Part 8 (1/2)

He had just finished when he received an email. It seemed that Shreve Metzger's great national security intelligence machine was grinding away as efficiently as ever.

Received your text. Good to hear success today.

Liabilities you need to minimize/eliminate: Witnesses and allied individuals with knowledge base of the STO operation. Suggest searching Moreno's trip to NY,

April 30May 2.

Identified Nance Laurel as lead prosecutor. IDs of the NYPD investigators to follow soon.

Individual who leaked STO. Someone is searching for ident.i.ty now. You may have thoughts on how to learn ID. Proceed at your own discretion.

Swann called the Tech Services people and requested some datamining. Then he pulled on thick yellow rubber gloves. To clean the skillet, he scrubbed it with salt and treated the surface with hot oil; cast-iron should never meet soap and water, of course. He then began to wash the dishes and utensils in very, very hot water. He enjoyed the process and found that he did much of his best thinking standing here, looking out at a dogged ginkgo in a small garden in front of the building. The nuts from that plant were curious. They're used in Asian cuisine-the centerpiece of the delicious custard chawanmus.h.i.+ in j.a.pan. They can also be toxic, when consumed in large quant.i.ties. But dining can be dangerous, of course; when we sit down to a meal who doesn't occasionally wonder if we've been dealt the salmonella or E. coli card? Jacob Swann had eaten fugu-the infamous puffer fish with toxic organs-in j.a.pan. He faulted the dish not for its potential for lethality (training of chefs makes poisoning virtually impossible) but for a flavor too mild for his liking.

Scrubbing, scrubbing, removing every trace of food from metal and gla.s.s and porcelain.

And thinking hard.

To eliminate witnesses would cast suspicion on NIOS and its affiliates, of course, since the kill order was now public. That was unfortunate and under other circ.u.mstances he would have tried to arrange accidents or construct some fictional players to take the blame for the murders that were about to happen: the cartels Metzger had claimed were really responsible for Moreno's death, or perps the police and prosecutor had put in jail, out for revenge.

But that wouldn't work here. Jacob Swann would simply have to do what he did best; while Shreve Metzger would deny that kill orders even existed, Swann would make absolutely certain that no evidence of or witnesses to his clean-up operation could possibly tie NIOS or anyone connected with it to the killing.

He could do that. Jacob Swann was a very meticulous man.

Besides, he had no choice but to eliminate these threats. There was no way he'd let anybody jeopardize his organization; its work was too important.

Swann dried the dishes, silver and coffee cup, using thick linen, with the diligence of a surgeon completing the st.i.tches after a successful procedure.

CHAPTER 13.

Robert Moreno Homicide

Crime Scene 1. Suite 1200, South Cove Inn, New Providence Island, Bahamas (the ”Kill Room”).

May 9.

Victim 1: Robert Moreno. COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.

Supplemental information: Moreno, 38, U.S. citizen, expatriate, living in Venezuela. Vehemently anti-American. Nickname: ”the Messenger of Truth.”

Spent three days in NYC, April 30May 2. Purpose?

Victim 2: Eduardo de la Rua. COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.

Supplemental information: Journalist, interviewing Moreno. Born Puerto Rico, living in Argentina.

Victim 3: Simon Flores. COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.

Supplemental information: Moreno's bodyguard. Brazilian national, living in Venezuela.

Suspect 1: Shreve Metzger. Director, National Intelligence and Operations Service.

Mentally unstable? Anger issues.

Manipulated evidence to illegally authorize Special Task Order?

Divorced. Law degree, Yale.

Suspect 2: Sniper. Code name: Don Bruns.

Information Services datamining Bruns.

Voiceprint obtained.

Crime scene report, autopsy report, other details to come.

Rumors of drug cartels behind the killings. Considered unlikely.

Crime Scene 2. Sniper nest of Don Bruns, 2000 yards from Kill Room, New Providence Island, Bahamas.

May 9.

Crime scene report to come.

Supplemental Investigation. Determine ident.i.ty of Whistleblower. Unknown subject who leaked the Special Task Order.

Sent via anonymous email.

Contacted NYPD Computer Crimes Unit to trace; awaiting results.

Hands on her hips, Amelia Sachs studied the whiteboard.

She noted Rhyme glance without interest at her flowing script. He wouldn't pay much attention to what she'd written until hard facts-evidence, mostly, in his case-began to appear.

It was just the three of them at the moment, Sachs, Laurel and Rhyme. Lon Sellitto had gone downtown to recruit a specially picked canva.s.s-and-surveillance team from Captain Bill Myers's Special Services operation; with secrecy a priority, Laurel didn't want to use regular Patrol Division officers.

Sachs returned to her desk. She didn't do well sitting still and that was largely what she'd been doing for the past two hours. Confined here, the bad habits returned: She'd dig one nail into another, scratch her scalp to bleeding. Fidgety by nature, she felt a compulsion to walk, to be outside, to drive. Her father had coined an expression that was her anthem: When you move they can't getcha...

The line had meant several things to Herman Sachs. Certainly it could refer to his job, their job-he too had been a cop, a portable, walking his beat in the Deuce, Times Square, at a time when the murder rate in the city was at an all-time high. Fast of foot, fast of thought, fast of eye could keep you alive.