I’d been in a lot of people’s company Sunday and about half answered that description. “You have a photo?” I asked.
Laguire pulled a five-by-seven black-and-white from her pocket and put it on my desk, pushing it across the blotter to me with both index fingers. It was a blowup of an ID photo, grainy and bland. Judging by the clothes, it was about ten years old. The young man in the photo was a generic white-bread nerd—as if he’d tried to be unmemorable—short hair, clean shaven, overweight, slightly sullen or just bored. Aside from everyone else, I’d talked to Fish, Quinton, and the Danzigers, as well as a few waitstaff, librarians, and a gas station attendant yesterday, and many of them could have been the man in that photo, given different hair, weight, glasses, whatever. I knew who she wanted, but I wasn’t going to turn.
I shoved the photo back across my desk. “I spent all day tracking witnesses and evidence for investigations and for cases going to trial. I spent a lot of that time with some homeless people who don’t exactly hand over their business cards, and the rest of it in a glorified trash dump. Which one of the hundred or so people I talked to or stood next to do you think I should recognize from that picture?”
“Only JJ. Purlis. He went to ground years ago and we’ve been waiting patiently for him to show up on our radar ever since. Yesterday he did. Now he’s vanished again, but you were ID’ed and here you are.” She seemed to imply I soon might not be.
“Who told you I was with this Purlis, and where?” I asked. “You give me a clue and I might give you your man.”
She shook her head with a disappointed smile. “I won’t name our source. That would be ill-advised. Purlis is a danger to national security and to the health and safety of people like you. He has knowledge, skills, and the mind to cause harm. You have a duty to turn him over.”
“You make this guy sound like a terrorist,” I said, flipping my hand to dismiss her drama.
“As information is the real source of power and since crypto systems are now defined as matériel, he well could be. I imagine you think you’re protecting a witness or an informant, but all you are doing is standing between us and a fugitive.”
“Fugitives are the purview of the federal marshals’ office and law enforcement. Not Fort Meade’s carnivores.”
A palpable hit. Laguires mouth tightened at the reference, but her voice stayed calm, if a bit chillier. “Mr. Purlis is our asset. We will reacquire him. You will not stand in our way.” She leaned in a little. “I don’t need to play games with you. I can get what I want other ways, but you won’t like them, Ms. Blaine. It’s very simple. All I want is Purlis’s location.”
I stood up and Laguire had to tilt her head up to meet my scrutiny. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t want to step back and even the distance—it might look like retreat. “I don’t have your mystery man’s location, Ms. Laguire. I don’t know a J.J. Purlis and your photo is worthless. You can—”
My suggestion was cut off by my cell phone—lucky for both of us.
“Excuse me. I need to answer my phone, but since the nature of my work is confidential, I’m sure you understand my asking you and your associates to leave now.” Then I shut up and gazed at her without blinking or hostility, just blank and expectant.
Her smoky aura flared with frustrated explosions of orange and red, but she laid her card on my desk, turned silently on her heel, and strode out of my office.
Her bodyguards followed her.
It was possible she’d left a bug or had some kind of tap on my cell phone or something, but I doubted she’d set up any such thing. If she’d caught a latenight flight, she’d have been on me, I agreed I’d be seeing him and paged Quinton. Then I went out to find a noisy place to grab some lunch I could wolf down in twenty minutes. The drive to Montlake was usually fifteen minutes from my office, but it sounded like a long day ahead and I both needed food and wanted to minimize Laguire’s chance of picking up any of my conversations. Some things are worthy of paranoia, and she and her agency gave me the chills.
My phone rang again as I was crossing the Square. In the frosted cold, the area was mostly deserted except for the snow drifts and ghosts, and I glanced around for any sign of surveillance or monitoring. Not even the phantoms were interested in me.
Spotting nothing, I still answered the phone in a sharp bark unlike my usual tone. “Blaine.”
There was a pause. “Um, this is your alarm company,” Quinton said. “You left a message for us to return your call…”
“I have three nines and I’m running late because of an official visitor.” Three nines was the pager code Quinton had programmed to indicate a break-in at my office—it was also the UK version of 911. “Tell the installer I’ll meet him at Bakeman’s in a couple of minutes.” I hung up without waiting for a reply and hoped Quinton knew me well enough to guess my meaning and show up both quickly and discreetly.
Located on Cherry in a basement row of little lunch spots that mostly catered to local office workers, Bakeman’s was determinedly blue collar in service and atmosphere. The odor of roast turkey and meatloaf wafted out the sunken door along with the clang and shout of the staff passing orders and moving customers at New York speeds. The hard, slick walls and Formica tables reflected the noises of the busy kitchen and the hurried diners into a rattling cacophony. No one lingered over a cup of joe at Bakeman’s or “took meetings” at the no-nonsense tables without risking the owners notorious sharp tongue. If Fern Laguire or her mismatched muscles wanted to snoop, they’d have to come in, order up, and join us at our table to have any hope of eavesdropping or getting in without drawing attention.
I’d barely sat down with my food when Quinton popped in through the lunchrooms back door from the building above.
“Hey,” he said, sliding in next to me to facilitate a lower-volume conversation.
“Hey. Two things first. We’re going to Marysville to talk to Fish’s grandmother about the Sistu, which should take a few hours so you better grab some food if you’re hungry. And I got a visit from the NSA about thirty minutes ago.”
Quinton looked thoughtful. “I’ll be right back.”
He returned in ten minutes with one of Bakeman’s famous sandwiches and a can of soda. “I always think I’ll have the pie next time and I never do,” he said.
I finished my soup and glanced at him as he wolfed his food. I was glad he hadn’t run, though I hadn’t really expected him to. “You know anything about this Fern Laguire?”
He nodded and swallowed. “I hear she was heartless at twenty and had passed ‘ballbreaker’ in her thirties. Ten years ago she’d advanced to vitrified in all human emotions except anger. The scale appears to be logarithmic.”
“She has two assistants who smell of Fed, one probably CIA, the other local Feeb.”
Quinton nodded acknowledgment.
“Do we have a problem?” I asked.
“There’s a hole in something. I don’t want to discuss it right now. In fact, considering communication is the name of the game with them, probably best to get moving and talk as little as possible. Fern may not have you bugged yet—if she just hit town she hasn’t had much time.”
“Unless she came on a private flight, I’d guess she couldn’t have arrived before eight-thirty this morning—assuming flights landed on time with the snow.”
He hummed, thinking. Then he asked, “Do you need your cell phone for this trip?”
“I need to call Fish for directions to his place.”
“Use a pay phone—it’s safer. I’ll have to disable the cell—otherwise they may use it to track or bug us.” He put out one hand for my phone and picked up his soda with the other, draining it in three big gulps.
I handed him the phone, which he looked over and put on the table.
“Remove the battery, will you?” he asked, rummaging in his coat.