The phone rang. Picking it up, I hoped it wasn't anyone important.
"Sampson? Get your fucking ass down here. Now!"
It wasn't.
I looked over at the clock. It was just 12:55. It was too close to Sally's time. She was more important. In fact, she was just coming to the door. I looked up at her and smiled. Fuck this telephone shit. Our times together were becoming too precious. I never knew what she was going to come up with, but I think I liked the 'nothing' days the best. We often just sat quietly holding each other, not talking, not petting, just being. Doin' nothin'.
"I'll be there at 2:30." Sally heard me and smiled at the timing.
"Now, Sampson."
I suppose I should have told him I didn't like to be ordered around, especially by someone in his position. It tended to make me angry. I was already well on my way to pissed off.
"2:30, asshole!" I told him, again.
He changed his tone, and I finally recognized that what I was hearing wasn't arrogance, but fear. Out of control fear.
"Look. It's not me, sir. But the directors are going to be really pissed if they have to wait that long."
Now my curiosity was piqued.
"Directors? As in plural?"
"Yeah, butt face. Ours, the FBI's, the CIA's, and another guy that has those three spooked out of their shorts. Believe me, they don't want to sit in there and drink coffee with that guy for an hour and a half."
"No shit?"
"No shit! Now get a move on!"
"OK. I'll leave as soon as I can get away."
We both knew I had no intention of leaving any sooner than I had said before. Let the bastards be a bit uncomfortable. It still beat a long night living with the rats...
"Now, you motherfucker..."
I heard as I hung up the phone. I smiled up at Sally and went to her with my arms open. I had a bad feeling I was going to need all the love and support I could get my hands on. Sally must have sensed my need for her comfort and love. It was a 'nothing' day.
I think she wondered why I cried when 2:00 came.
I got to the anonymous building downtown at 2:20. I waited outside the door, in clear view of the security cameras for 15 minutes. It was too much hassle for them to come out and get me, then have to get cycled back in. Sometimes things work in your favor.
By the time I got through security it was 2:45. I walked into the conference room and sat down. Four government suits stared back at me. Well, three, anyway. The fourth one was too expensive to be government issue, which meant only the government could have afforded it.
One of the men I knew better than the others because I had worked for him, in my prior life. I knew two of the others as they were in the news occasionally, political appointments and congressional hearings. The fourth man looked familiar, as if I had seen him somewhere. It was more like I had sensed his presence somewhere, like a dullness or deadness on the fringes of my consciousness. Or like a disease. I decided didn't like him. When I looked at him, I had a foreboding sense I was looking at myself in 10 years time. It scared the shit out of me. Not that I would be alive in 10 years, but in seeing what I could become.
FBI started in.
"Where the Hell did you get this evidence?"
The briefcase and its contents were on the table.
I told them the story, starting with Sally's involvement with Gary. I told them about finding Nicole and taking her and Simone into my home and into my protection. Since they had my report on Gary's demise and my part in it, I left that out. I related that Simone had had difficulties adjusting to the new situation and run away. I said I had traced her — I didn't say how — to the warehouse and rescued her.
"But that was months ago, Sampson! Do you realize how much time you've wasted?"
I didn't want them to know how frightened I had been of dealing with that briefcase. I had successfully forgotten about that particular ugliness until we moved and it showed up. Like a bad penny. But this FBI guy was a real asshole. And he was scared, too.
"Well, I figured you were still sifting the evidence you got from that child molester's house you had under observation for all those years," I shot back.
The FBI had taken public credit for putting away Gary, when it had been handed to them on a silver platter. That kind of positive PR meant billions of dollars in increased funding.
"Fuck you!"
I didn't answer.
"Why did you wait so long, son?" CIA was more intelligent, smoother. Still an asshole.
"It wasn't part of my mission."
"I don't understand. Was this an official mission?" he asked, turning to my old director.
He shook his head, then looked at me. "If I may?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Mr. Sampson's mission, as he had been trained to defined it, was to recover the young girl. Our agents are trained to be focused, mission specific. I'm surprised he brought out the case at all, to be truthful. It shows a break in his training."
He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. That look had ended more than one career and they had all been damned good agents.
"It wasn't entirely voluntary, Sir, as I recall. I remember I couldn't find the door, I remember my head kept turning to face the corner this case was hidden in. The girl later told me she was tugging my ear, turning me so I would find it. This was her find, not mine."
"That would be Miss Le Brech, the young girl, right? Dr. Schwartz has said some very nice things about her."
"Yes. Simone. She is my stepdaughter now. She wasn't at that time."
"Very nice for you, I'm sure. Can we get back to the fucking point?"
That was Mr. FBI again.
"You're telling me that you didn't have any idea what was in the case? I find that hard to believe!"
I shrugged. Fuck him. But something wasn't right. Suddenly, the stench of panic in the room made sense.
"God damn it! You bastards didn't have a clue. Even after I handed you that guy's house and all those tapes, all the pictures and the dead fucking bodies. I'm right, aren't I? You're all sitting here chewing on my ass because I'm the only one who has any god damn fucking clue what's going on. Oh, God help us!"
I looked at them accusingly, demanding a response. Finally the scary one nodded.
"What the press, what no one outside of a very, very small circle knows is that the funerals that were televised were almost all staged. No one had missed those 34 girls. No one had ever reported them gone. No one."
"What about..."
I stopped myself. I had taken the tapes and photos of Miki. But she was only one.
"What you uncovered has shaken the foundations of the law enforcement community to its very core. That such a massive and hideous crime could have been committed in the very heart of one of the safest major communities in the country and never been noticed, is ... is..." Spooky couldn't finish.
"Sampson, you're being reactivated." My old director, quietly.
"Fuck you." I wasn't about to let this get dumped on my lap.
"This isn't a request."
"You can't ... You wouldn't..." I saw the set of his face. "Oh, shit! As what?"
"As a Free Agent."
"This isn't fucking baseball. What the Hell is a 'free' agent."
Spooky took over. "Well, we're not really sure, exactly. Currently, you're the only one there is. You'll have just this case. That's it. Take what you need, from anybody here. You will have our full, unquestioning support. Do what you need to do. Just wrap it up. Quietly. Quickly. And let us know when you're done."
Spooky shrugged. He couldn't say anymore. I didn't think they would want any written reports. I also knew without them saying, that there would be complete deniability if anything went wrong. Hell, what was I thinking, 'if'...
I stared at Spooky for a long minute. Then I looked at them all, one by one. To their credit, each one looked me in the eye. They knew they had just made me the judge, jury and executioner of tens, maybe hundreds of men and women. 007 in spades. A license to kill.
"I've been known to make a bit of a mess," I stated. Understated, actually. I think I almost got a smile out of my old director, but I wasn't trying to make a joke.
"There won't be any problems. Just not too many civilians, if it can be helped." That was Mr. Tact from the FBI again. I think he was actually trying to make me feel better.
I stood, towering over him. "I have NEVER involved civilians, you mother fucker. I don't burn children in farmhouses or communes and I don't break down fucking doors of unarmed civilian's homes and steal little children at gunpoint. And if you say one more fucking word, YOU will be the first casualty in this war you are asking me to wage. Quietly and quickly. Do you fucking understand me, you incompetent asshole?" I was a little miffed.
After several minutes of silence I packed up the evidence in the briefcase and started out the door. The meeting was over. All except the...
"Mr. Sampson, a moment, please?" I was surprised. It wasn't my old director.
We waited while the other three men left. I turned to face the spook. He apparently was my new boss.
He looked at me for a minute, measuring me. "This is hard for you, isn't it?" It wasn't really a question. He said it softly. He knew from experience.
"I look at it the other way. It's too easy."
He was silent, agreeing with me. "I'm sorry it has to be this way. No publicity, no bodies, no noise. That's the main reason we chose you. Because you don't burn kids or break down doors. You don't like it. But you'll do the job and do it right.
"You have to understand. There are too many cities in this country where the police departments are hanging on to their credibility and their respectability by their fingernails. A crime of this magnitude, at this point in time, making them look totally incompetent, unable to protect the populace, would be the last straw for too many of the marginal departments. That would lead straight to anarchy. And honestly, we're not sure that some of them haven't been compromised and are involved in this in some way. But we don't know. We just fucking don't know.
"I don't have to tell you that if word of this got out, neither the states nor the Feds would be able to contain the rapid spread of violence and anarchy. Needless to say, don't expect any help from the locals."
"What help can I expect?"
"You will have complete and total access to every piece of information I get. I get it all." This guy was beginning to scare even me. No one had that kind of access.
"How do I contact you?"
"Your contact will be the Analyst you have used up until now. We thought it would be easier that way. Besides, as a result of reading your report and doing his own analysis, his security clearance is now as high as it gets. He, or someone like him, will be on the other end of your phone 24/7." He paused. "That was a good piece of analysis, by the way."
I somehow knew that was high praise coming from him.
"Other support?"
"Clean up will be on demand. Just tell him where. Then get out. You are never to come back here again. Your analyst has your equipment, computer, phone, all the usual toys. Anything else you need, just ask him."
I nodded my head.
"No other questions, Mr. Sampson?"
"Not that I can think of."
"You don't want to know who I am?"
I looked at him for a moment. "Not really. I don't think so, no."
He smiled sadly. "I know what you mean." He thought a moment. "What tipped you off? What made you make the link with that particular group?"
The memory of the dark basement under Gary's house flooded over me again. I had known then, I just hadn't pieced it together yet. "The graves. I'd seen them before. Over there."
He nodded. There was no substitute for fieldwork. We left the room together. The Analyst waylaid me before I could say anything else to him and Spooky slipped out, a shadow.
"Holy Shit, man! You hit the fucking jackpot! Do you know how high my clearance is now? Would you like to read the President's e-mail? Launch a missile? Damn, this is so scary, it's cool!"
He was having so much fun with his new toys I decided not to slug him. That 'fucking jackpot' had cost countless lives. I was going to have the unpleasant task of trying to account for them, somehow. I listened carefully while he rhapsodized over the features of the new hardware that was already installed in his now ultra secure office. Looking around, even I was impressed.
I'll say one thing, this spook guy didn't mess around.