Hunter parked the Bureau Ford in the short-stay parking lot at the airport, and then he and Reilly walked separately into the terminal building. The sheriff went straight to a ticket counter, carrying his gun case and leather bag, and paid cash for a single ticket.
Hunter joined the line at a different counter. When he reached the front, he bought a single ticket to Washington D.C. and, like Reilly, paid for it with cash. What they didn’t want was to leave any kind of a paper trail for anybody to follow.
After obtaining their tickets, both men showed the counter clerks FBI identification in the names of Wilson and Rogers and advised them that they were carrying firearms in holsters, and Reilly also confirmed that the locked gun case contained unloaded firearms.
The legalities taken care of, the two men sat separately in the bar and ordered drinks. Hunter bought coffee and a sandwich. He hadn’t slept since the previous night, or eaten in over twelve hours, and the strain was beginning to tell. When he’d finished his snack, he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his wallet and looked through it. The germs of an idea were stirring in his mind.
Hunter picked up his carry-on bag and left the bar, glancing once towards Reilly, who looked at him incuriously. Twenty minutes later he walked back, ordered another coffee and sat down.
On the other side of the building, a tall, fair-haired man sat in the departure area waiting for a flight to Denver to be called, Hunter’s ticket clutched in his hand. There was no paper-trail leading from Helena to Washington, but thanks to Hunter’s purchase of a ticket by credit card, and subsequent immediate cash sale to the stranger – for under a half of what he had paid for it – there was now a clear indication that Hunter was heading for Colorado.
That, he thought, might keep the pursuers off their backs for a few more hours.
John Michaelson had not been a popular choice as Senior Resident Agent at Helena, but his appointment had clearly been justified on the basis of his experience and time served in the Bureau. What most people didn’t like about him was his manner and attitude. He was perennially fussy, giving undue attention to details and, in the opinion of most people who had worked with him, not nearly enough attention to the overall picture. In short, he usually seemed more concerned that all the forms were correctly completed than whether or not a case was actually solved. J. Edgar Hoover would have loved him.
Christy-Lee Kaufmann should have appeared at the Agency that morning at nine, as she was the Duty Agent for the week, and all the other agents apart from her and Hunter were out on assignment. Michaelson was taking a couple of days’ leave, but he still rang the Agency from home at five past nine, as he always did unless he was actually going into the office, to check that the Duty Agent was there. He got no reply, so he tried again at nine ten, nine fifteen, nine thirty, nine forty-five, and at ten exactly.
At ten fifteen, he rang again, and then rang Agent Kaufmann’s home number. When he got no answer there either, Michaelson took off his casual clothes, put on his office suit, and drove in to investigate further.
When he unlocked the door, he could see at once that nobody had been in that morning. The fax machine had spewed paper in a stream onto the floor, overflowing the basket, and the answering machine light was winking. Michaelson tightened his lips and set to work to clear up the mess, mentally rehearsing the dressing-down he would enjoy giving Kaufmann when she finally did turn up.
The estimate from Omega Control of four hours for the arrival of the special ambulance from Pocatello, Idaho, turned out to be somewhat optimistic. Harris had calculated that they could be on their way north back to Helena no later than noon, but the ambulance didn’t appear until well after one thirty. Then the ambulance staff had to carry out the mandatory blood tests and sort out the paperwork. By the time they’d done all that, and transferred Christy-Lee’s still unconscious body to a gurney and loaded it into the back of the ambulance, where there was already one silent and sleeping patient, it was nearly two o’clock.
Harris and Morgan climbed back into the Buick and headed south for the next interchange, where they could get onto the north-bound freeway to Helena.
Randy Douglas closed the double rear doors of the ambulance, watched the Buick accelerate away, then walked round to the driver’s side door. ‘C’mon, Bill,’ he said. ‘Let’s get moving. Got a hell of a long way to go now, ’cause of this little diversion.’
His partner, Bill Robbins, nodded agreement and climbed into the front passenger seat. As Douglas started the engine and the air conditioning kicked in, bringing a welcome blast of cold air into the vehicle, Robbins reached for a road map and began studying it.
‘We’ll have to overnight somewhere pretty soon,’ he said. ‘We started at six this morning.’
Roland Oliver’s rules about driving hours would have done credit to any transport company. A maximum of two hours’ driving before a mandatory twenty-minute stop; a change of drivers at least every four hours, and a maximum of twelve hours travelling per vehicle per day. The vehicle was speed-limited to sixty miles an hour, and was fitted with a tachograph to ensure compliance with the rules by the drivers. All tachograph records were scrutinized at Roland Oliver, and dismissal was mandatory for even a single infraction.
The drivers liked it. They would perhaps have been less impressed if they’d realized that Roland Oliver’s rules were not designed for their comfort and convenience, but were simply intended to ensure that the precious cargoes the ambulances carried were never involved in an accident or subjected to excessive noise and vibration.
‘Yup,’ Douglas said, slipping the auto selector into ‘drive’ and heading towards the pumps. ‘We’ll gas-up here, get out of Montana into Idaho, and then look out for somewhere.’
The fax machine in the corner of the sheriff’s office emitted a faint ping, announcing the arrival of a message. The Deputy sitting at the reception desk stood up, walked over to the machine and tore off the sheet. He looked at it and stopped in mid-stride.
‘Jesus H Christ,’ he muttered, walked back to the desk, sat down and reached for the telephone.
Hunter paid off the taxi and he and Reilly climbed out.
‘OK,’ Hunter said, as they stood together on the sidewalk, looking down the Avenue. ‘You know what to do?’
Reilly nodded. ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Good luck in there.’
Hunter nodded once, and turned to walk away. As he did so, Reilly’s mobile phone rang. Hunter stopped as the sheriff answered it.
‘Yup?’ Reilly said, and listened. After three or four minutes, he ended the call and looked at Hunter.
‘One of my deputies,’ he said. ‘Been tryin’ to reach me for a while, but the phone was switched off in the aircraft. There’s an APB out for me, issued by the Fibbies, attention all agencies, plus a shoot-to-kill order. Seems I’m a carrier of some kind of a goddamn fever called Ebola Reston-Zaïre.’
Reilly said the unfamiliar words slowly, getting the pronunciation right.
‘The APB says it’s highly contagious,’ Reilly went on, ‘has better than ninety per cent lethality, and can spread through the air. The only way to eliminate the possibility of a major epidemic is to gun me down on sight. I’m not to be approached except by properly trained personnel wearing protective clothing. The fever’s also making me delirious, paranoid and unpredictable, and liable to acts of random violence. Funny,’ he finished. ‘I feel pretty good, all things considered.’
‘Might have guessed,’ Hunter said, nodding. ‘They were going to have to come up with some compelling reason for issuing a shoot-to-kill order. In the circumstances, that’s not bad.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Reilly said. ‘What the hell’s Ebola?’
‘Ebola’s a very nasty little filovirus that first surfaced in the Sudan in 1976 and killed about one in every two people it infected. Two months after the Sudan virus appeared, another filovirus emerged from the rain forest in northern Zaïre. That was much more lethal, and killed almost everybody it touched. All the filoviruses – and that group includes another one called Marburg – are classified as Biosafety Level Four hot agents.’
‘How many levels are there?’ Reilly asked.
‘Just the four,’ Hunter said. ‘Level Four is the most dangerous.’
‘And what about Reston?’ Reilly asked. ‘The name’s kinda familiar, but I can’t place it.’
‘Reston’s about ten miles west of here,’ Hunter said. ‘At the end of 1989 a monkey quarantine unit there became infected with a new strain of Ebola. Ebola Reston looked virtually identical to Zaïre under the microscope, but differed from it in two ways. First, it was lethal to monkeys but apparently harmless to human beings. That was the good news. The bad news was that this variant of the virus seemed to be able to spread itself through the air, maybe even in exhaled breath, though that’s never been confirmed. The others – Marburg, Sudan and Zaïre – could only be spread through body fluid exchange. A marriage of the two strains,’ Hunter finished, ‘would be spectacularly unpleasant.’
‘Seem to know a lot about bugs, Mr. Hunter,’ Reilly said.
Hunter nodded. ‘I studied them at Staff College in Britain, with a view to their use as terrorist weapons,’ he said.
‘Now that’s a real nasty thought,’ Reilly said.
‘Anyway,’ Hunter grinned at him, ‘just take two aspirins and try not to over-exert yourself.’
‘Very funny,’ Reilly replied, then looked serious. ‘OK. You take care of yourself in there. If you don’t come out, I ain’t quite sure what I’m gonna do.’
Hunter nodded and turned away. He walked off down the Avenue towards the looming bulk of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. He’d visited Bureau Headquarters maybe half a dozen times, when he had been doing familiarization training at Quantico, and he still remembered the basic layout and the security procedures.
The uniformed security guards stopped him, as they stopped everyone, at the entrance. Hunter took a deep breath and produced Wilson’s FBI identity card. The guard looked at it, glanced twice at Hunter’s face, nodded and handed it back.
‘Thanks,’ Hunter said, trying an American accent on for size, and pushed his way through the turnstile.
He walked across the atrium and took the elevator, getting out at the seventh and top floor. Hunter walked down the corridor until he reached a wide oak door bearing the legend ‘Office of the Director’ in large gold print, with ‘George Donahue’ in slightly smaller letters underneath. He pushed open the door and found himself in an airy and spacious office, looking directly at a male agent sitting at a mahogany desk. The only other occupant was a female secretary sitting in front of a computer terminal in the right hand corner.
The male agent looked up. He didn’t look pleased. ‘Yes?’ he asked.
‘I need to see the Director, immediately,’ Hunter said.
The man pursed his thin lips, smiled mirthlessly and shook his head. ‘Not a chance, unless you’ve got an appointment, and you haven’t, because if you had, I’d know about it.’
Hunter walked over to the desk, picked up the agent’s nameplate, looked at it and then replaced it, his movements slow and deliberate.
‘OK, Timothy,’ he said, leaning both hands on the desk and looking straight at the seated man, deliberately intimidating. ‘Let me explain things to you. I’ve come here all the way from Roland Oliver in Nevada to see the Director. What I want you to do is go in to him and tell him exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less.’
Out of the corner of his eye Hunter noticed that the typist was smiling broadly, and he guessed that very few people ever walked into the room and showed so little respect for Special Agent Timothy Myers.
Myers looked up at Hunter for a few seconds, then dropped his gaze. ‘You’re from who?’ he asked.
‘Roland Oliver,’ Hunter said, ‘but it’s an organization, not a person.’
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘I’d be surprised if you had,’ Hunter replied. ‘Don’t worry, the Director will know all about it.’
‘What’s your name?’ Myers demanded. ‘Let’s see some ID.’
Hunter shook his head. ‘My name isn’t important,’ he said. ‘It’s who I represent that matters. Just go tell the Director.’
‘OK,’ Myers said, getting up reluctantly. ‘I’ll see if he can make time for you.’
‘He’s not here,’ Morgan said, stating the obvious.
He and Harris were standing in the middle of Hunter’s living room. The door hadn’t given them any trouble, but their entry had still been very cautious. If Hunter had somehow found out about Kaufmann’s disappearance, or if he had been contacted by Sheriff Reilly, then he would certainly have been on his guard, and might even have been waiting for them in the building.
Harris had first rung the apartment phone from the telephone booth down the street. Then he’d pressed the bell in the lobby and waited. Neither action had produced any response at all, so they’d used a twirl on the deadlock and a strip of celluloid on the Yale, and eased open the door.
What they’d found was nothing at all. No Hunter, for openers, but no sign of hurried flight either. The place looked as if the occupant had just gone off to work or out for the day.
‘Maybe he’s at the Agency?’ Morgan suggested.
Harris nodded. ‘Could be,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s get out of here and call.’
The two men walked calmly out of the building – nobody attracts attention quite as much as someone who sneaks around – and Harris re-entered the telephone booth down the street. Morgan stood nonchalantly outside, apparently reading a newspaper but actually looking closely at everyone who entered or left Hunter’s apartment building.
Harris checked the Agency number from a contact list he had prepared earlier, and dialled. When the phone was answered, he spoke for a little over a minute, then replaced the receiver and stepped out. Morgan looked at him inquiringly, but Harris shook his head.
‘Some guy called Michaelson,’ he said. ‘He’s the Senior Resident Agent. He’s no idea where Hunter might be, and from the sound of it he doesn’t much care. He also,’ Harris added, with a slight smile, ‘doesn’t seem to know where Agent Kaufmann is.’
As Hunter had expected, Myers re-appeared from the Director’s office in less than a minute, and beckoned him over. Hunter inclined his head in a barely perceptible nod, walked past him into the inner office and closed the door behind him.
Donahue was sitting at his desk, two open files in front of him, but stood up as Hunter approached.
‘Mr. –?’ he asked, somewhat hesitantly.
‘My name isn’t important,’ Hunter said, echoing his statement to Myers of a few minutes earlier. He ignored Donahue’s outstretched hand and sat down in front of the desk. After a moment, Donahue sat down again.
‘I need to know who I’m dealing with,’ Donahue persisted.
Hunter shook his head firmly. ‘My FBI identification was checked when I walked into this building,’ he said. ‘All you need to know is that I’ve come up from Nevada and I represent Roland Oliver.’
As he said the words, concentrating on sounding as American as possible, Hunter wondered whether that really would be enough, whether Reilly had extracted enough information from Wilson. All he actually knew about the project was its name and the state where it was located, so that was literally all he could use. He watched closely, but the Director didn’t seem particularly uneasy or surprised by what he’d said.
Donahue stared across the desk for a long moment, considering. His dealings with Roger Ketch had been brief and somewhat unpleasant, and he was keenly aware that the head of Roland Oliver was not a man who would take kindly to having his instructions challenged, even by the Director of the FBI. And there was an undeniable presence – or perhaps more accurately menace – about the man sitting opposite him which suggested that he was the genuine article. Somehow, he looked like just the kind of man Ketch would employ.
But still the Director wasn’t satisfied, wasn’t completely certain. He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I accept that your name may not be important, but I have to be certain that you are from Roland Oliver.’
Hunter shook his head in apparent exasperation. ‘How many people know about Roland Oliver?’ he asked. ‘The fact that I’m here at all is proof enough that I’m genuine.’
Donahue thought that through for a few seconds. ‘No,’ he said, finally. ‘I still need proof. Ketch didn’t tell me he was sending anyone to Washington.’
Hunter noted the name without expression. ‘He didn’t think it would be necessary to advise you,’ he replied, mentally crossed his fingers, and took a sudden gamble. ‘Call Ketch right now, if you like, and confirm it with him. Otherwise, all I’ve got is this.’
Hunter fished inside his jacket pocket and brought out the Omega card Reilly had obtained from Wilson and tossed it onto the table in front of Donahue.
The Director picked it up, examined both sides, and then extracted an almost identical card from his own wallet and compared the two. Then he nodded and passed the card back.
‘OK,’ Donahue said. ‘Now, what exactly do you want with me?’
‘We have to talk, Director,’ Hunter said. ‘This operation has started coming off the rails, and we need to recover it. But we can’t talk about it here.’
Donahue looked surprised. ‘Why not?’
‘Walls can have ears, Director,’ Hunter said. ‘You know the classification of this project. Roland Oliver procedures mean that we have to talk outside, in a totally secure environment.’
‘We have secure briefing rooms here. What’s wrong with using one of those?’
‘They’re not secure enough, Director. Ketch is worried, and time’s running out. He’s given me instructions for you that have to be implemented within hours, and there’s another man here in Washington that you have to meet. I’ve got a car waiting outside. Let’s go.’
Hunter stood up and walked to the door, then stopped and looked back expectantly. If Donahue stayed where he was, Hunter’s only other option was to try to frog-march him out of the building at gunpoint, and he had no illusions about how successful that might be.
‘OK,’ Donahue said, got up and walked to the door leading to the outer office.
‘Myers,’ he said, as he walked through the room. ‘There are two Secret files on my desk. If I’m not back in an hour, lock them in my safe.’
Myers looked up, surprised. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you have a meeting with the CID Assistant Director in forty minutes.’
‘Cancel it. This is more important,’ Donahue snapped and walked out of the office, Hunter three paces behind him.
Roger Ketch slammed the telephone receiver back into its rest with enough force to crack the plastic of the base unit.
‘Fucking idiots,’ he shouted, stood up and stalked round the office. Then he sat down again. He was a man quick to anger, but calculatingly rapid in his recovery from it.
Harris had been apologetic, but unhelpful. To add to the fiasco of Sheriff Reilly shooting his way past – or rather through – two of the Alert Team, he now had to contend with the disappearance of Hunter. Ketch closed his eyes for a moment or two, then reached for the phone and dialled a number in Washington, D.C.
Agent Myers was in a less than good mood. He hadn’t liked the look of the man from Nevada from the moment he walked in through the door, and his arrogant attitude had made him, Myers, look a fool. He’d expected that the Director would have refused a meeting and told him to throw the man out, but that hadn’t happened.
Four minutes after Donahue had left the office, Myers heard the Director’s telephone ring. From the distinctive sound, he knew it was the internal line that meant Myers could and should answer it. He pushed through the door and picked up the receiver.
‘Director Donahue’s office. Agent Myers speaking.’
‘This is the Communications Centre. We have a Priority One call on a secure line for the Director.’
‘He’s not in the office,’ Myers said, thinking fast. A Priority One call had to be answered by somebody. ‘He’s stepped out for a few minutes. I’ll come down and take it.’
Three minutes after that, Myers walked into the soundproof booth and closed the door behind him. ‘Special Agent Myers.’
The voice in the earpiece was harsh, grating and unfamiliar. ‘Where’s Donahue?’
Myers liked and respected the Director, and didn’t much care for the caller’s tone of voice. ‘Director Donahue has left the building for a few minutes. I’m his assistant. Who’s calling?’
‘Jesus wept. He isn’t supposed to leave the fucking building. Where’s he gone?’
Myers was confused, and not a little alarmed. The voice radiated authority, and Myers frantically tried to identify it. The number of people who could order the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stay in the building, or to do anything else for that matter, was extremely small, and Myers wondered for a brief moment if he was actually talking to the President. He discounted that – he’d never spoken to Charles Gainey in person, but his voice was familiar enough from any number of presidential broadcasts.
‘Just a moment, please,’ he said, and leaned out of the booth.
‘What’s the origin of this call?’ he shouted across to the Communications Officer.
‘Origin? You mean where it’s from?’
‘Yes.’
The officer checked the display in front of him for a moment, then looked up. ‘Nevada,’ he said. ‘Groom Lake Air Force Base, to be exact.’
Myers nodded his thanks and closed the door again. ‘Who are you?’ he asked into the mouthpiece.
‘Who I am doesn’t matter, and is no concern of yours.’
Myers was getting a little tired of hearing that.
‘All that matters is where the hell the Director’s gone,’ the voice continued.
‘I can’t tell you,’ Myers said, ‘because I don’t know.’
‘Listen. This is a Priority One call concerning a subject classified above Top Secret. You do know what that means, I hope?’
‘Yes,’ Myers replied, ‘but it doesn’t help. I still can’t tell you what I don’t know.’
‘OK. Did he have an appointment outside the building?’
‘No. In fact, he had a meeting scheduled for this afternoon that I’ve had to cancel.’
‘So why did he leave?’
Myers pondered for a few seconds, shrugged, and answered. ‘Somebody arrived to see him, and they left together. And before you ask, I don’t know his name because he refused to give it. All he said was that he was from Roland Oliver.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ the voice said, surprisingly softly.
In his office in Nevada, Roger Ketch leaned back in his chair and held the telephone handset away from his ear for a few seconds. The operation was going wrong in spectacular fashion.
What he knew for certain was that no authorized Roland Oliver personnel were in Washington, which meant that whoever had called on Director Donahue was not authorized, but obviously knew something about the project. The only people who fitted that description were Sheriff Dick Reilly and Steven Hunter. With the APB out for Reilly, Ketch was prepared to put money on the man being Hunter.
He reached a decision and spoke urgently. ‘Listen, Myers. You have to find the Director, and as soon as possible. The man who called on him is an impostor, and the Director’s life is definitely in danger. I’ll call you back in half an hour.’
Sitting in the booth, Agent Myers found himself listening to a dead line. He replaced the receiver, glanced at his watch and walked quickly out of the booth. There was just a chance that he might be in time. He picked up an internal phone and called the front entrance security.
‘This is Agent Myers. Has the Director left the building?’
There was a brief pause as somebody else was consulted, then the guard replied. ‘Yes, sir. He left with another man about three or four minutes ago.’
‘OK,’ Myers said. ‘This is an emergency. Take any available guards and get outside now and see if you can spot him. If you find him, tell him to return to the building immediately. Carry weapons – the man with the Director is armed and dangerous. Now do it.’
Roger Ketch slumped back in the leather chair in his office, weighing the options open to him.
He was certain that the man in D.C. who’d kidnapped the Director was Hunter, simply because there was nobody else it could be, except Sheriff Reilly, and Ketch doubted very much if the Montana sheriff could even have talked his way into the FBI Headquarters Building, far less managed to persuade Donahue to walk out of it with him.
No, it had to be Hunter. But the chances were good that Sheriff Reilly was with him, simply because Hunter would need help to get the Director away from Pennsylvania Avenue.
Of course, Ketch mused, it was always possible that Myers might be able to get agents out on the streets and locate Donahue before whatever escape plan Hunter and Reilly had in mind could be implemented. On past form, though, Ketch doubted it. This operation seemed to be a perfect demonstration of Ketch’s version of Murphy’s Law – ‘if anything can go wrong, it will, at the most inconvenient moment, and with the most unfavourable possible consequences.’
Hunter and Reilly, he guessed, would kill or injure Donahue in an attempt to get him to tell them what he knew about Roland Oliver, and they would then dump him and try to get out of Washington as quickly as they could.
In that case, it was pointless having Harris and Morgan cooling their heels in Helena. The quarry was in Washington D.C., so that’s where the hunters should be. He nodded to himself, checked the number of Harris’s mobile and reached for the telephone.
Hunter and Director Donahue stood on the pavement about seventy yards from the front entrance of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Donahue wanted to talk, but Hunter just ignored him: he was too busy checking the traffic for the car Reilly should be driving.
Hunter glanced at his watch. Reilly was late. He was supposed to have pulled up nearly three minutes ago.
As he stared up the Avenue, Hunter saw two uniformed guards run out of the entrance of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and look up and down the road. One of them looked straight at Donahue, gesticulated to the other, and they both began running towards Hunter, grabbing at their holstered pistols.
‘Oh, shit,’ Hunter muttered, and looked again into the traffic for Reilly. Then he eased back slightly, so that Donahue was between him and the approaching guards, and extracted the Glock from his belt holster.
When the first guard was about twenty feet away, Hunter grabbed Donahue round the throat, stepped clearly into view, and levelled his pistol straight at the guard. The man stopped dead.
‘What the hell –’ Donahue spluttered.
‘Shut up,’ Hunter said, and moved the barrel of the Glock slightly to include the second guard. A brief flash of headlamps caught his eye, and he saw a black Ford easing in to the curb.
‘Stay right where you are,’ Hunter shouted. ‘Keep your hands away from your weapons.’
The Ford drew up. Hunter pushed Donahue over to the curb, reached out and opened the rear passenger door with his left hand. Then he motioned the Director towards it.
‘Get in,’ Hunter snapped.
The Director looked at him, but didn’t move. Hunter glanced back at him, and with a single backward blow smashed the barrel of the Glock across Donahue’s face. Donahue staggered back, blood streaming from his nose. The pistol was back in position, covering the two guards, long before either of them could react.
‘I said, get in.’
Donahue bent almost double, but crawled into the back seat of the Ford, his hands covering his face. Hunter wound down the rear window, never taking his eyes off the guards, and climbed in beside him. He closed the door, but continued to cover the two men with his pistol through the open window.
‘Go,’ he said, and the Ford surged away from the curb. Only when they were lost to sight in the traffic did Hunter relax slightly, wind up the window and look again at his captive. Donahue was hunched in the seat, a handkerchief held over his face.
‘You son of a bitch,’ he muttered. ‘You’ve broken my goddamn nose.’
Hunter shrugged. ‘You should do what you’re told, when you’re told,’ he said indifferently, and turned to look out of the windshield.
‘Better late than never,’ he said to Reilly.
‘Sorry ’bout that. The traffic’s a bitch. Where to?’
‘First, find somewhere to change the plates. Then get across the Potomac, past Arlington Cemetery and pick up Interstate 95,’ Hunter said. ‘Stay on the Interstate past Springfield, then take any exit you like. Director Donahue and I are going to have a little talk while you drive.’
‘’kay,’ Reilly said, then tossed his handcuffs to Hunter. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘make sure he don’t go nowhere.’
Hunter placed the muzzle of the Glock against Donahue’s neck, snapped one handcuff around his right wrist, then pulled the Director’s arm across his body, and secured the other cuff around the elbow rest on the left-hand door.
‘Just who the hell are you?’ Donahue asked. ‘And who’s the driver?’
Hunter grinned at him. ‘I said there was another man here in Washington that you had to meet, Donahue. Can’t you guess who he is? You don’t know him, but you’ll know his face.’
Reilly turned round and look straight at Donahue.
‘Jesus Christ,’ the Director said. ‘You’re Reilly.’
The sheriff grinned at him, but there was no humour in his face. ‘You got it, Donahue,’ he said. ‘Thanks to you, I’m a dead man walking, but I still think I’m gonna live longer than you.’
Donahue turned slowly back to face Hunter, who nodded at him.
‘Correct, Director. He’s Reilly and I’m Hunter. We’re right at the top of the Roland Oliver kill list, so it really doesn’t seem to make a hell of a lot of difference what we do. Or what we do to you.’