D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“You said you were dropping it,” Pell replied. “I had to.”

“This Sarah Burns thing is big. If it had been any other agent, I would have let them lead the investigation, but you –” Carl scrunched his face, wrinkling his thin lips and curling his sharp nose. “I don’t have any faith in you. You’re a screw-up and there was no way I would trust you with a case like this.”

“You’re a bastard,” Pell said.

Carl smirked, leaning down close enough that Pell could smell a recently chewed breath mint and said, “I’ve been looking for a way to get rid of you for years, and thanks to your own stupidity, I not only get to fire you, but I’ll get to see your sorry ass rot in jail too. Just perfect.”

Even though Pell’s mind was cloudy from the drugs, his face heated up, “Fuck you, Carl.”

Carl chuckled.

“We also went to see old man Andleman. Do you want to know what he told us?” Carl asked.

Pell stared back at him blankly, waiting.

“Nothing!” Carl said. “We found the poor old bastard on his floor, almost dead from a stroke.”

“What?”

“That’s right. It seems like where ever you went yesterday you left a body.”

“He was fine when I left there.”

“What did the two of you talk about?” Carl asked.

He thought about this revelation for a moment. If they couldn’t talk to Maurice, they didn’t know about Camilla Haywood. Chris would have more time now. “The weather.”

Carl bared his small teeth in a feigned smile. “You’re a funny guy, Pell – a real fucking comedian. You agree, Irving?”

Irving nodded.

Carl continued, “This isn’t the time for jokes. We’ve got to assume this virus is real and that they are about to release it. We need to do something. Fast. Right now, we’re at a dead end. Maurice Andleman was our best hope for some answers.”

“Then I guess you either better start doing some more digging and hope you come up with something, or you might want to let me get my lawyer, and we can all sit down and talk,” Pell said.

“You think we’re going to deal with garbage like you?”

“Yes, and you know what, Carl?”

“What?” Carl said through clenched teeth.

“If I do talk, it’s not going to be to you. I want to talk to Arthur Kent. I’m sure he would like to know how you handled this thing. You forced me to take matters into my own hands. You let a twenty-year-old grudge hinder an investigation that could be the most important that the Bureau has ever worked on. I’m sure Director Stevens will be interested in this.”

Carl scowled as he grabbed Pell by his thin hospital gown, and pulled him up to a sitting position. The wires attached to his heavily bandaged chest under the flimsy garment fell off. Alarms immediately squealed from the stacks of equipment. “You’re done, Pelletier. Nobody’s going to believe you. You’re going to die in jail, buddy.”

On the verge of losing consciousness, Pell could distinctly see Irving’s face. He stood off to the side, but this last exchange had brought an undeniable smile to his normally stone cold facade. Odd, Pell thought as the nurse burst into the room accompanied by a doctor.

“What the hell are you doing!” The doctor screamed.

Carl let Pell’s limp body drop back down onto the bed.

“He came at me,” Carl said.

“That’s ridiculous. Look at the state of him. Get out and do not enter this room again unless you have direct approval from me.”

The nurse quickly reattached the monitoring equipment and evaluated Pell’s condition.

“This is just great,” Carl said to Irving. “I want you to stay here until he comes to again. As soon as he does, let me know.”

Again Irving nodded as they stormed out of the room.

Pell watched everything unfold. He felt detached from his body, as if he were having an out of body experience. No doubt Carl would be back. This time Pell was not going to let him get the better of him. He was not going to walk away silently. He was going to bring the fight to Carl. As soon as he could get out of this hospital bed that was.

Arthur was scheduled to have a lunch briefing with the Director of the Cyber Division but Carl’s call had forced him to cancel lunch. He was never able to plan anything ahead of time – crises always cropped up. Anyway, he didn’t know Carl to cry wolf.

Nestled behind wooden panels in the walls of his richly appointed office were several different telecommunications devices, each capable of providing instant and absolutely secure communications. The panels were operated by a master control located on his desk. With everything shut, the office resembled what you would expect in a typical Fortune 500 CEO’s office – thick Oriental rugs, a heavy oak desk, real oil paintings of his FBI predecessors – including the great J. Edgar himself – a credenza with pictures of his wife, kids and grandchild. When he opened up all of the panels, it looked like mission control. He sat in front of the personal video-conferencing unit. Several lamps illuminated the office. The shades had been drawn, as they were most of the time. Why Executive Directors got offices with windows was beyond him. Spying wasn’t always high tech bugs, or moles, sometimes it was a simple set of binoculars. The view out his window wasn’t so great anyway – unless downtown DC could be considered scenic.

He entered his passcodes. The retinal scanner on top of the unit scanned his brown eyes, confirming his identity. The split-screen came up and he could see himself on one half. The other half was blank until he connected. There was an option to only view the person he was calling, but he liked being able to see himself. He stared into the tiny camera mounted on top of the monitor, and made sure that he looked presentable before selecting the remote unit for connection. His dark brown hair was starting to fleck grey. Time for another visit to his barber for some dye. It was a running joke at the Bureau – behind his back of course. Fifty–six-year-old men don’t naturally have thick, grey-free hair but then again, most men his age couldn’t bench press two hundred forty pounds.

He waited patiently while the link was established. Carl Moscovitz’s image appeared in a window on the blank side of the screen. The image froze until the ‘synched’ icon appeared at the bottom of the screen and Carl spoke. “Hi, Arthur. Sorry for the short notice.”

“That’s okay, Carl. What’s up?”

“Agent Paul Pelletier. We caught him last night. Actually, he showed up at a local emergency room. Wounded, damn near dead.”

“So did he shoot that cop?” Arthur received daily summaries of Bureau activity, ordered by importance from the bevy of analysts squirreled away on the second floor. He had read about agent Pelletier earlier this morning.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus Christ, how is he?”

“Pell?”

“No, the cop,” Arthur said. How the hell did one of his agents do something like this? He could see the headlines, “Rogue FBI agent shoots local cop.” More bad PR.

“He’ll make it. Probably get to take an early retirement,” Carl responded. “But it gets more bizarre.”

Arthur’s expression didn’t change. He had learned years ago to control his emotions. “Go on,” he said.

“The brains behind this virus, Sarah Burns, her college mentor lived in New Hampshire. That’s why Pell was there. He was the only lead we had. The old guy stroked out after Pell talked to him and before we could. He’s not going to make it. If he does, he’ll be a vegetable.”

Arthur shook his head. His empty stomach twisted – not from hunger.

Carl continued, blinking too frequently. “I think he told Pell something.”