Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

“Sam Wingo might already be here waiting.”

“He might. And there’s nothing we can do about that.” He looked at her. “Can you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Pull the trigger on Wingo if it comes to it. With Tyler there?”

Michelle didn’t hesitate. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Sean. You can take that to the bank and cash it.”

THE MAN SAID, “THIS IS more valuable than gold, you know that? Than platinum. Than, hell, I don’t know what.”

Alan Grant sat in the car and stared over at him.

“I understand that,” said Grant. “More than platinum. And yet you’re only charging for platinum. Thanks for the deal.”

The other man was Milo Pratt. He was short, chubby, and had a lot of years in places that had allowed to him to get the platinum Grant needed.

He smiled at Grant. “Do you know what the price of platinum is?”

“High. Higher than gold, probably.”

“Gold isn’t even in the ballpark. What’s your name again?”

“Not important.”

“Why do you want it?

“I’m curious, always have been,” said Grant. “It’s just my thing.”

Pratt smiled more broadly. “But why this thing? Why this info? Guy has to ask. You understand, right?”

“Perfectly. I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t asked.”

“Good, good. So why? Really?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“You a traitor? I mean, I got no problem with that, but I would like to know.”

“Not a traitor, quite the opposite in fact.”

“You a Fed? Got some squirrelly covert op going on?”

Grant pointed at him and smiled. “You have a quick eye.”

“It’s subject to change, of course. Nothing I can do about that.”

“I completely understand that. I’ll simply have to build that into the op.”

Pratt held up a flash drive. “It’s all here.”

“I’m sure it is.” Grant held out his hand and took it.

“I know the money is in my account, or you wouldn’t be holding that,” said Pratt.

“If I were you, I’d do it exactly the same way. But with just one small difference.”

“What’s that?”

Grant slammed Pratt’s neck against the steering wheel, crushing his windpipe. He watched as Pratt suffocated and then died, collapsing sideways in the seat.

Grant said to the dead man, “I would never do the exchange face-to-face in a lonely spot because I might end up dead. Like you.”

He got out of the car and walked away. A minute later he climbed into his car and drove below the speed limit to his next stop. The retrofit on the old radio station was progressing nicely. He knew his men were working hard, but they would have to work still harder. After the rehab was done he would bring in his tech team. They were a multinational bunch. Not a single one was committed to anything other than himself. No flag-wrappers in the lot of them. He liked that. When money was the motivation, you knew exactly where you stood. They were the best he could find, and Grant knew where to look.

The Pentagon was as busy now as it was during the day. It truly was a building that never slept and where people visited, ate, and worked at all hours. He cleared security and went directly to his father-in-law’s office once more. He was admitted immediately because he was expected. He and Dan Marshall were having dinner tonight, and Grant expected to get some scuttlebutt about things he needed to know about.

Marshall greeted him as enthusiastically as before, first gripping his hand and then giving him a bear hug.

“Leslie says you’re keeping really busy lately, Alan. You remember you have to keep some time open for those grandkids of mine.”

“I will, Dan. I promise. Just got quite a few things in the hopper right now. Want to build a good life for us. And Leslie and I want to give you more grandchildren too. We’re not stopping at three. We’re still relatively young.”

Dan beamed. “Never hear me complaining about more rug rats to pal around with.”

The two men walked to a restaurant in the Pentagon and sat at a table well away from others.

“You look worried about something,” said Grant, observing Marshall closely.

Marshall chuckled, rubbed his face, and took a sip of the Coors draft he’d ordered. Grant drank only water. When Marshall put the glass down he had stopped chuckling and looked far more serious.

“You’ve been reading the news?” he asked.

Grant nodded. “Bizarre to say the least. How over a billion bucks of Treasury money ended up going missing in Afghanistan along with a reservist?”

Marshall looked around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. “It was actually in euros.”

“Euros? Why?”

“Can’t really say.”

“What the hell was the money for?” Grant then quickly added, “Sorry, I’m sure that’s classified.”

“There’re rumors all over the press now. Really bad ones. Conspiracy. Breaking the law. Misuse of funds. And it all goes up very high.”

“Rumors with some truth to them?” asked Grant quietly.

“Let me put it this way, Alan. I can’t say unequivocally that they’re not true.”

You haven’t seen anything yet , thought Grant.

He reached over and put a hand on his father-in-law’s arm. “Dan, you’re in procurement. You buy stuff for the Army. You control a lot of money. But you’re not getting caught up in all this, are you?”

Grant liked Dan Marshall, he really did. But he didn’t like him well enough to not sacrifice him in order to achieve his goal. There was no one in the world he liked that much.

Marshall passed another hand over his face, as though he were trying to rub a layer of skin off. “Well, Alan, I’d say this sucker is big enough to catch a lot of folks.”

Grant withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry, Dan.” And in a way he was sorry. But that was all. He had put his father-in-law in this situation. He knew it would come to this. He hoped for his wife’s sake that her father would be mostly spared.

But my father and mother hadn’t been spared. They were ruined, crushed, and then they killed themselves. The only casualties. The only ones when there should have been far more.

He said, “What about this reservist, Sam Wingo? What’s his story?”

“Who knows? The son of a bitch hasn’t been seen since he drove off with Uncle Sam’s money.”

“I saw on the web that some of the money was going to Muslim insurgents. But it didn’t say which country.”

Marshall looked at him miserably. “I saw that too.”

“That will not sit well with some over there.”

“From the little I’ve been told, the diplomatic channels are being used so much they’re molten hot. I still have no idea how the media caught on to it. It was highly, highly classified.”

“It’s a mystery to me too,” lied Grant. “But I’m sure if you catch Wingo you’ll be able to put all this to rest quickly. Any leads there?”

“There might be, actually. I’ve been kept in the loop on this for a number of reasons, mostly because my ass is tied up in the outcome. Wingo has a son, Tyler. His mom died but Wingo remarried.” He lowered his voice. “Now, the marriage was not a real one.”

“The hell you say,” exclaimed Grant, who knew this perfectly well.

“No, it was just a sham. Part of the mission Wingo was going on. Convoluted but he also just couldn’t leave his kid on his own. Now the wife has disappeared. No one knows where she is.”

In a proper grave in the middle of nowhere with her throat slit because she disobeyed and then tried to kill me , Grant said to himself while he kept looking straight at Marshall with polite interest on his face.