Kevin ripped off his headset. “Jesus Christ!”
“Where’s the call from?” Teddy said.
“They’re going to kill her!”
“Snap out of it. Trace the call.”
“It wasn’t long enough to get an exact location.”
“You got something.”
“It was a cell phone here in D.C. I can probably pinpoint it within a twenty-block radius, but that’s the best I can do. He has to keep them on the line longer.”
“We don’t have control over that. He doesn’t know we’re doing this, so we have to work with what we’ve got. Now then, you’ve got a cell phone in a twenty-block radius. What else have you got?”
“Nothing. It’s a throwaway phone, and it isn’t registered. There’s no way to trace the owner, just the location. If they call back I can pin it down, but with a throwaway phone, they probably won’t.”
“What about the other call? What can you tell about that?”
“That one was different. It came from a landline, which will be listed. Hang on, I’ll trace it.” He typed rapidly. “Got it. The phone’s listed in the name of Calvin Hancock.”
Holly Barker sucked in her breath.
Kevin looked at her. “What?”
“Big money man,” Teddy said. “All right, that tears it. As if the Speaker wasn’t under enough pressure. Once Calvin Hancock gets involved, the situation’s out of control. He spends a ton of money and he expects results.”
“Any way to stop him?” Millie said.
“Short of killing him, no. He won’t be put off and he won’t be distracted. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Just when the Speaker got the nerve to stand up to these guys.”
Teddy’s cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket. “Hello?”
“Mr. Worthing?”
It took Teddy a second to place the name. It was the one he’d used to rent the hangar at Dulles where he’d left Peter’s plane. “Yes. One moment please.” He covered the phone. “I have to take this. Millie, stay with Kevin. Keep on top of the Speaker’s calls. He should be getting a lot.”
Teddy followed Holly into her office, shut the door, and uncovered the phone. “This is Mr. Worthing. What’s up?”
“I had some men snooping around the hangar checking out your plane. They seemed particularly interested in the tail numbers.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. The decal of one of the numbers was peeling up on the corner. The guy tried to pull it off. I stopped him. But they had a lot of questions.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them to take a hike. If they weren’t from Federal Aviation they got no right to ask.”
“And these guys weren’t?”
“Just goons. They didn’t even bother to flash credentials.”
“Did they leave peacefully?”
“They asked a lot more questions. I didn’t answer them.”
“What did they want to know?”
“When was the hangar rented, how long was it rented for?”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them they were wasting their time, the hangar wasn’t available, but there were plenty more to rent right next door.”
“Did that satisfy them?”
“Hell no. They wanted to know about Billy Barnett. They seemed to think he was the pilot.”
“Thanks. They got no right to be there. Let me know if they come back.”
Teddy hung up.
“What was that?” Holly said.
“They just found Peter’s plane. They had a bug in Stone’s phone when he called me to come out here and told me to borrow it. They tried to take me out at the airport. When the item ‘Movie Producer Billy Barnett Shot Dead’ didn’t show up in the tabloid press, they started tracing the plane. I changed the tail numbers, but they found it anyway.”
“How bad is that?”
“Well, it isn’t good. Now they know Billy Barnett’s in D.C. They suspected it before, but this confirms it.”
“But they don’t know who Billy Barnett is.”
“No. As far as they’re concerned, he’s just a movie producer from L.A. But the harder he is to pin down, the more interested they’ll become. They can’t kill him, and they can’t find him. The plane they think he’s flying has the tail numbers changed. They keep coming up empty. It will drive them nuts. They’ll become obsessed with Billy Barnett.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Let them find him.”