Power and Empire

“I figured,” she said. “Men who can quote Italian proverbs don’t stay unattached for long.” She sat at her desk, found a pair of reading glasses, and then bent to spin the dial on a gray metal safe under her side table. She hit the combination on the first try, and turned a handle before pulling open the heavy drawer with a loud thunk. “To be honest,” she said, looking up at him, “I’d intended to bring you here and engage in my own little version of a honey trap. You know, try and trick you into admitting what it is you’re really up to. But I guess I already know. When Flaco decided not to talk, I realized we had nothing to go on but the thin stuff Eddie Feng is giving us, and that’s likely just to save his own skin. He’s hiding more information, I know it, but in the meantime, I’m open to whatever help you guys at the Counterintelligence Division can give us.” She took a small yellow envelope from the safe and handed it to Caruso. He could see from the outline it was a USB drive.

Callahan took a deep breath. “I’m not an idiot, Caruso. Headquarters drops you in here on top of me, and then one of my arrests shows up duct-taped and hooded with a muddy boot print on his face.” She nodded to the envelope. “I don’t know who you are exactly, but I think you should take a look at this. There’s obviously something on it that I’m not seeing.”

Caruso opened the envelope and dumped the USB drive into his palm. “Not saying your theory about me holds any water, but we are on the same side, I promise you that. I wouldn’t mind having a look at this. It’s been checked for malware?”

She nodded. “FBI techs assure me it’s virus-free. You’ll need to sign for it. And I do want it ba—”

Callahan’s cell phone began to chime, cutting her off in midsentence. She looked at the caller ID, then shook her head. “It’s Joe Rice,” she said. “One of the detectives who booked Flaco into jail. I’ve gotta take this.”

Callahan’s mouth fell open five seconds after she pressed the phone to her ear. “You have got to be shitting me,” she said with a gasp. “…Okay… I’ll be right there.”

She ended the call and stood up.

“What is it?” Caruso asked.

“Apparently,” Callahan said, “somebody thinks Eddie Feng has information that is too important to let him live.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not quite,” Callahan said. She reached behind her desk and grabbed a black 5.11 daypack, which presumably she used instead of a purse. “Listen, Feng is in the hospital now, surrounded by a protective detail of very jumpy FBI agents. I’m going to try and get some kind of information out of the detention officer who attacked him. Sounds like he got a snootful of pepper spray, so maybe he’s been tenderized a bit. You go on and do what you need to do with that thumb drive.” Tears welled in Callahan’s green eyes. She sniffed and wiped them away. “I know there are hundreds, even thousands, more kids out there. I’ve never even met her, hell, I barely even know what she looks like, but for whatever reason, it feels important that we find Magdalena Rojas. I’m good with using your sketchy counterintel methods if it helps us find Matarife and rescue this kid.” She stopped at the door, finger poised above the pad to arm the security system. “Tell me how you say that Italian proverb again.”

“A carne di lupo, zanne di cane.”

Callahan looked at him and nodded. “Hell yeah,” she said. “That.”

• • •

Forty-five minutes later, Caruso sat with the rest of The Campus’s operators in Clark’s room at the Omni Hotel in downtown Dallas. Caruso and Adara leaned forward on the loveseat, shoulder to shoulder. Jack slouched in an overstuffed chair, and Midas leaned back in the office chair he’d swiveled around from the desk. Both men leaned as far back as their respective seats allowed, staring at the ceiling. Chavez sat on the floor, his back to the couch. Clark perched on the end of his bed. The team was used to such meetings in cramped hotel rooms and were all too tired to care about the furniture — or lack of it.

Caruso’s cell phone lay faceup on the coffee table with Gavin Biery on speaker. The Campus IT wizard sounded congested, like he had a cold — which was surely a function of the fact that it was nearly two in the morning in D.C.

Biery coughed. “I found a guy named Donny Lao with an Australian passport who looks a hell of a lot like the photo you sent of Vincent Chen, who happens to have a passport issued by the ROC.”

“I’m betting Donny Lao’s not really Australian,” Ryan said, stating the obvious.

“Ya think?” Biery’s eye roll was almost audible over the phone. “Vincent Chen has school records in Taiwan and the U.S. Sounds sinister, I know, but he owns a greeting-card company that has him taking trips between his home base in L.A. and China several times a year. I’ve sent everything I’ve found to you.”

“How did you come to find this Donny Lao?” Jack asked. His brain was exhausted, but not asleep… yet.