Needless to say, Higgins had not carried his CIA-issued beeper either, so before going into his office, he stopped by his secretary’s desk to check the messages he knew would be there.
He found several messages. Most could wait until the following day. His fingers stopped moving when he reached a small note from his secretary. It said that Tom Pruett had stopped by earlier, and that she had beeped Higgins several times at Pruett’s request. He saw another message in Pruett’s handwriting requesting Higgins to call him immediately, regardless of the hour.
Higgins ran a hand through his hair. In all the years Higgins had work for Pruett, the Head of Clandestine Services had come to his office only a handful of times. At the CIA, the mountain never went to Mohammed.
Does he suspect?
“Shit!” He rushed inside his office and carefully scanned the room. All appeared in order. The picture on the wall over his safe was just as he had left it, and no one else knew his combination. Not even Pruett. Higgins had been careful enough to get his combination lock changed after he moved in without his superior knowing about it. But even that didn’t matter. Higgins had always been extremely careful not to have any written record of his own dealings. He committed it all to memory. Pruett could have benefited from nothing in that office, even if he’d looked. But after Pruett had found sabotaged computers and learned about George’s termination, his visit could only mean one of two things. Either he was suspicious, or he wanted Higgins help in the ongoing investigations. After all, Higgins was officially Chief Western Hemisphere. It was his turf.
Suddenly his door opened.
Higgins turned around, his hand reaching into his coat. He kept it there.
“Jesus Christ! Don’t do that again. You scared me.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But it’s time to pick up the trash,” said the cleaning lady.
The trash? The trash! Shit!
Higgins raced for the metallic garbage can next to his desk. The burnt papers were there… or were they? He had burned three sheets of paper. He lifted the can up and emptied it on the carpet.
All that came out was barely enough burnt paper to make up one sheet. He glanced at the cleaning lady, who wore a puzzled look.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
“Yes… yes, it’s all right. As you can see. I’ll also need my carpet vacuumed.”
The cleaning lady shook her head. “Whatever you say, sir. I’ll go and get my vacuum—”
“Not now. Later! I have to work now.”
“Then it won’t be until tomorrow, sir.”
“Fine, fine. Tomorrow is fine. Bye.”
The cleaning lady frowned, turned around, and closed the door after herself.
Higgins tightened his fists. He now felt certain of the reason Pruett had come to his office. His superior was suspicious of him. Why? Did he get a chance to talk to George before I terminated him? Or did he decide to go and check with Records and find the first computer printout? It didn’t matter. The fact still remained that somehow Pruett had become suspicious of him. Enough to come into his office and remove those burnt pieces of paper, which were probably being analyzed at that very moment. If the analysis was successful, Higgins knew Pruett would nail him to the wall.
He walked outside and headed for his car. He had to find a public phone booth right away. He had to reach Vanderhoff immediately.
Tom Pruett walked to the windows behind his desk and gazed out at the parking lot. He blinked in surprise when he spotted his subordinate. Roland? It was him all right, heading for his car.
Strange, he decided. Especially after Pruett had left a note with Higgins’s secretary that he needed to see him immediately.
Pruett narrowed his eyes. Perhaps… He walked to the hall and continued down the long corridor, reached the end, and turned right. Higgins’s office was halfway down the hall. A cleaning lady was vacuuming the carpet about thirty feet from the entrance to the office.
“Excuse me.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m Tom Pruett, Head of Clandestine Services. Was Mr. Higgins here a few moments ago?”
“Yes, sir. He was in his office. Crazy man, he yelled at me and began dumping trash on the floor.”
Pruett inhaled deeply and felt a knot in his stomach, quickly followed by a burning sensation. “Is that it?”
“Yes, sir. He left a little after that.”
“Have you cleaned his office?”
“No, sir. Not yet. I need to—”
“Leave it alone for now. Don’t touch anything in there!”
“Yes, sir.”
Pruett walked away. Higgins was indeed covering up
something, but what?
He headed back to his office, hoping that Tammy had found the time to stock his refrigerator with a fresh carton of milk.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
OLD FACES
Feeling both furious and tired. Pruett turned the corner and slowed down as he approached his house, the third on the right side of the tree-lined street. It was one in the morning, and he was getting no answer. The FBI lab report on the burnt paper had come back negative. The first page didn’t even make it to the lab. It collapsed soon after leaving the CIA. The information on the second page could not be retrieved. The technician claimed to have tried every known restoration technique without luck. The thin cheap paper had burned all the way through. In addition, the print on the page had come from a laser printer, which left no hard impressions on the paper, just a surface coating of ink. After that evaporated with heat, nothing remained. If the paper had come out of a dot matrix printer or a typewriter, or had been handwritten, the verdict would have been different, since those three printing methods used impact or pressure to force the ink into the paper, Pruett exhaled as he pulled into his driveway, turned off the engine, and got out.
He struggled up the steps of his one-story house and unlocked the door. Pruett closed the door behind him, walked across the tiled foyer, past the living room, and into the kitchen. He reached for the light switch, but the overhead came on before he got a chance to flip it.
“Hello, Tom. It’s been a long time. Perhaps too long.”
Pruett looked in the kitchen but saw no one. He then remembered that the lights could be turned on from the formal dining room on the other side of the long kitchen. The voice… he knew the voice. He hadn’t heard it for a long time, not since he was Chief Western Hemisphere. It belonged to one of the brightest young agents under his jurisdiction, a young Vietnam vet who had loved his country enough to dedicate his life to serving it. The agency had recruited him out of Ft. Benning, Georgia, much to the relief of the raw young recruits he drilled to exhaustion on a daily basis.
After a brief probation period, the Career Trainee had been sent to “The Farm,” the establishment near Williamsburg, disguised as a Pentagon research-and-testing facility, where Pruett had first met him. Very young and ambitious, Pruett remembered. The young CT had undergone light-weapons training, explosives and demolition training, and a full course in parachute jumps. Should have excused him, Pruett remembered thinking. He could have taught those courses. From there Pruett had taken his young recruit to a CIA training facility in North Carolina for advanced courses in explosives and both light and heavy weaponry. Pruett had nurtured his CT until he’d become a full operative a year later, completing a four-to-five year training course in less than two. After a brief period in France to acquaint the new operative with Cold War espionage techniques, Pruett had assigned him to Mexico City to spy on the Soviets and the Cubans. His missions had been tough, his results top-notch. One of the hardest things Pruett had experienced after his promotion was the loss of contact with the men and women in the field. Head of Clandestine Services could not be directly involved in operations. He had a full staff of risk-takers like Higgins to do that for him. Yet now he was in contact again. The voice could be no one else’s. Pruett’s thoughts were confirmed when he spotted the tall, slim figure in the doorway to the formal dining room.