She checked her watch. “You up for some coffee?”

“What? Some people were just trying to kill us and you want a stimulant?”

“Yeah, at Simpsons in Georgetown, where Tolliver ate on Friday.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Then after that we can break into Tolliver’s house.”

“Oh for the love of God.”

CHAPTER 69

LATER THAT NIGHT Don Hope and Karl Reiger walked down the long hallway. They were several stories underground and the walls were lined with materials that prevented any form of electronic surveillance. It was a good thing since there were few buildings in the country that housed more secrets than this one, and that included the CIA’s command center in Virginia and the NSA headquarters in Maryland.

Both men looked anxious as they came to a stop in front of a metal door. There was a long hiss from hydraulic-powered equipment and the portal slid open. They stepped in and the door automatically closed behind them.

There were two chairs in front of the desk. They sat. Jarvis Burns was seated across from them. He perused his computer screen for another minute before turning to them. He slid off a pair of glasses and set them on the desktop. His hand ventured automatically to his right leg and started rubbing it. When Reiger started to speak, Burns held up his hand and shook his head. This was followed by a deep sigh. Reiger and Hope exchanged a nervous glance. Long sighs, apparently, were not a particularly good sign.

Burns said, “Interesting developments. Not pleased at all. Overly complicated now.” Each short sentence came out like an MP5 set on two-shot bursts.

Hope said, “Permission to speak candidly?”

“Of course.”

“The chief is covered. We fed her the info like you said and made it clear Director Donnelly was the source. As far as she’s concerned it’s domestic terrorists and she owes you. The sister and the lawyer are not really an issue, at least in my mind.”

Burns sat back, made a temple with his fingers, and settled his gaze on the two men. “Your assessment based on what? Your failures?”

“We haven’t failed.”

“Really? ‘Focus in on A-’? We had spyware on Tolliver’s computer. You knew about that e-mail and left it there. You could have erased it from Kingman’s computer before he even read it.”

Reiger said, “We didn’t do that because it sounded innocuous. We thought she’d just hit the send key by mistake. The message wasn’t even finished.”

“It was finished enough, because they figured out what it meant before you did. They got Watkins’s name and went to his apartment just in time to catch one of my people searching it. He had to tap-dance pretty fast.”

Reiger spoke up. “We didn’t know she had a box there. She’s never been to that mailbox place the whole time we’ve had her under surveillance.”

“Well, either she went before you had her under the glass or she had someone else to do it for her.”

“But your guy didn’t have to answer the damn door at Watkins’s apartment,” Hope pointed out.

“Trust me, if he hadn’t, Mace Perry would’ve broken in. And the police know about Watkins, too, of course. We could have removed the message after Perry and her friend found it, but then we would’ve risked her telling her sister and the paper being gone from the box would only have aroused the chief’s suspicions. The damage, in any case, was already done. But on the bright side, they have the old soldier in custody and he will no doubt be charged with murder very soon.”

“So maybe our work is done, then.”

“No, your work is not done. But we cannot afford any more screwups.”

Hope placed one large, muscular hand on the desktop. “We’ve been reactionary from almost the get-go. That’s not how successful ops are done, black or otherwise. That’s not why you brought us on board.”

“You are only technically assigned to DHS, which does not engage in black ops. You and Reiger are actually sterilized weapons, cocked and locked at all times. And we brought you on board to do a job, whatever job you were told to do. There is nothing nice or neat about our line of work. It is invariably messy, dirty, and ever-changing. You do deals with one devil because he’s slightly better than the next devil. If it were otherwise we wouldn’t need you. But we do need you to clean up your mess.”

“Look, they found nothing in the office, and the spyware surveillance established through Tolliver’s computer has already been severed. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“Then let me show you.” Burns clicked a button on his keyboard and spun the screen around to reveal a photo of Mace Perry. “This is the problem.”

Reiger threw up his hands in frustration. “Come on, she’s not even a cop anymore. She’s on probation. Her options are limited. She’s operating completely outside her sister’s authority. I see her as a total non-issue.”

“Really? Have you by chance read Perry’s psych evaluation?”

“Her psych evaluation?” Reiger said curiously.

Burns rose from behind his desk and limped toward them. “The psych evaluation they did on the woman when she wanted to move to undercover. It’s very interesting reading. She never gives up, Reiger. She never walks away. Her father was the U.S. attorney for D.C. I actually knew the man. He was murdered when she was twelve. She has never gotten over that. It burns in her belly with the potential explosive power of a mountain of C-4. She would rather die than be told she was wrong.”

“If you’re going to worry about someone, I think it should be the police chief. She’s a block of granite with a very big brain.”

Burns perched on the edge of his desk. “I’ve known Beth Perry for years. She is a formidable adversary. But she tends to operate within strict parameters. However, her sister does not and never will. Quite frankly, Mace Perry scares the crap out of me. And if she is allowed to screw this entire thing up, then none of us are safe.” He eyed each man with studied deliberation. “None of us. What we are doing here is right and good for the country but not something the public would approve of once they became aware of it.”

Hope said, “But she can’t even legally carry a weapon.”

Burns smacked his palm against the top of the desk. “Which begs the question of why it is so hard for us to eliminate her. Tonight at the law firm was a golden opportunity missed. I sent in a hand-picked team to get it done while you were occupied with Beth Perry, and it turned out like the Keystone Cops.”

“But if she goes down you know her sister will move heaven and earth to find out who did it,” Reiger pointed out.

Burns nodded. “It’s clear the two sisters would each die for the other.”

“See, that’s my point.”

“But I only need one of them to die. And we will help Beth Perry conclude quite clearly that it was the result of one of the many enemies her sister accumulated when she was a cop. A bullet to the head is a damn bullet to the head.”

“This is stupid whack-a-mole,” barked Reiger. “We pop one person but he or she talked to another person. Then we do that person, but turns out they sent a damn letter to someone else and we have to go after them. Where the hell does it stop, Burns?”

“Hopefully, with the intelligence sources and safety of this country still intact,” Burns said as his gaze bore into Reiger. “And watch your tone. Or did you forget the concept of chain of command?”

Reiger let his own stare burn into the man for another moment and then he looked away.

Hope sat back in his chair. “Fine. Then let’s do it the right way. We stop chasing her. We lead her down the path right to the target zone. Then we do it. Clean and quick.”

“To add some urgency to your mission, we all feel the layers of the onion being peeled away.”

“Resources?”

“You have preauthorization for the max push. You don’t have to pull the trigger. We have others who will do it. People who will fit the right description, if you get my drift.”