The Associate

Now that he was an official member of Team Trylon, Kyle had the honor of beginning each week with a 7:00 a.m. Monday chalk talk in a huge conference room he'd never seen before. After three months in the building, he still marveled at the meeting areas and balconies and tucked-away mezzanines and small libraries he was stumbling upon for the first time. The firm needed its own guidebook.

The room was on the forty-first floor and large enough to house many smaller law firms. The table in the center seemed as long as a bowling alley. Forty lawyers, give or take a few, crowded around it, gulping coffee and settling in for another long week. Wilson Rush stood at the far end and cleared his throat, and everyone shut up and froze. "Good morning. We'll have our weekly session. Keep your comments brief. This meeting will last for one hour only."

There was no doubt that they would leave at exactly 8:00 a.m.

Kyle was as far from Rush as possible. He kept his head low and took furious notes that no one, not even himself, could have read afterward. Each of the eight partners stood in turn and gave succinct updates on such gripping topics as the latest motions filed in the case, the latest haggling over documents and experts, the latest moves by APE and Bartin. Doug Peckham presented his first report on a complicated discovery motion. It almost put Kyle and the others to sleep.

But Kyle stayed awake, and while scribbling on a legal pad, he kept telling himself not to smile at the absurdity of the moment. He was a spy, perfectly planted by his handler, and now within reach of secrets that were so important he could not comprehend their value. They were certainly valuable enough to cause men to commit murder.

Kyle glanced up as Isabelle Gaffney took her turn on the floor, and ignoring her words, he looked at the far end of the bowling lane, where Wilson Rush seemed to be glaring at him. Maybe not, there was so much distance between them, and the old man was wearing reading glasses, so it was hard to tell exactly whom he was frowning at.

What would Mr. Rush do if he knew the truth? What would Team Trylon and the hundreds of other Scully partners and associates do when they learned the truth about young Kyle McAvoy, former editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal?

The consequences were horrifying. The magnitude of the conspiracy caused Kyle's heart to hammer away. His mouth became dry and he sipped lukewarm coffee. He wanted to leap for the door, sprint down forty-one flights of stairs, and run through the streets of New York like a madman.

DURING LUNCH he used the basement exit ploy and hustled over to the office of Roy Benedict. They chatted for a minute or two, then Roy said there were two people Kyle should meet. The first was his contact in the FBI, the second was a senior lawyer in the Department of Justice. Kyle nervously agreed, and they walked next door to a meeting room.

The FBI supervisor was Joe Bullington, an affable sort with a big toothy smile and hearty handshake. The man from Justice was Drew Wingate, a sour-faced sort who acted as though he preferred not to shake hands at all. The four sat at a small conference table, Kyle and Roy on one side, the government guys on the other.

It was Roy's meeting, and he took charge. "First of all, Kyle, how much time do you have?"

"About an hour."

"I've laid it all on the table. I've had a dozen conversations with Mr. Bullington and Mr. Wingate, and it's important now for us to review where we are. Joe, talk about the background on Mr. Bennie Wright."

Always smiling, Bullington squeezed his hands together and began, "Yes, right, well, we ran the photo of this guy through our system. I won't bore you with the details, but we have some very sophisticated computers that store facial images of millions of people. When we feed in a suspect, the computers search and scan, and in general do their thing. With Mr. Wright, or whoever he is, we came up with nothing. No hit. No clue. We then sent it to the CIA, and they conducted a similar search, different computers, different software, same result. Nothing. We're surprised, frankly. We were pretty confident we could identify this guy."

Kyle was not surprised, but he was disappointed. He'd read about the supercomputers used by the intelligence services, and after a lifetime of living with Bennie, he really wanted to know who he was.

Bullington brightened a bit and went on: "Nigel might be a different story. We placed your composite of him into our system and came up empty. But the CIA got a probable hit." Bullington opened a file, pulled out an eight-by-ten black and white, and handed it to Kyle, who immediately said, "That's him."

"Good. His real name is Deny Hobart, born in South Africa, raised in Liverpool, trained as a techie in the British intelligence services, got bounced ten years ago for hacking into the confidential files of some rich folks in Switzerland, generally regarded as one of the most brilliant hackers in the world. Brilliant, but a real rogue, a hired gun, warrants outstanding in at least three countries."

"How much have you told these people?" Wingate asked. It was more of an accusation than a question. Kyle looked at his lawyer, who nodded and said, "Go ahead, Kyle. You're not under any type of investigation. You've done nothing wrong."

"I've given them the layout of the computer room, general stuff like that. Enough to keep them happy, but no data whatsoever."

"Anyway," Bullington said, "the other two composites turned up nothing. If I understand things, these two boys are just part of the surveillance and not that important."

"That's right," Kyle said.

"Your composite of Mr. Hobert is remarkable, Kyle," Bullington said.

"It's from a Web site. QuickFace.com. Anybody could do it."

"What's your next step?" Wingate asked.

"We meet tomorrow night for an update. The plan is for me to somehow hack into the system, either download or divert the documents, and hand them over. I have no idea how this is supposed to be done. The computer system looks completely secure."

"When is this supposed to happen?"

"They haven't told me, but I get the impression it will be soon. I have a question for you."

Neither Bullington nor Wingate offered to take the question, so Kyle plunged ahead. "Who are these guys? Who are they working for?"

Bullington flashed all of his teeth and said with a boyish shrug, "We honestly don't know, Kyle. Hobart is a whore who travels the world selling himself. We have no clue where Bennie comes from. You say he's not American."

"He doesn't sound like it."

"Without an idea as to who he is, we can't even begin to guess who he's working for."

"There were at least five agents involved in the first encounter, back in February, the night I first met Bennie. All five were definitely Americans."

Bullington was shaking his head. "Probably hired guns, Kyle, thugs brought in for the job, paid, turned loose. There's a whole dark world out there of former cops and agents and former soldiers and intelligence types who got shoved out for a multitude of reasons. Most are misfits. They were trained in the shadows, and that's where they work. They'll hire on with anyone who'll pay them. Those five probably had no idea what Bennie was up to."

"What are the chances of catching the ones who killed Baxter Tate?"

The smile went away for a moment. Both government faces looked sad and perplexed. Bullington finally said, "First we have to catch Bennie, then we work our way up to the big boys who are paying him, then we'll work our way down to the street thugs who do his dirty work. If he's a pro, though, and it's quite obvious that he is, the chances of squeezing him for names are pretty slim."

"How do you catch Bennie?"

"That's the easy part. You'll lead us to him."

"And you arrest him?"

"Oh, yes. We'll have enough warrants to arrest him ten times  -  wiretapping, extortion, conspiracy, take your pick. We'll throw him under the jail, with Hobart as well, and no federal judge in the world will bond him out. We'll probably move him to a secured facility far away from New York so we can begin the interrogation."

The image of Bennie chained to a chair as a couple of pit bulls screamed at him was rather pleasant.

Roy cleared his throat, glanced at his watch, and said, "If you'll excuse us, I need to talk to Kyle. I'll call you later." And with that Kyle stood, shook their hands again, and followed his lawyer back to his office. Roy closed the door and said, "What do you think?"

"You trust those guys?" Kyle shot back.

"Yes. You don't?"

"Would you trust them with your life?"

"Yes."

"Try this scenario. Currently there are at least eighteen intelligence outfits in this country, and those are just the ones on paper. There are probably a few more we know nothing about. What if Bennie works for one of them? Suppose his project is just one of several to procure and protect all the secrets? What if the supercomputers couldn't find his face because they weren't supposed to?"

"That's a pretty ridiculous scenario, Kyle. A rogue operative working for the United States, spying on a U.S. law firm, killing U.S. citizens? I don't think so."

"Sure it's ridiculous, but when your skull might be the next target, it does wonders for the imagination."

"Take it easy. This is your only way out."

"There's no way out."

"Yes, there is. Let's take it one step at a time. Don't panic."

"I haven't panicked in nine months, but I'm getting close."

"No, you're not. Be cool. We have to trust those guys."

"I'll call you tomorrow." Kyle grabbed his brown trench coat and left the office.