James Grippando - Need You Now

I could tell that she had, but she paused to measure her response. “Your instincts were correct,” she said. “BAQ is not a random sequence of letters. It stands for Operation BAQ.”

“What is Operation BAQ?”

“If I answered that question, I would have to turn in my badge.”

“If it’s a matter of negotiation, I’m prepared to share the name of a certain account holder at BOS/Singapore.”

“Manu Robledo,” she said.

“You know about him?”

“It’s been a productive morning,” she said. “At this point, I’m confident that I know more about Robledo than you do.”

“Then I presume you’re going to arrest him.”

“For what?”

“For putting a gun to my head and threatening to send me the way of Gerry Collins if he doesn’t get back the money he lost.”

She shifted, uneasy. I sensed that the bureau’s party line was coming, and that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. “As of this point in time, the FBI doesn’t have sufficient evidence to substantiate as a matter of fact that the attack took place.”

As I’d expected: the party line. “You disappoint me, Agent Henning.”

“I told you when it happened that you should have called me immediately. You even washed the powder burns away from your neck. There’s no physical evidence.”

“You could at least bring him in for questioning.”

“I’ve told you all I can about the FBI’s position on Robledo. There’s nothing more to say.”

I felt the need to convince her otherwise, to demonstrate that our mutual exchange of information was still worth her while. The memo was my best angle.

“BAQ is a Treasury operation, isn’t it,” I said.

I didn’t expect her to confirm it, but clearly my educated guess had piqued her interest. “Why would you say that?” she asked.

“It’s a fairly easy deduction. My tech guy did his best to decode all the data in Lilly’s files. He was able to extract the letters BAQ from a memo that was encrypted on the order of a national security memorandum. You just told me that BAQ is a government operation of some sort.”

“I didn’t say it was a Treasury operation.”

“You didn’t have to. The only government memorandum Lilly ever mentioned to me was a Treasury memo stating that she and BOS/Singapore represented the most promising lead in the search for the Cushman money.”

“How would she know about a memo?” asked Andie.

“Lilly got the same threat I did: hand over the Cushman money or die. She told him she didn’t know anything about it, but he showed her proof that she was lying.”

“He showed her the memo?”

“Yes.”

She seemed to credit what I was saying, but I could see her concern as the realization sank in: in the world of quid pro quo, she owed me.

“I want to see the memo,” I said, getting right to the point.

“I can’t do that.”

“Lilly has already seen it. Why can’t I?”

“My guess is that she didn’t see the classified version.”

“There are two versions?”

“One version has all the classified information concealed. There are black bars on the page wherever anything has been redacted.”

“I want to see the classified, unredacted version of the Treasury Department’s Operation BAQ memorandum.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Sorry you feel that way,” I said. “I suppose I could take the encrypted file to someone who knows how to decode it. Maybe the Russian embassy can help me.”

“That’s not funny,” she said.

“I’m not laughing,” I said.

“You’re messing with treason.”

“You’re messing with my life and my family.”

Neither of us had raised our voice, but I could feel the heat from the exchange.

“Clearly, the smart thing is for us to work together,” Andie said.

“Agreed. I’m offering to hand over the encrypted file I have in my possession and to keep quiet about it. But I want to know what’s in it.”

“You’re asking too much.”

“You’re giving too little.”

Andie did not respond. I signaled to Connie that it was time to leave. “Think about it,” I told Andie as I opened the door. Connie exited first, and I followed. “But think fast,” I said. “I instructed my tech guy to be very careful with that encrypted file, but accidents do happen. I’d hate for him to hit the wrong button and send the thing viral over the Internet.”

I closed the door, leaving Agent Henning alone in the room to consider the proposal on the table.

L illy didn’t answer my call to her cell phone, which came as no surprise. I sent her an e-mail and hoped she would bite:

The Treasury memo was in your files. Give me a chance to prove you’re innocent. Meet me at Puffy’s, 2 p.m. today.

The message was clear enough-surely she would realize that “the Treasury memo” was the one with her name in it-and I thought I’d struck the right tone by offering to help. Puffy’s was familiar territory, the Tribeca bar we’d stumbled out of singing I need your cow . Still, I had to catch my breath when she actually showed up.

“You came,” I said, stating the obvious.

Lilly slid into the booth, no kiss or hug to greet me. None was expected, but seeing her so tense, seated on the other side of the table, made me wish that I could erase the last four days and start over.

She unbuttoned her winter coat but left it on. “I can’t stay long.”

She was trying so hard not to be the Lilly I knew that it came across as robotic. I would have liked to melt some of the ice, but there was a glacier in the room, and I didn’t have ten thousand years.

“This won’t take long,” I said.

“Can I see the memo?”

“First, there’s something I need to know. How did it get into your BOS files?”

“I had no idea it was there until I got your e-mail.”

That made sense, and I realized that it was at such a high level of encryption that she wouldn’t have been able to read it even if she had known it was there. But I had to discount my assessment of everything Lilly said by a serious I-want-you-back factor.

“Patrick, are you okay?”

Just seeing Lilly could do terrible things to my ability to focus. “Yeah, sorry.”

“So now can I see the memo, please?”

“The short answer to that question is yes.”

She was wary, the way most people react if they’re smart enough to know that the long answer always swallows up the short answer.

“You don’t have it, do you?” she said.

I drew a breath, and it was hesitation enough for Lilly to get up to leave. “You are such a liar, Patrick.”

“Lilly, wait. I do have it.”

She stopped, threw me a look that said You’d better not be lying , and slid back into the booth.

A waitress came, and we ordered coffee. Decaf for Lilly. The aversion to caffeine told me that she hadn’t been sleeping well, which added to my own sense of regret.

“Lilly, I am really sorry that-”

“Stop,” she said. “Let’s not go there.”

“Right,” I said, pulling myself back together. “Here’s the deal with the memo.”

I paused, not sure where to start. Our talk outside the building after the meeting in Barber’s office had ended in disaster, mostly due to the way I’d skirted around my involvement with the FBI.

“Go ahead,” she said. “You were saying.”

I leaned closer, as if to emphasize that I was sharing a secret. “Do you remember last time we spoke, when I said I went to Singapore as part of an official investigation?”

She rolled her eyes. Clearly, it wasn’t a pleasant memory. “Yes.”

“It wasn’t an investigation for some warring faction of the Santucci family,” I said, using her words. “It was for the FBI.”