He had not had enough time to do a complete reconnaissance of the aTF building, but it had been pretty clear that it was a softer target than the FBI headquarters. The building was much smaller, and though there were surveillance cameras, the approach to the front of the building was a lot more straightforward than driving down Constitution and dealing with all the traffic islands where the major avenues met. Yes, they would see the propane truck pulling up in front of the building, but, by then, it would be too late. In fact, McGarand would probably have time to park it, set a fuse, and run before the security people in the building could really react. He smiled grimly to himself as he thought of the options facing a guy at the security desk when he saw a big truck pull up in front of the building and a guy get out and run. Now what? Who goes down to see what’s in the truck, and who goes out the back door at the speed of heat?
In the meantime, he was stuck in here, and he had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen. And who was going to come through that door next.
The door finally opened and the desk sergeant admitted two men in suits into the room. Kreiss looked up at them and congratulated himself on being right. One of the men, the larger of the two, sat down across the table from him. The other remained standing. The big man was in his forties. He had a round face that needed a shave, impatient blue eyes, and thinning black hair. He produced a credentials wallet and flashed it at Kreiss.
“Sam john stone FBI,” he said.
“And you’re Edwin Kreiss. The notorious Edwin Kreiss.”
Kreiss said nothing. Johnstone leaned back in his chair.
“We’ve been looking for you, Mr. Kreiss. Or rather, the Roanoke RA has. Seems there’re some questions they want to ask you about a homicide down in Blacksburg.”
Kreiss maintained his silence. Johnstone looked over at his partner.
“You not going to speak to me, Mr. Kreiss?” he asked.
“You haven’t asked me a question yet,” Kreiss said.
“Okay, here’s one: Why were you loitering around the aTF headquarters building tonight? After being seen loitering around the White House? I guess that’s two questions. Well. And you were also seen on our cameras at Bureau headquarters. You got something going tonight, Mr.
Kreiss? You’re not still mad at us, are you?”
“Nope.”
Johnstone continued to stare at him as if he was an interesting specimen.
Then his partner spoke.
“I hear you used to be a spooky guy, Kreiss.
That you used to go around hunting people down with your pals out in Langley. That true? You a spooky guy?”
Kreiss turned slowly to look at the partner, who was a medium everything:
height, weight, build. Even his soft white face was totally unremarkable.
He would make a very good surveillance asset, Kreiss thought.
Then he turned back to face Johnstone.
“He gave me the look, Sam,” the second agent said.
“Definitely spooky. I think I’m supposed to be scared now.”
“Better watch your ass, Lanny. I’ve heard that Mr. Kreiss here was responsible for a guy shooting his wife and his kids and then himself. He must be really persuasive. That was before the Bureau shit-canned you, right, Mr. Kreiss?”
Kreiss smiled at him but said nothing.
“Damn, there he goes again, Lanny. Won’t talk to me. I think I’ve hurt his feelings. Of course, here he is, in the local pokey, picked up for loitering in downtown Washington. What do you suppose he was looking for, Lanny? A white guy walking the streets at midnight in the District? Looking for some female companionship, maybe? Or maybe some sympathetic male companionship? Is that it, Mr. Kreiss? All those years of playing games with those Agency weirdos, maybe you got a little bent?”
Kreiss relaxed in his chair and looked past Johnstone as if he didn’t exist. They had either planned their little act in advance in some effort to provoke him or they were pissed off at having to come over here at all, just because a routine name check had triggered the federal want and detain order. Or both. But so far, they weren’t talking about a bomb.
Apparently, Janet’s attempt to warn them about a bomb threat had gone right into the bureaucratic equivalent of the Grand Canyon. He looked at his wrist, then remembered they’d taken his watch.
“Got somewhere to go, Mr. Kreiss?”
“Am I being charged?”
“Nope. You’re being held. As a material witness to a homicide in Virginia.
But before you go back down to Blacksburg, we’ve been informed that the commissars out in Langley want to have a word.”
Shit, shit, shit, Kreiss thought while keeping a studiously indifferent expression on his face. He had managed to evade the best sweeper in the business, and now he had handed himself over to them on a loitering beef.
Johnstone was looking at his watch.
“Anyway, now you’re going to come with us, Mr. Kreiss. First we’re going to escort you out to Langley, where some people in their Counterespionage Division want to talk to you. Then you’ll be brought back to our Washington field office for further transport down to Roanoke. Cuff him, Lanny.”
Kreiss sighed and stood up, putting his two hands out in front of him.
He was much bigger than the agent called Lanny, and he almost enjoyed the sudden wary look Lanny had in his eyes when he approached Kreiss to put plastic handcuffs on his wrists.
“He looked at me again, Sam,” Lanny said, trying to keep it going, but Kreiss could hear the note of fear in Lanny’s voice. The man was physically afraid of him. That was good. They’d already made their first mistake, cuffing his hands in front of him. Now, as long as they had a car and not a van, and as long as they put him in the backseat
and they both rode in front, he was as good as free. He’d do it on the G.W. Parkway, with all those lovely cliffs. He looked down at the floor, putting a despondent expression on his face. He let his shoulders slump and his head hang down a little. Defeated. Captured. Resigned to his fate. He heard Johnstone make kissing noises behind him, and both agents laughed contemptuously.
Kreiss sincerely hoped that Johnstone would drive.
Janet was afraid of missing the turn into Micah Wall’s place, but when she saw all the junked cars, rusting refrigerators, tire piles, and pallets of assorted junk on both sides of a wide dirt road, she knew she’d found it.
She turned the car into the driveway and drove through more junk up toward the lights of a long, low cabin on the hillside. Halfway up the hill, her headlights revealed a telephone pole barring the drive. She slowed and then stopped. Several figures came out of the dark, walking toward her car with rifles and shotguns in their hands. She opened the door and got out, leaving it open.