“The President doesn’t like her, or so I hear . . . .”
“Yeah, she’s a radical tree-hugger, I know. But she’s pretty smart, too, and getting you this gear was a good call on her part. I talked to Sam Wilson down at Snake Headquarters, and his people have signed off on it with enthusiasm. Jam-proof, encrypted, digital clarity, and light as a feather.” As well it ought to be, at seven thousand dollars per set, but that included the R&D costs, Foley reminded himself. He wondered if it might be something his field officers could use for covert operations.
“Okay, two days, you said?”
“Yep. Regular trash-haul out of Dover to RAF Mildenhall, and a truck from there, I guess. Oh, one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Tell Noonan that his letter about that people-finder gadget has generated results. The company’s sending a new unit for him to play with-four of them, as a matter of fact. Improved antenna and GPS locator, too. What is that thing, anyway?”
“I’ve only seen it once. It seems to track people from their heartbeats.”
“Oh, how’s it do that?” Foley asked.
“Damned if I know, Ed, but I’ve seen it track people through blank walls. Noonan’s going nuts over it. He said it needed improvements, though.”
“Well, DKL – that’s the company – must have listened. Four new sets are in the same shipment with a request for our evaluation of the upgrade.”
“Okay, I’ll pass that along to Tim.”
“Any further word on the terrorists you got in Spain?”
“We’re faxing it over later today. They’ve ID’d six of them now. Mainly suspected Basques, the Spanish figured out. The French have largely struck out, just two probables – well, one of them’s fairly certain. And still no clue on who might be sending these people out of the dugout after us.”
“Russian,” Foley said. “A KGB RIF, I bet.”
“I won’t disagree with that, seeing how that guy showed “p in London-we think-but the Five’ guys haven’t turned up anything else.”
“Who’s working the case at `Five’?”
“Holt, Cyril Holt,” Clark answered.
“Oh, okay, I know Cyril. Good man. You can believe what he tells you.”
“That’s nice, but right now I believe it when he says he doesn’t have jack shit. I’ve been toying with the idea of calling Sergey Nikolay’ch myself and asking for a little help.”
“I don’t think so, John. That’ll have to go through me, remember? I like Sergey, too, but not on this one. Too open-ended.”
“That leaves us dead in the water, Ed. I do not like the fact that there’s some Russkie around who knows my name and my current job.”
Foley had to nod at that. No field officer liked the idea of being known to anyone at all, and Clark had ample reason to worry about it, with his family sharing his current duty station. He’d never taken Sandy into the field to use diem as cover on a job, as some field officers had done in their careers. No officer had ever lost a spouse that way, but a few had been roughed up, and it was now contrary to CIA policy. More than that, John had lived his entire professional life as an unperson, a ghost seen by few, recognized by none, and known only to those on his own side. He would no more wish to change that than to change his sex, but his anonymity had been changed, and it upset him. Well, the Russians knew him and knew about him, and that had been his own doing in Japan and Iran; he must have known then that his actions would have consequences.
“John, they know you. Hell, Golovko knows you personally, and it figures they’d be interested in you, right?”
“I know, Ed, but-damn it!”
“John, I understand, but you’re high-profile now, and there’s no evading that fact. So, just sit tight, do your job, and let us rattle some bushes to find out what’s happening, okay?”
“I guess, Ed” was the resigned reply.
“If I turn anything, I’ll be on the phone to you immediately.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Clark replied, using the naval term that had been part of his life a long time ago. Now he reserved it for things he really didn’t like.
The Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Gary, Indiana, FBI field office was a serious black man named Chuck Ussery. Forty-four, a recent arrival in this office, he’d been in the Bureau for seventeen years, and before that a police officer in Chicago. Skip Bannister’s call had rapidly been routed to his desk, and inside five minutes he’d told the man to drive to the office at once. Twenty-five minutes later, the man came in. Five-eleven, stocky, fifty-five or so, and profoundly frightened, the agent saw. First of all he got the man sat down and offered him coffee, which was refused. Then came the questions, routine at first. Then the questions got a lot more directed.
“Mr. Bannister, do you have the e-mail you told me about?”
James Bannister pulled the sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it across.
Three paragraphs, Ussery saw, disjointed and ungrammatical. Confused. His first impression was . . .
“Mr. Bannister, do you have any reason to suspect that your daughter has ever used drugs of any kind?”
“Not my Mary!” was the immediate reply. “No way. Okay, she likes to drink beer and wine, but no drugs, not my little girl, not ever!”
Ussery held up his hands. “Please, I understand how you feel. I’ve worked kidnappings before and-”
“You think she’s been kidnapped?” Skip Bannister asked, now faced with the confirmation of his greatest fear. That was far worse than the suggestion that his daughter was a doper.
“Based on this letter, yes, I think it’s a possibility, and we will treat this case as a kidnapping investigation.” Ussery lifted his phone. “Send Pat O’Connor in, will you?” he told his secretary.
Supervisory Special Agent Patrick D. O’Connor was one of the Gary office’s squad supervisors. Thirty-eight, red-haired, fairskinned, and very fit, O’Connor headed the office kidnapping squad. “Yeah, Chuck?” he said coming in.
“This is Mr. James Bannister. He has a missing daughter, age twenty-one, disappeared in New York about a month ago. Yesterday he got this on his e-mail.” Ussery handed it over.
O’Connor scanned it and nodded. “Okay, Chuck.”
“Pat, it’s your case. Run with it.”
“You bet, Chuck. Mr. Bannister, would you come with me, please?”
“Pat runs these cases for us,” Ussery explained. “He will take charge of it, and report to me on a daily basis. Mr. Bannister, the FBI treats kidnappings as major felonies. This will be a top priority case until we clear it. Fen men, Pat?”
“For starters, yes, more in New York. Sir,” he said to their guest, “we all have kids. We know how you feel. If there’s a way to locate your daughter for you, we’ll find it. Now I need to ask you a bunch of questions so that we can get started, okay?”
“Yeah.” The man stood and followed O’Connor out into the office bay. He’d be there for the next three hours, telling everything he knew about his daughter and her life in New York to this and other agents. First of all he handed over a recent photograph, a good one as it turned out. O’Connor looked at it. He’d keep it for the case file. O’Connor and his squad hadn’t worked a kidnapping in several years. It was a crime the FBI had essentially extinguished in the United States-kidnapping for money, in any case. There was just no percentage in it. The FBI always solved them, came down on the perps like the Wrath of God. Today’s kidnappings were generally of children, and, parental kidnappings aside, were almost always by sexual deviants who most often used them for personal gratification, and often as not killed them thereafter. If anything, that merely increased the FBI’s institutional rage. The Bannister Case, as it was already being called, would have the highest priority in manpower and resources in every office it might touch. Pending cases against organized crime families would be set aside for this one. That was just part of the FBI’s institutional ethos.
Four hours after Skip Bannister’s arrival in the Gary office, two agents from the New York field division in the Jacob Javits Building downtown knocked on the door of the superintendent of Mary Bannister’s dingy apartment building. The super gave them the key and told them where the apartment was. The two agents entered and commenced their search, looking first of all for notes, photographs, correspondence, anything that might help. They’d been there an hour when a NYPD detective showed up, summoned by the FBI office to assist. There were 30,000 policemen in the city, and for a kidnapping, they could all be called upon to assist in the investigation and canvassing.