Last Chance to Die. Noah Boyd

me.”

      “It doesn’t include you. Wherever this takes me, it takes us. It’s just that the more they get involved, the farther away the answer always seems to get. They’re like moths.”

      “Moths?”

      “They keep flying into the light simply because it’s the brightest thing in front of them, even though they’re slowly beating themselves—and any chance to solve this case—to death.”

      “Give it up, Vail. At some point even you are going to need Bureau help.”

      “As clever as Calculus has been with this, maybe he’s hidden evidence somewhere out there, and if we’re equally smart, we can find it without wasting all that time and manpower.”

      “You’re not worried about wasting Bureau resources. If anything, you like burning them. You’re just dreaming up excuses to cover up whatever you really have in mind.”

      “Come on, Kate, we’re ahead of schedule. Let’s poke around a little and see what we can find. It’s New Year’s Day. There are hangovers to nurse, there’s football to watch, resolutions to fake. Nobody wants to hear from us.”

      “Define ‘poke around,’” she said, with even more caution than usual.

      “It’s a holiday. We have a car, a credit card, and all of Calculus’s locations for the last two weeks he was here. Let’s take a ride and see if he left anything else to find.”

      She shook her head with mild self-contempt. “You make it sound so simple, so right, and even though I know it’s neither, I’m going to go along with it.”

      “Am I a good time or what?”

      “I’ll admit that it always seems like it’s going to be a good time, but it usually turns out to be ‘or what.’”

      FOUR

      WHEN THEY GOT TO THE CAR, VAIL SAID, “YOU KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND HERE A lot better than I do, so why don’t I drive?”

      While he drove, Kate made a list of everywhere Calculus had traveled on the day he sent his last message. “Okay, but you’ve got your work cut out for you. He drove over two hundred miles outside the D.C. area.”

      “In one day? That seems like a lot, but then maybe he wanted us to notice.”

      “Where do we start?”

      “How about at his clue, Alliant Industries in Calverton.”

      She found the address in her notes and entered it into the GPS unit on the dashboard. “Do you have any idea what we’re looking for?”

      “What we always look for, those wonderful little failed attempts to hide the truth—anomalies.”

      When he offered no further specifics, she said, “These anomalies, any idea what form they might take?”

      “Not a clue. I was just hoping that being philosophically vague would impress you into quiet contemplation.”

      “I’m a little surprised that you’re still trying to impress me.”

      Vail couldn’t tell whether the comment was meant to be sarcastic or whether she was offering some sort of truce. “Just because I can be an idiot, that doesn’t mean you’re not worth impressing. Who knows, maybe I could change.”

      “If you did, you’d probably bore me to death.”

      “Do you know why male moths fly so close to the flame of a candle?” he said mischievously, knowing she would object to any more moth references.

      “Oh, so you are trying to bore me to death.”

      “The flame gives off a vibrational frequency similar to the female moth’s pheromone. The male moth is powerfully attracted to it, even though it’s extremely dangerous.”

      “In other words, even setting yourselves on fire won’t deter you guys.”

      “I’m here, driving into who-knows-what, if that answers your question.”

      “You want me to tell you what I think? I think you’re bored right now and hoping you’ll drive into exactly ‘who-knows-what.’”

      For the next three hours, they traced the route the Russian engineer had taken through Virginia, stopping where he had, according to the Bureau charts. Each time, Kate would get out and take photos of everything in sight, making notes about the corresponding locations. Halfway back, they found a diner and he pulled in.

      Inside, they sat in a booth, and after the waitress had taken their orders, Kate asked, “Well, any anomalies?”

      “Not yet. But I want to spend some time with everything back at the off-site. Kind of let it all percolate a little.”

      “It sounds like you want to be alone.”

      “You’re welcome to stick around, but a lot of it is going to be just busywork—printing out photos, matching them with the maps and timelines. I’m not sure you want to spend your evening like that. By morning I’ll have everything a little more organized and we’ll be able to figure out what our next move is.”

      “So in the morning there won’t be an article in the paper about you breaking into the Russian embassy or involved in a shooting somewhere?”

      “I can’t make any promises about the embassy, but you have my word I’ll never get involved in a shoot-out without you.”

      “In that case I’m going to go home, get out a pad of paper and a pencil, and retrace my life as far back as I have to, to try to determine what seemingly innocuous, small turn in my life caused it to intersect with yours.”

      “You know, there’s an old Chinese proverb that says if you try to learn the source of your good fortune, you will destroy it.”

      “What I know is that if the Chinese actually do believe that, it’s because they’ve never met you.”

      THE NEXT MORNING Kate let herself into the off-site and could smell coffee brewing as she started up the stairs. She found that Vail had pushed all the furniture away from the longest wall in the room and had taped up all the photos from the day before. Below them were the time-place maps that had guided their trip.

      “Did you get any sleep?” she asked.

      “Enough. Did you eat?”

      “I just need some coffee.”

      “I think it’s done. Grab a cup and let’s go.”

      “Where to?”

      “Pollock’s bank in Calverton.”

      “For?”

      “I want to look at his account records.”

      “For?”

      Vail pointed at the wall. “Remember where we stopped in Denton?”

      “I’d have to look at the photos.” She stepped closer to the wall.

      “It’s a small intersection. There’s nothing there but that house.”

      She looked at the photo of a small, white wood-frame structure pinned to the wall.

      “According to the map, Calculus was there for about two and a half hours at night. None of his other stops were anywhere near that long.”

      “Wait a minute. How do you know which bank is Pollock’s?”

      “It’s in his security-clearance investigation.”

      “And how do his bank records tie in?”

      “If he visited his bank within twenty-four hours of Calculus’s stop at that house, then I think there’s a good chance that Pollock made an exchange with his handler there and Calculus recorded it. So the next day Pollock would have