Hidden Agendas nf-2 Read online

  Because when you tapped a big score, it wasn't the police dogs you had to worry about — it was the wolves.

  "All right," Platt said. "Go where I told you to go. I'll be in touch tomorrow."

  Platt broke the connection. Poor bank boy. He was hooked and cooked, any way you looked at it.

  As Platt made a call to make certain Peterson had been at least partially straight with him, he thought about bank boy's unhappy future.

  Back when he'd been running with Jimmy Tee, the old man had told him a story about a robbery in his home town. Seems a guard who'd been working at a bank for twenty years — everybody loved and trusted the guy — grabbed the manager one morning early when he came in, tied him up, and walked off with four million and change in unmarked twenties and fifties. Got away clean. Or so it seemed.

  Thing was, the guy didn't know how to keep a low profile. The cops found him three months later, dead as an old white dog turd. Somebody had snuck into his new house in Cancun and slit his throat.

  There was no sign of the stolen money.

  A pro, Jimmy Tee said, would have set up an identity months, or even years ahead of time. Given himself a background, met his neighbors, had a good reason to show up there one day to stay permanently. Like he'd taken early retirement from some kind of job nobody local was ever likely to wonder about. To make sure nobody else would accidentally show up one Sunday at the local bar to ask embarrassing questions like, "Hey, you remember old Mayor Brooks? Or that time when the City Council guy got caught with that hooker? You know who I'm talking about, don't you? What was his name?"

  You didn't need some thread like that to unravel, so you had to think about stuff like that in advance.

  And there had to be a way to launder all that cash too. You couldn't just whip out a few hundred thousand in fifties to buy a house, and even getting a car for cash was hinky. You sure couldn't stick it into a bank, not all in one chunk. Hell, anything over ten grand got reported to the IRS. They didn't care where you got your money, as long as you paid taxes on it.

  There were a lot of ways to do it, clean your money, but most of them involved things that honest people never thought about.

  You needed the cover, see? The cops, if they caught you, they were just gonna toss your butt in jail, but as soon as you hit the road with four million in your pocket, the bounty hunters would be right behind you. The wolves. And the bounty they'd collect if they caught you was everything you had, up to and probably including your life. If they got you, they'd put a gun in your ear and you'd give it up. And if they didn't feel like killing you, but just walked away, there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it. Who you gonna complain to about being ripped off? The cops? Excuse me, officer, but this bad man stole the money I took from the bank. Uh-huh. Right.

  No, what you did with a big score was, you took your money and you set up some kind of small business, or you lived the middle-class life of a retiree, drove a car a couple of years old, lived in a nice middle-class house. You didn't send Christmas cards to your ex-wife. You didn't go to your mother's funeral. You didn't call your nephew to congratulate him on getting into college. You cut your ties with your past clean and you never looked back.

  If you wanted to take a flier on the tables or the ponies, or roll around in a waterbed with a lady of the evening, you did these things quietly. You didn't go off to Las Vegas or the Gulf Coast or Atlantic City and start betting stacks of hundreds on the dice or wheels. You didn't rent the suite at the Trump or the Hard Rock Hotel and parade showgirls in and out, buying Moet & Chandon by the case either, because the cops weren't stupid and neither were the wolves. If you stuck your head up too high, somebody was gonna spot it, and come running to lop it off.

  Old Jamal didn't have the brains to know this. Oh, yeah, he could slip into an on-line bank and back out again with a couple hundred million dollars in his pocket slick as a greasy snake on a marble floor, but old Jamal didn't have any street smarts.

  So, even if Platt didn't give the guy up to the cops — which he fully intended to do — somebody would catch up to old Jamal pretty quick. And the dimbulb didn't have anybody to give up to save his sorry ass when the cops dragged him in. The man he knew as Platt was somebody else now. He didn't even know who he and Platt were working for, only that it was supposed to be some rich corporate fat cat.

  So the bank would get a few million of its swiped money back pretty quick once they collected Peterson. Hughes would do whatever he was gonna do over in Booga-land with his one-forty. And Platt?

  That was simple. Platt was gonna buy a hard-core gym in Kona, on the big island of Hawaii, a place he'd had his eye on for a couple of years. The gym was ten thousand square feet, had all kinds of gear — free weights, machines, the whole nine yards. It got world-class bodybuilders coming through now and then, there were fitness models who dropped by during photo shoots, and enough tourists so it was practically a license to steal. The place was well-managed, so Platt wouldn't have to do anything. He would rent a little house or a condo, work out when he wanted, maybe do a little personal training, and take things easy. The climate was perfect, you didn't need to own a heater or an air conditioner, and he'd be hanging out with the kind of people he liked: fit, healthy, strong folks. The place was his for a million-two, and that would leave plenty of running-around and fuck-you money. A man didn't need more than that. Business didn't do too well, you had plenty you could drop into it a few hundred or thousand at a time to even things out. Take a long time to burn up eighteen million and change that way…

  Sure, Hughes had big plans, he was gonna be master of the world, but what was the point? You could only sleep in one bed at a time, only drive one car at a time, only eat so much a day. Playing power games didn't appeal to Platt at all. He could raise a little hell now and then, kick some ass, but that was personal, in-your-face stuff. Deciding somebody's future from halfway around the world? Forget it.

  A few more weeks and he'd be out there in the warm sunshine, smiling at the tanned tourists and being a respectable businessman. It couldn't get much better than that.

  So old Jamal wasn't lying, the transfer had been made. Time to get the heat down on the boy. He had already recorded the message giving Jamal up. All he had to do was dial a number and hang up, and the remote would give the feds a ring and deliver a big-time bank robber on a platter.

  Adios, Jamal.

  And now, one more call:

  "Yes?"

  "It's a done deal, hoss."

  He could almost hear Hughes grin from ten thousand miles away. "Good. Everything else okay?"

  "No problems at all. Keep the light on, I'm gonna see you real soon."

  Breaking the connection, Platt fired up his portable computer and sent one brief signal winging its way into the aethernet. He'd learned Jimmy Tee's lesson well and had prepared for success. But he'd also prepared for failure. He didn't trust Net Force, he didn't trust the jig president of that backwater country, and he especially didn't trust good ol' Mr. Hughes. So he'd set up a fail-safe or two as insurance—‘cause you never knew when a little insurance just might come in handy.

  Sunday, January 16th, 7:00 a.m. Quantico, Virginia

  Naked, Fernandez rolled over in bed and marveled at his good fortune.

  Naked next to him, Joanna blinked sleepily. "What time is it?"

  "Around seven. Ask me if I care."

  He lifted the covers and looked at her.

  "What are you doing?" she asked.

  "Looking at you. I know it bothers you to hear it, but you are beautiful."

  "It doesn't always bother me. It depends on who says it and when." She smiled at him. "You're a little too scarred up to be called beautiful, but I'm not complaining."

  He reached out, touched her face. "You know, nobody even comes in a close second to last night."

  "I bet you say that to all the girls."

  "No. Just you, Jo."

  She sat up, the covers falling away to reveal her breasts. She reac
hed out and hugged him. "Thank you. You can say that all you want too. And I can't remember ever having a better time with my clothes off either."

  "I told you I had hidden talents."

  "You want to shower?"

  "No, ma'am, what I want to do is lie here in this bed with you until they come and haul us away to the nursing home. But I stink pretty good, so probably a shower is a good idea."

  "Go start it. Holler when you want me to come in."

  "I'll holler now then."

  "No, first you warm it up. What's the point in having a lover if he won't heat the shower up for you?"

  "I hadn't thought of it that way," he said. He slid out from under the covers and started for the bathroom.

  "Julio?"

  He stopped. "Yeah?"

  "Turn around for me, would you?"

  He grinned and did a three-sixty, hands held out. "Like so?"

  "Yes. Okay, you'll do. Start the shower, please."

  "Yes, ma'am. On the double."

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sunday, January 16th, 7:40 a.m. Quantico, Virginia

  Jay Gridley was still tired, having managed only an hour or so of sleep, but he felt good, the tiredness notwithstanding. Contrary to what the boss had said, he had camped out on his office couch, then gotten up and hit the nets early. Platt was the key to this whole thing, and while he had vanished, not leaving any real trail under that name, he might not be as smart as he thought he was. Few people ever were as smart as they thought they were, and Platt had made one giant mistake, no matter what — he had dared face off with Net Force.

  There are some basic mistakes you want to avoid. You don't piss into the wind, you don't eat at a place called "Mom's," and you don't pull your program on Lonesome Jay Gridley. Bad idea.

  Marietta, Georgia

  The inside of the telegraph office smelled of must and pipe tobacco. A cast-iron potbellied coal stove and steel chimney in the center of the room glowed with warmth that kept the hardest of the chill off, but the place was still cool. Behind a counter sat a small man puffing on a corncob pipe. The man wore a long wool coat and gold wire-rimmed spectacles.

  "Good mornin', suh. Can I hep you?"

  Jay smiled and tipped his hat at the telegraph operator. "Mornin', suh."

  Gridley wore the dress uniform of a Confederate captain, a soft gray wool unlike the butternut colors most of the enlisted men wore. A lot of officers had their own designs cut and sewed by their personal tailors, there being little real uniformity in officers' uniforms in the Confederacy. This early in the war, in 1862, the South was not only still in it, they had won major battles against the North. First Manassas — the Battle of Bull Run — had been a rout. The South had kicked some major Yankee ass. Things had already started downhill for the Rebs after Perryville, but right now most folks here felt pretty good about their chances of winning the War Between the States.

  Jay said, "Well, suh, I am Captain Jay Gridley, detached from General Lee's staff, and you could do a great service for your state and the Confederacy. We are seeking a Yankee spy, a Southerner who goes by the name of Platt. We do believe he might have been sending coded messages by wire to his Northern masters from this area."

  "Well, I do declare!" the telegrapher said. "Can it be?"

  "Yes, suh. Of course, we don't think he'd be so foolish as to do these treasonous acts under his own name, but perhaps he was. Could you check your records for us, suh?"

  "I would be more than happy to, suh."

  Polite folks, the Southerners.

  After a minute of thumbing through a stack of yellow paper, the telegrapher shook his head. "Captain, I'm afraid I cannot find any messages sent or received under the name of Platt."

  "This is not unexpected, suh. However, let me describe the traitor for you, and show you a drawing we have of him. He might have used another name."

  Jay laid out the general description of Platt, then proffered a pen-and-ink sketch he withdrew from inside his coat.

  The telegrapher frowned at the drawing. "I am sorry to report that I do not recognize this man, from word or this representation. However, if you will wait a moment…?"

  The telegrapher got up and walked to the back window, a barred affair with the glass portion closed against the chill. He raised the window and yelled out, "Buford! Put down that broom and git yourself in here!"

  A moment later a tall and gangly boy of thirteen or so, dressed in gray wool trousers held up by leather suspenders, a homespun gray shirt, and scuffed brown boots, appeared. "Yessuh?"

  "This is Captain Gridley, from General Lee's staff. He has something to ask you." To Jay, the telegrapher said, "Buford sometimes watches the office when I take supper. He's got a fair hand with the key for such a young age, although he'll be enlisting as soon as he turns fourteen."

  Jay wanted to shake his head. They did that, went off to war as young teenagers.

  A lot of them never came back. Stupid thing, war. Stupid.

  Jay repeated the description and showed the boy the drawing.

  "Why, yessuh, Captain, suh. I do recall him. A large fellow, although he did not go under the name Platt, suh. I recollect that he called himself Rogers." He glanced at the telegrapher, then back at Jay. "I believe he was in just yesterday, suh."

  Jay caught a glimpse of something in the boy's face, though he wasn't sure what it meant. He said, "And did this Mr. Rogers send or receive a message?"

  The boy hesitated. "I–I think so, suh. I'm not exactly sure. Last evening was passing busy, suh."

  The telegrapher, meanwhile, thumbed through the stack of telegrams for yesterday. "I don't see one to or from Rogers here, boy. You did keep a copy, didn't you?"

  The boy licked his lips, which seemed to have gone very dry all of a sudden. "I–I don't remember, suh. I must have done, if he sent or got a wire."

  "I cannot find one here."

  Jay stared at the boy. "Buford, you love your country, don't you?"

  "Suh, yes, suh!"

  "Then y'all better come clean. Something was unusual about this telegraphic event, wasn't it?"

  The boy looked as if he was about to cry. His face clouded over, and tears welled.

  "S-S-Suh. Mr. Rogers, he sent a message and — and he give me a nickel for the copy. He took it with him. Am I goin' to jail?"

  "What? How could you do that, Buford? That's strictly against regularity!"

  Jay held up one hand, asking for the telegrapher to keep silent. "I'm not worried about the nickel or what you did, son. You can square that if you can answer one question for me. Do you remember who Mr. Rogers sent the wiregram to? The name? Or the station?"

  "Y-Yes, suh, I remember the station."

  Jay grinned. Hah! Now I Gotcha, Platt!

  Sunday, January 16th, 8:05 a.m. Quantico, Virginia

  Jay thundered into Michaels's office, waving a hardcopy print out and yelling "Boss! I got him, I got him!"

  "Slow down, Jay. You got who?"

  "Platt. Who he's working for! You're not gonna believe this!" He shoved the paper at Michaels, who took it.

  "See, the thing is, the guy was smart enough not to use his own name, but not smart enough to change his appearance. I did a scan of all new phone service in Georgia — temporary lines, mobile units, new installations — crossed them with Platt's ID. I figured once he gave up the Platt name and ran, he'd want new com gear under a new name. I threw out female names and corporation names, then checked all the logs at phone stores and service companies in the state. It took a while, but I got it narrowed down to a few, and when I started running those, I came up with a security cam shot of him buying a new mobile!"

  Michaels listened with half his attention. There were several numbers on the list Jay had handed him. Circled in red was a number and written in red next to it was a name:

  Thomas Hughes.

  It sounded familiar, but Michaels couldn't place it. He knew the name. Where did he know it from?

  "So then I got the new nu
mber and ran a trace on the calls—"

  "Jay," Michaels broke in. "Cut to the finish line. Who is this Hughes you have circled?"

  Jay smiled and straightened himself up to his full height. "He's chief of staff for a United States senator."

  Michaels made the connection. Of course. "White? This guy is Robert White's COS?"

  "Yes, sir. And isn't it funny that our thug computer guy is calling Hughes? What could the two of them possibly have in common, do you suppose?"

  "Jesus," Michaels said.

  Sunday, January 16th, 8:55 a.m. Quantico, Virginia

  Toni met Alex and Jay in the conference room. She was on her fourth cup of coffee, but she wasn't fully awake yet. She hadn't slept that well, and the worry that had kept her awake wasn't about the job. She had relived that long passionate kiss in the Miata at least a hundred times. He wanted her, there was no question about that. The question was, was he going to let himself go with his feelings? Or was he going to suck it up and go stoic on her?

  "Toni, what have we got?"

  "Having a word with Hughes right now is going to be difficult. He's gone on a trip out of town with the senator."

  "To Africa?" Michaels asked. "Ethiopia?"

  She looked at him. "How do you know that?"

  "From his staff guy when he called to schedule me for a committee meeting."

  She shook her head. "Yes, well, we've had somebody there check, and while the senator is making the rounds and giving speeches, Hughes isn't with him. We know he got that far, he talked to the press on the flight over and shortly after landing, but nobody has seen him since."

  Jay said, "Well, we have his private number here, don't we? Doesn't matter exactly where on the Dark Continent he is. If he's got a virgil, he can't be out of signal range."

  Alex said, "The thing is, Jay, we don't really want to talk to him on the virgil. This is the kind of thing you need to do personally."

  "You think he might run if he knows we're on to him?"

  "Right now, given what we suspect, we're talking about an end to his career and fifteen years in a federal penitentiary — if Platt is working at his direction. He might decide that retreat is the better part of valor. And if he is somewhere in Africa, extradition might be iffy.