“Sure, but no point in making it in the cold.” Frank led the way to a door leading into a small room in the main office building. It was furnished with some shabby couches and a couple of beat-up coffee tables. A counter held a sink and a coffeepot and a miniature refrigerator, and copies of Northern Pilot and Aviation Week and Penthouse littered every available surface. It was warm, that was the main thing, and the warmth made Hugh realize just how cold he had been. His hands shook as he punched in an autodial number on his cell phone, and it was only by clenching his teeth together that he kept them from chattering.
The number answered on the third ring. A warm contralto voice said drowsily, “Hello?”
“Lilah? It’s Hugh.”
“Hugh? What are you- What time is it?” There were rustling sounds. “Hugh Rincon, it’s not even six a.m.!”
“I know, I’m sorry. Is Kyle there?”
“Who is it, honey?” he heard Kyle’s voice say.
“It’s Hugh,” she told him.
“Hugh?” Kyle said into the phone. “Where the hell are you? And what the hell are you doing calling at the crack of dawn?” Kyle’s voice sharpened. “What’s wrong? Sara? Your folks?”
“No, nothing like that. I have to talk to you, Kyle, right away.”
“Are you in Anchorage?”
“Yes. I’ll meet you at your office.”
“For crissake, just come to the house.”
“No,” Hugh said. “The office. I’m grabbing a ride, I’ll meet you there.”
“Hugh-”
“Fifteen minutes.” Hugh hung up, and followed Frank outside to a brand-new Dodge Ram Power Wagon. Frank was believer in conspicuous consumption. The truck seemed to ride at least ten feet above the ground. Hugh struggled in, muttered, “FBI headquarters, Sixth and A,” and passed out before the truck had warmed up enough for Frank to judge it safe to be put into drive.
Hugh had spent the hours prior to departure from Tokyo on the phone with the director in Langley, who stubbornly refused to connect the dots, the same dots Hugh had spent the last two months painstakingly tracing in a trail that led from the bombing in Pattaya Beach, the sighting of Fang and Noortman there, to Peter the Wolf in Odessa, to Harvey Mott’s report, to Hugh’s shakedown of Noortman in Hong Kong, who in his terror had confirmed much of this continuing story and who had added a whole new chapter that Hugh had utterly failed to sell to his boss. At this point Hugh was frantic to find a true believer.
“If it was Egypt, Hugh, my boy, or Iran,” the director had said in benevolent tones, “why, that kind of rumor I could see, that I could generate interest in.”
In the White House, Hugh correctly deduced, but by then he was angry enough to be indiscreet. “Sir, this isn’t a rumor. We have confirmed reports of Korean terrorists training in al-Qaida camps-”
“Do you have proof of al-Qaida involvement in this particular operation?” the director said sharply.
Hugh set his teeth. “No, sir.”
The director lost interest. “Hugh, I think it’s time for you to come home. Let us debrief you, get all the facts laid out on the table-”
“With respect, sir,” Hugh had said, “there isn’t time. According to my informant, their plan is already in motion. We have to act. We must act. Now.”
There was a momentary silence. The director was probably surprised that the worm had finally turned. “Hugh, my boy,” he had said slowly, “I understand your concerns, and I appreciate the hard work you’ve put into this operation, but like I said, you come on home now. I’m not even going to slap your wrist for hightailing it out of here without permission. I tell you what, we’ll put some people on it, some good people, we’ll investigate these reports and track this celium of yours down.”
“Cesium, sir,” Hugh said, biting off the words. “Cesium-137. I’ve got a lead on its whereabouts and I want to pursue that lead. Sir.”
The director’s voice cooled. “You said you were in Tokyo, did you not? There is a Northwest flight out of Narita that’ll put you into Dulles at eight-oh-five tomorrow evening.” There was a forced chuckle. “Seems odd to think of flying almost seventeen hours and getting in the same day you leave, don’t it?” He became very brisk. “I’ll have a ticket waiting for you at the counter, Hugh. We’ll see you in the shop tomorrow. Good night, my boy.”
“Yes, sir,” Hugh said, hung up, and started calling all the pilots listed on his cell phone directory. His fifth try produced Frank, who himself happened to be on the ground in Manila, loading a shipment of semiconductors just prior to taking off for Tokyo to pick up a shipment of Sony digital cameras, en route to Memphis with a stop in Anchorage for refueling and crew change, a piece of luck second only to being able to pick up Noortman in the restaurant. Well. Maybe third, after recruiting Arlene.
Arlene, to whom he had said before going through Hong Kong security to the gate to board his plane, “This never happened. You were never here. Write no reports, no memos, submit travel expenses only by hand and only to me. If I’m fired before you make it into the office, you might get stuck with them.”
She shrugged. “I was there. I heard him talk. You had to do this.”
He nodded, grateful that here at least was one person he didn’t have to convince of anything. “I’ll handle the charge for the Hong Kong ticket on your credit card. Leave. Now.”
She had nodded, asking no questions, and the last he’d seen of her was the bottle-green back of her blazer as she left the terminal. Watching the sliding electric door whisk out of her way, he thought that he was going to have to find some way to show his appreciation of her professionalism. Always supposing his own head wasn’t served up on a platter when he got back to Langley.
Frank’s 747 wouldn’t be in for hours, so he hunted up a cybercafe that served coffee and checked his e-mail, hoping Peter would have been sighted, Fang apprehended, the two Koreans identified, anything he could take to the director as proof. There was nothing. Nor had Sara replied to the e-mail he had sent from DC before he left. When his cell phone rang and it was Frank, wanting to know where the hell he was, he’d been genuinely surprised at the passage of time.
“Hugh,” Frank said.
“Huh?”
“Wake up.” Frank shook his arm. “We’re here.”
Hugh blinked blearily through the windshield and saw the immense brown brick shoebox squatting ten feet away. A figure stood on the corner, huddled into a parka. It stepped forward into range of the streetlight and Hugh saw Kyle’s face peering out from the wolf ruff around the hood. “Thanks, Frank,” he said, opening the door and stepping gingerly onto the ice.
“You’re gonna tell me what this was all about someday, right?” Frank said.
“If I can,” Hugh said, and shut the truck’s door firmly behind him. Frank demonstrated his displeasure by kicking up a little snow when he pulled out of the parking lot, but Hugh wasn’t paying attention.
“Hugh,” Kyle said, pulling Hugh into a bear hug and whacking him on the back hard enough to make him slip and almost fall. Icy parking lots. Something else he didn’t miss about home. “What the hell’s going on?” Hugh’s teeth had begun to chatter again and Kyle said, “never mind. Come on, let’s get in out of the cold.”
KYLE CHASE’S OFFICE WAS on the third floor, a square box with a desk, a chair, and a couple of bookshelves. Every horizontal space was piled high with paperwork, magazines, and books. Kyle removed a stack of newspapers and a box of nine-millimeter ammunition from what was revealed as a second chair. “Sit down before you fall down.” He busied himself at a coffeepot on a table.
He was almost as tall as Hugh and had almost as much hair, although his was black. His eyes were blue and his smile was quick and wicked. He was almost as smart as he thought he was, and he, like Sara and Hugh, was a rabid overachiever, which meant he was a rising star with the FBI. He’d had to ask to be posted to Alaska, but he’d always wanted to come home, and in spite of much headshaking on the part of his superiors, who freely prophesied that he was killing his career, he had prevailed. “There must have been something in the water in Seldovia,” Hugh said.