Gig swatted him and said, “He knows that.” Then she turned to me, all serious now. “What do you want us to do?”
“I’m not sure. Anything new with our search?”
Gigi said, “The CIA servers started running some kind of purge two hours after I started snooping around about the black ops you were interested in. I backtracked through the commands on the relevant server and it definitely wasn’t an automated systems procedure. Someone went in and told the archive to overwrite anything connected to those ops. From the way the instructions are configured, I’d say someone didn’t want their trail visible to the sys admins, which means the purge is outside standard data policy.”
My head was spinning, and not just from the music. “OK, so you’re saying you’ve hit a wall?”
Her mocking expression emasculated my question. “No wall’s impenetrable, G-boy. I’ve left some anonymous botnets running. They mimic multiple internal searches of the SCI database. I’ve asked them to trawl for anything connected to the files. They’ll come home to mama. But that might take a while.”
“A luxury I don’t have.” I felt deflated. “I don’t have anyone else to turn to. And I need to start fighting back.”
Kurt held his hands out, defensively. “Dude, seriously, we can’t-”
“I don’t mean it like that, relax. But maybe there’s stuff you can help me with.”
“Such as?” Gigi asked. I didn’t sense resistance in her tone or her expression. More like excitement.
“Listen to the chatter. See if my name comes up. This is a CIA and FBI situation, and it seems like they’re keeping the whole thing hushed up-for now. I’m thinking neither agency wants to look inept, and it’ll be much easier for whoever’s after me if the cops aren’t in the way.”
Still in something of a daze, Kurt nodded. “Sure. OK. I guess.”
Gigi put a reassuring hand on Kurt’s arm. “We can do that. It’s this guy they want. Now go get us some drinks because you’ve heard all this before while I need vodka.”
Kurt got up and headed for the bar, and I asked Gigi, “What about that reporter? The Portuguese one in the Corrigan file?”
Gigi leaned in toward me. “Octavio Camacho. I looked into that.”
“He died shortly after the meeting with Corrigan in which he was mentioned, right? Back in 1981?”
She nodded. “Yes. In a rock climbing accident. On top of being a hotshot investigative reporter, he was also an avid mountaineer. The coroner’s report found death by misadventure.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, that and some scattered references about him on the DI’s servers, but they’re heavily redacted. He was definitely someone of interest for a brief period of time. Before he died.”
She gave me a knowing look. I didn’t disagree.
“No other hits on Corrigan or Corrigam or any other obvious misspellings?” I asked.
“Nope. And nothing else in any CIA or DI files-or at least not in the ones I could get into before the purge started.”
Kurt placed a White Russian and a couple of beers on the table and sat down. I was so bummed out I picked up my beer and almost downed the whole thing in one chug.
Gigi gestured to Kurt, who handed me his beer as a chaser.
I was warming to her.
She crossed her legs, flashing me way more thigh than a happily monogamous man should ever catch sight of. “Where are you going to stay?”
I was already halfway through Kurt’s beer. “I don’t know. Some crappy motel somewhere.”
“No way. You’re coming home with me. I’ve got plenty of space.”
Kurt looked utterly crestfallen. “Hang on, hang on. Serious?”
“The man needs a pad, Snake.”
I looked at them, totally lost.
They caught it. Kurt said, “Snake Plissken?” Still nothing. “Kurt Russell’s character? Escape from New York? No?”
Clearly, I was going to need a translator around these two.
Kurt turned back to her and said, “I haven’t even stayed over yet.” There was a clear whine in both his expression and his tone.
Gigi laughed. “Hey, can’t have Mommy getting too lonely, right?”
His face fell even further.
She elbowed him in the side. “Chillax, Snake, I’m only messing with you. You can come too. And who knows… Maybe-”
I threw up my hands. “Stop. Please.”
Kurt’s expression went back to the guileless smile I had always found so appealing. It was clear my appreciation of Kurt’s many qualities had company, though there were certain qualities that would need to stay silent in my presence for this to work.
Gigi downed her White Russian and stood up. While she was taller than I expected her to be, her feathery skirt was so short I had to look away. My eyes caught sight of five guys and what looked like a drug sale going down in a dark recess of the club, away from the bustle. The negotiations seemed heated and for a second it looked like it was going to get nasty, then they settled down and got back to business. I had to remind myself to stay cool and can my instincts since I couldn’t do anything about it anyway, so I looked away, trying to find something less burdensome on which to settle my gaze, only to be drawn back to my freaky friends and the micro skirt.
Gigi grabbed Kurt’s arm, pushing him toward the door. “Come on, Cid. Lumina’s feeling frisky.”
As I trailed in their wake, the idea of being someone other than who I really was seemed immensely appealing.
SUNDAY
32
Federal Plaza, Lower Manhattan
Seated at the conference table, Deutsch didn’t think it was possible to feel angrier, sadder, more tired or more frustrated that she did at that precise moment. It was twenty-hours since she’d last sat in that same chair, twenty-four hours since her boss had chewed her out publicly in front of the same collection of grim faces. Déjà vu all over again, except for the fact that Lendowski wasn’t at the table-or anywhere to be found, for that matter.
They’d found his car parked by a gas station a few yards away from the thruway’s overpass. There was no sign of foul play. His work cell phone was missing and turned off, its battery pulled-meaning there was no way to track him. There was no one at his home, either.
Gallo had driven into town again and was chairing the emergency proceedings for the second day running, and on a Sunday morning at that. The two CIA liaisons, Henriksson and his silent partner, were also back in the room, as were four other agents from the New York field office that Deutsch barely knew.
“We know Reilly left the city in a car he stole from a parking lot on Fulton Street shortly after he escaped custody,” one of the agents said. “A 1994 Caprice Classic. We’ve got the car heading north on the I-95 at around two thirty in the afternoon yesterday, so around twelve hours after his escape. We don’t know what he did in the meantime.”
Deutsch noticed Henriksson studying her impassively and knew her face must have looked like thunder at the renewed mention of Reilly’s escape. She tried to shrink into herself in a vain attempt to disappear from the room.
“We have another couple of street camera sightings in and around Mamaroneck last night. Nothing after that. So either he dumped the car or-”
Henriksson seemed to lose patience and interrupted. “We’re wasting time. We all know what happened. Reilly drove up there to see Chaykin. They met somewhere, Lendowski stepped in and Reilly got the jump on him. Whether Agent Lendowski is still alive or not is the only question here, although given we haven’t heard from him yet, my guess is he’s no longer around to tell his side of the story.”
Deutsch jolted to life. “Hang on a second-that’s a pretty big assumption to make with no evidence.”
“Oh?” the CIA agent asked, his tone chillingly calm. “You have a more likely scenario about where your missing partner is?” His sardonic emphasis on “missing partner” was hard to miss.