“Yeah, sorta. We’re contractors. TFAC brings us in for the occasional job.”

“Who brings you in? Give me a name.”

He thought about the twenty years knocked off his sentence-“O’Neal. Martie O’Neal.” The name couldn’t come out fast enough.

“What were you asked to do?”

“Look for dirt. Plant bugs in your phones. Leave a little gift somewhere in your home.”

“The heroin. To set me up, right?”

“I guess. What happens afterward, I don’t know.” He tried desperately to sound convincing. He would never knowingly try to hurt the nice lady with twenty years of his life in her hands.

“Who’s TFAC’s client for this job?”

“I dunno. I swear I don’t. They never tell us. I’d tell you if I knew, I just can’t.”

“Have you done a job like this before?”

“Yeah, coupla times.”

“When was the last time?”

“Seven, maybe eight months ago.”

“Who? Where?”

“Some rich guy. Up in Jersey.”

“Name?”

“Wiley. Uh, Jack, or John, I think.”

Mia seemed to be out of questions for the moment. The instant they got him to the station, he would spend hours being grilled on tape and filmed. Now that he was already squealing and on record with a few big admissions, the hardest part would be getting him to shut up.

She turned to the uniform. “Get him the hell out of my house and book him. Make sure he’s kept away from the others.”

Jones was led out the door, tears rolling down his cheeks, as he stumbled over his own feet. Castile and Phillips were also singing their hearts out, answering any question thrown their way. All three were small fry, almost insignificant in the big scheme, though. Mia didn’t really care how many years they got, if indeed they got any at all.

As long as they spilled their secrets, as long as everything was on record and legally admissible.

As long as they helped her bag the big fish.

The same night, a Pentagon spokesperson, anonymously of course, leaked to the press that the $20 billion polymer contract was suspended, pending a careful review to determine its ultimate efficacy.

The decision to drop the news this way, so lacking in richness or detail or attribution, came straight from the top. The Secretary of Defense was understandably furious, but controlled. There was, as yet, no definitive evidence that the polymer failed after four months-nothing but a musty old report done years before by some private company.

In another week or two, assuming the original tests were correct, the first polymer coatings might start failing and they would know for sure about the polymer’s fleeting qualities. Until then at least, he wanted this handled without any grandstanding.

But the secretary’s patience with all the dirty scandals emerging from the Iraq war was exhausted. There had been so many. The greedy contracting officer who took kickbacks. The tortures committed in military prisons. The sleazy oil deals made quietly under the table. The massive arms shipment that was mysteriously misplaced and ended up in the hands of Iraqi insurgents. And too many other disgraceful memories, large and small.

So much of his limited time had been spent fending off congressional inquiries or wrestling with nosy, ambitious journalists who just wouldn’t get off it.

Big wars involved big money; a little bit of profiteering was to be expected. Wars spawned greed, what’s new? Deplorable certainly, but human nature didn’t take a holiday just because the bullets were flying.

This, though, was different, involving as it did one of America’s largest, most prestigious private equity firms. CG was a powerhouse, widely feared, vaguely admired, and uniformly envied in the corridors of power. A former American president, former secretary of state, ex-secretary of defense, all those impressive, famous foreign leaders, and countless lesser officials-barring a footlocker full of the most damning evidence, CG was not to be trifled with. The secretary definitely didn’t want to jump the gun, half-cocked. A single misstep at this stage and CG would pull out all the stops and make him pay dearly.

So whatever was done had to be accomplished quietly, respectfully, and fast. No big public announcement, no fanfare was the order of the day. Word was passed down, through the deputy secretary, then the undersecretaries, then the assistants, and deputy assistants to the assistants, to all the grandly titled minions, that the only leaks on this affair would come through the secretary himself, or else.

Naturally, long before his stern warning made it halfway down the chain, the nosy Pentagon press learned all about his gag order. And predictably, they launched into an all-out frenzy. They began working the corridors, jawboning their favorite snitches, fighting to be the first to get the scoop, vacuuming for all they were worth.

To their immense surprise, there was remarkably little to learn. The stop order on the polymer had grown out of a vague warning from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. Few knew the details, including anybody they talked to. No nasty charges had been preferred, no big investigation initiated.

It certainly smelled like a big story, rife with the promise of a loud and embarrassing scandal. The secretary’s information crackdown hinted at fear, and in their world, where there’s fear, there’s the possibility of a Pulitzer.

But with so little to go on, they were forced to hold their fire until, as inevitably happened, they found the crack in the ice.

In military parlance, the scandal light was lit. The reporters smuggled in booze and videos and sleeping bags, continued to work the corridors, huddled in small packs to share the latest scuttlebutt, and hunkered down in their cramped office carrels for the wait.

26

Rufus Clark was a two-bit Chicago private investigator with a less than promising practice. Nasty divorces, property disputes, and missing cats and dogs were his usual fare. Two thousand in a good month, and those were rare. He was thirty-two years old, single, with two illegitimate children, and still lived with his mother.

His lone claim to fame, pitiful as it happened to be, but one he proudly inflated to his clients, was one brief year he spent in the FBI, before being caught smoking a little weed and sleeping with some whores provided by a local crime lord whose questionable activities the Bureau was looking into. For once in his sorry life, Rufus got lucky. Too little evidence existed to do anything but show him the door.

Given his questionable background and severely limited policing experience, Rufus tended to jump at any work he could get without any serious consideration about its legality. So when Martie O’Neal called with a generous offer of $10K for only one day’s work, Rufus dove in.

He held the small photograph two inches from his nose and again studied the man across the lobby. Oh yeah, definitely him, he decided, taking a few steps closer.

Martie had e-mailed him the name, work address, this old DMV photo, a few instructive background notes, and a brief list of questions for Rufus to get answered.

His target was tall and thin, wearing a nice blue suit and holding a battered old briefcase as he stood by the elevator doors and waited. Rufus edged a little closer, within striking distance, just not enough to attract attention.

The elevator door opened and Rufus closed the distance fast and darted in before the door could close. Then it was just Rufus and his target standing side by side. His target was too busy watching the numbers as the elevator climbed to notice him.

“Excuse me,” Rufus blurted, producing a quizzical expression. “Don’t I know you?”

Weak, but the best he could do on such short notice. O’Neal had recommended the old tried-and-true government background check story, but in Rufus’s professional judgment, his target knew too much about Mia for that to hold any water. He was improvising and hoping it worked.