Ken Follett - The Hammer of Eden

She did not have a date. “Sure.”

“I’ll make a reservation and call you.”

As she left the room, she remembered the feeling she had had earlier, that he wanted to kiss her; and she wished she had invented an excuse.

As she entered the lobby of the FBI office she wondered again why the SAC and the ASAC had not come to court for the verdict. There was no sign of unusual activity here. The carpeted corridors were quiet. The robot mailman, a motorized cart, hummed from door to door on its predetermined route. For a law enforcement agency, they had fancy premises. The difference between the FBI and a police precinct house was like the difference between corporate headquarters and the factory floor.

She headed for the SAC’s office. Milton Lestrange had always had a soft spot for her. He had been an early supporter of women agents, who now numbered ten percent of agents. Some SACs barked orders like army generals, but Milt was always calm and courteous.

As soon as she entered his outer office she knew something was wrong. His secretary had obviously been crying. Judy said: “Linda, are you okay?” The secretary, a middle-aged woman who was normally coldly efficient, burst into tears. Judy went to comfort her, but Linda waved her away and pointed to the door of the inner office.

Judy went in.

It was a large room, expensively furnished, with a big desk and a polished conference table. Sitting behind Lestrange’s desk, with his jacket off and his tie loosened, was ASAC Brian Kincaid, a big, barrel-chested man with thick white hair. He looked up and said: “Come in, Judy.”

“What the hell is going on?” she said. “Where’s Milt?”

“I have bad news,” he said, though he did not look too sad. “Milt is in the hospital. He’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”

“Oh, my God.” Judy sat down.

Lestrange had gone to the hospital yesterday — for a routine checkup, he had said, but he must have known there was something wrong.

Kincaid went on: “He’ll be having an operation, some kind of intestinal bypass, and he won’t be back here for a while, at best.”

“Poor Milt!” Judy was shocked. He had seemed like a man at his peak: fit, vigorous, a good boss. Now he had been diagnosed with a deadly illness. She wanted to do something to comfort him, but she felt helpless. “I guess Jessica’s with him,” she said. Jessica was Milt’s second wife.

“Yes, and his brother’s flying up from Los Angeles today. Here in the office—”

“What about his first wife?”

Kincaid looked irritated. “I don’t know about her. I talked to Jessica.”

“Someone should tell her. I’ll see if I can get a number for her.”

“Whatever.” Kincaid was impatient to get off the personal stuff and talk about work. “Here in the office, there are some changes, inevitably. I’ve been made acting SAC in Milt’s absence.”

Judy’s heart sank. “Congratulations,” she said, trying for a neutral tone.

“I’m moving you to the Domestic Terrorism desk.”

At first Judy was just puzzled. “What for?”

“I think you’ll do well there.” He picked up the phone and spoke to Linda. “Ask Matt Peters to come in and see me right away.” Peters was supervisor of the DT squad.

“But I just won my case,” Judy said indignantly. “I put the Foong brothers in jail today!”

“Well done. That doesn’t change my decision.”

“Wait a minute. You know I’ve applied for the job of supervisor in the Asian Organized Crime squad. If I get moved off the squad now, it’s going to look like I had some kind of problem.”

“I think you need to broaden your experience.”

“And I think you want Marvin to get the Asian desk.”

“You’re right. I believe Marvin is the best person for that job.”

What a jerk, Judy thought furiously. He gets made boss and the first thing he does is use his new power to promote a buddy. “You can’t do this,” she said. “We have Equal Employment Opportunity rules.”

“Go ahead, make a complaint,” Kincaid said. “Marvin is better qualified than you.”

“I’ve put a hell of a lot more bad guys in jail.”

Kincaid gave her a complacent smile and played his trump card. “But he’s spent two years at headquarters in Washington.”

He was right, Judy thought despairingly. She had never worked at FBI headquarters. And although it was not an absolute requirement, headquarters experience was thought desirable in a supervisor. So there was no point in her making an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint. Everyone knew she was the better agent, but Marvin looked better on paper.

Judy fought back tears. She had worked her socks off for two years and scored a major victory against organized crime, and now she was being cheated of her reward by this creep.

Matt Peters came in. He was a stocky guy of about forty-five, bald, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a tie. Like Marvin Hayes, he was close to Kincaid. Judy began to feel surrounded.

“Congratulations on winning your case,” Peters said to Judy. “I’ll be glad to have you on my squad.”

“Thank you.” Judy could not think what else to say.

Kincaid said: “Matt has a new assignment for you.”

Peters had a file under his arm, and now he handed it to Judy. “The governor has received a terrorist threat from a group calling itself the Hammer of Eden.”

Judy opened the file, but she could hardly make out the words. She was shaking with anger and an overwhelming sense of futility. To cover her emotions she tried to talk about the case. “What are they demanding?”

“A freeze on the building of new power plants in California.”

“Nuclear plants?”

“Any kind. They gave us four weeks to comply. They say they’re the radical offshoot of the Green California Campaign.”

Judy tried to concentrate. Green California was a legitimate environmental pressure group based in San Francisco. It was hard to believe they would do something like this. But all such organizations were capable of attracting nutcases. “And what’s the threat?”

“An earthquake.”

She looked up from the file. “You’re putting me on.”

Matt shook his bald head.

Because she was angry and upset, she did not bother to sweeten her words. “This is stupid,” she said bluntly. “No one can cause an earthquake. They might as well threaten us with three feet of snow.”

He shrugged. “Check it out.”

Judy knew that high-profile politicians received threats every day. Messages from crazies were not investigated by the FBI unless there was something special about them. “How was this threat communicated?”

“It appeared on an Internet bulletin board on the first of May. It’s all in the file.”

She looked him in the eye. She was in no mood to take any crap. “There’s something you’re not telling me. This threat has no credibility whatsoever.” She looked at her watch. “Today is the twenty-fifth. We’ve ignored the message for three and a half weeks. Now, suddenly, with four days left to the deadline, we’re worried?”

“John Truth saw the bulletin board — surfing the Net, I guess. Maybe he was desperate for a hot new topic. Anyway, he talked about the threat on his show Friday night, and he got a lot of calls.”

“I get it.” John Truth was a controversial talk radio host. His show came out of San Francisco, but it was syndicated live on stations all over California. Judy became even angrier. “John Truth pressured the governor to do something about the terrorist message. The governor responded by calling in the FBI to investigate. So we have to go through the motions of an investigation that no one really believes in.”