“Not exactly. The money’s how he keeps score.”
“If he’s spending it, it’ll leave a trail.”
“He can hide it. He can put it in his wife’s name, his parents, set up a trust.”
“Whatever name he puts it in, if he’s spending, then we can see it. He’ll have something. A vacation house on the Chesapeake.”
“If you say so.” Shafer sighed, the sound he made when he thought Exley had missed an obvious point. Exley hated that sigh. “Suppose he got a million bucks over the last decade. That would be a big haul, as much as Ames. But over ten years, it’s only a hundred grand a year.”
“Maybe you don’t think so, but a hundred grand a year is a lot of money, Ellis. Especially tax-free.”
“If wifey’s a lobbyist, say, she’s making more than that. A lot more. And he’ll have the nice car and the house on the Chesapeake anyway.”
“What if his wife doesn’t work?”
“Then it would be more obvious, sure.”
“She doesn‘t, Ellis. I’m sure of it. He’s divorced or his wife doesn’t work.”
“Or maybe she works eighty hours a week and the marriage is dead and he’s blowing the money on hookers. He feels emasculated, so he’s getting her back.”
“I don’t think so. The marriage is broken, but they’re not divorced.”
“A completely unfounded, wild-ass guess.”
“As opposed to everything you’ve just said?” Exley looked at her list. “Okay. We’re looking for a man forty to fifty-five, maybe divorced, maybe in an unhappy marriage. He may have a DUI or a public intoxication on his record, but that’s not a requirement. Money that he can’t explain is a bonus.”
“Also a high IQ, but at least one spotty personnel evaluation. That’s the pattern. Doesn’t mean it’s right in this case, but it’s worked in the past. And put in the two guys who failed their polys. That’s an automatic red flag.”
“Minor deception doesn’t mean you failed.”
“It does to me.”
Exley checked off names. “I’m going to count peeing in public as intoxication—”
“Good call.”
“Looks like at least ten guys make the cut. Edmund Cerys, Laurence Condon—”
“I know Condon,” Shafer said. “It’s not him.”
“Now we’re not even sticking with our own made-up rules?”
“Fine. Leave Condon on. But it’s not him.”
“Edmund Cerys. Laurence Condon. Tobias Eyen. Robert Ford. Joe Leonhardt. Danny Minaya. Keith Robinson. James Russo. Phil Waterton. Brad Zonick. Besides Condon, anybody ring a bell?”
Shafer shook his head.
“So I guess…” Exley fell silent. “Now what? Let me guess. Continuing this highly scientific process, we throw darts to decide which of our suspects did it.”
“Try again.”
“Property records, financial disclosure forms, divorce records. We ask around, try to figure out who has a bad marriage, who’s a closet drinker. We get Tyson to authorize the national security letters for them and everyone else on the list.”
“Correct. Toodle-oo.” Shafer grabbed his file and walked out, looking altogether too pleased with himself for Exley’s taste.
“Toodle-oo yourself, you ass.”
“And say hi to John for me,” Shafer called from the corridor. “He’s fine, you know.”
She decided not to rise to the bait. In his own childish way, Shafer was trying to make her feel better. She looked down again at the names. She wasn’t sure Shafer’s theories made sense. Maybe the mole was highly successful, a genius who spied just for the thrill. But at least they were moving. And almost certainly they were coming at the search from a different angle than Tyson’s people.
She picked up the phone and dialed Tyson’s office.
“George? It’s Jennifer Exley. I need help with some names…. Yes. Ten in all.”
15
THE CAVE ENTRANCE WAS A BLACK MOUTH in the side of the mountain, seven feet wide, nearly as tall. Handmade bricks lined the opening, evidence that guerrillas had turned the space inside into a semipermanent refuge. Wells wondered when the bricks had been laid. The Afghans had been defending these mountains for a long, long time. Some of their underground networks had been built not after the Soviet occupation in 1979 but the British invasion of 1838.
Until he went in, Wells couldn’t know if the cave was a cul-de-sac used for weapons storage or a deeper link to a tunnel network. Either way he’d be blindly chasing an armed and desperate guerrilla. Prudence dictated that Wells lob in a couple canisters of CS and hope that whoever was inside came out on his own.
Then Wells thought of Greg Hackett, his life dribbling away through the tourniquet on his leg. The soldier in the cave might be the one who’d taken Hackett down. Prudence was another word for fear.
Wells set his M4 neatly against a rock. Inside the cave’s narrow passages, the rifle would be a hindrance. He would depend instead on his Makarov and his knives. He grabbed his headlamp from his belt, clicked it to be sure it was working, strapped it to his helmet. He stepped toward the cave — then stopped as he heard someone yelling his name. Gaffan.
“John! You all right?” Gaffan said. “Looked like you went down hard.”
As if in answer, Wells’s right shoulder began to ache, a dull pain that Wells knew would worsen. But he could still use the arm, and that was enough.
“Keep watch here. Clean up anyone who sticks his head out. I’m going in.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“We’ll be in each other’s way. You cover me on the way in. Then stay here.”
“You’re the boss, sir.”
Wells didn’t bother to wonder if Gaffan was being sarcastic. He darted across the mouth of the cave and flattened himself against the jagged rocks beside it. As Gaffan positioned himself on the other side of the entrance, Wells peeked inside. He reached for his headlamp, then reconsidered. Not yet. Light would give away his position. Instead he stared into the darkness. Slowly his eyes adjusted enough for him to understand what he was seeing.
The guerrillas had shaped the cave into a tunnel that sloped into the mountain. Rough brick covered parts of its walls, but the ceiling was untouched stone. Wells half-expected to see flint-tipped arrows on the ground, charcoal drawings of men hunting woolly mammoths on the walls.
But this cave had no drawings, and no arrows. A thousand generations of human cleverness had replaced them with deadlier tools. AK-47 rifles lay beside used RPG launch tubes. Aside from the weapons, the space was empty as far as Wells could see. The darkness took over about thirty yards in.
An acrid whiff of the CS gas Wells had fired floated out of the cave, faint but enough to make his nostrils burn. Wells had never thought he’d wish for a faceful of CS. But now he did. The fact that the gas had dispersed so quickly meant that the passage ran deep into the mountain. Not what he wanted.
Across the entrance, Gaffan stood ready. Wells held up three fingers, two, one—
And stepped inside. If someone was watching the entrance Wells was most vulnerable at this moment, his silhouette visible against the sky. He took two steps forward, dove behind an empty crate, and waited. But no shots came. He pushed the crate aside and crawled into the mountain.
INCH BY INCH the rock womb darkened. Soon Wells couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He straightened up slowly. Before he could stand, his helmet bumped the ceiling, sending a jolt down his neck and into his damaged shoulder. The passageway had shrunk. The ceiling here was lower, no more than five feet.
