He stretched. A joint somewhere in his back popped softly and he admonished himself: Don't be a damn fool…
But in another part of his lavish mind Arthur Potter English-lit major thought, If we have to be foolish it ought to be in love. Not in our careers, where lives hang in the balance; not with our gods or in our lust for beauty and learning. Not with our children, so desirous and so unsure. But in love. For love is nothing but the purest folly and we go there for the purpose of being impassioned and half-crazy. In matters of the heart the world will always be generous with us, and forgiving.
Then he laughed to himself and shook his head as reality descended once more – like the dull ache that returned along his seared arms. She's twenty-five – less than half your age. She's deaf, both lower- and upper-case. And, for heaven's sake, it's your wedding anniversary today. Twenty-three years. Not a single one missed. Enough nonsense. Get back to the command van. Get to work.
The medic tapped him on the shoulder. Potter looked up, startled.
"You're all set, sir."
"Yes, thank you."
He rose and walked unsteadily back to the van.
A figure appeared in the doorway.
Potter looked up at Peter Henderson. "You all right?" the SAC asked.
He nodded cautiously. Tremain might have been the main perp but Potter would have bet a week's salary that Henderson had played some role in the assault. Ambition? A desire to get back at the Bureau, which betrayed him? Yet this would be even harder to prove than the existence of the suspected gas bomb in the generator. Forensics of the heart are always elusive.
Henderson looked at the burns. "You'll get yourself a medal for this."
"My first wound in the line of duty." Potter smiled.
"Arthur, I just wanted to apologize for losing my temper before. It gets dull down here. I was hoping for some action. You know how it is."
"Sure, Pete."
"I miss the old days."
Potter shook the man's hand. They talked about Joe Silbert and his fellow reporters. They'd refer the matter to the U.S. attorney but concluded there was probably nothing to hold them for. Obstruction of justice is a tricky charge and absent interfering with an ongoing criminal prosecution judges usually come down on the side of the First Amendment. Potter had contented himself by walking ominously up to Silbert, who stood in a circle of troopers, cool as a captured revolutionary leader. The agent had told him that he was going to cooperate in every way with the widow of the dead trooper, who would undoubtedly be bringing a multimillion-dollar wrongful-death action against the TV station and Silbert and Biggins personally.
"I intend to be a plaintiff's witness," Potter explained to the reporter, whose facade cracked momentarily, revealing beneath it a very scared, middle-aged man of questionable talents and paltry liquidity.
The negotiator now sat back in his chair and gazed at the slaughterhouse through the yellow window.
"How many minutes to the next deadline?"
"Forty-five."
Potter sighed. "That's going to be a big one. I'll have to do some thinking about it. Handy's mad now. He lost control in a big way."
Angie said, "And what's worse is that you helped him get it back. Which is a form of losing control in itself."
"So he's resentful in general and resentful at me in particular."
"Though he probably doesn't know it," Angie said.
"It's lose-lose." Potter's eyes were on Budd, gazing mournfully at the slaughterhouse.
The phone buzzed. Tobe picked it up, blew soot off the receiver, and answered. "Yeah," the young man said. "I'll tell him." He hung up. "Charlie, that was Roland Marks. He asked if you could come see him right away. He's got his friend with him. Somebody he wants you to meet. He said it's critical."
The captain kept his eye on the battlefield. "He's… Where is he?"
"Down by the rear staging area."
"Uh-huh. Okay. Say, Arthur, can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Sure you can."
"Outside?"
"Taken up imaginary smoking, have you?" Potter asked.
"Arthur started a trend in Special Ops," Tobe said. "Henry's taken up imaginary sex."
"Tobe," barked LeBow, typing away madly.
The young agent added, "I'm not being critical, Henry. I'm going to imaginary AA."
Budd smiled wanly and he and Potter stepped outside. The temperature had dropped ten degrees and it seemed to the negotiator that the wind was worse.
"So, what's up, Charlie?"
They stopped walking. The men gazed at the van and the burnt field around it – the devastation that the fire had caused.
"Arthur, there's something I have to tell you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tape recorder. He looked down and turned it over and over in his hands.
"Oh," the agent said. "About this?" Potter held up a small cassette.
Budd frowned and flipped open the recorder. There was a cassette inside.
"That one's blank," Potter said. "It's a special cassette. Can't be recorded on."
Budd pushed the play button. The hiss of static brayed from the tiny speaker.
"I knew all about it, Charlie."
"But -"
"Tobe has his magic wands. They pick up magnetic recording equipment. We're always sweeping locations for bugs. He told me somebody had a recorder. He narrowed it down to you."
"You knew?" He stared at the agent, then shook his head in disgust with himself – for having been outsmarted at something he didn't think was very smart to begin with.
"Who was it?" Potter asked. "Marks? Or the governor?"
"Marks. Those girls… he's really in a state about them. He wanted to give Handy whatever he wanted in order to get them released. Then he was going to track him down. He had this special homing device he was going to put in the chopper. You could track 'em from a hundred miles away and they'd never know."
Potter nodded at the crestfallen captain. "I figured it was something like that. Any man willing to sacrifice himself is willing to sacrifice somebody else."
"But how'd you swap the cassettes?" Budd asked.
Angie Scapello stepped down through the open doorway of the van and nodded a greeting to the men. She walked past Budd, touching his arm very lightly as she passed.
"Hi, Charlie."
"Hey, Angie," he said, not smiling.
"Say, what time do you have?" she asked him.
He lifted his left wrist. "Hell, it's gone. My watch. Damn. And Meg just gave it to me for my -"
Angie held up the Pulsar.
Budd was nodding, understanding it all. "Got it," he said, and hung his head even lower, if that was possible. "Oh, brother."
"I used to teach the pickpocket recognition course at Baltimore PD," she explained. "I borrowed the recorder when we were strolling around in the gully – having our loyalty talk – and switched cassettes."
Budd smiled miserably. "You're good. I'll give you that. Oh, man. I've been messin' up all night long. I don't know what to say. I've let you down."
"You confessed. No harm done."
"It was Marks?" Angie asked.
"Yep." Budd sighed. "At first I was thinking like him – that we should do anything to save those girls. I gave Arthur an earful about that this morning. But you were right, a life's a life. Doesn't matter if it's a girl or a trooper. We gotta stop him here."
"I appreciate that Marks had noble motives," Potter said. "But we have to do things a certain way. Acceptable losses. Remember?"
Budd closed his eyes. "Man, I almost ruined your career."
The negotiator laughed. "You didn't come close, Captain. Believe me, you were the only one at risk. If you'd given that tape to anyone your career in law enforcement would've been over."