The waiter approached with a large tray covered with plates of steaming eggs, sausage, pancakes, and buttered toast. They stopped talking while he set the food before them, handed down extra napkins, and refilled their coffee. Once he was gone, the conversation continued.
Mike reached for the pepper, which he shook liberally over his scrambled eggs, the little black dots scattering across the bright yellow eggs. “Last year, he turned up in Ohio, posing as a terrorist working with a guy who had a suitcase nuclear weapon. He helped us bust them and stop the detonation. Like you said, though, he left bodies behind that we had to clean up.”
Hilde swallowed a bite of toast, then added, “He killed a man literally twice his size in a hand-to-hand fight in an RV, then a few minutes later, dove in front of a bullet to save a civilian, the whole while joking around like it was all a high-school prank or something.”
“Sounds like he's not right in the head maybe,” Lonnie said.
“When a guy spends as much time in the field as he has,” Marcus said, “whether it's undercover or in direct combat, it has a drastic impact on their mind.”
Mike nodded. His experience as a pastor had brought many cases of PTSD, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, to his office in a professional counseling capacity. At a deeper level, though, twenty years of living violently as a special operations officer in the Marines had put him face-to-face with more horrors than the vast majority of his clients could even dream up in their nightmares. Over the course of his career, there had only been three other men he'd been able to confide in with his own nightmares. One had been church elder Harry Johnson, a retired Cold War CIA operative whose past was as secret as Mike's own. The other two were Paul Hogan and Marcus Johnson, both of whom had been with him during most of the bloodiest times of his life.
He blinked hard, as if pinching off a stream of thought, and said, “When it comes to the residue of espionage and combat alike, I’ve seen men break down into anything from suicidal depression to full-on schizophrenic megalomania.”
“Guys like Kharzai, luckily, are few and far between,” Marcus paused and let out a brief, humorless chuckle. “I pray there is no one else in the world like him. But he is the kind of the guy no one can figure out. Totally focused, perfect actor, perfect killer.”
“Is he a threat to the president?” Lonnie asked.
“I don’t know,” Marcus replied. “If he's watching the bad guys, someone is going to die. If he's switched sides, we’re screwed.”
Chapter 12
They scraped up the last bits of omelet, toast, pancakes, and hash browns. Marcus went to retrieve his truck from the garage while the others paid the bill. They were on the sidewalk outside the front entrance as he pulled up. At a quarter to eight, the sun was already high in the sky, and it was turning into a warm summer morning. In a tree that stood in a round concrete planter in the sidewalk outside the hotel, a pair of birds chirped happily from their invisible perches hidden somewhere in the broad green leaves. Their song, repeated back and forth, sounded like a competition to see who could do it most perfectly.
“Listen to those birds,” Hilde said.
“Yeah,” Mike said, “they make it sound like we’re in a Disney movie or something instead of trailing a terrorist.”
They climbed into the F250 and Marcus drove the eight blocks to the FBI building on East 6th Avenue. There was no public parking area for the FBI building itself, but a row of spaces in the large lot at the Office Depot store across the street was labeled with signs that authorized FBI visitors to use the space. Marcus pulled in to one of the slots and turned off the truck. They got out and walked toward the building to the tune of more birds singing from inside baskets of flowers hanging beneath street lamps. The Municipality of Anchorage prided itself on the huge number of flowers it laid out every summer, taking full advantage of the limited months of bright sunshine. The streets were awash in the bright colors of every possible species of flower that could thrive in the Arctic. The swallows and jays acted like they were in heaven on earth as they flitted back and forth from baskets to potted trees, making the morning seem more like a party than a manhunt.
Hilde started to wonder if they were all overreacting — the place was just too peaceful for a terrorist attack. As they crossed the street, the happy bird song abruptly stopped, interrupted by the loud, flat squawk of a massive raven that stooped on the flag pole jutting from the parapet of the FBI building. The raven turned its head toward the foursome passing beneath, its beady black eyes staring malevolently at them from above its large beak. Hilde looked up at the bird. It stared back like an ill omen.
“Ravens,” Marcus said, “rude beggars of the wild. Those things have little fear of mankind, especially if you happen to have any kind of food trash sitting in the back of your truck.”
“That thing is huge,” Hilde said. “It looks like a crow on steroids.”
“Native lore says that they’re the reincarnated spirits of the dead, and their favorite thing is to play evil tricks and generally torment the living.”
“Let’s hope it’s not planning to trick us.” Lonnie said.
They reached the building and walked in to the small lobby. The space was packed with a security desk, behind which sat two armed federal police officers, and a bank of cameras that scanned the outside of the building, the streets around it, and the secure parking garage. The remaining area contained a pair of uncomfortable-looking government-issue chairs and a large metal detector and x-ray machine, leaving barely enough open space for the four of them to stand. One of the officers looked up as they entered. The other kept his eyes on the series of black-and-white surveillance screens. Mike and Hilde both pulled out their FBI credentials and said who they were.
“Yeah, Agent Caufield’s secretary just called down to let me know he was expecting you,” the officer said. “Are any of you armed?”
“Yes,” Lonnie said, producing her trooper badge and ID and adding, “Walther PPK in my ankle holster.”
The officer glanced at her as if she said something crazy. Then he looked over her credentials and nodded to Marcus.
“You?”
“No,” Marcus said. “I'm the only non-cop here, and I didn't want to push my luck bringing in a firearm.”
“Good,” said the officer, “cuz if you had, I'd need to disarm you, and by the looks of you, that's not something I think I'd enjoy much.”
He motioned them through the metal detector, which filled the only access point to the building like a gate with an electronic portcullis. Beyond it stretched a short, featureless hall that terminated at an elevator and a stairwell door. The guard told them to wait for a few minutes while the escort came down who would take them up to the second floor, where Special Agent in Charge William Caufield was waiting for them. Just as the words finished reaching their ears, Caufield's secretary, a smartly dressed middle-aged woman with a disarming smile, came out of the elevator.
“Good morning,” she said with a professional-sounding voice. “May I help you?”
“Yes, I am Agent Hildegard Farris from the Ohio Valley office. Undersecretary Paul Hogan said he had arranged a meeting with the SAC.”
“Yes, we just got the call a little while ago, and he’s waiting for you.”
She took them up in the elevator and led them down a long hallway lined with offices on both sides. As they passed each office, agents glanced up through open doors, throwing suspicious looks at the strangers as if they were trying to see through them with x-ray vision. It was the kind of look only a cop can give, or a distrustful mother-in-law. In the office, Hilde noticed that the secretary’s desk looked very expensive, a nice dark cherry wood that glowed reddish brown. The office was warm and comfortable.