Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(93)

I dropped in on my old buddy of buddies, Gerry Scorse, at FBI headquarters. After I cooled my heels for forty minutes in reception, Scorse brought me coffee and invited me into his office. “Come right in, Alex. Thanks for waiting.”

He listened politely, and with apparent concern, as I went over what I had previously learned, and then what Soneji had told me concerning Secret Service agents Mike Devine and Charles Chakely. He took notes, a lot of notes on yellow foolscap.

After I’d finished, Scorse said, “I have to make a phone call. Sit tight, Alex.”

When he returned, he asked me to come upstairs with him. He never said it but I assumed he was impressed by the news from Gary Soneji.

I was escorted to the deputy director’s private conference room on the top floor. The deputy, Kurt Weithas, is the number-two person at the Bureau. They wanted me to understand that this was an important meeting. I got it.

Scorse went with me into the impressive, very cushy conference room. All the walls and most of the furnishings were dark blue, very sober and severe. The room reminded me of the cockpit of a foreign car. Yellow pads and pencils were laid out for us.

It was clearly Weithas’s meeting from the start. “What we’d like to accomplish is twofold, Detective Cross.” Weithas spoke and acted like a very successful, very cool Capitol Hill lawyer. In a manner of speaking, that’s what he was. He wore a brilliant white shirt with a Hermès tie. He slipped off his wire-rimmed reading glasses when I entered the room. He appeared to be in a dark mood.

“I’d like to show you all the information we have on agents Devine and Chakely. In return, we must ask for your full cooperation in keeping this matter absolutely confidential. What I’m telling you now… is that we’ ve known about them for a while, Detective. We were running a parallel investigation to your own.”

“You have my cooperation,” I said, trying not to show my surprise at his news. “But I’m going to have to file a report back at the department.”

“I’ve already spoken to your commanding officer about the matter.” Weithas brushed that little detail aside. He’d already broken my confidence; he absolutely expected me to keep his. “You’ve been ahead of us a couple of times during the investigation. This time, maybe we’re a little ahead of you. Half a step.”

“You have a little bigger staff,” I reminded him.

Scorse took over for Weithas at that point. He hadn’t lost his touch for condescension. “We started our investigation of agents Devine and Chakely at the time of the kidnapping,” he said. “They were obvious suspects, though not ones we took seriously. During the course of the investigation a great deal of pressure was placed on both men. Since the Secret Service reports directly to the secretary of the treasury, you can imagine what they were subjected to.”

“I watched most of it firsthand,” I reminded both FBI men.

Scorse nodded, then went on.

“On the fourth of January, Agent Charles Chakely resigned from the Service. He stated that he’d been thinking about the move long before the kidnapping, anyway. He said he couldn’t handle the innuendos, all the media attention. His resignation was accepted immediately. At about the same time, a small error in the daily logs kept by the agents was discovered by us. A date had been inadvertently reversed. It was nothing major, except that we were checking everything about the case at the time.

“We eventually got nine hundred of our agents directly or indirectly involved,” the deputy director added. I had no idea what his point was yet.

“Other inconsistencies in the agents’ logs were eventually discovered,” Scorse continued. “Our technical experts concluded that two of the individual reports had been doctored, that is, rewritten. We ultimately came to believe that what was taken out were references to the teacher Gary Soneji.”

“They had spotted him checking out the Goldberg house in Potomac,” I said. “If Soneji can be believed.”

“On this point, I think he can. What you’ve recently had confirmed corresponds to our findings. We believe that the two agents observed Soneji watching Michael Goldberg and Maggie Rose Dunne. We think one of the agents followed Soneji, and discovered the hiding place in Crisfield, Maryland.”

“You’ve been watching the two agents ever since?” I asked Gerry Scorse.

He nodded once, just as efficient as ever. “For a couple of months, anyway. We also have good reason to believe they know we’re watching. Two weeks after Chakely resigned, Devine also resigned from the Service. He said he and his family couldn’t take the pressure associated with what had happened, either. Actually, Devine and his wife are separated.”

“I assume Chakely and Devine haven’t tried to spend any of the money,” I said.

“To our knowledge, no. As I said before, they know we’re suspicious. They aren’t dumb. Not at all.”

“It’s come down to a rather delicate and intricate waiting game,” Weithas said. “We can’t prove anything yet, but we can disrupt their lives. We can sure as hell keep them from spending any of the ransom money.”

“What about the pilot in Florida? There was no way I could run an investigation down there. Did you ever find out who he was?”

Scorse nodded. The FBI had been withholding a lot from me. From everybody. I wasn’t surprised. “He turned out to be a drug runner named Joseph Denyeau. He was known to some of our people in Florida. It’s conceivable that Devine knew Denyeau and hired him.”