Read Online The Global War on Morris by Steve Israel - Free Book Online

stare at their drink then stare back at her again. Usually there was a nauseatingly suggestive smile. Sometimes even a ridiculous wink that may have been learned back at the junior prom. Not this guy. This was a tight-lipped, no-blink, comatose-frozen stare. And it unnerved her.
    â€œUcccch,” she said, scowling.
    â€œWhat is it, Victoria?” asked Ricardo.
    â€œGuy at the bar. Staring like that. I hate it!”
    Ricardo turned slowly. And when he saw the man at the bar, Victoria noticed his moustache seem to twitch, and his eyes seemed to fall cold. He swung his head back. “Yes, that is rude of him.”
    â€œWhatever. I get it all the time. Should we get menus?”
    â€œYes, of course. But would you excuse me for a moment while I make a phone call?”
    As he left the table, Victoria thought, This is the part where he’s lying to his wife about why he won’t be home tonight . . . or calling in a cure for cancer.
    Ricardo Xavier Montoyez was doing neither.

THE FDA
    THE SAME NIGHT
    I n a blue sedan in a dark corner of Murphy’s parking lot, Special Investigator Anthony Leone slumped behind the steering wheel, thinking, Tell me how crime doesn’t pay? Lucky bastard’s inside having a steak dinner with the blonde. Me? I’m stuck out here all freaking night.
    Then he saw Montoyez emerge from the restaurant and present a stub to a parking valet.
    â€œHoly shit. Holy shit, holy shit,” he repeated as he fumbled for his cell phone then panted into it, “Subject’s leaving. Subject’s leaving. Alone.”
    â€œStay with him,” a voice crackled.
    â€œWhat about her? The woman?”
    â€œCooper will keep his eyes on the woman. You follow Montoyez. Stay . . . with . . . Montoyez.”
    â€œRoger. Follow Montoyez.”
    T wo hundred and fifty miles away, in the Washington headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration William Sully thought, Stand by. Stand by. That’s all I do with Ricardo Xavier Montoyez. Stand by. Until he escapes. Then find him again. And . . . stand by.
    Sully pressed the tips of his fingers against a pain that throbbed deep between his eyes. He had been up most of the night, staring into a bank of computer screens. Now the images grew blurry. There were fuzzy black-and-white images of various Long Island neighborhoods, brought to Sully courtesy of the Nassau County Police Department’s Neighborhood Block Watch cameras. On another screen was Murphy’s Steakhouse. An electronic map of Long Island flickered on a third screen, its coastlines streaks of blue against a black background. Red orbs pulsated in the vicinity of Murphy’s.
    He sat in the Situation Room of the Food and Drug Administration Counterfeit Drug Investigation Division, surrounded by the video screens, speakers in all shapes and sizes, tangles of cables and wires, and an assortment of discarded soda cans dented from his grip. Four special agents stood behind him, on loan from the FDA Division of Sugar Substitutes–Office of Testing, Evaluation, and Compliance. Sully was building an investigative empire, plucking assets from the bowels of the federal government, where nobody would notice they were gone. He had become the master of the “Intra-agency Reverse Lateral Detail,” a little known bureaucratic maneuver that allowed employees to be transferred from one office to another “temporarily.” In Washington, that means forever.
    Ricardo Xavier Montoyez might be able to evade the law, but Sully could make federal employees vanish and then reappear in his budget lines. Now you see them, now you don’t.
    When he began his career in federal law enforcement, Sully never envisioned he would end up at the FDA. He was once a rising star at the Central Intelligence Agency. But he became impatientwith the obsessively cost-conscious, low-bid budgeters there. The ones that preferred green eyeshades to