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“Yes, but so far there’s nothing of interest to report. But I’ll alert them that Amy is back in the States, so they can grab her if she meets up with her husband.”
“Nice start—but there’s something else.”
Tyler waits patiently.A good assistant knows when to shut the bleep up,Ernest thinks.
He says, “The Brit belongs to Hector. Get word to him that he’s on our soil, and that he’d better do whatever it takes to run him down. Amy Cornwall belongs to me. She has blood on her hands, she’s violated at least a dozen Agency rules and requirements, and most of all…”
Ernest shuts his mouth. He was going to say,and most of all, she’s humiliated me,but it won’t do to say that aloud.
He says, “There’s an Army major I know, detached to the NSA over at Fort Meade. Rudolf Meyer. Reach out to him—tell him you’re calling on my behalf.”
Like magic, a small pad of paper is in Tyler’s hands and he’s scribbling away. “Yes, sir.”
“They have new surveillance-recognition software that they’ve had success with on a few trial runs,” Ernest says. “Called FACE/GRAB. Tell him we’re going to need it soonest in an area covering whatever county McGuire Air Force Base is in, and then expanding outward. And then provide him with the best facials we have at Langley of Amy Cornwall.”
Pope keeps on scribbling. “What does FACE/GRAB do?”
“It allows the NSA or other duly designated agencies to hijack the stream of any surveillance cameras in an area—ATMs, gas stations, toll booths—and run a facial-recognition software program. If Amy comes in view of any type of camera in that part of New Jersey, we’ll know about it. Better than waiting to see if she hooks up with her husband.”
“I see,” Tyler says. “And then what?”
Ernest goes back to his paperwork. “Then we’ll Gitmo her ass to Cuba before she does any more harm.”
Chapter90
LESS THANan hour after leaving McGuire Air Force Base, I’m with Jeremy on the doorstep of a plain yellow Cape Cod house in a dense neighborhood in Bayonne, New Jersey, that dates to the go-go postwar years of the 1940s. Our borrowed car—a light blue Chevrolet Impala—is parked on the narrow street, and I ring the doorbell again and again.
The sun is rising.
It’s a gorgeous day in May, but I feel cold.
Death is coming.
I ring the doorbell again.
Jeremy says, “If nobody answers, then what?”
“Stop with the negative thoughts,” I say, then I open the storm door and start hammering at the wooden door.
Just when I’m about to hit the door a third time, it swings open.
A flustered-looking woman in black tights and an oversize New York Giants sweatshirt is before us, hair done up in a blue-gray perm. She scowls and says, “Yes?”
“Ma’am,” I say. “We’re looking for Gus Carlucci. Is he in?”
She’s suspicious, looking at me and Jeremy, me with wrinkled and smelly clothes, my head and feet aching something awful, and Jeremy’s getup no better than my own.
“I’m sorry, he’s quite busy,” she says. “He can’t be disturbed.”
Jeremy speaks up. “Ma’am, I insist. We need to see him. Please. It’s vitally important.”
Her frown deepens. She looks to be in her late sixties. “The fool is a retired high-school chemistry teacher. What, are you from the school district? About to finally give him a plaque for his years of service to students who refused to learn?”
“No, ma’am,” Jeremy says. “It’s much more important than that.”
She gives a good look to Jeremy. “You’re English, then, are you?”
I let Jeremy take the lead.Maybe this stubborn woman is an Anglophile?
