For a moment Lee was taken back to a day a few years earlier. Construction on the i3 complex was complete. Every month he and his team were siphoning more information from their rivals. He was at his desk when the door opened and a familiar figure entered. Lee stood at once, both thrilled and frightened.
“Copying is no longer enough,” said the premier, the most powerful man in China. “Our policy of state-sponsored industrial espionage can take us only so far. It is not enough that we succeed. The West must be seen to lose.”
Lee nodded.
“Can you do more to help us?”
“Yes,” said Lee. “I can.” For he had been harboring the same thoughts and had spent long hours thinking about how to help his country. And so he told the premier his plan, and the premier gave him his blessing.
On that day Troy was born.
Magnus Lee reread the intercept, biting his lip. It could not have come at a worse time. He had not yet revealed to anyone that Edward Astor had contacted his son about Palantir, or that there was any kind of possible breach whatsoever. And now the son was taking up his father’s crusade.
The ripples were closing in on the shore.
Troy was at risk.
Lee found a quiet corner and placed a call to New York State.
“Hello, brother,” came the strong, familiar voice.
“Hello, Shifu,” said Lee, using the respectful title for “master.” “How quickly can you find someone for me?”
20
The FBI’s New York office for counterterrorism was housed on the upper floors of a red-brick building on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea. The Bureau shared space with several fashion designers, a software startup, and a law firm. Two restaurants occupied the ground floor. One belonged to a television chef famed for his bald pate and brusque manner. The other had recently received three stars in the Times and boasted a bone-in rib-eye steak priced at $135. Both eateries were beyond the reach of the dedicated men and women earning government salaries who passed by every day.
Alex exited from the elevator on the eighth floor. She passed through the biometric security station-thumb plus six-digit personal entry code-and headed to her office. Word of the shootings had spread through the office. Friends and enemies approached to offer their sympathy. She acknowledged each without breaking stride. If she stopped for a second, she was finished. Her carefully constructed façade would crumble to the ground. She had to keep moving. Work was the disease and the cure.
Alex’s office sat in a lonely corner of the building off the bullpen that housed her squad. Dr. Gail Lemon was waiting inside when she opened the door.
“I’m surprised to see you,” said Lemon. “You’re required to take a few days off.”
Alex continued past her to her desk. “And you’re required to have the courtesy to wait for me to arrive before barging in.”
Lemon was the New York field office’s staff psychologist. She was petite and prim and looked as if Alex’s battering ram outweighed her by 10 pounds. “You’ve suffered a traumatic loss,” she said, with a beatific smile. “I understand you’re upset.”
“You don’t understand squat.”
“There’s no need to be hostile.”
“That wasn’t hostile. You’re still standing and I don’t see any blood.”
The smile faltered. “Now, Alex-”
“It’s Special Agent Forza…and remind me, Dr. Lemon, do you carry a badge?”
“Of course not. I didn’t go to the academy.”
“And you’ve never spent a day in the field?”
“Not exactly…but if you-”
“Then get out of my office.”
Lemon stood her ground, arms crossed. “Alex-I mean, Special Agent Forza-you’re required to seek help.”
“You want me to talk to a shrink, send someone who knows what it feels like to lose three men. They were family.”
A half-dozen people gathered by the door, drawn by her raised voice. “It’s okay, everybody,” she said, speaking over Lemon’s head. “Dr. Lemon was just heading out.”
“Three days’ leave,” stated Lemon through gritted teeth. “Those are the rules for agent-involved shootings.”
Alex held the door. “I have work to do.”
Still Lemon wouldn’t leave. She turned a half-circle, taking in the barren room-the metal desk, the half-empty bookcase, the battering ram, and of course the picture on the wall. Her mouth twisted as if she’d tasted something putrid. “Something is wrong with you, Special Agent Forza. You’re a sad, hostile person. I’m going to have a word with the assistant director.”
Alex shooed Lemon out of the room. “Make sure you say hello from me. She’s the one who gave me this job. Have a pleasant day.”
Dr. Gail Lemon’s response was unrepeatable. The beatific smile had left the building.
Alex shut the door and blew out a sad, hostile breath. One more word and she would have struck the woman. Her gaze shot to the photograph of J. Edgar Hoover on the wall behind her desk.
“Father,” she said, “I promise you that I am going to catch the sons of bitches who did this to my boys. And then…”
Alex left the last words unspoken. What she had in mind did not conform to the highest ideals of the FBI.
21
There was a knock on the door and a head poked around the corner. “Boss,” came a squeaky voice. “Got a sec?”
Alex looked up from her paperwork. “Get in here, Mintz.”
Special Agent Barry Mintz shuffled into the office. He was forty going on fourteen. Tall, gangly, with thinning red hair, trusting blue eyes, and an Adam’s apple to rival Ichabod Crane’s, Mintz was the lone holdover from her predecessor’s team at CT-26. Those who hadn’t transferred out voluntarily, she’d pushed out herself. All except Mintz. He wasn’t brash, bold, or confident, which was how she liked her agents on the threat response squad. In manner and bearing, he was the opposite. He was quiet, self-effacing, and polite. Mintz was the guy in the corner no one noticed. And yet Mintz got things done. He was a six-foot-three-inch package of administrative whup-ass. When he entered the room asking if she had “a sec,” Alex knew enough to put down whatever she was working on and pay attention.
“Got a call from Windermere,” said Mintz. “Guys found something at the scene.”
Alex tapped her pen impatiently. “Yeah?”
“There’s not just machine guns under the floor,” Mintz continued. “Looks like they turned up a lot more.”
“How much more?”
“Don’t know. But I think he used the words ‘a fuckin’ arsenal.’”
Alex dropped the pen. A second later she was up, throwing on her blazer, and coming around her desk. “Mind if I drive?”
“Sure…um…do you have to?”
“Attaboy.” Alex patted Mintz on the shoulder and led the charge to the elevators.
She remembered that there was only one thing that she didn’t like about Mintz. On the shooting range, he qualified last among all her charges on every occasion. His nickname was Deadeye.
In recent years, events in the Bureau’s history had come to have their own names, one- or two-word monikers that not only brought to mind the crime but somehow encapsulated the entire event: the criminal act, the investigation, and the aftereffect on the Bureau. WTC referred to the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in ’93. Oklahoma City, to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by the homegrown radicals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Waco referred to the bloody and botched standoff between the federal authorities and the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh. There was Ruby Ridge and Flight 800 and the Cole and of course 9/11. With three officers killed in the space of a few minutes, Windermere was set to join that black pantheon.