It was. His pattern was a backward regression. Thus the first stock recommendation in the letter, ITGO PAK, yielded a K; the second, AMJWEL, an E, the third, KOMEST, another E, and the fourth, NOPINC, a P, for a first word of keep. This went on a few progressions, then, as the stock abbreviations were necessarily short, began again, usually on the fifth letter. Bonson, rushing, even made some mistakes. But three hours later, Swagger ended up with

Keep item secure. It may prove useful later. Do nit share any hint of it with anybody, and don’t not release to press, no matter how it clears clients.

The clients? “Clearing” them? Would that be Jack and Mitzi, and would “clearing” them have some reference to the bank robbery, with two guards shot dead, that they were suspected of committing? So did it mean they were not guilty of that? That proof would be a nice thing for them to have, even at this late date. It would open a lot of doors. The item? What could it be? He realized he’d have to go back and read more carefully about those days to even come up with a guess. But whatever it was, Ozzie Harris, in his travels through leftist America in the early seventies, somehow got hold of it. He held it. For years and years he held it. Possibly he contacted Bonson again over those long years, and Bonson could see no use for it and continued to order Ozzie to hold tight. Eventually, as Bonson joined the Agency and began his rise, and his career of careful betrayal, he may have forgotten about it. Or maybe he was saving it for some reason, with some great goal in mind. But then he ran into one Bob Lee Swagger and ended up looking all Jackson Pollack-except for his legs-on a metal warehouse wall, and if he’d been controlling Ozzie Harris all those years, he’d left that one thing undone. Ozzie, dying ten years later, knew all along that it had major bearing on the case of Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly. In the end, only Jack and Mitzi had been there for him, and Bob saw how it would be of use to Ozzie in “clearing” them, and so he told them about it, maybe gave them the key to his apartment, and they’d gone to the place, looked under the bed, reached up into the structure, and Jack had yanked it free of the four yellowing strands of Scotch tape that had held it in place for so many years.

But when they realized what it was, they also realized it somehow had value. Great value. Somehow, it could be used to leverage millions of dollars to them, a lot more than “clearing” them ever could. That was the game they had tried to play, possibly seeing it as their reward for long years of service to the cause but not seeing how dangerous it was. Typical of the type: they love the violence of the game but can’t believe it will ever turn, as it always does, monstrous and eat them alive. Whomever they had tried to leverage was such a monster and decided on a different course. He didn’t want to give them the money; he gave them, instead, a bullet in the head in their broken-down Volvo in the alley behind their soon-to-be-foreclosed house. And this monster, whoever he was, found it so important to him that he not be connected to the case and that he obtain the whatever it was, the MacGuffin, the whoozie, the whatsit, that he buried that enterprise in a larger, camouflaging enterprise, a false narrative about an insane marine sniper, who’d snapped when he found that someone else had more kills in ’Nam. And he’d hired the best mercenaries in the world to make it go down just right. Joan Flanders and Mitch Greene were assholes, sure, but guess what, nobody’s asshole enough to end up like that, with a 168er punching your guts or brains out to help someone keep his dirty little secrets buried. And Carl and Denny, even less did they deserve their parts in the drama; to this guy, they were just action-movie extras the hero blows away, without names or pasts or lives. He was protecting himself; he had money, he had juice, he had influence, he was part of this whole thing and always had been. There was only one man it could be, because there was only one player on the board big enough to make it all happen. And that would have its own set of terrible problems to solve, formidable obstacles to climb, penetrations to be made, confrontations to win. But Bob couldn’t bring himself to say the name and face those challenges yet. It filled him with depression and it sucked his energy: so far to go, so hard a trek. Instead, he looked at his watch and saw that it was time to call Nick. He knew he had to do it fast or he’d decide against it and instead go hunting again, as in the old days.

He picked up the cell, dialed Nick’s number. Not only was there no answer, there was no voice mail.

That was odd.

He tried again and found the same, tried three more times. Finally he called the general 1-800 FBI number, waited for a human to arrive after two minutes of robo-voices, got an operator and asked for Special Agent Memphis. He was transferred to what had to be a ten-year-old intern and told that Special Agent Memphis wasn’t available. Would he care to leave a message? Bob thought a second; then he said, “Give me, uh”-what was the name?-“Special Agent, uh, Chandler, I think it’s Jean Chandler.”

Clicks, pops, silence, at least no Muzak.

“Chandler.”

“Special Agent, this is Bob Lee Swagger-”

“Swagger! Where are you? Everybody’s trying to find you.”

Nick hadn’t told anyone. Would she have time to set up a trace on the call? He guessed not, then second-guessed himself and started to hang up, then third-guessed himself and decided he had to know and he could bail out fast if it came to that.

“Ma’am, I’d prefer not to say.”

“You have to come in. We need you here.”

“I am not out of control. I told Nick I wouldn’t do a thing without his say-so. I will stick to that. May I please speak with him?”

“I’ll call you back.”

“I’d prefer to call you back. You’re not tracking me? You’re not setting me up or nothing?”

“We don’t operate that way.”

“Give me a number and a time. I’ll call you tonight.”

“I won’t track you, Swagger. I have things to tell you and you have things to tell me. This is not a good place for a conversation.”

Christ, she was stubborn!

He hated being at the cusp of the decision, but he remembered his earlier conversation with her and how she’d seemed to adore Nick. So maybe she was still on Nick’s team.

He gave her his cell number, knowing that she’d already written it down from the caller ID feature.

He left the room, looked for a fire escape, found none. He went back to the room, went out on his balcony. The motel backed onto fencing and an alley, now deserted. Through trees, some kind of university structure was visible. But no one could see him. Groaning, remembering how the limberness had seemed to lessen with each day he aged, he pulled himself from the balcony railing by way of the gutter and got to the roof. His hip still ached a little from an old wound, then a bad cut in Japan, but he made it. No one saw him. He went to the front of the building, looking over the parking lot and the busy avenue. If cops came, he’d see them come and could maybe, somehow-

The cell rang, some absurd ringtone, out of vaudeville. Had to get a new one.

“Swagger.”

“Nick’s been benched,” she said.

“Jesus.”

“It’s not formal. He didn’t have to turn in his badge and gun. It’s not a suspension. The director said he would appreciate it as a ‘favor’ if Nick went home while the Times story was the big news in town. The idea was he would not be suspended and have to turn in his things, nothing goes on the record, but at the same time, he would take no part in Bureau business until the situation clarified. He turned in his cell phone and the key to his office and went home at three; he is officially out of the loop for now, while Professional Responsibility investigates these charges the Times has raised. He will be interviewed sometime next week. So he can’t be called, he can’t be consulted, he is officially out of the game, and if you reach him somehow and try to talk, you compromise him, and I know you don’t want to do that.”