“You’re admitting to a criminal conspiracy, you know that, right?” Starshak said.

“Grow the fuck up, will you?” Munroe with an edge to his voice now. “Who do you think is winning this goddamn War on Terror? Us? In 2001, we were running a surplus. The economy was humming. Iraq and Iran gave us a nice little balance of power in the Middle East, and the fact that Tehran had to worry about Saddam getting another invade somebody bug up his ass kept them plowing most of their defense budget into conventional weapons. Then Bin Laden pulls his little surprise party. We gut Iraq for no good reason other than George Jr thinks maybe they dissed his daddy back in the day. We spend something like two trillion chasing ragheads around camel town. We turn whatever rep we had on the Arab street into ass wipe by acting exactly like the Crusader fuck ups Bin Laden knew we would. Pakistan, in case you don’t read the papers, is teetering on the edge of becoming the first fundamentalist Islamic state with its own nukes, Iran’s working on becoming the undisputed power in the region – and if their Hezbollah puppets manage to keep Assad on top in Syria, they might actually pull it off. Our economy is in the toilet, and Congress and the President are pissing on each other in the kiddie pool trying to decide how not to default on our debt. Hardin’s a big boy. He decided to steal a mess of diamonds from a mess of terrorists. He didn’t think that could end badly, then he should have thought again. And this Wilson or whatever her name is, she got into bed with Hardin knowing who he’d been screwing with. That ain’t safe sex. Things are seriously fucked, but Tehran has finally stepped on its winky with this deal, and I’ve got a chance to start the unfucking process by bloodying their nose but good. And what you gentlemen have to understand is I will do whatever is necessary to get that done.”

“You got a point to get to here?” Lynch asked. “Or did you just need an audience to practice your neocon spiel?’

“OK boys,” Munroe said, “Here the pitch. Turns out this Hardin’s got all kinds of interesting friends, including some DGSE types from back in his Foreign Legion days. We spin that into Hardin being an operative with a friendly Western power, and an ex US Marine at that, then he’s not a thief anymore, then we got him inside this operation in a role that will pass the smell test with the media. That’s just crooked enough that the Frogs have signed off on it. They love this kind of shit. All we gotta do is let them send some guy over from the Consulate so he can take a bow during the press conference. With Hernandez putting shooters on the field, God bless his psychotic little heart, we got everything we need to sell this drugs-for-diamonds financing thing. Wilson is the DEA’s inside player, another hero. And you boys, you’re Chicago PD’s contribution to the proceedings, the tough guys with the local know-how to make this whole thing work out. And Lynch, thanks to the tabloids, you’re already everybody’s favorite hot cop. Now you’ll be the guy who put out al Din’s lights. What the press gets is this: US and French intelligence penetrated an Iranian false flag operation. Tehran was financing the deal by selling blood diamonds to the Cartel to make it look like an Al Qaeda play – and most of that is true, if that makes you Boy Scouts feel any better. In cooperation with the Chicago PD, we bounced the exchange today, terrorists were killed, brave men were wounded, and Chicago was saved from a fate worse than 9/11. Hardin and his girlfriend get their payday, the French back our play, I get on with the business of making the world safe for democracy, and you guys get to be heroes. All you gotta do is smile for the cameras, take your bows, and keep your goddamn mouths shut.”

Long pause. Lynch could see a vein popping on the side of Starshak’s neck.

“This fate worse than 9/11, you wanna fill me on that?” Starshak said.

Munroe shrugged. “Biological attack. Our guys projected between thirty and a hundred thousand dead, depending.”

“That’s been taken care of?”

Munroe was coming as close to leveling with these guys as he did with anybody. For one thing, he liked them. Damn good cops. Smart, tenacious, big brass ones, and Lynch did take out al Din before the little fuck could pop the cork on his toys. Second, these guys had real good bullshit filters. He knew their type. If they thought he was feeding them a pile of crap, they’d start picking at it, trying to find something that made sense. No, the right play was to give them as much of the truth as he could, hope they saw the reasons for it, show them they were boxed in on all sides, and hope they could live with it. Hell, they were cops; they were used to living with shit. Warrants tossed because of bureaucratic slip ups, psychos walking because some shrink sold a jury a sob story, civil liberty types tying their hands any way they could. At least this time all the bad guys ended up dead. They even got to kill one of them. The worst one of them. No threats, not with these guys. A guy like Lynch? Threaten him and he’d never stop coming after you. Threaten him and you had to put him down. Munroe didn’t want that. He liked the guy. Put him down if he had to, of course, he’d put all three of them down if he had to. Just wouldn’t threaten them first. That would be a waste of time.

So he fed them all the truth he could, but he sure as hell wasn’t telling them there were still five devices hidden around town. They didn’t need to know how close this had come to going south.

“Yeah. That’s been taken care of,” Munroe said.

Everyone sat there, nobody talked.

Starshak’s cell rang. He answered, listened for a while, hung up. “The chief,” he said to Lynch and Bernstein. “Nobody’s got our back on this. And nothing we do is going to change any of it. Our orders are to play ball.”

Lynch choked down his anger, trying to keep his mind clear. He’d never been Don Quixote, never imagined the world could be perfect. Do the best you can with what you got, that was his compass. This sucked. But he’d always known shit went on outside the lines. Sometimes it was bad shit done for good reasons. Lynch couldn’t stop this, he couldn’t change it. All he could do was try to get some good out of it. Serve and protect, that was the deal. Not the entire free world, just his city. Lynch wanted something for Chicago.

“If I play ball, I want something,” Lynch said.

“What?” Munroe asked.

“I want Corsco.”

Munroe’s smile was back, broad and expansive. “Tell me what you need.”

“Hardin,” Lynch said. “I need to borrow Hardin.”

“Done,” said Munroe. The big man pulled a small digital recorder out of his pocket and tossed it to Lynch. “And I’ll throw this in for free.”

Lynch hit the play button. A little tinny without earbuds, but he could make it out. Munroe jacking up Ringwald and Corsco, Corsco confessing to putting a hit out on Hardin.

“Won’t do you much good in court,” said Munroe, “what with me not existing and all, and I did kinda point a gun at him. Well, shot a gun at him. But if you need it for window dressing, knock yourself out.”

CHAPTER 98

Munroe took his cell out of his pocket. It had been vibrating all through his chat with his Chicago PD buddies, but he didn’t want to take the call, break the rhythm.

He checked the number. The lab. He hit redial.

“What?” he asked.

“We got a problem. The device, it started ticking.”

“What do you mean ticking?”

“It’s got a secondary program. A failsafe. It’s set up to detonate remotely off a cell signal. Looks like al Din had this thing set up so he had to call the cell’s number every day to reset the timer. If he didn’t, then the device starts counting down. Al Din didn’t call today. This sucker is ticking.”

“And you can’t shut it off?”