Kane almost made it to Brownstein’s apartment before his boss caught up with him. For a moment Greg considered letting the call go to voice mail. A host of excuses — dead battery, dead zone, heavy traffic — flitted through his mind but they were all stopgap measures at best. Eventually he’d have to deal with Immerson and he figured that he might as well do it now.
“Kane.”
“What do you think you’re doing? You’re not supposed to be in the field without your partner.”
“Useless is attending a seminar on Transformative Political Correctness and Advanced Paper Pushing.”
“His name is Eustace, not Useless! I’ve warned you about creating a hostile work environment, Kane.”
“I guess I confused his name with his job performance. I suppose that’s why he’s taking the Political Correctness seminar. Sorry, it won’t happen again.”
“You know it’s not . . . .” Immerson paused, familiar by now with Kane’s habit of getting the other person so irritated that they lost sight of what they wanted to talk to him about in the first place. “Just get back here until your partner returns.”
“I would but this is an emergency. Lives are at stake.”
“Lives are at stake?”
“The Senior Deputy Director of the HHS Department for the Control of Dangerous Biological Agents and Toxins has gone missing.”
“What?”
“42 USC 351A,” Kane answered knowing that the cryptic reference would raise Immerson’s frustration level another few points.
“What the hell are you babbling about?”
“That’s the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Response Act section that deals with the control of biological agents and toxins. The Department of Health and Human Services oversees the importation of potentially dangerous biological agents and toxins. Albert Brownstein is the HHS administrator who handles importation permits and exemptions. He’s the guy in charge of keeping bio-weapons out of the country and he’s gone missing. Obviously this is a job for Homeland Security.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a job for you. Come back here, now. You can open a case file and it’ll be assigned to the next team in the rotation.”
“Sure, I could do that but what if at this very moment someone is using Brownstein’s stolen credentials to bring in some kind of a bio-weapon? I mean, how would it look if hundreds of people died and then the press found out that we could have stopped it but that you pulled me out of the field because you were afraid that it was too dangerous for me to be alone on the streets of Washington D.C. without an armed escort?”
Immerson waited five seconds before he trusted himself to speak.
“Kane, I’m giving you a direct order. You have until six o’clock to get back to this office and file the proper paperwork on this supposed case.” The line went dead.
Greg smiled and went looking for Brownstein’s building manager.
“I have to have keys in case there’s a fire or something,” Henry Appel said defensively as he opened a battered file cabinet.
“It would be irresponsible not to,” Kane agreed.
“Ummm, 506 . . . 506 . . . 506,” Appel muttered as he leafed through a drawer of manila folders. “Yup, here it is, 506, Albert Brownstein. Do you want the lease app?”
“I just need access to the apartment for now.”
Appel toyed with the key.
“I’m not supposed to give these out, you know. Not without a warrant I mean.”
“It’s all right, Mr. Appel. I’m authorized.” Kane bent forward and lowered his voice. “It’s a matter of National Security.”
Appel stared for half a second then almost forced the key into Kane’s hand.
“I won’t tell anybody,” Appel whispered.
“Good man,” Kane said giving Appel a little nod. Washington was a city obsessed with terrorists.
Warrant? I don’t need no stinkin’ warrant, Kane thought as he moved from Brownstein’s bedroom to what Kane named the “hobby room.” Originally it had been a second bedroom but now it contained a high-end photo printer, a Win 7 computer and a top-of-the line 23-inch high-def monitor.
Brownstein hadn’t bothered to enable password protection and when Kane pressed the “Start” button he saw that Photoshop was the last application that had been used. It didn’t take long to discover that the hard disk was filled with photographs. Kane found a two-thousand dollar DSLR and four extra lenses in the closet. A sampling of the computer’s images — trees, flowers, leaves and waterfalls — boiled down to one word: boring.
An hour later Kane finished his search of Brownstein’s emails, web browser history and address book. He found nothing even remotely interesting. You could set your watch by him, Sandra Cray said and it looked like she had been right. Albert Brownstein was as boring as they came. If there were any clues here about what had happened to him or where he had gone Kane wasn’t going to find them this afternoon.
Greg copied Brownstein’s address book, email folders and his on-line phone bills to a flash drive more out of habit than with any hope they would help him find the missing bureaucrat. Whatever had happened hadn’t had anything to do with this apartment or any of Brownstein’s friends or acquaintances. Kane was sure of that. No, something or someone out of left field had caused Albert Brownstein to go missing and Kane didn’t have the slightest idea of what or who that could have been.
When Greg returned the key to Henry Appel he put a cautionary finger to his lips. Appel gave Kane a little wink and silently closed his door.