The Burning Wire

are quite some posters. Did you and your classmates make them yourself?”
    “Uhm, yeah. But, you know, our teacher, Mr. Rahman”—he glanced up at the man beside him—“he helped us some.”
    “Well, good for you, Tony. And thanks to you and all your fellow students in Peter Rahman’s third-grade class at Ralph Waldo Emerson elementary school in Queens, who believe you’re never too young to start making a difference when it comes to the environment. . . . This is Kathy Brigham reporting from—”
    Under the SAC’s stabbing finger, the screen went blank. He sat back. Dellray couldn’t tell if he was going to laugh or utter some obscenity. “Justice,” he said, enunciating carefully. “Just Us . . . Kids.” He sighed. “Want to guess how much shit this office is in, Fred?”
    Dellray cocked a bushy eyebrow.
    “We begged Washington for an extra five million dollars, on top of the expense of mobilizing four hundred agents. Two dozen warrants were ramrodded through magistrates’ offices in New York, Westchester, Philly, Baltimore and Boston. We had absolutely rock solid SIGINT that an ecoterror group, worse than Timothy McVeigh, worse than Bin Laden, was going to bring America to its knees with the attack of all time.
    “And they turned out to be a bunch of eight- and nine-year-olds. The code words for the weapons, ‘paper and supplies’? They meant paper and supplies. The communication wasn’t going on in the cloud zone; it went on face-to-face when they woke up from naptime at school. The woman working with Rahman? It was probably little Tony because his goddamn voice hasn’t changed yet. . . . It’s a good thing we didn’t get SIGINT hits about somebody, quote, ‘releasing doves’ in Central Park because we might’ve called in a fucking surface-to-air missile strike.”
    There was silence for a moment.
    “You’re not gloating, Fred.”
    A shrug of the lanky shoulders.
    “You want Tucker’s job?”
    “And where will he—?”
    “Elsewhere. Washington. Does it matter? . . . So? The ASAC spot? You want it, you can move in tonight.”
    Dellray didn’t hesitate. “No, Jon. Thanks, but no.”
    “You’re one of the most respected agents in this office. People look up to you. I’ll ask you to reconsider.”
    “I want to be on the street. That’s all I’ve everwanted. It’s important to me.” Sounding as un-street as any human being possibly could.
    “You cowboys.” The SAC chuckled. “Now you might wanta get back to your office. McDaniel’s on his way here for a conversation. I’m assuming you don’t want to meet him.”
    “Probably not.”
    As Dellray was at the door, the SAC said, “Oh, Fred, there’s one other thing.”
    The agent stopped in midlope.
    “You worked the Gonzalez case, didn’t you?”
    Dellray had faced down some of the most dangerous assholes in the city without his pulse speeding up a single beat. He now was sure his neck was throbbing visibly as the blood pumped. “The drug collar, Staten Island. Right.”
    “There was a little mix-up somewhere, it seems.”
    “Mix-up?”
    “Yeah, with the evidence.”
    “Really?”
    The SAC rubbed his eyes. “At the bust your teams scored thirty ki’s of smack, a couple dozen guns and some big bricks of money.”
    “That’s right.”
    “The press release said the cash recovered was one point one million. But we were getting the case ready for the grand jury and it looks like there’s only one million even in the evidence locker.”
    “Mislogging a hundred K?”
    The SAC cocked his head. “Naw, it’s something else. Not mislogging.”
    “Uh-huh.” Dellray breathed deeply. Oh, man . . . This is it.
    “I looked over the paperwork and, it was funny, the second zero on the chain-of-custody card, thezero after the one million, was real skinny. You look at it fast, you could think it was a one. Somebody glanced at it and wrote the press release wrong. They wrote, ‘one point one.’ ”
    “I see.”
    “Just wanted to tell you, if the question comes up: It was a typo. The exact amount the Bureau collected in the Gonzalez bust was one million even. That’s official.”
    “Sure. Thanks, Jon.”
    A frown. “For what?”
    “Clarifying.”
    A nod. It was a nod with a message and that message had been delivered. The SAC added, “By the way, you did a good job helping nail Richard Logan. He had that plan a few years ago to take out dozens of soldiers and Pentagon people. Some of our folks