Douglas Preston - Gideon's Corpse

Fordyce gave a polite tap on the open door. All his professional instincts told him that this was not going to be a good meeting.

The man turned, held up a finger, kept talking. Fordyce waited. He didn’t know Millard, hadn’t even heard the man’s name before, but that didn’t surprise him in an investigation like this, with everyone jockeying for inches of turf. And someone had to take charge on a local level—things had become increasingly chaotic, with many people in charge and no clear lines of command.

He studied Millard while waiting for him to get off the phone. He was a good-looking man in a WASPy sort of way: high cheekbones, fine green eyes, mid-fifties, a distinguished shock of gray hair at the temples, athletic and lean. He had an easygoing face and a mild-mannered voice. Fordyce hoped it would extend to his personality. But he doubted it.

Millard remained on the phone for a few more minutes, hung up, then gave Fordyce a smile. “Can I help you?”

“Agent Fordyce. I was told you wished to see me.”

“Ah, yes. Name’s Millard. Please, sit down.”

They shook hands. Fordyce sat in the only other chair in the cubicle.

“This is a unique investigation,” Millard said, his voice pleasant, even melodious. “We’ve got something like twenty-two law enforcement and intelligence agencies directly involved, along with sub-agencies and black agencies. Things get confusing.”

Fordyce nodded in a noncommittal way.

“I think you would be the first to admit that things have gone seriously off-track in the New Mexico branch of the investigation. But now Sonnenberg’s been sent back east, and I’ve been appointed by Dart to take charge of all aspects of the investigation. No more confusion.”

A pleasant smile.

Fordyce smiled back, waited.

Millard leaned forward, clasping his hands. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. Your involvement in this case has been less than successful. You failed to identify your former partner as a suspect until it was pointed out to you, you failed to arrest him at the movie set, failed to locate him in the mountains, failed to apprehend him when he entered Los Alamos, and then allowed him to escape down to the river. Your people can’t find his dead body—if in fact he did drown. You’ve been in law enforcement long enough to know that this is not an acceptable record, especially in a case like this, with a city at risk, the entire country in a panic, the president and Congress having a fit, and most of Washington shut down.”

He paused, folding his hands. His voice had remained quiet and pleasant. Fordyce said nothing. There was, in fact, nothing to say. It was all true.

“I’m going to move you out of the field and into the office, here, where your new responsibilities will be R and A.”

R&A. Research and analysis. That was the fancy term the FBI used for that most odious of jobs, given to new agents as a sort of rite of passage. Research and analysis . He thought back to his own early days in the Bureau, one of a hundred agents parked in a windowless basement room, loaded up with stacks of gray metal cabinets full of files to read, search, and summarize. An investigation like this generated literally tons of paper every day—wiretap transcripts, financial records, emails by the bushel, interrogations, and much more—all of which had to be digested and summarized, with the relevant facts plucked out of the mass of useless information like poppy seeds tweezered out of a soggy cake…

“But before you assume your new responsibilities, take the weekend off,” Millard said, breaking Fordyce’s chain of thought. “You’ve been killing yourself. Frankly, you look like hell.”

Another friendly smile and then Millard rose, extended his hand. “Are we okay?”

Fordyce nodded, taking the hand.

“Thanks for being a sport,” he said, giving Fordyce a friendly pat on the back as he exited the office.

Fordyce paused outside the door of the warehouse, gulping air as he walked toward his car. He felt slightly sick. His career was over. Millard was right: he had fucked up big time. Once again, he felt a swelling of black anger at Gideon Crew.

But along with the anger came a certain uneasiness. Again. It always came down to two things. The biggest was Gideon leaving incriminating emails on his work computer. The more Fordyce had seen Gideon in action, the more he’d realized the guy was as smart as hell. The computer wasn’t the only evidence against him, apparently: they had found a Qur’an and prayer rug in his cabin, along with some DVDs of radical Islamic preachers. But those discoveries, too, gave him pause. They seemed lame. Because at the same time, the CIA hadn’t been able to break into Gideon’s RSA-encrypted, security-protected home computers, despite the most sophisticated hacking tools in the toolkit of the CIA. A guy that careful, and that good, would not leave jihadist DVDs lying around.

The second was that Gideon had sabotaged the plane, putting himself at risk. Sure, if he were a jihadist he’d be looking for martyrdom. But he remembered Gideon during that flight; the guy was genuinely terrified.

He paused. If Gideon had been dirty, Fordyce felt sure he would have sensed it, felt something was wrong. But he hadn’t. The guy felt genuine.

Maybe he hadn’t fucked up, after all. Maybe everyone else had. Maybe Gideon had been framed.

With a muttered curse, he resumed walking to his car. He had his gun, badge, and a few days to satisfy himself whether or not Gideon really was guilty.

Fordyce consulted the GPS built into his pool vehicle. The house was in a cul-de-sac, with pine forest and mountains rising up behind. It was well after midnight but the lights were on, the blue flicker of a TV seen through the gauzy curtains. The Novaks were still up.

This was clearly one of the prime lots of the suburban neighborhood: the last house on a dead-end lane, bigger than the others. Not to mention the Mercedes in the driveway.

He drove in, blocking the Mercedes, then got out and rang the bell. A moment later a woman’s voice asked who it was.

“FBI,” said Fordyce. He unfolded his shield, showed it through the narrow side window.

The woman opened the door immediately, almost breathlessly. “Yes? What is it? Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” said Fordyce, stepping inside. “Sorry to be bothering you at such a late hour.” She was a fine-looking woman, very fit, trim little waist and a shapely butt, great skin, wearing white slacks and a cashmere sweater with pearls. Funny outfit for midnight television.

“Who is it?” came an irritated voice from what appeared to be the living room.

“FBI,” the woman called back.

The TV went off immediately and Bill Novak, the head of security in Crew’s department, emerged.

“What is it?” he asked matter-of-factly.

Fordyce smiled. “I was just apologizing to your wife for the late hour. I have a few questions of a routine nature. It won’t take long.”

“No problem,” said Novak. “Come in, please, sit down.”

They went into the dining room. Mrs. Novak turned on the lights. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

“Nothing, thanks.” They all sat down at the table and Fordyce looked around. Very tasteful. Expensive. Some old silver on the dining table, a few oil paintings that looked like the real thing, handmade Persian rugs. Nothing outrageous—just expensive.

Fordyce took out a notebook, flipped over the pages.

“Do you need my wife?” Novak asked.

“Oh yes,” said Fordyce. “If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

They seemed eager to please, not nervous. Maybe they didn’t have anything to be nervous about.