The Burning Wire

That’s more than everybody’s snitch bag put together.”
    “Hm.” Brent said nothing. Which is exactly what Fred Dellray himself would have done, had he been on the other side of the negotiation.
    The agent sat forward, his bony hands clasped. “Give me a minute.” Like Jeep in the stinky diner earlier, Dellray rose and walked past a skateboarder, two giggling Asian girls, and a man handing out fliers, looking surprisingly rational and cheerful, considering his cause was the 2012 end of days. Near the dharma tree he pulled out his phone and made a call.
    “Tucker McDaniel,” was the clipped greeting.
    “It’s Fred.”
    “You got something?” The ASAC sounded surprised.
    “Maybe. A CI of mine, from the day. Nothing concrete. But he’s been solid in the past. Only he wants some money.”
    “How much?”
    “How much we got?”
    McDaniel paused. “Not a lot. What’s he got that’s gold?”
    “Nothing yet.”
    “Names, places, acts, numbers? Scraps? . . . Anything? ”
    Like a computer rattling off data in a list.
    “No, Tucker. Nothing yet. It’s like an investment.”
    Finally the ASAC said, “I could do six, eight thousand probably.”
    “That’s all?”
    “How the hell much does he want?”
    “We’re negotiating.”
    “Fact is, we’ve had to adjust bottom lines for this one, Fred. Took us by surprise. You know.”
    McDaniel’s reluctance to spend was suddenly clear. He’d moved all the money in the Bureau operatingaccounts to the SIGINT and T and C teams. Naturally one of the first places he’d raided was the snitch fund.
    “Start with six. See the merchandise. If it’s meaty, maybe I could go nine or ten. Even that’s pushing it.”
    “I think he could be on to something, Tucker.”
    “Well, let’s see some proof. . . . Hold on. . . . Okay, Fred, it’s T and C on the other line. I better go.”
    Click .
    Dellray snapped the phone shut and stood for a moment, staring at the tree. He heard: “She was hot, you know, but there was this one thing didn’t seem right . . . no, it’s the Mayan calendar, I mean, maybe Nostradamus . . . that’s totally fucked up . . . yo, where you been, dog? . . .”
    But what he was really hearing was his partner in the FBI some years ago saying, No problem, Fred. I’ll take it . And going on a trip that Dellray had been scheduled to handle.
    And then hearing the voice of his special agent in charge of the New York office two days later, that voice choking, telling Dellray that the partner had been one of the people killed in a terrorist bombing in the Oklahoma City federal building. The man had been in the conference room that Dellray should have been occupying.
    At that moment, Fred Dellray, in a comfortable air-conditioned conference room of his own many miles from the smoking crater, had decided that a priority in his law enforcement career from then on would be to pursue terrorists and anyone else who killed the innocent in the name of ideas, whether political or religious or social.
    Yes, he was being marginalized by the ASAC. He wasn’t even being taken seriously. But what Dellraywas about to do had very little to do with vindicating himself, or striking a blow for the old ways.
    It was about stopping what he thought was the worst of evils: killing innocents.
    He returned to William Brent, sat down. He said, “Okay. One hundred thousand.” They exchanged numbers—both cold phones, prepaid mobiles that would be discarded after a day or so. Dellray looked at his watch. He said, “Tonight. Washington Square. Near the law school, by the chessboards.”
    “Nine?” Brent asked.
    “Make it nine-thirty.” Dellray rose and, according to the tradecraft of the CI world, left the park alone, with William Brent remaining behind to pretend to read the paper or contemplate the Krishna elm.
    Or figure out how to spend his money.
    But the CI was soon lost to thought, and Fred Dellray was considering how best to plan the set, what part the chameleon should now play, how to cast his eyes, how to convince and wheedle and call in favors. He was pretty sure he could pull it off; these were skills he’d honed for years.
    He’d just never thought he’d ever be using his talents to rob his employer—the American government and the American people—of $100,000.

Chapter 19
    AS AMELIA SACHS followed Charlie Sommers to his office on the other side of the Burn in Algonquin Consolidated, she was aware that the heat was risingalong