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  “You gave me a good team, sir, and George must have lived a charmed life.”

  Director Barnes nodded and grunted. He knew it was he who had gotten lucky, bringing Brooke in from civilian life to head up this major investigation. “I was amazed I could lure you back.”

  “You’re timing was perfect, sir.”

  The director knew all too well that she had distinguished herself not only at the FBI, but working out of the White House on a super-secret operations cluster. “Can’t be anywhere near as glamorous as working for the president’s special ops group.”

  “Couldn’t comment on that, sir.” Brooke said, also looking straight ahead.

  “Right, need to know only, sorry.” The director had seen most of Brooke’s file when the Secretary of the Treasury first suggested he try to get her to run this op. The unique thing about it was that it had been redacted but in opaque red, not the usual black. That indicated it was good stuff, top stuff, very secret stuff that she had distinguished herself doing. In fact, you had to be at the director level of a major agency, like him or above, just to even see her red-redacted file.

  “How’s married life been treating you?”

  Brooke seemed a little thrown by the question. “Good, sir. Now that this assignment is wrapping up, I’ll be heading back to Hawaii.”

  The President of the United States had agreed to let Brooke go and have a life with her navy commander husband. That was a good break for the director; her husband’s sea duty took him away for months at a time, which had made her more amenable to his offer. “You’re husband coming off patrol?”

  “So they say, but you never know when.”

  The slight sigh in her voice hinted to the director that she was bored; after all, she was a woman of action, and the attempts at a family hadn’t taken yet, so she was predisposed for this relatively easy assignment to stem the flow of corporate profits from finding their way to known terrorist organizations around the globe.

  “The pay from this assignment has got to help if you’re thinking about a family,” he added as they blew through the glass doors and out onto the unseasonably warm Brooklyn midday.

  .G.

  For Brooke’s part, this was a safe cakewalk of an assignment with a director’s pay grade, which was a little win in the negotiation she was able to hold out for. Brooke didn’t want to do this anymore, and that was her greatest strength in negotiating her temporary return to government service. “I’m happy with my contract, sir.”

  She had talked it over with her husband, Mush, a nickname he inherited from his Navy granddad along with the submariner’s dolphins—and the 5.6 billion dollar missile boat that he commanded.

  “Any thoughts about maybe staying on? We got a lot more easy cases like this.”

  Bingo! He’s trying to recruit me. “The timing was good for this job, but I don’t see that kind of opportunity ahead,” Brooke said, but she was conflicted. Being a Navy wife was a noble role, but Brooke had two service stars on her record and had been involved in or led some of the biggest operations the United States government had ever conducted. Downshifting her life from the 120-mile-per-hour, on-the-edge, spine-tingling situational awareness with the existence of danger at every turn, to the quiet humility of 25 mph in a school zone didn’t happen without the grinding of some gears.

  She climbed into the backseat of the lead government Suburban next to Director Barnes for the fifteen-minute, siren announced, US motor pool convoy over the Brooklyn Bridge to Park Avenue South and Twenty-Eighth Street in Manhattan.

  “You are telling me that volunteering as the Pearl Harbor High School girls’ soccer coach compares to this?”

  Brooke sighed and looked behind them to see that her troops were mounting up. Her mind flashed on the soccer field at PHHS, where the director had found Brooke when he personally flew to Pearl Harbor to recruit her. He had correctly surmised that the relative boredom of safe civilian life and the old kick of being back in the game would be tugging at her. The fact that, two months later, she was here in New York, running this op meant he was right . . . back then.

  Right now she had to defuse the director’s intention to secure her retention. She turned and said directly to the director’s face, “Funny you should mention it. I was just wondering how the girls did against Maui Free School District High in the state semi-finals.”

  .G.

  Inside of twenty minutes, the take down of what was suspected to be a multi-billion dollar money-laundering ring would be behind her, and the mountain of evidence they were about to capture would be on its way to the Justice Department. Sixteen hours after that, she was going to be on her way, jumping on Hawaiian Airlines number fifty-one, 10:00 a.m., non-stop, first-class cabin service to Honolulu, on Uncle Sam’s tab.

  As the web-like cables of the Brooklyn Bridge flickered by, she thought about how funny it was that of both her lives, one life always beckoned her away from the other. Why did she have this restlessness? Why was she attracted towards the action, only to be pulled back by the serenity of civilian life?

  Chapter 3

  Pop Quiz

  Down on Twenty-Eighth Street, amid the chaotic aftermath of the subway death, the nine federal Suburbans crammed with heavily dressed agents and their weapons, and, more importantly, forensic accountants armed with hard drives and impounding tags, were hardly noticed by anyone. Anyone, that is, but the SUB cops trying to keep traffic minimally moving while allowing access to investigators and news folks.

  .G.

  Forty floors above, George grabbed the sixth grade math book to give his unknowing chief informant, and someone he’d genuinely gotten attached to. The book was truly was a gift of sorts. Handing it to Joe was the last thing on George’s to-do list before the take down. He had gotten the approval from Brooke a week earlier.

  Down the hall, he breezed past Harriet’s empty desk. She was Joe Garrison’s assistant and probably on her coffee break. He entered the room. “Hey, Joe, I’ve got a favor to ask . . .”

  He wasn’t there. Miles turned around and went back outside. Harriet returned with a cup of coffee and a muffin. “Hi, Mr. Wheaton. What can I help you with?”

  “I was looking for Joe.”

  “He’s hasn’t come in yet. Can I help you?”

  “I was going to ask him to do me a special favor.” He gestured with the book.

  “You need help studying for the math test?” Harriet said with a twinkle in her eye that just pulled the strings at the corners of George’s lips into a smile.

  “Yeah, darn fractions. . . .Have Joe come see me when he gets in?”

  “Sure thing. He should be along shortly. I heard the trains are all screwed up; somebody got run over. He’s probably fuming, stuck in the tunnel, no cell service.”

  “Well, then make sure he has his coffee before he comes to see me.” With that pleasantry he left to return to his office. Damn, that plan got shot to hell, George thought as he entered his office and threw the book down on one of the two green leather chairs across from his desk. His plan had been to ask Joe, who was his main source of information, to do him a favor and go downstairs at ten to twelve and wait for George’s nanny to swing by in a cab and give her the textbook for his son. That way Joe, the only one in the company who he knew for a fact wasn’t involved in the laundering, would escape the raid.

  In actuality, the agents from the Treasury would be able to spot Joe holding George’s imaginary son’s math book down on the street and spirit him away from the bust. This way, if anyone in the company—or worse, the terrorists they were supporting—looked in Joe’s direction, they’d think he was just luckily out of the building for an early lunch when it went down. But now, tardy Joe would have to take his chances, unless he got in within the next ten minutes. George started collecting his alter ego Miles’s things. In fifteen minutes everyone would know he wasn’t a financia
l manager but a fed, whose name wasn’t Wheaton. George looked at his watch. I’ll give him five more minutes.

  Handing Joe the get-out-of-jail-free textbook wasn’t the only reason to see Joe. Today, Joe was supposed to hand over the last piece of the puzzle that George needed to spring the trap on Prescott Capital Management and its illegal activities. Although Joe didn’t know it, George had asked him to run a routine T&E report for the forty-first floor. George, acting as Miles, the project manager on Prescott’s company wide, “trim the fat” initiative, asked Joe to quietly sort the travel and entertainment data in a way that made Miles’s request seem like just a convenience. Joe was sure Miles had the printed expense reports anyway and thought nothing more of it than Miles just wanting them grouped by account number. Actually Miles/George, didn’t have access to any reports, in any sort of order, so the whole thing was a bonanza.

  With this final piece of information, Prescott executives could be traced and placed at key meetings and drop-off points around the globe as the money was handed off and washed from business to business. It would make the last three months of discovery iron clad in court, and leave no wiggle room for a cheesy defense lawyer to squirm his client out of prison time. In the end, it would be their signatures on receipts, which were the marks of petty greed, that would lead to their downfall. These were men who thought nothing of stealing and rerouting billions to the nefarious bad guys around the world without so much as a pang of guilt—but God forbid they didn’t get their mini-bar bill reimbursed!

  George looked at his watch. Time was up. He got up and went into Joe’s office to print out the files he needed. It didn’t matter now who saw him or what questions they asked. In six minutes it was all over for Prescott . . .

  When Harriet entered Joe’s office she was surprised to find Miles behind Joe’s desk, “Mr. Wheaton?”

  “Harriet . . .”

  “What are you doing? Is there something you need?”

  “Yes, Harriet. I am trying to print out a report that Joe was going to have ready for me at noon, and I can’t wait any longer. But his computer is locked or something.”

  “Not usually. Here, let me take a look.”

  She sat behind Joe’s desk as “Miles” moved over. She hit a few keys, then a few more, harder this time. “Oh, dear.”

  “What?”

  “It looks like, like . . .”

  “Like what?”

  “Like his hard drive’s been erased!”

  It took a second, but George was already onto alternate plan B. “Is there a backup?”

  “Only on the server, but I have to order whatever I want from archives. What were you looking for, Mr. Wheaton?”

  “Expense report, last three years, forty-first floor, by account.”

  “Why would you . . . ?”

  “Please, Harriet, never mind the why. Joe was running it. Any chance he did it last night and printed it or emailed it to you?”

  “No, there was nothing . . .”

  Marjorie came into the room. She was white as a ghost. “Harriet. Line two. It’s Mrs. Garrison . . .”

  Just then a bullhorn sounded as the same message was being broadcast on all seven top floors of the building. “Attention Prescott employees. This is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Division of the US Department of the Treasury. All employees are ordered to step away from their desks and head to the elevators. Do not touch anything and do not take anything. Anyone not complying will be arrested. Move now, people.” Then it was repeated.

  Both Marjorie and Harriet wore dumbfounded expressions but Marjorie was tearing up. “Harriet, line two.”

  Harriet picked up the phone, but it was dead. She gave it a screwy look then looked to Miles.

  “Harriet, the feds have cut off the phones and the computers. We have to go to the elevator now,” he said.

  Marjorie was just short of hysterical. “But don’t you understand? Joe . . . Mr. Garrison is dead! His wife just called to tell me. She was on line two . . .”

  George felt like a bucket of cold water just got poured down his back. He left the office and ran up the steps to the forty-first floor. The agent at the door of the stairwell challenged him. “Sir, we are restricting access between floors. You’ll have to wait here.”

  George pulled out his ID. “Treasury, I need to speak to Burrell.”

  The agent stepped aside.

  On forty-one, Brooke was overseeing the operation as agents swept into every office, seizing anything that wasn’t screwed to the walls. “George, your textbook man wasn’t waiting outside.”

  “Brooke, he’s dead, and I think you are going to find out everything’s been erased. They were tipped off somehow. I’m afraid we’ll have nothing but a big lawsuit by five o’clock.”

  As if on cue, Dalton Hornsby of Hornsby-Reynolds, the biggest, most expensive law firm in New York appeared and identified himself to Brooke. “They tell me you are in charge?”

  “Yes, Director Brooke Burrell-Morton. Who are you?”

  “I am counsel for Prescott Capital Management and I’d like to see your warrant to conduct this raid.”

  Brooke looked over her shoulder and said to the agent behind her, “Yuri, show the man the papers.” She turned back to the lawyer. “Federal magistrate, six separate warrants covering all the LLC’s holding companies and corporations that fall under Prescott, for all evidence and ancillary material in connection with our investigation.”

  “Which is what exactly?”

  “Now that I don’t have to tell you.” She walked towards George. “Without your expense report, and if they scrubbed everything, we are dead.”

  “Dead . . . ?” That word forced a connection in George’s brain, “Shit!” He jumped into the elevator and told the building manager, who was now pressed into being the operator of the only elevator running to the top floors, to take him to the lobby.

  .G.

  Down on the subway platform, the train was still at the station, frozen in time from the moment the man had been decapitated. Yellow crime scene tape spanned the two-hundred-foot length of the south end of the platform, which was the distance the train had traveled after the conductor saw the gory event and pulled the emergency cord. It was also defined by the spray pattern of organic material and fluids that was the result of the violent separation of the head from the body.

  For the fifth time George flashed his federal ID, this time to a burly transit cop inspector. “Treasury?”

  “Yes, sir, have you identified the body yet?”

  “Complicated. The head is beyond recognition and the rest of the body is entangled in the undercarriage between the fifth and sixth cars. The ME hasn’t released the scene yet.”

  “Anything from the eyewitnesses?”

  “Again, why is the Treasury interested?”

  “I am hoping to eliminate the possibility that the body is someone who was part of a major investigation.”

  “You want to leave me your card, and I’ll call you as soon as I know.”

  George didn’t have a card. He was, after all, operating undercover. All he had was his federal ID, which was normally hidden behind his driver’s license just in case somebody casually looked at his wallet. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait a few minutes.” George walked to the spot where the green column was splashed in red and pink. That was the point of impact. He was surprised when his cell phone rang. He looked up and saw that part of the station was under the street grating so the cell signal was able to penetrate for a few feet on either side of the airway.

  “Where did you go, George? We are processing the physical evidence,” Brooke said.

  “Brooke, the subway death could be my source, Joe, the textbook guy.”

  “Sit tight. I am on my way down.”

  At the other end of the platform, uniformed transit cops were interviewing the hundreds
of people that had been in the two cars on either side of the gap between the fifth and sixth cars as well as the forty or so people from the platform. They were about fifteen people in. Mostly they were taking names and numbers for future contact by detectives if the death was ruled suspicious. They did catch some utterances and write them down. But the usual fog of eyewitnesses was evident; one cop got a description of the man who “jumped” from between the cars as a white male, medium height, about fifty with a trench coat and laptop case. Another cop, thirty feet away, was getting a statement from someone in the car right ahead of the “jumper.” The passenger described the man who went between the cars as a tall Hispanic man wearing a dark cloth coat, no case or even a newspaper.

  Brooke found George on the platform. The news wasn’t good. “You were right, someone tipped them off. As far as we can tell, all the data on the server and on the office computers was wiped clean.”

  “There is no way anyone inside knew what was going down,” George said.

  “Even textbook man?”

  “His name was Joe, Joe Garrison. And no, he never showed the slightest hesitation or question about what I asked him to do. Mostly because everything I asked him to do was covered under my job description. This had to be a leak at another level.”

  Brooke was looking at the blood patterns. “This is odd.”

  “What is?”

  She looked to the rear of the station. “The train was pulling out?”

  “Yes, it happened as the train I just got off of was pulling out of the station. There were about a dozen probationary police officers present. The academy is a block or so away. They immediately locked down the station and didn’t let anyone leave until the first responders arrived, ten minutes later.”