Conspiracy Theory(38)

“Anything you want,” Marty said, pushing himself away from the wall he’d been standing against and heading for the door.

“We’ll go get some coffee,” Frank said.

Gregor waited for them to leave and shut the door behind them. Walker Canfield waited too. He had gone beyond nervous. His eyes were darting around in his skull. The palms of his hands were sweating enough to leave visible marks on the knees of his pants when he rubbed them. Oh, fine, Gregor thought. No instincts, and no nerves, either.

When the door shut, the click sounded as loud as a cap gun going off in a playground. Gregor sat down on the edge of the conference table.

“Now,” he said, “let’s make some sense. What is it exactly you’re supposed to be doing here? And don’t hand me that crap about helping law enforcement one more time.”

“I do have a brief for confidential agency business.”

“More crap. Try again.”

“You aren’t an agent of the Bureau any longer, Mr. Demarkian. You know as well as I do that it is entirely against the rules for me to divulge confidential agency business without first getting a green light from—”

“You want a green light? Fine. Let’s get a green light. There’s got to be a phone around here somewhere. I’ll call the director himself and we’ll—”

“No,” Canfield said.

“No? Why not? If this is confidential agency business you’re on, the director will know about it. He has to know.”

“He does know,” Canfield said. “I mean, he knows in general.”

“Then why not ask him?”

“It’s not that simple.” Canfield had calmed down, but it wasn’t a good kind of calm. His palms were still sweating, and now so was his forehead. His face looked like it was covered with water. It was not a good face under the best of circumstances.

Gregor got a chair and sat down on it, straddling it, resting his chin on its back. “So,” he said. “If it’s not that simple, what is it?”

Canfield sighed. “I had a partner. On this investigation.”

“The investigation of Tony Ross?”

“No, no. We were here a long time before that happened. Months, to tell you the truth. He went undercover and I did backup.”

“Undercover as what?”

Canfield gave Gregor an odd look. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled a wad of papers from his inside jacket pocket. “Here,” he said, flattening them on the conference table. “Take a look at these.”

Gregor looked. THE HARRIDAN REPORT, the page at the top said, in bold italics. That page was stapled to three others. Then there was another set of stapled pages, the first one with the same logo. Then there was a third set. Gregor picked up the first set and scanned the text. He picked up the second and did the same. He stopped midway through the second page.

“Do you know who this is?” he asked, pointing to the name.

“Bennis Hannaford,” Canfield said. “We checked her out. Comes from one of those old money Main Line families, railroad money and then steel, I think. Went to Vassar. Tends to be a little pink, to use an old-fashion word. Writes science fiction. I don’t remember everything else. I’d have to check my notes. She—”

“She’s sitting down the hall eating doughnuts. She drove me in from Philadelphia today.”

“What?”

“I hate sloppy work,” Gregor said. “She and I have been plastered all over People magazine more than once. It’s not like it would have been hard to find out.”

“We weren’t interested in her,” Canfield said defensively. “She wasn’t our target.”

“Who was? This Michael Harridan?”

“Yeah,” Canfield said. “Sort of. It’s this whole organization he runs. America on Alert. You heard of them?”

“No.”

“We got word about six months ago that they were buying weapons. A lot of weapons, and explosives too. So they sent us down to check it out.”

“And?”

“And,” Canfield said, “it was true. They weren’t even being cagey about it. These two women, Kathi Mittendorf and Susan Hester, they went to gun shows. They bought on the street. They bought on the Internet. They used false ID, of course, but not good false ID. And they just kept stockpiling the stuff. They put it in Kathi Mittendorf’s living room, as far as I can tell.”

“Fine. We’re making progress. At least we’re finally talking about something the Bureau really does investigate. What about ATF?”

“We got a guy at ATF we’re feeding information to, yes,” Canfield said, “but we’re trying to be careful. These conspiracist groups are paranoid as hell. They think there’s an agent of the New World Order behind every bush. We didn’t want to land a bunch of agents in their lap all at once, if you see what I mean.”