right. We'll be there."
"Thank you."
Jake hung up.
Favreau stared at him from behind the wheel of the van as Jake climbed into the passenger seat. "Who was that?" Favreau asked.
"A friend?"
"Can you trust him?"
"Her," Jake said. "It was a her. And yes, I trust both of them."
The Frenchman smiled. "Both of them? You have two mademoiselles as special friends?"
"I spoke to two people. Both are friends. A guy and a girl. The guy is my roommate. We were at the Academy together."
"And the mademoiselle?"
Jake hesitated. "Somebody I care about."
Favreau cocked his face up into an exaggerated wink and made a quick double clicking sound with his cheek, which had the effect of making him look and sound both very cartoonish and very French at the same time. Like the amorous skunk Pepe' Le Pew in those old cartoons Jake used to watch when he was in grade school, before he caught the bus in the morning.
"Let's get going," Jake said. Then he eyed the broken steering column and the hanging ignition wires, which were twisted together to form a completed circuit. "We should leave a note for the owner."
"I left the Nissan."
Jake shook his head. "Drive."
"Where to?"
Jake pointed south down 17th Street. "That way."
Favreau mashed the gas pedal. The old van shuddered as it accelerated into traffic.
***
Wendell Donahue hung up the telephone and leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile on his face.
"What?" Blackstone said. Like a lot of people in the intelligence business, he hated secrets, unless he was the one keeping them.
They were still in Donahue's office.
"They're headed across the river to Fort Marcy Park," the FBI agent said.
"Who told you that?" Blackstone asked.
Donahue kept smiling, although Blackstone thought it had morphed into more of a condescending smirk, something that gave him a sudden urge to smack it off the man's face. "It's against Bureau policy to reveal a confidential source," Donahue said. "But trust me, they're on their way to Fort Marcy Park."
Blackstone stood. "The chopper can get us there in ten minutes."
"What happens to Miller?"
"If he keeps his mouth shut he can still come out of this in one piece," Blackstone said. It was a lie, but he was pretty sure Donahue already knew that. As a professional bureaucrat who had spent nearly his entire career behind a desk, looking for properly dotted i's and thoroughly crossed t's, the FBI agent needed to hear certain things to ease his conscience, and Blackstone was happy to supply him with what he needed to hear if it got the man off his ass and moving.
"And Favreau?" Donahue asked.
Now it was Blackstone's turn to smirk. "Who's Favreau?"
Chapter 14
"I had called the two people I trusted the most. I wanted to get the full story out of him, whatever he believed that to be, in front of witnesses. I still thought he was a nut. But obviously he had information that somebody high up wanted to suppress pretty badly. Whatever that information was, I figured it had to be the key to unlocking this whole thing. At the time, of course, I had no idea how right I was."
***
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2013
Jake checked the luminous dial of his Submariner. It was just past midnight. He and Favreau were sitting in the front seats of the stolen van. Their second stolen vehicle of the night. They had all the lights out and were stopped at the end of a winding road deep inside Fort Marcy Park, with the van turned around and facing the entrance. The park was dark and quiet. Both of them were staring out the windshield, watching for car headlights in the otherwise deserted park.
Jake felt a little better now, knowing that Chris and Stacy were on their way. He needed people to brainstorm this problem with, people to bounce ideas off of, people he could trust. He glanced at Favreau sitting behind the wheel. The man was either out of his mind or...No, there was no or to it, no alternative. Favreau was flat-out crazy. Delusional. Which meant there had to be some
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