Persuader

There was talk of a tropical storm blowing in from the direction of Bermuda. I had a million files on my desk. We had rapes, homicides, suicides, weapons thefts, assaults, and there had been a riot the night before because the refrigeration had broken down in the enlisted mess kitchens and the ice cream had turned to water. I had just gotten off the phone with a buddy at Fort Irwin in California who told me it was the same over there whenever the desert winds were blowing.
    Kohl came in wearing shorts and a tank top shirt. She still wasn't sweating. Her skin was still dusty. She was carrying her file, which was then about eight times as thick as when I had first given it to her.
    "The sabot has got to be metal," she said. "That's their final conclusion."
    "Is it?" I said.
    "They'd have preferred plastic, but I think that's just showboating."
    "OK," I said.
    "I'm trying to tell you they've finished with the sabot design. They're ready to move on with the important stuff now."
    "You still feel all warm and fuzzy about this Gorowski guy?" She nodded. "It would be a tragedy to bust him. He's a nice guy and an innocent victim.
    And the bottom line is he's good at his job and useful to the army."
    "So what do you want to do?"
    "It's tricky," she said. "I guess what I want to do is bring him on board and get him to feed phony stuff to whoever it is who's got the hook in. That way we keep the investigation going without risking putting anything real out there."
    "But?"
    "The real thing looks phony in itself. It's a very weird device. It's like a big lawn dart. It has no explosive in it."
    "So how does it work?"
    "Kinetic energy, dense metals, depleted uranium, heat, all that kind of stuff. Were you a physics postgrad?"
    "No."
    "Then you won't understand it. But my feeling is if we screw with the designs the bad guy is going to know. It'll put Gorowski at risk. Or his baby girls, or whatever."
    "So you want to let the real blueprints out there?"
    "I think we have to."
    "Big risk," I said.
    "Your call," she said. "That's why you get the big bucks."
    "I'm a captain," I said. "I'd be on food stamps if I ever got time to eat."
    "Decision?"
    "Got a line on the bad guy yet?"
    "No."
    "Feel confident you won't let it get away?"
    "Totally," she said.
    I smiled. Right then she looked like the most self-possessed human being I had ever seen.
    Shining eyes, serious expression, hair hooked behind her ears, short khaki shorts, tiny khaki shirt, socks and parachute boots, dark dusty skin everywhere.
    "So go for it," I said.
    "I never dance," she said.
    "What?"
    "It wasn't just you," she said. "In fact, I'd have liked to. I appreciated the invitation. But I never dance with anybody."
    "Why not?"
    "Just a thing," she said. "I feel self-conscious. I'm not very coordinated."
    "Neither am I."
    "Maybe we should practice in private," she said.
    "Separately?"
    "One-on-one mentoring helps," she said. "Like with alcoholism." Then she winked and walked out and left a very faint trace of her perfume behind her in the hot heavy air.
    Duffy and I finished our coffee in silence. Mine tasted thin and cold and bitter. I had no stomach for it. My right shoe pinched. It wasn't a perfect fit. And it was starting to feel like a ball and chain. It had felt ingenious at first. Smart, and cool, and clever. I remembered the first time I opened the heel, three days ago, soon after I first arrived at the house, soon after Duke locked the door to my room. I'm in. I had felt like a guy in a movie. Then I remembered the last time I opened it. Up in Duke's bathroom, an hour and a half ago. I had fired up the unit and Duffy's message had been waiting there for me: We need to meet.
    "Why did you want to meet?" I asked her.
    She shook her head. "Doesn't matter now. I'm revising the mission. I'm scrapping all our objectives except getting Teresa back. Just find her and get her out of there, OK?"
    "What about Beck?"
    "We're not going to get Beck. I screwed up again. This maid person was a legitimate agent and Teresa wasn't. Nor were you. And the maid died, so they're going to fire me for going off the books with Teresa and you, and they're going to abandon the case against Beck because I compromised procedure so badly they could never make it stand up in court anymore. So just get Teresa the hell out and we'll all go home."
    "OK," I said.
    "You'll have to forget about Quinn," she said. "Just let it go." I said nothing.
    "We failed anyway," she said. "You haven't found