Hard Fall Part 13

"Let's get out of here," she said breathlessly, eyes closed.

"Yes," he agreed. "Let's."

NINE.

WITH HER SAD brown eyes and broomstick posture, Gloria's demanding expression stopped Daggett cold. She was still angry about his refusing the promotion. It was the first time it had occurred to him that her jet black hair might be covering the truth. He felt tempted to ask her if she dyed it it was one sure way to silence her before she spoke.

He placed his briefcase down heavily onto his desktop, and with a few nods said h.e.l.lo to a couple of the gang who had beaten him into work, already busy on the phones. CNN ran with the sound down low from a battered set in the corner. It ran twenty-four hours a day. The remaining desks went empty. Some of the guys had stretched the holiday weekend into a week's vacation. Others were on field a.s.signments, a few on opposing s.h.i.+fts.

He said h.e.l.lo to her. She was playing it smug. "We get a new agent today. He'll be in any minute."

"Glo," he said, "this is important to me."

"I don't want to talk about it." She handed him a fax. "Here, this is for you."

It was the flight manifest, listing pa.s.sengers who had flown from Los Angeles to Was.h.i.+ngton on the plane that the mystery woman, Maryanne Lyttle, had boarded after dropping off the rented minivan. Daggett scanned the list for her name, but it wasn't there. He couldn't allow this to discourage him. An operative would change aliases at every opportunity. They would change looks, driver's licenses, credit cards, everything. It didn't give him the kind of hard evidence Pullman was demanding to see. It left him in the familiar no-man's-land of suspicion without proof. Investigative Purgatory. He wanted to believe that Lyttle by whatever name was involved, but he couldn't be certain.

The new man's name was Bradley Levin. He was thirty-two, fiercely handsome, and a good deal taller than Daggett, maybe six-two, two hundred or two-ten. Strong upper body. Long, black curly hair with a shock of premature gray in the front. Gentle dark eyes, but chiseled lines to his face, his cheeks shaded by an insistent five o'clock shadow. Daggett greeted him enthusiastically, but it was an act: Although he needed help badly, the idea of working with a transfer was less than appealing. They got to know each other over more burned coffee. This time in the first floor cafeteria. Levin had started out at the Denver field office, where he had worked kidnappings. "Miami after that. Drugs," he explained in a low, warm voice. "We took up some slack for the DEA. Surprise inspections of commercial aircraft."

"The Air East bust?" Daggett inquired.

"That was mine," he admitted reluctantly. He blushed. Daggett was glad for the humility. It was less and less common around WMFO.

"Now Counterterrorism here with you guys. I gotta tell you: driving up here, what a neighborhood! I can see why they treat the garage like a jail for cars."

"Wait till you work the night s.h.i.+ft. You end up carrying your piece with one in the chamber."

"I believe it."

"We're in some deep s.h.i.+t here. I need an independent thinker, Brad, not a yes-man. I need someone to bounce ideas off of. Work with. I need someone to do a lot of the s.h.i.+t work and smile through it. Your experience with the commercial airlines will come in handy. But, honestly, this is probably the worst time to come aboard here. We're frantic. We've got a live one on the run. Dangerous, as in bombs. You have less than no time to catch up on all this. You have your reading cut out for you. Tempers are on hair triggers around here, so beware. I'm working on a deadline: I've been given one more week to prove that a murder in Seattle and the crash of flight sixty-four are both connected to Bernard. So beware .. . office hours are anytime you're not sitting on the can."

"Like Miami."

"Good," Daggett said, relieved. "Then you're used to it."

"Very."

"If we're lucky, we slam-dunk this guy. If we're not so lucky .. . well, there's nothing worse than wandering a burning field littered with body parts, especially knowing it was your job to prevent it from happening. There's pressure, and then there's this kind of pressure." He paused and lost his concentration. "Anyway, welcome aboard."

"Thanks."

"They call me Michigan around here you don't have to, but everyone else does." He took hold of the letter jacket.

"I get the idea," Levin said.

"I did some reading of my own before you got here. Your SAC in Miami wrote good things about you. Says you think first and talk later. You're single. I won't ask."

"Good, 'cause it's none of your business."

Daggett paused while the two challenged each other with stares. "It is my business. We're open books around here. All of us. Just so you know. Counterterrorism ... it has to be that way. We've never been penetrated from the outside. Not that we know of anyway. You understand?"

"It's worse when you're in Drugs in Miami."

"I can believe it."

"You should. I'm not in the habit of lying."

"Well, that answers the point about your being insolent."

"As Popeye said to the potato farmer: "I yarn what I yarn.""

"That's good. I'll try to remember that." It won a smile. Daggett said, "Pity about your schooling. But if I'm Michigan, then you're Ohio. Is that okay with you?"

"Fine, as long as we both know which is the superior school," Levin said.

Daggett wasn't going to allow himself to be led into that. It was an argument that could last days. Lifetimes, maybe. Not now anyway. "An A student right through college. That's impressive."

"My parents pushed."

"What do they think of the Bureau?"

"Next question."

"They don't approve," Daggett said.

"They had me picked for an attorney, like my father. From the age of about six months."

"So now you're an overachiever. Is that supposed to explain your record? Is that what you're telling me?"

"I'm not telling you anything. You're asking. If you ask, I answer, okay?"

"You'll like it here; you'll fit in. One thing nice about Counterterrorism is you're left alone a lot. It makes for more freedom, but comes at the cost of more reports."

"What's the squad chief like?"

"Pullman? He's new to it."

"So I hear."

"He's okay. The last guy was a bounty hunter. Wanted credit for anything that happened to go right. Can't tell yet what Pullman will be like. Guys change when they get the corner office."

"I heard you turned down a promotion. Any truth to that?"

Daggett wondered if this was Gloria's doing, or just an office rumor. "I've got my reasons."

"I thought we were open books around here."

They locked eyes and Daggett sensed he had made a friend. He asked, "Any friends in the area?"

"You're my first," Levin said, testing the waters. Daggett nodded. Levin added, "Couple of people I know from Quantico should be around here someplace."

"You want to discuss a.s.signments?"

"Why not?"

"I don't know whether you've had a chance yet to review the Der Grund file "

"I have."

"Good. Then you know that in Europe they're considered a radical Green group, that they target the petrochemical/pharmaceutical industries."

"What about ten twenty-three?"

"Including ten twenty-three. It was carrying commercial chemicals in the cargo hold. They made a threat and it was ignored. One thing we know about them: They seem to have some sort of collective conscience, as perverse as that may sound. In every case they have issued a threat prior to committing their act of terrorism. They do this to a flaw. And their signature is that they kill using a product, or byproduct, of the company they've targeted. The Semtex derivative that was used to blow up ten twenty-three was manufactured by the same company whose chemicals were in the cargo hold. A German company called EisherWorks Chemicals. Now, come to find out, the stuff on flight sixty-four was manufactured by an EisherWorks subsidiary. That's not good enough evidence for the desk jocks like Pullman, but it is for me.

"I'm convinced the murder at Duhning and flight sixty-four are connected, although I have yet to prove it. I can't even prove sixty-four was sabotaged. We have our work cut out for us. Pullman and Mumford above him requires more than coincidence. To make matters worse, he's under some intense pressure to sideline me long enough to write a comprehensive report on Backman's killing. All I've given him so far is a one-pager. That kind of report would take me a couple weeks some in-house review, maybe even testimony on the Hill. You get started on something like that and suddenly it's a couple months later."

"Tell me about it. Same thing in Miami."

"I've been on the Bernard case a long time. The only way I'm going to stay on it is to deliver something of sub stance. I figure I've got two chances: one, I come up with hard evidence that puts Bernard's device on board flight sixty-four; two, I link a threat to a major chemical company with my suspicion that whoever's behind this is now in Was.h.i.+ngton."

"And which do I get?"

"Number two." Daggett turned in his chair to face his good ear toward Levin. With them both talking softly, he was having trouble hearing.

"Your a.s.signment is to find their next target."

"Oh, is that all?" The oily skin between his dark eyebrows knitted with intensity. He squinted across the desk at Daggett like a nearsighted man without gla.s.ses. "Who says there is a next target?"

"The lab believes Bernard built two detonators. I think the first was on flight sixty-four, though I'm not sure we'll ever prove it. They're both barometric, so it's got to involve an aircraft. Commercial? Cargo? Who knows? You've read the file: the only real lead we have is that a woman who rented the van that was parked out front of the AmAirX-press mechanic's house in L.A." boarded a plane bound for here. That much we can prove. Bernard built the detonators in L.A. sixty-four goes down in L.A. Next time we caught up with him, he was here in Was.h.i.+ngton. This woman flies to Was.h.i.+ngton. Coincidence?"

"So we play the odds," Levin said.

"I don't know what else to do. We could, and should, try asking the various chemical giants about recent threats to their operations, but the sad truth is, they get way too many of those, and they handle them themselves. They don't like the publicity that often comes with our involvement." Daggett leaned back, "You look a little overwhelmed. Too much?"

"Not at all. Just trying to see the various angles. In Miami you have the drugs and you have the money. This has a lot more angles to it, that's all. I don't want to miss any."

"Mind you, it's all hypothetical. Maybe it's not Der Grund, maybe there isn't a second target."

"Okay, I'm buying. So what's next?"

"Der Grund targets chemical companies. Often, the executives. Flight sixty-four fits with that there were chemicals on board. It seems to me the first place we start.

"I think we explore every avenue we can think of," Daggett continued. "They've targeted chemical company executives in the past. So the first thing we do is get the travel itineraries for the executives say from VP up in every major chemical company. We see who, if anyone, is coming to town in the near future. Just to cover our bases, we should request notification of any recent threats received. If we turn up any, these should be compared by Linguistics to earlier Der Grund threats for overlaps."

"Will they give out itineraries that easily?"

"One thing you'll find in this squad that may be different than Drugs. All you do is mention the word terrorism, and people will give you d.a.m.n near anything you want."

Thirty minutes later, Gloria entered the bullpen carefully balancing a plastic bowl of lentil soup along with a tuna sandwich and a large OJ. She treated him better than she treated Pullman. "You don't look so good," she told him. She placed the food squarely before him. "You should marry that girl of yours. You need someone to look after you." She attempted to straighten the papers on his desk.

Daggett playfully tapped her on the hand. "I'm not through with those."

"Even you can't read six files at once, dearie." She continued her cleanup, undaunted, creating s.p.a.ce for his food. "Be nice to me, Cam Daggett, or I won't tell you that Duhn-ing called while you were downstairs."

Daggett reached for his pink message slips.

"Fifth one down," she said, isolating it, extracting it from the others and dangling it out of his reach. "If you would remember to put your extension on voice-mail, then little old ladies wouldn't have to answer the phone for you." Then she handed it to him.

Reading the slip, he reached for the phone and she said, "No, sir. You eat this food first. Doctor's orders. And I'm standing right here until you do."

"Glo."

"Eat."

She continued fussing with his desktop while he ate, making order out of the chaos. She rambled, as Gloria tended to do, lecturing him on a variety of personal subjects ranging from an observation that Carrie wouldn't "hang around forever," to the fact that "all work and no play makes Jake a dull boy." She never quoted perfectly.

Daggett was reaching for the phone when Levin strode into the bullpen with an ebullient expression on his face. Daggett replaced the receiver, not wanting to quash the younger man's enthusiasm.

Levin pulled over a chair and at Daggett's invitation, accepted half the sandwich.

With a mouthful of food, Levin said, "This may be the only time you'll be happy to know that one of your co-workers namely, me is the proud son of a dental hygienist."

Daggett looked at him peculiarly.

"I came across the lab report on that tooth we turned up in the hotel trash."

He handed Daggett a photograph Daggett would have preferred not to see a second time. Especially not while eating. Daggett pushed it back at him.

"It's the way the tooth fragmented," Levin explained, interpreting the gesture as an invitation to ill.u.s.trate his point. "Right here," he said, pointing. "See? Just one root showing. Our man may have the other left in his jaw. If he does, the thing will probably go south on him and he'll need some serious attention in a hurry."

Daggett felt a wave of excitement shoot through him. "How certain is this?"

"If that root is in there, he's in trouble. He can't fix that himself. So I thought we should alert all the dentists both in L.A." to see if it was done there, and here in Was.h.i.+ngton too. We'll put the word out to watch for an out-of-towner who needs work on that particular tooth. Number seventeen."

"We can't bust Kort for having a tooth repaired," Daggett pointed out, "but we can put him under surveillance. The dentist could keep a blood sample; we might even get a DNA match."

"Two major metropolitan areas. It's going to mean a h.e.l.l of a lot of phone calls," Levin said.

"It can be done by computer. We have a phone system all set up for this kind of thing like the phone solicitations you get. You record the verbal message, scan the numbers you want called right out of the phone book, and the computer does the rest. It dials the various numbers until a line is answered and the query responded to. The query can be as complicated or as simple as you like. Talk to Tech Services; they'll set it up."

Levin left in a hurry, taking the photograph of the tooth with him.