The efforts were completely illegal, of course, but they were also proceeding well. The Smoke dissipated a bit more. He asked Ruth to summon Spencer Boston. He then read encrypted texts regarding the efforts to derail the investigation.

Boston arrived a few minutes later. He was wearing a suit and tie, as he always did. It was as if the old school intelligence community had a dress code. The distinguished man instinctively swung the door shut. Metzger saw Ruth’s eyes gazing into the office for a moment before the heavy oak panel closed with a snap.

“What do you have?” Metzger asked.

Spencer Boston sat, removed a fleck of lint from his slacks that turned out to be a pill of cloth. He stopped pulling before a run appeared. Boston didn’t seem to have had much sleep, which, for someone in his sixties, made him seem haggard. And what the hell do I  look like? Metzger wondered, brushing his chin to see if he’d remembered to shave. He had.

Despite Metzger’s reputation, Boston never hesitated to give him bad news. Running assets in Central America gives you a fortitude that won’t be scuffed by a younger bureaucrat, however ill tempered. He said evenly, “Nothing, Shreve. Nothing. I’ve checked every log in for the kill order files. And all the outgoing email and FTP and upload servers, had our IT security people see if they could find anything. And the security folks at Homestead. Nobody downloaded it except those on the list. That means somebody probably snagged it off a desk here, Washington or in Florida, smuggled it out and copied it or scanned it at home or a Kinko’s.”

At NIOS and its affiliated organizations, all photocopying and logging on were automatically recorded.

“Kinko’s. Jesus.”

The administrations director continued, “And I went back and looked over the vetting assessments here. Not a hint that anybody’d have a problem with STO missions. Hell, most of our people knew what we were up to before they joined.”

NIOS was created after 9/11 largely for the purpose of targeted remedies, along with other extreme operational activities, like kidnappings, bribery and other dirty tricks. Most of the office’s specialists had a history of military service and had taken lives in the course of their careers before joining NIOS. It seemed inconceivable that any of them would have a change of heart and try to bring down his operation. As for the other staff, Boston was right, most applicants knew what the organization was up to before they signed on.

Unless, of course, that was why they joined in the first place. Moles. Despicable.

Metzger: “We’ll have to keep looking. And for God’s sake, there can’t be any more  leaks. He  already knows too much.”

Wizardly.

Boston’s white eyebrows furrowed. He whispered, “They’re not…This isn’t going to knock us out, is it?”

Metzger was painfully aware that he didn’t have a clue what Washington was thinking, since he hadn’t heard a word from the man after the initial phone call.

It turns out some Intelligence Committee budget discussions have come up. Suddenly. Can’t understand why …

“Jesus, Shreve. They can’t . We’re the best ones suited for this kind of work.”

True. But apparently not the best suited for keeping this kind of work secret.

Which Metzger didn’t say.

Boston asked, “What more do you know about the investigation, the police?”

Now Metzger grew cautious. He said, “Not much. Still circling the wagons. Just to be safe.” And glanced at his magic phone, the red one, which happened to contain an acid capsule that would melt the drive in a matter of seconds. The screen reported no messages.

He exhaled. “Fact is, I don’t think it’s moving very quickly. I got the names of the investigators and’ve checked them out. The cops’re using a skeleton crew to stay under the radar, not standard NYPD. Keeping it quiet. It’s really just Nance Laurel, the prosecutor, and two others and some support staff. The main cop’s a detective named Amelia Sachs and, get this, the other guy is a consultant, Lincoln Rhyme. Retired from the force a while ago. They’re operating out of his apartment on the Upper West Side. A private residence, not police headquarters.”

“Rhyme, wait. I’ve heard of him,” Boston said, frowning. “He’s famous. I saw a show on him. He’s the best forensic scientist in the country.”

Metzger knew this, of course. Rhyme was the “other” investigator gunning for him, the intel memo had reported yesterday. “I know. But he’s a quadriplegic.”

“What does that matter?”

“Spencer, where’s the crime scene?”

“Oh, sure. The Bahamas.”

“What’s he going to do, roll around in the sand looking for shell casings and tire prints?”

“So, this is the Caribbean.”

His hand on the joystick of his candy apple red wheelchair, Lincoln Rhyme steered out a door at Lynden Pindling Airport in Nassau into an atmosphere hotter and more dank than he could recall experiencing in years.

“Takes your breath away,” he called. “But I like it.”

“Slow down, Lincoln,” Thom said.

But Rhyme would have none of that. He was a child on Christmas morning. Here he was in a foreign country for the first time in many years. He was excited at the prospect of the trip itself. But also at what it might yield: hard, physical evidence in the Moreno case. He’d decided to come down here because of something he was nearly ashamed to admit: intuition, that fishy crap that Amelia Sachs was always going on and on about. He had a feeling that the only way he was going to get that million dollar bullet and the rest of the evidence was to wheel right up to Corporal Mychal Poitier and ask him for it. In person.

Rhyme knew the officer was genuinely troubled by the death of Robert Moreno and troubled too that he was a pawn being used by his superiors to marginalize the case.

There wasn’t a single inspection or license I handled that was not completed in a timely, thorough and honest manner…

He didn’t think it would take much to convince the corporal to help them.

And so Thom had thrown himself upon the sword of airline and hotel reservation telephone hold, listening to bad music – the aide announced several times – to arrange the flight and motel, an assignment made complicated by Rhyme’s condition.

But not as complicated as they’d thought.

Certainly some issues had to be contended with when traveling as a quad – special wheelchairs to the seat, particular pillows, concerns about the Storm Arrow in storage, the practical matters of the piss and shit details that might have to be attended to on the flight.

In the end, though, the journey wasn’t bad. We’re all disabled in the eyes of the Transportation Security Administration, all immobile, all objects, all baggage to be shuffled about at whim. Lincoln actually felt that he was better off than most of his fellow travelers, who were used to being mobile and independent.

Outside the baggage claim area, on the ground floor of the airport, Rhyme motored to the edge of the sidewalk filled with tourists and locals bustling for cars and taxis and mini vans. He looked at a small garden of plants, some of whose varieties he’d never seen. He had no interest in horticulture for aesthetics but he found flora extremely helpful in crime scene work.

He’d also heard the rum was particularly good in the Bahamas.

Returning to where Thom was standing, making a phone call, Rhyme phoned Sachs and left a message. “Made it okay. I…” He turned, hearing a caterwauling screech behind him. “Christ, scared the hell out of me. There’s a parrot here. He’s talking!”

The cage had been placed there by a local tourist commission. Inside was an Abaco Bahamian parrot, according to the sign. The noisy bird, gray with a flourish of green on the tail, was saying, “Hello! Hi! ¡Hola! ” Rhyme recorded some of the greeting for Sachs.