Nelson Demille: The Lion's Game

He picked up the phone and speed-dialed Kennedy Tower first. As the phone rang, he wondered if he shouldn't just tell them what he really felt in the deepest part of his guts-something is very wrong here.

I was sitting now with my colleagues: Ted Nash, CIA Super Spook; George Foster, FBI Boy Scout; Nick Monti, NYPD good guy; and Kate Mayfield, Golden Girl of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We'd all found swivel chairs from unoccupied desks, and everyone had a ceramic coffee mug in his or her hand. I really wanted a donut-a sugar donut-but there's this thing with cops and donuts that people find funny for some reason, and I wasn't going to have a donut.

We all had our jackets off, so we could see one another's holsters. Even after twenty years in law enforcement, I find that this makes everyone's voice a couple of octaves lower, even the women.

Anyway, we were all leafing through our folders on this alleged defector, whose name was Asad Khalil. What cops call the folder, by the way, my new friends call the dossier. Cops sit on their asses and flip through their folders. Feds sit on their derrieres and peruse their dossiers.

The information in the folder is called the book on the guy, the information in the dossier is called, I think, the information. Same thing, but I have to learn the language.

Anyway, there wasn't much in my folder, or their dossier, except a color photo transmitted by the Paris Embassy, plus a real short bio, and a brief sort of This-is-what-we-think-the-prick-is-up-to kind of report compiled by the CIA, Interpol, British MI-6, the French Surete, and a bunch of other cop and spook outfits around Europe. The bio said that the alleged defector was a Libyan, age about thirty, no known family, no other vitals, except that he spoke English, French, a little Italian, less German, and, of course, Arabic.

I glanced at my watch, stretched, yawned, and looked around. The Conquistador Club, in addition to being an ATTF facility, doubled as an FBI field office and CIA hangout and who knew what else, but on this Saturday afternoon, the only people there were us five of the ATTF team, the duty officer whose name was Meg, and Nancy Tate out front. The walls, incidentally, are lead-lined so that nobody outside can eavesdrop with microwaves, and even Superman can't see us.

Ted Nash said to me, "I understand you might be leaving us."

I didn't reply, but I looked at Nash. He was a sharp dresser, and you knew that everything was custom-made, including his shoes and holster. He wasn't bad-looking, nice tan, salt-and-pepper hair, and I recalled quite distinctly that Beth Penrose got a little sweaty over him. I had convinced myself that this was not why I didn't like him, of course, but it certainly added fat to the fires of my smoldering resentment, or something like that.

George Foster said to me, "If you give this assignment ninety days, then whatever decision you make will be given serious consideration."

"Really?"

Foster, as the senior FBI guy, was sort of like the team leader, which was okay with Nash, who was not actually on the team, but drifted in and out if the situation called for CIA, like it did today.

Foster, dressed in his awful blue-serge-I'm-a-Fed suit, added, rather bluntly, "Ted's leaving on overseas assignment in a few weeks, then it will only be us four."

"Why can't he leave now?" I suggested subtly.

Nash laughed.

By the way, Mr. Ted Nash, aside from hitting on Beth Penrose, had actually added to his list of sins by threatening me during the Plum Island thing-and I'm not the forgiving type.

George Foster said to me, "We have an interesting and important case that we're working on that involves the murder of a moderate Palestinian by an extremist group here in New York. We need you for that."

"Really?" My street instincts were telling me that I was getting smoke blown up my ass. Ergo, Foster and Nash needed a guy to take the fall for something, and whatever it was, I was getting set up to go down. I felt like hanging around just to see what they were up to, but to be honest, I was out of my element here, and even bozos could bring you down if you weren't careful.

I mean, what a coincidence that I wound up on this team. The ATTF is not huge, but it's big enough so that this arrangement looked just a little suspicious. Clue Number Two was that Schmuck and Putz requested me on this team for my homicide expertise. I was meaning to ask Dom Fanelli how he'd heard about this Special Contract Agent thing. I'd trust Dom with my life and I have, so he was okay on this, and I had to assume that Nick Monti was clean. Cops don't screw other cops, not even for the Federal government-especially not for the Federal government.

I looked at Kate Mayfield. It would really break my cold, hard heart if she was hooked up with Foster and Nash to do me.

She smiled at me.

I smiled back. If I was Foster or Nash and I was fishing for John Corey, I would use Kate Mayfield as bait.

Nick Monti said to me, "This stuff takes some getting used to. And you know, about half the cops and ex-cops who sign on here leave. It's like we're all one big happy family, but the cops are like the kids who didn't go to college, live at home, do odd jobs, and always want to borrow the car."

Kate said, "That's not true, Nick."

Monti laughed. "Yeah, right." He looked at me and said, "We can talk about it over some brews."

I said to all assembled, "I'll keep an open mind," which means, Fuck you. But you don't want to say that because you want them to keep dangling the bait. It's kind of interesting. Another reason for my bad manners was that I was missing the NYPD-The Job, as we called it-and I guess I was feeling a little sorry for myself and a little nostalgic for the old days.

I looked at Nick Monti and caught his eye. I didn't know him from The Job, but I knew he had been a detective in the Intelligence Unit, which was perfect for this kind of work. They supposedly needed me for this Palestinian homicide case and I guess other terrorist-related homicide cases, which was why I was given a contract. Actually, I think they have a contract out on me. I said to Nick, "Do you know why Italians don't like Jehovah's Witnesses?"

"No… why?"

"Italians don't like any witnesses."

This got a big laugh out of Nick, but the other three looked like I'd just had a brain fart. The Feds, you have to understand, are so very politically correct and anal retentive, so very fucking frightened of the Washington Thought Police. They're totally cowed by the stupid directives that come out of Washington like a steady stream of diarrhea. I mean, we've all gotten a little more sensitive and aware of our words over the years, and that's good, but the Federal types are positively paranoid about offending anybody or any group, so you get stuff like, "Hello, Mr. Terrorist, my name is George Foster, and I'll be your arresting officer today."

Anyway, Nick Monti said to me, "Three demerits, Detective Corey. Ethnic slur."

Clearly Nash, Foster, and Mayfield were somewhere between annoyed and embarrassed that they were indirectly being made fun of. It occurred to me, in a sensitive moment, that the Feds had their own issues with the NYPD, but you'd never hear a word of it from them.

Regarding Nick Monti, he was about mid-fifties, married with kids, balding, a bit of a paunch, and sort of fatherly and innocuous-looking, the kind of guy who looked like anything but an Intell man. He must have been good or the Feds wouldn't have stolen him from his NYPD job.

I perused the dossier on Mr. Asad Khalil. It appeared that the Arab gentleman moved around Western Europe a lot, and wherever he had been, some American or British person or thing had met with a misadventure-a bomb in the British Embassy in Rome, bomb in the American Cathedral in Paris, bomb in the American Lutheran Church in Frankfurt, the ax murder of an American Air Force officer outside of Lakenheath Airbase in England, and the shooting dead in Brussels of three American schoolkids whose fathers were NATO officers. This last thing struck me as particularly nasty, and I wondered what this guy's problem was.