The door slid open. Brian went out and through another door, along a short hallway, and into a small conference room. There were six chairs around the table, and three were already occupied. He nodded at the other people in the room and sat down, sprawling out his legs. One of the two remaining empty chairs awaited whatever guest might be attending this morning, and the other, at the head of the conference room table, was reserved for their team leader. Who was always late, and who had an office out at the other end of the underground complex, along with the other team members. Coffee and juice and pastries and doughnuts were set in the middle of the table. On the far wall was a thin plasma screen, displaying nothing save a pale blue light. Laptops were set up in front of the other three participants, and Brian didn’t feel guilty that his own laptop was locked up safely in his own little cubicle.
At his left was Montgomery Zane, a black guy about his own age who was about the same height as Brian but who easily had fifteen pounds on him, all of it muscle around his neck and shoulders. He had on a dark blue polo shirt and grunted a greeting as Brian sat down, the good side of his face toward him. The other side — the left side — of Monty’s face had ripples of burn-scar tissue running down to his thick neck. Brian sneaked a peek at Monty’s laptop screen, saw that he was playing some sort of Tetris-like game, which immediately made him feel better about being laptop-less. At his right was Darren Coover, who was about ten years his junior and so slight and blond he looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over. Darren didn’t even seem to notice as Brian sprawled out, and a quick glance at Darren’s laptop screen showed streams of numbers and letters, nothing that seemed to make sense.
Across from Brian was Victor Palmer — or, as he preferred to be known, Doctor Palmer. Like Brian, he was on loan and was hating almost every minute of it. Brian quickly realized that he didn’t like the look on the doc’s face. Usually the doc had this air of superiority, like the rest of the group weren’t fit to wipe his ass after he’d taken a dump, but not this morning. He was looking around the room and nervously licking his thin lips, eyes blinking behind his round, horn-rimmed glasses. That look made him seem scared, scared for the first time in a long time, and Brian said loudly, ‘Anybody know when the princess is showing up?’
That brought a smile from Monty. But Darren continued to ignore everybody, while the good doctor still looked like he was trying to retain an enema in his bowels. Brian looked around at his fellow members of Federal Operations and Intelligence Liaison Team Seven, a/k/a Tiger Team Seven, and he remembered how it had all begun.
Months earlier there’d been a note on Brian’s cluttered desk, at the First Precinct on Ericsson Place at the southern tip of Manhattan. ‘See me soonest. L.’
L. Officially known as Lieutenant Lawrence Lancaster, known to everyone in the squad as Ellie but who was never called that to his face. Brian crumpled up the note, tossed it in a nearby wastebasket, and thought about going outside for a nice second cup of coffee. But he decided that wasn’t going to solve anything. There. A detective joke — not going to solve anything — and he hadn’t even tried. He looked at his cluttered desk, at the sparse collection of family photographs there, his ex-wife Marcy and their boy Thomas, and another one, showing a much younger Brian Doyle, a rookie in his fresh NYPD uniform, standing next to his dad Curt, wearing a NYPD sergeant’s uniform, and a goddam proud look on his face. Across from his desk was another desk, just a shade cleaner, but empty. His partner, Jimmy Carr, coming in late from the dentist or something.
Brian got up from his desk, went over to the small office on the east side of the building. The lieutenant was sitting behind his own messy desk — Brian almost smiled at the memory of the biting memo that the Chief of Detectives had sent out last month, about how cluttered desks led to cluttered cases and court dismissals — and he rapped his hand on the side of the door.
‘Looking for me?’
The lieutenant looked up, gazing at Brian over his half-rim glasses, which were kind of sissified for a squad lieutenant. But those nearly bloodless blue eyes behind the lenses never let anybody call the lieutenant sissy, even though his nickname was Ellie. He was squat, like a man whose intended weight and girth had been shoved into a frame built six inches too short. He waved a thick hand up at Brian and said, ‘Yeah, Bri. Come in and close the door.’
Brian nodded, still hating the nickname Bri, wondering what in hell had gotten into the lieutenant that he needed an office visit. He sat down, noted the filing cabinets filling the office — at least those were neat, like they were part of the goddam wall system or something — and the lieutenant picked up a thin file folder, opened it up as he sat back. Brian kept quiet, kept his mouth shut. Better not to offer anything before knowing what the hell was going on.
The lieutenant was no longer looking at the file folder. He said, ‘Last December.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘There was a test we all took. Remember?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘It was an intelligence test, that’s what most of us thought. Odd questions. Puzzles. Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb. Crap like that.’
Brian nodded. ‘Yeah, I remember now.’
The lieutenant tossed the folder on his desk. ‘Okay, Bri, we’re now in confidential land, got it? Confidential such you don’t tell your partner, you don’t tell the ex, don’t tell nobody. Understood?’
‘Sure, boss,’ Brian said, feeling better that the meeting wasn’t for something he had screwed up on but was for some-thing else.
‘Okay. Deal is, we all thought the test was just another pysch bureau bullshit project, but it wasn’t. Maybe it was bullshit after all, but it wasn’t ours. It’s the Feds.’
‘What do they want?’ Brian asked.
‘You.’
‘Huh?’
The lieutenant grimaced. ‘Don’t like it at all, and you’re gonna like it even less. The Feds are looking for people, on temporary duty. Six months, maybe a year, maybe longer. You’ll be detached from the precinct, full pay and benefits and seniority accruing, plus you’ll get a twenty percent pay bonus to make up for whatever OT you lose. Plus the usual travel and per diem goodies.’
‘Lieutenant, I got cases to close, court appearances set for the next month, and—’
‘It’s all been taken care of.’
Brian heard his voice get heated. ‘It has, has it? Excuse me, lieutenant, but what the fuck, okay? Don’t I get a say in this? Don’t I?’
The lieutenant seemed to choose his words. ‘Apparently not. Because I’ve been raising a shit storm, too, losing a guy like you, but I’ve gotten the word, inscribed in granite letters ten feet tall from One Police Plaza, that it’s a go. For some reason the Feds like the answers you gave on the test and what they saw in your personnel jacket. And don’t take this the wrong way or the hard way, and you can be a royal Irish pain in the ass, Bri, but I’m gonna hate losing you.’
Brian clasped his hands together. ‘Shit, boss, what the hell do they want me for, anyway?’
Lancaster opened up the thin folder, bent his head down and said, ‘Something called Federal Operations and Intelligence Liaison. FOIL. Duties and responsibilities to be announced once you report in and sign a standard non- disclosure form, yadda yadda yadda.’
The lieutenant closed the folder. ‘That’s the official. Unofficial line, you want to hear it?’
‘Christ, yes.’
‘Unofficial, the Feds are cherrypicking people with different skills, putting them together in these teams. Thing is, Bri, you’re going hunting.’
‘Hunting? For who?’
The lieutenant made a gesture with his head, like he was pointing out something outside, and Brian looked out the window and knew what the lieutenant was pointing at. That near and terribly empty spot on the horizon, where the two buildings had once stood.
Brian said, ‘Okay, I get it now. Shit.’
The lieutenant offered him a slight smile. ‘Go and do well, Bri. And maybe the Feds, looking at your record and all, decided that with your dad it makes sense that you—’
Brian interrupted, saying, ‘So. When do I go? Next week? Next month?’
