True Evil

Memories of last night's attack flashed through her mind. She had given her real name to the Natchez police: she'd had no choice. As she stared at the words UNKNOWN CALLER in the message window, she felt an impulse to answer the phone. But at the last moment she followed her standard procedure for the past month, which was to use her voice mail as a screening device. Her official phone could only mean bad news. The caller might be any number of field agents, or it might be her SAC in Charlotte, who was supposed to be on vacation in the Bahamas. After waiting a full minute, she dialed voice mail to find out who was looking for her.

'Agent Morse,' began a familiar voice with a priggish Boston Brahmin accent, 'this is Associate Deputy Director Mark Dodson in Washington.'

Alex's chest tightened until breathing was difficult.

'I'm calling to inform you that we have dispatched a Bureau plane to bring you back to Washington for an interview with the Office of Professional Responsibility…'

Her blood pressure went into free fall.

'…jet is bound for Jackson, Mississippi. If you are anywhere other than Jackson, you should call me back immediately so that I can reroute the plane to wherever you are. Do not delay, Agent Morse. You will only make matters worse for yourself.'

She heard a click, and Dodson was gone. When the voice-mail program offered her a chance to delete the message, she did so. She would not put herself through the hell of listening again to a mortal enemy in his moment of triumph. The Office of Professional Responsibility…

'Damn it!' she cried, climbing off the bed and pulling on yesterday's pants. If they were sending a jet for her, they must know everything. The extra sick leave she had taken, the fake reports she had filed, the classmate covering for her in Charlotte…they probably even knew about last night's attack in the carport by now. That was probably what had started the collapse of her whole house of cards. And all for nothing! Every white van checked by the police last night had been legally registered to a legitimate citizen.

'Stupid, stupid, stupid,' she cursed.

Fighting back tears, Alex dialed the main switchboard of the Puzzle Palace in Washington, better known as the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Of course, she thought wryly, there's always the chance that they've sent the plane to carry me to Afghanistan, to negotiate the surrender of Osama bin Laden, or something equally as important. Possible-but unlikely. She asked the all-too-chipper switchboard operator to connect her to Associate Deputy Director Dodson's office. When she gave her name, she was immediately put through.

'Special Agent Morse?' said Dodson.

'Yes, sir.'

'Where are you at this moment?'

'Natchez, Mississippi.'

There was a longish pause. 'I see they have an airport there that can take a Lear.'

'I believe they do, sir.'

'You will be at that airport in thirty minutes, packed and ready to go.'

'Yes, sir. May I ask why, sir?'

'You may not.'

'Yes, sir.'

'That's all.'

'Sir,' Alex said, but Dodson had already hung up.

She looked around the empty guest room. Last night, with Chris Shepard in it, the bedroom had seemed a warm and human place. Now it was just another hollow shell. She walked into the bathroom to clean up as best she could.

When she closed the door and sat on the toilet, she found herself facing an eleven-by-sixteen-inch color portrait of Thora Shepard. Thora stared back at her with the cool indifference of a magazine model-stared right through her, really-with perfect blond hair framing the high cheekbones, sculpted nose, and sea-gray eyes that had ensnared Chris Shepard as surely as they had Red Simmons before him. Though Alex had never spoken a word to Thora, she had always felt that they were adversaries, like two agents on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall, playing a distant game of cat and mouse. But now she realized that this was a ludicrous fantasy. The cool visage before her belonged to a woman who had already won whatever game she was playing, while Alex was about to be flown back to Washington for what amounted to professional execution.

Neville Byrd delicately adjusted the joystick in his lap, shifting the laser on the roof five millimeters to the right. Then he donned his goggles to check the line of the beam. Hello. This time he'd done it. The green beam terminated precisely at the center of the northeast corner window on the sixteenth floor of the AmSouth Bank Tower. From this moment forward-thanks to the laser and the fourth-generation optical scope sighted along the same track-every word spoken and every keystroke typed on the keyboard inside the office of Andrew Rusk would be recorded on the instruments racked in the flight case behind Neville Byrd.

Neville took a slug of Vault and leaned against the window of his hotel room, which was separated from the AmSouth tower by only a single city street. He was here at the behest of Noel D. Traver, a well-spoken man of about sixty with a horrible purple birthmark on his face. Dr. Traver had given Neville very simple instructions, then offered double his usual rates to accomplish them. This had made Neville Byrd a happy man. High-tech security work wasn't exactly a growth business in Mississippi.

For the last few years, Byrd had worked for divorce lawyers and private detectives, hacking into e-mail accounts and eavesdropping on the cell phones of people committing adultery. A long fall from the days when he worked for Netscape. Just ten years ago he had been part of the forefront of the battle against mighty Microsoft. Now CEO Jim Barksdale was a philanthropist, and Netscape was only a shadow of its former self-much like its former software engineer.

But this job was different.

Andy Rusk was one of the top five divorce lawyers in the city, and he had actually hired Neville on several occasions. In Neville's not-so-humble opinion, Rusk was just another aging Ole Miss frat boy with too much money and more ego than was good for him. Right now he was blabbing on the phone to some guy about a cross-country motorcycle trip he was organizing-on Harleys, of course; hawgs, man! — but rented ones. Rented Harleys. That pretty much said it all.

Neville took another slug of Vault and giggled. Unlike Andy Rusk, Dr. Traver seemed like a decent guy, and he was certainly a hell of a lot smarter than Rusk and his ilk. (Neville knew Traver was a veterinarian because he had looked him up on the Internet: A Breed Apart, Noel D. Traver, DVM Proprietor.) Dr. Traver knew about a lot more than animals, too. He had known exactly what kind of gear it would take to carry out the surveillance on Rusk's office, and he wouldn't have hired anyone who didn't own it.

Dr. Traver had not hired Neville blind, either. He'd asked him to drive down to the Byram exit on I-55 South for a face-to-face. Neville hadn't minded. He'd met people in lots worse places in the five years since he'd hung out his Digital Security shingle. Over a Frescata Club sandwich from Wendy's, Neville had assured Dr. Traver that he would be able to hack into Rusk's office network, no problem. Dr. Traver had been skeptical, and so far, his skepticism had proved justified. Whoever had beefed up Rusk's security had done all right. But the laser rig would nail him in the end. Not only would it pick up all of Rusk's conversations by measuring the vibration of the window glass, but it would also track which keys were depressed on Rusk's computer keyboard-and in which order-by measuring changes in the electromagnetic field of the office. The optical scope alone could make out about two- thirds of Rusk's keyboard and monitor, which meant that much of what was typed would also be recorded onto digital video.

The tough part of this job had been the installation. The Marriott Hotel was the only building with line-of-sight access to Rusk's sixteenth-floor window, and even the Marriott lacked windows facing the AmSouth tower. To solve this problem, Neville had built a custom rig at home-sort of a plastic doghouse for the laser and optical scope-then installed it on the roof of the Marriott. Then he'd checked into a room on the top floor and set up his wireless monitoring station.

So far its highest-value data transfer had been stunning views of Rusk's secretary's tits. The lawyer must have listed Russ Meyer tits as the prime qualification for the job, because his secretary had them in spades. She