“Roy, I’m holding a ten-pound chain. Do not piss me off!”
Sixty seconds later they heard the sirens coming. Mace dropped the chain and they raced to the door and bolted down the stairs. They cleared the lobby and stepped into the elevator to the garage right as the firemen were coming in the front doors. They didn’t bother with the Marquis parked in the garage, but fled out the exit and turned away from the building.
“Now what?” said a breathless Roy as they slowed to a fast walk.
She checked her watch. “You up for some coffee?”
“What? Some people were just trying to kill us and you want a stimulant?”
“Yeah, at Simpsons in Georgetown, where Tolliver ate on Friday.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Then after that we can break into Tolliver’s house.”
“Oh for the love of God.”
CHAPTER 69
LATER THAT NIGHT Don Hope and Karl Reiger walked down the long hallway. They were several stories underground and the walls were lined with materials that prevented any form of electronic surveillance. It was a good thing since there were few buildings in the country that housed more secrets than this one, and that included the CIA’s command center in Virginia and the NSA headquarters in Maryland.
Both men looked anxious as they came to a stop in front of a metal door. There was a long hiss from hydraulic-powered equipment and the portal slid open. They stepped in and the door automatically closed behind them.
There were two chairs in front of the desk. They sat. Jarvis Burns was seated across from them. He perused his computer screen for another minute before turning to them. He slid off a pair of glasses and set them on the desktop. His hand ventured automatically to his right leg and started rubbing it. When Reiger started to speak, Burns held up his hand and shook his head. This was followed by a deep sigh. Reiger and Hope exchanged a nervous glance. Long sighs, apparently, were not a particularly good sign.
Burns said, “Interesting developments. Not pleased at all. Overly complicated now.” Each short sentence came out like an MP5 set on two-shot bursts.
Hope said, “Permission to speak candidly?”
“Of course.”
“The chief is covered. We fed her the info like you said and made it clear Director Donnelly was the source. As far as she’s concerned it’s domestic terrorists and she owes you. The sister and the lawyer are not really an issue, at least in my mind.”
Burns sat back, made a temple with his fingers, and settled his gaze on the two men. “Your assessment based on what? Your failures?”
“We haven’t failed.”
“Really? ‘Focus in on A-’? We had spyware on Tolliver’s computer. You knew about that e-mail and left it there. You could have erased it from Kingman’s computer before he even read it.”
Reiger said, “We didn’t do that because it sounded innocuous. We thought she’d just hit the send key by mistake. The message wasn’t even finished.”
“It was finished enough, because they figured out what it meant before you did. They got Watkins’s name and went to his apartment just in time to catch one of my people searching it. He had to tap-dance pretty fast.”
Reiger spoke up. “We didn’t know she had a box there. She’s never been to that mailbox place the whole time we’ve had her under surveillance.”
“Well, either she went before you had her under the glass or she had someone else to do it for her.”
“But your guy didn’t have to answer the damn door at Watkins’s apartment,” Hope pointed out.
“Trust me, if he hadn’t, Mace Perry would’ve broken in. And the police know about Watkins, too, of course. We could have removed the message after Perry and her friend found it, but then we would’ve risked her telling her sister and the paper being gone from the box would only have aroused the chief’s suspicions. The damage, in any case, was already done. But on the bright side, they have the old soldier in custody and he will no doubt be charged with murder very soon.”
“So maybe our work is done, then.”
“No, your work is not done. But we cannot afford any more screwups.”
Hope placed one large, muscular hand on the desktop. “We’ve been reactionary from almost the get-go. That’s not how successful ops are done, black or otherwise. That’s not why you brought us on board.”
“You are only technically assigned to DHS, which does not engage in black ops. You and Reiger are actually sterilized weapons, cocked