“DCI.”
“Cronley, James, for Oscar Schultz.”
“Schultz.”
“James Cronley for you, sir. The line is secure.”
“Put him through.”
“Mr. Cronley, Mr. Schultz is on a secure line.”
“What’s up, Jimmy?”
“Somebody tried to kill me a couple of hours ago.”
“Who?”
“Probably Odessa.”
“You okay?”
“More or less.”
“Who does Wallace think was responsible?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him.”
“You want to explain why you called me and not him? You ever hear of command channels?”
“Tony Henderson called him a few minutes ago.”
“Tony works for me. Not Wallace. If he called anybody, he should have called me.” He paused. “Oh, shit! Okay. Starting at the beginning, tell me what happened.”
“I had been in Strasbourg—”
“What the hell were you doing in Strasbourg? You’re supposed to be sitting on Justice Jackson.”
“And when I came back, Tom Winters met me at the airport. On the way to the Farber Palast—”
“To the what?”
“On a back road, we were bushwhacked. Very professionally.”
“Not very professionally. You’re still alive. What happened to the bushwhackers?”
“I killed one, and wounded—I don’t know how bad—the other one.”
“When Justice Jackson hears about this, he’ll shit a brick.”
“He already knows.”
“And?”
“He told Max Ostrowski to put a bodyguard on me.”
“You should have thought about doing that ten seconds after you heard they whacked Moriarty. They were after you, not that poor sonofabitch. That brings us to who are they?”
“As I said, probably Odessa.”