I heard Tommy’s voice booming somewhere in the distance. That answered the question: could things get any worse.
A door opened.
“The bodyguard’s got a depressed skull fracture,” DeLucca said. “He’s in bad shape. Lime’s lawyer is screaming attempted murder.”
“I’ll take care of that shyster,” Tommy said. “A Treasury agent in the lawful execution of his duty? By the time I get through with him he’ll be begging to plead out.”
I was face down on a table. I produced a sound to let them know I was conscious.
“Lawful?” DeLucca said.
“He had a warrant,” Tommy grumbled.
“You mean a FISA warrant?”
Tommy ignored him. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a secret tribunal, and he wasn’t going to tell DeLucca what paperwork we had.
I was in a back room of the Twentieth Precinct on West Eighty-Second Street. A police surgeon had spent an hour on my mouth, repairing the cuts and injecting me with something that had taken down the swelling. The medic finishing the patch-up was the same one who’d treated me after the Brighton Beach operation.
“All the other cuts are superficial,” he said. “I’ve closed them with glue. This one,” he prodded my butt with a blue-gloved finger, “I put a stitch in this one. I think the blade just grazed the sciatic nerve. It’ll hurt for a while.”
“Incontrovertible proof that you are a pain in the ass,” Tommy said.
The design of the Santa Clara had saved my life. Lime’s apartment was on three floors, but the top two were stepped back, the architectural detail that gave the tower its famous wedding-cake silhouette. When I went over the railing I’d landed on the terrace below. I stumbled inside, found the elevator, and hobbled out into the lobby dragging the six-foot blade just as a swarm of cops were coming in the door.
When I’d left her, Tabitha had worried about what I might do. In the morning she’d tried calling, but couldn’t reach me. I’d left my phone in the car. She ordered a GPS location search, and when she saw that it came from just outside Lime’s building, and wasn’t moving, she called Tommy. He called DeLucca, who scrambled a tac squad.
They arrived just as a bleeding crazy man came rushing through the lobby with a sword. They screamed at me to drop the weapon and get down. It had taken DeLucca an hour to get to the precinct and spring me from the holding cell. Tommy was now here to take care of the paperwork and see if he could make my day a little worse.
“You want to talk to the concierge?” DeLucca said to Tommy. “His cell phone shows he called Lime to warn him about Alex. I got him in the cage. Here’s his sheet.”
He tossed a thick wad of pages on the table.
“Let me see that for a sec,” said Tommy. He scrabbled in the breast pocket of his citron-colored bowling shirt. This one had lime-green piping and the name “Cato” stitched on the pocket. He fished out his reading glasses and glanced quickly through a few pages.
“I’ll have a chat with him later,” he said, placing the file on the table and giving it a pat. “I need the exercise. In the meantime,” he turned to me, “where are we with your sparring partner? It would be nice if you actually learned something. Other than that you’re an idiot.”
“Nash and Lime are connected,” I said, getting slowly off the table.
“What, did he give something up?”
“I pretended I’d discovered their plan. It hit home.”
“That’s the takeaway? You faked him and he blinked?” Tommy shook his head and looked at the medic. “You didn’t tell me about the severe brain injury and delusional complications.”
I paced gingerly around the room. It felt as if an electrified wire ran from my hip to my ankle. Every time I moved, the wire delivered a shock. The medic had left me with ten days’ worth of fentanyl. I pretended to study a notice on the wall and swallowed one of the pills.
When the medic left, DeLucca closed the door and glanced at Tommy. They both looked glum.
“Want the bad news first?” Tommy said.
Washington was taking us apart. The attorney general had found cracks in the legal structure that kept the operations of our unit confidential, and was busy hammering in wedges.
Nash had been baiting the president, ridiculing his business past. Ridiculing his physical appearance. He played the president’s game, but dirtier, until the president was incoherent with rage. The president was going to use whatever weapon against Nash he could, and he had a big one: the government of the United States.
“How can we protect the files?” I said.
“Jesus Christ,” Tommy snapped. “Are you not paying attention? There is nothing we can protect. The president runs the administration. There is no such thing as a file he can’t see once he knows about it.”
I tried to sit, but the pain shot down my leg again and I leaned against a wall.
“If that’s the bad news, what’s the good?”
“Yeah, well, that’s where maybe I misstated,” Tommy said. “There’s bad news, and then there’s worse.”
I had a hard time concentrating. The sword cuts still burned beneath the fentanyl, just enough to let me know they would be waiting when the drug wore off.
I bit the inside of my cheek to help focus. Tommy had something important to add, and it would be best to actually hear it.
“I’m listening.”
“There’s an order for you to report to DC to be debriefed at the Treasury.”
“Debriefed? There’s a statutory restriction on who can question me.”
“I think you’ll find they’ve got that sorted out.”
What it came down to was this: Chuck was only nominally in charge. The treasurer had started running things. He would send marshals for me if I didn’t come.
Unless I ran.
And that’s what we agreed on. I had a legitimate reason to leave the country: to pursue an existing investigation. Anyway, that was going to be the story.
When Tommy left, DeLucca and I worked out the details. He would be my contact. The NYPD was the largest police force in the country, and the city of New York, the fortress that protected it. Any communications with DeLucca would be safe.
For the next two hours we talked about what I would have to do. He made some calls and so did I. The pain was giving me trouble. It roamed around inside my body. It chewed at the places where the sword had cut. Fentanyl is a short-acting drug, but the medic had given me some patches too.
By the time we left the precinct, it was night. We drove downtown and stopped outside a condo tower on Chambers Street. A block away, where the Twin Towers had stood, the spire of the World Financial Center soared above ground zero. An NYPD squad car idled at the curb nearby.
“Your car’s in the garage,” DeLucca said. “Parking level two. My guys packed the bag exactly as you asked. It’s in the trunk. I’ll give your apartment keys to Tommy.”
A thin stream of exhaust dribbled out of the tailpipe of the squad car parked ahead of us.
A stab of pain shot down my leg. I was feeling nauseated.
“One more thing,” I said. “I know you’ve laid on a lot of protection, and I’m grateful. But I’d like somebody I personally trust at Tuxedo Park. Augie Treacher. You probably know who he is.”
He shrugged. “Sure I know. He’s a killer.”
I took the Holland Tunnel. No tail that I could see. I picked my way carefully through Jersey City, Paramus, and Ridgewood, doubling back on myself, exiting suddenly, parking. Nothing.
I got on the I-87 and six hours later crossed into Quebec with a Canadian passport in the name of Alan Ryder. I reached Montreal airport in time for Air Canada’s morning flight to Brussels.