James Patterson - Honeymoon

We moved the conversation into his conference room. “I’d like to shoot the breeze with you two bullshit artists for a while, but I’m very tight on time today. Maybe dinner at Neary’s some night soon. Susan, you can’t come in here for this. Sorry.”

“Of course,” said Susan. She doesn’t think Frank is as smart as I do, but she tolerates him.

“So, let’s get down to business,” Walsh said as he and I walked into the next room. “This hearing is now called to order.”

The room had that uncomfortable, tight-collared, shame-on-you air to it. It was the kind that immediately announced loud and clear without a single word being spoken: You fucked up good, O’Hara.

I sat down in the lone chair facing the disciplinary panel. Since the night Nora disappeared, I’d gone from the hospital to the hot seat, with a week of recuperating time in between for my shoulder. Not to mention a little undercover work I’d finished out at La Guardia Airport. I was guessing the panel wanted me good and healthy before officially kicking my ass.

Frank Walsh got things started with a brief run-through of my background. The panel listened intently while a tape recorder in front of Frank recorded every word.

Agent John Michael O’Hara… former U.S. Army captain… former NYPD officer, decorated twice… Currently special agent with the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, specifically the Terrorist Financing Operations Section… Several important undercover assignments…

“Frank?” came a voice. It was an older man sitting at the far right end of the table. In addition to his involvement with the disciplinary committee, his day-to-day was the serial murder unit. His name was Edward Vointman.

“Could you please elaborate on how it is that Agent O’Hara was involved with the Sinclair investigation in the first place?”

I held back a smirk. Vointman’s question was the politically correct way of asking what he really wanted to know. Why the hell wasn’t I aware of this?

Walsh frowned. In most any company, let alone a government agency, the left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing. In this situation, however, the breakdown in communication was a little more suspect. The right hand didn’t know what one of its own fingers was doing.

Walsh reached out and turned off the recorder. When the tape stopped, so did his stiffness.

“Here’s the story, Ed,” he began. “The Joint Terrorist Task Force here in New York has been working with the financing group from the Counterterrorism Division and Homeland Security on monitoring money trafficking in and out of the country.”

Vointman opened his mouth as if to say something—most likely, “What do you mean by monitoring?”—when Walsh stopped him.

“I can’t tell you anything more on that, Ed, so don’t bother.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, what happened was we got a red flag on a large transfer from a Connor Brown in Westchester a while back.

“Upon further investigation we turned up an odd coincidence. The guy’s fiancée, Nora Sinclair, was previously married to a doctor in New York who died the same way. Get this, he was a cardiologist. The good news is she probably wasn’t a terrorist. The bad news is she was probably involved with both deaths.”

Again, Vointman opened his mouth, his original question even more valid. As a section leader of the serial murder unit, the case definitely should’ve been thrown his way.

As before, Walsh cut him off. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “We couldn’t turn it over to your group, Ed, without being a hundred percent sure this Nora woman wasn’t a shill for someone or, unlikely as it may seem now, some sort of operative herself. Long story short, we went with O’Hara because he was experienced with both those scenarios. He worked undercover for four years with the NYPD, and his profile matched well with the mark. He was even working on another related assignment at the time.

“In other words, he had the right look and—at least, we thought—was good at using his head.” He turned to me with a steely glare. “Of course, we were thinking about the one above the waist.”

Walsh reached out again and hit the RECORD button. “But I disagree,” he said.

It was all downhill from there.

For the next hour I fielded questions on every aspect of my investigation into Nora Sinclair. Every decision I made, and those that I didn’t. Especially those that I didn’t. The panel was relentless. I became their human piñata, and everybody was sure to take their whacks.

When it was done, Walsh gave his thanks to everyone, then excused the room. I assumed I was free to go as well. That’s when he told me to stay put.

Chapter 105

THE REST OF THE disciplinary panel had filed out, and it was just the three of us. Walsh. Me. The tape machine. Everything was very still. For twenty, maybe thirty seconds, all he did was stare at me.

“Am I supposed to be saying something?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Are you supposed to be saying something?”

“Probably not. But I’m going to ask the question anyway.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms tight against his chest. His eyes bore right into mine. “I’m going to get a phone call from upstairs, aren’t I?”

The man was uncanny. “What makes you say that?”

“Let’s say it’s a hunch,” he said with a slow nod. “You’re too smart to be this dumb.”

“I guess I’ve had worse compliments.”

He ignored the sarcasm. “You got caught with your pants down, literally, but something tells me you’ve still got your ass covered.”

I didn’t answer right away. I wanted to see if he’d keep talking, maybe reveal the source of his “hunch.” He didn’t.

“I’m impressed, Frank.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “It was written all over your face.”

“Remind me not to play poker with you.”

“I can still make this exceedingly tough for you.”

“I’m very aware of that, too.”

“Nothing changes what you did, how badly you screwed up.”

“I’m very aware of that.”

He closed his file. “You can go.”

I stood.

“Oh, one other thing, O’Hara.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I know all about your other assignment. I knew from the start. I’m in the loop. I know you’re the Tourist.”

Chapter 106

WHEN I WALKED into Susan’s office a few minutes later, she was standing at the window, staring out on what was a drizzly afternoon. It was hard not to notice the symbolism of her having her back to me.

“How bad was it?” she asked without turning around.

“It was really bad.”

“Scale of one to ten.”

“Eighteen, nineteen.”

“No, seriously.”

“A nine, maybe,” I said. “I won’t know anything for a week.”

“Until then?”

“They chain my ankles to my desk.”

“They really ought to chain something else.”

“For the record, that’s now the second dick joke I’ve gotten today.”

“What’d you expect?”

“I don’t know, but I’d appreciate it if I didn’t have this entire conversation with your back.”

Susan turned around. She was a tough cookie and almost always unflappable, though you’d never know it to see her face at that moment. The concern and disappointment were unmistakable.

“You made me look bad, John.”

“I know,” I said quickly. A little too quickly.

“No, I mean, really bad.”

I gave a good, long stare down at my feet. “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

“Hell, you knew that working this through my department was bending the rules to begin with.”