Kirk Russell - Redback

‘I’ll get Maria here.’

It turned out Hosfleter wasn’t going to be back in the Field Office until mid afternoon and Maria wasn’t at work. Marquez left a message on her cell phone, told her he’d done what she and he agreed earlier. ‘Call me as soon as you get this.’

He hung up and Desault said, ‘OK, well, we’re waiting anyway so let’s go get lunch. I was going to take you to lunch.’

They walked to a Japanese restaurant Desault liked. It was cool and dark inside and there were slender tall aquariums with tropical fish. They took seats at the bar where CNN played on a big flat screen above them. Anderson Cooper was in Iraq talking about aging military equipment. An old Sherpa plane used for ferrying men and materials in Iraq showed on the screen and Desault read the caption aloud, Workhorse of the Desert.

‘I once flew into a drug bust in one of those,’ Marquez said. ‘We busted the pilot and cut a deal with him to pretend he was still bringing in the load.’

The report went on about the aging fleet of C-23 Sherpas, the complex procurement process, and the need to revamp after five years of war. Cooper returned to a final shot of the Sherpa and said, ‘No other aircraft in the Iraq war has carried more.’

CNN switched to the Arizona condo fire and footage of the fire line showed. A reporter questioned a tree ecologist about what he thought the prolonged drought had done to Arizona trees, and then they cut to an FBI spokesman out of the Phoenix office who appealed to the public for help. An aerial view from a helicopter looked down on the remains of the condos and the burned cottonwoods along the canyon floor, and as the obligatory shot of a plane dropping fire retardant appeared on the screen Marquez and Desault ordered lunch.

Desault ate a bowl of donburi, explaining that he liked the chicken and egg version they did here. ‘At home my wife badgers me about my cholesterol, but here I sneak eggs. Man, I love eggs.’ When Desault finished eating he pushed the empty donburi bowl away and said, ‘Here, I’ve got something for you.’

He pulled out Marquez’s new creds, badge, and passport. Marquez checked out the maroon passport that back when Marquez was a Fed agent had been called a redback. He picked it up and then the black wallet holding the creds. The feel, the shape, the weight was still very familiar.

‘A couple of details about traveling that you need to know, John. When you get there you go straight to the airline counter and get your tickets. You won’t have a gun, so there’s no issue there, but you’ve got to wait through security like everyone else. When the transportation security guys see your badge they’ll wave you through. Since 9/11 more of these flights have Federal Air Marshals or FAMs onboard, and if you don’t meet them or other law enforcement officers ahead of time, hold your boarding pass and creds like this.’

Desault held the cred and boarding pass together so you could make out both.

‘Don’t wave it, but hold it so that if there’s a FAM seated already or another LEO, they should acknowledge you. But good chance you’ll be the only one on the plane.

‘You’ll fly business class. You’ll always be seated forward. That way you can sacrifice your life when the time comes. You need the leg room anyway. You’ve got a knee, right?’

‘Yeah, but it doesn’t bother me much.’

‘It has to, because I wrote that you can’t ever fly coach because of the knee.’

Marquez smiled and Desault’s phone rang. Desault scooped up the creds and the passport and said, ‘I hope to turn these over to you later today.’ He pointed at the TV. ‘I’ve got to take this outside where I can hear.’

Marquez paid for lunch and walked out into the sunlight. He watched Desault on the phone and waited. After Desault hung up, he said, ‘That was Jane Hosfleter, the agent I told you about who runs the ecoterrorism squad. She and another agent were at your stepdaughter’s workplace half an hour ago. Hosfleter wants a call from you right now. Let me give you her number.’

‘Tell Hosfleter I’ll bring her in by three, and that I won’t be calling her.’

Marquez started to say more, but instead turned and walked away.

After Maria chained her bike to a rack near the Ferry Building they walked south along the Embarcadero waterfront toward the ballpark. Wind carried fog and the fog stripped the brightness from the afternoon.

‘They’re already on to Gant, Maria. There’s an agent named Jane Hosfleter who heads an ecoterrorism squad out of the Field Office here. She’s been looking locally for Gant after getting a tip he was planning an arson fire that would dwarf anything the Earth Liberation Front has ever done.’

‘Did they come looking for me because they think I’m involved?’

‘You’re going to meet this Agent Hosfleter and you can ask her what she thinks.’

Maria was shocked that Hosfleter and another agent had visited where she worked. She was shocked and Marquez was angry.

‘Dad, you know there’s nothing wrong with 1+1Earth. You know that, right? There are two million members. Every time someone new joins that’s one more and eventually the goal is to have everybody, so one earth, one voice. It might sound dorky, but it’s about people working toward sustainability.’

‘Sure, but right now let’s stay on Gant. Tell me everything you can before we go to the FBI.’

‘OK, we went to Los Angeles for the weekend and it was supposed to be our big getaway, except that we got in a bad fight right after we got there Friday night. The next morning I went out to get us coffee and forgot my money, so went back for it. But the truth is I forgot it on purpose because I was jealous. Jack said he had to make some business calls and asked me to get us coffee and something to eat, but I thought that was because he wanted to call a woman named Lisa who lives in LA. I was starting to suspect things. I probably knew it was over between us, but I couldn’t accept it yet, so I faked the thing about forgetting my money because I wanted to catch him talking to her.’

She folded her arms.

‘This is a little embarrassing.’

‘I understand, but it’s human, Maria, and everyone at the table will get it.’

Maria looked out at the water. She looked worried and still shaken that the FBI showed up where she worked.

‘Jack travels a lot and I think he was hooking up with this Lisa whenever he was in LA. Anyway, when I went back to the hotel room to get money I came in quietly. He was on the phone. He was in the bathroom and pretty quickly I figured out that it was Ben Marsten, the founder of 1+1Earth. I could tell from the words he used. It’s a kind of a shorthand way they talk to each other. Jack was talking about a condo project in a canyon in Arizona. He called it Wonder. He talked about being “at Wonder” four days ago, and that made total sense because he disappeared the week before and I couldn’t get a hold of him. It was how our Friday night fight started. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been. On the phone to Marsten he said things like, the grade in the canyon is perfect and the wind funnels through there, so if the wind is blowing hard nothing will stop it. So last night when I was watching TV news and heard the name of the condominium complex it was obvious.’

‘And what did you think that morning?’

‘That they were just talking about something they thought shouldn’t have been built and predicting what was going to happen to it. I’ve heard them sit around and do that before. Anyway, I could tell the call was going to end, so I freed the hotel door and let it shut, and then called his name like I’d just come back for my money. He didn’t come out of the bathroom right away. Maybe he wondered if I overheard him. Maybe he realized I was already in the room and was debating what to do. But I didn’t wait for him to come out and see my face. I left and got the lattes, and when I came back he said, “Let’s just go home.”’