The Big Bad Wolf

all. Just do your job in Dallas. I have the utmost confidence in you.”
    Burns went off the line, and just about every agent’s face in the room wore a smile. It was quite magical, actually. The director had said things that some of them had been waiting years to hear; especially welcome was the news that he believed in their ability and wasn’t worried about mistakes. We were back in the game; we were expected to bring down Lawrence Lipton.
    Minutes after the phone call ended, my cell went off. I answered, and it was Burns himself. “So how’d I do?” he asked. I could hear the smile in his voice. I could also almost see the cocky upturn of his lip when he grinned. He knew how he’d done.
    I walked away from the group into a far corner of the room and told him what he wanted to hear. “You did good. They’re pumped to do the job.”
    Burns exhaled. “Alex, I want you to turn up the heat on this punk. I sold you hard to Dallas as a key member of the team. They bought you, and your reputation. They know how good we think you are. I want you to make Lawrence Lipton very uncomfortable. Do it your own way.”
    I found myself smiling. “I’ll see what I can do.”
    “And Alex, contrary to what I said to the others,
don’t
make any mistakes.”

Chapter 94
    DON’T MAKE ANY MISTAKES. It was a hell of an exit line, I had to give him that. Kind of funny, in a sadistic, hard-ass way. I was starting to like Ron Burns again. Couldn’t help myself.
But did I trust him?
    Somehow, I got the feeling that Burns wasn’t that worried about the mistakes, though. He wanted to catch the kidnappers, especially Pasha Sorokin—even if we didn’t know yet who he really was or where he lived. According to Burns’s orders, all I had to do was figure out a way to break Lawrence Lipton down, do it in a hurry, and not embarrass the Bureau in any way.
    I met with Roger Nielsen on possible strategies—we had already resumed surveillance on Lipton. It was decided that it was time to put real pressure on him, to let him know we were in Dallas and that we
knew
about him. After Burns’s phone call, I wasn’t surprised that I had been chosen to confront Lipton.
    We decided that I would go and see Lipton at his office in the Lakeside Square Building at the intersection of the LBJ Freeway and the North Central Expressway. The building was twenty stories high, with lots of reflective glass. It was practically blinding as I looked skyward in the Texas sunshine. I walked inside at a little past ten in the morning. Lipton’s office suite was on the nineteenth floor. When I got off the elevator, a recorded voice said, “Howdy.”
    I stepped into a large reception area with half an acre of wine-colored carpeting, beige walls, and dark brown leather sofas and chairs everywhere. There were framed, signed photos of Roger Staubach, Nolan Ryan, and Tom Landry on the walls.
    I was told to wait in reception by a very proper-looking young woman in a dark blue pantsuit. She sat self-importantly behind a sleek walnut desk under recessed lighting. She looked all of twenty-two or twenty-three years old, fresh out of charm school. She acted and spoke as properly as she looked.
    “I’ll wait, but let Mr. Lipton know it’s the FBI. It’s important that I see him,” I told her.
    The receptionist smiled sweetly, as if she’d heard all this before, then she went back to answering the phone calls coming in on her headset. I sat down and waited patiently; I waited for fifteen minutes. Then I got back up again. I strolled over to the reception desk.
    “You told Mr. Lipton that I’m here?” I asked politely. “That I’m with the FBI?”
    “I did, sir,” she said in a syrupy voice that was starting to rub me the wrong way.
    “I need to see him right now,” I told the girl, and waited until she made another call to Lipton’s assistant.
    They talked briefly, then she looked back at me. “Do you have identification, sir?” she asked. She was frowning now.
    “I do. They’re called creds.”
    “May I see it, please? Your creds.” I showed off my new FBI badge, and she looked it over like a fast-food counterperson inspecting a fifty-dollar bill.
    “Could you please wait over at the seating area?” she asked again, only now she seemed a little nervous, and I wondered what Lawrence Lipton’s assistant had told her, what her marching orders were.
    “You don’t seem to understand, or I’m not making myself clear,” I finally said. “I’m