The Bone Chamber Page 5

  The conversation ended there, and they drove in silence. About ten minutes later, her phone vibrated. Carillo. “Hey,” she said, answering.

  “Not only is your guy not with the Bureau, but any record of whatever you’re working on? Your Jane Doe? It’s not there. Like you’re not even in Quantico right now.”

  “So I’m beginning to find out.” She kept her gaze straight ahead, tried to keep her voice conversational, pleasant as they sped past the barren trees, the gray winter sky.

  “Can you say OGA?”

  OGA stood for other government agency. Only problem was that term ran the gamut, and if there was one thing the government had, it was lots of agencies and shadow agencies, some above board, some so far undercover that even the legit agencies didn’t know they existed. “I’d rather not.”

  “I’m thinking CIA, but I haven’t gotten a verification on that yet. Can’t get shadier than them. When you coming back to your mother’s?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m spending the night at Scotty’s.”

  A long pause followed. “Fine. It’s your life. Just don’t forget he’s no good for you.”

  “One of our friends was killed in a car accident.”

  “Oh.”

  “Gotta go.” She eyed Griffin as she tucked the phone on her belt. “You don’t work for the Bureau.”

  “Never said I did.”

  “But you never denied it.”

  “No one asked.”

  And she had to agree, it had only been implied. “You were willing to let me believe you worked for us.”

  “Why do I get the feeling we picked the wrong forensic artist?”

  “A little late for that direction.” She crossed her arms, trying to figure out what agency he possibly worked for.

  “Everything in your background that we conducted alluded to you being…compliant. The sort who doesn’t ask questions.”

  “Well, like you said about backgrounds. People change.”

  “In a couple months?”

  “Trust me,” she said, trying to rein in her anger, since it would do her little good to get on his bad side. “It was a hellish couple months. So, what are you? CIA?”

  “That bothers you?”

  “Uptight as you are, Secret Service fits better. Presidential detail.”

  He glanced over at her, then back at the road, signaling for a lane change. “I used to work for them.”

  “Figures.”

  A slight smile creased the corners of his mouth, but then just as quickly faded back to the staid, unexpressive personality he’d exhibited throughout their short tenure at Quantico. Definitely a Company man.

  Zach Griffin glanced over at Sydney Fitzpatrick. It would’ve been better had she returned to San Francisco, so that no one would suspect she’d been working on the case. Then again, maybe it was just as well. Keep a better eye on her here. Find out what she knew or suspected. She’d said nothing the last ten minutes, just watched the passing scenery, no doubt grieving for her friend. Unfortunately, he’d been ordered not to tell her, even though he’d argued that her compliance might be greater if she knew the risks up front. Now she had even more reason to distrust them, and she didn’t know the half of it.

  He turned his attention back to the rearview mirror, saw the smoke-gray Honda. He’d watched it for the last dozen miles, thinking about how Fitzpatrick had said she was followed on her run this morning. He wondered if the Honda was a tail, a bad one, or if he was just being his usual paranoid self.

  Turned out he wasn’t the only paranoid one, because Fitzpatrick nodded toward the mirror. “Either that gray Honda’s been following us the last fifteen minutes, or the driver’s got some obsessive-compulsive complex that requires he stay exactly two cars behind us.”

  “Or,” he said, “the car we’re in looks like any other unmarked police car, and he’s worried about getting a ticket.”

  “He’d be inching up on us if that were the case. Peeking into the window to find out if we really were cops.” She was quiet a few seconds, then, “So what sort of case is this that you have people following you when you leave Quantico?”

  He wasn’t about to answer that, but he decided to find out if they were in fact being followed and he pulled behind a particularly slow motor home. The Honda swept past, and he noted the license number as well as the physical description of the dark-haired male who drove. He continued trailing the motor home, right up until his exit, satisfied that no other vehicle seemed to be tailing them.

  Then again, if someone knew where he was headed, there was no reason to tail him, a point brought home as he made a left turn toward the office, stopped at a red light-directly behind said Honda. Fitzpatrick crossed her arms, glanced over at him. “Now what?”

  “On the off chance this guy is part of a tail, I don’t think you want me dropping you off at your ex’s place until we lose him. How about we stop for coffee first?”

  “Coffee works for me.”

  The light turned green. The Honda continued through. Griffin made a hard right, took several more evasive turns, all with no idea if the vehicle was or wasn’t following. For him it was just in case. Old habits die hard. When he was certain he was in the clear, he pulled into a driveway of a nondescript warehouse, then hit a remote control on his visor. A bay door opened and he drove into an enclosed garage, the door closing as he pulled in. “Get your things,” he said. “We’ll be changing cars after we get our coffee.”

  Fitzpatrick made no comment, merely got out, opened the back door, and took her possessions.

  He popped the trunk, gathered his briefcase and bag, then slammed the lid shut, hanging the keys on a wall hook. “This way,” he said. She followed him to an innocuous-looking scarred and battered door at the rear of the bay, bearing a sign that read “Janitorial Supplies.” He lifted the air-conditioning thermostat cover set in the wall adjacent to the door, revealing a biometric scanner and keypad. He placed his right index finger to the scanner, then punched in his code. The door buzzed open, three inches of solid steel.

  Fitzpatrick eyed the door, then him. “Must be some damned good coffee you keep in there.”

  He indicated she should precede him, and she stepped through the threshold, onto the top landing of a stairwell, the steps faintly lit by unseen lights at the base of the walls. At the bottom, a brick tunnel stretched off in either direction, and the same base lighting illuminated the concrete floor.

  “Which way?” she asked as they neared the bottom.

  “Turn right. My office is the second door down. The one marked ‘High Voltage.’”

  “How apropos,” she muttered. The rumbling of a passing Metro subway train reverberated through the walls, then quickly faded. “Why not just walk in the front door?”

  “After the tail, I’d rather not take a chance.”

  “And this door?” she asked as they passed one that was unmarked.

  “A convoluted exit into the Metro. Comes in handy sometimes.”

  The “High Voltage” door appeared just as unassuming as the garage bay door, until it, too, was opened, revealing the several inches of solid gleaming steel. The small space looked like any high-voltage electrical room. The only voltage within, however, was the hidden biometric keypad in one of the boxes, which, once engaged, caused the back wall to slide open, revealing a normal-looking elevator. They stepped in, the door slid shut, and up they went. It stopped on the fifth floor of his building. “My office,” he said.

  She looked around, taking in the monotonous off-white walls, standard industrial linoleum flooring. “I give. Where are we?”

  “The Washington Recorder.”

  “A newspaper?” She laughed. “Mild-mannered reporter, à la Clark Kent? I thought federal law prohibited intelligence agencies from having cover identities as reporters.”

  “Reporters from American media. Unlike Clark Kent, I’m not a reporter,” he said, pulling a business card from his pocket and handing it to her. “I’m an editor.”

&
nbsp; “Of course.” She looked at the card, which read, “International Journal for World Peace.” “Convenient. Offices throughout the world, no doubt?”

  “Would you expect anything less? My boss is the publisher. Not that he publishes or I edit.”

  “A shadow paper.”

  “Precisely. It just so happens that the IJWP rents space from the American newspaper that occupies this building.”

  “The American paper you rent space from wouldn’t also happen to be owned by the agency you work for?”

  “We need a place to go to work every day without raising suspicion that we’re drug dealers or earning a salary without means of support. Unlike the IJWP, our American paper has a staff that fully mans, reports, and publishes on the floors below ours, and we use the AP. A lot.”

  “So you’re a covert operative,” she said, walking to the window, looking down to the street below. “Running a paper.”

  “A foreign paper. You’d be surprised what we learn from the letters to the editor.” He unlocked his desk, grabbed a set of car keys, then checked the messages his secretary had left for him. When he looked up, he saw Fitzpatrick trying to make a call from her cell phone. “You’ll have to use a landline. No signals in, no signals out on this floor.” He pushed the telephone toward her.

  She picked it up, punched in a number. “Hey, Scotty,” she said, then listened to whatever it was her ex told her. “Yeah, I’ve still got a key. Be careful.” She hung up, looked at him, her expression unreadable. “He’s still out on the robbery. They’ve holed themselves up somewhere in the downtown area.”

  “Hostages?”

  “Only one bank teller, and she escaped when they tried dragging her into their car.”

  “Lucky for her,” he said, picking up the inside line to call his secretary and let her know he was back. “Done. We deliver the briefcase, then we’re out of here.”

  They stopped for a cup of coffee in the break room, then, coffee in hand, continued on to the director’s office. Griffin knocked, waited for the “come in,” then opened the door. His boss, Ron Nicholas McNiel III, was talking to one of Griffin’s team members, James “Tex” Dalton. Griffin introduced Fitzpatrick to both men.

  Tex stood, and with his usual shit-eating grin, said to Fitzpatrick, “You doing anything tonight?”

  “She’s visiting her boyfriend,” Griffin said.

  “Doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  Fitzpatrick smiled at Tex. “If plans change, I’ll let you know.”

  “You do that, darlin’,” Tex said, laying on a thick drawl he used to impress the ladies. Like many on Griffin’s team, Tex spoke several languages, but with an added skill of having accents down to an art. He’d recently finished a stint in the Boston area. No one could’ve told he wasn’t Boston born and bred.

  “We should be going,” Griffin said, then directed Sydney toward the door.

  “Zach?” his boss called out. “Have a minute?”

  Fitzpatrick gave a neutral smile. “I’ll wait out here.”

  Griffin stepped back in, shut the door.

  “They recovered the car that ran over Tasha Gilbert. It matches the description of the vehicle that hit Dr. Balraj’s car a couple weeks ago. They’re doing an analysis on the paint transfer. The color matches.”

  “So she was targeted by the same people?”

  “So it seems. Why Tasha, though? She has absolutely no connection to Balraj or his assistant.”

  A good question, Griffin thought. Dr. Balraj was a microbiologist who was working on the evolution of plagues. On the day in question, Balraj had lent his car to his assistant, who later died in a solo car wreck after the car allegedly blew a tire and went off an embankment and into the river.

  At least that was the official story released.

  The real story was not for public consumption. There was no doubt that Balraj was the real target, but it wouldn’t do the public any good to know that someone was picking off the world’s foremost scientists one by one, especially when those scientists were known for their work in biowarfare research. As to who was doing it, a print found at the scene of one of the murdered scientists had been matched to a suspect they knew worked for Carlo Adami, an American crime boss based in Italy. Unfortunately, Adami had the man killed before they could prove a connection in any court of law.

  “Any word on Balraj?” Griffin asked.

  McNiel’s secretary called on the intercom before he could answer. “Congressman Hoagland’s on the phone.”

  “Put the call through,” McNiel said. When his extension rang, he said, “Martin, what can I do for you…? No, sir, we do not believe there is any truth to the rumor that Alessandra was having an affair with Congressman Burnett…No, we haven’t heard from her yet, but I’m sure we will, soon. Yes, sir, I do agree that it’s best to clear his name. We are looking into that, but at this point, it won’t help matters to bring it out in the open…”

  To which Tex whispered to Griffin, “Clear his name my ass. Hoagland would like nothing better than to publicly humiliate him and gain the chair when Burnett resigns.”

  Griffin wasn’t interested in politics at the moment. “What about Balraj?” he asked Tex. “Anything else on that investigation?”

  “We don’t know if he’s been kidnapped or killed, but knowing Adami, I’d have to guess the latter.”

  “So much for hope,” Griffin said, not that they’d ever held much. He’d been in this business far too long to think that Balraj’s fate would be different from that of the other microbiologists who’d been murdered. The only consolation-if one could call it that in a twisted sort of way-was that it was because of Dr. Balraj that they’d found Alessandra’s body. After his assistant had been killed, two agents were assigned to watch Balraj. They’d lost him somewhere in the vicinity of the Smithsonian, and it was during their search for the microbiologist that they’d found Alessandra-and why they’d been able to keep her murder from the police and the press.

  Griffin looked down at his briefcase, thinking about the forensic sketch within. Alessandra had never told them about any meeting with Dr. Balraj-they couldn’t even imagine a reason that she would have contacted him-and so it took them quite some time before they realized she was missing and the body might have been hers. But now, thanks to Sydney Fitzpatrick, there were no doubts…

  “Of course, sir,” McNiel said into the phone. “We’ll put every effort into the investigation.” He slammed the phone into the receiver. “Congressman Hoagland is a pompous idiot.” He leaned back in his chair, eyed Griffin. “You have the sketch?”

  Griffin opened the briefcase and took out the drawing.

  Tex saw it as he pulled it out. “Hell.”

  Griffin laid the sketch on McNiel’s desk, and he saw the moment of recognition, the pulse pounding in his neck. “Sometimes I hate this job,” McNiel said. “Alessandra. And now Tasha.”

  “What about this third key that Tasha mentioned?”

  McNiel turned the drawing facedown. “With what we can gather from the chatter we’ve picked up, our best guess is that the third key is some code for a new super-plague that Adami’s scientists are working on. I’d have to guess that’s why he’s hell-bent on killing off anyone in the business.”

  To which Tex said, “Knock off the competition and the possibility that anyone can counteract whatever the hell his scientists are coming up with.”

  “Exactly,” McNiel said. “All the more reason to concentrate on finding his lab, which, thanks to Tasha, we know isn’t in Egypt.” He looked at Griffin. “After you notify Alessandra’s father, that is your main objective. Find his lab, destroy it.”

  “Understood.”

  McNiel straightened a stack of papers on his desk, clearly bothered by the drawing, and doing his best not to show it. “I’m afraid it’s public transportation en route. Tex will be using the jet as part of his cover. Marilee has your ticket on her desk,” he said, referring to his secretary. “And speaking of planes, I thought
this artist of yours was to be on a plane back to San Francisco, not on a private tour of our building.”

  “She had other plans.”

  “That wasn’t part of our plan. I agreed to her involvement because she played by the book, which made her predictable and compliable. Someone who would do as she was told, and not ask questions.”

  “What we didn’t count on was someone calling her and informing her that her friend was killed in a hit-and-run.” It was as close as he would ever come to telling his boss, I told you so, about keeping her in the dark over Tasha’s death. “Short of hogtieing her, I didn’t think it wise to force the issue. She’s already asking questions. And that was before her partner told her I was CIA.”

  Tex laughed. “CIA?”

  Their boss threw Tex a dark look, then tapped the drawing of Alessandra. “This forensic artist. Do you think she’s made any connections?”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to find out.” Griffin turned to Tex. “You busy? I might need your skills in the next hour or so.”

  5

  Sydney unbuckled her seat belt when Zach Griffin double-parked his black Chevy Tahoe in front of Scotty’s apartment building with the confidence of someone who wasn’t worried about traffic tickets. “Thanks for the lift,” she said, sliding out, then hauling the straps of her bag and drawing case over her shoulder.

  He lowered the passenger window after she shut the car door. “If you need anything, day or night, my cell is on the business card.”

  She gave a small wave, then turned toward the building. The doorman opened the heavy glass door, and she walked in, taking the elevator to the third floor. Once inside, she threw her things on the couch, then called the D.C. field office to have the secretary let Scotty know she was going to borrow his personal car.

  “He just came in for a quick break,” the secretary said. “I’ll put you through.”

  “Catch the bank robbers?” Syd asked him when he answered his phone.

  “They’re holed up on the south side, and MPDC’s doing a door-to-door search right now. They called us the moment it went down. Some serious shit going on. They were armed with assault rifles. I’m thinking Russian mafia, if the accents are any clue.”