Gary Ponzo - A Touch of Deceit

“So if you didn’t talk about your family, what else did you discuss?”

“Well, he says I should avoid stress.”

“Uh, huh. Did he tell you anything of practical value?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes even common sense needs to come from a different voice before you recognize it. Besides, I was thinking about taking some time off anyway. Julie deserves a vacation. We haven’t been anywhere that wasn’t job related in. . shit, probably five years.”

“How long have I been telling you the same thing? You’re burning out. Take some time and recharge your batteries. What else did the good doctor have to say? Maybe I can offer some insight.”

Nick sighed. “I’m going to get advice from you?”

“Hey, we’re coming up on our ten year anniversary together. Why wouldn’t you listen to me?”

“Pardon me, sir, aren’t you the guy who parked his car in the fast lane of the interstate at three in the morning to have sex with a stripper?"

“Yeah, so?”

“A stripper you’d met that night at a bachelor party?”

“Okay, so I’m a little impulsive. That doesn’t mean I’m not trustworthy.”

“It was your bachelor party.”

“All right, so I realized I was too young to be married and I subconsciously sabotaged my engagement. I was just a kid. That was before I even met you. Besides, I only told you that story so you could see how far I’ve come.”

Nick laughed. But when he looked back at Matt he knew he’d exposed an old wound. Matt’s fiancee was a fellow FBI agent he’d met at Quantico. They were both young, but beneath the smug veneer, Matt always lamented the loss of Jennifer Steele.

“How long did you guys date?”

“Three and a half years. She hated the city. Any city. She was a country girl at heart.”

“Where did she end up?” Nick asked.

“Somewhere out west. New Mexico, something like that.”

“All that time you were together she never mentioned the fact that she wanted to live in the country?”

Matt shrugged.

“I see,” Nick said. “You didn’t think she’d be able to resist your charm. You thought she’d be a city girl for the great Matt McColm.”

When Matt didn’t respond, Nick decided to let it go. They drove with the windows open, just the noise of the busy streets passing between them. After a while Matt took a bite of his apple and pointed to a cruddy white spot on Nick’s windshield. “You may not see the birds, partner, but they sure see you.”

Just outside the Beltway, amidst the undistinguished block structures of an industrial park, a lone brick building sat quietly behind an American flag and the shade of a royal oak. The Baltimore field office afforded the FBI quick access to the highway, yet was unobtrusive enough to be mistaken for a post office. Nick parked in the lot behind the building. It wasn’t a coincidence that the building itself prevented a clear view of the agents’ cars. Very few things the FBI did were by chance.

Matt gripped the doorknob to the employee entrance and waited for Nick to swipe a security pass through the receptor. A small black box blinked green and Matt yanked open the steel door to the administrative wing. They entered the building and nodded to secretaries who were busy talking into headsets and tapping keyboards. They made their way down a corridor with illuminated portraits of past FBI directors surrounded by ridged wallpaper with somber geometric patterns. The corridor emptied into the center of the building; an open space whose perimeter was comprised of mismatched fabric chairs. The bullpen. A waiting area for visitors who were summoned to the office by one or more of the agents. In the center of the bullpen sat a wooden table with magazines sprawled across the top.

When Nick and Matt saw who sat in the worn-out chairs, they both stopped. Ed Tolliver, Carl Rutherford, Mel Downing and Dave Tanner sat at the far end of the bullpen in deep conversation. They were known simply as “The Team.” The four of them with Nick and Matt made up an elite counterterrorism squad of agents who specialized in significant foreign threats to the United States. The three two-man teams circled the globe in pursuit of foiling terrorist activity with American targets. The best of the best.

J. Edgar himself began the specialist trend in 1934 when he authorized a special squad of agents to capture John Dillinger. It was this philosophy that produced the group of specialists now gathered in the bullpen of the Baltimore field office. It also meant that each team was rarely on the same continent, never mind the same building. You didn’t have to be a seasoned veteran to know that something was amiss.

As Nick and Matt approached, Dave Tanner stood and extended his arm. He tapped fists with Nick, then Matt. A tacit congratulation for capturing someone on the top-ten list. Then he got a close look at Matt’s left ear.

“What happened, Deadeye?” Tanner smiled. “You finally hook a woman with too much spunk for you?”

Matt gingerly touched his taped earlobe. “Gee, Dave, that’s uncanny. I’m beginning to think you’re some kind of investigator or something.”

Tanner didn’t seem to hear him. He reexamined Matt’s ear. “Rashid didn’t go down without a fight, did he?”

“Would you expect him to?” Matt said, not answering the question directly, but close enough for two spies who understood the language.

“Probably not,” Tanner said. “Let’s just hope it sticks.”

Nick picked up on Tanner’s tone. Next to Nick, Tanner was the Team’s senior agent and he always had his ear to the ground whenever a big prisoner was being interrogated.

“What do we know, Dave?” Nick asked.

“Nothing yet.”

Nick looked at the elite group. Before he could ask the question, Matt beat him to the punch.

“What are we all doing here, Dave? I mean the last time we were all in the same room together. .” he raised his eyebrows.

Tanner seemed to recognize the reference to a false intelligence report of a dirty bomb in Manhattan three years back. “I don’t know,” he said. “But Walt doesn’t call us all in without good cause.”

“The safe money is on Rashid,” Matt said. “What else could it be? I’m sure he hasn’t flipped, but I’ll bet we got something. Something that nets us Kharrazi, maybe?”

Tanner nodded vacantly, but if he knew something he wasn’t giving it away.

There was an edginess to the banter now in the bullpen as the Bureau’s finest minds spun their wheels in anticipation. A red ball meeting was urgent, so the hurry up and wait routine added to the anxiety.

Nick nodded toward the closed door at the end of the hallway. “Who’s he with?”

“No one,” Tanner said. “He’s on the phone. We’re waiting for him to call us in.”

From his chair, Ed Tolliver called out, “Hey, Matt, I hear that was the first time you were caught without your Glock since you were in the crib.”

This provoked a round of laughter that caused a few secretaries to look up and smile.

Matt gave a tight-lipped scowl and saluted Tolliver with his middle finger.

Another boisterous roar lit up the room.

“Knock it off,” a voice boomed from the end of the hallway. A broad-shouldered man with dark chocolate skin leaned out of his office with the door half-open.

“Bracco,” Walt Jackson said. “Get in here.”

Nick felt his stomach tighten as Jackson shut the door behind him. The big man disappeared and left an overt silence in his wake. Nick looked back at the team and saw something approaching compassion in their eyes. Matt seemed confused. He’d never been apart from his partner in a meeting before. Nick looked at Tanner and got an open-palmed shrug.