and hair and fiber. They’d probably never had to travel such a short distance to do a job. A couple of important-looking men and women in business suits stood outside the threshold of the room in tense conversation.
“You were wrong,” she said.
“About what?”
“The tie. It was Brooks Brothers.”
“My bad.”
“Only it had something like fishing line stitched inside.”
“Probably eighty-pound high-tensile-strength, braided line. It makes a very effective garrote. Works like a cheese slicer. He could easily have decapitated Perreira if he chose to, only he probably didn’t want to get arterial blood all over his expensive suit.”
She looked horrified, said nothing.
“Who cleared him in?” I said.
“See, that’s the problem. There is no clearance procedure. Everyone assumed someone else had vetted him. He presented ID at the desk, claiming to be Cláudio Barboza from the Brazilian consulate, and who’s going to question him?”
“Someone should call the consulate to check whether there’s anyone there with that name.”
“I just did.”
“And?”
“They don’t even have a legal attaché in Boston.”
I just groaned. “It’s probably too much to expect that the guy left any prints.”
“Didn’t you notice those very expensive-looking black lambskin gloves he wore?”
“No,” I admitted. “But at least you guys have surveillance video.”
“That we do,” she said. “Cameras all over the place.”
“Except in the interview room, where it might have done us some good.”
“The video’s not going to tell us anything we don’t know.”
“Well,” I said, “I hope you have better facial recognition than the Pentagon had when I was there. Which was crap.” People sometimes forgot that facial recognition isn’t the same as facial identification. It works by matching a face with a photo of someone who’s already been identified. Unless you had a good high-resolution image to match it against, the software couldn’t tell the difference between Lillian Hellman and Scarlett Johansson.
“No better. The guy’s obviously a pro. He wouldn’t have been sloppy enough to show his face here unless he felt secure we wouldn’t catch him.”
“Right,” I said. “He knew he’d have no problem getting in—or out. So why was that?”
She shrugged. “Way above my pay grade.”
“Have you ever heard of anyone being killed in FBI custody before—inside an FBI field office?”
“Never.”
“A couple of guys break into my loft to put a local intercept on my Internet. The SWAT team shows up in Medford just minutes after I do. They grab a key witness, who’s later murdered in a secure interview room within FBI headquarters. Obviously someone didn’t want me talking to Perreira.”
“Don’t tell me you’re accusing Gordon Snyder.”
“I’d happily blame Gordon Snyder for the BP oil spill, cancer, and global warming if I could. But not this. He’s too obsessed with bringing Marshall Marcus down.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
“But it’s someone in the government. Someone at a high level. Someone who doesn’t want me finding out who kidnapped Alexa.”
“Come on, Nico. That’s conspiracy theory stuff.”
“As the saying goes, not every conspiracy is a theory.”
“I guess that means you don’t trust me either.”
“I trust you absolutely. Totally. Without reservation. I just need to keep in mind that anything I tell you might end up in Gordon Snyder’s in-box.”
She looked wounded. “So you don’t trust me?”
“Put it this way: If you learned something germane to your investigation and you didn’t pass it along to him, you wouldn’t be doing your job, would you?”
After a moment, she nodded slowly. “True.”
“So you see, I’d never lie to you, but I can’t tell you everything.”
“Okay. Fair enough. So if someone’s really trying to stop you from finding Alexa, what’s the reason?”
I shrugged. “No idea. But I feel like they’re sending me a message.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m on the right track.”
47.
My old friend George Devlin—Romeo, as we called him in the Special Forces—was the handsomest man you ever saw.
Not only was he the best-looking, most popular guy in his high school class, as well as the class president, but he was also the star of the school’s hockey team. In a hockey-crazed town like Grand Rapids, Michigan, that was saying something. He had a great voice too and starred in his high school musical senior year. He was a whiz at computers and an avid gamer.
He could have done anything, but the Devlins had no money to send him to college, so he enlisted in the army. There he qualified for the Special Forces, of course, because he was just that kind of guy. After some specialized computer training he was made a communications sergeant. That’s how I first got to know George: He was the comms sergeant in my