Judas Horse_ An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery - April Smith [93]
Donnato: “At this point, we have to ask: Do you trust the chain of command? Why does Toby Himes, a known associate of terrorists, have the private number of the number-two man in the FBI?”
Galloway tries again.
“Let’s stay on track. One scenario is for Ana to hang in there until Stone shows his cards—who he’s working for, and to what end. Until he slips up.”
Donnato: “Stone ain’t gonna slip.”
“Operations are fluid,” Angelo argues reasonably. “We started out looking for one thing; now we’ve got two focuses: Stone and FAN.”
Donnato: “They’re the same.”
With the good side of his face, Angelo agrees. “Stone is running a cell of FAN. We have an operative in deep cover; this thing is going where we want it to go. At this point, it’s real simple: Watch the boat.”
“While we’re watching, he buries Ana Grey up to the neck like that kid.”
“What does Ana want?” Galloway asks.
“She wants to stay in,” Donnato replies. “She wants to be a hero.”
Galloway considers his cigar.
“Does she know what it means to be a hero? A hero is a picture in somebody’s office.”
There is a prolonged silence.
Finally, it’s Galloway, his voice reluctant and low, who says it: “Do we have a problem in-house?”
From the look on the faces of his two trusted agents, veterans whose combined service records add up to almost forty years, Galloway can no longer ignore the elephant in the room.
“Approach Peter Abbott like you would any other bad guy. This stays with us. For her own security, keep Ana out of the loop.”
They nod.
Around a conference table in Los Angeles, in complete secrecy and at great personal risk, three men who put loyalty above all else agree to launch a clandestine investigation to determine whether the deputy director of the FBI is aiding and abetting a group of domestic terrorists.
Thirty-one
“Get out of my way.”
Stone rummages through the kitchen drawers and then moves to the front closet as Megan follows him from room to room.
“Julius—what are you doing?”
“You should know.”
“I have no idea!”
From the safety of the landing on the staircase, beneath the eye of the pinhole camera inside the German clock, the black-and-white kitten cries, one paw curled. Sitting there and stroking him, I try to fathom Dick Stone’s state of mind. He seems possessed, as if powerful aromas are assaulting him from every side. As he pushes Megan aside, his body seems to be aflame with irritation.
“The whole superstructure of this country is collapsing,” he says, charging upstairs. “There’s downward pressure on everything.”
“Including me,” she replies, exasperated, as they pass.
I take the kitten in my lap and watch from a child’s point of view as the arguing parents thunder by. Stone’s boots raise dust on the runner tacked along the treads—which I remember checking out, piece by piece, for false compartments beneath the stair. That was before the discovery of the arms cache—before I knew that Daddy stole the bunnies that were rescued from starvation at the dump, in order to feed the rattlesnakes that were guarding Daddy’s guns.
“It’s everywhere,” Stone is lecturing. “Even for people who are medium well-off. Nobody can make it anymore.”
“Could the apocalypse wait until Saturday? I’ll drive you wherever you want to go after the market.”
“You?” He laughs as they disappear inside the bedroom.
“Oh, stop being silly,” clucks Megan, but a few minutes later she is heading back downstairs with a purpose.
I find her in the dining room, digging through the sideboard until she has what she is looking for—two bankbooks I have already examined. Neither shows a balance of more than fifteen hundred dollars.
“Phew!” She uses them to fan herself dramatically. “Last time he was in a mood like this, he took out three hundred dollars with no memory of what happened to it.”
“He doesn’t remember? Really?”
She slips the bankbooks in her pocket.
“We have ‘happy Julius days,’