Simple Simon by Ryne Douglas Pearson Read Free Book Online Page B

remembered in the texts that memorialized such things as the ‘Father of KIWI’. KIWI might still be in use then. That was what he had believed. Until now.
    Yes, dumping KIWI was option one, and Kudrow knew without hesitation it was unacceptable.
    Option two was the better course…for the country. Yes, for everyone. “I want a copy of the tape and the trace info on my desk in ten minutes.”
    Pedanski nodded, chewing his lower lip and digging fiercely at the carpet with the toes of his Reeboks. “But, Mr. Kudrow…”
    “What?” Kudrow looked at each of the animals individually, and gave his assistant a glance for surety’s sake. “If someone is playing with us, gentlemen, testing us, they will not expect that we just dump the system you three designed. And if there is a weakness in your system, we have to find out what that is, and how whoever cracked it did so. In either instance the proper course is to investigate. I will see to that.” He looked over his shoulder to Folger. “Shut this room down. Assign anyone who is scheduled to work in here to other duties. Put them on the MAYFLY dissection. I don’t care. If that phone rings again I don’t want anyone other than a KIWI team member answering…just in case. Understood?”
    “Yesss,” Folger replied breathily.
    “You three work out a schedule to cover this place,” Kudrow instructed. He thought Patel ready to complain, but instead saw the small, dark head fall between the worn knees of his jeans. “Understood?”
    After three tentative nods Kudrow turned and left. He stopped in the hall just outside the door and slid his hands into his pockets. Brad Folger followed him out and studied the government blue carpet at his feet. The boss hadn’t been able to swing a more pleasing gray sisal.
    “KIWI’s all we have, Nick,” Folger said once again, as though speaking of the air they breathed.
    “All the more reason not to throw it away because of one phone call.” Kudrow looked down the hallway, briefly at each door, then to the stairs that led up from the basement. It was the only way out. “We’ll fix this.”
    “How?”
    Kudrow began to walk toward the stairs, passing the three green doors as he did. “It won’t be a problem,” he answered with his back to his assistant, then disappeared up the staircase.
    *  *  *
    “So nothing?” Art Jefferson asked, looking up from the report.
    “Preliminarily, no,” Special Agent Denise Green answered. “That’s just a quickie, remember.”
    “I know,” Art acknowledged. “Bob said the CIA is anxious.”
    Green nodded and took the report back from the A-SAC. She saw him close his eyes as his glasses came off. “You knew Chappell, didn’t you?”
    “Briefly,” Art answered. Surely not long or well enough to know some of the things the report had just told him. To each is own , Art usually thought, but in this case it looked like Vince Chappell’s sexual tastes only made Keiko Kimura’s job easier. ‘Subject’s acquaintances report a propensity for B & D (bondage and domination) in sexual situations.’ “Very briefly.”
    “Anything else?” Green asked.
    Art glanced at his desk clock, and stood in a hurry. “Nope. Gotta run. Make sure I have the full report by Friday.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Please, no ‘sirs’,” Art said as be hurried by the youngish agent. “I’m old enough as it is.”
    The Chicago Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is located on the 11th, 12th, and 13th floors of the Federal Building on South Dearborn Street. Several blocks due west the Sears Tower rises toward the sky in stark black steps, and on late summer afternoons when the sun is deep in the northern hemisphere the Tower casts a shadow that leaves the west-facing Bureau offices in a cooling shade.
    The office Art rushed out of as winter was melting into a chilly spring had spears of bright afternoon light filling its space, but the room he arrived at one floor down from 13 a minute later