CHAPTER 78.

CAPTAIN SHALES-"

"I've left the military. I'm civilian now."

The hour was early, Friday morning. Nance Laurel and the drone pilot were in an interview room at the detention center. The same floor, as a matter of fact, where she'd been talking to Amelia Sachs when the State Department delivery boy had so successfully derailed the Moreno homicide case.

"All right, Mr. Shales, you've been read your rights, correct?" Laurel put a tape recorder on the scabby table in front of them. She wondered how many invectives, lies, excuses and pleas for mercy this battered rectangle of electronics had heard. Too many to count.

He looked at the device without emotion. "Yes."

She wasn't sure how to read him, and reading defendants was a very important part of her job. Would they cave, would they stonewall, would they offer a modic.u.m of helpful comment, would they look for the right moment to leap from the chair and throttle her?

All of those had happened on occasion.

"And you understand you can terminate this conversation at any point?"

"Yes."

And yet he wasn't terminating and he wasn't crying for his lawyer. She sensed that part of him, a small part, wanted to tell her everything, wanted to confess-though some very thick walls surrounded that portion of his heart still.

She noted something else: Yes, Shales was a trained killer, no different, in theory, from Jimmy Bonittollo, who'd put a bullet into the head of Frank Carson because Carson had moved into Bonittollo's liquor distribution territory. But, practically, there did seem to be a difference. Unlike Bonittollo, Shales had a patina of regret in his blue eyes. And not regret because he'd been caught, which was always there, but regret because he understood that Robert Moreno's death was wrong.

"I want to explain why I'm here." Laurel spoke calmly.

"I thought...the case was dropped."

"The case for the death of Robert Moreno is not going forward. We're bringing a case for the death of Eduardo de la Rua."

"The reporter."

"That's right."

His head rose and fell slowly. He said nothing.

"You were ordered by Shreve Metzger to kill Robert Moreno as part of a Special Task Order issued by the National Intelligence and Operations Service."

"I'm choosing not to answer that question."

I didn't ask a question, she reflected. Then continued, "Because you intended to kill Moreno and you did kill him, any deaths that resulted-even if you hoped to avoid them-are murder."

His head turned and it seemed that he took in a pattern of scuff on the wall. It looked like a lightning bolt to Laurel.

And then she realized: Lord, he looks like David! She'd had the same thought when she'd seen Lincoln Rhyme's aide, Thom. But Shales's glance just now had been like an electric shock; the airman was much, much closer in appearance and expression.

Schoolmarm...

Said in the heat of the moment.

Still...

David, her only real boyfriend. Ever.

A deep breath and Laurel, steadied, continued, "Are you aware that Robert Moreno was not, in fact, engaged in a plot to attack the American Petroleum building in Miami? And that the chemicals he imported into the Bahamas were for legitimate agricultural and commercial purposes, to aid his Local Empowerment Movement?"

"I'm choosing not to answer that question, either."

"We've datamined your phone calls, determined your whereabouts, have air traffic control information about the drone, photos of the Ground Control Station in the NIOS parking lot-"

"I'm choosing-" his voice caught. "I'm choosing not to respond." His eyes could not hold hers.

Like David's.

There, sorry. I didn't want to say it. You made me...

Instinct told her to back off now. Immediately. Softer voice. "I want to work with you, Mr. Shales. Can I call you Barry?"

"I guess."

"I'm Nance. I want to work something out. We believe that you were a victim in this too. That you weren't given all the information about Robert Moreno that you probably should have been when the STO was issued."

Now a flicker in his eyes.

Which, f.u.c.k it all, are just as blue as David's.

"In fact, it's possible," she continued, "that some of the intelligence was intentionally manipulated to make a stronger case for a.s.sa.s.sinating Moreno. What do you think about that?"

"Intelligence is hard to a.n.a.lyze. It's a tricky business."

Ah, no more name, rank and serial number. No doubt: Shales knows that Metzger fudged the intel and it's been eating at him.

"I'm sure it is. But it presumably is also easy to manipulate. Isn't that the case?"

"I guess it can be." Shales's face was flushed. She believed that veins in his jaw and temple were more prominent than earlier.

Excellent.

Fear was a good tool for persuasion.

Hope was better.

"Let's see if we can work something out."

But his shoulders rose slightly and she measured the level of resistance. Still pretty high.

Laurel had played chess with David. This was one of their Sunday-morning things to do, after breakfast and after, well, what often came after breakfast.

She loved those games. He was slightly better than she. That added to the excitement.

Now, she thought. Now's the time.

"Barry, the stakes are high here. The death of Moreno and the others in the Bahamas are one thing. But the bomb in the coffee shop, the murder of Lydia Foster, that's-"

"What?"

"The bomb, the murder of the witnesses." Laurel appeared perplexed.

"Wait. What are you talking about?"

She paused. Then, surveying his face closely, said, "The individual trying to stop our case, the specialist, they're called, aren't they? He killed a witness in the Bahamas and one here in New York. He detonated an IED to destroy a computer holding evidence, nearly killed a half dozen people, including an NYPD police detective. You're not familiar with these?"

"No..."

Bishop to queen's knight three. Check.

She whispered, "Yes. Oh, yes."

He looked away whispering, "Minimal steps..."

She didn't know what that meant.

But Laurel did know that this wasn't an act. Shales, of the pink flesh and eyes impossibly old and achingly blue, hadn't known anything of Unsub 516. Not a single thing. Shreve Metzger had thoroughly deceived him.

Work it...

"Well, Barry, we have proof positive that this man was in the Bahamas around the time of your drone strike. We thought he was your partner."

"No, I work alone. NIOS sometimes has a.s.sets on the ground for intel..." His voice faded.

"Who are sent there by Shreve Metzger."

Not a question.

"Sometimes."

"So he's the one who manipulated the evidence in the first place. And has been trying to stop the investigation."

"You have a name?" Shales asked.

"No, he's an unknown subject at this point."

Shales whispered, "Tell me, who's this Lydia Foster you mentioned?"

"Moreno's interpreter here in New York. This unsub killed her. He was eliminating witnesses."

"And the bomb, was that the gas main explosion in the news the other day?"

"Yes, that was the cover story. But it was a bomb. The point was to kill investigators and destroy evidence."

The pilot looked off.

"And two people died?"

"And they were both tortured first."

He said nothing. His eyes focused on a dime-sized ding in the table.

"Barry, you called the South Cove Inn two days before the Moreno a.s.signment. You called from your operational phone, registered to Don Bruns."

If he was surprised at this he gave no reaction.

"I know why you called," Laurel said softly. "It wasn't to confirm Moreno's reservation. The CIA or NIOS's own a.s.sets could verify he was going to be there. You wanted to be sure that he was going to be there alone. That his wife and children wouldn't be coming with him. You wanted to be sure. So that there was no collateral damage."

The airman's lip trembled for an instant. He looked away.

Laurel whispered, "That tells me you had doubts about the a.s.signment from the beginning. You didn't want it to end up the way it did." She held his eye, whispered, "Work with us, Barry."

There's a moment in chess, David had told her, of alarming clarity. You understand that the strategy you've been confidently following is completely wrong, that your opponent has been playing an entirely different game-one of insight and brilliance, outstripping yours. Your loss might not be in the next move or the next ten but defeat is inevitable.

"He'll see it in your eyes," David had explained. "Something changes. You know you've lost and your eyes tell your opponent you understand that."

This is what she observed now with Barry Shales.

He's going to cave, she understood. He's going to give me Shreve Metzger! The murderer who uses national intelligence to kill whomever the h.e.l.l he wants to kill.

Checkmate...

His breathing was rapid. "All right. Tell me...Tell me how this could work?"

"What we can do is-"

A pounding on the door.

Laurel jumped.

A man in a close-fitting gray suit stood at the window, looking matter-of-factly from her to Shales and back again.

No, no, no...

Laurel knew him. He was one of the most tenacious-and vicious-defense lawyers in the city. That is, one of the best. But he primarily appeared in federal court in New York at the behest of a.s.sociated firms based in Washington, DC. Curious that he was here, rather than an attorney who knew his way around the rough-and-tumble state trial court, which in New York was called the Supreme Court.

The guard opened the door.