“Which cab company?”
“He just said it was a maroon-colored taxi.”
“Thank you, sir. We appreciate your help.” Levy hung up and immediately called Perkins. “Perkins, DeMarco took a maroon-colored cab from the Hyatt after he used the ATM. Figure out which company he used and find out where the cab took him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Agent Carlucci,” Claire said, “you received a phone call from a man named Joseph DeMarco about fifteen minutes ago.”
“How do you know that?” Diane said.
“Did you hear what I said when I introduced myself? I said I work for the National Security Agency. We’ve been watching DeMarco.”
There was a pause as Carlucci absorbed that shocking nugget. “Why?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Claire said. “You don’t have need to know.”
“How do I know you’re NSA?”
“You mean other than the fact that I know DeMarco called you? Well, call the agency. We’re in the book. Ask for me. Or call anyone you know at the NSA and have them verify I work here.”
“I don’t know anyone at the NSA.”
“Agent Carlucci, I need to know what DeMarco told you.”
“If you know he called me, why don’t you know what he said?”
“Because we didn’t have a warrant to tap the phone he was using. Now will you please tell me what he told you, or do you want my director to call your director?”
Carlucci went silent again, probably thinking: Go ahead. Call my director. Claire had already gotten the impression that there was some steel in Carlucci and she wasn’t going to be able to walk right over her.
“Okay, Carlucci,” Claire said. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but…”
Claire was treading on dangerous ground here. She didn’t know what DeMarco might have told Carlucci, but she agreed with Dillon that he wasn’t on the phone long enough to have told her the whole story.
“… but DeMarco has been dating a woman who works for the CIA and this woman is currently in Afghanistan. The other night she called DeMarco. We know this because we monitor almost all communications coming from that part of the world. Well, what DeMarco’s lady friend passed on to him is controversial. Politically controversial. And it involves the CIA, the NSA, and high-ranking members of the U.S. military. I’m sorry to be so cryptic, but that’s all I can tell you.”
“Joe said it involved the FBI.”
“Only in a peripheral way. DeMarco’s girlfriend disagrees with what her superiors are doing in Afghanistan regarding a particular operation and when her chain of command wouldn’t listen to her she spoke to the FBI’s legal attache in Kabul. The attache had the good sense to know this was not an issue in which he should get involved, he told Ms. DiCapria’s superiors that she was talking out of school, and now Ms. DiCapria is in hot water, both legally and professionally.”
“And if I call our legal attache in Kabul, he’ll confirm this?” Carlucci said.
“No, he won’t,” Claire said. “This operation is highly classified and strictly need to know. But I imagine five minutes after you talk the attache, the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility will be in your office asking how it is you happen to have information on this subject.”
“Why would Joe call me about this?”
“I won’t know that until you tell me what he said to you.”
Claire held her breath until Carlucci responded.
“All he said was that he needed to see me, that he couldn’t talk on the phone, and that it involved the FBI.”
“That’s all he said?”
“Yes.”
Thank God!
“The only thing I can assume, Agent Carlucci, is that DeMarco’s trying to help his girlfriend. May I ask what your relationship is with DeMarco?”
“We were involved with each other about three years ago but I’m married now.”
“I see,” Claire said. “Well, all I can think is that DeMarco is trying to take advantage of your former relationship. Agent, I can’t order you not to meet with DeMarco, but believe me when I tell you that doing so would not be a career-enhancing move.”
Carlucci didn’t say anything.
“When were you supposed to meet him?”
“In half an hour.”
“Where?” Claire said.
“I thought you guys were following him,” Carlucci said.
Claire almost laughed. Carlucci was testing her.
“We are. Right now he’s sitting in a coffee shop in Rosslyn on Wilson Boulevard.”
“That’s where we’re supposed to meet,” Carlucci said.
“Okay, Agent. Thank you for your cooperation and, again, I want to stress that it’s not in your best interest to get involved in this.”
Claire had no idea if Carlucci would call the FBI’s legal attache in Kabul or meet with DeMarco, but her gut told her that she wouldn’t do either of those things. All that really mattered at this point was that she knew that DeMarco hadn’t told Carlucci anything significant-and she needed to get him out of that coffee shop.
“Sir,” Perkins said, “the cab dropped him off in Rosslyn, near the metro station.”
“Did he go into the station?” Levy asked.
“No. He went into the McDonald’s near the metro but he’s not there now.”
“All right, Perkins. I want you to get four cars over to Rosslyn and start looking for him. Tell your men when they find him that they’re not to talk to him. I want DeMarco tossed into a car and I want your people to remain outside the car until I get there.”
“Claire,” Gilbert said, “we’re picking up radio traffic from Pentagon police vehicles. They’re searching Rosslyn for DeMarco.”
Shit. She knew that was going to happen. Levy’s men had seen DeMarco use the ATM at the Hyatt, found out from the Hyatt’s people that he’d taken a cab, and it was a cakewalk from there. The good news was they didn’t know exactly where DeMarco was. But if DeMarco left the coffee shop-which he would do eventually when Carlucci didn’t show up-the Pentagon cops might spot him walking on the street.
“Where’s Alice?” Claire said.
“She’s still ten minutes from Rosslyn.”
“What the hell is taking her so long?”
“Traffic.”
Even the NSA couldn’t do anything about the traffic.
“Connect me to that coffee shop,” Claire said.
DeMarco looked at his wrist to check the time, and realized he no longer had a watch. He asked a lady sitting near him for the time and she told him-but made it clear that she wasn’t interested in starting up a conversation with an unshaven guy dressed like an escapee from a poor man’s gymnasium. Diane was late. Only ten minutes late, but she’d always been a punctuality freak. Maybe she’d gotten held up in traffic.
“Sir, is your name Joe DeMarco?”
DeMarco had been looking out the window. He turned to see who was speaking and saw it wasn’t the lady who had reluctantly given him the time. It was the barista, a cute gal in her twenties-but she really should lose the nose ring.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, but he was wondering how the girl knew his name. He’d been in the place a couple of times but had never introduced himself. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand at attention.
“You have a phone call,” the barista said.
“A phone call?”
“Yeah. Some lady. She said it’s real important.”
