Edge

to the Middle East?”
    “Yes. On business to buy rugs. But we don’t have GPS around his neck. The folks he was dealing with here, the couple in the deli? They were Pakistani, not Arabs. And recently? No phone calls in the past two weeks. Routine at his office hasn’t been affected, best as we can tell. Christ, Corte, we’re taking this seriously. We know what we’re doing.”
    I asked, “Could he be deep cover, a sleeper?”
    Williams asked, “After six years? They don’t really work that way.” He said this with some authority. “Besides, sleepers don’t volunteer at the Georgetown Islamic Youth Center. Or go near anyplacewith the I word in it. He’d be at Presbyterian bake sales.”
    “You have no other actors it could be?”
    “That’s right.”
    Presumably because they were dead.
    I said, “I want the names of your security man and analyst on Zagaev.”
    “Corte, what could Lily . . . what could Joanne possibly know that he’d have any interest in, after all these years?”
    The answer seemed obvious to me. “She knows where to find you, doesn’t she?”

Chapter 47
    AFTER WE DISCONNECTED, Joanne stood for a long moment looking toward the hallway that led to the closed bedroom door behind which her husband undoubtedly was fuming.
    She took several steps down the hall and then stopped and returned to the couch.
    I called Williams’s case analyst. The director had given him the okay to talk to me—about the Joanne Kessler security matter only, of course, not about the Sickle part—and I got addresses and phone numbers and corporate information about Aslan Zagaev and his businesses. He told me that neither he or the security officer Williams had ordered into the field on Saturday morning had found anything linking Zagaev to Loving, confirming what Joanne and Williams had stated.
    I thought, Well, obviously he’s not going to be making incriminating calls from those phones. Did they even think about prepaid mobiles? There were limits as to how much digging Williams’s people could do, sure, but these were basic elements of tradecraft.
    I disconnected, called Claire duBois and explained the situation to her. “Drop everythingand start running background on Zagaev,” I told her. “I want everything.”
    “Shoe size to what’s on his TiVo,” she said.
    “Family, employees, family of his employees, travel records. Concentrate on the past couple of days, then go on from there. Any connection to Loving, anything that could be a connection to Loving.”
    I then asked her to transfer me to Aaron Ellis. I briefed him and he coughed a surprised laugh. “Joanne?”
    “Seems so. At least Ryan’s cases haven’t led us anywhere. There’s one actor still around from her past. We’re going to follow up on it.”
    “But Westerfield called, all excited about some D.C. police scandal. He was saying you thought that that was why Ryan was targeted. Some senior official in the department or city hall hired Loving.”
    “I’d just as soon he kept thinking that, Aaron.”
    Silence for a moment. “Corte . . . you mean the police scandal’s fake too?”
    “Not fake. It was a valid theory.”
    “Was.”
    “Correct.”
    “But by the time you suggested to Westerfield it was a possibility, you knew it wasn’t?”
    “Aaron, just try to keep him off me for a while.”
    “I’ll do the best I can.”
    Finally, I called and briefed Freddy about Joanne’s deception.
    The jokey facade was gone. “Why the fuck didn’t the bitch tell us? She didn’t have an inkling this whole tidal wave of crap might have something to do with the fact she was an assassin?”
    “I don’t think they like to use that word.”
    “I care?”
    “This Williams—”
    “Just for the record,” Freddy grunted, “he’s not as clever as he thinks he is. Or would like to be. A bunch of us know about him and his Sickle band of brothers . . . and sisters, I guess. We thought it was more dirty tricks. But, when you think about it, shooting somebody in the head is about as dirty as it gets. How’re you handling it?”
    “Claire’s doing homework.” I debated. “I’ll need some warrants. She’ll get you the details. Who and where.”
    “All right, will do.” Then he asked, “What’s Zagaev’s game, you think?”
    “I don’t know. Williams said sleepers don’t work that way. But it works that way if it works.”
    “Now, that’s quotable, son.”
    “Think about it. Williams cleared him five, six years