Chris Jordan - Measure of Darkness

Watching through his pair of small Nikon binoculars, Kidder sees the lean, athletic man in the sharp suit exiting the big yacht, striding purposefully toward the security gate, obviously leaving the area. This is good. Every inch of the guy says “senior investigator,” and Kidder doesn’t need the complication of dealing with a professional, not when he has to find a way around the security cameras.

Using the Nikons, he follows the sharp dresser to the back of the marina parking lot, and manages to pick up the plate number on the gleaming Lincoln Town Car as it makes the turn. What is the guy, a glorified chauffeur? Would any self-respecting investigator have an uncool ride like that? Maybe he’s misread Mr. Sharp, maybe he’s an empty suit, but that can all be resolved later, when he runs the plate.

For now, keep to the task at hand. Kidder glasses the big yacht, notes again that it’s tied to the farthest of the floating piers, just inside the breakwater. Kidder grunts, having arrived at a solution. There’s more than one way to skin a cat-not that he’s ever skinned one, he sort of likes cats, cats are killers-and more than one way to board a fat-cat yacht.

One if by land, he thinks, grinning to himself, two if by sea.

Dane Porter perches at a sidewalk table in downtown D.C., seething. Her arms are firmly crossed, her brow furrowed. She has never been so humiliated. First she’s refused entrance to the FBI by a pudgy female with a smug attitude, and then she’s ordered to cool her heels-and heels is where the trouble began-at a Five Guys hamburger joint.

As if. A French fry hasn’t passed her lips in two birthdays, at least, which is part of how she maintains her lithe and youthful figure and a body mass index of nineteen. She’s in the open air, but every time the restaurant doors open she can feel deep-fried calories exuding through the atmosphere.

Twenty minutes, the voice on the cell had promised, and sure enough in twenty minutes exactly Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Monica Bevins comes striding up the sidewalk, all six foot plus of her, looking in every way formidable. Smart, no-nonsense hairdo, power pantsuit, black executive handbag on a long strap slung from her wide athletic shoulders. Ready to leap tall bureaucracies in a single bound, save the planet, no problem that can’t be solved.

“Attorney Porter?”

Dane stands, formally shakes the big lady’s hand, figuring that’s what you do with high-ranking feds, you tug the forelock and curtsy, or whatever.

Bevins towers over her.

“Let’s go inside, shall we?”

Dane opens her mouth to demur-she loathes the smell of frying cow-but AD Bevins is already moving through the door. A force-of-nature type, obviously, and used to assuming full command of any given situation. Bevins marches to a recently vacated table in the back of the place, sweeps away the peanut shells, slips into a seat, points Dane to a chair.

“You hungry? You want something?”

“I’m good, you?”

“I’d love a dog and fries but I’m dieting.”

“Oh?”

“I’m always dieting. Dieting sucks. You wouldn’t know because you’ve never weighed more than what, a hundred and five?”

Dane wants to tell the big lady that she, too, has to watch her weight, but knows from past experience that, given the exquisite petiteness of her figure, nobody wants to hear it. “So what are we doing here?” Dane asks. “I offered to take you to lunch at Cafe Milano. They have lovely salads.”

“Ambient noise,” the big woman intones, lowering her voice. “Lots of ambient at Five Guys.”

“You think we might get bugged?”

Bevins smiles and shrugs. “Better safe than sorry. Considering who may be involved.”

“There’s a ‘who’?” Dane says, bright with excitement. “What have you learned?”

“First, tell me what happened at the checkpoint. All I heard, Naomi Nantz’s personal attorney failed to pass security.”

“My heels,” Dane says, showing off her Pampili strap-ons. “This horrible woman made me take them off so she could measure. Said the maximum heel length allowed is three-and-a-half inches and mine were five, and I’d have to leave them with her if I wanted to enter the building. I said I wasn’t going to walk the halls of Justice in my bare feet and that was that.”

AD Bevins smiles, her eyes twinkling.

“Glad to amuse you,” Dane says tartly. “These heels cleared Homeland Security at Logan Airport. That should be good enough.”

“Logan will never be good enough,” Bevins responds darkly. “Flight 11? Mohamed Atta? Ancient history, but it still rankles.” The big woman grimaces and leans forward, her face inches from Dane’s, as she begins to speak very quietly, almost a murmur that very nearly blends into the bright background noise of the restaurant. Her breath is mouthwash-minty. “You first. I understand you bring news of my friend Randall Shane. What’s the latest?”

Keeping her voice equally low, Dane says, “In the last hour or so we confirmed that his client, Joseph Keener, did indeed have a child, possibly out of wedlock. All evidence of the child had been erased from the crime scene. Well, almost all evidence: one of our investigators found a sandbox under some leaves in the backyard, and a neighbor who will swear to the little boy’s existence, and to the fact that the mother is Chinese, possibly a Chinese national. It’s clear that the victim was secretive about the child, for reasons yet to be determined.”

“I never doubted it,” Bevins says.

“That the kid was real?”

The big woman nods. “Shane wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. He can be fooled-we all can, depending on circumstance-but not like that. Not Randall Shane.”

“What’s your take on the case against him? All the physical evidence indicates he killed the professor.”

“Crap. His own gun? A bloody shirt? Shane does the deed, then keeps blood evidence? No way.”

“So you believe he’s been set up?”

Bevins nods, keeping direct eye contact with Dane. “No doubt. There are national security implications I can’t discuss with you, and which I’m not fully briefed on myself, but you can take it to the bank. Shane is being framed.”

“By who?”

Bevins looks grim. “Unknown to me at present.”

“Why? What possible motive?”

“Also unknown.”

“Come on, who took him? You must have some idea. Some theory.”

“Lots of ideas, no evidence. But I’ve been making noise, letting it be known that one of the FBI’s own has been detained, and that if he’s harmed we’ll be all over it.”

Dane sits back. The place is packed, quite noisy, and nobody obvious is listening in to the conversation. “Can we speak normally for a bit? I can call you Monica?”

“Not if you worked for me, but you don’t. Monica is fine for civilians. As to the conversation, proceed. I’ll stop you if we need to go SV.”

“SV?”

“Sotto voce. With a hushed quality.”

“Got it. Is that FBI lingo now?”

Monica shakes her head, shows the hint of a smile. “Just me.”

“Interesting,” Dane says, filing it away under Personal Eccentricities. Because she works for Naomi Nantz the file has numerous entries, starting with the boss. “So. You and Shane go way back.”

Bevins nods, her eyes large. “All the way to boot camp at Quantico. I came in straight out of law school, he’d been on the FBI civilian side for a couple years as a technical expert, then decided to apply for Special Agent. We’re both big, so we got lumped together, sort of. I fell in love with him in about twenty minutes.”