“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, pal. Now you let her go or I’ll have to introduce you to my friends Smith and Wesson.”
The deputy drew the gun, but instead of getting it out of the holster, he succeeded only in pulling the belt, pants and all, right up to his rib cage. Jesse tried not to laugh, but it was futile. Deputy Mills spun around. “Who the hell are you?”
“Jesse Corbin, sir. I work for the Morisson Herald. Mrs. Abernathy sent me to get a picture of you for the paper.”
“How long you been spying on me?”
“I just walked in,” Jesse said.
“Well, then you missed the best part, kid. That last line was just one of my backups.”
“Sounded all right to me,” Jesse lied.
“So, you want this shot with or without my shirt on?” the deputy asked.
“It would probably be best if you had it on.”
Jesse decided he liked the new deputy. The man was a little vain, to be sure, but not in an annoying way. He was also clearly a rookie, probably fresh out of the barracks down in Concord.
“I’ll be outside,” Jesse said and turned for the door.
“Be with ya in a sec, kid.” Deputy Mills said and gave him a wink.
He got fifteen shots. Deputy Mills checked every one of them and had him delete all but five. By the time he got back to the Herald, he had deleted another three, believing, and rightly so, that Mrs. Abernathy would have had something to say had there been more.
Jesse spent the rest of the day doing odd jobs around the office. When Julia left at half past four, he made a point of not noticing what time it was. Mrs. Abernathy, who always knew what time it was, played along for fifteen minutes, then sent him on his way.
When he got home, Jesse put on his best pair of jeans and the only shirt he owned with a collar. When he was ready to leave, his mom followed him out to the porch and handed him a fifty-dollar bill.
“Mom, I’ve got a job. I’m not broke, seriously!”
“You run errands. For what, ten bucks a day? I know that old cow. She won’t be parting with more than that. Now take it.”
She stuffed the bill into the pocket of his jeans.
“She doesn’t pay me ten bucks a day. She gives me a hundred dollars a week. And she’s not a cow.”
By the time he passed the familiar town sign (Welcome to Morisson – Population: just right!), the first wave of nerves had started to come over him. He had spent the day deliberately not thinking about this evening on the understanding that the more he did, the more on edge he would become. Now it appeared the effort had been in vain.
When he reached Farmland, Morisson’s premier and only farm machinery dealership, he pulled off the road and stopped.
– – –
Jesse had first met Amanda in second grade, on what had probably been the worst day of her life. At least up until then. In those days, he and Bill Perry had been Siamese twins, played in the same imaginary rock ‘n’ roll band and had developed the closest thing to telepathy that existed outside the Twilight Zone. On that particular day, Bill was in the hospital having his tonsils removed. Jesse had been on his way back to the locker room after PE when he heard someone crying behind the bleachers and went to investigate. He had found her sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees. When he had moved closer, she put her hands over her chest and he saw that the back of her T-shirt had been torn from neck to hem.
The sight of her sitting there, trying to cover herself up with arms that were shaking as if it had been January instead of one of the warmest days in June, had made him feel both sad and angry at the same time. Without thinking, he’d taken off his own T-shirt and held it out to her then walked back to the sports field. When she still hadn’t emerged several minutes later, he’d gone back. She’d been standing just around the corner. His T-shirt ended just above her knees. With the lack of tact characteristic of most eight year olds, he’d said, “No one will believe that’s yours. My mom sews name tags into all my clothes.”
For a moment neither of them had said anything, then, as if on cue, they both burst out laughing. And by the invisible stroke of magic that is also characteristic of most eight–year-olds, they were friends.
In that instant, the two of them fit to split and unaware the world was still turning, Jesse’s young mind formed a simple, yet very powerful, idea. He thought he loved her.
Like Jesse, Bill didn’t have a sister. That meant neither boy had developed any serious fear of the cooties. Amanda had slipped almost seamlessly into their friendship, not tearing it apart, but adding a new dimension to it, like a good pitcher joining an already successful baseball team. Amanda never did give him his T-shirt back and for eleven years Jesse had kept his feelings to himself.
When he finally did get around to breaking the news to Bill, both Bill and Amanda were saying goodbye to the small town they had grown up in. Bill was going to State College in Lyndonville and Amanda had been accepted into Penn State. Jesse had the grades, but hadn’t applied to anywhere, a fact that had the faculty, his parents, and his two best friends wondering out loud if he was all there. What none of them understood, and what he was loath to admit even to himself, was that he was afraid if they both left Morisson, he would never see her again.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Bill had said. “After all this time, you break this to me
now
?”
By then Jesse had been on the verge of tears. Bill had put an arm around him and squeezed. “All right, it’s okay. I get it, man. It would have fucked everything up.”
“It’s not just that.”
But Bill, who had a knack for simplifying the complicated, had hit the nail squarely on the head. It
would
have fucked everything up. And whichever way it went, their friendship would have been over.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” Bill had asked.
“No. She would hate me. It would ruin things for her.”
“I doubt she’d hate you, man. But you’re right, it would be awkward the way things are now.”
That had been the entirety of their conversation on the matter. Jesse had driven Amanda to the airport and said goodbye. She had cried and he had told her it would be cool. They’d get together whenever she came home. It would be just like old times.
Jesse had saved his own tears for the parking lot.
That had been almost two years ago. But sitting behind the wheel of his mother’s Volvo and looking out at the tractors in the yard at Farmland, it might as well have been yesterday.
But Amanda had her own troubles. He’d known that from the moment he picked up the phone. She wasn’t coming home, she was running home. The thought both worried and angered him. Someone had hurt her. If she had made friends out there, they obviously didn’t amount to much in a crisis. Jesse tried to focus on that, and it went a long way towards steadying his nerves. He would be the friend she needed, not another problem.
Feeling a little better, he shifted the car into drive and pulled back onto the road.
FBI Field Office
New York, New York
Monday 17 July 2006
1200 EDT
Mike left his office to get himself a cup of coffee in the staff canteen. Someone had left a copy of the Times on the table and he scanned the headlines as he sipped.
So far the blackout seemed to be working. After taking Mitch to the airport, he’d spent the rest of the morning tracking down names on the list they had gotten from Allied Bishop, the company that ran the Fed’s security system. Then he had spent another hour dissecting the company’s merger history. The idea was to put together a list of everyone who had worked on the security system both when it was written and during any subsequent modifications. The people who made the calls in Washington had thought this a good precautionary measure. Mike wasn’t so sure.
Nova, the original security system, hadn’t been designed by Allied Bishop, but by a German company called GSL Systems, which had been contracted to create it by a consortium of German banks in 1998. Allied Bishop had acquired GSL in 2001 and then licensed another company, a British firm called Titan, to use the Nova platform as the basis for an updated version. Only by the time it was completed, Allied Bishop had also acquired Titan and renamed the project, rather unimaginatively, Nova 2. In 2003, Allied Bishop won a contract to install the new system in six of the banks in Manhattan, including the Fed.
Unraveling the puzzle of people who had been involved with Nova and its successor since 1998 had proved more complicated than Mike had anticipated. Allied Bishop had bought up no fewer than eight smaller firms in that time, and the migration of personnel that had occurred as a result was enough to give anyone a headache.
His thoughts were interrupted by Gregory Johns, one of the field office’s rookie agents, who appeared in the doorway and said, “The assistant director wants to see you, boss.”
She was on the phone when he entered and gestured for him to take a seat. When she put the receiver down, she said, “Have we got anything stronger than coffee around here?”
“What’s going on?” Mike said.
She looked at him for a moment, then closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. “Close the door.”
Mike did.
“The White House is pulling the investigation. They’re sending someone over to pick up the files.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Mike said.
“How did you get on with the list?”
“I think I’ve tracked down most of the names.”
“Good. Put everything you’ve got together. They should be here in the morning.”
“That’s it?” Mike asked.
“That’s it.”
When he reached the door Mike turned around. “I really hope they know what they’re doing.”
The assistant director nodded. “You’re not the only one.”
New York, New York
Monday 17 July 2006
1300 EDT
Jack handed the cab driver a fifty and got out before the man could count out his change. He walked the two blocks to Park Avenue and arrived in the parking lot just as the man he had come to see pulled in behind the wheel of a red Ford van with the words
Mitchell Plumbing and Heating
stenciled across the door. Jack followed the van to the end of the parking lot and got in.
Steve Rollins was in his mid-forties, at least six feet tall and well built. He wore faded jeans and a black t-shirt under an old green army parka with a peace symbol sewn onto the left breast.
“Jesus, Jack. You look like shit,” Rollins said.
“I’m fine,” Jack said.
“So what can I do for you?”
“What do you know about the New York Fed?”
“It’s a bank?”
“I know it’s a fucking bank, Steve. What I’m asking is, do you know if anyone’s – you know – made a move on it recently?”
Rollins looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Made a move on it?”
“Robbed it! I’m asking you if anyone’s robbed the god-damned place!”
“First of all, if someone had I wouldn’t know,” Rollins said. “As you’re well aware, I’m not in that line of work anymore. But even if I was, the Fed is the last place anyone would try and break into.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because it can’t be done. That’s why you wanted to see me? To ask me about the Fed?”
“It
can
be done,” Jack said. “I know because I’m the fucking guy they did it to.”
“You know, Jack, I’ve never taken you for a practical joker.”
Rollins studied Jack’s face for a moment and saw nothing remotely jovial in it. “You’re serious?”
“The assistant director of the FBI field office got a call yesterday morning.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Rollins asked.
“I have a contact inside the Bureau. But that’s beside the point. I was there this morning. Something was taken out of my safety deposit box.”
“What?” Rollins said.
“A hard drive. A very fucking important hard drive.”
“If it was yours, you must have some idea who would want to steal it.”
“I don’t,” Jack said and pulled the two photographs from his jacket. “But the asshole left these.”
Rollins studied the photographs then read what was written on the back of one of them. “Jesus. What’s Princip?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“And you have no idea who these two people are?”
“Never seen them,” Jack said.
“Maybe they hit the wrong box. How long have you been using it?”
“About two months.”
Rollins nodded somberly. “If the feds are involved, they won’t be for long. I can tell you that.”
“They’re not,” Jack said. “The investigation was shut down by the White House this morning.”
Rollins nodded again. “Of course it was. Imagine that, someone pulling a job at the Fed. I’d give my right arm to know how they did it.”
“Well if it’s all the same to you,” Jack said. “I’d rather you kept it for now. Can you help me or not?”
“I don’t know, Jack. You’re asking me to put my ass on the line. This isn’t some local street gang we’re talking about.”
Jack reached down between his legs and set the briefcase he had brought with him on the seat between them. “That’s two hundred and fifty thousand. Get me the drive back and I’ll make it half a million. I can get you names, maybe help find some of them, but that’s it. This isn’t a company job. If someone finds out what’s going on, I’m fucked.”
Rollins reached for the briefcase, then pulled his hand back. “Seven-fifty. And if I so much as suspect I’m stepping on someone else’s toes, I’m gone.”
“Done,” Jack said.
FBI Field Office
New York, New York
Monday 17 July 2006
1400 EDT
Mike had only been asleep for half an hour when he was dragged back into the land of the living by a knock on the door. He sat up slowly and rubbed his neck. The couch in his office was comfortable enough, but at least a foot short. “Come in.”
Mike’s first impression of the man who stepped into his office was that he wasn’t real. He was only a few inches over five feet and wore a tailored black pinstripe suit that looked like it might have cost at least a grand. His skin was a smooth, deep bronze, almost certainly the product of a daily routine involving a tanning bed and a cocktail of men’s designer skin care products. His jet-black hair was combed back and held in place by some kind of gel that gave it a shine matched only by his shoes, which gleamed like polished glass. To Mike, he looked like he’d strayed off the set of a 1930s gangster movie.