I didn’t move, and I didn’t think she’d seen me. She then walked over to a plain vanilla Ford and got in. The phone conversation went on for a few minutes, and then she signed off. She pulled the rearview mirror over, checked her makeup, then lit the car off, backed out of her parking space, and drove directly over to where I was parked and pulled in, nose to tail. She smiled at me as she rolled down her window.
“It was the purse, wasn’t it,” she said.
I nodded. I’d seen too many just like it under the arm of just about every female FBI agent I’d ever met. Compact, hard leather, big, easily accessible snap, and perfect for a concealed weapon. Some of them even had springloaded pouches, so all she had to do was unsnap the purse, hit the butt of the weapon with her open hand, and go to town.
“You think Trask knows?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s too busy trying to pretend he doesn’t notice that glorious bod of yours. It’s a military thing, I think-if the troops are all salivating and acting like teenagers, the colonel should remain aloof.”
She rolled her eyes, but at least had the grace not to protest about sexist comments and such. She was a genuine beauty, and it was tough not to just look at her. Which is why, when Frick suddenly barked, I realized I’d been well and truly had. Three large men in dark clothes and sporting what looked like H amp;K MP5s were standing on the other side of my Suburban. One of them presented his FBI credentials through the passenger side window. As I took the situation onboard, a black Suburban rolled up behind us and stopped. I looked back over at Samantha.
She gave me a wistful smile. “Sorry about this,” she said. “Nothing personal.” Then she rolled up her window, backed out, and drove away.
They were actually polite. No cuffs, no perp walk, no reading of rights in the headlights or anything like that. They let me take the dogs back to the house and put them inside. They told me to leave my cell phone and any weapons I might be carrying, which I did. Then I was escorted to the black Suburban and settled into the backseat with one of the agents. Two more got in the front seat, and a fourth took my car keys and followed us in my Suburban. We were a regular parade.
They were acting like this was just a normal office call among professionals, but still, I didn’t even think about resisting or giving them any lip. I sat there in the backseat with my seat belt fastened and both hands clearly visible in my lap as we drove north toward the lights of Wilmington, up over the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, down into town, and then east toward the container port, which is where I thought we were going.
Wrong. We turned north onto Shipyard Drive, away from the port, and went several blocks north before turning right into a cluster of two-story brick buildings. We drove around to the back of one of them, which was right next to a fitness center, and parked. They took me through a cipher-locked back door and into what I assumed was the FBI’s resident agent’s office in Wilmington. I was escorted down a hallway to a conference room. There was a cardboard box on the conference table. The agent who seemed to be in charge told me that it would be just a few minutes.
“What will be just a few minutes?” I asked.
“Your ride.”
An hour later my “ride” drove through the gates of what looked like a state hospital for the mentally challenged. There were grim, twenty-foot-high brick walls along the front, an ornate if presently unguarded wrought-iron gateway, and a central paved road pointing toward a large, five-story brick building in the distance. Alongside the road were low, boarded-up white structures that looked like vintage World War II Tempo buildings.
I was now wearing a set of bright orange nylon overalls, courtesy of the cardboard box in the conference room. My ankles were connected by eighteen inches of thin stainless steel wire, and my wrists were similarly constrained. When we pulled up in front of the Victorian-looking main building, one of my escorts in the front seat asked me to lean forward so he could drop the hood over my head. Throughout the entire process, I hadn’t said a word, and I didn’t say anything when the cotton hood was draped over my head and neck. There were no eyeholes, so I was now totally dependent on the two escorts to shuffle me out of the car and into the building, with quiet instructions about steps, the door, turn right, turn left, turn around, okay, sit down. I was physically larger than either of them, but the restraints and now the hood reduced me to something very small indeed. I could see light and blurred shapes through the hood, but nothing else. Every time I inhaled, the hood flattened against my face. It smelled of industrial-strength laundry soap.
I sat on what felt like a park bench in what I assumed was a hallway. I could hear voices coming from another room nearby, but there was no alarm or excitement, just the casual conversation I remembered when doing a routine booking. Some low laughter, a phone ringing and being answered, someone stirring a coffee mug, football talk, and the shuffle of papers. The hallway smelled of institutional disinfectant and stale coffee in equal proportions.
There’d been no drama at the RA’s office, either. A walk down the hall to the bathroom, where I was asked to strip down to my underwear, given a cursory examination for weapons, and then handed my new costume. Then back to the conference room to wait. Being an ex-cop, I knew that my best move at this point was to keep my mouth shut, which I did. I didn’t know what charges, if any, were being filed, or if I was really even under formal arrest, although the orange jumpsuit had not been an encouraging development. No one came in to ask questions, and the people who were handling me had obviously not been interested in idle chitchat.
Hands appeared at my elbows, and I stood up. Turn left, the sounds of an electronically controlled door, walk straight ahead, turn right, stop. Elevator sounds. Step in, turn around, stop. Doors closing. Elevator movement, with four dings indicating that we were going to the fifth floor. Doors opening. Step out, turn right, walk straight ahead. A firm hand on each elbow, but no antagonistic pressure holds. I’d seen pictures of the Al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo, and wondered why their heads always hung down. Now I knew: The only things I could see were the tops of my feet.
Finally, stop here. The sounds of another electronic door. Turn right, step through the door, that’s good, now three more steps, turn around, sit down. Elbows free. Good. The hood came off. And there was Creeps, stretching out his long, awkward frame in a too-small metal chair across the room. My two hallway helpers stood by the door, within reach. They were dressed in Marine combat fatigues and had distinctive military haircuts. One of them crumpled up my hood in his large hands.
The room was about twelve by fifteen feet square. I’d been expecting a cell, but it wasn’t like that. There were two windows, dark now, of course, a normal single bed with a night table and a reading lamp, a small desk and chair, and two other armchairs. There was a door that I hoped led to a bathroom. The walls were painted a muted green, and the floors were polished linoleum. The only thing that indicated I was in a cell was the fact that there was no doorknob on the inside, just a card reader.
Creeps watched me take it all in before speaking. “Mr. Richter,” he said.
“Special Agent,” I replied. If they’d expected me to protest or otherwise spout off, I meant to disappoint them. For the moment.