Collision

He paused to let the drama build; the scratching of pens against paper stopped; the gathered reporters waited. “Hector Global is and will continue to be an integral part of the War on Terror, especially when terror comes again to our shores. We will give our full cooperation and support to Homeland Security, the FBI, and other governmental agencies.”

He took no questions from the press, although they yelled several at him as he left the podium. He heard one inquiring about his business relationship with the missing Ben Forsberg and one asking how much his contracts with Homeland were worth and would he be losing the department’s business. Another reporter yelled a question about how much business he’d already lost in the past six months, and it was an effort for Hector not to flinch as he walked away.

He retreated from the conference room to the sanctuary of his own office. Alone. He sat at his desk and pulled from a locked drawer a photo, yellowed with age. The man in the photo was big-built, plain-faced, with brown hair. His name had been Randall Choate. He was supposed to be dead, but he was not.

Sam Hector wanted Choate dead. Soon. The stakes were far too high to let a man like Pilgrim-Choate-interfere with the operation.

Contractors are sometimes each other’s most important client-much of the large contracts handed to companies are then subcontracted out to other, more specialized concerns. The resulting network of suppliers and firms made for a considerable intelligence advantage.

Hector started leaning on his network to find Pilgrim. Quietly.

Lockhart Technologies, a fast-growing company based in Alexandria, Virginia, handled communications and IT support for Hector Global. Sam Hector owned a software engineer inside Lockhart named Gary, whose online gambling addiction required money. Lockhart also provided customized software design and support to the National Security Agency’s mainframes for tracking, analyzing, and cataloging millions of phone calls to and from, and now within, the United States. The software was a critical component of the NSA’s parabolic satellite listening stations in Yakima, Washington, and Sugar Grove, West Virginia. Gary kept an admin account alive on a mainframe used to analyze the torrents of data-and this morning, at Hector’s request, he was secretly loading programs to listen for and identify any phone conversations, happening anywhere in the country, using the word “Choate.” He wanted to know if the CIA knew one of their lost heroes was alive and well.

A financial services contractor-who handled credit card charges for the military and for Hector employees in Baghdad’s Green Zone-was told by Sam Hector to alert him to any new credit card accounts opened in the name of Benjamin Forsberg or Randall Choate, or of any new credit card accounts opened with any of the aliases he had identified as used by the Cellar. He also asked for alerts on the use of cards which had been dormant for a month, specifically on charges for hotels, travel, or gasoline, in a fivestate area.

The contractor got a number of immediate hits. Hector noticed three from last night in towns between Austin and Dallas, including a charge for James Woodward. That was one of Pilgrim’s aliases found by Adam Reynolds. So were they headed for Dallas-or just headed away from Austin? He called the contractor back, told him to call immediately if there were any further charges on the James Woodward card.

Pilgrim must eventually show his head, and Hector wanted to be ready to lop it off.

He slid the old photo of Randall Choate back into his desk. Soon enough, he thought, you bastard, you’ll be in the coffin you belong in. He expected that Ben Forsberg-if Choate had not killed him-would be calling for help soon. Both men should be dead within twelve hours, hopefully, if Pilgrim did the expected thing and went to Barker’s house. Nice to have people to do the dirtiest work for you; Hector preferred having clean hands.

His phone rang, the cell phone he kept in his pocket, the number that fewer than ten people in the world had. He glanced at the cell’s readout. He didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Uh, yeah. Hi. Mr. Hector? My name is Delia Moon.”

He said, “You’re Adam’s friend.” He knew this not because of Adam confiding in him but because he knew all pertinent details about Adam Reynolds’s life.

“Oh, yeah. Did he mention me to you?”

“With the warmest regard, Delia. He was so fond of you.”

“Oh, God, um…” A choked sob, controlled with effort.

He waited for her to compose herself.

“I need help, Mr. Hector.”

“Of course.”

“Adam mentioned that you were going to help him with his project. His software to track illicit banking activities to find terrorists.”

Hector squeezed the bridge of his nose and thought: Idiot couldn’t keep a secret. That was unfortunate. “Well, yes, he talked to me about such a project… but I didn’t know he was far off the ground with it.”