Дэвид Балдаччи - Walk the Wire

When he closed the door behind him, a small light came on in the room, brightening it, if feebly.

In a chair sat Blue Man, dressed in a regulation suit and tie that would have allowed him to blend in at most any event in Washington, DC, but made him stick out conspicuously in London, North Dakota.

“Mr. Decker, Agent Jamison, please sit,” said Blue Man.

“Who the hell are you?” said Decker.

“A wise question. Your phone should be buzzing any moment, ah.”

Decker lifted out his vibrating cell phone and hit the answer button.

“Ross? What’s going—? What?” Decker glanced at Blue Man. “Yeah. We are. Okay. You’re sure? Right. Thanks.”

He clicked off and looked at Jamison. “Bogart says this guy is on the up-and-up, and we should listen to him.”

Jamison nodded and noted that Robie stood with his back to the door they had come through. “I don’t think we have a choice anyway,” she said, studying Robie’s granite expression.

Blue Man motioned to the two chairs in front of him. “Please.”

They sat.

Blue Man said, “I understand there have been developments?”

“If you call the coroner on the case offing himself a development, then, yes, there have been developments,” said Decker curtly.

“And the reason?” said Blue Man.

“His wife thought it possible that he was being blackmailed for sexual indiscretions,” said Jamison.

“And you believe her?” said Blue Man.

“I don’t believe anybody just because they tell me something,” said Decker. “And I’m not sure if present company is excluded or not.”

“I would have been disappointed had you answered otherwise,” said Blue Man benignly. “Any other developments?”

“I’ve got somebody tracking down Ben Purdy. He has family in Montana.”

“The ‘ticking time bomb,’ as you told my colleague?”

“Yes.”

“Any thoughts on that?”

“Yeah, all of them apocalyptic.” Decker paused and studied Blue Man. “And you’re involved in this why? Because you don’t strike me as the law enforcement type.”

“I have no authority whatsoever to do anything in this country. Neither does Robie.”

“Well, you’ve run right over that rule.”

“That certainly is one interpretation. Anything else?”

“We think Pamela Ames was the target, not Hal Parker.”

“Why?”

“They tried to make it seem that she was there servicing Parker as a hooker, but I believe that was fabricated.”

“Why would they do that?” asked Robie.

“To explain away why Ames was at Parker’s house. If it wasn’t for sex, then why? She lived at the Colony. She would have known Irene Cramer. It’s perfectly plausible that when Ames left the Colony she would reach out to Cramer for assistance. In fact, I think she did. And it might have been then that Cramer told Ames something that later made Ames suspicious. Whoever killed Cramer might be very worried that Ames knew something that could lead back to them. And it’s also possible they might have had reason to get rid of Parker. It was a stroke of genius to get them both out of the way at the same time, and make it seem like Parker was the only target and Ames was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“What would Parker have known that could hurt them?” asked Blue Man.

“He was a trained tracker. He found the body before the rains started. Now, the killer had to get the body out there. And it couldn’t have been lying out there long at all because it hadn’t been attacked by animals. So I doubt the killer carried her for miles to place her there. And the ground out there is relatively soft.”

“So he would have left tracks,” noted Robie.

“Yes. And if he did maybe Parker saw them.”

“But why wouldn’t he have told the police about that if he did?” wondered Jamison.

“Now that’s an interesting question,” said Decker. “Because it opens lots of possibilities.”

“Interesting,” said Blue Man. “Very interesting.”

“Is this a two-way street?” asked Decker.

“Meaning?”

“What can you tell us?”

Blue Man nodded slowly and looked thoughtful. “I think some quid pro quo is in order. You ask why I’m involved, and, ultimately, why you and Agent Jamison are involved in this?” He paused. “Irene Cramer is the answer, of course.”

“Or Mary Rice, as she was known at a nursing home in Williston,” interjected Jamison.

Blue Man said, “Or Terry Ellison or Denise Finley. I could go on and on.”

“Please do,” encouraged Jamison.

“Irene Cramer was collateral damage in a disastrous mission undertaken decades ago by the U.S. government.”

“How so?” asked Decker.

“Her mother was a Russian agent.”

Jamison shot Decker a glance. “Sins of the parent, Decker, like you said.”

“Oh, so you had figured that out?” said Blue Man.

“Only to that extent. So her mother was a spy and you caught her. How is that a disaster?”

“You didn’t let me finish. Her mother was a Russian agent who we thought was still working against us. She was actually a double agent and was working on behalf of a sister agency of ours that had neglected to tell us of that arrangement.”

“And the FBI’s involvement? Because Cramer’s fingerprints set off alarm bells all over Bureau Land.”

“They were the agency tasked with bringing Cramer’s mother in, since we have no authority to arrest anyone.”

“What happened?” asked Jamison.

“Irene Cramer was only eight at the time. I won’t tell you what their real names were. The point is the mission went sideways and her mother was... killed. And, unfortunately, Irene saw the whole, disturbing thing.”

“And her mother was working for us?” said Jamison. “Risking her life?”

“What a clusterfuck,” added Decker.

“Yes, it was. We could not let her daughter go back to Russia, of course. So, for all intents and purposes, we adopted her. Gave her a new identity. Paid for her education and living expenses. Gave her money when she needed it as she grew up.”

“You were paying for her silence?” said Jamison harshly.

“In a way, yes, though who would have believed her? But the far more important thing was to keep her safe. The Russians have a long memory. And were they to find out about her mother spying on them, which we believe they actually did, Moscow would have no compunction about using the daughter as an example. She would have died a horrible death, I can assure you.”

“Did you know she was applying for a teaching job here?” asked Jamison. “She told the Brothers that she went to Amherst. And she had a teaching certificate. They apparently didn’t check up on that because they needed someone badly.”

“Normally, if she needed a reference for some reason, the information she provided an employer would run through one of our departments, which would handle it.”

“So you would give her a bogus reference?” said Decker incredulously.

“It’s not like she ever applied to be a commercial airline pilot or heart surgeon. And as a matter of fact she had gone to college at Amherst, and she did have a teaching certificate under the name Irene Cramer.”

Decker looked at Blue Man. “But you knew nothing about her applying for the job here?”

Blue Man shook his head and said, “About fourteen months ago, she disappeared off our radar completely. That had never happened before. We were concerned, of course.”

“That’s just about the time she stopped working at the nursing home,” noted Jamison.

“So when her prints and the name hit the FBI database?” said Decker.

“We knew what had become of her. But we don’t know who killed her.”