“As she has done every year since my divorce,” Roos replied. “It’s still no. Regretfully, of course.”
“Of course. I’ll pass it on.”
A waiter brought Roos the coffee he had ordered, then left again. Roos glanced around the room as he took his first sip. There was no one seated within earshot. The large room was silent except for the crackle of logs in the huge fireplace.
“This is a total clusterfuck,” Tomblin said. “How the hell did Reilly get out?”
“We don’t know. They said he got sick so they were taking him to a hospital when he made the break.”
“What about your inside man? Is he still missing?”
Roos nodded. “Last time we spoke, he was trailing Reilly’s woman. He thought she was going to meet with him.”
“So Reilly took him out.”
“Looks that way.”
“That’s what happens when you use a non-vetted asset.” Tomblin thought about it. “We need to find his body. It only makes Reilly look worse. In case.”
“Screw the body. We need to take Reilly out. That’s all.”
“Does Sandman have any leads?”
“Nothing at the moment. But Reilly’ll resurface. He has to.”
Tomblin said, “At least the Feds are taking our lead on this and keeping it shuttered. But we need to shut him down before we lose that window.”
“I’m down with that, as the kids say. What about the penetration attempts? Have they stopped?”
Tomblin didn’t seem alarmed at all. “No. Someone’s still trying to break into our servers. Looking for you. This guy’s got a real hard-on for you.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Roos cursed the day he’d accepted to help out an old friend at the DEA with his offbeat plan to bait a major Mexican drug baron-a favor that had first put Reilly on his trail.
“Reilly’s got someone helping him. Whoever it is, they’re very good. Not many people out there with that much talent. If we can backtrace their location, it’ll lead us to him. We can’t let this get any further, Gordo. No more screwups. Any of this comes out and… you want to spend the rest of your years behind bars?”
“It’s not going to happen.” Roos struck the arm of his plush chair with each word.
“We need to put Reilly down. Fast.”
“Have you put the Fort on him?” he asked, using his preferred nickname for the NSA.
“As of this morning,” Tomblin said. “I got one of our guys there to set it up quietly. Full spectrum, priority one. We’ve got a lot of videos and recordings for the cameras and voice taps to work off, which helps. He’s bound to turn up soon.”
This pleased Roos. He knew how pervasive the NSA’s reach into surveillance camera networks was and how effective their face recognition software-to say nothing of voice-match monitoring of phone lines and keyword tracking. “Who gets the alert?”
“Just you, me and Sandman. We’re keeping it in the family.”
“Good.”
“Speaking of family…”
Roos set his mug down. He sensed there was more at play here.
“I’m worried about contagion and our favorite brainiacs.”
Roos knew where this was going. He just shrugged. “They were always going to be a weak link. That’s why we’ve have them on such a tight leash.”
Tomblin leaned in. “They’re civilians, Gordo. They’re old. And they’re not like us; they didn’t join up for the cause. They’re scientists who more or less stumbled into this. They gave us their expertise out of, I don’t know, a sense of duty, an intellectual curiosity, maybe for the thrill of it… but at the end of the day, they’re still civilians. With all the vulnerabilities and failings that entails.”
“And we can’t risk that any more.”
“Padley had his Road to Damascus moment and decided to clear his conscience. The three of them-they talk to each other. Especially Padley and Orford. They were close back in the day. How do we know it’s not a feeling they all share? How do we know one of the others won’t do what Padley did?”
“Won’t try to do, you mean,” Roos corrected him.
Tomblin brushed the comment away. “I think we should clean house.”
Roos let the notion sink in. He’d already considered it himself, but thinking about it and doing it were two different things. He knew these people. He’d worked with them for years. They’d done everything asked of them, without fail.
And now they’d have to die. Simply because they were a security risk.
Roos let out a small chortle. “You want the Janitors cleaned up? Not all of them, I hope. I’m kind of partial to sticking around a bit longer so we can enjoy these little chats before I embarrass you out on the course yet again.”
“You know what I mean,” Tomblin told him.
Roos nodded. “OK. We should start with Siddle. He’s the more clued-in of the two.”
“Sandman’s going to have his hands full.”
“It’s what he does. Let’s finish our tea and head out. I’ll send him instructions from the first tee while you go through your mulligans.”
Roos studied his old partner. “Did you tell Viking what’s going on?”
“No need,” Tomblin said. “We can take care of it.”
Roos nodded and leaned back into the couch. He could see two problems. One was that Sandman was indeed going to be a busy man. The other was not so much a problem as a subtle alarm going off deep in the folds of his experienced brain: he needed to make sure any blowback from this whole mess didn’t end up catching him in its blaze.
Ex-partners and old friends counted for a lot, but every relationship had its breaking point, and he knew things were getting stretched unbearably thin. Beyond the fact that they would all end up in prison if this thing ever blew up, some of his old partners had even more to lose if that ever happened.
He’d need to watch his back from here on.
34
Chelsea, New York City
I woke to the sound of Gigi busying herself at a kitchen range which occupied the center of the large loft. The sofa bed in one corner of the huge open-plan space was surprisingly comfortable and the low partition walls around it, though far from reaching the high ceiling, made the contained area feel like a separate room. The main bedroom had proper walls and a suspended ceiling, though I was still pretty sure I’d heard Gigi’s muffled wails of ecstasy during the night.
We’d taxied back to her place well after midnight, after I’d retrieved the holdall. Gigi had insisted we stop for some Thai food on the way back and, seeing as I was her guest, I could hardly tell her otherwise. I also needed the nourishment.
Without turning on the main lights she’d gestured to the corner, told me to make myself at home, then pulled Kurt toward the bedroom. I unfolded the bed, opened a couple of the screens, took off my boots and jeans, fell onto the bed and was asleep in under a minute.
“Hey, you want bacon with your pancakes?”
By the sounds of it, breakfast was definitely going to be better than a motel muffin loaded with enough preservatives to survive into the next millennium.
Gigi’s head peered around one of the screens. “Wanna keep me company? I gave Kurt a major workout last night, so I doubt he’ll be up for a while.”
The wink only made it worse and I shuddered. “Gigi, seriously. Way too much information.”
She gave me a curious look, the mischief never buried too deep. “But you’re happy for him, right? I mean, I can tell you like him. When he told me about you, I thought you must be using him, but he was adamant that you were a team.”
“I’ll deny it if he asks me, but yes, I am fond of Cid. Or Snake. Or whatever avatar he’s using today.”
“Good. Because I’m kind of fond of him too. And I wouldn’t want anyone messing with him. He’s a doll. And a surprisingly generous lover-not many of those around, let me tell you.”
I gave her the look.