Jeffery Deaver - Edge

Grit …

“The primary?” he asked, looking over the expanse of fields, with a dozen highways beyond.

“Loving warned him off. But I’ve got some good leads. My associate’s following them up right now.” I thanked him again for everything and we agreed to stay in touch. If he ever wanted to leave his organization, I’d hire him in a minute. Though he didn’t seem the sort to run away from a threat as a first impulse, which is what we shepherds are trained to do.

I pushed off from the fire truck, which I was leaning on for support, and put some weight on my foot with the raw toe.

Damn, it hurt. I exhaled softly. Thinking, if I actually had had information about Amanda’s whereabouts, how long could I have held out before I talked? I would have talked, of course. There are differing opinions about whether torture leads to valid information. But one thing it definitely leads to is talking. People may be intent on remaining silent but in the face of pain they will talk.

I returned to my car and sat in the driver’s seat, eyes closed, and let the tears from the stinging pepper spray flow, which for some reason eased the pain. Bottled water didn’t do much but tears helped.

Fifteen minutes later I got an email. I wiped my face and, squinting, read what Claire duBois had sent in response to my request not long before.

As I read it I was thinking of the phenomenon of endgame.

Although the concept can apply to many games, it is most common in chess, which is where I study the subject exhaustively.

As the middle game draws to a close and the endgame approaches, a fundamental change occurs in the players’ attitudes, and, I swear, a macabre eeriness descends over the board. The surviving pieces take on different roles and importance. For instance, pawns become vital; not only can they move to the opponent’s first line and become queens but they provide important defensive barriers that limit the other player’s moves. Similarly the king spends most of the game in hiding, protected by his minions. But in endgame, he often must go on the offensive himself.

Each move is intensified. The odds of a single error leading to defeat rise dramatically as the match draws to a close.

Endgame is rife with improvisation, desperation, flashes of brilliance and instances of fatal panic.

There are many surprises too.

I stared at my notes from Amanda and at Claire’s email for some minutes. As Pogue had said earlier, I’d had all the bits of information as to why Amanda was the target; I just hadn’t put them together… until now. I considered my endgame strategy and I composed another email that began with a stern warning to keep the contents absolutely secret. The subject had to do with the Saturday course that Amanda Kessler took at a local community college, taught by a part-time professor named Peter Yu. He worked during the week for a software developer, Global Software Innovations, and it was he who distributed to Amanda and the other students beta copies of software to try out-like the picture editing program that Amanda had given Maree.

But the most interesting fact about Yu was that GSI did more than create commercial and consumer software. The company-and Yu’s specialty, as it turned out-happened to be developing military programs for cutting-edge battlefield imagery analysis. The software for those applications was classified at the highest level.

I finished my email and read through it once more.

My finger hovered for a moment. Then I clicked SEND and sent my words into the ozone.

AT 9:00 A.M. my protégée and I were sitting in one of my organization’s SUVs on a sedate street in Fair Oaks, Virginia, a section of Fairfax.

“And?” I asked Claire duBois, as she was moving her thumb to the DISCONNECT button on her BlackBerry. She’d been calling about Ryan Kessler.

“He’s doing okay. The doctor said he was stable. I never understood those medical condition terms. Stable. Serious. Critical. They’re like the Homeland Security threat warnings. Orange, yellow, green, taupe. Or whatever they are. Is that really helpful? I don’t think so. Somebody sits in a room and thinks those up. Our taxpayer dollars.” She tucked her trimmed, shiny brunette strands behind an ear. The gesture was silent; she wasn’t wearing the jingling charm bracelet this morning. For safety’s sake. Jewelry and tac ops don’t mix.

Ryan was in a federal detention hospital. Amanda, Joanne and Maree were tucked away in the new safe house, with Ahmad and the clone who’d collected Amanda last night watching over them.

DuBois and I were on the trail of the primary.

I returned to our surveillance. The houses around us reminded me of Ryan Kessler’s place. About every fifth one was, if not identical, then designed from the same mold. We were staring through bushes at a split-level colonial, on the other side of a dog-park-cum-playground. It was the house of Peter Yu, the part-time professor of computer science at Northern Virginia College and a software designer for Global Software Innovations. The company was headquartered along the Dulles “technology corridor,” which was really just a dozen office buildings on the tollway, housing corporations whose claim to tech fame was mostly that they were listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

I was watching through binoculars, observing some ambiguous movement in the backyard of the house.

I lifted the Motorola and asked Freddy, who was parked nearby, “We ready to move in?”

“I’m not sure what I’m looking at.”

I squinted. “It’s him. I’m sure.”

“You’re younger than I am, son. The eyes are the first to go. Well, not the first, unfortunately, but pretty close. Hold on, our surveillance boys’re calling… Okay, there’re two of them at the house.”

“I see the second one,” I told the agent.

“Some muscle, looks like. You in armor?”

I glanced toward Claire duBois’s navy blue blazer, specifically her chest. It wasn’t the first time, I had to admit, but the circumstances now were such that there was nothing remotely sexual about the look. I was checking that the thick nylon plates Velcroed around her were secure. I knew that my American Body Armor vest was.

“We’re good,” I told Freddy.

“All right. Let’s go. My guys and gals tell me they have a visual on the evidence. Oh, and the muscle’s armed. Autoloader. In a hip holster.”

“We’re moving.” I disconnected.

I said to duBois, “You won’t need it but keep your jacket unbuttoned.”

“Okay.”

The “it” was her Glock.

In fact, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t need it. But I remembered the men in the old military facility in Leesburg. I remembered Henry Loving. I knew from my studies-history, not my other degrees-that people can behave unpredictably at desperate times. Besides, even though we believed there were only two individuals here, this entire job had been fraught with surprise.

Our SUV and four other cars accelerated fast and skidded up over the grass on Professor Peter Yu’s property, tearing up the lawn and destroying shrubs. I’m told that this dramatic entrance, which you’d think was made up by TV-movie directors, is in fact the most efficient way to approach a suspect. It’s all about intimidation.