Chapter Eight

BRADLEY WAS ASLEEP when the phone went. Twice he let it go to the answering machine, but when the apartment’s entry intercom shrilled he felt he had no choice but to answer that. An unknown voice at the front door of the building asked him to pick up his goddamn phone immediately.

With Marcie at his side, Bradley lifted the handset and was told there was a car waiting outside. He was needed downtown at the FBI’s headquarters now. He tried to find out what it was about, but the guy on the other end of the line refused to say.

After pulling on his Industries and a sweatshirt – it was 2 a. m. – he was taken to the same nondescript building I had visited some months before and escorted to the eleventh floor. A night-duty agent showed him into a soundproofed room, empty except for a secure phone line and a chair, and then left, locking the door behind him. The phone rang, Bradley picked it up and heard my voice at the other end.

I told him there wasn’t much time, so he had to listen hard. ‘My name’s Brodie Wilson, I’m a special agent with the FBI. Got it? ’ I’ll give Ben his due – he took it in his stride.

I said that in a few hours I was heading to Bodrum and gave him a brief rundown on Dodge’s death. He immediately started asking about a connection to the woman at the Eastside Inn, but I cut him off – that investigation wasn’t our primary concern. I told him I would be calling him from Turkey and his job was to listen carefully and to relay what I said to a ten-digit number I was about to give him.

‘You must never try to record what I say – not under any circumstances. It’s memory and notes alone, ’ I said, more harshly than was necessary, but I was worried. The Turkish version of Echelon would know if he was using a recording device and that would send up a forest of red flags.

‘You may be asked to send messages back to me. Same deal, okay? Here’s the ten-digit number—’

I was partway through it when he stopped me. ‘That’s wrong, ’ he said.

‘No it’s not, ’ I replied testily. I was dog-tired too.

‘It can’t be right, Scott – I mean, Brodie – there’s no such area code. ’

‘Yes there is. ’

‘No, I’m telling you—’ He tried to argue, but I stopped it. ‘It’s an area code, Ben! People just don’t know about it, okay? Nobody does. ’

‘Oh, ’ he said, and I finished giving the number to him. I didn’t tell him, but he now had the number of the Director of US Intelligence’s high-security cellphone – something known to only five other people, one of whom was the president.

Without knowing it, Ben had joined the big time.