Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

Abbott, who thought Will couldn’t see him.

Abbott was smiling.

It was more than just a smile; it was a smirk.

A triumphant smirk, the look of someone who’s just gotten away with something big. Puzzled, Tanner left his office and walked into the adjoining warehouse. There, he stopped in front of the kitchen cabinet, behind which was the safe.

He stared at the cabinet for a moment.

And he realized that he was being bamboozled. He was being led on. Tanner, who could bullshit with the best of them, was being manipulated by a master bullshit artist.

That smile on Abbott’s face — he’d seen that same smile on Blake Gifford. That fangy smile of triumph. The faint quiver of muscles trying to repress it. It was Bugs Bunny knowing that Elmer Fudd’s lunch pail is filled with TNT.

Sal Persico, his genius roaster, was there. “I just brewed a fresh batch of the Colombian, the Villa Maria,” Sal said. “It’s awesome.”

“Perfect,” Tanner said. He’d bought the beans from a finca in the Nariño region, in southeast Colombia, on the border with Ecuador.

He poured out two mugs of coffee and carried them back through the warehouse to his office. Abbott looked up expectantly as he returned. He no doubt expected Tanner to be carrying a laptop.

Tanner set the mug of coffee down on the desk in front of Abbott. “Tell me what you think,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”

Will arrived home in a taxi from National Airport in a funk. He was weary and defeated and angry, and he was in no mood to deal with a cranky Jennifer and a no-doubt squalling Travis.

But when he unlocked the front door, all he heard was quiet. Jen was sitting in her favorite chair reading Entertainment Weekly in a cone of light from the standing lamp. She put her finger to her lips. “ Shh! He’s actually sleeping!”

“Now that we’re not starving him to death,” Will said in a normal speaking voice.

“Shh!”

“I think Dr. Blum said you’re not supposed to stay quiet while the baby’s sleeping so he doesn’t, I don’t know, need to sleep in a cork-lined room for the rest of his life.”

“I am finally getting a chance to read something that’s not the label on a formula bottle. When you wake him up, you’re taking him.”

“Fair enough,” Will said in a quiet voice. He didn’t want to fight with her. He just wanted to be alone right now, figuring out his next move. He dreaded having to give the boss the bad news. He didn’t know how she’d react, but he was pretty sure she’d be angry and not hold back.

He had thought he’d played things exactly right with Michael Tanner in Boston, that Tanner had gotten up to get the laptop, finally. But when he came back with a couple of mugs of coffee, he’d said, “I wish I could help you, Will. I really appreciate your coming to Boston to return my laptop. I feel like I should at the very least reimburse you for the train or the plane or whatever.”

“What about the senator’s...?”

“I actually lost my laptop in LA,” Tanner said. “I didn’t take the wrong one. I just must have left it there — I was in a rush.”

“You don’t have the senator’s laptop?”

“Sorry.” Tanner shrugged.

He was lying, Will was certain. But how to get him to admit he had it? Will was stymied. He was near speechless. He’d almost had the guy, but somehow he’d lost him. He didn’t know why. But he negotiated all the time, and he knew when the drawbridge had gone up.

Now Jen asked sweetly, “How was your trip?”

“Fine. No big deal.” He set down his shoulder bag.

“Success?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You get a good contribution?”

Jen understood the money chase that politics had become.

“Not bad.”

“God, wouldn’t it be great if you got a cut of all the money you help raise? Like a commission or something?”

“Yeah, that would be illegal, I’m pretty sure.”

His cell phone rang, and he saw who it was. His stomach twisted. He hit Answer as he moved toward the bedroom and a little privacy.

“Do you have it?” the senator asked without preface.

“No.”

“What? But you—”

“I totally had him. Then the fish wriggled off the goddamned hook.”

“I don’t understand. What’s going on? He won’t give it back?”

“He denies he ever had it.”

“He denies it? Is that— Is it possible he doesn’t have it? Seriously?”

“He has to have it. I know he does.”

“So how can we—”

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk—” on the phone, he wanted to say.

“I want a plan to get it back.”

“I’m on it,” he said. “Not to worry.”

“At this point,” she said, “we both need to be worried. Very worried.”

And she hung up.

After Will Abbott had left his office, Tanner sat at his desk and thought for a few minutes. He let the phone ring.

It had been a close call. He had almost opened the safe. Fortunately he’d been able to cover by pretending he’d gone off to get coffee, not to find the laptop. Abbott had left his MacBook Air with him.

He’d covered, too, in conversation with Abbott.

“You don’t have the senator’s laptop?” Will Abbott had said after Tanner had handed him a mug of black coffee.

“Sorry. But you’re barking up the wrong tree. I was at the LA airport and I forgot my laptop. I mean, I left it there — I was in a hurry, I guess — in the security line.”

“You don’t have the senator’s—”

He shook his head. “I wish I could help you. But I’m so glad you brought mine back. When I called TSA, they said they had loads of laptops but not mine.”

Abbott had left, clearly disappointed, but also baffled.

Tanner had thought a lot. He could never tell anyone about how he had run over the tattoo guy, but he could talk about the break-in. Though the evidence was slim — a mouse put back wrong, a broken window, a disabled surveillance camera. It was Lanny’s death, his murder. That’s what tipped things.

He needed help. It was foolish to try to go it alone. It was, in fact, dangerous. Something could happen to him. Lanny had been targeted, and he could be next. He had to tell someone in law enforcement about the swapped laptop, the classified documents. He might need some kind of protection, something more serious than staying in a friend’s house. And he wanted someone to investigate Lanny’s death.

Carl knew people in the local police, but that wasn’t the level of help he needed. He needed someone with a national reach, which meant Homeland Security or FBI. He didn’t know anyone in Homeland Security, but he did know a guy who worked for the FBI. Not a friend, really, but an acquaintance, a friend of a friend, a guy he’d played poker with.

He called the Boston office of the FBI and asked for Brent Stover. He was connected to Stover’s voice mail and left a message, asking him to call, telling him it was important.

By the time he left work, Tanner had returned calls and sat through three meetings, distractedly. He wondered about moving the laptop somewhere else. If they’d searched his house and found nothing, wasn’t it only a matter of time before they searched the office? If they did, they might or might not locate the safe. It wasn’t easy to find, but if someone opened every drawer and cabinet and so on, eventually he’d find it. But then they were dealing with a high-quality safe that was locked and presumably difficult to crack. Maybe not impossible. Not for the right people.

The problem with moving the laptop, though, was that he’d have to take it out with him, and he could easily be intercepted with it. It was still better not to move it, he decided.