hot blast of its slipstream. The driver straightened the wheel and accelerated. Smiled with his lips hard together. The killing crew was going to work again.
The Mercedes driver saw headlights flashing in his mirror and looked again and saw the sedan behind him. Two peaked caps silhouetted in the front seat. He dropped his eyes automatically to his speedometer, which was showing more than ninety. Felt the cold oh-shit stab in his chest. Eased off the gas while he calculated how late he was already and how far he still had to go and what his best approach to these guys should be. Humility? Or maybe I'm-too-important-to-be-hassled? Or what about a sort of come-on-guys, I'm-working-too camaraderie?
The sedan pulled alongside as he slowed and he saw three people, one of them a woman. Radio antennas all over the car. No lights, no siren. Not regular cops. The driver was waving him to the shoulder. The woman was pressing an ID wallet against her window. It had FBI in two-inch-high letters. Their caps said FBI. Serious-looking people, in some kind of duty fatigues. Serious-looking squad car. He relaxed a little. The FBI didn't stop you for speeding. Must be something else. Maybe some kind of security check, which made sense considering what lay thirty miles up the road. He nodded to the woman and braked and eased right, onto the shoulder. He feathered the pedal and coasted to a stop in a big cloud of dust. The Bureau car eased up and stopped behind him, the brightness of its headlight beams dimmed by the cloud.
The way to do it is to keep them quiet and alive as long as possible. Postpone any kind of struggle. Struggling leads to evidence, blood and fibers and body fluids spraying and leaking all over the place. So they all three got out of the car at a medium speed, like they were harassed professionals dealing with something important, but not something right up there at the top of their agenda.
"Mr. Eugene?" the woman called. "Al Eugene, right?"
The Mercedes driver opened his door and slid out of his seat and stood up in the heat and the glare. He was around thirty, not tall, dark and sallow, soft and rounded. He faced the woman, and she saw some kind of innate southern courtesy toward women place him at an immediate disadvantage.
"What can I do for you, ma'am?" he asked.
"Your cellular phone not working, sir?" the woman asked.
Eugene patted at the pocket of his suit coat.
"Should be," he said.
"May I see it, sir?"
Eugene took it out of his pocket and handed it over. The woman dialed a number and looked surprised.
"Seems O.K.," she said. "Sir, can you spare us five minutes?"
"Maybe," Eugene said. "If you tell me what for."
"We have an FBI assistant director a mile up the road, needs to speak with you. Something urgent, I guess, or we wouldn't be here, and something pretty important, or we'd have been told what it's all about."
Eugene pulled back his cuff and looked at his watch.
"I have an appointment," he said.
The woman was nodding. "We know about that, sir. We took the liberty of calling ahead and rescheduling for you. Five minutes is all we need."
Eugene shrugged.
"Can I see some ID?" he asked.
The woman handed over her wallet. It was made of worn black leather and had a milky plastic window on the outside. There was an FBI photo-ID behind it, laminated and embossed and printed with the kind of slightly old-fashioned typeface the federal government might use. Like most people in the United States, Eugene had never seen an FBI ID. He assumed he was looking at his first.
"Up the road a-piece?" he said. "O.K., I'll follow you, I guess."
"We'll drive you," the woman said. "There's a checkpoint in place, and civilian cars make them real nervous. We'll bring you right back. Five minutes, is all."
Eugene shrugged again.
"O.K.," he said.
They all walked as a group back toward the Crown Vic. The driver held the front passenger door for Eugene.
"You ride up here, sir," he said. "They're listing you as a class-A individual, and if we put a class-A individual in the backseat, then we'll get our asses kicked but good, that's for damn sure."
They saw Eugene swell up a little from his assigned status. He nodded and ducked down and slid into the front seat. Either he hadn't noticed they still had his phone, or he didn't care. The driver closed the door on him and ducked around