FOUR

Downstairs in Monk’s SOG car—a black Saab 9-3 Turbo—he realized that Roger Forbes was staring at the side of his head, clearly upset by Monk’s refusal to tell him what had just happened upstairs.

“Christ, Puller,” he said at last. “I can understand why you didn’t want to talk inside the building, but it’s just the two of us now. What the hell’s going on?”

Monk lifted his finger to his lips, then used the same finger to point at the radio mike hanging at the end of the black cable that spiraled out of the center console. It was the universal signal between agents to check to make sure the microphone switch wasn’t stuck in the on position, a calamity that had led to some of the worst horror stories in the FBI.

Roger bent down and keyed the mike. The short raspy squawk told them the radio was safe. Roger turned his attention back to Monk.

“We’re going back to the SOG,” Monk told him. “One of the surveillance teams must have come up with a new lead on the Madonna. But for some reason they want us to dry-clean first.” Bureauspeak for evasive maneuvers to detect the presence of surveillance.

Roger unfastened his seat belt, preparing to turn around and watch through the rear window. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“I’ll get on the Whitehurst. If you notice anything before then, we’ll stay on the surface streets.”

Monk got on H Street out of the Watergate parking lot and took a left on Twenty-fifth as the quickest way to K Street and the Whitehurst Freeway. But as he drove, he couldn’t keep his brain quiet. What he’d told Roger about the possibility of a new lead didn’t seem a very likely reason for the cryptic phone call. For one thing, the director of the FBI wouldn’t be personally involved in a robbery, regardless of the amount of money involved. For another, the bureau’s counterintelligence division wouldn’t be either. So what did it mean? Monk wondered. Why had they been interrupted and ordered back to—

“Jesus Christ, Monk, look out!”

Roger’s shout snapped Monk back to life.

He slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

He’d blown the red light at K Street and was halfway into the intersection. Directly into the path of a white Cadillac Escalade, its tires screaming as the driver fought to stop before running right over the top of the Saab. Monk stomped even harder on his own brakes, but could only stare wide-eyed as the man driving the SUV clutched the steering wheel with both hands. Monk braced for the impact.

But the Cadillac skidded to a stop just inches from his door.

The driver glared at him, then slumped over the wheel for a moment before looking up and shaking his head. Monk lifted his hand in an “I’m sorry” gesture, then continued through the intersection, his heart pounding and his hands shaking. He turned to Roger Forbes, who was staring hard at him.

“Christ,” he said. “I didn’t see the light. I was thinking about that damned phone call.”

Roger shook his head, but said nothing.

Until they got all the way up to M Street without turning left.

“Now what are you doing, Puller? I thought you wanted to take the freeway.”

Monk stared through the windshield, perplexed. Where the hell was he going? Not only had he almost killed them at K Street—where he’d planned to turn left to the Whitehurst—he’d gone right past L Street as well, past the Columbia Hospital for Women, and was now halfway through the intersection at M.

“What’s the matter with you?” Roger said. “If I hadn’t been with you for the last hour, I’d swear you were drunk.”

“Drunk?” Monk scowled at his partner. “I didn’t even have wine with dinner tonight.”

Roger shook his head. “Your driving has been getting worse and worse, Puller. To the point where I don’t want to ride with you anymore. It’s like you’re in a fog or something.” He paused. “Are you feeling okay? Are you getting enough sleep?”

Monk nodded. He was getting way too much fucking sleep. And it seemed like the more he slept, the fuzzier his head became. He felt a stab of fear in the pit of his stomach. Roger wasn’t the first to mention his fog, it was becoming a daily issue at home with Lisa as well. Had his behavior become that obvious? Monk hoped not. He needed this job, needed to keep his head together enough to hold on to it. He couldn’t help thinking about the MRI test his doctor had scheduled for Thursday. There was no doubt he needed the brain scan, but he wasn’t nearly as sure he wanted to find out the results. Without the possibility of a cure, what good would it do for him to know?

“It’s just that goddamned phone call,” he repeated, as he took the next left to loop back to the freeway. “And that business about dry cleaning.”

Three minutes later they were on the Whitehurst and heading toward the Special Operations Group building near the foot of the Key Bridge. He glanced at the light traffic around them. “The last exit,” he told Roger. “Be ready to watch when we hit the bridge exit.”

Ninety seconds later they approached the exit for the Key Bridge, the last one before the Whitehurst ended in Canal Road. Monk stayed in the far left lane, accelerating past the few cars to his right until he was almost on top of the bridge exit, when he jerked the wheel and swerved to his right, cutting off a slow-moving truck to take the exit and swing around the big loop that would take them up on the bridge. He turned to Roger, who had climbed around in his seat to watch the traffic they’d left behind.

“Nothing,” Roger said. “Trucker gave us the finger, but that was about it.”

Monk didn’t bother telling his partner to watch for the same thing on the other end of the bridge. It was standard operating procedure. When he got to the Rosslyn, Virginia, side, he took the first exit and circled around to get back up on the bridge.

“Still nothing,” Roger said.

Monk nodded. Satisfied they were alone, he got off the bridge onto M Street and took a left on Thirty-fourth, continued for half a block before pulling to the curb and parking. Roger got out of the car first and looked around before tapping on the roof as a signal to Monk to follow. Together they hurried through the clammy night, and five minutes later approached the nondescript entrance to the converted trolley-car barn just off Canal Road that served as headquarters of the Special Operations Group. Monk used his card key on the battered metal door before he and Roger stepped through into the vast, dimly lit garage that served as the heart of the group. Despite the fact that Monk had been working at SOG for almost a year, the sight of the garage still made him blink.

The FBI had field offices in more than fifty cities—public offices anyone could walk into—but what most people didn’t know was that in many of those cities there was a second office as well, one with no public face, with no visible connection to the bureau at all. Designed to serve as command and control centers for covert operations, these secret offices were home to the FBI’s special operations groups. And nowhere in any of these SOG facilities was the mission more apparent than in the garages that housed their vehicles.

Fifty yards long and at least that wide, this garage had been built in the 1800s as a trolley-car barn to house the streetcars that traveled back and forth across the Francis Scott Key Bridge. A century and a half later it was still a car barn, although the rolling stock was vastly different. Filling every available square foot, nondescript Dodge sedans cozied up to slouching Ferraris, Winnebagos to massively chromed Harley Hogs. Only the breathtaking Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible in the farthest corner escaped such democratization. The cream and brown Roller sat by itself and gave off the distinct impression that it knew the reason why.

Monk led the way as he and Roger navigated through the vehicles toward the far end of the garage. Half a minute later they stood in front of a dull gray steel door that had been deliberately beaten and dirtied to make it match the rest of the place. Monk used his card key again. They went through the door and into a long corridor, then moved up the hallway to the second of two doors on the left. The same gray steel as the outer door, but this one was spotless. It featured a combination lock the size of a grapefruit set just under eye level. The door was ajar, probably left that way for their arrival. Monk glanced at Roger, who shrugged before following him into a room no civilian would ever see.

At eight hundred square feet, the wiretap-monitoring room was still too small. Fluorescent light fixtures lined the twelve-foot ceiling and kept the room bright as day no matter the hour. Gray carpetlike soundproofing covered the floor, walls, and ceiling. A dozen or so FBI agents sat in black-fabric chairs in front of metal tables pushed against three of the four walls. On the tables sat the machines that the room had been specially built to house. Electronic wiretap receivers predominated—squat black boxes that looked like overgrown DVD players—but there were reel-to-reel audio and videotape machines as well, and portable cassette recorders, too. In the little bit of space left over, desktop computers sat side by side with flat-screen monitors.

On the wall opposite the door hung a sign on white posterboard:

QUIET!!!

IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO—DON’T TALK!

Headphones clamped to their ears, the agents were straining to hear conversations in a cacophony of languages. Mostly Spanish and Arabic these days, but still lots of Russian, more and more Korean, and several other tongues. The last thing the agent-monitors needed was more chitchat, and the only sounds to break the silence were the annoying buzz-hum of the lights, the whir of computer cooling fans, and the clicking of fingers against keyboards. The rule against bringing food in here was just as strict as the no-talking prohibition, but a lot more easily ignored. Monk saw no physical evidence, but the place carried the unmistakable odor of furtive burritos and surreptitious pizza.

Midway down the room stood three men. The tall one—almost seven feet tall—in the green windbreaker was Kendall Jefferson, the Special Operations Group supervisor. The deadly one in the dark blue suit was Burt Malone, the bureau’s assistant director in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division.

The sight of the third man brought Monk to a stop.

What the hell? he thought. What was William Smith doing here?

Monk stared at the NSA spook from Fort Meade. Monk had trained himself to show no reaction to surprise—pretty much a necessity for a man who spent his days off sitting over a poker table—but he damned near allowed his eyes to flicker. William Smith had gained some weight in the five years since Monk had last seen him, but he was getting close to forty and that was to be expected. His black mop of hair showed no gray and was still just as slicked back as ever, and he was dressed even better than in the old days. A tan linen suit tonight, with a crimson tie, and brown Italian loafers that hadn’t come off any sale table. And he’d kept his mustache too. Just as black as his hair, and a perfect match for his deep-set eyes.

Kendall Jefferson motioned for them to approach.

Monk saw that Jefferson was sweating—his milk-chocolate skin glowing despite the chill in the room—but that was as it should be. With an AD in the room, a middle manager was expected to sweat. The AD was not only dry as a bone, but scowling as Monk got closer. Monk smiled. Smiling confused assistant directors.

“This is Puller Monk,” Jefferson told Malone, “and his partner, Roger Forbes.” He didn’t bother announcing the AD’s name, before turning toward the third man. “And this,” he said to Monk and Roger, “is William Smith from NSA.”

Monk extended his hand. “William,” he said. “Been a long time.”

William Smith stared at his hand for a long moment before shaking it. “Monk,” he said. And nothing more.

In the suddenly less than comfortable silence, Assistant Director Malone turned to William. “You know each other? Did you mention that earlier?”

“No,” William said. “No, I didn’t.”

There was another short silence as the AD appeared to be waiting for the customary pleasantries that should be attending such a reunion, but Monk knew better. It would snow in August before William Smith would say anything the least bit pleasant to Puller Monk.

Again it was Burt Malone who broke the silence.

“We’ll go to Jefferson’s office to talk, gentlemen,” the AD said, “but we have to stay here to watch the elsur intercept first. I don’t want any of the electronic surveillance video to leave this room.”

Malone nodded at Kendall Jefferson, and everybody turned to the table against the wall to their right. Jefferson leaned over and picked up two sets of headphones, handed one to Monk, the other to Roger, before touching a key on the gray keyboard in front of a twenty-inch flat-panel monitor. Monk adjusted the phones over his ears.

The blue screen turned fuzzy for an instant before the picture appeared, a crystal-clear picture of an apartment living room, with numerals in the lower right corner, showing the date and time of day. The date was today, August 8, and the time 0047—12:47—just over half an hour ago.

Monk watched as the video began to run. His eyes widened as he saw the three men in the living room, as he realized he didn’t need the date-time readout at all. Not when he’d been there in person.