THIRTY-SEVEN

“Jesus Christ,” Monk muttered, as he finally managed to turn Betty’s second lock. Twelve minutes. Ridiculous. He’d done better in training school. It was hard not to wonder about the decline of his skills. He couldn’t help thinking about Dr. Gordon’s concerns, about the PET scan, before he told himself to shut up and keep moving.

He went through the door into the stacks, the shelves that held the files themselves. He flipped on the lights and the smell hit him, the musty odor of old paper. The files in here were both pending and closed, but at least the current ones got to see the light of day. The closed ones just stayed in this room and began to stink.

He didn’t bother with the informants’ so-called main files. Filled with administrative details—complete descriptions of the informant, credit and criminal checks, stuff like that—they wouldn’t help with what he needed. Instead he went to the Sub-A files, which contained copies of the FD-302s, the “blind” 302s that didn’t identify the informant but contained the results of the debriefings. The remaining copies of the 302s—documents increasingly more familiar to followers of Court TV—had already been sent to pertinent case files throughout the field office and around the country.

Thirty seconds later he had all six A-files in hand as he returned to Betty’s desk. He stared at the closed door that led out into the corridor and felt a crawling sensation up the back of his neck. If he’d thought he was exposed before, he was even more seriously compromised now. Betty Clement wasn’t likely to show up, but Betty wasn’t the only danger. Her support-staff supervisor had a key to this room, too, and the agent supervisor in charge of monitoring the informant program also had one. But even if they didn’t show up, he still wasn’t safe. It wouldn’t take a key at all to do him in. All anyone had to do was see a crack of light under Betty’s locked door and he was finished. He felt his pulse quicken, his heart thumping behind his shirt. A shrink could probably tell him what he was doing here, why he had to be here, but it was too late for that now.

So he’d just have to work fast.

He picked up the first file and opened it. Franklin was not the subject of the file—not the informant himself—but there was no way he could be. The bureau didn’t mind gathering raw data on public figures, but FBI HQ would never allow a man of Franklin’s stature to actually be operated as an informant. The billionaire was much too powerful to fool around with, and the downside risk simply too great. If it ever came out that the bureau was operating the president’s closest friend as an informant, the media would go crazy. Anybody and everybody with fingerprints on the case would perish. No FBI agent in his right mind would risk his career over such a thing. But that didn’t mean Franklin’s name wouldn’t appear in these pages. That was a different matter altogether. No one could blame the bureau for making a record of what their legitimate informants reported.

And Franklin’s name came up often, Monk saw, as he examined the first file. He used Betty’s computer again, this time to identify the “serials”—the individual documents in an FBI file—that contained Franklin’s name. A process that would save him from having to go page by page through the file itself. The computer listed twenty-three serials containing information about the man. Monk glanced one more time at the door, then turned to the first Franklin serial and began to read.

The informant report—bureau form FD-209—mentioned a party at Battle Valley Farm. Monk checked the date and let out a murmur of relief. It wasn’t the party he and Lisa had gone to, thank God. The idea that an informant had been at that party, had reported what had happened upstairs, was unsettling enough to turn Monk’s eyes back toward the door before he returned to the 209. This was a different party, and the informant was reporting the presence of a man at the party, a man whose name Monk didn’t recognize. A name he decided was of no value in finding Sung Kim.

He flipped to the next serial.

Another party at Franklin’s farm, again not last Saturday night’s, but now he was concerned. Two parties in a row. An undesirable trend. He checked the next serial. Not a party this time, Monk was happy to see, but still nothing he could use. Franklin had hosted a group of engineers from South Korea, one of whom the informant suspected of involvement in an illegal transfer of American technology. Interesting. Monk pulled a small notebook from his pocket, jotted down the pertinent details of the report.

Then he went through the remaining serials in the first file. Two more parties at the farm, three business meetings at the Global Building, but nothing about da Vinci, the Madonna, or any sort of artwork at all.

The next file was even more innocuous. Two serials, old ones, both containing little more than gossip. Monk bent closer to the report. He needed the dirt, and this was more like what he was looking for. The first 209 reported that Franklin’s wife was livid about rumors that Franklin was involved with a younger woman, rumors that had penetrated their social circle and were causing her embarrassment. The second 209 said pretty much the same thing, but added the fact that nobody could figure out who the woman was, or anything else about her for that matter. Monk felt his eyebrows lift. A younger woman. Now he had something to look for. Despite the fact that Betty’s computer listed nothing else in this file identifiable with Franklin, Monk went through every page. Betty might have made a mistake. There might be something more in here about the mystery woman. There might be something to identify her as Sung Kim.

But there wasn’t.

Monk tossed the file aside and went to the next one. The pertinent 209 was the last serial in the file, the latest addition. He looked at the date. Just a couple of weeks ago. He skimmed the report. According to the informant, the president had met with some of his closest advisors at Battle Valley Farm. The stated agenda was economic development along the Pacific Rim, but the real purpose was a whole lot more serious. The informant had heard from someone at 1600 Pennsylvania, who’d heard from someone even closer to the West Wing, that the real purpose of the meeting was to talk about North Korea and the growing threat of North Korean nuclear proliferation. And what the rest of the world might soon have to do about it. Specifically, what Japanese prime minister Ishii Nakamura wanted to do about it. Despite the cultural contempt of his people for nuclear weapons, Nakamura was asking for nukes he could use to protect his country from North Korea and to keep peace along the Pacific Rim.

Reading the report, Monk was fascinated by the inside peek at what everyone seemed to be talking about these days, the ever-growing nuclear bluster from the lunatic in Pyongyang. Equally fascinating was the Japanese prime minister’s extraordinary request. Not so long ago his country had been devastated by the same sort of weapon they now seemed ready to obtain.

And the fact that the meeting had taken place at Franklin’s farm certainly underscored the man’s influence with the Oval Office. Monk recalled the story in Time, the article that suggested Franklin was not only the president’s closest friend but his most trusted advisor as well. He thought about that for a moment and felt his stomach tighten. The stakes were growing larger, weren’t they? This was turning into a hell of a …

Monk froze as he heard footsteps outside the door.

He could do nothing more than stare at the doorknob, and watch it turn as the door began to shake.

Shit.

He looked around for a place to hide.

He reached for the light, but didn’t dare turn it off. Whoever was out there would notice for sure.

The door stopped shaking.

The footsteps receded down the hallway.

Monk’s body sagged. He glanced down at his shirt, half expecting to see the fabric jump with the hammering of his heart. He released the breath he’d been holding since hearing the footsteps. Christ Almighty. One of the night clerks, he realized. Rattling the door like a cop walking the beat, checking to make sure it was locked. Monk sat quietly for a moment, and when his breathing returned to normal he went back to the files.

He searched for more about the president’s meeting at Battle Valley Farm but saw nothing. He wasn’t surprised. It was amazing enough for the bureau to have one informant so close to the West Wing; more than one would be a miracle. He looked for anything to do with art, with paintings, with stolen paintings, with da Vinci or the Madonna, but found nothing. He glanced at his watch. He’d been here forty-three minutes already. Far too long. For all he knew, the night clerk had seen some light under the door and gone for help.

He grabbed the files and hurried back through the door into the file room, replaced them in the stacks, then shot back to Betty’s desk and turned off her computer. Making sure her desk was exactly as he’d found it, he moved to the office door, cracked it open, peered out into the semi-darkness, and saw no one. He stepped through the door, shut and locked it behind him, then walked swiftly to the corridor and from there to the elevator that would take him to the garage.

Oh, for God’s sake! Jack Bryant thought. Now what?

Someone had just gotten into the elevator on the third floor.

Still sorting mail, Jack checked the elevator monitor. A tall man stood inside, facing the door. Dark red tennis shirt, tan cotton pants. Jack didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean much. He hadn’t been here long enough to know even a third of the people who worked in the field office. He looked instead for the ID card that should be hanging down the man’s chest, but he couldn’t see one.

Jack stepped over to the monitors and watched the screen that would show the man coming out of the elevator into the garage. A moment later he saw the elevator doors slide back and the man step through. Jack touched the button at the bottom of the monitor to zoom in with the camera. He still couldn’t see an ID card. He reached for the microphone to his left to challenge the man. He lifted the mike as the man turned his back for an instant to look around at the closing elevator doors. Jack lowered the mike. There it was, the ID card, hanging down the guy’s back.

Damn it, that had been close.

The last thing he needed was to piss off some agent who had to be dog-tired.

He stepped back from the monitors, turned toward the mail slots again, then realized he’d forgotten something. Jesus, what was the matter with him? He’d almost forgotten the security log, another good way to get your ass fired. Jack knew he was overly scrupulous—that the other night clerks laughed at his constant concern about crossing t’s and dotting i’s—but it was his life, his career, and he wasn’t about to lose it through carelessness.

He went back to the clipboard hanging near the monitors. He jotted down the time, added the words, “unknown agent entered third floor elevator, exited into garage and drove out. ID badge verified.”

There, Jack Bryant thought, as he initialed the log and returned to his mail. Any problem now, it wasn’t going to be his. He picked up a letter, glanced at it, turned to fire it into a pigeonhole, then stopped with his hand in the air as he realized what he’d seen … or what he hadn’t seen.

The agent had been on the third floor, working on the third floor, but Jack hadn’t seen him. He’d just come back from walking through every squad room on that floor, and he hadn’t seen a soul. Jack began to wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake with the goddamned security log. Maybe he shouldn’t have made any kind of note at all. Especially one that said he’d had an unidentified person on the third floor, a person he hadn’t even bothered to identify. Shit. People had warned him the FBI was a dangerous place to work, but they had no idea.

He didn’t need five seconds to decide what he had to do next.

His supervisor might chew his ass for failing to identify the agent, but the bureau would fire him if they found out he didn’t report his mistake promptly. He was fucked if he did, but he was really fucked if he didn’t. If he wanted to get his degree, to move up the ladder and become an FBI agent, there was only one way to go here. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then reached for the phone.

Back in the Volvo after her failed attempt to determine from the lights in the FBI building’s windows which floor Monk had gone to, Sung Kim watched his Saab as it swung up the ramp and turned into the street. She waited for him to get far enough away that he wouldn’t notice her, then pulled out of her parking place and followed. There was virtually no traffic, and she warned herself to be careful. She didn’t have to risk exposure. She knew where he lived. She knew where he worked. She knew about the barnlike structure by the river. It was better to stay back tonight, better to lose him now than blow her assignment altogether.

Monk was too wired to sleep, so he drove around the deserted streets until the adrenaline level in his body had returned to something resembling normal. It was shortly after five o’clock when he finally made it back to the loft. Lisa was waiting for him. Sitting up in bed as he came through the door, her eyes on him as he approached.

“Where were you?” she asked. “I woke up about four, and you weren’t here. When did you get up?” She frowned. “And where have you been all night?”

“My pager went off around two. You didn’t hear it, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You had to work?”

“You sound like you don’t believe me.”

“The SOG? You and your team were out on the street?”

Damn it, she’d made a phone call to check. “I didn’t say that at all.” He paused. “What I said is that I had to go to work.”

Lisa sat up straighter, her dark eyes narrow. “What were you doing? What were you working on?”

He stared at her for a long moment, but said nothing. Lisa knew better than to ask a question like that.

“I didn’t know what to think when I got up to use the bathroom and you were gone.” She paused. “You should have called me if you were going to be gone all night.”

“I should have. I should have called, but I just got busy.”

Lisa shook her head. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.

“What’s wrong?” Monk asked her. “What do you imagine I was doing?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” She shook her head. “Or is that something else I don’t have the need to know?”

Monk stepped over to the freestanding wardrobe they used as a closet and began to unbuckle his belt, then stopped and turned to her again before approaching the foot of the bed.

“When did you go back to being a prosecutor again?”

Lisa looked directly into his eyes. “Were you with her?”

“Her?”

“Damn it, Puller, don’t even start. Don’t run one of your games on me.”

“I’m not running a game. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bethany Randall,” she said. “That’s what I’m talking about … That’s who I’m talking about.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I watched the two of you walking across the street together, going into the bar. You were gawking like an altar boy at her legs, she was touching your arm … brushing something off your sleeve.” She paused, and when she continued her voice was different. Lower now, and sad. “She was brushing your sleeve like a lover.” Lisa hesitated again. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I worry, Puller. I see you with her and I worry.”

Monk looked into her wounded eyes. He bent over the bed and spoke directly into those eyes.

“I was at WFO tonight. Checking on some stuff that I really can’t talk about.” He paused. “Bethany Randall was engaged to a friend of mine. We used to hang out together, the three of us, but that’s it.”

Lisa’s voice softened. “Are you going to see her again?”

“I don’t know why I would. I hadn’t seen her for five years as it was.”

He moved back to the wardrobe, pulled off his shirt and pants, and hung them up. Then he slid his shorts and socks off, opened the wicker hamper next to the wardrobe and tossed them in, before returning to the bed and sliding under the covers. He reached for Lisa, but her body stiffened as she edged closer to her own side. He followed her, nuzzling against the curve of her back.

“Lisa,” he said into the back of her head. “I should have let you know I’d be working all night. I shouldn’t have left without telling you. I’m a jerk and an asshole … but I love you.” He put one arm around her and pulled her close. “Can we be friends again? Can I weasel my way back into your arms?”

She turned over, her face only inches away.

“You are an asshole,” she said. “Sometimes you are a real jerk.” She rolled away from him, got out of bed, and started for the bathroom. Halfway there, she turned back. “We’re going to talk about this some more, Puller. I have to go to work now, but trust me, we will discuss this later.”