London Bridges

on her, and it turns out, he does. Slightly less than two hundred thousand so far this year. Trips, jewelry, one of those cute little Lexus convertibles the gals like.”
    Koch paused and looked around the room. “That’s about it. Except we know that Hancock is connected to the Wolf and that he’s been paid a lot of money for his services. So at twelve hundred hours, we’re going in to take a look for ourselves inside the house. So tired,” Agent Koch said in a singsong. “Tired of waiting.”
    There were smiles around the room, even from those who didn’t get the reference to the Kinks song. Somebody patted me on the shoulder, as though I had something to do with the decision that must have come down from Washington.
    “Not me.” I turned and shrugged at the agent congratulating me. “I’m just a soldier here.”
    The team going inside Hancock’s place was mostly FBI, but there was a handful of CIA agents, too, led by Rooney. The CIA was in Idaho as a courtesy, partly because of the new working relationship that existed between the two agencies, but mostly because Hancock was directly involved in the murder of Thomas Weir, one of theirs. But I doubted they wanted to take Hancock down any more than I did. I wanted the Wolf, and somehow, somewhere, I was going to get him. At least, that was what I needed to think.

Chapter 102
    KOCH AND ROONEY were in charge, and they finally gave us the go. At the appointed hour, we swarmed all over the Hancock house. FBI-emblazoned shirts and windbreakers were everywhere. Probably scared off a few deer and jackrabbits, even though not a single shot was fired.
    Hancock was in bed with his girlfriend. He was sixty-four years old; Coral was supposed to be twenty-six. Lustrous black hair, good figure, lots and lots of rings and things, slept in the nude, on her back. Hancock at least had the decency to wear a Utah Jazz sweatshirt and sleep in a fetal position.
    He began to shout at us, which was actually kind of ironic and funny. “What the hell is this shit? Get out of my damn house!”
    But he forgot to look surprised, or he just wasn’t a good actor. Either way, I got the feeling that he knew we were coming. How? Because he’d spotted us over the past few days? Or had Hancock been warned by someone in one of the cooperating agencies? Did the Wolf know we were onto Hancock?
    During the first couple of hours of interviews, we tried Dr. O’Connell’s truth serum on Hancock. It didn’t work as well on him as it had with Joe Cahill. He got happy and high, but he just sat back and went with it. Didn’t tell us much, wouldn’t even confirm things that Cahill had already confessed.
    Meanwhile, a search of the house, barn, and sixty acres of grounds was going on. Hancock owned an Aston Martin convertible—and the Wolf loved fast cars—but nothing else even vaguely suspicious turned up. Not for three whole days, during which nearly a hundred agents combed every square inch of the ranch. During that time, half a dozen computer experts—including loaners from Intel and IBM—tried to break into Hancock’s two computers. They finally concluded that he’d had experts put up extra security to protect whatever was inside.
    There was nothing to do but wait around some more. I read every magazine and newspaper in Hancock’s house, including several back issues of the
Idaho Mountain Express.
I went for long walks and tried to figure out a direction for my life that made some sense to me. I didn’t do real well, but the fresh mountain air was a nice treat for my lungs.
    When a computer breakthrough finally came, there wasn’t much to go on. No direct link to the Wolf or to anyone else who seemed suspicious to us, at least not at first.
    The next day, though, a hacker from our offices in Austin, Texas, found a file inside an encrypted file. It contained regular communication with a bank in Zurich. Actually, with a couple of banks in Switzerland.
    And suddenly we didn’t just
suspect,
we
knew
that Hancock had a lot of money. Over six million. At least that much. Which was the best news we’d had in a long while.
    So off to Zurich we went, at least for a day or two. I didn’t expect to find the Wolf there. But you never know. And I’d never been to Switzerland. Jannie begged me to bring back chocolate, a suitcase full of the stuff, and I promised I would.
A whole suitcase full of Swiss chocolate, sweetheart. Least I can do for missing most of your ninth year.

Chapter