Trial Run (34 page)

M
urray Feinne had never been to Langley before. He was astonished at how much the foyer resembled the images he had seen in countless films. And how simple it was to enter the CIA's main building. There were guards everywhere, of course. And the level of vigilance was very high. But he was permitted to stand inside the foyer and watch the tide of people hurry through the turnstiles, flashing their ID's at the electronic monitor and then once more at the guard station. They were perhaps more silent than in a normal corporate environment. There might be a higher level of tension on the faces he saw. But otherwise it was just another governmental office complex. Except of course for the seal embedded in the floor. And the wall of stars representing unnamed fallen agents.

“Mr. Feinne? Jack Parrish. Sorry to keep you waiting.” A young man with a military buzz cut offered Murray a visitor's ID on a lanyard. “I don't need to tell you to wear this at all times, do I.”

“No.” Murray followed the young man to the guard station, where
he showed his driver's license, was photographed, and signed in. Then he was led down a series of halls and into a large waiting room that held three clusters of quietly urgent conversations.

The young man said, “Wait here, please.” He disappeared into the inner sanctum, then returned to say, “The director will see you now.”

The current director of the Central Intelligence Agency carried himself with the rumpled disdain of a tenured professor. Murray had seen him on television for years. The director had served as advisor on international affairs to an earlier president, then been brought back by the current administration to clean up an organization whose greatest talent had become its ability to waste time with infighting.

The director spoke softly on the phone as he waved Murray forward. He hung up and offered his hand without rising. “Have a seat, Mr. Feinne. Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“You are here because allies within the intelligence community vouched for you. Mind if I ask how a corporate lawyer in LA became so connected?”

“An associate set this up. I have never been anywhere near your world.”

The director glanced at his assistant, who had taken up station by the side wall and was frowning at Murray. “That is extremely odd, since these contacts insisted that this meeting was of the highest possible importance.”

“It is.”

The director's gaze carried the impact of supreme power. “Mr. Feinne, you have thirty seconds to explain.”

“You have a dead agent on your hands by the name of Elene Belote.”

The aide stiffened slightly and came off the wall. The director stilled his staffer with a glance. “I'm listening.”

“You also have another agent who is probably still missing. His name is Rod Aintree.”

The aide said, “Mr. Aintree is in the mental patients wing of a secure facility outside San Francisco.”

The director asked, “As of when?”

“Day before yesterday. We received word of his admission last night.”

When the director's attention turned back to him, Murray went on, “The chief of national intelligence has an assistant by the name of Amanda Thorne. She has been operating a clandestine facility outside Santa Barbara. The operation has two divisions. One is run by a gentleman named Kevin Hanley, a theoretical physicist formerly with military intelligence. The other division is headed up by Reese Clawson. Maybe you've heard of them.”

“And if I have?”

“I've traveled here today,” Murray said, “to hand you their heads on a platter.”

The director inspected him a long moment, then turned to his assistant and said, “Clear the rest of my morning.”

T
he officer who came for her was the one Reese Clawson thought of as Flat-Face. Female inmates tended to know their prison guards far better than male prisoners. This was part of staying safe. Abuse among female prison populations was fairly constant. Not that Reese had much to worry about on that score. Word seemed to travel with her to each of her new locations that she was to be left alone.

The guard was short and wide and had freckles that were stretched into a second coloring. Her face looked smashed by a frying pan, flat and utterly round, her nose a miniature indent. Most of the guards shared two things—odd physical appearances, and gazes as dull and flinty as old iron.

“Clawson, you've got a visitor. Bring your gear.”

She still had an hour before the morning claxon. So Reese took her time closing her book and rolling off the bunk. Inmates did everything on their three-by-six foam mattress. Hers smelled bad, but it was not the worst she had known in her fourteen months of incarceration.

For most inmates, visitors meant a sliver of activity in their dull grey existence. For Reese, it meant something else entirely. She pulled her sweatshirt over her prison blues, then filled the front pouch with her meager belongings. The book she left on the empty bunk. Her hand lingered on the blank notepad, then she decided to leave that as well. Why she had spent prison money on a journal was a mystery.
She would never have dared write down her recollections. Even so, she had found a sense of bitter glee over the havoc she might have caused. But the thoughts remained locked inside, where they belonged. Because if she started writing down what she knew, she would sign her own death warrant.

Her cellmate was a huge Native American, so big she jammed onto the wall and spilled over the lower bunk's rim. She asked sleepily, “Going somewhere?”

“Out of state, most likely.”

“What, you read smoke in the sky?”

“Something like that.”

The woman shut her eyes. “See you when you wake up, girl.”

Reese followed the guard down the concrete alley and through the buzzed security doors, down another hall, past the main security point, ever closer to the forbidden outside. Reese was good at pretending she did not care about ever breaking out. But now and then she caught a whiff of the world beyond the wire. And her heart skipped a beat. Like now.

She had assumed they were leading her to the narrow concrete-lined quadrangle where vehicles parked for prisoner transfers. Instead, the guard led her into an area she did not know, another windowless hall, another series of metal doors. But as far as Reese was concerned, any change in the routine was interesting.

The guard stopped by a door with a wire-mesh window and waved to the security officer in the bulletproof cage. The door buzzed. The guard opened it and said to the person waiting inside, “Rap on the glass when you're done.”

“Thank you, Officer.” The visitor did not look up from the file open on the metal desk. “Sit down, Clawson.”

Reese did as she was told. Not because she was good at following instructions. Because she caught another faint whiff of a fragrance from far beyond this realm.

The woman on the other side of the desk turned a page in the file
she studied. She wore a pin-striped suit and a white silk blouse with a frilly bow at the collar, which on her looked absurd. She was bulky and mannish with long dark hair clenched tight inside a gold clip. The frilly collar appeared odd, like she had intentionally dressed to draw attention away from her expression, which was cold and hard and calculating. She turned another page in the file and continued reading.

Reese had no problem with waiting. She had been doing little else for fourteen long months.

Since her arrest, Reese Clawson had been relocated four times. When they had first picked her up, she had been sent from Santa Barbara to Raiford Women's Prison in central Florida. Then Tennessee. The last two had both been in Virginia. Endless trips in the backseat of cars that had smelled worse than her mattress. It was enough to drive her insane. Which was perhaps what they had intended.

The woman reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out what at first glance was a digital recorder. Which was probably why prison security had let the woman bring it inside. But Reese knew better. She had used the exact same device. The woman flipped a switch and waited until the light glowed green. The device sent out a jamming signal, intended to blanket all frequencies. Such meetings as this were supposedly protected by attorney-client privilege. But it was this same code of ethics that stated no American citizen could be held without charge for over a year.

The woman had still not looked up. She turned another page. “Do you know where you are, Clawson?”

The obvious answer was, the Lawyer Room. It was the inmates' name for the security chamber, the only place in the entire prison not wired for sight and sound. At least, not on record.

Reese Clawson had not been here before. Which was hardly a surprise. Since she had also never been charged. Or had any need to ask for a lawyer. Up to this point, she had been fairly certain that any such request would have made that day her last.

The woman turned another page. She seemed to find nothing
wrong with Reese's silence. “You are at the verge of the only chance you will ever have.”

Reese did not respond. There was nothing to say. Yet.

“My name does not matter, because I am not here. We are not meeting.” The woman looked up and revealed a gaze as hard as a prison guard's. “Clear?”

“Yes.”

“I have one question for you. Answer correctly, and you will move on to a different status. What that is, and where you will be operating, does not matter. Yet.”

The woman liked holding this life-or-death clout, Reese could tell. There was a glint of resentment in those eyes, brown as muck, dark as the life Reese had come to call her own. She detected a tight anger and realized the woman was here against her will. At any other time, Reese might have found that humorous.

The woman went on, “Answer incorrectly, and you will be swallowed by the federal system. Permanently. Tell me you understand.”

“Perfectly.” All four of the prisons where Reese had been held were run by state penal systems. In each case, cells were rented by the federal government to house prisoners convicted in federal court. Federal prisons were so overcrowded they could no longer ignore the public outrage. It was easier to house the overflow in rented cages than build new facilities. But this also meant it was possible for the government to falsify documents and claim this particular inmate had been tried, convicted, and sentenced. To a life without any shred of hope of parole. Which was no life at all.

The woman's actions were overly slow, deliberate as an executioner. She tapped the pages back into order. Settled them into the file. Shut the cover. Placed the folder in her briefcase and snapped it shut. Rested her hands on the table. Gave Reese ten seconds of the eyes, cold as a cell door. “What would you do to earn another chance at freedom?”

Reese gave the answer as much force as she could. “Whatever it takes.”

The woman cut off the jamming device. She rose to her feet and hefted her briefcase. She walked to the door and rapped on the security glass. “That is the correct answer.”

A black Escalade was waiting for them outside the prison gates. Reese was directed into the rear seat. The woman slipped in beside the driver, a bulky guy dressed in a tailored suit of slate and silk. He asked, “Any trouble?”

“No. Drive.”

Everything Reese saw or sensed carried an electric quality. Even the woman's hostile silence was pleasurable. The world spun and the road unfurled and every breath took Reese farther from the existence she had feared was all she would ever know.

The woman said her name was Vera. Reese assumed it was a lie, but just the same she wanted to thank her for the gift. To offer any name at all suggested a future and a purpose big enough to require further contact. The Escalade was not new and smelled vaguely of disinfectant. The leather seat was seamed with the sort of ingrained dirt that no amount of cleaning could pluck out.

Vera said, “There's a briefcase behind you in the rear hold.”

Reese turned around and pulled the heavy Samsonite case onto the seat beside her. The briefcase contained four thick files. Reese estimated their weight at between twenty-five and thirty pounds. Their contents were divided into a logical sequence—finance, product development, legal and human resources, clients. She was deep into her initial read-through when, an hour later, the Escalade pulled into the parking lot of a cheap highway motel, one that probably catered to the prison visitors.

Vera kept her face aimed at the front windscreen as she said, “There's a key in the case. Your room is straight ahead of where we're parked. Go inside. Go to work. Don't leave the room. There's an envelope in there with cash. Order takeout. Don't make any other calls. If you try
and run, federal marshals will be given a shoot-to-kill order. You have seven days to memorize the contents of those files.”

Reese felt her face constrict into an unfamiliar expression, but at least she could still name it as a smile. Not because of the command or the warning. Because this woman thought she would need a week. “Will there be a test?”

“Absolutely.” Vera did not bother turning around. “Fail, and Jack here will dispose of you.”