Munroe crossed the hall, stepped into the big conference room.
“You guys get enough to eat?” he said to Hardin and Wilson.
“Sure,” Hardin said.
“Yeah,” she added. “Stunned by your largesse.”
Munroe smiled, turned to the suit in the corner. “Nobody was talking out of school in here, where they?”
“Just small talk,” the guy answered.
“OK, take Hardin and Wilson upstairs. I’m gonna have a word with these guys.
The suit paused a second, opened his mouth once, then closed it, then opened it again.
“Sir, Hickman asked that an agent witness all interviews.”
Munroe chuckled. “You’re taping all the interviews, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Seems kind of redundant then, doesn’t it?”
“Yes sir, but I have orders from Hickman.”
Munroe’s smile went away. He stepped up close to the agent. “You piss off Hickman, what’s the worst that can happen to you?”
“I could lose my job sir.”
“You piss me off, what’s the worst that could happen to you?”
The man didn’t answer for a moment.
“I’ll take Hardin and Wilson upstairs, sir.”
The suit left the room, led Hardin and Wilson down the hall toward the elevators.
“You guys hungry?” Munroe asked, his smile back. “Help yourselves. Want something we don’t have, I can get it.”
“Beluga caviar, maybe a bottle of Moët Chandon,” Bernstein said.
Munroe laughed. “Fucking Jews. Always busting my hump. I hear you were asking about Pardo a little ways back. You want some pastrami, I’ll send for it. You want Beluga and champagne; I’ll call Chuckles the Suit back and have him shoot you.”
Hickman came storming into the room.
“Damn it, Munroe, you agreed I could have an agent at all interviews. We need to do things buy the book now.”
“Now?” said Starshak. “Gee, that would imply that maybe some rules got broken earlier. Hard to imagine.”
Hickman reddened a little.
“Yeah,” Munroe said. “Tell the nice police officer what you mean by ‘now’.”
“I mean by the book now and always,” Hickman said.
Munroe smiled again. “And when we get to the interview, we’ll call the agent back. Right now, we’re just a few old warhorses shooting the shit over lunch. Anybody with a battle scar is welcome to stay. That leaves you out, counselor.”
Hickman’s face got even redder.
“Don’t feel bad about the scar thing,” said Bernstein. “I just got mine this morning.”
Munroe closed in on Hickman, his smile disappearing again.
“Hickman, why don’t you go take a leak or something, so you don’t hear anything you’ll have to deny at a confirmation hearing someday.” Hickman stood his ground for a second, then walked out of the room. Munroe closed the door.
“Shut it off Morty, all of it,” Munroe said.
“OK,” came a voice from the ceiling. “You’re clean.”
Munroe got up, walked to the coffee pot over on the credenza, poured a cup. Walked back to the table, sat down. “I’m going to play it straight with you three, see how that works out. What I tell you, there’s no record of it, not anywhere, so you start shooting your mouth off, it’s your word against mine, and I don’t exist. So basically you’ll be talking to yourselves about what the voices in your head told you.” Munroe took a sip of the coffee, set the cup down. “Shit got out of hand. But the bottom line is this. We were flipping al Din. Hadn’t wrapped the deal yet, but we were close. He gave us the scoop on Iran running a fake Al Qaeda op here in Chicago. Seems, Khamenei and the mullahs over in Tehran were worried that, with us pulling out of Afghanistan, that was going to free up our resources to start paying more attention to them and their nuclear ambitions. So they were planning 9/11 the sequel. Plan was to pin that on Al Qaeda, keep us chasing ghosts around Waziristan for another decade or so. So that’s one thing.
“The other was this. The deal the Iranians were planning, al Din would have been the guy pulling the trigger on it. Guess he watched the Bin Laden take down, realized we hold a grudge about this kind of thing. Did the math, figured out, best case, he’d spend the rest of his life hiding in some dump somewhere waiting for Uncle Sam to zero a drone in on him. That’s where the Iranians miscalculated. Turns out al Din isn’t very ideological, just wants his payday and a nice place to enjoy his sunset years.”
“So you were making a deal with him? Guy we’ve got lined up on at least nine homicides, he was going to spend his time on some beach on the taxpayers’ dime?” Starshak said.
Munroe shrugged. “You say homicides, he says targets. I say collateral damage. It sucks, no way to unsuck it. But yeah. The deal was he gets paid off, we get to wring out his brain, and we get what we need to call Tehran on its bullshit.”
“Those homicides?” Starshak said. “How is it some guy who doesn’t exist gets to make a deal that has to come out of the Cook County DA’s office?”
Munroe shook his head. “You never charged him, you never even had him in custody, and now he’s dead, so that all pretty much falls into the spilt milk category. Where we still got a problem is we got a parking garage full of bodies to explain, OK? And I’m sorry a couple of you guys got nicked up, but it looks like you’re both gonna be fine. But here’s the thing, we had al Din on one side of this deal and Hardin on the other. Hardin got stuck in town with a shitload of hot rocks after Stein got whacked, he needed a buyer, and he was talking to us. Then this business with him and Hernandez cropped up and that presented a whole new opportunity. Gave me some terrorist diamonds and Hernandez in the same place at the same time, everything I need to sell a whole new war on terror story and put a real dent in the mess down in Mexico.”
“You’re admitting to a criminal conspiracy, you know that, right?” Starshak said.
“Grow the fuck up, will you?” Munroe with an edge to his voice now. “Who do you think is winning this goddamn War on Terror? Us? In 2001, we were running a surplus. The economy was humming. Iraq and Iran gave us a nice little balance of power in the Middle East, and the fact that Tehran had to worry about Saddam getting another invade somebody bug up his ass kept them plowing most of their defense budget into conventional weapons. Then Bin Laden pulls his little surprise party. We gut Iraq for no good reason other than George Jr thinks maybe they dissed his daddy back in the day. We spend something like two trillion chasing ragheads around camel town. We turn whatever rep we had on the Arab street into ass wipe by acting exactly like the Crusader fuck ups Bin Laden knew we would. Pakistan, in case you don’t read the papers, is teetering on the edge of becoming the first fundamentalist Islamic state with its own nukes, Iran’s working on becoming the undisputed power in the region – and if their Hezbollah puppets manage to keep Assad on top in Syria, they might actually pull it off. Our economy is in the toilet, and Congress and the President are pissing on each other in the kiddie pool trying to decide how not to default on our debt. Hardin’s a big boy. He decided to steal a mess of diamonds from a mess of terrorists. He didn’t think that could end badly, then he should have thought again. And this Wilson or whatever her name is, she got into bed with Hardin knowing who he’d been screwing with. That ain’t safe sex. Things are seriously fucked, but Tehran has finally stepped on its winky with this deal, and I’ve got a chance to start the unfucking process by bloodying their nose but good. And what you gentlemen have to understand is I will do whatever is necessary to get that done.”
“You got a point to get to here?” Lynch asked. “Or did you just need an audience to practice your neocon spiel?’
“OK boys,” Munroe said, “Here the pitch. Turns out this Hardin’s got all kinds of interesting friends, including some DGSE types from back in his Foreign Legion days. We spin that into Hardin being an operative with a friendly Western power, and an ex US Marine at that, then he’s not a thief anymore, then we got him inside this operation in a role that will pass the smell test with the media. That’s just crooked enough that the Frogs have signed off on it. They love this kind of shit. All we gotta do is let them send some guy over from the Consulate so he can take a bow during the press conference. With Hernandez putting shooters on the field, God bless his psychotic little heart, we got everything we need to sell this drugs-for-diamonds financing thing. Wilson is the DEA’s inside player, another hero. And you boys, you’re Chicago PD’s contribution to the proceedings, the tough guys with the local know-how to make this whole thing work out. And Lynch, thanks to the tabloids, you’re already everybody’s favorite hot cop. Now you’ll be the guy who put out al Din’s lights. What the press gets is this: US and French intelligence penetrated an Iranian false flag operation. Tehran was financing the deal by selling blood diamonds to the Cartel to make it look like an Al Qaeda play – and most of that is true, if that makes you Boy Scouts feel any better. In cooperation with the Chicago PD, we bounced the exchange today, terrorists were killed, brave men were wounded, and Chicago was saved from a fate worse than 9/11. Hardin and his girlfriend get their payday, the French back our play, I get on with the business of making the world safe for democracy, and you guys get to be heroes. All you gotta do is smile for the cameras, take your bows, and keep your goddamn mouths shut.”