the papers he was reading, stuffed the rest of the file back in the rear, closed the safe drawer, and got back to his feet.
He took a good look around. Nobody was paying him any attention, but he was through taking risks.
He walked out quickly the same way he came in. His knees were weak with fear and excitement. On his way back down to his office, he made a firm decision. A hundred thousand was too little. It was time for a serious renegotiation. That little slush fund was loaded with cash. Some third-rate political peckerwood got seven million. Seven million!
Hell, the information in his fist was worth at least a million, possibly two. Crintz tightened his grip. The clutch of papers in his fist was his early retirement to a beautiful Florida resort, a glorious golf course, a boat, young girls in bikinis flaunting bronzed bodies, his life’s dream.
He relished the moment, and by the time he got back to his desk he was ready to hop on the Internet and begin the search for a nice little Florida condo, somewhere near the bars and the ocean.
The meeting opened with Walters and Bellweather thrashing and badgering Martie O’Neal, holding back no punches. Jack and Old Man Arvan were still missing, they yelled. Why in the hell was CG paying a fortune to TFAC, an incompetent firm filled with losers, bunglers, and hacks? TFAC was sloppy and stupid; its mistakes were costing the Capitol Group billions. O’Neal relaxed against a far wall and let Walters and Bellweather vent and spew and fume till they were tired of hearing themselves talk.
A few hours before, Walters had authorized one million dollars to buy Harvey Crintz’s goods; the permission was grudging and attended by another of Walters’s crude tantrums.
O’Neal now held the product of that million dollars in his hand. He weathered their curses and threats with good humor, and endured their abuse with the gratifying knowledge that the moment they finished, he would make them eat their words. Go ahead, boys, he wanted to yell. Call me an asshole again. Burst a few blood vessels, scream till you’re hoarse.
But they didn’t seem to grow tired of abusing him, so he pushed off the wall and approached Walters’s desk. “Guess what I got?” he sneered.
Walters sneered back, twice as nasty. “Don’t play games with us.”
“All right. I found your leak. You got a rodent problem in this building. A snitch, someone feeding loads of incriminating info to Jenson.”
O’Neal tossed the papers onto Walters’s desk, then stood back and allowed the other two to read for themselves. Walters had forgotten his glasses and had to jam his face about three inches from the pages. Bellweather stood slightly behind him and leaned over his shoulder. O’Neal enjoyed the looks of growing horror on their faces.
“Jesus,” Bellweather blurted after he finished. “She knows about the slush fund.”
Walters was too stunned to say anything for a moment. He collapsed into his chair, gripping the armrests like a life raft.
“Relax, fellas. Not all is lost,” O’Neal announced, too happy to be the irreplaceable lackey once again.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bellweather demanded.
“Remember, I was in the FBI. Those statements are nothing but paper. Unless they’re backed up by the living witness who made those claims, they’re worthless.”
“Worthless?” Walters managed to croak, still shell-shocked.
“Yeah, Mitch. In court, without that witness, it’s all inadmissible hearsay. God bless the Supreme Court. The accused has the right to cross-examine, and you can’t do that with pieces of paper.”
“What are you suggesting?” Bellweather asked.
“Isn’t it obvious, Dan?” Walters answered him with a sly smile, “Once we know who’s talking to Jenson, we take care of the problem. No witness, no evidence-no case.”
“You mean kill her?” Bellweather asked.
“Nothing that drastic is necessary,” O’Neal replied, smirking with pretended innocence. “There’s plenty of ways to make a source disappear. Money can cause a memory lapse. Enough money can even buy a complete reversal of old testimony. Maybe the source can just vanish for a while, take a long trip to a wonderfully remote place.”
Bellweather quickly said, “Don’t even mention murder in this office, Mitch. Or kidnapping either. We’re businessmen. We have reputations to protect. We don’t behave that way.”
The three men studied each other’s faces for a moment. The message was clear; nobody needed to say it. O’Neal had no famous reputation to protect, nor was he a “businessman” with a limited imagination. How O’Neal took care of the “rat” problem was up to him. Bellweather didn’t need to, or want to, know about it.
“So who is she?” Walters asked. The source was referred to as “she” three different times in Jenson’s papers.
“Consider what we know,” O’Neal, the investigator, began. “She works in accounting. She’s in the loop about the polymer. Here’s some other stuff Crintz got.” He planted Crintz’s little green book in front of Walters. The three of them bent forward and examined it together.
Walters’s eyes stopped cold on the phone messages. Three messages in particular, three different callbacks Jenson was supposed to make to the same name.
Bellweather caught his reaction. “That her?” he asked, pointing at the name as though Walters had missed it.
O’Neal leaned closer. “Eva Green. Does she work here?”
“In accounting,” Walters admitted, but nothing more.
“That’s where the leaks are coming from.” Bellweather bent forward and studied the name more closely. “I don’t know her.”
O’Neal, standing with his arms crossed and watching Walters’s distressed face, asked in an insinuating tone, “Who is she, Mitch?”
Mitch looked like someone had just stuffed a fat golf ball down his throat. His face was red. He couldn’t seem to find his voice, and when he did, he yelled, “Bullshit. That’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?”
“It can’t be Eva. She’s been working for me.”
“Meaning what?”
“I sent her up with Feist last summer to escort Wiley to the White House shindig. Feist said Wiley seemed impressed with her, so we worked out an arrangement.”
“Describe this arrangement,” O’Neal asked, rolling his eyes. He hated amateurs dabbling in his field, getting in over their heads.
“Eva’s one of those hyperambitious Harvard B-School types, always willing to go the extra mile to get ahead. She kept an eye on Wiley for me. We wanted to find out more about him and she filled in a few details. It was easy and cheap.”
“Easy, cheap? What’re you talking about?” Bellweather bellowed, slamming a hand against the wall. Whatever plot this idiot had hatched up now seemed to be biting them all in the ass.
“Nothing complicated, Dan. All she had to do was drop in. Visit him occasionally. Go out on a few dates. Build trust, get Wiley to confide in her.”
“She was a mole?” O’Neal asked. This idiot didn’t even know the nomenclature of the trade.
“Sort of, yeah, I guess. Update me on what Wiley was doing and thinking. If something more developed, I promised her a fifty grand bonus.”
“And did it… uh, did she?” Bellweather asked, tiptoeing into the rich, lurid details.
Walters bunched his shoulders and shrugged. “Not really. He treated her like a sister. The arrangement ended months back. Eva had a sort of breakdown. Seemed like a good idea to end it.”
Bellweather traded a quick glance with Martie. “Sounds like she was a double agent,” he suggested.
That’s exactly what it sounded like, but Walters refused to believe it. “Look,” he said defensively, “I’ll bring her in. Hit her up with a few questions and get to the bottom of this. If it’s her, I know we can cut a deal. If it’s not-”
O’Neal finished his thought-“Then we’re back at square one.”
“And you just wasted another million bucks,” Bellweather said.
Jack was finding it hard not to burst out in laughter as he sat at the console and listened. The arrogance of
