flanges on the scattered steam pipes made them look like giant broken bones. Big black holes gaped beneath each turbo generator and she wondered if they led down into the water chamber at the end of the Ditch. She put the car in park, shut it down, and rolled her window down. A small building whose roof was gone provided a patch of shadow for the car, for which she was duly grateful.
“It’s a rental,” Farnsworth reported.
“Rented two days ago in northern Virginia, along with a cell phone. We’re waiting now for headquarters to get the info on the drivers license. The contract is in the name of a John Smith, who paid cash.”
“I’ll bet that’s Kreiss’s vehicle,” she said.
“And you’d be right,” a voice behind her said softly. She turned and found Kreiss crouching by her door, a finger to his lips.
“Hold your position and report any movement,” Farnsworth was saying.
She acknowledged, while Kreiss walked around the back to the other side and let himself into the front seat. He asked her to roll the window down on his side. He was dressed in a camo jumpsuit, head hood, a pack front and back, and a heavy equipment belt, not unlike her own, which was strapped around his waist. A large automatic, probably a .45, was slung under the left side of his chest pack, ready for a cross-draw. He smelled of pine needles and wet mud.
“Well, Special Agent,” he said in a tired voice, “here we are.”
She didn’t say anything as he took off the hood. His face was gaunt with fatigue, and his normally well- trimmed beard was a little ragged around the edges. His eyes were red-rimmed, but alert, looking at her while keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings, as if he were expecting something dangerous to spring out of the rubble.
“Do you think she’s here?” Janet asked.
“Not Lynn. That woman?”
“It’s possible,” he said.
“That van down there? I left it in a shopping center parking lot last night,” He patted his front pack.
“I still have the keys.”
“So how did it get here?”
“Beats the shit out of me, but someone with the right resources could manage it. I thought maybe you guys had moved it here.”
“Nope,” she said.
“Bad sign,” he said as he scanned the area again.
“So what happens now?”
“I tell them you’re here and then we leave,” she said, getting a little anxious about the possible presence of Misty.
“Sooner rather then later, okay?”
“What about Lynn?”
“You give headquarters what they need, they pressure the Agency to get that woman to release Lynn.”
“And what if she doesn’t?” he asked, echoing her own earlier question.
Then the vehicle’s cell phone rang. Kreiss looked at her. She shook her head.
“Moot point now, I suspect,” he said with a wintry smile. Janet had no idea of who might be calling her vehicle’s cell phone when there was a tactical radio net up. She picked it up.
“Carter,” she said. Her voice cracked and she cleared it.
“Let me talk to him,” the woman’s voice said.
“No,” Janet said.
“Don’t be an ass, Carter. How do you think I knew when to make this call?”
“I don’t care,” Janet said.
“Yes, you do. I’m looking at you through a sniper scope. Want proof?”
“Tell me what you want.”
“You know exactly what I want. Kreiss.”
Then Kreiss was reaching for the phone. Janet didn’t want to hand it over, but something in his eyes made her yield. Then he slid across the seat so she could listen to both sides of the conversation. She was suddenly very aware of him as the front seat dipped under his weight. She hadn’t realized how large he was.
“Speak,” he said.
“I have your daughter. I will release her, now, as long as you get out of that car and go back into the woods until the feebs leave.”
Kreiss was trying to scan the area outside the car without turning his head.
“I’ve had a better offer,” he said.
“I’m going to give these people something, and then they’re going to make your people an offer they can’t refuse.”
“And then what happens to you?”
“What?”
“I said, what happens to you?”
“I get to live in peace.”
“And you believe that?”
“Why not? They get the smoking gun and a lock on Justice that even Hoover would love. And your people basically shouldn’t care. Your traitor blew his brains out five years ago up in Millwood.”
“Palace games, Edwin,” she said.
“You’ve never cared for palace games.
And you think you can come in from the cold once you’ve done this, do you? A grateful Bureau welcoming the exiled hero back into the family, right? Listen to this.”
There was a pause, and then, to Janet’s shocked amazement, Farnsworth’s conversation with Howell Greer was playing back to them. She cringed when she heard Greer’s words about Kreiss being expendable.
She stared rigidly out the windshield, holding her breath, unable to meet his eyes when it was over. That damned woman had someone in the Roanoke office. Someone who had had access to secure communications, while they were being transmitted. Oh shit, Billyh Farnsworth’s voice came over her collar radio. Kreiss, not letting go of the phone, ripped the mike off her shoulder and threw it out the window.
“Edwin,” the woman said.
“I’ve been sent to retrieve you. I’m not leaving until I do. Here’s the real deal: You get out of that car and walk back up into the woods. If you don’t, I’ll drop your daughter down one of these deep holes I keep finding here.”
Janet saw Kreiss’s hand close on the phone handset so hard that it began to crack.
“Edwin,” the woman continued.
“You get out of the car and she gets to walk away. You have my word, which you now know is a lot more reliable than your precious Bureau’s word, isn’t it? Then I’ll give you an hour or two. Let’s wait until dark. Then we’ll work it out, you and me. Sound and light, like old times. You can even try to stop me. But this way, what happens to your daughter is up to you, not some faceless bureaucrat in Washington.”
Kreiss said nothing, staring straight ahead.
“It’s a no-brainer, Edwin.”
He hesitated, then said, “I need a minute.”
“Take a lot. Take two. I know where to find you.”
The phone subsided into a hissing noise. Janet was paralyzed: She absolutely did not know what to do. Kreiss closed his eyes and then the handset shattered in his white-knuckled grip. Janet tried to think of an argument, a reason, any reason for him not to take the woman’s deal, but she knew there wasn’t one. Not after what he’d heard Assistant Director Greer say. Son of a bitch} “I’m trying to think of an argument not to do what she wants,” she said.
“For the life of me, I can’t.”
“There isn’t one,” he said, dropping the broken handset onto the seat and moving back to his side of the front
