windows a low credenza with trays on top. Coffee service, ice bucket, glass tumblers, and small bottles of soda.
“Sorry for the wait, fellas,” the woman says. “Please have a seat.” Her voice is husky, aggressively upbeat, and has a trace of Texas in it. Her skin is tanned and grainy. “We’ll get started in just a minute, but in the meantime we have refreshments.” She crosses the room and carries the trays from the credenza to the conference table. Bessemer reaches for a glass and a bottle of ginger ale.
“And for you Mr. Frye?” She spreads her hands toward the trays, like a trade-show model presenting a dishwasher. “Please, help yourself,” she says, and leaves, closing the door behind her.
Bessemer fills a glass with ice and ginger ale and empties it in one long swallow. He picks up a cocktail napkin and wipes his mouth and his forehead. Then he goes to the window and raises the shades. Carr sees the low rooftops of George Town, bright under the hammering sun, and the busy blue harbor. Bessemer turns and begins to speak, and Carr shakes his head minutely.
“Lots of boats,” Carr says.
Bessemer nods. “Curt must be running late,” he says, and begins to pace.
Carr stares until he catches Bessemer’s eye. “Another drink, Howie?” he asks, and slides a bottle of ginger ale across the table. Then he reaches for a glass of his own.
Twenty minutes later, Carr his finished two club sodas, and the hairs have risen on the back of his neck, though he doesn’t know why. Bessemer is pacing again, but the little knot tightening in Carr’s stomach isn’t fallout from that. He swirls the ice in his glass and looks around the conference room, which has suddenly come to resemble a fishbowl.
“Does Prager usually keep you waiting long?” he asks.
Bessemer flinches, startled by Carr’s voice. “He never keeps me waiting, and he never parks me in a conference room either. I feel like a salesman, for chrissakes.”
“I know what you mean,” Carr says, and he looks through the glass walls at the people in the their cubicles doing god knows what. “Have you caught a glimpse of him, walking around?”
“Walking around out there?” Bessemer says, flinching again. “No, I haven’t seen anything.” And the knot tightens more.
And then the blond woman is at the conference room door again, still smiling, though this time apologetically.
“Fellas, I feel terrible about this. I just now got off the phone with Curtis, and he’s not going to be able to make it in today. He’s on his way to the airport-got a little emergency, and he’s got to jump over to Nassau real quick. But he wants you to know he’s real sorry for this, and he’d like to reschedule for Saturday-lunch at his place.”
Carr looks at Bessemer, who is sputtering. “This is unbelievable,” Bessemer says. “We came down to see Curt, not for a vacation. I’d have come in February if that’s what I was after.”
The blonde nods and her smile slides smoothly into a sympathetic frown. “And Curtis is so sorry. In fact, he’d like you to send over your hotel bill, so he can take care of it.”
Bessemer begins to speak and Carr puts a hand on his arm. “That’s all right,” Carr says, smiling. “Things come up-I know how it is. And Saturday should be fine, don’t you think, Howie? Give us time for some golf.”
Bessemer looks at Carr and nods vaguely. “Golf, sure.”
The blonde’s smile returns. “Great-so I’ll tell Curtis Saturday.”
“Saturday,” Bessemer says.
The blonde makes more noises of cheerful apology and leads them out of the conference room and through the office again. The knot in Carr’s stomach moves into his chest. They pass the men’s room, and Carr makes an abrupt right turn.
“I’ve got to make a pit stop,” he says, leaning on the bathroom door. “I’ll catch up at the elevators.” Carr pushes through, and as he does he sees the blonde’s face tighten with a look of annoyance.
The bathroom is small and gray and smells of disinfectant. Carr runs water on his hands and dries them and listens to the blonde’s voice dwindle down the hallway. When it’s gone he throws away his paper towel, steps into the corridor, and turns left. He walks down the hall, turns a corner, and stops when he sees the conference room, and the man at the conference table, who is sporting a crew cut, a polo shirt, and vinyl gloves, carefully placing Carr’s drinking glass in a plastic evidence bag.
At the elevators, Bessemer is sweating, and the blonde is checking her watch. Carr smiles as he approaches. “Sorry to hold things up,” he says, chuckling. “Too much club soda.”
The blonde returns his smile and presses the elevator call button. “So we’ll see you Saturday, Mr. Frye? Mr. Bessemer?”
Carr nods and puts out his hand. “You’ll be there too, Ms…?”
“Oh, I’m sorry-I never did make a proper introduction to you fellas. I’m Kathy Rink.”
“A pleasure,” Carr says. “Are you Curtis’s assistant?”
Kathy Rink smiles wider and laughs as she squeezes Carr’s hand. “Oh, no, Mr. Frye, I’m his head of security.”
30
“She’s ex-DEA,” Tina tells Carr, stirring the ice in her drink, but drinking nothing. “She left eighteen months back, after fifteen years there. Spent most of her time in the New Orleans district, in Shreveport and Baton Rouge, and her last three years down south, in Honduras. She came on about four weeks back, with a recommendation from one of Prager’s clients. Word is she’s still got plenty of friends in the agency.”
“Shit,” Carr says. His voice is low and cold.
They’re alone on the terrace of a bar perched over a cove, at a table by the wooden railing. The tide is rolling in, slapping at the rocks below and casting up a briny mist. Carr has nothing in front of him but the strips of a shredded cocktail napkin that are being carried away, one by one, on the wind.
“That’s all I’ve got so far,” Tina says, “but I’m expecting another call.”
“And is this call going to explain just what the fuck happened to your intel?”
“I don’t like surprises any more than-”
“It’s not your ass on the line.”
Tina’s face is without expression and as white and still as carved bone. Her eyes are invisible behind her dark glasses, and her voice is without affect. “You want me to say it’s a fuckup? Fine-it’s a fuckup. You feel better now?”
“No,” Carr says. He presses his fingers to his temples. “If Rink’s still got federal wiring, then Greg Frye won’t last. He’s not built for that. He’s good for a quick look-see-a criminal records check, or somebody trying to confirm that he and Bessemer were at Otisville together-but for somebody with fingerprints and access to AFIS…”
Tina nods. “She’ll run right through Frye to you.”
Carr looks down at the foam-covered rocks. “They took my prints when I applied, at every one of my interviews, on my first day at Langley, and a half dozen times afterward. Dennis is good, but he’s not good enough to scrub all that away.”
Tina leans back and chews on her straw. “Your minders still around?”
“We wouldn’t be meeting here if they were. They were with us to Prager’s office this morning, but not afterward, and they’re not at the hotel.”
“You left Bessemer there?” Carr nods. “How’s he holding up?”
“He was nervous before we met Rink; he’s bat-shit now. Bobby’s probably scraping him off the ceiling, if he hasn’t actually killed him yet.”
“How’s Bobby doing?”
“Pissed off, scared, ready to pack his bag.”
And Bobby wasn’t the only one. After parking Bessemer in the suite and phoning Tina, Carr had arranged a conference call with Valerie, Bobby, Mike, and Dennis. His story of what happened at Prager’s office was met first with silence, and then angry, colliding voices. Bobby’s was the loudest and most poetic.
