When Reyland woke up at his house, it was eight in the evening. He went down into the empty kitchen and put on some coffee. A note on the granite kitchen island said that everybody was at Sadie’s clarinet performance. His knuckles cracked as he balled the paper into his fist.
Two hours later, he had his driver let him off at the Hoover Building’s 10th Street side.
“Evening, Deputy Assistant, or is it Director now?” Harry Naylor, the most veteran of the FBI security cops on the night shift, said quietly as he came into the lobby.
Reyland stopped and looked down at the mustached veteran’s poker face. Like everyone else there at the puzzle palace that was FBI HQ, even the damn security guards were coy and cryptic masters of innuendo and rumor.
“When I become director, first order will be purging the deadwood,” Reyland said coldly as he passed the desk. “So believe me, Naylor, you’ll be among the very first to know.”
Off the elevator on seven, instead of making a left down the long corridor toward his office, Reyland immediately made a right.
He came around a deserted corner and key fobbed himself in through an unmarked gray door.
Five feet from the hall door inside stood a white steel box that almost looked like a small shipping container. There were thick beige-colored electronic cabinets attached to the front of it, and to the right of the cabinets was a small shiny silver metallic door.
The antiseptic white walls and fluorescent light inside the box gave it a look of a doctor’s examination room. In its center was a rolling office chair surrounded by three computer terminals and two huge black flat screens.
The room inside a room was called a SCIF, short for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Sound-baffled with electromagnetically sealed steel plate walls, it thwarted even the most sophisticated remote electronic eavesdropping methods.
He wouldn’t have come in to the office at all except that he wanted to return a call from London. Technically, it had been a text message. One with three long-awaited, very intriguing words.
Very Good News, it said.
He closed the door and typed the required coding into one of the terminals. The closest of the two screens blinked on a moment later, and a short sixtysomething woman with overdone glamour-puss makeup and big owl-like spectacles was staring at him.
“Well, you’re looking cheery, Robert,” the woman said.
The woman’s name was Brooke Wrenhall, and she was his contact at MI6. He had worked with Wrenhall several times over the last fifteen years and liked the feisty, extremely sharp, bitchy Brit.
“It’s this wonderful lighting,” Reyland said.
“Long day?” she said.
“Long career,” Reyland said. “Just trying to keep it going. Getting harder and harder these days.”
“Well, hopefully my tidings will help on that front.”
“News?”
“The doctor picked up our package.”
Reyland fell back into the office chair as if he’d been shot.
“No!” he yelled.
“Would I lie to you, Robert?” Brooke said, smiling.
“When did this happen?”
“Six hours ago.”
“And everything is in there?”
“Yes,” she said. “All of it. He took it back to his apartment. He stared at it for quite some time. There was some crying. When he put it away, he hid it in his closet in an old suitcase.”
“So the wife doesn’t know?” Reyland said, pumped.
“Presumably.”
“That is very good news. He’s committed. He’s really going to do it.”
“It certainly looks like it.”
Reyland found himself suddenly smiling.
“So we’re still on.”
“Yes. Full speed ahead. We seem to have him on the hook now. Congratulations. I knew you’d be pleased. How long have you been planning this? A year?”
“And a half,” Reyland said.
Reyland, still smiling, shook his head at the white walls as he pondered the ways of fickle fortune. Even after everything. Even after the disaster with the plane and Dunning’s death, the last phase of the operation had just clicked into place.
They could still pull it off, Reyland thought. They really, really could. They just had to seal up everything.
“Okay. Very good. But don’t pop the champagne yet, Brooke.”
“I know full well. We still have what? Six days?”
“Yes. We just need to keep everything under wraps for six more damn days,” Reyland said.
“How’s things on your end with the crash management?” Brooke said.
Reyland looked at her. She obviously hadn’t looked at the news in a while.
“Still not one hundred percent, but we’re getting a cover on it.”
“I thought you said you had eyes on the issue,” Brooke said, raising an eyebrow.
“We did but...”
Reyland thought of Mr. X factor, the way he took out his contractors. The fact that they had completely lost the trail on him and Everett.
“But what?” Brooke said.
“Don’t worry about it, Brooke. Don’t spoil my good mood. We’ll sew everything up on this end. Especially now that the good doctor has shown his fresh new commitment to the cause.”
“Shall I give word to our special friends of the latest happy developments?” Brooke said.
“No,” Reyland said as he glanced at the text on his encrypted phone. “Please allow me, Brooke. I’m actually meeting with them in the morning.”