“I don’t know that either, Agent Coleman. I’m sure the Director will contact you if he needs to speak with you. Or I can take a message if you’d like.”
Tom shook his head impatiently. “Do you at least know when he’s expected back?”
“No, I do not.”
“Fine,” Tom replied abruptly. He turned and paced to the elevator. What the hell was going on? he wondered. This wasn’t a good time for Preston to be out of touch – not with everything that was happening right now. He took the elevator to the first floor and started walking to his office. Halfway there, a thought made him suddenly change direction and he turned down a side corridor that led to the Undercover Operations area. He walked over to Rick Martin’s closed office door and knocked loudly. There was no answer.
“If you’re looking for Rick, he’s out on some assignment,” a voice from the adjacent office called out. Tom walked over and looked in the open door.
“Do you know where he is?” he asked.
“No idea,” the agent said with a shrug. “All I know is that he said he’d be unreachable until he was back in the office, which means all the shit happening with his pending cases is ending up on my desk.”
“I know how that goes,” Tom replied empathetically. “When’s he getting back?”
“Should’ve been back already. He told me he’d probably only be gone for a few days, but it’s been at least five days now.” The man looked harder at Tom. “Don’t tell me – did he leave you hanging with a case too?”
“No, just curious,” Tom answered. “Thanks.”
He walked back to his office as he mulled over the facts. Preston had told Tom he’d dropped an agent in Amsterdam the same night as the CIA raid on the terrorist’s hotel – exactly five nights ago. Rick Martin had now been gone for more than five days on an assignment where he was “unreachable”. In Tom’s mind, there was only one reasonable conclusion.
Rick Martin was Preston’s agent in China.
Tom marched into his office and glanced around at the cramped room. On the corner of his desk, a tall stack of unopened new case files waited patiently for him. The Landscapes of Sedona calendar pinned on the wall looked dull and lifeless under the fluorescent lights that twitched overhead. He walked over to his chair with its torn upholstery and stopped. A sudden rush of anger swept over him.
This was his fucking case to solve. It belonged to him – not Alex Murstead, not Jack Preston, and certainly not Rick Martin. Tom turned around and walked out of his office, the steel door shutting loudly behind him.
As he walked down the long corridor towards the exit, Tom realized Preston was right. Regardless of whether she was in league with the terrorists or not, the case still revolved around Jeri. There was nothing else he could solve from inside the ICE office, which meant there was only one place left to go.
∞
Alex paused in the corner of the small, sound-proof room inside the Central Intelligence Agency’s Langley complex and stared intently at the two Homeland Security Directors seated at the table in front of him. Neither of the men returned his stare as he once again paced the length of the interrogation room’s bright white interior. Sitting nearby, the agent who had helped Alex apprehend Connolly earlier that morning was now hovering behind a laptop and a small microphone recording the conversation.
Alex studied both men as he considered his next line of questioning. His interview of Preston and Connolly was still in its first hour, and already it was clear that the careers – if not the lives – of both men were effectively ruined. Once the transcripts of the interview were delivered to Deputy Secretary of State McCarthy, their fates would be sealed.
The first sacrifices for the altar Alex thought somberly.
Of course, the fate of both men was irrelevant to Alex. Preston and Connolly had knowingly exercised the powers of their offices well beyond their moral and legal limits. In doing so, they had become accountable for the deaths of Agent Martin and the Chinese scientist named Zhu. Whatever consequences they faced – most likely charges from the Department of Justice – would be, in his opinion, fully deserved. The only interest Alex had in these men now was finding out how they’d come by their information.
He turned and faced Jack Preston.
“Help me understand something, Director Preston. You sent Agent Martin to Amsterdam based on the belief that a suspected terrorist was located there. But exactly how did you acquire this information in the first place?”
Jack Preston glared irritably at Alex before responding. “That information was obtained from Agent Coleman.”