James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

Now he nodded.

“Say it, please.”

“I’m… honored.”

“Good. Now here’s what’s going to happen. We’ll be moving to the back of the house, and you’ll be getting inside that filthy bathtub you never clean.” Kyle patted the duffel on his back again. “Then I’m going to unpack, and you and I are going to talk some more. I need to know some things about Max Siegel.”

HE WAITED TWO MORE DAYS, spent a few nights around DC, got himself laid at the Princess Hotel. Then Kyle brought Max Siegel in from out of the cold once and for all.

It was an unbelievable thrill, driving Siegel’s newly leased BMW past the familiar guard booth and down into the Hoover Building parking garage. Every security measure in the world, and here they were, waving Mr. Most Wanted himself right into FBI headquarters.

Sweet.

Siegel’s ID got Kyle right up to the fifth floor. They met with him in one of the Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) conference rooms overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue – two reps from the Gang and Criminal Enterprise Section, one from the Directorate of Intelligence, and two assistant directors from the main and field offices in DC.

AD Patty Li seemed to be in charge of the meeting. “I know this is a stressful time, Agent Siegel, but there’s something you need to know. Your original handler, Steven Malinowski, died two days ago.”

Kyle kept up his professional composure, with just the right amount of emotion. “Oh my God. What happened to Steve?”

“Apparently he dropped dead of a heart attack in the shower at his home.”

“This is unbelievable. I was at his house yesterday. I knocked on his door.” He stopped and ran a hand over his million-dollar face – the master performer in action.

“You were right to contact us directly,” Li said. “Once you’ve made your report and received a full debriefing, I’m putting you on administrative leave–”

“No.” Kyle sat up and looked Li straight in the eye. “Excuse me, but that’s the last thing I need right now. I’m ready to go back to work.”

“You need to acclimate. Sleep in, go to a game, whatever. You’ve been someone else for years, Max. That takes a toll.”

The whole thing was like great food, great sex, and driving 120 with the headlights off all at the same time. Best of all, these Friendly But Ignorant pinheads were eating it up like free doughnuts.

“With all due respect,” he told everyone in the room, “I’d like my record to speak for itself. Give me a fitness-for-duty eval, if that’s what you need to do. Just don’t sideline me. I want to work. Trust me, it’s what I need.”

There were some open glances around the table. One of the drug-squad guys shrugged and closed the personnel file in front of him. This was Li’s call.

“Just for the sake of argument,” she said, “what did you have in mind?”

“I believe I’m up for SSA,” he told her, which was true. “That’s what I want.”

“Supervisory special agent? I see you haven’t lost any of your ambition.”

“I’d also like to stay right here in Washington, ultimately in the field office. I think that’s where I can do the most damage,” he said – just a touch of self-deprecation to keep them on the line.

There would be no promises today, but Kyle could tell he’d pretty much cinched it. And the field-office placement, while not strictly necessary, was a nice bit of gravy.

That facility was over in Judiciary Square, maybe a stone’s throw from the Daly Building. He and Alex could practically string up a couple of tin cans between their offices and play catch-up. How much fun would that be?

Now it was just a matter of time until they met again.

I OFFERED UP a couple of Washington Nationals tickets to the Fingerprint Examination Section for a fast turnaround with the sniper hits. They got me some results that morning.

A single print had been found on an otherwise freshly cleaned area of glass where the shots had been taken. And, as it turned out, it was a match for two other prints found on-site – one on a stair rail between the building’s eighth and ninth floors, and another on the crash bar of a ground-level steel door that had almost certainly been the shooter’s exit point.

That was all the good news, or at least the interesting news. The bad part was that our print didn’t match any of the tens of millions of samples in the IAFIS database. Our presumed killer had no criminal record to help point the way to his arrest.

So I widened my net. Recently I’d been to Africa and back, chasing down a mass murderer who called himself the Tiger. As part of the fallout from that case, I’d struck up a pretty good rapport with a guy named Carl Freelander. He was Army CID, embedded with the FBI in Lagos, Nigeria, as part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force. I was hoping Carl could help me cut a few corners with the investigation.

It was late afternoon in Lagos when I caught Carl on his cell.

“Carl, it’s Alex Cross calling from Washington. How about if I ask you my favor first, and we do the chitchat later?”

“Sounds good, Alex, minus the chitchat, if you don’t mind. What can I do for you?” This was one of the reasons I liked Carl; he worked the way I did.

“I’ve got a print on a homicide, two kill shots from two hundred sixty-two yards. The guy obviously had some training, not to mention good equipment, and I’m wondering if maybe there’s a military connection.”

“Let me guess, Alex. You want a red phone into the civil database.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Yeah, okay. I can run it by CJIS,” he said. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

CJIS stands for Criminal Justice Information Services, a part of the FBI that’s based in Clarksburg, West Virginia. This was one of those loopy situations – calling halfway around the world to access something so close to home, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

Less than two hours later, Carl was back with some discouraging news.

“Your boy’s not U.S. military, Alex. Not FBI or Secret Service either. And I hope you don’t mind, but I ran it through ABIS at Defense while I was at it. He’s never been detained by U.S. forces, and he’s not a foreign national who’s ever had access to one of our bases. I don’t know if that helps or not.”

“It gets rid of some of the obvious possibilities anyway. Thanks, Carl. Next time you’re in DC–”

“Drinks and all that, sure thing. I look forward to it. Take care, Alex.”

My next call was to Sampson, to share the news, such as it was.

“Don’t worry, sugar, we’re just getting started,” he told me. “Maybe this print didn’t even come from our guy. That crime scene was crawling with our people the other night – and you can bet not everyone was wearing gloves.”

“Yeah,” I said, but a different possibility had already wormed its way to the front of my mind. “John, what if it is the shooter’s print, and he wanted us to find it? Maybe it gets him off, knowing we’re going to waste our time chasing it down–”

“Oh man, no. No, no, no.” Sampson knew just where I was headed.

“And maybe that gives him exactly the confidence he’s looking for – when it comes time to do it all over again.”

I WAS THERE for Bree outside of Penn Branch when she got off that afternoon. I couldn’t wait to see her, and when she finally came out of the building, it brought a big smile to my face.

“This is a nice surprise,” she said, and gave me a kiss. We’d stopped trying to draw a line around that stuff at work anymore. “To what do I owe the pleasure? This is a treat.”