Edge

way.
    But if I hadn’t justified myself to my boss, I sure wasn’t going to do so to Westerfield and his young assistant.
    “It’s the same thing here, Corte. The motel in Providence, the Hillside Inn. The safe house there, the safe house here. From what we can reconstruct, back at the Hillside, after Loving showed up and was in pursuit, you could have escaped right away but you paused in the back of the motel. You engaged him, with the Kesslers in the vehicle with you.”
    People who explain are weak, Corte. A shepherd can’t be weak. He can be wrong but he can’t be weak.
    Abe’s words, of course. I realized that Westerfield must be upset; he hadn’t lapsed into French once during this conversation. I sped around a slow-moving Prius.
    “So what happened is the trap in Rhode Island didn’t work out after all, and your fox shows up still alive yesterday. So you set out to nail him all over again, using the Kesslers. And now, I understand from Aaron there’s a terrorist component.”
    “A . . . what?”
    “Ali Pamuk, aka Clarence Brown.”
    “We haven’t found any terrorist connections. His father’s Turkish, and he’s contributed money to a mosque here in Virginia. He’s also played with his identity. That’s all we know at this point. We’re investigating.”
    “But it’s possible that a terror cell wants to kidnap Kessler and find out what he knows and who else might be involved in his investigation.”
    “Like I said, Jason, we don’t know.”
    “Look, Corte, I appreciate you’ve saved the Kesslers from two tight situations. You’re talented . . . and you were lucky. We can’t risk that the third time Loving’ll have more luck than you do.”
    Luck . . .
    “Kessler may be the only key to a serious terror threat. We can’t afford to have him jeopardized, like you’ve been doing. I have the attorney general’s okay. I want the Kesslers and the woman’s sister in a slammer now. The Hansen facility we were talking about earlier. I’ve already contacted them.”
    I pictured him looking at Teasley with an expression that said, See, that’s how it’s done.
    “I want to talk to my boss.”
    “This is coming from the attorney general.”
    Everybody’s boss.
    I found I was driving ten over the limit. I eased up on the gas.
    Westerfield continued, speaking reasonably, “If this was some bullshit embezzlement or organized crime thing, I wouldn’t care so much. But now there’s a terror component, we can’t fool around. We need to make sure we do everything we can to identify a threat. We also don’t need any blowback.”
    Even spending so much time inside the Beltway I could never quite get used to the lexicon.
    “I want them in Hansen as soon as possible. You want to keep after Loving, be my guest. You want to keep tracking down the primary, fine. You just aren’t going to use my witness for cheese in your mousetrap.”
    His witness . . . The famous hero cop.
    Westerfield continued, “I’m ordering an armored van now.”
    “No.”
    “I’ll just call Aaron and find out where they are.”
    “He doesn’t know.”
    “What?”
    “I haven’t told him.”
    Need-to-know . . .
    “Well, that’s . . .” Westerfield had trouble processing this, though I wasn’t sure why. I doubted people in his organization shared everything with one another.
    “I hope this isn’t going to become a fight, Corte. Mon Dieu . . . that would not be good.”
    Ah, the French. At last.
    Finally I said, “Here’s what I’ll agree to do. I’ll call Aaron. If he confirms that the AG’s ordered them into a slammer”—I let that linger—“I’ll arrange for one of our armored transports to get them to the Hansen facility. But I’ll tell you . . . a District cop? Inside? Ryan’s not going to be happy at all. I don’t know how cooperative he’ll be after we move them.”
    “You let me worry about that, Corte. This has to happen immediately. I can rely on you?”
    Meaning he was going to call Aaron Ellis in about ten minutes to make sure I was doing what I’d said.
    “Yes.”
    “Thanks. It’s really for the best—for us, for them, for the country.”
    I didn’t know if those words were directed toward me, toward Teasley or an invisible audience.
    After I disconnected, I gave it a few minutes and, without bothering to call Aaron Ellis for the confirmation, dialed Billy to ask about an armored van.

Chapter 23
    HOTELS ARE GOOD meeting places in our line of work.