“No,” Laurel said abruptly. “We need to minimize any communication from your office. I’d prefer phone calls to me or Detectives Sellitto and Sachs or Lincoln Rhyme. Discretion is—”
“The better part of valor,” Dellray intoned cryptically. “Not a single problem in the world on that. But broachin’ that subject: You sure our friends don’t know anything yet? At NIOS?”
“No,” the ADA said.
“Uh-hum.”
Rhyme said, “You don’t sound convinced.”
He chuckled. “Good luck, one and all.”
Sachs clicked the phone off.
“Now, where can I work?” Laurel asked.
“How’s that?” Sachs wondered aloud.
The ADA was looking around. “I need a desk. Or table. It doesn’t need to be a desk. Just something big.”
“Why do you need to be here?”
“I can’t work out of my office. How can I?” As if it were obvious. “Leaks. NIOS’ll eventually find out we’re running the investigation but I need to delay that for as long as possible. Now, that looks good. Over there. Is that all right?”
Laurel pointed to a worktable in the corner.
Rhyme called Thom in and had the aide clear the surface of books and some boxes of old forensics gear.
“I have computers but I’ll need my own line and Wi-Fi router too. I’ll have to set up a private account on it, encrypted. And I’d prefer not to share the network.” A glance toward Rhyme. “If that can be arranged.”
Sachs clearly didn’t like the idea of this new member of the team. Lincoln Rhyme was by nature a solitary person but at least when a case was ongoing he’d come to tolerate, though hardly relish, the presence of others. He had no particular objection.
Nance Laurel hefted her briefcase and the heavy litigation bag onto the table and began unpacking files, organizing them into separate stacks. She looked as if she were a student moving into a dorm on the first day of freshman year, placing her few possessions on the desk and bedside table for most comfort.
Then Laurel looked up to the others. “Oh, one thing: In working the case I need you to find everything you can to make him look like a saint.”
“I’m sorry?” From Sachs.
“Robert Moreno — a saint. He’s said a lot of inflammatory things. He’s been very critical of the country. So I need you to find what he’s done that’s good. His Local Empowerment Movement, for instance. Building schools, feeding third-world children, that sort of thing. Being a loving father and husband.”
“You need us to do that?” Sachs questioned. The emphasis pointed the question in the direction of disbelief…and gave it a nice tidy edge, to boot.
“Correct.”
“Why?”
“It’s just better.” As if obvious.
“Oh.” A pause. “That’s not really an answer,” Sachs said. She wasn’t looking at Rhyme and he didn’t want her to. The tension between her and the ADA was simmering just fine on its own.
“The jury again.” With a glance toward Rhyme who’d apparently fueled her argument earlier. “I need to show he was upright and a good, ethical man. The defense is going to paint Moreno as a danger — like lawyers try to portray a rape victim as somebody who was dressing provocatively and flirting with her attacker.”
Sachs said, “There’s a big difference between those scenarios.”
“Really? I’m not so sure.”
“Isn’t the point of an investigation to get to the truth?”
A pause for digesting these words. “If you don’t win in court, then what good does having the truth do?”
Then, for her, the subject was settled. Laurel said to everyone, “And we need to work fast. Very fast.”
Sellitto said, “Right. NIOS could find out about the case at any time. Evidence could start disappearing.”
Laurel said, “That’s obvious but it’s not what I’m talking about. Look at the board, the kill order.”
Everyone did, Rhyme included. Yet he could draw no immediate conclusion. But he suddenly understood. “The queue.”
“Exactly,” the prosecutor said.
RET — TOP SECRET — TOP SECRET — TOP SE
Special Task Orders
Queue 8/27
Task: Robert A. Moreno (NIOS ID: ram278e4w5)
Born: 4/75, New Jersey
Complete by: 5/8–5/9
Approvals:
Level Two: Yes
Level One: Yes
Supporting Documentation:
See “A”
Confirmation required: Yes
PIN required: Yes
CD: Approved, but minimize
Details:
Specialist assigned: Don Bruns, Kill Room, South Cove Inn, Bahamas, Suite 1200
Status: Closed 9/27
Task: Al-Barani Rashid (NIOS ID: abr942pd5t)
Born: 2/73, Michigan
Complete by: 5/19
Approvals:
Level Two: Yes
Level One: Yes
Supporting Documentation:
N/R
Confirmation required: No
PIN required: Yes
CD: Approved, but minimize
Details: To come
Status: Pending
She continued, “Now, I can’t find out anything about this Rashid or where he is. Maybe his kill room’s a hut in Yemen, where he’s selling nuclear bomb parts. Or given Metzger’s zeal, maybe it’s a family room in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where Rashid is blogging against Guantánamo and insulting the president. But we do know that NIOS’s going to kill him before Friday. And who’ll be the collateral damage then? His wife and children? Some passerby? I want Metzger in custody before that.”
Rhyme said, “That won’t necessarily stop the assassination.”
“No, but it’ll send a message to NIOS and Washington that somebody’s looking very carefully at what they’re up to. They might delay the attack and have somebody independent review the STO and see if it’s legitimate or not. That’s not going to happen with Metzger in power.”
Like counsel in a closing argument Laurel then strode forward and dramatically tapped the kill order. “Oh, and these numbers at the top? Eight/twenty-seven, nine/twenty-seven? They’re not dates. They’re tasks in the queue. That is, victims. Moreno was the eighth person NIOS killed. Rashid’ll be the ninth.”
“Twenty-seven total,” Sellitto said.
“As of a week ago,” Laurel said briskly. “Who knows how many it is today?”
CHAPTER 11
A human form, like an unflappable, patient ghost, appeared in Shreve Metzger’s doorway.
“Spencer.”
His administrations director — his right-hand man around headquarters — had been enjoying the cool blue skies and quiet lake shore line in Maine when an encrypted text from Metzger had summoned him. Boston had immediately cut short his vacation. If he’d been pissed off, and he probably had been, he’d given no indication of it.
That would be improper.
That would be unseemly.
Spencer Boston’s was a faded elegance, a prior generation’s. He had a grandfatherly face, creases bracketing his taut lips, and thick, wavy white hair — he was ten years older than Metzger. He radiated an utterly calm and reasonable demeanor. Like the Wizard, Boston wasn’t troubled by the Smoke. He now stepped into the office, shut the door instinctively against prying ears and sat opposite his boss. He said nothing but his eyes dipped to the mobile in his boss’s hand. Rarely used, never to leave the building, the device happened to be dark red in color, though that had nothing to do with its top-secret nature. That was the shade that the company had had available for immediate delivery. Metzger thought of it as his “magic phone.”