth, sad or not: Washington thought California was unworthy of federal dollars the same way New York thought California unworthy of intellectual respect. It was a nasty little prejudice he'd noticed from day one.
"We're playing it as tight as we can," Joshua said.
"You know that and I know that. But Appropriations sees twelve million going out and nothing coming back. If we can't make a cost-effective go of it this year, we'll get nothing from Hate Crimes next time around. I don't have to tell you that. Unfortunately, there's no neat way out of this. That's why I've called you here. You now have a deadline. A short one."
Joshua actually felt his stomach turn. It rotated, then settled back down into a new, less comfortable position. He had tried to isolate his own tiny operation in this labyrinth of finance and politics but that was hopeless. It was just a speck in the federal wind.
There was silence in the room now, all hands aware that Captain Frazee was about to make a major course correction. Joshua's stomach squeezed out a gurgling surge of gas, which he held in with great discomfort.
"And if we can't make a clean arrest of Wayfarer I'm going to have to turn him over to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Let them finish it."
"No," said Joshua.
"Shut up, Weinstein," said Norton. He stood now, sighing histrionically. Josh saw the fresh rush of blood to his already heated cheeks. He circled the conference room once, like a lion pacing the confines of a cage. "Walker, we can't sit still for that.'
"You will if I tell you to."
"Why? We've put in the time. We got the money from the Hate Crimes bill. We've worked Wayfarer up one side and down the other, we've got a man inside, just inches from pay dirt, am you want the Bat Boys to finish it? On what possible grounds?"
"All grounds," said Frazee, offering his smile, his clear am guileless eyes, his Gleam, his righteousness. "ATF takes Wayfare off our books, but the dollars stay. We are seen to be Joint Tasking effectively. We use what's left of our Hate Crimes windfall for more achievable goals. We still get our man. Moreover, the nation sees that our fellows in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are not the bumbling murderous fools last spotted in Waco, Texas."
"Oh, God," said Joshua, his stomach churning like a washing machine now, his tongue all but frozen by anger.
"Don't 'oh God' me, Mr. Weinstein," snapped Frazee. "You can sit back in your Bureau seat and call ATF anything you warn You can laugh, scorn, micturate or moan. But that won't change the fact that they're looking for redemption. They're not just looking for it-they're frothing after it. I had lunch with the Attorney General yesterday, and I can tell you that she is absolutely resolute on this point-ATF needs another chance. And, hint, hint: Hate Crimes largesse is much in question for next year. So, if we don't have Wayfarer's head on a platter soon, ATF gel their chance. I've got to give them something."
Norton was still standing, his mouth open, a look of incomprehension in his wet, blue eyes. He'd taken a cigarette from his pack but hadn't lit it-federal regulations, of course. For just moment Joshua saw Norton as ridiculous, a Scotch-soaked old triceratops wandering heavily in a world of smokeless bureaucracies, smug, soulless zealots like Walker Frazee and muscle-headed storm troopers like the Bat Boys. He wondered if Norton would start to fossilize, right before his eyes.
"How soon is soon?" managed Weinstein. His own voice sounded like something released from under pressure. He could hardly form words around his jumping larynx. He saw Share Dumars staring at him, which encouraged a fresh jolt of anxiety;
"Six days is the best I could do. Believe me, the Attorney General was this close to shutting us down right there, over lunch-redlining about ten of my operations. She pointed out with unfortunate accuracy that the murder of Rebecca Harris-a heterosexual WASP-does not, in fact, even constitute a hate crime."
"We all know who the target was!" yelled Joshua.
"That doesn't change the outcome," said Frazee.
"And if we don't have the arrest in six days?"
"She cannot guarantee us all six days. Six, maximum."
"If we don't have an arrest in time?''''
"ATF takes over."
"Would you excuse me for just one moment, sir?"
"Of course."
Joshua went into the men's room and vomited. Then he wiped his face with a soaked paper towel, brushed the hair back on his sweating scalp and smashed his foot into the aluminum waste receptacle. He looked down at it: shiny angles now all converging toward the huge pockmark of a center. Round Two, he thought. This fucker will not defeat me.
Back in the conference room, he stood somewhat formally behind his chair, like a party guest waiting to be seated. He buttoned his coat and looked at Walker Frazee, trying to mute the fury from his eyes.
"Sir," he said calmly. "I believe this is the worst decision that can be made at this time. Our informer has performed splendidly, quickly, intelligently. We are on the verge of a clean arrest. I can guarantee you one thing, sir-if ATF storms the walls at Liberty Ridge, Wayfarer will destroy everything that might implicate him in the murder of Rebecca Harris. We will be left with nothing. Nothing. ATF won't even get their ninety-six bodies. It will be an unqualified defeat, and Wayfarer will walk. He'll never offer us another chance again. Ever. You know him, sir. You know I'm right."
It was Frazee's turn to posture. He extricated himself from his chair with meaningful slowness, then walked to the window. He stared out. Then he turned and looked at Joshua. His eyes had that glimmer of conviction in them again."
“I object to your cynicism and irony, Mr. Weinstein. You have been given control. You have had your man inside for nine days. At the most, he will have six more. I can do nothing more for you. And if ATF takes over I'll be happy to see this go. I've never believed in this kind of hugger-mugger, anyway. I believe in bold, broad, decisive action. Take it, or ATF will."
Joshua stared back at Frazee, both drawn to and repelled b the Gleam. It was such a pure, unexamined thing. But when Frazee smiled now, Joshua saw it in a new way. Gone was the boy behind the face, and in his place was the serene sadness o the supplicant. Joshua realized it then: Frazee's onetime friend and ally within the Bureau was now his lamb of atonement. Frazee could not be clean until baptized in the blood of Wayfarer, and blood, Joshua understood, is exactly what Frazee was hoping the Bat Boys would spill for him. For free.
"Sir," said Weinstein. "I guarantee you that we will bring in Wayfarer on a clean arrest. Owl will produce. And I humbly implore you to keep those fucking apes out of my case."
"Go back to California," snapped Frazee.
"We're on our way, Walker!" exclaimed Norton, taking Joshua by the arm and leading him from the room.
They huddled in the far corner of a terminal lounge at Dulles International. Joshua stirred sugar and milk into his third cup of coffee. His ears were still bright red from a bitter confrontation with the airline desk, from which Joshua finally emerged victorious with two tickets for an earlier flight, no extra charge. He had only saved three hours time, but something in his gut told him he would need them.
"Can we shift Owl into overdrive?" asked Norton.
"He's been working as fast as he can," said Joshua. "Now we'll work him even faster. The Bat Boys will not crash my party; Norton."
Norton nodded without spirit. "Frazee is just a blade of grass in a Storm."
"He's a waste of skin."
"It isn't his fault."
"Norton," said Joshua, "that is completely beside the point."
Josh looked at his boss. There was no way he could tell him of Snakey now-it would be certain suicide. Norton would simply enjoy the protection of innocence until someone on Joshua team leaked the news. Someone would, he knew, but he prayed it wouldn't happen in the next six days. Six days-maybe less.
Knowing Frazee, maybe a whole lot less. If and when Frazee got wind of Snakey, the whole investigation would be completely and forever over. So, he knew, would his career with the FBI. This concept sat inside him without valence, neither positive nor negative, just a stable actuality he had never considered before. With regard to his future, he thought: small business. I've always liked dry cleaning, the way things go in dirty and come out clean.
He turned his thoughts to Liberty Ridge. What a botch, he thought, what a mess. But still, Owl was in there, right where they needed him, and the pearl of great price was in there too, waiting to be discovered. The cellular phone waited on his belt, a silent oracle. The relays and patches and satellites could put Owl through to him almost anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, but there it sat, black and mute on his hip. Ring, bastard, he thought.
"How come you missed the morning flight yesterday?" asked Norton.
"I told you, the Bureau car broke down. It took Tech Services over an hour to get the damn thing to a garage. Too late for the flight, by then."
Norton looked at him with unsatisfied eyes.
"Fuel line," said Joshua.
He felt Norton's big hand brush his shoulder as his boss stood, then plodded through the empty bar toward the exit.
Josh waited until Norton was out of sight before he spoke. "Sharon, I feel betrayed. Six days."
"Better than two."
Josh thought, then gulped down half his coffee. "The sketch of the Journal and the photo of Baum's house should be enough. They were in Wayfarer's possession. It is evidence of planning a murder. Why can't Frazee cut us loose with it, at least let a judge decide? We're after a search warrant for God's sake, not the gas chamber. Who in hell made that sketch, took those notes, if it wasn't Wayfarer?"
"That doesn't really worry me, Joshua. What worries me is John. How is he going to take this? He's packed and ready to come out. He's weak and he's vulnerable."
Joshua shook his head. "Fuck him. He's got the training and the ability to find what we sent him in to find."
"He just killed a man to get something to us, and it wasn't enough, Josh.
"He looked at Sharon Dumars for a long moment. He could feel the first rush of outrage and adrenaline leaving him, and approaching in its wake the grand fatigue of doubt and waiting.
"Six days," he said again. His voice sounded hollow an ungenuine.
Dumars set a hand over his. When he looked at her, she held his gaze with a look that seemed ready to dissolve, but did no Her dark eyes expressed the strength and tenderness that Joshua had long thought of as the essence of the feminine. How could they feel both at the same time? He wanted to cry.
"The other day you asked me something, and I answered you with a lie," she said.
He waited. He felt stuffed with information now, overloaded with emotion, and he could hardly believe that Dumars was apparently about to add to his burden. He searched his memory for the conversation in question. Something about the documents? The gun they hadn't found yet? The safe that Owl had photographed?
"You asked me to dinner and I said I had plans. I didn't."
That, he thought. Funny what a good job he'd done of forgetting.
"Oh. Well, that's okay."
Sharon blushed then. It surprised Joshua to see this intrusion onto Sharon's tanned, always composed, always prepared face. Her hand tightened and she smiled.
"Josh, you should have seen the look on Crazy's face when you told him to keep those apes out of your case. It was just to die for."
He allowed himself an uncertain grin.
She grinned, too, looked around, then leaned in closer l him. "I have to tell you, watching you go up against those o farts really made me proud. You're just a babe in their wood Josh, but you made a sound. You registered. No matter what happens here, you're the future of this Bureau, not Frazee and not Norton. You kicked a little butt in there, partner, and I loved it."
"What, exactly, did Frazee look like when I said that?"
"Like a nun finding a dildo in a Christmas package. Pardon my graphics."
"I missed it, I was so wound up."
"Well, I'll never forget it."
He smiled back at her now, and felt a massive draining of amperage from his nerves. He took a very deep breath.
"Thanks, Sharon."
He felt her hand tighten on his.
"Joshua, for cryin' out loud, will you just ask me to dinner again tonight? What does a girl have to do?"
"Would you?"
"My place. We'll go through Wayfarer files until we can't hold our eyes open any longer. After that, well, we'll just do whatever we need to."
Joshua's smile continued for just a moment, then his eyes took on a look of great reluctance as he reached down to the telephone pulsing against his waist.