The Exchange: After The Firm

Scully & Pershing maintained a stone wall of silence. “Could not be reached for comment” was in many of the reports. The firm had issued a press release when the news of the abduction first broke, and its PR people were working around the clock to monitor events. Classified memos to every lawyer and employee went out daily. All said basically the same thing: Not a word to the press without authorization. Any leaks will be dealt with severely.

But what was there to leak?

The firm would not speak until it had something to say, and it would have nothing to say until Giovanna was home safe.

Abby wandered into the kitchen and, before uttering a word, went straight for the coffee. She sat down, took the first sip, then smiled at her husband. “Tell me only good news,” she said.

“Yankees lost.”

“No more bodies?”

“Not yet. Nothing new from the kidnappers. Scully and Pershing gets mentioned, as does Luca Sandroni, but no one else.”

Satisfied with the updates, she took another sip. Mitch turned off the television and closed his laptop. “What’s on tap in your world today?”

“I haven’t got that far yet. Meetings, always meetings. Marketing, I think. And you?”

“A briefing by our security consultant first thing this morning. I can’t walk the boys to school.”

“I’m happy to. A security consultant? I thought Scully had its own little spy shop.”

“We do. It does. But this is far more serious and requires us to spend a fortune on an outside intelligence service, a rather shadowy outfit run by former spooks and retired colonels.”

“And what might they brief you on?”

“It’s classified, top secret and all that. Ideally, they would tell us who abducted Giovanna and where they are hiding her, but they don’t know yet.”

“They have to find her, Mitch.”

“Everybody’s trying, and that might be part of the problem. Maybe we’ll learn something this morning.”

“And can you tell me?”

“It’s classified. Who’s invading our kitchen tonight?”

“It’s classified. Actually, no one. But we have some frozen lasagna from the Rosarios’ last visit.”

“I’m kinda tired of those two. When are you going to finish their cookbook?”

“Could be years. Let’s take the boys out tonight.”

“Pizza again?”

“No, let’s make them pick a real restaurant.”

“Good luck with that.”

The building was a 1970s high-rise with more brown brick than steel and glass, so dull that it blended in with a block of others, none of which were in any way attractive or imposing. Midtown was packed with such bland edifices, buildings designed only for the collection of rents with no regard for aesthetics. It was the perfect place for a mysterious operation like Crueggal to hide. Its main entrance on Lexington Avenue was staffed with armed guards. More of the same monitored a wall of closed-circuit screens.

Mitch had walked past the building a hundred times and never noticed it. He walked past it again, then turned onto Fifty-First, as instructed, and entered through a side door, one with a smaller number of pit bulls waiting to pounce. After being mug-shot and fingerprinted, he was met by a guard who could actually smile, and led to a bank of elevators. As they waited he scanned the directory, and of course there was no mention of Crueggal. He and his escort rode in absolute silence to the thirty-eighth floor where they got out and stepped into a small foyer with nothing to welcome guests. No firm name, no weird art, no chairs or sofas, nothing but more cameras to film the arrivals.

With time, they worked their way through the layers of protection and came to another thick door where Mitch was handed off to a young man in a non-polyester suit. They walked through the door and entered a large open space with no visible windows. Jack Ruch and Cory Gallant were chatting with Darian Kasuch in the middle of the room. Everybody said hello. Coffee was poured, pastries declined. They gathered around a wide table and Darian reached for a remote. He pushed a button and a detailed map of southern Libya appeared on a large screen. There were at least eight of them around the walls of the room.

He picked up a laser pointer and aimed the red dot at the region of Ubari near the southern border with Chad. “The first question is: Where is she? We don’t have an answer because we have not heard a word from her abductors. The second question is: Who are they? Again, nothing definite. Ubari is highly unstable, and not friendly to Gaddafi. He’s from up here.” The red dot moved to the far north, to Sirte, then back to Tazirbu.