—
TEN MINUTES LATER,Lucas, Bob, and Rae were in the Evoque and running hot, Moy calling every couple of minutes to give them updates. At first, Moy thought Claxson was headed back to his house. “Wonder if he thinks he can get in? The place is sealed... He can’t be dumb enough to go in anyway, can he?”
“Maybe he’s going to throw a Molotov cocktail through the window,” Bob suggested.
“You don’t really think that...”
—
CLAXSON WASN’T GOINGto his house. He drove past McLean, where he lived, and continued west to the town of Great Falls, still on the Virginia side of the river. “One of my people passed him,” Moy said. “He appears to be alone.”
“He must know he’s being monitored, even if he doesn’t know you’re following him,” Lucas said. “He can’t be going somewhere he shouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t think he would,” Moy said. “By the way, we’ve notified Agent Chase. She’s on her way.”
“Is that normal?”
“No, but this is getting some attention at the Bureau. She wants to be on top of everything because, well, that’s just the way she is.”
“You’re saying she’s a bureaucratic climber?”
“No. She’s very... conscientious,” Moy said cautiously.
“Okay,” Lucas said.
Five minutes later, Moy called back. “He’s getting off the highway.” And five minutes after that, “He’s pulled into a house off Chesapeake Drive. We’re running the address.” And five minutes after that, “The house belongs to Charles Douglas. He’s Heracles’s main company attorney.”
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Shoot. I was kinda hoping he was running for it.”
—
“MAKES SENSE HE’D TALKto the company attorney after what’s happening at the company,” Bob said, as they drove toward Great Falls. “Claxson must know it’s too late to bug Douglas’s house. Nice safe place to talk.”
“I’d kill to know what they’re saying,” Lucas said.
“We could sneak up to the house and put our ears to the window,” Rae said. “Done that a few times.”
“Can’t do it in this neighborhood,” Bob said. “I’ve been looking it up on my phone, and it’s one of those richie rich places. Sneaking through backyards could be bad for your health.”
“The other thing is,” Lucas said, “if we got caught listening in to a private conversation with his attorney, we could go to jail ourselves.”
—
MOY HAD SET UPan observation post a block from Douglas’s house, in the driveway of a neighbor, where they were hidden from the road by a screen of oaks. They’d gotten the spot easily enough: Moy pulled into the drive, leaned on the doorbell until the owner came to the door, showed him his ID, and asked if they could park there “on a matter of national security.”
The neighbor had many questions, none of which were answered, but agreed to let Moy’s team wait in the driveway. Before Lucas, Bob, and Rae arrived, one of Moy’s minions, dressed in camo and wearing night vision goggles, snuck off through the trees, set up across the road from Douglas’s house with a radio and a chicken salad sandwich. They couldn’t bug Claxson’s attorney, but there was no law against watching him.
—
LUCAS, BOB, AND RAEarrived fifteen minutes after Moy. Moy, an Asian American, had a West Coast beachboy accent and hard angles in his face. “Nothing happening,” he said. “We got a guy a hundred feet out with a direct view of the house.”
“How far away are we right here?” Lucas asked.
“According to my Google Earth, about two hundred and ten feet, if you run out the driveway and down the street,” Moy said.“In a straight line, a hundred and ninety-one feet, but of course there are a lot of trees between here and there. And it’s dark.”
They sat and waited in four different cars. A while later, a fifth car pulled up, and Moy walked over to it, a door popped open, and he got in. He was in there for two or three minutes, then all the doors opened, and Jane Chase got out of one of them and walked over to Lucas’s Evoque. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt and running shoes, the first time Lucas had seen her when she wasn’t wearing a dress. “Nothing happening,” she said.
“I know,” Lucas said, as he got out and eased the car door closed. Bob and Rae got out to join the huddle, and Chase gave them a couple of paragraphs on Douglas’s background. “One of those lawyers who got rich writing bills for Midwestern congressmen,” she said. “Sent lots of government defense money out that way.”
