of his. Now what, indeed. I’ve got good news and bad news. Your daughter is conscious and apparently doing okay. She says one of the guys who kidnapped her is taking a hydrogen bomb to Washington. If you’re interested, that is. Oh, and an old friend of yours stopped by with a message—want to hear it? And Kreiss would go, Nope, busy right now. Bye. Her cell phone rang. It was Farnsworth’s secretary: “Get back here now.”
Kreiss nosed his rented Ford 150 van into the truck stop off the Van Dorn Street Beltway exit in Alexandria. It wasn’t much of a truck stop, not compared with the interstate facilities, but he had to check it out. His exit guide listed only two such facilities on or near the Beltway, not counting trucking terminals. This was the third trucking terminal he’d stopped into on his circuit of Washington’s infamous 1-495. It was midafternoon, and he knew that in about a half hour or so he would have to quit until after rush hour, because nothing moved during rush hour around Washington.
There were a dozen trucks parked at this stop, and three more filling up in the fuel lanes. No propane truck was in evidence. It was possible, of course, that McGarand had put the thing in a garage somewhere, and he had made a mental note to look up fuel companies in the area and make the rounds of those if the truck stops came up empty. But there was something so nicely anonymous about a truck stop that he was pretty sure that’s where the propane tanker would be. Kreiss believed in the theory that if you want to hide something really well, you hide it in plain sight. He drove the van around the parking lot and behind the store and rest facilities building. No propane tanker. He got back out onto the Beltway and headed east, toward the Wilson Bridge and the crossing into Maryland.
He had a terrible feeling he was wasting time.
A stone-faced Farnsworth was waiting in his office when Janet got back to the Roanoke office. Keenan was with him when Janet took a seat in front of the RA’s desk. He asked her to debrief him on what Lynn Kreiss had told her. When she was finished, he turned in his swivel chair and looked
out the window for a long minute. Janet looked over at Keenan, but his expression was noncommittal. He seemed to be uncomfortable with what was going on, but willing to go along. Farnsworth swiveled his chair back around.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m glad the girl’s going to recover. I’m sorry the other two kids didn’t make it. Larry Talbot is going to make family notification, and we’re sending in some search teams to see if we can find remains.”
“The county people are getting up a search team and a canine unit,” Keenan said.
“Larry’s coordinating it.”
“Good,” Farnsworth said. As best Janet could tell, the RA was only minimally interested in the resolution of the case of the missing college kids.
“Now, this other business: You have a page to make at six P.M.” right?”
“Yes, that’s what Mata Hari wanted me to do. I wanted to ask you about—” Farnsworth was shaking his head.
“No,” he said.
“Make the page. If he calls back, give him whatever message she wants. Then I hope we’re done with the Edwin Kreiss affair. His daughter’s been recovered, and the other two missing persons have been … accounted for.”
“But what about the girl’s statement? That Browne McGarand’s going to Washington with a bomb?”
“You said she said she was blindfolded,” Farnsworth said.
“We have no evidence that Browne McGarand has ever even been to the arsenal or that he was the man who abducted Lynn Kreiss.”
“Then show her his picture,” she said.
“She saw them both in the storm. It just about has to be him. She described him as a big man with a huge beard. Looked like a mountain man.”
Farnsworth and Keenan exchanged looks.
“What we know is that jared McGarand’s truck had been parked outside the arsenal fence. We have no evidence that he himself penetrated that arsenal perimeter, either.”
Janet frowned. What the hell was this? Farnsworth was sounding like a barracks lawyer.
“There were two people involved in Lynn’s abduction,” she said.
“One young, one much older. She was abducted inside the arsenal.
She saw them both and can identify them. We found her inside the arsenal, so they must have been inside the arsenal, too. Doing what? She said that the older man told her he was holding her as a possible hostage, in case things went wrong with his little H-bomb project in Washington.
She was found in a building right near that power plant. What more do we need?”
Her voice had risen with that last question, and she became acutely aware of the way her two supervisors were looking at her. Impertinence was not an attribute much admired within the Bureau. Farnsworth leaned forward.
“We need to adhere to the very explicit guidance we have been given from headquarters. Now, I would very much appreciate it if you would comply with my orders. Make the page. Give Kreiss the message if and when he calls in, nothing more, nothing less.”
What the hell is going on here? she wondered.
“Can I tell him his daughter is back among us?”
Keenan made a noise of exasperation.
“What part of ‘nothing more, nothing less’ don’t you understand, Carter? How about doing what you’re told for a change?”
Janet had never heard Keenan speak this way, but she had about had it.
“How about telling me what’s going on around here?” she countered.
“Why is this office so hell-bent on mind-fucking Edwin Kreiss?”
“You’ve got it wrong, Janet,” Farnsworth said.
“That page will conclude your involvement in the Edwin Kreiss matter. Then you can help Larry Talbot close out the missing persons case.”
“But what about the bomb? Are we just going to sit on that?”
“You’re talking about wholly uncorroborated information, obtained from a young woman who has just awakened from a coma, as if it were evidence. There is no evidence of a bomb, and if there were, bombs are the business of the aTF, and even they are saying there was no bomb.”
Christ, Janet thought. This was like being back in the lab: We know the answer we want; how about a little cooperation here?
“But they don’t know what we do,” she protested.
“Of course they’re saying there’s no bomb!”
Farnsworth closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“I am ordering you to drop this matter.” He opened his eyes.
“And if you can’t accept that order, you have an alternative.”
That shocked her. She sat back in her chair, unable to think of what she should say next. Both Farnsworth and Keenan were watching her, almost expectantly. Then, surprising herself, she fished out her credentials and leaned forward to put them on Farnsworth’s desk. Then she hooked her Sig out of its holster, ejected the clip, and then racked and locked back the slide. A single round popped out onto the floor. Keenan automatically bent to retrieve it. She put the gun on the RA’s desk, as well.
“You guys page Kreiss,” she said, getting up.
“This is all fucked up, and I quit.”
She walked out of the RA!s office and went straight upstairs to her cubicle.
Larry Talbot and Billy were in the office. Talbot took one look at her face and asked her what was wrong. She told him she’d just quit. He sat there at his desk with his mouth open.
“You did what? Why? What’s happened now?”
“There’s something way wrong with this Kreiss business,” she began, but then she stopped. Talbot probably
