James PATTERSON - The Big Bad Wolf

‘You’re something of a hero for the moment. Enjoy it,’ he said, sounding, as always, like an Ivy League prof. ‘Won’t last long.’

‘Always the optimist, Tony,’ I said.

‘That’s my job description, young man.’

I wondered how much Ron Burns shared with his assistant, and also what the Director had in mind this morning. I wanted to ask Tony about this plum job I was slated for. But I didn’t. I figured he wouldn’t tell me anyway.

Coffee and sweet rolls were waiting in Burns’s office, but the Director wasn’t there. It was a little past eight. I wondered if he’d even gotten to work yet. It was hard to imagine that Ron Burns had a life outside the office, though I knew he had a wife and four children, and lived out in Virginia, about an hour from D.C.

Burns finally appeared at the door in a blue dress shirt and tie, with the shirtsleeves rolled up. So now I knew he’d had at least one meeting before this one. Actually, I hoped this meeting wasn’t about another case that he wanted me to dive into. Unless it involved the Wolf.

Burns grinned when he saw me sitting there. He read my look instantly. ‘Actually, I have a couple of nasty cases for you to work on. But that isn’t why I wanted to see you, Alex. Have some coffee. Relax. You’re on vacation, right?’

He walked into the room, sat down across from me. ‘I want to hear how it’s going so far. You miss being a homicide detective? Still want to stay in the Bureau? You can leave if you want to. The Washington P.D. wants you back. Badly.’

‘That’s good to hear, that I’m wanted. As for the Bureau, what can I say? The resources are amazing. Lot of good people here, great people. I hope you know that.’

‘I do. I’m a fan of our personnel, most of them, anyway. And on the dark side?’ he asked. ‘Problem areas? Things to work on? I want to hear what you think. I need to hear it. Tell me the truth, as you see it.’

‘Bureaucracy. It’s a way of life. It’s almost the FBI’s culture. And fear. It’s mostly political in nature, and it inhibits agents’ imaginations. Did I mention bureaucracy? It’s bad, awful, crippling. Just listen to your agents.’

‘I’m listening,’ Burns said. ‘Go on.’

‘The agents aren’t allowed to be nearly as good as they can be. Of course that’s a complaint with most jobs, isn’t it?’

‘Even your old job with the Washington P.D.?’

‘Not as much as here. That’s because I sidestepped a lot of red tape and other bullshit that got in the way.’

‘Good. Keep sidestepping the bullshit, Alex,’ Burns said. ‘Even if it’s mine.’

I smiled. ‘Is that an order?’

Burns nodded soberly. I felt that he had something else on his mind. ‘I had a difficult meeting before you got here. Gordon Nooney is leaving the Bureau.’

I shook my head. ‘I hope I didn’t have anything to do with that. I don’t know Nooney well enough to judge him. Seriously. I don’t.’

‘Sorry, but you did have something to do with it. But it was my decision. The buck passes through here at a hundred miles an hour, and I like it that way. I do know Nooney well enough to judge him. Nooney was the leak to the Washington Post . That son of a bitch has been doing it for years. Alex, I thought about putting you in Nooney’s job.’

I was shocked to hear it. ‘I’ve never trained people. I didn’t finish orientation myself.’

‘But you could train our people.’

I wasn’t sure about that. ‘Maybe I could struggle through. But I like the streets. It’s in my blood. I’ve learned to accept that about myself.’

‘I know. I get it, Alex. I want you to work right here in the Hoover Building though. We’re going to change things. We’re going to win more than we lose. Work the big cases with Stacy Pollack at headquarters. She’s one of the best. Tough, smart, she could run this place some day.’

‘I can work with Stacy,’ I said, and left it at that.

Ron Burns put out his hand and I took it.

‘This is going to be good. Exciting stuff,’ he said. ‘Which reminds me of a promise I made. There’s a spot here for Detective John Sampson, and any D.C. street cop you like. Anybody who wants to win. We’re going to win, Alex.’

I shook Ron Burns’s hand on it. The thing is, I wanted to win, too.

On a Monday morning I was in my new office on the fifth floor at headquarters in D.C. Tony Woods had given me a walking tour earlier that morning, and I was struck by strange, funny details that I couldn’t get out of my head. Like… the office doors were metal all through the building, except on the executive floor, where they were wood. The odd thing, though, the wood doors looked exactly like the metal ones. Welcome to the FBI.

Anyway, I had a lot of reading to do, and I hoped I’d get used to being in an eleven-by-fifteen-foot office, which was kind of bare. The furniture looked as if it were on loan from the Government Accounting Office; there was a file cabinet with a large dial lock; a coat tree that held my black vest and blue nylon raid jacket. The office also looked down on Pennsylvania Avenue, which was something of a ‘perk’.

Just past two that afternoon I got a phone call, actually the first incoming message to my new office. It was Tony Woods. ‘All settled in?’ he asked. ‘Anything you need?’

‘I’m getting there, Tony. I’ll be fine. Thanks for asking.’

‘Good. Alex, you’re going out of town in about an hour. There’s a lead on the Wolf in Brooklyn. Stacy Pollack will be going with you, so it’s a big deal. You fly out of Quantico at fifteen hundred. This thing isn’t over.’

I called home, then I gathered some paperwork on the Wolf, grabbed the overnight bag I’d been told to keep in my office, and headed to the parking garage. Stacy Pollack came down a few minutes later.

She drove, and it took us less than half an hour to get to the small private airfield at Quantico. On the way, she told me about the lead in Brooklyn. Supposedly, the real Wolf had been spotted at Brighton Beach. At least we weren’t giving up on him.

One of the black Bells was saddled up and waiting for us. Stacy and I got out of the sedan and walked side by side to the helicopter. I remember that the skies were bright blue and streaming with clouds that appeared to be shredding in the distance. A crisp smell of fall was in the air.

‘Nice day for a train wreck,’ Stacy said and grinned.

A shot rang out from the woods directly behind us. I had thrown back my head, laughing at Stacy’s little joke. I saw her get hit and blood spatter. I went down and covered her body.

Agents were running on to the tarmac. One of them fired in the direction of the sniper shot. Two came sprinting toward us, the others ran toward the woods, in the direction of the shots. I lay on Stacy, trying to protect her, hoping she wasn’t dead, but wondering if maybe the bullet had been meant for me.

You’ll never catch the Wolf, Pasha Sorokin had said in Florida. He will catch you. Now the warning had come true.

The briefing that night at the Hoover Building was the most emotional I had seen at the Bureau so far. Stacy Pollack was alive, but she was in a critical condition at Walter Reed. Most of the agents respected Stacy Pollack tremendously, and they couldn’t believe she’d been targeted. I still wondered if the bullet had been meant for me? She and I had been headed to New York to see about the Wolf; he was the chief suspect in the shooting. But did he have help? Was there someone inside the Bureau?

‘The other bad news,’ Ron Burns told the group that night, ‘is that our lead in Brighton Beach turns out to be bogus. The Wolf isn’t in New York, apparently he wasn’t there recently. The questions that we have to answer are, did he know we were going after him? If he knew, how did he know? Did one of us tell him? I promise that we will spare nothing to get the answers to those questions.’