Binder - 02 Read Free Page B

an important man, the kind who briefs senators and presidents. He’s not the kind of man you say “no” to, not without careful consideration. I did that once. This time I agreed to meet with him when he asked me to come see him at lunchtime that day, even though a long drive and two angry sisters stood in my way.
    Alpha was somber that afternoon. It was a relative thing as the man never smiles, but I saw something in his eyes that told me to tread carefully.
    “I understand your mother is not well?” he asked. It was the closest he’d come to an apology for disrupting my family visit.
    “She had a stroke on Saturday.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “I need to ask a personal favor,” Alpha said, using neither my given name nor the old code name he’d have trotted out if he wanted me to run an errand for the Activity. This told me something in itself. Alpha is the kind of man who stockpiles favors while scrupulously avoiding owing them, a sort of Polonius in the government service.
    I was in Alpha’s debt because of some trouble I’d run into the year before in Conestoga. Alpha ran interference with the FBI and kept me out of custody long enough for me to resolve things on my own. It ended up working out in his favor, but the man took a risk on me. It was the kind of obligation I would have honored even if it cost me my job. He knew that, too.
    “Of course, sir,” I replied, my back rigidly straight in a leather chair with arms. I’d rarely sat in his presence before.
    Alpha handed me a red folder from his desk. I flipped it open and saw the face of a girl at her high school graduation. Her dark hair had a streak of purple running through it that matched her robes, and she sported a nose ring.
    The folder also had news clippings from the morning papers. I’d already heard the story on the radio as I drove to Arlington. A group of protestors got beaten up in West Virginia and one of them had died.
    “Who’s the girl, sir?” I asked the obvious question.
    “Her name is Heather Hernandez. She’s the daughter of a friend. The picture is several years old, but I understand her appearance was the same when her parents last saw her. She left home at the beginning of the summer with a group called ‘Reclaim’ to protest the activities of the Transnational Coal Company in West Virginia. The parents’ only contact with her after she left was by e-mail. Her mother also saw some of her Facebook posts through a family friend. After the incident last night, Heather’s parents were unable to reach her and neither the police nor any West Virginia hospital has a record of Miss Hernandez being transported or admitted.”
    “Can we confirm she was on the bus last night?”
    “We cannot.”
    “Do you have any background on the other protestors?” I asked, thumbing through the documents in the folder.
    “There are some profiles at the end of your file,” Alpha answered, pulling on a pair of reading glasses and flipping open his copy. “Reclaim has a fairly typical composition for a radical environmental group: somewhere between thirty and fifty members, mostly young, almost all white or Asian and largely from the Northeast, California and the Pacific Northwest. A number of them took part in the Occupy Wall Street protests. Some have criminal records, but nothing unusual—one shoplifting conviction, some minor drug charges—but primarily a large number of arrests for disorderly conduct, vandalism and similar crimes. Three of Reclaim’s older protestors have the majority of the disorderly conduct citations and other misdemeanors consistent with protesting, but no criminal backgrounds.”
    “Do you have a complete profile of the leaders?” The folder only had photos, basic information and the police records.
    “No, but we can run that,” Alpha replied, making a note on a blank white pad sitting inside a leather portfolio on his desk.
    “Sir, I’m not a licensed investigator. That