Chinese spy. During the case, DeMarco had a brief fling with an FBI agent named Diane Carlucci. The fling might have amounted to more but Diane was transferred from Washington, D.C. to LA, and out of DeMarco’s life.
But she was back in Washington now. He hadn’t known she was back until he ran into her on the street in Georgetown one day. She was with a rugged, good-looking, gray-haired guy a few years older than DeMarco, whom she introduced as her husband. She and DeMarco had stood there for a moment, both feeling a bit embarrassed. They couldn’t talk about the good times they once had-not with her new husband standing there-so DeMarco mumbled a few words about how good she looked, which she did, and how great it was to see her again and then walked away thinking about what might have been.
But Diane was the right person to call. Unlike Hopper, DeMarco knew she was honest. And she’d been with the Bureau long enough that she’d be able to put him in touch with the right big shot to talk to about this whole NSA mess.
So that was DeMarco’s new half-assed plan: meet with Diane Carlucci and convince her to introduce him to a heavy hitter at the Bureau, a big honcho near the top who would know how to proceed with a case of this magnitude, involving people at the highest levels in the Department of Defense.
“Where’s DeMarco, Claire?” Dillon asked.
“I don’t know,” Claire said. “We never expected him to bolt, but while Alice’s people were all following Levy and removing Hopper’s body, that’s just what the bastard did. He abandoned his car, took off all his clothes, and dumped everything that had listening and tracking devices installed in them. After we located his car, we identified people in the area he might know and found a guy named Perry Wallace, who’s John Mahoney’s chief of staff.”
“Mahoney? Is DeMarco connected to Mahoney?”
“I don’t know. He isn’t a member of his staff. He probably just knows Wallace because they both work in the Capitol. Anyway, Alice paid Wallace a visit, scared the livin’ shit out of him, and he admitted he loaned DeMarco a vehicle, but said he had no idea what DeMarco was doing or where he was going. And knowing how Alice can be, I believe him. But right now, we have no idea where DeMarco is.”
“You need to find him, Claire, and you need to find him before John Levy does.”
“I know that,” she snapped. It really irritated her when he stated the obvious. “What do I do after I find him?”
“Put him in a safe house with people who can make him stay there. I haven’t decided what to do about Mr. DeMarco yet.”
As deputy director of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, John Levy had the resources at his disposal to pursue DeMarco. He called four senior agents into his office and gave them a photo of DeMarco and all the information he had obtained on the man.
“But you can’t use local law enforcement to help you,” he told his agents. “This agency needs to track this man down independently.”
“Why are we looking for him, sir?” one of the agents asked.
Levy knew the men who worked for him resented him. He’d been brought in from the outside, elevated immediately to a senior position, and had an incredible amount of power-power that was disproportionate to his position. But they’d follow his orders-they were afraid not to-and they’d accept whatever explanation he gave them.
Answering the agent’s question, he said, “DeMarco has been identified as a credible threat to Pentagon security. Why he’s a threat is classified. Just find him, but don’t approach him until you’ve talked to me.”
DeMarco decided not to call Diane Carlucci from his room at the Day’s Inn. He thought he could trust her but he wasn’t sure how she’d react to what he was about to tell her, and she might decide to trace the call. But what he was really afraid of was the NSA tracing the call. He didn’t know how they’d know about the call if he called from a randomly selected phone but he’d become so paranoid about NSA capabilities that he wasn’t willing to take any chances.
He walked over to the window and peered through a crack in the drapes. Across the street from the Day’s Inn, just on the other side of the Jefferson Davis Highway, was a Hyatt Regency. That would work.
The snooty-looking clerk at the Hyatt’s registration desk gave him a dirty look when DeMarco entered the hotel-which was not surprising considering his wrinkled, oversized sweat suit attire-but the clerk didn’t stop him when he walked over to a bank of pay phones.
“This is Agent Carlucci.”
“Diane, it’s Joe.”
“Uh, Joe, how are you doing?”
She was obviously surprised to hear from him and she also sounded somewhat guarded, maybe thinking that he was calling to try and rekindle their affair. She had no idea that sex was the last thing on his mind.
“Diane, I need to see you. Right away.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone.”
She didn’t say anything. He was obviously going to have to tell her more to get her to drop whatever she was doing and come to him.
“Diane, this isn’t about us. All I can tell you is that I can’t talk about it on the phone, it involves the Bureau, and it’s serious. Really serious. And I need you to meet me. I can’t come to you.”
Diane still didn’t say anything. One thing he knew about her was that when it came to her career, she wasn’t going to take chances.
“Diane, you know me. You know I wouldn’t ask you to do something like this if it wasn’t important. And like I said, it involves the Bureau, and not in a good way.”
“All right, Joe. Where do you want to meet?”
DeMarco thought about that for a second. He didn’t want to meet her too close to where he was staying. “Rosslyn,” he said. “There’s a little coffee shop on Wilson Boulevard, close to the metro station, called the Java Hut. How long will it take you to get there?”
“An hour. I can’t make it any sooner.”
“Okay, see you in an hour,” DeMarco said, and hung up before she could change her mind.
He didn’t know what Diane would do after he talked to her but at least someone else would know what the hell was going on. And once he told her Hopper had been killed, she’d do something-DeMarco didn’t know what-but something.
He started to leave the phone booth, but then something else occurred to him. Last night he’d been desperate to escape from Dillon’s thugs and running to Perry Wallace had been the best, most expedient solution. But this morning he also remembered that he’d called Perry just a couple of days ago to ask about Mahoney’s condition and that phone call, more than anything else, would have led the NSA right to Perry’s doorstep. The consequence of all this was that to save his own hide DeMarco had selfishly gotten Perry involved in this whole, deadly NSA affair and he wondered if Dillon’s goons had Perry’s wide-bodied frame in a little room somewhere, twisting his nuts to make him talk.
Perry wasn’t a good friend, but he didn’t deserve that.
Since he didn’t know Dillon’s phone number, DeMarco called directory assistance and was surprised to find that the NSA had a listed number, just like they were some sort of normal government agency.
“You got an old spook there named Dillon,” DeMarco said to the NSA operator. “I’m pretty sure that’s his first name. I need to talk to him.”
“Sir,” the operator said, “I have no idea who you want to speak to. This is a very large agency and I-”
“Lady, listen to me before you hang up. This guy Dillon is in his sixties, tall, white hair, dresses like a million bucks. He’s probably six hundred pay grades above you and he’s trying to find me. He will have you fired if you don’t put this call through to him. Now I know you can’t possibly know everybody at the NSA, but Dillon’s not a common first name and, like I said, this guy’s a big shot. Somebody will know him. Now I’m just gonna wait five minutes, and if I’m not talking to him before five minutes are up, I’m gonna hang up and you’re gonna get fired.”
DeMarco meant what he said: calling Dillon was dangerous and there was no way he was going to wait longer than five minutes. He knew that as soon as Dillon came on the line and realized DeMarco was on the other end, he’d trace the call and dispatch a bunch of armed thugs to pick him up. But DeMarco figured that unless the thugs were eating breakfast at the Hyatt, they wouldn’t be able to get to him in five minutes and he’d be gone before they arrived. He hoped.
