FBI Field Office, Chicago
Laura rose to greet Chris as he entered her office. She walked around her desk, arms already opening, before she caught herself. She held out her right hand instead, took Chris’s and shook it.
Chris shook back, over-emphasizing the professionalism of the gesture. ‘Chicago’s been good to you. Your own office.’ He watched her walk back to her desk, then took a seat in a chair facing her.
‘More privacy, more responsibility,’ she answered. She’d received her own office only a few months ago.
Chris allowed his eyes to linger a long time on Laura Marsh. The silence would have been awkward if they weren’t both locked in it. The undeniable attraction between them during the few months they’d been in the Chicago Field Office together had gone unresolved since his changed posting had cut their relationship short before it could be explored.
‘I’m sorry it took so long for me to get here,’ he finally said. ‘I got the call in a little place called Asyut. It took a few transports to make it from Egypt to O’Hare.’
‘I’ve been anxious to have you here.’ Laura recognized the double entendre, and forced herself to sit straighter in her chair. ‘We’re in need of your skills.’
‘They’re at your disposal. Gallows briefed me on the way here, and I’ve caught up on as much intelligence as you’ve got. Doesn’t look good.’ He was still feeling the frustration of his exchange with the section head.
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘Where’s your focus in the op?’ Chris asked. ‘You’re obviously not on the field teams out sweeping for security.’
The question brought Laura’s concentration back to the uncomfortable work that had preoccupied her all morning. The loss of life in the building, the odd direction of her leads, the uneasy tension in her chest.
‘Chris,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘that you’re here from the outside means you’re one of the only people I can talk to about the line I’ve been following.’
‘Me? You’ve got your whole team.’
‘I’ve been working on the case’s international dimension,’ she skipped over his question, ‘and there’s a major problem with our intelligence. A problem no one is talking about.’
Suddenly, all the joking and flirtation left Chris’s mind, and he felt the skin on his face go taut. His own problem, the source of his frustration with Ted Gallows and the bureaucracy of divisional hierarchy, was to do with the case’s international dimension. Arthur Bell. Egypt. Cairo. Could Laura possibly know already?
‘I didn’t think anyone else knew,’ he said.
Laura peered up, surprised. ‘Know what?’
Chris fidgeted. ‘I was told, firmly, that it wasn’t meant to be general knowledge.’
Without knowing how, Laura found herself standing.
‘What isn’t meant to be general knowledge? What are you talking about, Chris?’
He hesitated, but Chris had to share what he knew with someone other than Gallows, and Laura Marsh was an agent he knew he could trust. It was enough for him.
As Laura listened, eyes wide and hardly breathing, Chris recounted his experiences in Egypt with Michael and Emily, his encounter with Arthur Bell, the discovery of the keystone and his friends’ current intention to track Bell to Cairo.
Only when Chris had finished the whole of his narrative did Marsh finally open her mouth. ‘My God, I knew there was something up abroad, apart from Iraq.’
The pieces of her day were starting to fit together, confirming her instincts and painting a worse picture than before.
She realized she had to tell him about the morning.
‘Chris, there’s something else I need to fill you in on. Something far closer to home, and something I can only tell you.’
He waited, and Laura Marsh brought him fully into her confidence.
‘One of our agents has been murdered. And it was someone in this office, working for me.’