O’Hara stared long and hard at the guy in the suit, Viseltear, who was an analyst at Quantico and a thief. “You follow all of this? You get it?”
Viseltear shook his head slowly. “You don’t want me in a court of law,” he said. “You can’t have this go to court. I get it.”
O’Hara shrugged. “If you come at us again, we take you down. That’s what I need you to get.”
And then he punched Viseltear squarely in the jaw. Almost put him out. “Just like you tried to take me down with your pizza delivery guy in Pleasantville. Now get the hell out of here. Leave the briefcase.”
Still rubbing his jaw, Viseltear stood up from the table.
He was a little wobbly but he walked away, and it was over.
Well, not exactly over, O’Hara couldn’t help thinking—because he knew too much about what had really happened, didn’t he?
He’d looked inside the suitcase, looked at the flash drive, read that little piece in the Style section of the Times. Put one and one together. Came up with 1.2 billion.
But maybe, just maybe, that could turn out to be a good thing for him.
And maybe not.
Things aren’t always as they appear.
Chapter 104
“O’HARA.”
“Susan. Nice to see you.”
“Even under the circumstances?”
“Always. Under any circumstances.”
We were on our way to Frank Walsh’s office on twelve in the FBI building in downtown Manhattan. Susan and I worked under Walsh’s supervision, though usually in separate divisions. Frank Walsh controlled several departments in the New York office.
“Susan. John,” he said, and showed his teeth when we arrived at his office. Walsh is an accomplished smiler, raconteur, and glad-hander, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t smart. He’s Susan’s and my boss after all.
We moved the conversation into his conference room. “I’d like to shoot the breeze with you two bullshit artists for a while, but I’m very tight on time today. Maybe dinner at Neary’s some night soon. Susan, you can’t come in here for this. Sorry.”
“Of course,” said Susan. She doesn’t think Frank is as smart as I do, but she tolerates him.
“So, let’s get down to business,” Walsh said as he and I walked into the next room. “This hearing is now called to order.”
The room had that uncomfortable, tight-collared, shame-on-you air to it. It was the kind that immediately announced loud and clear without a single word being spoken: You fucked up good, O’Hara.
I sat down in the lone chair facing the disciplinary panel. Since the night Nora disappeared, I’d gone from the hospital to the hot seat, with a week of recuperating time in between for my shoulder. Not to mention a little undercover work I’d finished out at La Guardia Airport. I was guessing the panel wanted me good and healthy before officially kicking my ass.
Frank Walsh got things started with a brief run-through of my background. The panel listened intently while a tape recorder in front of Frank recorded every word.
Agent John Michael O’Hara… former U.S. Army captain… former NYPD officer, decorated twice… Currently special agent with the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, specifically the Terrorist Financing Operations Section… Several important undercover assignments…
“Frank?” came a voice. It was an older man sitting at the far right end of the table. In addition to his involvement with the disciplinary committee, his day-to-day was the serial murder unit. His name was Edward Vointman.
“Could you please elaborate on how it is that Agent O’Hara was involved with the Sinclair investigation in the first place?”
I held back a smirk. Vointman’s question was the politically correct way of asking what he really wanted to know. Why the hell wasn’t I aware of this?
Walsh frowned. In most any company, let alone a government agency, the left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing. In this situation, however, the breakdown in communication was a little more suspect. The right hand didn’t know what one of its own fingers was doing.
Walsh reached out and turned off the recorder. When the tape stopped, so did his stiffness.
“Here’s the story, Ed,” he began. “The Joint Terrorist Task Force here in New York has been working with the financing group from the Counterterrorism Division and Homeland Security on monitoring money trafficking in and out of the country.”
Vointman opened his mouth as if to say something—most likely, “What do you mean by monitoring?”—when Walsh stopped him.
“I can’t tell you anything more on that, Ed, so don’t bother.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, what happened was we got a red flag on a large transfer from a Connor Brown in Westchester a while back.
“Upon further investigation we turned up an odd coincidence. The guy’s fiancée, Nora Sinclair, was previously married to a doctor in New York who died the same way. Get this, he was a cardiologist. The good news is she probably wasn’t a terrorist. The bad news is she was probably involved with both deaths.”
Again, Vointman opened his mouth, his original question even more valid. As a section leader of the serial murder unit, the case definitely should’ve been thrown his way.
As before, Walsh cut him off. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “We couldn’t turn it over to your group, Ed, without being a hundred percent sure this Nora woman wasn’t a shill for someone or, unlikely as it may seem now, some sort of operative herself. Long story short, we went with O’Hara because he was experienced with both those scenarios. He worked undercover for four years with the NYPD, and his profile matched well with the mark. He was even working on another related assignment at the time.
“In other words, he had the right look and—at least, we thought—was good at using his head.” He turned to me with a steely glare. “Of course, we were thinking about the one above the waist.”
Walsh reached out again and hit the RECORD button. “But I disagree,” he said.
It was all downhill from there.
For the next hour I fielded questions on every aspect of my investigation into Nora Sinclair. Every decision I made, and those that I didn’t. Especially those that I didn’t. The panel was relentless. I became their human piñata, and everybody was sure to take their whacks.
When it was done, Walsh gave his thanks to everyone, then excused the room. I assumed I was free to go as well. That’s when he told me to stay put.
Chapter 105
THE REST OF THE disciplinary panel had filed out, and it was just the three of us. Walsh. Me. The tape machine. Everything was very still. For twenty, maybe thirty seconds, all he did was stare at me.
“Am I supposed to be saying something?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Are you supposed to be saying something?”
“Probably not. But I’m going to ask the question anyway.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms tight against his chest. His eyes bore right into mine. “I’m going to get a phone call from upstairs, aren’t I?”
The man was uncanny. “What makes you say that?”
“Let’s say it’s a hunch,” he said with a slow nod. “You’re too smart to be this dumb.”
“I guess I’ve had worse compliments.”
He ignored the sarcasm. “You got caught with your pants down, literally, but something tells me you’ve still got your ass covered.”
I didn’t answer right away. I wanted to see if he’d keep talking, maybe reveal the source of his “hunch.” He didn’t.