“Fuck you busy. We need to talk.”
“Hang on a sec.” She covered the mouthpiece loosely and called off to nobody,
“Just wait for me, OK? Be there in ten seconds. Ten seconds.” Rook clench-pumped
both his fists to give her encouragement. Committed to the strategy, she waded in.
“Listen, if you want to talk to me, why don’t you come in? Otherwise, you’ll have
to wait.”
“Have you lost it?”
“No, in fact, I kind of have a clear head for a change. See, I just don’t have
time for you now. I have something bigger to deal with.”
“Bigger?” She could hear his breathing accelerate. “What, that bio plot?”
“You’ll have to wait, Glen. Your moment has passed.”
“You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”
The more he went over the top, the more flat she made her voice. “You know, I
really can’t deal with this now.”
“You don’t know shit. You don’t even know where this stuff’s going to be
released.”
She waited, just in case he offered. When he didn’t, she said, “No, but I will. I
’m going to be there to stop this madness, and when I do, you’re going to be no
more than an asterisk.”
“Bull. Shit.”
“It’s not you, Glen, it’s just the way it goes. A bigger fish came along.”
“No, I fucking own this now. At nine tomorrow morning, I’ll be gone, but everyone
will know I did it. I’ll make history, and you can live with it.”
“Got to see that. Want to tell me where?”
But he’d hung up.
Heat raced out of the squad room, saying, “Nine A.M. Let’s tell Callan.”
Rook kept pace with her down the hall and said, “Considering that you’re someone
who hates to play games, remind me never to cross you.”
Nikki hurried into Observation One and found it empty. A creeping certainty weakened
her limbs. She rushed to the glass to look into Interrogation.
The room was empty.
“Maggs is gone,” she said to Rook as she ran back out the door. “And so are
Callan and Bell.”
The desk sergeant had seen them lead Maggs out through the lobby but thought nothing
of it. Why should he? They were federal agents escorting a prisoner. In a knowing
act of futility, Heat and Rook trotted out through the glass doors onto 82nd. All
they found was the air-conditioning puddle where Callan had parked his SUV and an
empty street between them and Columbus.
“Looks like we have one additional moving part,” said Rook.
Heat spent the next hour working to reach them. The obvious calls came first: to
Callan’s cell phone, then to Yardley Bell’s. Heat left voice mails that she knew
in her heart would be ignored, if they even were listened to. Rook followed up with
e-mails and texts to Bell—even posting a heavily masked Tweet about getting in
touch.
The hour stretched into a full night of fruitless outreach. Nikki called every
number she had at Homeland Security, her gut telling her that she was hollering down
a black hole. She tried NYPD Counterterrorism and managed to get connected to her
colleague on the DHS counterterrorism unit at his home. Commander McMains said he’d
look into it, which she took as code for letting the feds have at Maggs all they
wanted. “We are coming to the brink, Heat, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
In desperation, Rook even called Paris and woke up his Russian spy pal, Anatoly Kijé
, just to try to shake loose any private numbers or e-mail addresses he might have.
The secret agent cursed in Russian and told Rook to get real; his Rolodex of
American spooks was slightly limited.
When they had exhausted their options, they made the same rounds again with nothing
in the end to show for it all but lost energy and time. “Know what the hell of this
is?” said Heat. “The effort we’re putting into chasing our own people is pulling
us away from heading off that event tomorrow.”
Rook checked his watch. “You mean today. It’s after midnight.”
“Excellent.”