Jeffery Deaver - Edge

She disconnected and handed the phone back to me. Her hand seemed to be trembling. She asked Joanne something about plans for Thanksgiving, a non sequitur, and they had a conversation that I stopped listening to.

Traffic thinned and I sped up-but now that we weren’t being pursued I kept the needle no more than six miles an hour over the limit. My organization doesn’t use government license plates-all the vehicles were registered to one of a dozen corporations, commercial and nonprofit-so if a cop were to speed-gun us, he’d pull us over, which could be inconvenient and dangerous.

A whisper from Ryan: “Ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“It was two of them there at the house? Loving and his partner?”

“Probably. Could have been three or even more but Loving’s profile is working mostly with one partner.”

“Well, it’s just that… there were five agents there, plus me. We could’ve taken him.”

He was thinking of the plan I’d laid out earlier, to nail Loving.

I gave him a knowing look, then back to the road. “The agents in the car? They were out of commission.”

“True. But…”

I continued, “I considered a takedown but it wasn’t an advantageous playing field. I was worried he’d involve Mrs. Knox or maybe some other hostages from the neighborhood. He puts innocents into play all the time. It’s one of his trademarks.”

He said slowly, “I guess. I didn’t think about that.”

Ryan went back to riding shotgun. I glanced his way and concluded that he had no clue he was being conned.

As my mentor taught me and I teach duBois, you always ask yourself: What’s my goal and what’s the most efficient way to achieve it? Nothing else matters. That’s the rule in the business world, medicine, science, academia. And it’s the rule in the protection field, which is a business like any other, Abe Fallow regularly had said. Frustration, hurt feelings, vindictiveness, elation, pride… they’re all irrelevant.

You disappear. You don’t have feelings, you don’t have lust, you don’t get insulted. You’re nothing. You’re vapor .

Part of being efficient as a shepherd was calmly picking the best strategy to get your principals to do what you wanted. Some you have to order around; they’re more comfortable that way. Some you reason with.

Others you just plain trick.

The story I’d given Ryan Kessler about having him help me capture Henry Loving was nonsense. Though rooted in the truth-of course, I wanted Loving collared-it was just a strategy I was playing to win Ryan over. I’d decided on my approach after meeting him and learning, from duBois, details of the incident at the deli, from which he’d emerged a hero. The rescue of the customers and the ensuing love story were in themselves irrelevant to me; what was important was how the event had affected Ryan. A formerly active man, he was now off the street he loved, with a bad leg and relegated to investigating financial crimes, mostly from a desk, I supposed, and poring over balance sheets. I needed to play to where his heart was: his macho, cowboy side.

So I’d given him the role of partner. Since I’d make sure he’d never have to act out that part, you could make the argument that my strategy was condescending, even mean. In a way it was.

But: What’s the goal, what’s the most efficient way to achieve it?

I had to make him believe that I couldn’t take Loving on my own. I thought I’d been overacting but apparently he’d bought the whole story. This trick-exploiting the desires and weaknesses of the principals to get them to do as we wish-was called bait-and-switch. Abe Fallow had taught me the technique. It was, of course, inconceivable to enlist a principal to help us engage a hostile but the difference between the Detective Ryan Kessler I’d met at the front door just an hour and a half ago and the man sitting beside me was significant.

Just then I sensed him tense. I glanced in the rearview mirror. The, or a , beige car was behind us once again. It was going about our speed, which was only three miles over the limit now.

Maree saw us both looking backward as much as toward the road ahead. “What?” she asked, her addled voice resurrected as she sat up, eyes wide.

“There was a car that might have been following us earlier. Vanished for a while. It’s back now.”

Ryan was regarding me impatiently.

It was time for a decision.

I made one. Easing off the gas, I slowed, so that the beige car moved closer. Then, glancing behind me, I said firmly, “Go ahead, now! Shoot!”

RYAN KESSLER BLINKED, drawing his pistol. “Should I aim for the wheels? The driver?”

“No, no!” I said quickly. I hadn’t been speaking to him but to the woman who’d been looking into my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Maree, with your camera . Shoot the license plate.”

The woman had a serious telephoto lens mounted on her Canon. I wanted the tag of the car. It was too far behind to get a visual with naked eyes.

“Oh.” Ryan sat back. He seemed disappointed.

Maree played with the camera’s controls, spun around and shot, with the click-buzz of single-lens reflex cameras. I wondered, with the digital models, like they all were nowadays, if that was just sound effects and speakers.

A moment later she was looking at the screen. “I can read the plate.”

“Good job. Hold on a minute.” I called Freddy and told him I needed a tag run immediately.

Maree gave me the letters and numbers and I recited them into the phone.

Ryan was looking around, gripping his gun again.

Fewer than sixty seconds later, Freddy came back on. He was laughing. “Registered to one Jimmy Chung. Owns a restaurant in Prince William. His son’s driving around, dropping off flyers for the restaurant. I got his number and talked to the kid. He said he’s behind a gray SUV-that needs washing, by the way-and it looks like somebody just took his picture, which he’s not too happy about. They have a good menu, Corte. The General Tso’s chicken is a specialty. Was there really a General Tso?”

“Thanks, Freddy.”

I disconnected and noted the passengers were staring at me.

“It’s safe, there’s no problem. Chinese food delivery.”

After a moment Maree said, “Let’s order out.”

A fragment of a laugh from her sister. Ryan seemed not to hear.

Now that the vehicle had turned out to be harmless, I relaxed somewhat and fell into the rhythm of the road. I enjoyed driving. I never had a car as a teenager. But my father, a lawyer for an insurance company and a good one, made sure I learned to drive safely and well. Once you realized that most of the other people on the road were idiots-he knew this firsthand from his job-and took appropriate precautions you could enjoy the process of tooling around the roads quite a bit.

He himself drove a Volvo, claiming it was the safest thing on the highway.

In any event I liked the act of driving. I wasn’t sure why. It certainly wasn’t speed. I was quite a cautious driver. Maybe it was that, as a shepherd, when I was driving, my principals and I were moving targets and therefore, incrementally at least, safer. Though not always, of course. Abe Fallow had been captured by Henry Loving and killed during a convoy transport. The chicken truck incident in North Carolina.

I pushed the thought away.

At the moment we were on a road heading west, dancing in and out of Fairfax and Prince William counties. We moved past the Tudor turrets of strip malls with their assembly-line chain outlets and busy fast food franchises, manned by teen clerks counting down the hours, the glistening humps of used cars in rows, their features touted with exclamation points, doctors’ offices and insurance agencies, the occasional antiques store in a fifty-year-old single-story building, gun shops, ABC stores. A sagging barn or two. Some high-rise wannabes in office parks.