Agent X - Boyd Noah - Страница 22

“But whoever was shooting at us used it.”

“We never got a look at him. We don’t know how much he weighed. He could have been a hundred and thirty pounds for all we know.”

“How much do you weigh?” she asked.

“One-ninety. What are you, about one-eighty?”

“One-thirty-five, Vail.”

He got down on his knees again and turned on the flashlight. He took a few extra seconds looking into the thin opening before getting up. “You should be all right.”

“What about you?”

“They had to build some tolerance into it. I’m guessing that to open that spring up fully and set it off, both of us would have to be on it together. You go first. Once you’re down, I’ll get on it.”

In the distance Kate could hear the sirens now. “Maybe we should wait for the fire department.”

“They haven’t got anything that can reach ten floors.” He squatted down and put his hand flat on the deck. “It’s getting hot. We don’t have that much time.”

Kate went over to the side and grabbed the cable. Vail could see the uncertainty in her eyes. “I could be wrong about how much weight this can hold. Maybe you should take off your clothes just to be safe.”

She got a new grip on the cable. “Vail, I’d rather do a two-and-a-half into the concrete.” She slipped over the side and looped the cord around her foot as a brake to control the speed of her descent.

From the black vehicle, the four men watched Kate come over the side of the roof and wrap the cable over her foot. As she started down, all of them looked back anxiously at the roof to see where the second agent was.

Suddenly it seemed as if the sirens doubled in volume. The driver’s eyes darted over to his passenger, but he was still watching the roofline intently. The sirens grew even louder.

The driver started the engine as a plea to leave. The passenger snorted in disappointment and then turned forward in his seat and closed his eyes. The SUV made a U-turn and drove away just below the speed limit.

As soon as Kate let go of the rope and dropped the last few feet, Vail was over the side as fast as possible. Just as he reached the ground, a fire truck pulled up, and Vail told the crew about the explosive cord. “The fire shouldn’t detonate it, but if it does, I don’t think it’ll hurt anyone inside the building. It’s only the upper thirty feet or so.”

Kate and Vail went to their car to get out of the way. He started to say something, and she held up her hand. “Not a word until I call Bill Langston.”

“Okay, but I can tell you he’s—”

She thrust her hand at him to demand his silence as she dialed. Without supplying any details, she told the assistant director that they had identified Pollock and how they tracked him down, finding him dead. She told him about escaping from the burning building and that the fire department was there now trying to extinguish it. At last she said, “I’ll be here,” and hung up. “If you were planning to say he’s not going to be happy, congratulations on your extraordinary understanding of the human mind.”

“Just for that, next burning building you can stay home.”

“This isn’t funny, Steve. I’m not letting you talk me into anything like this again.”

“You act like it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done to you. How about when I stole the three million dollars from your safe? And you didn’t know what I was doing and, even worse, where I was so you could yell at me.”

She finally smiled. “Okay, that was worse.”

“And what happened? You were a hero, even got invited to the Irish ambassador’s New Year’s party. Of course, I got the best night of my life out of it.”

She turned to him and searched his face for a moment. “I bet you say that to all the women you seduce with sculpture.”

“Less than half, I swear.”

Kate laughed. “You’d better let me handle Langston when he gets here.”

“That’s the best offer I’ve gotten all day.”

“Enjoy it, because that’s the only offer you’re going to get all day. And by ‘all day’ I mean ever again.”

“You say that now, but a few more dead bodies, another shoot-out or two, maybe an explosion, and you’ll be putty in my hands.”

Kate stared out the windshield for a moment. “I guess there’s no doubt now that the Russians have Calculus talking. But why kill Pollock? And why try to kill us?”

“Think about what would have happened if their plan had succeeded. The det cord would have exploded, leaving us dead on the ground with a rope that would have appeared to have come untied. For lack of a better explanation, it would have looked like we ineptly started a fire to destroy evidence. Inside was a murdered spy whose blood was all over both our shoes. Not only do the Russians no longer have to worry about what Pollock might tell us, but the Bureau gets a huge black eye out of it.”

Kate said, “That seems a little drastic, but maybe the Russians have decided to play hardball. Didn’t Calculus say something about how they were under orders not to get caught spying?”

“There’s only one reason they would have gone to all that trouble—it’s the disc. The way we snuck into the safe house, they probably figured the two of us were freelancing. And then again tonight it was just the two of us. If we’re sneaking around on the Bureau, they probably assumed—correctly—that no one else knows about the disc. If they got rid of us, they don’t have to worry about it. Which means there’s something else on it that leads to the next spy.”

“That’s a lot of supposition, Steve.”

“There’s one way to find out. We need to take another look at the DVD.”

Thirty minutes later Bill Langston pulled up next to their car; his deputy, John Kalix, was driving. Vail said to Kate, “We can’t let him know about the disc.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, since I’m not sure I believe it contains anything. We’ve already looked at it, remember?”

As Kate started to get out, Vail nodded toward the assistant director and said to her, “Boy, am I glad I’m not in your shoes. He looks mad.”

A few minutes later, Kate got back in the car. “He wants to talk to you.”

“You told him I was here?”

“We’ll see if you still have your sense of humor when you get back.”

Vail slid into the rear seat of the assistant director’s car. Langston turned around, and his look of displeasure was clear. “I thought you were instructed to keep me advised of any developments.”

“You don’t think this is a development?”

“I think this is at the end of a chain of developments.”

Without mentioning the possible lead to the next mole, Vail answered Langston’s questions. He laid out everything that had led them from Calculus’s text message to tracking Pollock to how he died. “You broke into a Russian safe house?” Langston thundered.

“That’s where the answer was,” Vail said, with a calm that was intended to contrast the assistant director’s anger.

“You can’t do that,” Langston said, his voice quieter now but still strained.

“Not the first time I’ve heard that this week,” Vail said. “To keep this civil, I’m going to pretend that you are going to accept what I’m about to say, although I seriously doubt you will. You and I come with two different sets of instructions. Where your methods end, mine begin. I wasn’t brought into this because I was likely to follow the agent handbook. And I’ll continue to do what I think is necessary until the director tells me to turn around and go home. Don’t take my tactics personally. What I do has only one purpose—to find the answer. It has nothing to do with you.”

“I’m not asking you to do things differently. I’m just asking you to keep me informed.”

Vail laughed. “Did you really want me to let you know I was going to break into property owned by the Russian embassy?”

It was at that moment Langston realized how foolish he was being. Of course Vail was right. He was taking all the chances, and although Langston wasn’t exactly in charge, his division’s major problem was being resolved. The time would come when Vail was no longer needed, a time when the assistant director could grab the reins of the investigation from him and claim its success. As though in response to Vail’s question, Langston laughed. “I didn’t say I wanted to be informed of everything.”