'Grade pay, nothing shady.'
'Grade pay nearly equivalent to chief of detectives, a position you turned down four years ago because you didn't want the desk.'
'Holy Jesus—’
'I've had to be thorough… and since your wife works for the congressman, I believe a man in your position could insist on being informed if and when anything relevant to Phillip Tobias comes down, as he also works, or worked, in Kendrick's office.'
'I suppose I could, that's my girl. But it leads me to a question or two.'
'Go right ahead. Any questions you have may help me.'
'Why is Evan in the Bahamas?'
'I sent them there.'
'Them? The Egyptian woman?… Old Weingrass told my wife.'
'She works for us; she was part of Oman. There's a man in Nassau who fronted a company that Kendrick was briefly associated with years ago. He's not terribly reputable and neither was the firm, but we felt he was worth checking out.'
'For what purpose?'
The director of Special Projects looked over the roof of the car at Evan Kendrick's house, at the now dimly lit windows and what they held beyond the glass. 'All that will come later, O'Reilly. I won't hold anything back, I promise you. But from what you've described to me I have work to do. I have to reach the shroud squad and that can only be done at my car.'
The shroud squad? What the hell is that?'
'A group of men neither of us would care to be a part of. They pick up corpses they can never testify about, forensically examine evidence they've been sworn not to reveal. They're necessary and I respect every one of them, but I wouldn't be one of them.'
Suddenly, the staccato, grating ring of the detective's cellular telephone erupted. It had been tripped to Emergency, the sound echoing throughout the still, cold night, bouncing off the brick wall, each echo receding into the woods beyond. O'Reilly yanked open the door and grabbed the phone, pulling it to his ear. ' Yes?'
'Oh, Jesus, Paddy!' screamed Ann Mulcahy O'Reilly, her voice amplified over the speaker. 'They found him! They found Phil! He was down under the boilers in the basement. Good Christ, Paddy! They say his throat was cut! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he's dead, Paddy!'
'When you say “they” exactly who do you mean, tiger?'
'Harry and Sam from night maintenance—they just called me, scared out of their skins, and told me to phone the police!'
'You just did, Annie. Tell them to stay where they are. They're not to touch anything or say anything until I get there! Understood?'
'Not say anything…?'
'It's a quarantine, I'll explain later. Now call C-Security and have five men armed with shotguns posted outside the office. Say your husband's a police officer and he made the request because of personal threats against him. Understood?'
'Yes, Paddy,' replied Mrs. O'Reilly, in tears. 'Oh, holy Jesus, he's dead!'
The detective spun around in his seat. The CIA director was running to his car.
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 28
It was four-seventeen in the afternoon, Colorado time, and Emmanuel Weingrass's patience had run out. It had been close to eleven o'clock in the morning when he personally discovered that the phone was not working, subsequently learning that two of the nurses had known it several hours earlier when they tried to place
