FORTY-NINE

Lisa didn’t respond to her cell phone, so Monk called her office. She wasn’t at her desk, either, and he waited for the call to transfer to the squad secretary.

“Sorry, Mr. Monk,” Janet Halper told him. “Lisa left a few minutes ago.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Didn’t say, but she left in a hurry, I can tell you that much. Went by me like a tornado.” Janet paused. “You have her cell number?” She laughed. “Dumb question … Of course you do.”

“I’ll try to call her, but if you talk to Lisa before I do, ask her to call me.”

He hung up and punched numbers for Lisa’s cell phone, but she didn’t answer. He left a message on her voice mail, then dialed her pager number and left the same message. Twenty minutes later he still hadn’t heard from her, so he did it all again. Still no luck. He threw the phone into the Ferrari’s passenger seat, and felt his grip tighten on the steering wheel. He couldn’t do anything about finding Lisa if she didn’t want to be found.

Then he thought about someone else he hadn’t heard from yet. William should have called by now. Monk reached for the phone again, hit the numbers for William’s office. It rang twice before an automated voice came on. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service, and there is no new number.” Monk frowned. He must have misdialed. He tried again, and discovered he hadn’t made a mistake.

Next he tried William’s cell phone, but it was the same message, this time from the cellular company he used. Monk stared at the phone for a few seconds before tossing it aside and heading for William’s office.

It wasn’t there anymore.

When Monk got to the third floor, William’s office was gone.

Monk stood in front of the NSA man’s door, staring at the empty spot where there should have been the brass-plated POTOMAC ENGINEERING sign. He shook his head as he realized he must have made a mistake, that in his rush to get here, he’d gotten out of the elevator on the wrong floor.

He hurried back to the elevator, but saw when he got there that he wasn’t wrong, that he was on the third floor. Scowling, he went back to William’s door. He tried the knob, but the door was locked. He knocked on it, softly at first, then harder, but there was no response.

“William?” he called. Nothing. “William!” Still no response.

Monk heard a voice to his right, and turned to see a thin short man down the hall, twenty feet away.

“Moved out,” the man said. “Last of the movers just left a few minutes ago.”

Monk walked down the hall until he was standing in front of the man.

“William?” he said. “William Smith just moved out?”

“I don’t know what his name was, but the man in that office is gone.”

Monk described William.

“That’s the guy,” the short man said. “But I never did meet him.” He paused. “Had to be a hell of a workaholic, though. Here when I got here in the morning, here when I left at night, but …” The short man shook his head. “No wonder he had to move out. The sign on the door said he was a civil engineer, but I never saw any clients.”

“You say the movers just left?”

“Not ten minutes ago.” The man chuckled. “Now that I think about it, he couldn’t have gone broke.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Man who’s belly-up doesn’t hire movers … not movers like those guys, anyway.”

“Those guys?”

“I’ve never seen so many, for one thing … and I’ve never seen any who looked like they did.”

Monk didn’t say anything. The man was itching to tell him the rest of it.

“Had to be twenty men,” he told Monk. “White coveralls, white shoes. Hell, they were all white, and I don’t mean just their clothes.” He shook his head. “You know what movers look like these days. About one step from homeless, most of them. Not the drivers … the day laborers who do the heavy lifting. But these guys didn’t look like that at all. Come to think of it, they looked more like you.”

“Twenty? Twenty movers?”

“Took ’em about half an hour, start to finish. I walked down there when they were gone. Never seen an office look so clean after a move.” The short man glanced up the hall in the direction of the empty office, then turned back to Monk. “It’s a whole lot cleaner in there than it was when your friend moved in.” He shook his head. “Matter of fact, it looks like he never moved in at all.”

Now Monk had to go to Fort Meade.

He drove to the Beltway and headed toward Maryland. When he hit I-295 he turned north, and half an hour later found an empty space in the immense parking lot outside the equally massive black-glass headquarters of the National Security Agency. Inside at the reception desk, a young man in an earnest blue suit took Monk’s credentials and examined them closely before looking up from behind the computer screen on his desk.

“What can I do for you, Special Agent Monk?”

“I’m here to see Director Carter.”

“Of course.”

The young man typed on his keyboard for a moment, then leaned toward the monitor and examined the screen before looking up again and shaking his head. “I don’t see your name here. When did you make the appointment?”

“I don’t have an appointment, but call upstairs anyway. I have a hunch he’s expecting me.”

The young man frowned. “I can’t do that … You can’t just walk in and.…”

His voice died as Monk turned and walked away, toward the bank of elevators beyond the reception desk.

“Hey!” the young man shouted. “Get back here! You can’t …”

Monk didn’t bother looking back. The young man would summon the guards without any further help from him. They would show up before he actually reached the elevators. Seconds later they did. Two of them, one on either side of Monk as he slowed to a stop. Big guys in dark blue uniforms. Wide shoulders, no perceptible necks. Large black pistols in the holsters on their hips. The shorter one stood at least six-four and he did the talking.

“What’s the problem here?” he wanted to know.

Monk showed his credentials again. “FBI,” he said. “Puller Monk. I’m on my way up to see the director.”

The guard frowned. “Why would you think you can just walk into the director’s office without an appointment?”

“Because I’m here to find out what happened to William Smith. To ask why William and his office have disappeared.”

“William Smith?” He glanced at his partner. “Is that name supposed to mean something to us?”

“I’m not here to see you.”

Both guards stepped closer to Monk. The bigger one reached out and grabbed his arm above the elbow. “You’re not here to see anybody,” he growled. The other guard took his free arm. Monk allowed himself to be pulled back toward the big front doors.

“William Smith,” Monk repeated before they got halfway there. “William Smith and …” He couldn’t make himself say any more, not to these guys. “If I don’t talk to Philip Carter about Smith, I’ll have to go to my own director.”

Which was meaningless drivel, but they wouldn’t know that. And it worked. Suddenly they stopped. Suddenly they were looking at each other. They didn’t exchange a word, but Monk could hear them just as clearly as if they were talking out loud. Like the security guards in Franklin’s secret vault, these guys weren’t about to proceed without shifting the responsibility to somebody else.

The shorter one let go of Monk’s arm and stepped off to the side to use the phone he plucked from his wide black belt. Monk couldn’t hear what the guard was saying, but he came back and grabbed Monk’s arm again.

“Let’s go, pal,” he said. “The only place you’re going is back to your car.”

Monk tried to yank his arm free, but the guard had a grip like a pit bull.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “Did you tell Carter what I said?”

“I told his chief of staff.”

Monk shook his head. “Not good enough. Carter himself has to be told I’m here. And why I’m here.”

“The chief of staff spoke to the director. I could hear him talking on the other line.”

“You heard him tell Carter that I’d go to my own director if Carter doesn’t see me?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“And?”

“And Mr. Carter says he has no idea what you’re talking about. He says nobody does … and nobody will. He says no matter how many times you come back here, nobody will.”