That’s it, isn’t it?” He looked around the table again. One of the supervisors diverted his eyes, confirming Vail’s suspicions.
“Steve, try to look at it from our side. We have to consider the possibility that you might have found something.”
“Where are Kaulcrick and Kate?”
“Kate’s in her office.”
Vail waited a few seconds. “Since you’re not saying where Kaulcrick is, I’ll have to assume…he’s searching my room, isn’t he?”
Hildebrand’s face reddened. “We have a warrant.”
Vail roared with laughter. “When I was first an agent, I used to wonder if there was someone in a secret room watching everyone in the office who would feed management the answers to make sure that they got everything completely wrong. There had to be because how else could you guys get everything perfectly backward?” He looked around at the walls. “Come on, you can tell me, where are the cameras?”
“Would you be willing to take a polygraph to clear yourself?”
He smiled. “I’ll be glad to take a polygraph. On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You take one first.”
“Me? About what?”
“Kaulcrick wouldn’t have waited for a warrant to search my room, especially if he knew I wasn’t going to be there. You knew I was with Tye Delson at the hospital. Even though you did a quickie yesterday to lift my handgun, somebody had to go back to my room after the shooting for a little prewarrant reconnaissance. A little light lifting of the pillows to look for large chunks of money. Nothing that I’d notice. Just pass the box on that one question, Mark, and then you can hook me up.”
“So you’re saying no.”
“Sounds like you’re the one saying no.”
“Would you mind waiting out in my secretary’s office.”
“Listen, if you want me to help look for the money, just ask. If not, I need a ride back to my hotel. Please call and ask them to have the courtesy of being out of there by the time I get back.” Hildebrand hesitated for a few seconds, considering the advantage of joining forces with Vail, but knew that Kaulcrick was the surest route back to Washington. There was an old saying among managers: Contacts trump competence. The SAC nodded to the two agents at the door to take him back to the hotel. “Oh, two more things,” Vail said. “First, I assume you’d like to know the identity of the body in the elevator.”
“You know who that is?”
“A federal parolee named Benjamin Lavolet. He had an apartment on Sistine Lane.”
“How do you know that?”
“Actually, Radek told me when he called with the ransom demand.”
“Why would he tell you that?”
“He couldn’t help himself. He was rubbing it in my face how smart he was. Also because, at the time, he knew I couldn’t tell anyone. And he planned to kill me before I had the chance. Which brings me to the second thing, something he was even more proud of. Pendaran is innocent,” Vail lied. “They set him up as a fall guy in case someone saw through their Bertok ruse. Go to Pendaran’s lawyer and offer him an immediate walk if he passes the polygraph. I suspect you’ll have better luck with him than you did with me.”
Vail smiled enigmatically, almost as if to himself. He had bluffed them out of his taking a polygraph because he knew he couldn’t have passed it regarding the whereabouts of the money.
EVERYONE WAS GONE from Vail’s room when he got back. There really wasn’t much they could disrupt. The bed linens had been removed and were piled on a chair. A copy of the search warrant lay in the middle of the mattress. He checked the return: nothing had been taken as evidence.
He pulled a sheet off the chair and arranged it across the bed. He considered sleeping for a couple of hours, but knew he wouldn’t be able to. It was true what Kaulcrick had said, that he would have little success finding the money without the Bureau’s resources, but he had something none of them did. There was a good chance that the answer to everything was in his pocket. He pulled out the ring of keys he had taken off Radek’s body. “That’s the sound of freedom,” he had told Tye. Since the handcuff key was not among them, it had to be his freedom he was referring to—the money. And an assistant director of the FBI had told Vail that if he found it, he could keep it. Had he done three million dollars’ worth of work for the