Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

"Oh, yeah. Juf-tee made a move."

"Casualties?"

"We've got a video. You want to see it?"

Dellray thought, No, sir, you betcha I don't. The last thing I want to see is people hurt because I screwed up. Or Tucker McDaniel leading in a takedown team to save the day. But he said, "Sure. Roll it."

The SAC leaned over his laptop and hit some keys, then spun the unit around for Dellray to look at. He expected to see one of the typical Bureau surveillance videos, shot with a wide-angle lens, low contrast to pick up all the details, information at the bottom: location and by-the-second time stamp.

Instead, he was looking at a CNN newscast.

A smiling, coiffed woman reporter, holding a sheaf of notes, was talking to a man in his thirties, wearing a mismatched suit jacket and slacks. He was dark-complexioned and his hair was cropped short. He was smiling uneasily, eyes shifting between the reporter and the camera. A young redheaded boy with freckles, about eight years old, stood next to him.

The reporter was saying to the man, "Now, I understand your students have been preparing for Earth Day for the past several months."

"That's right," the man answered, awkward but proud.

"There are a lot of different groups here in Central Park tonight, supporting one issue or another. Do your students have a particular environmental cause?"

"Not really. They have a lot of different interests: renewable energy, risks to the rain forest, global warming and carbon dioxide, protecting the ozone layer, recycling."

"And who's your young assistant here?"

"This is a student of mine, Tony Johnston."

Johnston?

"Hello, Tony. Can you tell our viewers at home the name of your environmental club at school?"

"Uhm, yeah. It's Just Us Kids for the Earth."

"And those are quite some posters. Did you and your classmates make them yourself?"

"Uhm, yeah. But, you know, our teacher, Mr. Rahman"-He glanced up at the man beside him-"he helped us some."

"Well, good for you, Tony. And thanks to you and all your fellow students in Peter Rahman's third-grade class at Ralph Waldo Emerson elementary school in Queens, who believe you're never too young to start making a difference when it comes to the environment… This is Kathy Brigham reporting from-"

Under the SAC's stabbing finger, the screen went blank. He sat back. Dellray couldn't tell if he was going to laugh or utter some obscenity. "Justice," he said, enunciating carefully. "Just Us… Kids." He sighed. "Want to guess how much shit this office is in, Fred?"

Dellray cocked a bushy eyebrow.

"We begged Washington for an extra five million dollars, on top of the expense of mobilizing four hundred agents. Two dozen warrants were ramrodded through magistrates' offices in New York, Westchester, Philly, Baltimore and Boston. We had absolutely rock solid SIGINT that an ecoterror group, worse than Timothy McVeigh, worse than Bin Laden, was going to bring America to its knees with the attack of all time.

"And they turned out to be a bunch of eight- and nine-year-olds. The code words for the weapons, 'paper and supplies'? They meant paper and supplies. The communication wasn't going on in the cloud zone; it went on face-to-face when they woke up from naptime at school. The woman working with Rahman? It was probably little Tony because his goddamn voice hasn't changed yet… It's a good thing we didn't get SIGINT hits about somebody, quote, 'releasing doves' in Central Park because we might've called in a fucking surface-to-air missile strike."

There was silence for a moment.

"You're not gloating, Fred."

A shrug of the lanky shoulders.

"You want Tucker's job?"

"And where will he-?"

"Elsewhere. Washington. Does it matter?… So? The ASAC spot? You want it, you can move in tonight."

Dellray didn't hesitate. "No, Jon. Thanks, but no."

"You're one of the most respected agents in this office. People look up to you. I'll ask you to reconsider."

"I want to be on the street. That's all I've ever wanted. It's important to me." Sounding as un-street as any human being possibly could.

"You cowboys." The SAC chuckled. "Now you might wanta get back to your office. McDaniel's on his way here for a conversation. I'm assuming you don't want to meet him."

"Probably not."

As Dellray was at the door, the SAC said, "Oh, Fred, there's one other thing."

The agent stopped in midlope.

"You worked the Gonzalez case, didn't you?"

Dellray had faced down some of the most dangerous assholes in the city without his pulse speeding up a single beat. He now was sure his neck was throbbing visibly as the blood pumped. "The drug collar, Staten Island. Right."

"There was a little mix-up somewhere, it seems."

"Mix-up?"

"Yeah, with the evidence."

"Really?"

The SAC rubbed his eyes. "At the bust your teams scored thirty ki's of smack, a couple dozen guns and some big bricks of money."

"That's right."

"The press release said the cash recovered was one point one million. But we were getting the case ready for the grand jury and it looks like there's only one million even in the evidence locker."

"Mislogging a hundred K?"

The SAC cocked his head. "Naw, it's something else. Not mislogging."

"Uh-huh." Dellray breathed deeply. Oh, man… This is it.

"I looked over the paperwork and, it was funny, the second zero on the chain-of-custody card, the zero after the one million, was real skinny. You look at it fast, you could think it was a one. Somebody glanced at it and wrote the press release wrong. They wrote, 'one point one.' "

"I see."

"Just wanted to tell you, if the question comes up: It was a typo. The exact amount the Bureau collected in the Gonzalez bust was one million even. That's official."

"Sure. Thanks, Jon."

A frown. "For what?"

"Clarifying."

A nod. It was a nod with a message and that message had been delivered. The SAC added, "By the way, you did a good job helping nail Richard Logan. He had that plan a few years ago to take out dozens of soldiers and Pentagon people. Some of our folks too. Glad he's going away forever."

Dellray turned and left the office. As he returned to his own, he allowed himself a single nervous laugh.

Third graders?

Then pulled out his mobile to text Serena and to tell her that he'd be home soon.

LINCOLN RHYME GLANCED up to see Pulaski in the doorway.

"Rookie, what're you doing here? I thought you were logging in evidence in Queens."

"I was. Just…" His voice slowed like a car hitting a patch of soupy fog.

"Just?"

It was close to 9 p.m., and they were alone in Rhyme's parlor. Comforting domestic sounds in the kitchen. Sachs and Thom were getting dinner ready. It was, Rhyme noticed, well past cocktail hour and he was a bit piqued that nobody had filled up his plastic tumbler of scotch again.

A failing he now told Pulaski to remedy, which the young cop did.

"That's not a double," Rhyme muttered. But Pulaski seemed not to hear. He'd walked to the window, eyes outside.

Shaping up to be a dramatic scene from a slow-moving Brit drama, Rhyme deduced, and sipped the smoky liquor through the straw.

"I've kind of made a decision. I wanted to tell you first."

"Kind of?" Rhyme chided once again.

"I mean, I have made a decision."

Rhyme raised his eyebrow. He didn't want to be too encouraging. What was coming next? he wondered, though he believed he had an idea. Rhyme's life might have been devoted to science but he'd also been in charge of hundreds of employees and cops. And despite his impatience, his gruffness, his fits of temper, he'd been a reasonable and fair boss.

As long as you didn't screw up.