he hoped were suitably touristy clothes: khaki slacks, short-sleeved shirt, a windbreaker, and a floppy sun hat and some sunglasses. He wished he had a camera to complete the outfit, but, as long as nothing had changed, this would do. The Pentagon Metro station was on the east side of the Pentagon building. He would take a Yellow Line train into the District, then get off at the Mount Vernon Place station. His target would then be within easy walking distance.
He ordered another cup of coffee, and, as the caffeine kicked in, wondered if he should bother getting a motel room.
Janet got back into the office at 11:30. She picked up a sandwich at the first-floor deli and took it upstairs to her office. She had just popped open her Coke when the intercom buzzed and Farnsworth’s secretary called her down to a meeting in the RA’s conference room. She sighed, poured her Coke into her coffee mug, put the sandwich in the office fridge, and went downstairs. Farnsworth was there, along with Keenan, Special Agent Bobby Land from the Roanoke surveillance squad, and two uniformed police lieutenants, one from the Virginia State Police and the other from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department.
The person who got her attention, however, was a woman who was sitting by herself at the other end of the conference table from where the men were standing. Janet struggled not to stare at her. She had a striking, witch like face: intense black eyes under thin eyebrows, a slightly hooked nose, wide cheekbones, and dark red lips. She appeared to be in good physical shape, tall, with wide shoulders and a fit tautness to her skin. She looked to be in her late forties, and the way she was sitting at the table, still as a grave, staring quietly into the middle distance, projected an attitude of total composure that made her utterly unapproachable. As the only other woman in the room, Janet would normally have gone over to introduce herself, but something in this woman’s demeanor gave her pause.
“Okay, gents, this is Special Agent Janet Carter,” Farnsworth said.
“Let’s get going.” Everyone took a chair, leaving the other woman in
semi splendid isolation at the far end of the conference table. Janet forced herself to face Farnsworth, who shuffled some papers before beginning.
“We’ve had some developments in the McGarand business,” he announced.
“Not to be confused with progress, however. Janet, for your benefit, this is Lieutenant Whitney from the Virginia State Police, and Lieutenant Harter from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department.”
Farnsworth glanced down at his papers for a second while Janet waited for him to introduce the woman, but he did not.
“There’ve been some musical chairs with vehicles in the arsenal case,” he said.
“Browne McGarand’s pickup truck has been located at his grandson’s house, where it was not present during yesterday’s sweep, except for the brief time that Browne McGarand visited there. Jared McGarand’s telephone company repair van, which had been parked at jared’s trailer, was found by another phone company crew at the TA truck stop above the Christiansburg interchange. This is the same truck stop where two security guards allege that an unknown subject, later identified as Edwin Kreiss from a Polaroid photograph the security guards took, attacked them without provocation in their office. They’d detained him in the parking lot, where they had been watching him ‘case the place,” to use their words.”
“Unprovoked attack’?” Janet asked.
Farnsworth shrugged.
“Both of them were steroid junkies. One of them nearly died from a partially strangulated larynx, and the other reported being disabled with a … weapon, I guess, that another branch of government said was something subject Edwin Kreiss might have been carrying. They called it ‘a retinal disrupter.”
” “A retinal what?” Keenan asked.
“They described it as a very powerful flashcube, tuned to the optical frequency of a purple substance in the human eye that can be overloaded by a strong pulse of light. Firing a retinal disrupter into a subject’s eyes renders him stunned and immobilized for up to sixty seconds, if not longer, which has its obvious tactical advantages.”
“Where can I get me one of those?” Lieutenant Whitney asked. He was a large-shouldered man in his fifties, with buzz-cut gray hair and a huge pair of mirrored sunglasses hanging down from his perfectly creased shirt pocket.
“You can’t,” Farnsworth said.
“If it’s any comfort, neither can we.” He gave the lieutenant a second for that to sink in, then continued.
“Kreiss’s personal vehicle is also a pickup truck. It is not at his house, nor is Kreiss.
Browne McGarand is not at his house, and we have information that he
did not go to Greensboro, North Carolina, as he told the local police he was going to do. His other grandson, whom we located in Greensboro, confirmed he had not heard from his grandfather, and he also did not know about Jared McGarand’s demise.”
“Sir, what’s the status on Kreiss’s daughter?” Janet asked.
“She’s stable, comatose, but breathing on her own. The docs now think she’ll come out of it, but they can’t say when.”
“You guys designated a prime suspect for the Jared McGarand homicide?”
Keenan asked.
“We like this guy Kreiss, based on what you folks have told us,” Lieutenant Harter said. He was a dark-haired, well-built young man, whose short-sleeved tan uniform shirt fit him like a glove. He had been giving I Janet the eye while Farnsworth spoke.
Janet was surprised to hear this: Now what had Farnsworth done? The last thing she’d been told was that they were going to stay quiet about Kreiss. And she was still wondering who the woman was. She was wearing a visitor’s badge, but it was not one requiring an escort. She had not moved a muscle, reminding Janet of an exquisitely made Japanese robot she had seen at Disney World several years ago. She did not even appear to be listening to the discussion. Her hands rested motionless on the table. Janet noticed that the outside edge of the woman’s right palm was ridged with calluses, which fairly shouted karate training. She jerked her attention back to what the lieutenant was saying.
“Is there a federal warrant out?” Harter asked.
“No,” Farnsworth said, looking down at the papers in front of him.
“And we’ve asked the state and local authorities to hold up on obtaining a warrant for right now.”
“Because of what happened out at the Ramsey Arsenal,” Janet said, concentrating again on the discussion.
“Exactly,” Farnsworth said.
“The purpose of this meeting is to confirm that we will continue to press our search for Edwin Kreiss and Browne McGarand, but we will do so in conjunction with a larger federal investigation being conducted in cooperation with the ATE” Farnsworth shot Janet a quick glance to make sure she wasn’t going to blow his cover, but she had caught on—Farnsworth wanted local law to think the Bureau was working hand in glove with the aTF
“This is all about that big explosion, out at the arsenal?” Lieutenant Harter asked. His expression indicated that he wasn’t exactly following what was being said.
“Yes, and we have reason to believe that subject Browne McGarand may be engaged in a bombing conspiracy, which might involve the capital city,” Farnsworth continued.
“Do y’all think the explosion at the arsenal was their lab going up?”
Whitney asked.
“We think it was, but the aTF national response team is leaning toward natural causes. A methane buildup. Given the size of that explosion, we’re treating the whole matter very seriously. If there was a bomb-making cell operating out of the arsenal, and they blew themselves up, then end of story. aTF tells us that happens sometimes. But if that explosion was a package left behind to entertain federal authorities who might come snooping, then they’re capable of making one hell of a bomb, and we have to assume a clear and present danger.”
“We’ll play it any way you want to, Mr. Farnsworth,” Harter said.
“But when it’s all over, we’re still going to want to have a talk with this Kreiss fella.”
“And you’ll get it. I guess what I’m saying is that we just want to make sure that there isn’t a bigger deal going down here. You know, like an Oklahoma City-scale conspiracy.”
