“It feels like hours.”
“You were supposed to be Mr. Cool.”
“That was years ago. Even then I was never any good at waiting. I always wanted to do something.”
He put down the binoculars with which he had been studying the western facade of the Langley complex. The buildings looked like computer cards, six stories tall, the windows a latticework of irregularly lit slots. It looked like the cover of a ’50s sci-fi novel, some dream city, some clean future glinting in the night. Government theater: floodlights poured glare up across the skin of the place, hyping up the drama with stark shadows. It was difficult to read the architecture from here, the relationship of the buildings, even with all the lights, but he could see all that he needed to see; for on the other side of the road from the parking lot where he waited was a broad walk that led into the base of the building, to two quite common-looking glass doors and a lighted corridor. It was the Computer Services entrance in the C Wing, and it was through this entrance that Miles Lanahan had so recently disappeared. All the rest — the hulking buildings, the elaborate landscaping, the canopied public entrance on the south side, the central courtyard — was pointless for now. Chardy stared at the glass doors through the trees.
“Well, it’s going to be a long one,” said Bennis. “He’s got to dig through a lot of stuff.”
“If he gets in.”
“He’ll get in. Miles will surprise you.”
“This isn’t the parish hall.”
“He knows what it is, Paul.”
They sat in the front seat of a van inside the Agency parking lot. It was a warm summer night and rain had come, spatting against the windshield.
“I wonder if it’s raining in Baltimore,” said Bennis. “I hope the Oriole game isn’t washed out.”
“Twenty-five minutes now,” Chardy said.
“Paul, if you see him now, he’s screwed up. He’s been kicked out and the whole thing’s messed up.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Chardy. He did not like being here, so close, inside the fence. He’d never been a headquarters man to begin with, and now they were practically parked on the roof. Yet there had been no other choice. They had brought Miles to the very door — they had him covered the whole way, a team of three units, radio-linked to each other and the hospital, each carrying the Bureau’s favorite new toy, the.380 Ingram MAC-11 machine pistol, complete with silencer.
Now it was the altar boy’s show; now all he had to do was get in there and fish the name out. Then they’d bust the man, and roll it all up and it would all be over.
Chardy looked at his watch again.
Thirty minutes.
Come on, Miles. Come on, priest’s boy. You’re on the bull’s-eye now.
A buzz. Chardy jumped, disoriented. Bennis picked the radiophone off the dashboard.
“Candelabra Control, this is Horsepipe One,” he said.
He listened.
“Yes,” he said, “all right, I understand. Can you get units onto the street? And call metro. Sure, I agree.”
“What’s going on?” asked Chardy, hearing the urgency in Leo’s voice.
“It’s Danzig. They just intercepted an Emergency Code off Miles’s security channel. He’s bolted. Danzig’s taken off. He’s out on his own.”
“Form Twelve?” said Lanahan. “Aw, Christ.” He tried to look hurt.
“Miles, it’s the rule. They had a security shake-up recently. All kinds of new games.”
“You mean I have to go all the way back to Building A?”
How do I play this? he thought. What the hell is a Form 12?
“I’m sorry, Miles. I really am. It’s the rule.”
“Jesus, you got a Russian in here or something?” Bluestein laughed. “You know how they like to brace us up every so often.”
“Sure. Three years ago they tried a fingerprint ID device. It kept breaking down though. Okay, back to Building A.”
“I’m really sorry. You can see my position?”
“It’s not your fault,” Miles said, not moving an inch. “I should have checked on the new regs. No problem. The hike’ll keep me humble.”
“Christ,” Bluestein said bitterly, “it’s not as if they do anything with the Twelves. They just sit in Dunne’s office until he throws them out.”
“It’s okay, Bluestein. Really it is.”
“It’s such a stupid, stupid rule,” Bluestein said. “They think them up, up there, just to justify their super- grades.”
“It’s a good rule. You can’t be too careful. Ninety percent of this business is security.”
“How long you figure you’d be on?”
“It depends. Real short — or maybe an hour. I don’t know.”
“Just hustle, okay? It’d be my ass if somebody makes a stink.”
“Don’t you worry about it,” said Miles. “Nobody’s going to make a stink,” and he leaned back, waiting for the man to punch the entrance code.
“Miles. You’re back.”
“I am. Relax, Jerry — not for good.”
“Ah.”
“No, I’ll just be in your hair for a minute or so.”
“What is it?”
Lanahan was in an office off the dark pit called the Disc Vault and the man he addressed was the Disc Librarian. Over the shoulder of the DL he could see the racks of discs, their plastic purity blinding in the brightness of this clean and odorless room.
“I hear you’re doing real well, Miles.”
“Not so bad, Jerry.”
“I never thought you’d do it. I still don’t know how you did it. You just kept pushing and pushing.”
“I’ll teach you my secret some day. I’m looking for a ’seventy-four disc.”
“Fighting somebody’s old war?”
“Something like that.”
“That’s when we were just gearing up on the system. I think it went on-line in late ’seventy-three. That’s so long ago I wasn’t even here.”
“Can you help me dig it out?”
Jerry was florid and bitter, a reddish man of fierce ambition who’d never gotten anywhere. He stank of disappointment. He was plateaued out down here, his career aground in Computer Services. He looked down on Miles with something less than enthusiasm.
“The little priest. You really brought it off. You really got lucky.”
“I never missed mass when I was a kid. That’s why I’m smiled on. Come on, Jer, help me, okay?”
“Christ, Miles.” He fished through some bookshelves behind him and came at last to a metal notebook, the disc index. He opened it, flipping through the pages.
“There’s a lot of stuff here.”
Miles nodded.
“You’ll have to be more specific. Miles, there’s a hundred discs here from ’seventy-four. From Operations — I think they called it Plans back then — from Economic Research, from Cartography, from Satellites, from Security. I assume you want the Operations stuff.”
“What was the first disc archive set up? The very first?”
“Operations — Plans. That was the heart of it. Then later, other divisions and directorates went on- line.”
“Yes, Operations then.”
“Ahhh—”
