HARDY WAS IN HIS OFFICE opening his mail, having just finished reviewing the documents that he had received over the past three weeks via registered mail from the local FBI office in San Francisco. The FBI had done its usual efficient and thorough job and, from fragments found at the Khalil home, had matched the grenades used in that attack to a cache of them at the Allstrong warehouse at BIAP. Beyond that, they had recovered a bullet from the Khalil scene and matched it to the gun that had been in Nolan's duffel bag with the grenades. Downloads from Nolan's hard drive revealed not just the photos of the Khalil house from various angles, but also photos of the eventual victims that looked as though they'd been scanned in. Nolan's bank records memorialized regular biweekly automatic deposits of ten thousand dollars and another deposit, four days before the Khalils were killed, of twenty-five thousand. There was a handwritten quarter page in Nolan's handwriting, noting the victims' names and address, some indecipherable scribbling and doodling, and the notation "$50,000" circled several times.
The evidence tying the Khalils to a plot to kill Nolan was equally impressive. The wiretaps arrived, accompanied by neat binders of translations from the Arabic. There were informant reports, with names blacked out due to national security, but which clearly identified some of the Khalils as involved in a plot to murder Nolan in retaliation for the Menlo Park killings.
Hardy had to admire Jack Allstrong's own thoroughness, as well as his caution. All of this evidence would be valuable to Hardy when the hearing came up for Scholler's appeal. And none of it directly implicated either Allstrong himself or his company.
Of course, during the same time period, Hardy had been reading in the local press about the agents involved in the FBI's handling of the Scholler case. The debate raged in the media about whether the agents had been merely grotesquely incompetent or criminally derelict in suppressing such critical evidence in the trial of a bona fide war hero. Agents were being transferred, suspended, and demoted.
Glitsky, following it daily with Hardy, could barely suppress his own glee. Hardy had tried to point out that it was unlikely that anyone truly culpable in the affair was ever really going to be punished, but Glitsky exulted in the random carnage the agency was inflicting on itself.
Now Hardy reached for an 81/2 11 envelope. It had arrived addressed to him, personal and confidential, by regular mail with no return address, but postmarked in San Francisco. Reaching in, he pulled out two sheets of faxed copies of e-mail correspondence between Rnolan@sbcglobal.net and JAA@Allstrong.com. Dated the day after the Khalil murders, it acknowledged that Nolan had accomplished his most recent assignment and requested payment of the remainder of his fee into a certain bank account. Allstrong should advise Mr. Krekar that "the situation has been resolved, as promised; Krekar should expect to move on the Anbar contracts without competition."
Although there was nothing remotely humorous about any of this, a ghost of a smile tickled the side of Hardy's mouth. Maybe he ought to tell Glitsky that Bill Schuyler wasn't the gullible, gutless G-man he needed to pretend to be if he wanted to keep his job. On the other hand, Hardy had no proof that Schuyler had had anything to do with this latest evidence. Any mention of his name would probably just get the man in more trouble. And in fact, the evidence could have come from any other FBI agent between San Francisco and Baghdad who had a sense of what was happening and a disgust at the role that the Bureau had been forced to play in it.
Hardy realized that without a witness or some other way to authenticate the documents, what he had in his hand were just two pieces of paper, worthless in a court of law. He sat at his desk pulling the tight skin at his jawline as for the hundredth, the thousandth, time he considered the ramifications of his intentions.
He had made no promises to Allstrong. To the contrary, he'd made it abundantly clear that whatever information he received would be his to do with as he pleased. Additionally, this wasn't information he'd gotten from Allstrong anyway. He owed Allstrong nothing. As Allstrong himself had said, it was an inconvenient situation.
He got up and, without a word to anyone, walked across his office and out to the copy room, where he copied the two pages. Coming back to his desk, he put the copy in his file and began searching through his notes for the address of Abdel Khalil.
***
HARDY AND FRANNIE were trimming the roses that bounded the fence in their backyard on a cool Sunday afternoon in the second week of June, talking about the arrival of their children, who'd both be returning home from their respective schools in the next couple of days. "I think they should both work," Hardy said. "I worked every summer of my life."
"Of course you did," Frannie said. "I can see you now, four-year-old Dismas out plowing the fields. To say nothing of walking ten miles to school every day, in deep snow."
"Leave out the snow part," he said. "This was San Francisco, remember."
"Yeah, but back when you were a baby, wasn't the climate different here?" Frannie enjoying the little joke at the expense of the eleven-year difference in their ages.
"You're a very funny person." He reached over and clipped a newly budded rose just at its base.
"Hey!" She turned on him.
"It's my old eyes," he said, backing away. "I was aiming for lower down on the stem."
"Yeah, well, keep it up and I'll aim for lower down too." She took a quick and playful swipe at him with her cutting tool.
Hardy backed up another step, then cocked his head, looking over her shoulder. "Well, look what the cat dragged in."
Glitsky was just emerging into the yard from the narrow walkway between their house and the neighbor's. He was in civilian clothes, hands in the pockets of his battered leather jacket. Getting up to them, he gave Frannie half a hug and accepted her kiss on the cheek, then turned to her husband. "You should leave your phone on."
"I know. It's bad of me," Hardy said. "But it's Sunday, I figured whatever it is can wait. But maybe not."
"Maybe not, after all. You know anything about this?"
"About what?"
"Jack Allstrong."
Hardy felt his stomach go hollow. He caught his breath, cleared his throat, tried to swallow. "No. What about him?"
"He got in his car this morning down in Hillsborough and turned it on and it blew up him and half his house. It's all over the news."
"I don't watch TV on Sunday either."
Glitsky just stood there.
Frannie touched Glitsky's arm. "Abe? What's wrong?"
"I don't know, Fran. I don't know if anything's wrong. I was thinking Diz might be able to tell me." He kept his eyes on Hardy.
Who drew another breath, then another, then blew out heavily and went down to one knee.