night seemed darker after the brightness of the classroom and the wind had picked up. It was blowing leaves down the street and into Shepherd’s face as he fell into step beside Franklin.
‘’Bout twelve years back,’ Franklin said, peering at the darkening forest ahead as if he could see the lost years among the trees, ‘I was part of a six-man task force running an investigation into a string of hit-and-run bank jobs across the Ohio–Indiana state line. In each case a lone, masked gunman stormed into a small out-of-the-way bank, grabbed a hostage – always a woman – and threatened to shoot her if anyone tripped an alarm. He was smart to a point because the size of the banks meant security wasn’t top of the line so we didn’t have any decent security camera footage. Also he never got greedy so was always out and away within a couple of minutes. And he always took the hostage with him, saying if he heard so much as a car alarm he would kill her.
‘As you can imagine the local press shook up a hornets’ nest of fear about it all but there was also a bigger concern: none of the hostages were coming forward afterwards. For about a week or so we lived in fear of getting a call from some hunter or dog walker who had stumbled upon the silenced corpse of one of our unfortunate bank customers. Then he hit another bank, third in a month, and we got fresh footage.’
Franklin directed Shepherd away from Hogan’s Alley and towards the path through the forest that led to the main building complex beyond.
‘This is how it went down. Woman walks into the bank, talks to the door guard; gunman comes in and disarms the guard while he’s distracted, grabs the woman, robbery ensues then perp leaves with a hostage. We could see by comparing the clear images of the new footage with the fuzzy older stuff we had that it was the same woman every time. Turns out she wasn’t a hostage at all, she was one of the crew. That’s why no one was coming forward afterwards.
‘We quietly spread the word among the state banks, so when they pulled another job ten days later in Des Moines, a teller tripped the alarm and the cops got there in plenty of time to pick ’em up. When he was cornered the gunman tried to pull the same hostage routine, said he was going to kill her if they didn’t give him a car and a free pass. Cops just told him, “Go ’head, shoot her.” All of which brings us back to your little situation. Tell me what you knew about your suspect from the mission brief?’
Shepherd dug his hands deep in his pockets and tried to focus on something other than how cold he was. ‘The intel said he was on several international watch lists as a known terror suspect. Believed to be a Jihadist, trained in Afghanistan by Al-Qaeda.’
‘And from your reading and case studies do terrorists and other religiously motivated individuals tend to give themselves up to officers of an enemy state they believe they are conducting a holy war against?’
‘No.’
‘No they do not.’
The trees parted to reveal the Quantico Hilton rising up in front of them, all square lines, slit windows and concrete. This was where the labs and active case teams were housed; proper on-going, messy cases with as-yet undiscovered solutions, not the clean textbook ones Shepherd was being weaned on. It could easily have passed for a small mid-western high-school campus had it not been for the sound of gunfire crackling out of the forest behind them. The next recruit must have made it to the basement. Shepherd hoped he or she was doing better than he had. Hearing the shots reminded him of all the paperwork he needed to fill out back at the briefing room. The forms for discharging your weapon during an exercise were thorough, tedious and in triplicate for very good reason: it stopped the recruits from getting trigger-happy.
‘Don’t worry about the admin,’ Franklin said, apparently reading his mind. ‘I’ll square it with Agent Williams. You can fill it in and file it after.’
After what? Shepherd wanted to ask, but Franklin was already halfway towards the glass doors of the main building.
‘Never forget that you are a highly and expensively trained officer, son. In the currency of law enforcement that makes you an asset to Uncle Sam and a much-valued target to a terrorist. If you don’t take the shot, odds are the bomber will push the button anyway and there will be three bodies to scrape out of that basement instead of two. The hostage dies either way. And, given the little story I just told you, how do you know the hostage was even friendly?’ They moved from the frigid night into the brightness and heat of the executive building. ‘You have to wonder what that woman was doing at dusk in a rat-hole basement with a known terrorist in the first place. I can understand you being upset that you shot someone who might be innocent, it’s a credit to you, but don’t lose sleep over it. You made the right choice, Shepherd. Though you do need to work on your marksmanship.’
They passed the honours board that dominated the glass atrium with the name of every top-of-the-class graduate written in gold, dating right back to 1972 when the doors first opened. Shepherd doubted his name would ever grace it. He was a good few years older than the average intake, which showed in his fitness scores, and his shooting was clearly letting him down. The things he really excelled at were not part of the five areas of ability that went towards his final mark; his expertise had not even been thought of when the FBI first came into being.
The elevator door opened and Franklin stepped inside, waited for Shepherd to join him then pushed button number 6. Shepherd’s mouth went dry. The sixth floor was where the most senior personnel lived.
‘You cannot have doubts out in the field,’ Franklin said, his soft voice sounding conspiratorial in the confines of the elevator. ‘Because if you hesitate in a situation like that, you die, or, worse still, your partner does and you end up carrying it around with you for the rest of your life. They don’t put this sort of thing in any of the manuals but I’m telling you how it is, for your own sake and for mine – especially if we’re going to be working together.’
The door swished open before Shepherd had time to respond and Franklin headed down the silent corridor, checking his watch as he passed all the heavy doors belonging to the sub-division chiefs. The corridor was arranged according to rank with the lesser chiefs nearest the elevator. Franklin swept past them all, heading straight for the door at the very end with Shepherd close behind, feeling like he was back in high school and had been summoned to the principal’s office. Only here the ‘principal’ was one rung down from the Director of the FBI, who himself was just one down from the President of the United States of America. Franklin stopped outside the door, checked his watch one last time then rapped twice above a nameplate spelling out: ASSISTANT DIRECTOR.
In the softened silence of the corridor they sounded like gunshots.
‘Come in,’ a deep voice rumbled from the other side.
Franklin gave him the smile, only this time the warmth wasn’t there and it occurred to Shepherd that maybe he was nervous too. Then he opened the door and stepped into the room.
Assistant Director O’Halloran was a thin blade of a man worn sharp by a lifetime in the Bureau. Everything about him was hard and precise: the steel rims of his spectacles; the pale grey eyes behind them that looked up as Franklin and Shepherd entered the room; even his gunmetal hair appeared to have been parted with a scalpel rather than a comb. He was sitting at the same immaculate desk he had been photographed behind on the recruitment literature that went with the application form Shepherd had filled out almost a year ago: same flatscreen monitor, same keyboard, same desk phone and framed photograph. The only things different were the two files on the desk in front of him: one plain, the other with
