softened.
“And that inquiry got back to the Justice Department how, exactly?”
“That, I don’t know,” she said. The waitress buzzed by and asked if they needed anything else. Kreiss didn’t look at her, just shook his head.
“I mean, I guess the Counseling Division notified somebody,” she said.
“Although I don’t know why, exactly. My inquiry concerned your ex-wife, not you.” She was trying to keep the conversation going, but there he was, looking at his watch. She had gotten nowhere.
“Have you been to this Ramsey Arsenal place?” she asked.
He sat back in his chair and steepled his hands beneath his chin.
“Who wants to know?”
“I do. Why did you ask that?”
“Because I don’t believe the PA to the deputy AG and her counterpart from Marchand’s office came down here to work a missing persons case. I think they came down here to find out what the hell I’m up to. Let me guess: They send you to get close to me?”
The question came so directly and so unexpectedly that Janet couldn’t keep her expression from revealing the truth. Kreiss smiled wearily.
“They’re so damned transparent. They sit around in Washington for years and years, playing all these palace games. They think field people believe their bullshit.”
“That’s not quite it,” she said.
“They think there’s some kind of bomb making cell that might be working out of the arsenal. They—” “Bombs?” he said with a snort.
“The Bureau doesn’t work bombs; aTF works bombs. If they thought that, they’d turn loose a herd of aTF agents in there and find out. This
isn’t about any goddamned bombs. If those two are here, they’re here about me. Which is probably why two Agency CE worker bees were waiting at my cabin when I got back this morning.”
She thought she saw an opening.
“Got back from where, Mr. Kreiss?”
“That’s my business, Agent Carter,” he said, ignoring her gambit.
“Now, I have a daughter to locate. I don’t really think there’s anything you can do for me. I appreciate your telling me about the Washington interest, but that’s between me and them. If I find my daughter, I’ll let you know. If I don’t but I find the people responsible for her disappearance, you’ll hear about that, too.”
“Right,” she said.
“Heads out on I-Eighty-one.”
He smiled, but his eyes remained grim.
“It’d be a change from all those billboards,” he said.
“Did you really operate alone?” she asked. She surprised herself, asking the question, but she couldn’t imagine what that must be like.
He thought about it for a moment.
“Not at first, but later, yes. The backup was available, but it was more technical than human. Once I went down a hole after somebody, it was an individual effort.”
“But why? Why give away our biggest advantage, our ability to overwhelm a subject, with agents, with data, with surveillance, the whole boat?”
“We weren’t sent after ‘subjects,” Special Agent. We were only activated to retrieve professional clandestine operatives. That’s not a game for groups. Besides, we applied a different theory of pursuit.”
“Which was?”
“A single hunter. One-on-one. That made it personal, which gave us a chance to provoke an emotional reaction.”
“Why?”
“Emotion distracts. The more emotion, the more distraction. Distraction leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to capture. This is all news to you, isn’t it?”
She shrugged.
“I went through basic agent training. I’ve just never done it at the street level.”
“And you probably never will. You’re not tough enough.”
She felt herself coloring.
“That something you know, Mr. Kreiss?”
“Yes, it is. For instance, could you shoot someone?”
“Yes. Well, I think so. To save my life. Or another agent’s life.”
“Sure about that? Could you pull that trigger and blast another human’s heart out his back?”
She started to get angry.
“Well, the real answer to that is, I don’t know.
Probably won’t know until the time comes to do it, will I?”
He smiled then.
“Well, at least you’re not stupid. I think we’re done here.”
He looked at his watch again, which was when she remembered something during the discussion in Farnsworth’s office.
“The Washington people were pretty specific about a bombing conspiracy. But one of them, the woman, said something I didn’t understand. She jumped in Ransom’s shit because he failed to deliver a message. I asked, “What message?” but she wouldn’t say, and neither would Ransom.”
Kreiss looked away for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he said, finally.
“Like she said, Ransom didn’t deliver any message.”
He pushed his chair back. She couldn’t just let him walk away, but she could not figure out a way of prolonging the conversation. She also wanted to be able to contact him again if something developed.
“Wait,” she said. She fished in her purse and brought out her Bureau-issue pager.
“Would you take this?” she said, handing the device across the table.
“In case I need to reach you quickly. You know, in case we get news of Lynn.”
He cocked his head.
“You want me to carry your pager?”
“It’s not what you think,” she said quickly, too quickly.
“I mean, it’s not a tracking device or anything. It’s just a plain vanilla pager. Please?”
“Sure it is,” he said, but then he took it and got up.
“You have a good evening, Special Agent Carter. And remember to check out your passenger.”
He left a five-dollar bill on the table and walked out. She noticed that all those intelligent-looking men at the bar again moved aside to let him by, moving quickly enough that he didn’t have to slow down. Kind of like the Red Sea opening up for Moses, she thought. She took another sip of her Coke, grimaced, and left the bar. Great job, she thought. You coopted him very nicely. Had him eating out of the palm of your hand, didn’t you? You’re supposed to be setting up on him, and he has to tell you somebody’s put a bug on your car? And in compensation for seeing right through you, he’s really going to walk around with your pager on his belt.
Jesus, what had she been thinking?
She went out the front door and walked directly to her Bureau car. She thought about looking for the bug, then decided to take the vehicle directly back to the Roanoke office and let someone from the
surveillance squad take a look. It had better not have been Ransom or one of his people planting that thing, she thought, because if it had, this little game was over before it began. She started the car and then just sat there for a moment. Kreiss had touched a nerve when he asked her if she could shoot someone. She was pretty damn sure she could never do that. Even in tactical range training, when the bad guy silhouette popped up right in front other, she had hesitated. After the final qualifications, the chief instructor had given her a look that spoke volumes. It was probably still in her record. And here was Kreiss, reading her like an open book. She wondered if he was watching her now. She resisted the impulse to look up at the windows. Then she wondered how she was going to
