Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

“Sean’s not here. But you can talk to me.”

He nodded and passed by her into the house. She glanced over his shoulder and checked the perimeter one more time before securing the door behind her.

Michelle called out to Tyler in the kitchen that things were okay. She flicked on the lights, and he came into the living room on wobbly legs. He flinched when he saw McKinney.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“Agent McKinney with Homeland Security.”

“Homeland Security?” said Tyler. “Why are you guys involved?”

McKinney said, “We keep the homeland secure. Like the name implies.” He stared hard at Tyler and then shot Michelle a glance. “Why is he here? Damn, can’t you guys heed a warning?”

Michelle said, “It’s a long story but Tyler is safer with us. So why are you sneaking around Sean’s house?”

McKinney sat down and slipped out a pack of Marlboros. “You mind if I smoke?”

“Yeah, I do. And I know that Sean sure as hell would.”

He put the smokes away and sat back. “Do you guys have any idea what you’re involved in?”

“We’re working on it,” said Michelle. “Any help you’d like to give us would be appreciated.”

“An international incident,” said McKinney, who didn’t seem to have heard her.

Michelle sat down across from him while Tyler remained standing and looked stunned.

“What kind of international incident?” asked Michelle calmly.

McKinney studied her. “I’m not sure I can answer that.”

“Then why the hell are you even here?” she said hotly. “To tell us you can’t cooperate with us? Trust me, we got that message loud and clear before.”

McKinney cracked his knuckles. “The dead guys were former military.”

“All of them?”

He nodded. “But they’d been out of uniform a long time and had gotten into stuff that men who wore the uniform of this country never should.”

“Like what?” asked Michelle.

“Drugs and gunrunning, for starters. And some militia activity with maybe some domestic terrorism thrown in. The list only gets longer after that.”

“Do you think that’s what this is about?”

“I don’t think so. But I can’t be sure.”

Michelle looked up at Tyler, who blurted out, “My dad wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”

McKinney turned to him. “He seems to be right in the middle of it, whatever ‘it’ is.”

“What was the mission, McKinney? What was Sam Wingo doing? We know he was delivering something but it never got there.”

“Who the hell told you that?”

“Does it matter?” Michelle said.

“It might,” snapped McKinney.

“Look, we’re both trying to get to the truth.”

He looked at Tyler again. “Your old man contacted you, didn’t he? Slipped you a coded message?”

Tyler immediately looked at Michelle. She hesitated but then nodded.

Tyler said, “Yeah, he did. After he was supposed to be dead.”

“And what did the message say?”

Michelle answered. “That he was sorry and wanted Tyler to forgive him.”

“You’re sure that was all?”

“Yes,” said Tyler defiantly. “I wish it had been more but that’s all there was.”

“Sounds like a confession to me,” said McKinney.

“Don’t think so,” said Michelle before Tyler could say anything.

“Why?”

“Just my gut.”

McKinney snorted with derision.

She ignored this and said, “What was he delivering? And was it just him?”

“It was apparently just him. Which makes no sense at all considering the cargo. But then maybe the military does things differently.”

“So what was the damn cargo?” asked Michelle.

McKinney cracked more knuckles. “Every alphabet agency and all the uniforms are mixed up in this shit. It’s big, really big.”

“I’m sure it is. Big enough for you to get a call from the Pentagon and read us the riot act. But that doesn’t explain why you’re here. Like you said, you’re DHS. You have lots of resources. You don’t need to come to us for anything.”

“What you say is perfectly true,” he said.

“And still, here you are.”

McKinney let out a long breath. “I checked you two out some more. You and King. That’s why I’m here. People I respect say you’re both the real deal. That you can be trusted. That you’re sharp.”

“Okay,” said Michelle warily. “But why do I think one reason you’re here is that you’re having trouble getting straight answers from your side? And maybe there’s a lack of trust going on.”

McKinney hiked his eyebrows at this but said nothing.

Michelle said again. “So what was the cargo?” She added, “Come on, the suspense is killing me, Agent McKinney.”

McKinney glanced at Tyler and then back at Michelle. He seemed to have finally made up his mind. “Forty-eight hundred pounds.”

Michelle’s brow furrowed. “That was the weight? Well over two tons?”

McKinney nodded.

“So what was it?”

“What do you know that weighs forty-eight hundred pounds?”

“What are we playing here, Jeopardy! ?” Michelle snapped.

“A nuke or a dirty bomb?” said Tyler anxiously.

McKinney shook his head. “No.”

She said, “Too light for a tank or a plane. Bioweapons? Some off-the-rack centrifuges? A few hundred al-Qaeda terrorists?” she added sarcastically.

McKinney shook his head.

“Okay, we give, what is it?” said Michelle.

McKinney cleared his throat. “One billion euros.”

SEAN WAS SEATED ACROSS FROM Mary Hesse at a restaurant in Chantilly, Virginia. She was in her mid-forties, attractive with dark hair and a slim figure. She seemed to have a problem making eye contact with Sean. She wore glasses but kept taking them off and wiping the lenses with her napkin.

Nerves all around, observed Sean.

“So you worked with Sam Wingo?” he prompted for the second time. This was shaping up to be like pulling teeth, he thought. But in situations like this patience was a virtue even though it felt like an ulcer.

She nodded. “Sam was a really nice guy. It was just–” She broke off, looking slightly dazed.

“It was just what?”

He put a hand across and tapped her wrist. “Ms. Hesse, I know this is hard. But as I told you on the phone I’m working with Sam’s son, Tyler.”

“Sam spoke of him all the time. He was really proud,” she said.

“I’m sure he was. Tyler is a great kid. But he’s terribly worried about his dad.”

“They said he had been killed in Afghanistan.”

“We don’t believe that to be true. And I think you were about to say that you thought something was off about Sam, weren’t you?”

She looked surprised at his observation. “How did you–”

“I’m former Secret Service. We get really good at reading body language.”

“Well, he just appeared one day at DTI. No one had seen him previously. No one that I knew had even interviewed him for the job. And while we’re not that big a company we do have certain protocols.”

“And these weren’t followed with Wingo?”

“They didn’t appear to have been followed,” she corrected.

“What else?”

“He spoke Dari and Pashto, but not, well, not at the level of the other people at the firm.”

“But I understood he was a salesman. He drummed up business for the company.”

“We don’t need drumming, Mr. King. We’re swamped, even with the winding down of the wars in the Middle East. There’s still a large military footprint. And commercial companies are starting to go there. They all need translators.”

“So business is booming and you don’t need salesmen. So what was Wingo doing for you?”