Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

"Anything?"

A pointless question because she would have called him-and every other of the multitude of law enforcers here tonight-if she'd spotted "anything."

A shake of the head.

Pointless questions weren't worth answering aloud, in Barb's opinion.

Bar-bar-a, he corrected himself. As she'd corrected him when they first started working together.

"Are they here yet?" Conradt nodded at the stage set up at the south end of the Sheep Meadow, referring to the speakers scheduled to begin at six-thirty: the two senators who'd flown into the city from Washington. They'd been working with the President on environmental issues, sponsoring legislation that made the green libbers happy and half the corporations in America mad enough to wring their necks over.

A concert would follow. He couldn't decide if most people were here for the music or the speeches. With this crowd, it was probably evenly divided.

"Just got here," Barbara said.

They both scanned for a while. Then Conradt said, "That acronym's weird. Juf-tee. They should just call it JFTE."

"Juf-tee's not an acronym."

"What do you mean?"

Barbara explained, "By definition, to be an acronym, the letters themselves have to spell an actual word."

"In English?"

She gave what he thought was a condescending sigh. "Well, in an English-speaking country. Obviously."

"So NFL isn't an acronym?"

"No, that's initials. ARC-American Resource Council. That's an acronym."

Conradt thought: Barbara is a…

"How about BIC?" he asked.

"I suppose. I don't know about brand names. What does it stand for?"

"I forget."

Their radios clattered simultaneously and they cocked their heads. "Be advised, the visitors are at the stage. Repeat, the visitors are at the stage."

The visitors-a euphemism for the senators.

The command post agent ordered Conradt and Barbara to move into position on the west side of the stage. They made their way forward.

"You know, this actually was a sheep meadow," Conradt told BIC. "The city fathers let them graze here until the thirties. Then they got moved to Prospect Park. Brooklyn. The sheep, I mean."

Barbara looked at him blankly. Meaning: What does that have to do with anything?

Conradt let her precede him up a narrow path.

There was a burst of applause. And shouts.

Then the two senators were up on the podium. The first one to speak leaned forward into the microphone and began talking in low, resonant tones, his voice echoing across the Sheep Meadow. The crowd was soon hoarse from shouting their mad approval every two minutes or so as the senator fed them platitudes.

Preaching to the converted.

It was then that Conradt saw something off to the side of the stage, moving steadily to the front, where the senators were standing, He stiffened then leapt forward.

"What?" Barbara called, reaching for her weapon.

"Juf-tee," he whispered. And grabbed his radio.

AT 7 P.M. Fred Dellray returned to the Manhattan Federal Building from visiting William Brent, aka Stanley Palmer, aka a lot of other names, in the hospital. The man was badly injured but had regained consciousness. He'd be discharged in three or four days.

Brent had already been contacted by the city lawyers about a settlement for the accident. Being hit by an NYPD police officer who fucks up with a squad car was pretty much a no-brainer. The figure being offered was about $50,000, plus medical bills.

So William Brent was having a pretty good couple of days, financially at least, being the recipient of both the settlement, tax-free, as a personal injury award, and the 100 Gs Dellray had paid him-tax-free, too, though solely because the IRS and New York Department of Revenue would never hear a whisper about it.

Dellray was in his office, savoring the news that Richard Logan, the Watchmaker, was in custody, when his assistant, a sharp African-American woman in her twenties, said, "You hear about that Earth Day thing?"

"What's that?"

"I don't know the details. But that group, Juf-tee-"

"What?"

"JFTE. Justice For the Earth. Whatever it is. The ecoterror group?"

Dellray set down his coffee, his heart pounding. "It's real?"

"Yep."

"What happened?" he asked urgently.

"All I heard is they got into Central Park, right near those two senators-the ones the President sent down to speak at the rally. The SAC wants you in his office. Now."

"Anybody hurt, killed?" Dellray whispered in dismay.

"I don't know."

Grim-faced, the lanky agent stood. He started down the hallway quickly. His variation of the lope, the way he usually walked. The gait came, of course, from the street.

Which he was now about to say good-bye to. He'd tracked down an important clue to help catch the Watchmaker. But he'd failed in the primary mission: to find the terror group.

And that's what McDaniel would use to crucify him… in his bright-eyed yet somber, energetic yet subtle way. Apparently he already had if the SAC wanted him.

Well, keep at it, Fred. You're doing a good job…

As he walked he glanced into offices, to find somebody to ask about the incident. But they were empty. It was after hours but more likely, he guessed, everybody'd sped to Central Park after Justice For the Earth was spotted. That was perhaps the best indicator that his career was over: Nobody had even called to request his presence in the operation.

Of course, there was another possible reason for that too-and for the summons to the SAC's office: the stolen $100K.

What the hell had he been thinking of? He'd done it for the city he loved, for the citizens he was sworn to protect. But did he actually believe he'd get away with it? Especially with an ASAC who wanted him out and who pored over his agents' paperwork like a crossword-puzzle addict.

Could he negotiate his way out of jail time?

He wasn't sure. With the fuckup over Justice For the Earth, his stock was real low.

Down one corridor of the nondescript office building. Down another.

Finally he came to the den of the special agent in charge. His assistant announced Dellray and the agent walked inside the large corner office.

"Fred."

"Jon."

The SAC, Jonathan Phelps, mid-fifties, brushed at his gray swept-back hair, pushing it a little further back, and motioned the agent into a chair across from his cluttered desk.

No, Dellray thought, cluttered wasn't the right word. It was ordered and organized; it was just layered in three inches of files. This was, after all, New York. There was a lot that could go wrong and needed mending by people like the SAC.

Dellray tried to read the man but could find no clues. He too had worked undercover earlier in his career. But that wouldn't buy Dellray any sympathy, that wisp of common past. That was one thing about the Bureau; federal law and the regulations promulgated thereunder trumped everything. The SAC was the only person in the room, which didn't surprise Dellray. Tucker McDaniel would be reading rights to terrorists in Central Park.

"So, Fred. I'll get right to it."

"Sure."

"About this Juf-tee thing."

"Justice For the Earth."

"Right." Another sweep through the opulent hair. It was as ordered after the fingers left as when they arrived.

"I just want to understand. You didn't find anything about the group, right?"

Dellray hadn't gotten this far by poking at the truth. "No, Jon. I blew it. I hit up all my usual sources and a half dozen new ones. Everybody I'm running now and a dozen I've retired. Two dozen. I didn't come up with squat. I'm sorry."

"And yet Tucker McDaniel's surveillance team's had ten clear hits."

The cloud zone…

Dellray wasn't going to trash McDaniel either, not even wing him a bit. "That's what I understand. His teams came up with a bucketful of good details. The personnel-this Rahman, Johnston. And code words about weapons." He sighed. "I heard there was an incident, Jon. What happened?"