High Crimes

“Now, before the surrender, I’ll want time alone with him first — a minimum of one hour.” Massie raised his eyebrows. “In private, so we can talk. Your guys can keep a close watch, so you can make sure he’s not going to run, but I want privacy.”

“That may be a problem,” Crawford said.

“If it is, you can forget taking him in. Or seeing his letter.”

“I think,” Massie said, “we may be able to arrange it.”

“Good. Next, I want assurances from you that you will not freeze his assets.”

“Professor,” Crawford said, “I don’t think that’s—”

“Make it happen, gentlemen. It’s nonnegotiable.”

“We’ll have to talk to Washington.”

“And I don’t want the FBI charging him with violating the False Identity Act. In fact, I’ll want all civilian charges dropped.”

Crawford glanced at Massie in astonishment.

“And I’ll want all of these assurances in writing, signed by an assistant director of the Bureau. No one lower. I want complete accountability. No one’s going to try to wriggle out of this by claiming they didn’t have the proper authority.”

“I think we may be able to arrange this,” Massie said. “But it’s going to take some time.”

“You take too much time, the window of opportunity slams shut on your fingers,” Claire said. “I’ll want signed documents by noon tomorrow. Our rendezvous is early evening.”

“Noon tomorrow?” Crawford said. “That’s — that’s impossible!”

Claire shrugged. “Do your best. Once we come to terms, you can read Tom’s letter. And then you can take him into custody.”

Claire left the house early the next morning wearing a bright royal-blue coat she’d bought once at Filene’s Basement in a fit of fashion dementia. She took Annie to school, walked her into the building and to her classroom, then returned to her Volvo and drove to her office. Two Crown Victorias followed like faithful sheepdogs.

At eleven-forty-five in the morning, a package arrived by courier from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston field office. It contained the letter she had requested, signed by an assistant director of the FBI, whose signature was an indecipherable jagged up-and-down EKG.

Half an hour later a messenger came by to pick up a sheet of paper and take it to Massie at the FBI office downtown.

When Connie went off for lunch a little after one, Claire gave her a shopping bag, which contained the bright-blue coat, neatly folded, and asked her to leave it with the waiter at the bustling fern bar/restaurant where Connie invariably ate lunch with her regular luncheon companions, two other Harvard Law administrative assistants.

Claire then taught a class, and canceled several afternoon meetings.

At four-thirty she packed up her briefcase, closed her office, said good night to Connie, and walked to the elevator. If a watcher was lingering in the waiting area on her floor, she didn’t notice. She took the elevator to the basement and wandered through the tunnels beneath the Law School campus for a while until she was certain no one was following her. They knew the tricks of their trade, they knew surveillance and patterns of pursuit, but she knew the entrails of the Law School.

At precisely five o’clock, just as Claire had promised the FBI agents, her Volvo pulled slowly out of the faculty parking garage. As she passed on foot, from a good distance away, Claire could see the dark-haired driver in a royal-blue coat and oversized sunglasses, a pretty fair approximation of Claire, or at least as close as Jackie could pull off, with the assistance of a wig she had hastily purchased downtown. The Volvo took a right into rush-hour traffic on Mass. Ave., followed closely behind by an unmarked Crown Victoria, and then pulled out of sight. Jackie would drive to Logan — a nasty, traffic-choked route at this time of day — and go from terminal to terminal as if confused about which one she was supposed to go to, and they would no doubt follow.

The letter Claire had couriered to Massie — single-spaced, printed on the LaserWriter in Tom’s home office on letter-size twenty-pound Hammermill CopyPlus Bright White paper, taken from a sealed ream and therefore without fingerprints, and unsigned — had instructed her to meet him at the Delta terminal at Logan, where he’d be arriving at five-thirty on the New York shuttle. There would be watchers waiting at the arrival gate, but, because they were suspicious, they would naturally follow her Volvo, to make sure she was going where she said she would.

Then Claire took a leisurely stroll to Oxford Street, behind the Law School, and located Tom’s Lexus at a metered parking space. It had been a few hours since Jackie had parked it there, and the meter had long ago expired, so Claire wasn’t at all surprised to find a Day-Glo — orange parking ticket tucked under the windshield-wiper blade.