The Kill Room (Lincoln Rhyme 10)

Sachs and Pulaski pushed inside and she closed the door.

The man brushed a hand through his luxuriant hair then remembered he should be keeping them in view. He stepped back, making clear he was no threat.

"Are you alone?" she asked. "Your family?"

"I'm alone."

Sachs did a fast sweep of the house while Pulaski stayed with the whistleblower.

When she returned Boston said, "What's this all about?" He tried to be indignant but it wasn't working. He knew why they were here.

"Leaking the STO to the DA's Office. We checked flight records. You were on vacation in Maine on the eleventh of May but you flew back to New York in the morning. You went to the Java Hut with your iBook. Uploaded the scan of the kill order to the DA. And flew back that afternoon." She added details about tracing the email, the tea and Splenda and the blue suit. Then: "Why? Why did you leak it?"

The man sat back on the couch. He slowly reached into his pocket, extracted and clumsily ripped open a pack of antacid tablets. He chewed them.

Reminiscent of her Advil.

Sachs sat across from him: Pulaski walked to the windows and looked out over the manicured lawn.

Boston was frowning. "If I'm going to be prosecuted it'll be under the Espionage Act. That's federal. You're state. Why did you come?"

"There are state law implications," she answered, intentionally vague. "Now tell me. Why'd you leak the STO kill order? Because you thought it was the moral thing to do, telling the world that your organization was killing U.S. citizens?"

He gave a laugh that was untidy with bitterness. "Do you think anybody really cares about that? It didn't hurt Obama to take out al-Awlaki? Everybody thinks it's the right thing to do--everybody except your prosecutor."

"And?" she asked.

He rested his face in his hands for a moment. "You're young. Both of you. You wouldn't understand."

"Tell me," Sachs persisted.

Boston looked up with burning eyes. "I've been at NIOS from the beginning, from the day it was formed. I was army intelligence, I was CIA. I was on the ground running assets when Shreve Metzger was having keg parties in Cambridge and New Haven. I was key in our resisting the Pink Revolution--the socialists in the nineties and oughts. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Lula in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Vazquez in Uruguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia." He regarded Sachs coldly. "Do you even know who those people are?"

He didn't seem to expect an answer. "I orchestrated two regime changes in Central America and one in South. Drinking in shitty bars, bribing journalists, sucking up to mid-level politicos in Caracas and BA. Going to the funerals when my assets got accidentally on purpose killed in a hit-and-run, and nobody could know what a hero they'd been. Begging Washington for money, cutting deals with the boys from London and Madrid and Tokyo...And when it came time for a new director at NIOS, who'd they pick? Shreve Metzger, a fucking kid with a bad temper. It should've been me. I've earned it! I deserve it!"

"So when you realized Shreve had made the mistake with Moreno you decided

to use that to bring him down. You leaked the kill order and the intel. You expected you'd be his replacement."

He muttered angrily, "I could run the place a hundred times better than he could."

Pulaski asked, "How'd you beat the polygraph?"

"Oh, that's tradecraft one-oh-one. See! That's my point. This business isn't about pushing buttons and playing computer games." He sat back. "Oh, hell, just arrest me and have done with it."

CHAPTER 87

SCANNING," THE VOICE HISSED through an earbud. "No transmissions, no signals."

The whispering probably wasn't necessary. The men were in a wooded area well out of earshot of anyone in Spencer Boston's house.

"Roger that," Jacob Swann acknowledged, thinking the phrase sounded somewhat ridiculous.

No transmissions, no signals. This was good news. If there had been other officers around to back up Boston's arrest, the chatter would have shown up on Bartlett's scanner. Bartlett, a mercenary, was as dull as a slug but he knew his equipment and could find a microwave or radio transmission inside a lead box.

"Any visuals?"

"No, they came alone. The woman detective--Sachs--and the uniform with her."