David Baldacci - Simple Genius

“I’m already in trouble.” Hayes sat back with an air of resignation. Sean smiled and said, “Still glad you decided to partner with me?”

“No!”

“Good, that means we’re really starting to click as a team.” And that remark made Sean remember that in a few hours’ time Michelle would be here. Normally Sean would look forward to seeing his real partner. Yet Horatio’s words kept coming back to him. Michelle could be dangerous, to herself. She shouldn’t have left the facility. She wasn’t cured. She was coming down here. And who the hell knew what would happen?

MICHELLE TOOK ADVANTAGE of the drive down to call a girlfriend of hers who worked at the National Intelligence Center after a stint at the Secret Service where Michelle had helped her along the career path. She called the woman at home figuring her phone at work would be monitored.

After a bit of chitchat, Michelle said, “Not looking for any secrets, Judy, but what can you tell me about Camp Peary?”

“You mean the DOD’s Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity?”

“Come on, Judy, give me a break. We’re talking CIA.”

“Okay, okay, forgive the automatic official response.” Her friend gave her the physical dimensions of the place, a thumbnail of its history and its official mission. “Most of the advanced training is now done at the Point in North Carolina,” Judy said. “But it’s still the CIA’s primary Field Tradecraft center. Actually, the Pentagon’s thinking about establishing its own espionage school and setting up intelligence op commands around the world.”

“Sometimes too much intelligence is a bad thing,” Michelle said wryly.

Judy laughed. “I officially can’t comment on that. Now the current head of Camp Peary is a man named Ian Whitfield. Ex-military, Delta Force, I believe. Vietnam War hero. Not a guy you want to mess around with. He came over to the intelligence side sometime in the 1980s. He was stationed in the Middle East for the last several years. Now that he’s back stateside, word is he’s doing all he can to bring Camp Peary back to prominence.”

“How’s he going about that?”

“What’s your interest?”

“Got a job down there. Someone was found dead on the property.”

“I read about that in the newspaper. I thought it was a suicide.”

“It might turn out to be. We were talking about Whitfield?”

“Well, two years ago some money was slipped through Congress to construct a new building down there, purportedly a dormitory.”

“Purportedly?”

“Look, you didn’t hear this from me.”

“Judy, I never talked to you, okay? Now spill it.”

“In the Nineties they built a 105-room dorm to go along with a new training school. So, word around here is the new money was really for an interrogation center.”

“Interrogation? Why would that be so hush-hush?”

“Depends on who they’re interrogating and-”

Michelle finished for her. “And how they’re interrogating them.”

“Exactly.”

“Terrorists?”

“You know the NSA is probably listening to this conversation.”

“Let them. They don’t have enough personnel to sift through the real bad guys’ conversations much less people like you and me. So they’re bringing people down there that nobody knows about and maybe torturing them?”

“Officially? Absolutely not. Unofficially, who knows? It’s not like we’re going to be telling everyone that a brand-new torture chamber has opened in Tidewater, Virginia, three hours from the capital of the free world. I’m not for mistreating prisoners, but it’s a war on terror. It’s not like we can fight it the old-fashioned way.”

“Okay, how are they getting them there?”

“Along with the funds for the ‘dorm,’ money was also appropriated for a new runway that would accept larger jets.”

“Like jets capable of intercontinental travel?”

“Exactly.”

Michelle was quiet for a few moments. “The paramilitary squads still assigned to Camp Peary?”

“I can’t say.”

“Judy, come on!”

“Let me put it this way, don’t go there for a picnic, you might never be seen again.”

“I appreciate it. You’ve been a big help.”

“You’re the only reason I survived my first year with the Service.”

“Girls do have to stick together.”

“Are you working on this with Sean King?”

“Yep.”

“So are you two more than just business partners yet?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because if you’re not going after him I want a shot. He’s gorgeous.”

“You ought to see him when he’s cranky.”

“I’ll take him cranky, believe me.”

Michelle clicked off, downed a PowerBar and finished off her coffee. She checked her watch and then her navigation system. Ninety miles an hour and sixty minutes to go. Trusty old illegal radar detector.

HAYES AND SEAN FOLLOWED the lady into the parking lot of a very popular bar located about three blocks off the William and Mary campus. As she went inside, Hayes and Sean held a quick consultation. It was decided that Sean would go in alone, leaving the uniformed Hayes in his police cruiser.

As Sean slid out of the car the sheriff held up a warning hand. “Look, I want to be on the record that you going within two miles of that woman is a really bad thing if she turns out to be married to Whitfield.”

“But on the other hand if Monk’s death is connected to Camp Peary and Ian Whitfield, then the lady might provide us with a shortcut. And as an added bonus, maybe I can find out who tried to kill me.”

The inside of the bar held an interesting mix of college kids and those who had to actually work for a living. Behind the old-fashioned bar, which looked straight out of the Cheers set, two young men and an older gent were filling drink orders as fast as their brains and hands would operate. Higher education was known to inspire great thirst, Sean thought.

There she was, at a high table in the back, near the pool tables. She already had her drink and was nimbly fighting off the advance of what looked to be a member of the William and Mary football team, a lineman judging by the young man’s heft. Not that Sean could blame the guy for trying. The lady’s skirt was short and the legs long, and the way the blond hair fell over the shoulders, spilling near the deep cleavage revealed by the plunge of her neckline, and the heat of those blue eyes bubbling just below the surface… Hell, if he’d been in college he could imagine moving heaven and earth to bed that prize. The bragging rights alone would’ve lasted the entire four years he’d be in school.

The guy wrote something down on a piece of napkin and handed it to her. She looked at the writing-no doubt a phone number or description of a lewd sexual act he wanted to perform on her-shook her head and motioned him away.

Sean took the opening and sat down beside her. Whether it was because he was obviously old enough to drink legally or her energy had been sapped by fending off the lineman’s thrust, she smiled appreciatively at Sean.

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she said.

“That’s because I haven’t been in here before.” He caught a waitress’s eye. “What the lady’s having.”

She held up her drink. “You into Mojitos?”

“I am now.” He glanced at the wedding ring on her finger.

She saw this. “I don’t believe there’s a law against a married woman going out by herself.”

“None at all. Sorry. I’m Sean Carter.”

“Valerie Messaline.”

If she was married to old Ian, the lady hadn’t taken her husband’s surname.