particularly bad characters. They made it hard for Bill, and he finally got disgusted.”
“He quit?”
Forbes reached into his jacket for a handkerchief. Smith saw the big 10mm Browning in his shoulder holster. The Bureau still believed in its agents being the men with the bigger guns. Forbes mopped his face. He was clearly worried. But not for himself. For Bill Griffin.
He said, “Not exactly. He'd met someone on a tax-fraud case, someone with money and power. I never knew who. Bill started missing meetings and staying away from the Hoover Building between assignments. When he was sent to work with a field office, sometimes he didn't show up for days. Then he blew an assignment, and there were signs of high living ? too much money, the usual. The director found evidence Bill was secretly moonlighting for the tax-fraud guy and that some of what he was doing skated pretty close to the edge ? intimidation, using his badge to lean on people, that sort of thing. In the Bureau, if you work for the Bureau, you represent the Bureau. Period. They fired him. He went to work for someone. I had the feeling it was the tax-fraud guy he'd been moonlighting for.” He shook his head regretfully. “I haven't seen him in more than a year.”
Smith tried to watch the street outside the front windows, but there were too many signs taped to the dirty glass. “I can see where he'd be frustrated, even disgusted. But to work for someone like that? To intimidate others? That doesn't sound like Bill.”
“Call it disgust, disillusion, principles betrayed.” Forbes shrugged. “As far as he was concerned, no one at the Bureau really cared about justice. It was all about the rules. The law. And, yeah, I think he wanted money and power, too. No one flips sides like a believer who loses his belief.”
“And that's okay with you?”
“It's not okay, and it's not not-okay. It's what Bill wants, and I don't ask questions. He's my man regardless.”
Smith considered everything. His position was similar to what Bill's had been. Instead of the Bureau, it was the army that was betraying Smith, and how far from going rogue was he right now? In the Pentagon's eyes, he probably already was rogue. Certainly AWOL. Was he the one to judge Bill? Was this FBI man a better friend of Smith's old friend than was Smith?
Moral actions were not always as absolute as we liked to think.
“You don't know where he is? Or who the man he's working for, or with, is?”
Forbes said, “I don't know where he is, or if he's even working for the same guy. It's only a hunch, and I never knew who the guy was.”
“But you can get in touch with Bill?”
Forbes's eyes blinked slowly. “Let's say I can. What would you want me to say?”
Smith had already worked that out. “That I took the warning. That I survived, but they murdered Sophia. That I know they have the virus. But I don't know what they're planning, and I need to talk to him.”
Forbes studied the big soldier-scientist. The FBI had been briefed days ago on the worrisome situation with the unknown virus, including the death of Dr. Sophia Russell. Then an army memo had arrived this morning declaring Smith AWOL, a danger to the integrity of the investigation, the facts of which had been declared top secret by the White House. It asked the Bureau to look for Smith and, if they found him, to return him to Fort Detrick under guard.
But a lifetime of learning to assess people, sometimes in a matter of seconds with his life hanging on the outcome, had made Forbes trust himself. Smith was not the enemy. If anything threatened the integrity of the investigation, it was the paranoid order that took the scientific investigators out of the field. The Pentagon didn't want any more headlines about bacteriological warfare agents and our soldiers' possible exposure during Desert Storm. They were covering their sedentary butts as usual.
“If I can contact him, I'll give him your message, Colonel.” Forbes stood up. “A tip. Be careful who you talk to, and watch your back, whatever you plan to do. There's an arrest order out for you ? AWOL and a fugitive. Don't try to contact me again.”
Smith's chest contracted as he listened to the news. He was not surprised, but the confirmation was still a blow. He felt betrayed and violated, but that was the pattern since he had returned from London. First he had lost Sophia, and now he was losing his profession, his career. It stuck in his throat like broken glass.
As the FBI man walked to the door, Smith glanced around the cafe with its scattering of patrons bent over their exotic coffees and teas. He looked up just in time to see Forbes push through the doorway and scan the bustling street with a long-accustomed eye. Then he was gone, vanishing like the steam from his coffee. Smith put money on the table and slipped out the back door. He saw no one suspicious outside and no dark sedans parked with people in them. His pulse beating a wary tattoo, he walked away briskly toward the distant Woodley Metro station.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At Dupont Circle, Smith left the Metro. The morning sun radiated down bright and warm on the thick traffic as it circled the park. He glanced casually around and began to walk, joining the throngs of business and government people taking early coffee breaks. His gaze constantly moved as he headed off through the maze of streets that hosted cafes, cocktail lounges, bookstores, and boutiques. The shops here were snore upscale than in Adams-Morgan, and even though it was October, tourists were pulling out their billfolds to make purchases.
Several times as he examined faces, he had bittersweet feelings of deja vu, and for a few exciting moments it seemed as if he had just caught sight of Sophia…
She was not dead.
She was alive and vital. Just a few steps away.
There was one brunette who had the same swinging, sexy gait. He had to fight himself from rushing past so he could turn and stare. Another woman had her long blond hair pulled back in the same kind of loose ponytail that Sophia always wore to keep her hair from her face when she worked. Then there was the woman who breezed past leaving a scent so much like Sophia's that his stomach knotted with anguish.
He had to get over this, he told himself sternly.
He had work to do. Crucial work that would give some meaning to Sophia's tragic death.
He inhaled and kept at it. He made himself watch all around for tails. He walked north up Massachusetts Avenue toward Sheridan Circle and Embassy Row. Halfway to Sheridan, he made one last move to assure himself that he had left behind any surveillance: He stepped quickly into the main entrance of the just-opened Phillips Collection, hurried through empty rooms of remarkable Renoirs and Cezannes, provocative Rothkos and O'Keeffes, and slipped out a side fire door. He paused, leaned back against the building, and studied pedestrians and cars.
At last he was satisfied. No one was watching him. If there had been a tail, he had lost him or her. So he hurried back to Massachusetts Avenue and his Triumph parked on a side street.
After hearing the telecast last night about Kielburger, Melanie Curtis, and the AWOL charge against him, he had intensified these evasive maneuvers. Before dawn he had awakened in Gaithersburg on the inner alarm of all combat surgeons in the field. He had been drenched in a cold, sad sweat following a night of dreaming about Sophia. He forced himself to eat a solid breakfast, and he studied the morning traffic as it increased on the highway and the traffic helicopters that monitored it. Showered, shaved, and determined, he was on the road by seven.
He had called Special Agent Forbes from a pay phone and driven across the Potomac into Washington. He had cruised around for a time before parking the Triumph off Embassy Row and hopping on the Metro to meet Forbes.
After retrieving the Triumph, he drove sedately to a busy residential street between Dupont and Washington Circles where a prominent sign marked the entrance to a narrow driveway bordered by a high, unruly hedge: PRIVATE PROPERTY — KEEP OUT! Beneath it hung smaller signs: NO TRESPASSING. NO SALESMEN. NO SOLICITING. NO COLLECTORS. GO AWAY!
Smith ignored the signs and pulled into the driveway. There was a small white clapboard bungalow with
