Memoria (34 page)

Jessup fiddled with h
is phone and dialed his informant
's number
again.
For the hundredth time,
he heard a raspy signal followed by
a
synthesized
female voice t
elling
him that the number he'd dialed was not available.
He slid the phone back into his pocket and rose.

"Keep on trying,"
Jessup
ordered
as he walked out
into the hallway
.

Behind the open doors, his men were busy
working, their voices subdued, radio rece
ivers
crackling with
white noise. The captain took the steps to the upper floor and stood by the window.
N
ot a single light showed amid the trees, not a single whiff of smoke
, not
a
spark
escaped
the chimneys
.
Buildings loom
ed
in the growing darkness outside,
vacated by their inhabitants
who'd even taken their children along.

"Permission to speak, sir?" Gizbo
's soft voice
said
behind his back.

Jessup knew why he came.

"No need to, Lieutenant," he shook his head.

"But why, sir?
Just a
quick recce
is all we-"

"
We
don't
trespass
the perimeter, period.
These are
the regs.
Dismissed."

"But sir
...
"

"
I said dismissed, Lieutenant."
Jessup clenched his teeth and turned back to the window.

Memoria's choppers had left four hours ago.
He still didn't know wh
at had happened in the camp. Had
Memoria's men seize
d
Shelby? Why did
Gautier
show no
response to the attack? Why was there no response from their council? They had the right to protest and demand explanations from the administration
, but they didn't.

Behind his back, Gizbo sniffed
showing no intention of leaving.
Jessup
could yell at him all he wanted, he could suspend him
,
but he knew that
they both wanted the same thing
. And other department workers
who
'd
assisted in their covert
investigation
wanted it
, too,
even though they wisely kept it to themselves.
Uncertainty and
the
lack of action are a detective's worst enemies.

"Come on now," Jessup hurried down the steps. He knew what to do.
"Tell Salem to double-check all the reports for the last forty-eight hours.
You will form four groups. Two will surveil
M
emoria's HQ
and the surrounding area
. Tell them to watch all the exits,
intercept all the phone calls and ma
ke a video record of everything
they observe. No radio contact between
groups.
Tell them to use plastic bottles if they need to take a leak. If they have something worth reporting,
they must use our cell phone numbers, yours or mine." He glanced back.

"Yes, sir," Gizbo nodded.

"No one leaves their surveillance positions."

Judging by the events of the last tw
o days, someone listened to their classified frequencies
and even sent their own messages. Jessup didn't want to risk the lives of the people he was now sending
on
an unauthorized
surveillance operation.

"The third group
will watch Binelli. Exercise caution and use your imagination.
Sign up for all the equipment you may need and explain the objective well so that our peo
ple kno
w what they
're
get
ting
into."

"
You can count on them, sir."

Jessup
stopped on the
landing to give way to two sergeants hurrying upstairs. Having watched them
pass
, he motioned Gizbo to
approach
.

"Now listen to me, Lieutenant," Jessup whispered. "
It's twenty-six years I've been with the police: ten as an operative, eight as Chief of Homicide,
three more as a chief of this base
, plus three
more
as a
deputy head of internal investigations
.
I've been head of New York
police for the last two
years
. I've seen a lot. I've seen corrupted patrol cops and trigger-happy detectives
,
" Jessup paused. "One thing I've never seen is a mole in the department. To think that one of my own
men
channels classified information to Memoria
...
"

"
Rooting
him
out
won't be easy," Gizbo said softly.

"That
I know. But you," Jessup
poked Gizbo's chest, "y
ou've got to be a hundred percent sure your people won't let you down.
It's not that we have a prosecution warrant."

"I understand, sir."

They continued their descent.

"You yourself wi
ll take the fourth group.
You'll penetrate the perimeter and find out what the fuck's going on in the camp.
I need to know why Shelby had to go there, of all places. Also, what
's making
the migrants assemble
in Ford
ham. Come back and report to me,
" Jessup stopped and looked into the man's eyes. "Make sure they don't
suss you out."

"I will, sir."

Jessup
looked up to the sound of hurried footsteps
and lowered his voice. "
You've got to find out what Shelby had in his
attaché
case
—
if he had something there at all. Just find that out, Lieutenant, and make sure you don't get caught. I
'll give you my contact in the camp. His name is-"

"Captain Bud Jessup?" he heard from above.

"Here!"

Footsteps clattered overhead.
The next moment, the chubby dark-skinned Lieutenant Salem appeared on the landing.

"Finally I've found you, sir," he managed, out of breath.

"Don't tell me you've got radio contact with the camp," Jessup gasped in anticipation.

"No, sir
...
You've got to listen to the news, sir
...
They've just made a statement
...
"

"Who has?"

"Memoria,
sir.
It's breaking news, sir."

Jessup slapped his forehead. Hadn't
Gautier
told them to watch the evening news? How could he forget?

All
three ran out
into the ground-floor hallway. Jessup was the first to reach the fishbowl of the watchman's booth by the building exit.
His men rose, alarmed.

"Turn on the TV," panting, Jessup dropped onto a chair pulled
up
by Gizbo.
A gray-haired sergeant
—
he had to be as old as Jessup himself
—
reached for the remote and pressed the "on" button pointing at an ancient valve TV
set
resting on top of a dusty filing cabinet in the corner.

"Put it up! Where's the sound?" Jessup ordered.

The sergeant obeyed. The anchor's confident voice filled the
room. With his every word, the tension grew. Jessup didn't move. His men held their breath as they listened.
Occasional footsteps and voices behind the glass partition died straight away. No one noticed them: all eyes and ears were on the screen. On the breaking news.

It lasted three minutes and started again without a commercial break. Jessup stared at the
wall
unable to speak.
It all sounded like
the
ravings of a madman, but now
Gautier's
words finally made sense.
He looked back onto the screen when Gizbo stood between him and the TV.

"Sir?" the
lieutenant
, worried, shook Jessup by the shoulder looking into his face. "Sir, we've got
DC
on the line."

The duty staff officer passed Gizbo the receiver
. He handed it to the captain.

Jessup rose. It took him some time to realize he was the center of
attention. Several dozen policemen crowded in the hall watching him through the glass partition. They'd all seen the news; those
at
the back whispered their explanations to newcomers.
Relief
officers streamed in filling the stairs and the hallway
. Jessup looked out of the window. Reserves were already lining up on the
drill grounds in front of the building.

"They're waiting, sir," Gizbo reminded him.

Slowly, Jessup took the receiver, weighed it in h
is hand as if to throw it back on top of the
scrambled
army telephone set
, then brought it to his ear.

"Captain Jessup speaking."

Secretary of Homeland Security
was on the line
.

First
,
he asked Jessup
if
he'd watched the news.
To
the
affirmative,
the Secretary
demanded that law and order were
maintained
by whatever means necessary.
He wanted Jessup to coordinate his actions with
the Feds who were now busy
in New York. He finished by demanding Jessup to
hand Agent Archer the independent reporter detained earlier.

"Who d
o you mean?" Jessup asked, perplexed.

Afte
r
a pause, the Secretary gave him the name. Serge Gillan.

Then he remembered. The reporter was among those who
had
covered the morning
's
talks at Memoria's. The problem was, only two people knew about it: Jessup himself and
Lieutenant Gizbo who'd taken the detained reporter to the station. Gillan
had
told them nothing of interest, apart from the fact that Shelby had
an
attaché
case
which, he'd claimed, contained some evidence of his innocence.
Most likely, the Secretary himself didn't know that. It was some Memoria rat again, trying to kill two birds with one stone:
get Jessup out of the way and
deal with the reporter at the same time.
It still didn't explain how the secretary had got hold of the man's name
in the first place
.

The clock kept ticking but Jessup
didn't know how to react. He had no reason not to trust Gizbo.
In fact he'd just
warned him
, ten minutes
previous
, that
they had a mole in the department. No way
Gizbo was the one. Jessup could believe anything but that.

"Yes, sir," he finally mumbled
into the phone
. "
I'll do as you say." He handed the receiver back to the duty officer and sat still staring at the
control panel
behind
the glass partition.

"Sir?" Gizbo said. "You sure you're all right?"

Jessup heard him but lingered, unwilling to speak.
He didn't want to jump the gun.
There was t
oo much at stake. He knew of a few cases when
old staff
buffer
s
like himself
had
failed to see the obvious.
He chuckled.
Did he
really
think he was immune to treachery?
Having said that, Gizbo
probably didn't even realize he was
being used.
And now it was too late, anyway. Now Jessup had only two
ways of action left to him: either keep playing the
predetermined losing party
or admit his failure.