Going Dark(89)
“Yeah? Where’s that?”
“Troublemaker waiting to see the principal, bend over, grab his ankles.”
“Call her back now,” he said to Marta. Then to Nicole: “I’m not scared of these guys. I’ve been paddled by the best.”
THIRTY-FIVE
NICOLE TOOK THE SEAT BESIDE him, gave Marta a token smile, and they waited in silence for a while. Marta spoke to Angie Stevens on the phone, passed on Frank’s message, then she excused herself to take a bathroom break.
“Alone at last,” Nicole said.
“A software bomb. You know what that is?”
Nicole said of course she knew what a software bomb was. Frank explained the rest of it. Malicious code that seemed harmless, possibly a red herring, something to waste their time. Which raised the likelihood that still more code was hidden somewhere in the power plant’s network.
While she was digesting that, he told her about the Keys water pipeline. Saying it sounded like Wally was still in the vicinity.
That got a scornful frown. “That’s not how he works. The raid on Prince Key spooked them. The Chee boys are long gone.”
“You’re positive? You know these guys so well you can predict what they’ll do next?”
A flush crept into her cheeks. With a tone he hadn’t before heard from her, as if she were indulging an addled child, she said, “The Keys pipeline thing, that could have been on a time delay, too. He could’ve set it long ago. Or pulled it off remotely. No reason he has to be nearby. Ask Magnuson if you don’t take my word for it. He’s studied Pauly’s movements. The guy’s gone. And his brother goes where he goes.”
“Okay, tranquilo. I’m just raising the possibility.”
“Don’t tranquilo me, Frank.”
Dinkins came out. Someone inside the office shut the door firmly behind him.
“How’d it go?”
“Who can tell? Like I said, they seem to be circling Magnuson. But, hey, with pros like these, they’re asking shit so fast, one from this direction, one from that, rat-a-tat-tat, my head was coming unscrewed.”
Door opened, the latter-day hippie curled his finger at Frank.
“Kick ass,” Dinkins said.
“Sit up straight,” Nicole said, smiling at Frank.
“The Chee brothers are still around,” he said. “Believe it.”
Her smile dwindled away.
Frank followed the suspenders into his own damn office.
When he entered, everyone was standing, and they stayed on their feet until Frank took a seat in a chair across from his desk. Like an all-rise moment in a courtroom. The silver-haired hipster from the Security Division sat behind Frank’s desk, tapping Frank’s favorite ballpoint pen against his ink blotter. The hippie was running the show. A surprise. Or maybe they’d been taking turns. Test-driving the desk of the special agent in charge of the Miami field office. See how it handled the tight turns.
The others were arrayed in a semicircle with various views of Frank’s profile. He looked around his office, having never studied it from this angle before. Never tried to make his office a home away from home, but now he realized from this vantage point it looked stark, no knickknacks, nothing personal to soften it up, a little forbidding.
Though he’d done it once when they’d first met, the security guy formally introduced himself, Miles Shuster, then went around the room naming everyone, giving their titles.
“You understand, Agent Sheffield, we’re here to debrief you.”
“Well, it shouldn’t take long. I’m not wearing underpants today.”
Nobody smiled. Maybe they’d heard the line before. Or maybe they were professional sourpusses.
It took Frank five minutes to lay out the order of events, the lead-up to the raid, the raid itself, the shooting, the aftermath. Shouldering the blame like a good soldier. Whole time he was telling the story, he was picturing the Silver Sands and hearing the sea breeze ticking through the palms, a whiff of coconut suntan oil. Come on, how bad was that? Fired from the FBI, forced to live full-time at the beach. Shit. He was burned out anyway. Do your worst, bureaucrats.
The only thing tipping the scales the other way, okay, yeah, he wanted somebody to put these ELF assholes out of business before they exploded some nasty gadget and sent a plume of fallout over the city, and he wasn’t sure anybody else was up to the task. And, yes, he very much wanted to speak to Flynn Moss again, make sure the kid was okay.
“Before we begin, Agent Sheffield,” the aging hippie said, “I want you to take a look at something our forensics people found on Prince Key a few hours ago. It’s rather mystifying.”