Conspiracy Theory(39)

“Yes,” Gregor said. “I do see. So you played backup, and your partner went undercover. Undercover as what?”

“As somebody interested in joining the movement.”

“And that’s possible? How do you make an approach in a case like that?”

Canfield got up and started to pace. “It’s not like those Islamic groups, where you’ve got cells and nobody is supposed to know anybody else in the cells. The conspiracist groups are much more open, if that makes any sense. They give lectures that are open to the public, they sell books, like that. We sent Steve to one of the lectures.”

“Steve was your partner?”

“Steve Bridge, yeah. We went down to Price Heaven and got him a pair of chinos and a cheap polo shirt. He really looked the part. And he went to a couple of their lectures, and after a while he started getting asked to meetings.”

“And?”

“And nothing, really,” Canfield said. “He went to meetings, but they didn’t trust him right off. They wouldn’t. So he tried to be helpful and he tried to sound like he’d gotten religion, so to speak, and they seemed to be buying it. He got the names of the members, the real ones. We did some background checks.”

“Why didn’t you raid them? You had the weapons violations. You knew where the weapons were. ATF should have been able to go in there and clean them out.”

“We wanted to get a line on Michael Harridan himself.”

“And did you?”

“No,” Canfield said. “He didn’t come to meetings, at least not in the flesh. And he didn’t give lectures or attend them. We were pretty certain that the women had met him at some point, because they were always talking about him and the things he said and the things he did, but we weren’t able to figure out when they saw him or where.”

“Did it occur to you that there might not be any him to see?” Gregor asked. “Maybe the two women invented him for reasons of their own—because the kind of men who join this kind of movement don’t take too well to leadership by women, or something like that.”

“We thought of it, but we knew it wouldn’t fly,” Canfield said. “It really wouldn’t. Neither of them had the technical skills to produce the newsletter, for one thing. And it was more than that. At one point the group had a remote bug with a satellite relay planted at the offices of the City Planning Commission in Philadelphia. Not one of those deals where you had to have a van parked practically out in front of the place, but a real relay—”

“You must be joking.”

“I’m not. And it worked too. Steve sat in Kathi Mittendorf’s living room and listened to the feed for half an hour. He said the quality was lousy, but the thing worked. Neither of the women could have done that. Whoever this Michael Harridan is, he knows what he’s doing and he’s good at it. He’s also smart enough not to show his face.”

“So Steve never actually saw him,” Gregor said.

“Not as far as I know,” Canfield said.

“Which means what?”

Canfield looked at the floor, frowning. “Meaning, Steve might have seen him. Back at the beginning of last week, maybe three or four days before the Ross shooting.”

“What makes you think that? Did he say so?”

“No. He didn’t say anything. That’s the point.”

“I’m not getting the point,” Gregor said.

Canfield sighed. “That’s when Steve went missing. Poof. Gone. Disappeared. That’s the last time I saw or heard from him.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gregor said. “He’s gone?”

“I didn’t think anything of it at first,” Canfield said desperately. “It wasn’t all that unusual for me not to hear from him for a day or two. We really were being very careful to keep him undercover. But then the Ross thing happened, and he didn’t surface—”

Gregor took a deep breath. “You haven’t told the Bureau,” he said. “You haven’t told anybody that he’s gone.”

Canfield cleared his throat. “I didn’t know there was anything to tell,” he said carefully. “And then the Ross thing happened and I was distracted—”

“Jesus Christ,” Gregor said again. “I walked in here and took one look at you and thought you were the kind of idiot who couldn’t imagine ever doing anything except by the book, and here you’ve got a special agent, your own partner, missing for—what?—ten days now? And you haven’t called anybody. You haven’t notified anybody. Have you done anything sensible? Have you searched the morgues?”