a package from the sideboard and placed it on the table in front of his son. “A present?”
Rush placed his hands on the package.
“I don't know,” Lydia said.
Rush felt the edges of the box. “What is it?” he asked.
“Open it and see.”
Rush removed the ribbon, peeled off the paper, and pried open the box. He reached in.
“It's something plastic.”
“Could be,” Winter said.
Rush lifted the object by the edges and placed it down on the table, flat-side down.
“Sculpture art?” Rush had been to museums where there had been sculpture and other tactile work he could appreciate with his fingers. In art classes, he had made three-dimensional objects in clay, wood, cloth, and paper.
“Sort of art. That guy Moses Mink who brought his statues to your school made it for me. You tell me what it is,” Winter said.
As Rush's fingers moved over the surface of the piece, the contours started to make sense. What he was feeling suddenly appeared as an image in his mind, and his heart leaped with sheer joy. “It's.. you!” He started laughing and ran his fingers over the cast impression of his father's face. “It's a picture of you!”
“It's a mask, so you won't forget me. How cool is that?”
“That's way, way far-out cool! That's the number-one best present ever.” He laughed again. “I can't believe it.”
Rush made a big deal over the other gifts: a stack of audiobooks from the Trammels, two sweaters and two pairs of jeans from Lydia, and a check from Eleanor's father, who had moved to Nova Scotia with his third wife. When Rush left the table, he was carrying the mask.
58
Charlotte, North Carolina
Monday
From his Explorer, Winter watched Rush and Nemo join other students to walk up the stairs to his school. His cell phone buzzed.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?” Hank Trammel asked.
“Dropping Rush off.”
“Can you come see me?”
“What's up?”
“I'd rather tell you when you get here.”
It was impossible to read Hank's voice.
His phone rang again almost immediately after he'd set it aside.
“Yeah?”
“Say hello first, Winter,” Lydia scolded.
“I thought it was Hank.”
“I wondered if you would mind stopping by the grocery store on your way home.”
“Something's come up. An important meeting at headquarters. It may take a while.”
“I don't know why one tells you to rest a few days and then another tells you to come to work,” his mother complained. “It's like they don't care what you go through. I know that news story about the plane crashing upset you. I know you didn't want Rush to think about all that, but you can tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Did you know any of those people?”
“I knew most of them.”
“Did it-”
“Mama, if I could discuss it with you, I already would have. When I can, you'll be the first to know.”
Hank Trammel's stiffly formal manner and his stern face set off warning bells in Winter's mind as he sat across the uncharacteristically ordered desk. Hank flipped open a file folder and studied the first page. “Chief Marshal Shapiro got preliminary findings from the FBI this morning and faxed this to me, asking that I share it with you.”
Winter felt his anticipation growing at the possibility that the case had already been broken.
“Were you aware that Greg Nations had an offshore bank account?”
“No,” Winter replied. The question surprised him. He couldn't think of one reason he should have one. “But people have bank accounts all over. I doubt it's illegal to have an offshore account.”
Hank pushed the photocopy toward Winter, spinning it around so he could read it. He pointed to the balance.
“Four hundred thousand dollars was deposited by wire before Nations arrived on Rook,” Hank said. “His cell phone records show that he called the bank the day that transfer was made. He's had this account for two years. He opened it with a ten-dollar deposit and, over its life, the amount of wire transfer deposits has ranged from twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars. Eleven days ago, four hundred thousand was wired into it from a Swiss bank.”
“Come on, Hank. What proof do they have that this is Greg's account, that he had any knowledge of it?” The notion that Greg had that kind of money was ludicrous.
Hank pushed over the second sheet from the folder-the paperwork to open the account. Winter recognized the scribbled signature as Greg's, unless it was a superb forgery. He felt nauseous.
“Anybody can put anybody's signature on a document. This is a photocopy.”
“The FBI found the originals hidden in his house when they searched it over the weekend.”
“So they say.”
“They say Greg knew Sam Manelli.”
Hank showed Winter a grainy picture of Greg talking to Sam Manelli. It looked like a surveillance shot taken from a distance.
“We meet criminals all the time,” Winter said. “Besides, pictures can be faked.”
“I'm not saying it's true,” Hank told Winter. “But Greg specifically asked for you to be attached to this operation.”
“Yes, he did.”
“How often before this had he asked for you on a WITSEC operation?”
Hank already knew the answer.
“Shapiro has to consider that maybe Greg didn't expect any of his men to be killed. Maybe he was double- crossed. Maybe they were supposed to shoot Devlin from a distance.”
Even though Winter realized Hank was just passing the information along, he felt like he was being tortured. “If Greg was dirty, he would never have brought me into it.”
“Did Greg tell you about his military experience?”
“He trained Special Forces.”
“Winter, according to the FBI, Greg trained people in special weapons, effective and unorthodox killing, and interrogation techniques. He tell you that? Did he tell you he started with military intelligence, worked directly with the CIA? He guarded defectors.”
“No, he didn't. What about the dead UNSUBs on Rook?” Winter offered. “They were obviously soldiers. The armed forces fingerprint and take blood for DNA. Those dead men won't lead to Greg.”
“Those four killers were soldiers. The FBI matched their prints.”
“I knew it.”
“Winter, according to the Bureau they were Russians-ex-shock troops. You know what happened after the wall fell-Russia couldn't even afford to fix their equipment or feed their soldiers. A lot of them hired themselves out
