Lieutenant Son, the head of the division that had detained Ms. Chu, was waiting at the end of the hall.
“Keep questioning her about this American, Charles Dean,” Cam Tre Luc told him. “In the morning, I want her taken to his hotel.”
“He has not gone back, or I would have been informed.”
“My goal, comrade, is simple,” said Cam Tre Luc. “I wish Mr. Dean to be brought to me. If you have a better way of achieving that goal, by all means proceed. Just do not fail in the end.”
“What if this Dean has already left the country?”
“He would have been picked up at the airport. No, he is still here. He hasn’t checked out of his hotel. Detain him, take his passport, and alert me.”
“Absolutely, Comrade Director.”
Cam Tre Luc stepped out in the humid night air, still turning the metal lump between his fingers. The American would pay for his impertinence. They had not fought the war to be treated like peons.
101
Lia slid the small dongle into the computer’s USB slot as the librarian approached. She sat straight up and clicked on the Web browser, quickly typing in the address.
“Got it?” she said in a stage whisper.
“We’re in,” said Telach back in the Art Room.
“Young woman,” said the librarian. “That’s the third computer you’ve been on.”
“I couldn’t get used to the keyboards on the others,” Lia told her.
“They are all the same brand of computer!”
“But the keyboards are different. Here, look at this one.” Lia pointed her to the computer at the next desk. “The support isn’t quite level. It wobbles. Try it.” The librarian frowned and sat down. She typed a few sentences.
“It seems perfectly level to me.”
“It felt odd to me,” Lia insisted.
“Some people,” muttered the librarian under her breath as she went back to the circulation desk.
“They need about ten more minutes,” said Telach.
“Fine,” said Lia, not bothering to keep her voice low. She checked the browser history on the top line; there were only two requests logged, both sites for free recipes.
“This one may have been it,” said Telach, relaying information from the technical people. “It looks like files have been erased. The entire history file has been erased.”
“Can you get it back?”
“They can get back what ever wasn’t overwritten easily.
As for the rest, I’ll have to talk to Mr. Rubens to get approval to take their hard drive. Stand by.” Lia looked up from the screen and saw that the librarian was staring at her.
“Just talking to myself,” said Lia.
“Well, please be considerate. Other people are trying to concentrate.”
“Sure thing.”
102
Christopher Ball had killed at least three dozen people in his life. Most were in Vietnam, where as enemy soldiers or guerillas they had clearly deserved it. Most of the rest were criminals, or involved in criminal activity, generally with Ball during the five or six years after Vietnam when he had par-layed his portion of the Key Tiger money into a sizeable nest egg by selling Asian heroin. Their deaths were also easily ra-tionalized, as was the revenge killing of Jason Evans, the developer who had robbed Ball of much of his money in the mid-1980s, squandering over a million dollars in a scheme to build condos outside of LA. And then there was Reggie Gordon, whose murder — disguised as a suicide — was an absolute necessity. Gordon had clearly been the one to tell Forester about the theft of the Vietnamese payoffs: the only other people alive who knew what had happened were McSweeney and Ball himself. Killing Gordon was easy, in fact, pleas ur able, though it had been more than a de cade since Ball had found it necessary to use the skills he had learned as a young Marine.
But Amanda Rauci was different, and Ball couldn’t precisely say why. It wasn’t just that she was a woman; he had killed two women in Vietnam, both guerilla leaders, at least according to the CIA. It wasn’t just that she was a federal agent. He’d killed a DEA agent during his drug dealer days, albeit one who was dealing on both sides of the law.
Ball tried to parcel out the differences as he drove north on the Parkway toward Albany. The more he tried to define it, the more impossible it became.
And the more her death haunted him. He heard her again, felt the way she pushed against his arms, life ebbing from her.
He told himself not to think about it, but there was nothing to replace the thoughts. He glanced down at his speedometer and saw that he was pushing ninety. Ball immediately backed off the gas. He wasn’t afraid of getting a ticket; if he was stopped, he’d casually show his badge while reaching for his license, mention that he was on official business, and out of professional courtesy the trooper would let him go. But then someone would know where he was.
When Forester didn’t keep his appointment that day, Ball had feared the worst — that the Secret Service agent had seen through his smile and his bs, and realized that he did know Gordon. Then, when he heard the news that Forester had killed himself, Chief Ball thought that God Himself had intervened.
There was a certain logic and even rough justice to the thought. All of the money he had gotten was gone, long gone, most of it stolen by that crook Evans. Ball had paid the price for his moment of weakness in many ways, and had done good work besides.
But now he saw that was simply wishful thinking. Clearly, these people weren’t going to stop until they caught him. It occurred to Ball that Forester’s suicide was a setup — they were eventually going to blame him for the death, and put him away for life.
They wouldn’t give him the chair, because of the way the law read in Connecticut. Which was probably why they chose to do it there, rather than in New York — they wanted to torture him for the rest of his life.
Would he have to kill them all? DeFrancesca next? Then the FBI agent, and the other Secret Service agent — he couldn’t even remember their damn names.
Could he kill them all?
He’d have to.
Not if it meant choking them. Amanda Rauci’s eyes loomed in front of him.
Why were they after him now? Was it Gordon’s fault? Or was McSweeney pulling the strings?
It couldn’t be McSweeney. He had too much to lose.
God, the way Rauci shook when she died.
Ball felt her pushing against his arms. He saw her face when he picked her up.
Ball’s stomach began to react. He made it to the side of the road just in time.
103
Telach came down to the briefing room to personally tell Rubens that they had located the computer the Secret Service agent had used the night before.
“It looks like she erased and overwrote what she had been doing,” Telach told him. “We may be able to
