“Help me with your name again?” he said, barely able to hide his smile.
And then she said, “Jameson Rook. Holy fuck.” The two moved to shake but, halfway, opted for a hug. Then Yardley Bell surprised Nikki-and Rook-by kissing him. Sure, she planted it on his cheek, not his mouth, but-a kiss.
Heat forgot her DHS beef for a moment.
Yardley Bell pulled back, but not far. She still cupped his shoulders with both hands while she laughed and said, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t very professional, was it?” Rook just gaped, speechless for a change. Then Callan, Heat, and Rook sat. Agent Bell chose a spot to lean against the wall behind Callan’s chair at the head of the long table. Nikki considered the power message that signaled.
“Detective Heat,” she began, “I’m visiting from our team in DC. I came up here to liaise with Special Agent Callan on bringing this Tyler Wynn business you stumbled upon to a happy conclusion. I’m aware of your emotional connection to this case, and you have my deep sympathies.” She paused only briefly and rolled onward. “However, make no mistake, this is The Big Show, no lone wolves. We have more of a handle on this than you know, and a big-picture strategy that cannot concern you as an outsider. But-if you choose to smarten up and join the team-you may get an answer to your question. What do you say?”
“Agent Bell, is it?” said Heat. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you. But I think my visit is about over. Special Agent Callan, thanks for the tour.” She rose. Rook hesitated slightly but got to his feet as well.
They were almost out the door when Bell said, “Don’t you want to know about Salena Kaye’s phone call from the helicopter?” Nikki hated herself for it, but she stopped and turned. A jumbo LED flat-screen on the wall came to life with a series of animated graphs scanning a map of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Yardley Bell moved beside the giant touch screen and swiped the map with her fingertips to magnify detail of the East River. An oblong box of rolling numbers in the upper right corner time-stamped the grid search.
“This was recorded at the time Kaye escaped from you and borrowed the general aviation chopper.” She touched an icon on the side of the glass, and bright green crosshairs found the middle of the river and blinked steadily. “This is the perp’s cellular signal crossing over toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard at twenty-five MPH.” Another light flashed on the screen. “This is the cell tower in Red Hook that picked up the call. The trace, as you can see, is bouncing to about eight cellular repeaters in Queens, Staten Island, back to Brooklyn, and so forth.” Bell stepped aside while the lights flashed and pinged around the screen like a second-gen video game, then died. “This indicates four things. It wasn’t a burner cell. It was an encrypted cell. And it was a sophisticated digital transmission designed to be untraceable, then implode.”
“That’s only three things,” said Heat.
“Oh, right. Number four. You’re over your head. You can join us and have access to resources like this, or stay outside and chase your fucking tail.”
At the sound of a hot button getting pressed, Bart Callan got to his feet and injected himself into the conversation. “That’s not about you personally.” He stood close to Nikki, giving her his most conciliatory smile. For a military type he had true warmth, and it had a calming effect.
Heat held the brake on her anger. “What’s it about then?”
“Assets, plain and simple. We have the infrastructure, the team, and the experience to do this right. What I’d like personally…?” He paused and pressed his palm against his chest. “Is for you to join us and give us the benefit of your insights and, frankly, remarkable skills, Detective Heat.”
Callan held her eyes with his, and a small, involuntary flutter rose in Nikki’s chest again. She turned to Rook, wondering if he’d read it. Then she looked over at the striking agent across the room, who seemed just to be waiting the whole thing out, and wondered if this was a good agent/bad agent soft sell/hard sell or if Yardley was just a plain asshole. Heat returned Callan’s pleasant smile. “This has been very helpful, Bart. I do have to say that I have changed my mind. I came here all pissed off to ask you why you were interfering in my investigation, and now…” He looked at her with anticipation. “And now I am telling you to stay the hell out of it.”
Callan insisted on riding topside with his two visitors so he could put in his bid for another meeting, giving Nikki time to cool off and reconsider. When Heat and Rook stepped out into the DHS lobby he stayed on the elevator, holding the door open with his hand. “And don’t be put off by Agent Bell’s brusque style. I went through an adjustment myself. Kinda had to cinch up my jock when she swooped in on my case.”
“Aren’t you the ranking officer?”
“I am.”
Heat said, “Looks more to me like you’re working for her, Special Agent. And now you want me to jump into that political dysfunction?”
“Let’s be pros. Let’s get past the pissing on trees we just saw down there. Agent Bell has an amazing track record in counterintelligence. Just ask your friend here.” His reference carried a whiff of animosity that made Rook avert his gaze and threw Nikki off balance as she processed his prior relationship with Yardley. But Nikki regained her footing and pushed back.
“I still want an answer to my question. Vaja Nikoladze.”
“OK,” said Callan, “I’ll give you this one as a gesture of good faith. The Georgian is an informant. We’d like to keep it that way.” He cast a buffalo eye at Rook. “I’d go on, but I don’t want to be quoted in the media.”
Rook said, “Hey, you carjack a journalist and an NYPD detective on the LIE, you’re going to buy a paragraph in my article.”
Callan didn’t respond. He asked Nikki to think it over, then released the door for his descent.
First thing back in the car, Heat said, “OK, spit it out. Who is Yardley Bell?”
“She is a force, isn’t she?”
“Rook, she kissed you. Start talking.”
“We met in the Caucasus five years ago,” he began. “That was when my early reporting on the Chechen rebels began making noise.”
“Stick to Yardley Bell, Rook,” she said. “I know all about your reporting.”
“OK, so I’m in-country, sitting in the café next door to my hostel, tapping a dispatch into my laptop, when this woman sits across from me and introduces herself as a field producer for public radio. She said she’d been reading my stuff and wanted to tag along to do advance work for a documentary. I thought about it and figured, why not?”
“Because she was hot?”
“Because I’m a sucker for All Things Considered. And because someone who spoke English-let alone was an American-was something I hadn’t encountered in six weeks riding with the rebels.” Then he shrugged, admitting, “All right, and she was hot.”
“How long until you figured out she was CIA?”
“That night. I woke up and caught her going through my laptop and Moleskines.”
“In the middle of the night,” said Nikki.
“Yes.”
“The first night.”
“Let’s review. Six weeks, American, hot.”
“Got it.”
“I had my journalistic ethics, though. I wouldn’t travel as cover for a spy. And I sure wasn’t going to burn the cred I’d established with the warlords. So I sent her off the next morning-OK, next night-and that was that.”
Heat made a turn north along the Hudson and said, “No it’s not. Rook, I interrogate liars for a living, don’t snow me. Not about this.”
“Let me finish. I thought that was that-until six months later when I got kidnapped on a mountain trail by a splinter group that accused me of working for the Russians. They beat the shit out of me for a week in their caves. And guess who found me and led the rescue mission?”
“Susan Stamberg.”