She got out. “Can I use your phone?”

“You don’t have a cell?”

“I’d rather use a hard line.”

“I wasn’t expecting company.”

Kate wondered how bad it was up there. She found herself intrigued at the prospect of peeking into Vail’s personal life. “I’ll keep my eyes closed.”

Vail opened the door and let Kate walk in ahead of him. The small apartment was not what she expected. It seemed newer, better constructed than the rest of the building. The walls were unpainted Sheetrock. The taped seams were visible but had been smoothed with the expert touch of a trowel. In stark contrast, the dark hardwood floors looked like they had been recently refinished and were buffed to a high sheen. The furniture was sparse, and the few tables and shelves scattered around held a couple dozen different sizes and types of sculpture, mostly the kind that were found at garage or estate sales or dusty way-out-of-the-way antique shops. Strangely, all the human figures were of the headless variety and had apparently been purchased for the detail of the torsos. She wondered if there was another reason. “I’m still working on the walls, but I guess that’s obvious.”

On a worktable at the front window, to take advantage of the natural light, was an almost complete sculpture of a male torso formed by hundreds of thumb-size smudges of clay. “You live here alone?”

“If you’re asking if it’s mine, the answer is yes. And yes to living alone.”

She walked over to the two-foot-high figure and examined it more closely. The upper portion appeared completed and was heavily muscled. She glanced around at the other works in the apartment to see if any matched the style. “None of the others are mine if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Do you sell them or give them away?”

“Actually, I throw them out when I’m done, or break them down so the material can be reused.”

“Have you ever tried to sell them?”

“They’re not good enough yet.”

“Really, this seems like it has potential.”

He pulled off his T-shirt. “That’s probably why you’re not working at the Guggenheim, and I’m a bricklayer. Beer?”

“Sure.”

“Glass?”

“Please.”

Her voice had an odd quality about it that Vail was drawn to. It was lilting, but at the same time gracefully incomplete, making him want to hear it again. “Not trying to be one of the guys drinking out of the bottle—refreshing.” He handed her a glass and twisted the cap off. After opening his, he took a long swallow from the bottle.

She glanced at each of the sculptures again. “What’s with the no-heads?”

He took another swallow of beer. For the first time that day, she sensed a reluctance to answer a question, an evasion of the blunt answers that seemed to come naturally to him. “I find faces distracting. I’m always trying to figure out what the models were thinking about at the time, even what language they might be thinking in. Probably studying Russian and reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky all those years has scarred me for life. Besides, I’ve tried faces. They all wind up looking like they’re from Middle Earth.”

The explanation seemed superficially dismissive, one that he never quite believed himself. Remembering Detroit now, she wondered if there was a natural distance he preferred. Back then everyone assumed it was some sort of extension of his inexplicable modesty. Armed with this new insight, she looked around and could find no television or magazines or personal photos. Apparently not even pictures of faces were allowed. The real question, she supposed, was what had made him like that. “Even though you didn’t say yes right away, I’m surprised getting you to come back to Washington wasn’t more difficult.”

“As you can see, my sculpting business isn’t going that well. And the job I just finished was the only one I had scheduled.”

Again, she detected a slightly hollow ring to his reasons. “You know, if you’re interested in getting your job back permanently, that could be arranged.”

“I’m not looking for permanent right now, just different.”

She smiled and nodded, deciding to lighten the conversation. “I think I can pretty much guarantee that this is going to be different.”

“Give me fifteen minutes. The phone’s over there.”

Kate sipped at her beer absentmindedly as she listened to the shower. She stood over the unfinished sculpture, admiring its virility. The shoulder and upper arm muscles seemed too large to be realistic, but it gave off a kind of primitive indestructibility. Then, closing her hand, she let her fingertips massage her palm, recalling the callused strength of Vail’s handshake. She let the tip of her finger run lightly down the curve of the figure’s spine like a drop of warm water.

SIX

AS THEY WERE BOARDING THE PLANE, KATE THOUGHT SHE MIGHT have a chance to find out more about Vail. That he had recognized her on sight had made her curious, even flattered. As far as she recalled, their eyes had never met in the year and a half they were in Detroit together. Now seemed like a good opportunity to find out why he remembered her.

Vail took the window seat without asking her preference, and by the time she got settled, he was sound asleep. He didn’t wake up until the plane’s tires chirped onto the tarmac at Dulles International. “Why are you looking at me like that, was I snoring?”

She smiled. “No, in fact for the first time today, you were perfect company.”

“Is that how you like your men, unconscious?”

“My men? You make it sound like I collect scalps.”

“Human beings are collectors by nature. Ownership, control. Breaching someone else’s defenses. In one form or another, we all do it. It’s part of the chase.”

“Chase? What are we chasing?”

“That’s what men—excuse me—men and women since Pythagoras have been trying to figure out.”

“Pythagoras?”

“Yes, there were Greek philosophers before Socrates.”

“The guy with the triangle?”

“The square of the hypotenuse. He believed that the soul was immortal. Do you think your soul is immortal?” Vail asked.

“Deputy assistant directors are not allowed to have souls.”

“Or to collect scalps?”

“Actually that’s a requirement.”

He leaned close to her with mock intimacy. “Tell me something, Deputy Assistant Director Bannon, is that all I am to you—advancement?”

“Like you said, bricklayer, we all need something to chase.”

THE DIRECTOR HAD given his secretary instructions to show Kate and Vail into his office as soon as they arrived. When they entered, Lasker was seated at his desk signing a stack of paperwork. Directly behind him stood Don Kaulcrick, taking each of the documents after it was signed and barely looking at them.

Lasker rose and offered Vail his hand. “Steve, thanks for coming, and on such short notice. This is one of our assistant directors, Don Kaulcrick.” Vail shook Lasker’s hand. The director waved Vail into a chair. “Your way of ending a hostage standoff is impressive.”

“You’d think someone who did this job for a while would know better than to go inside a bank on Friday afternoon.”

Lasker laughed. “Let me ask you something that’s been driving all of us around here nuts. After it was over, why did you just walk away?”

“I never really thought about it. But if it drove everyone nuts, especially around here, that’s reward enough.”

Lasker picked up a file that had Vail’s name printed on the cover. “Is that a warning? In case you decide to help us.”

“I would think after reading my personnel file that question would be unnecessary.”

Lasker smiled. “I’m starting to understand why you were fired.”

Vail laughed. “I can’t see how it could have turned out any other way. It was a train wreck just waiting for the Bureau and me to be thrown in each other’s way. No one especially wanted it, but at the same time no one cared enough to prevent it, most of all me. A bureaucracy has to have the ability to self-repair if it’s going to be able to function. I’ve never done well knowing anyone has that kind of authority over me.”