| MIA |
[23 Jun 2008|03:04pm] |
"What the hell do you mean you can't find him?" Clarence Johns barked.
"I mean we can't find him," Special Agent Craddock replied, sounding both sheepish and a little testy. "Ivers and I have been all over the airport three times. We're on our fourth pass right now. If he's here, we haven't seen him."
Sitting in his office, which offered a fine view of the parking lot, Johns turned the fan on to create a paper-ruffling breeze, then opened his desk drawer and rummaged around, trapping the receiver between his chin and shoulder. "Did you try paging him?" "After the second pass."
"I knew I should have gone along. Damned useless staff meeting..." The operative located a bottle of Tums hiding beneath a travel pack of Kleenex, put it next to the phone. His heartburn had been bad since yesteday, and this was likely to be at least a four-tablet phone call.
As Josiah Markowitz had asked, Johns had watched Action 13's live segment about Project Intergration, and the glee he'd experienced at the thought of Homeland Security being exposed and humiliated was something he'd had to struggle to keep to himself. They were all on the same side, right?
Yeah, bullshit.
But now the other agent, his former colleague, was nowhere to be found, and Johns didn't like it. Markowitz was a professional, albeit a flaky one, and he wouldn't call to say eh basically needed asylum and then not show up. The CIA man flipped through a small notepad, then asked, "What about his hotel?"
"He'd checked out already, probably before he was going to drop the bomb," Craddock replied, and there were airport noises behind him; foot traffic, announcements over the loudspeakers, distant conversations. Tablets rattled as Johns took the cap off of the Tums.
"He's got no family," he said, obviously thinking aloud. "There was a cousin, I think, but they passed away about a year ago. And he wouldn't go straight to Queens, they'd look for him there." Two flat white tablets landed in a broad, brown palm, and crunching sounds could be heard as the operative chewed up the antacids and washed them down with bottled water.
"OKay, let me think for a second."
Johns put the phone down, looked over at the opposite wall of his office. Craddock would wait for him to come back, he knew. The poeple he worked with understood his methods by now. He and Markowitz had almost come up together in the agency, even though Johns was a decade younger. There was a commemorative photograph on the wall, the two of them at some ceremony with a bunch of other agents. Smiling, waiting in a queue to shake hands with the president.
Another Tums down the hatch. This felt bad.
"Okay." Johns picked up the phone again, rubbed his brow, then the top of his bald head. "Okay," he said again. "Where is Ivers right now?"
"She's outside checking the cabstands again," Craddock answered, as if the conversation had never paused. Smart man, Craddock, always on point. "Its kind of crowded today, she suggested he might've tried to get a taxi if we missed him."
"Okay, good, that's good." Johns rapped his knuckled on the desktop, then said, "All right, wait where you are until she comes back, then make another thorough check and another page. If you still don't find him, flash your badge and get a copy of the passenger list for Flight 264, on Southwest Airlines. I need to know if Markowitz got on that plane. If he didn't, its going to be my foot in somebody's bunghole."
"Anything else, sir?"
Johns looked over at the picture again, scowled and shook his head. "No, nothing else." Pause. "Craddock." "Yes, sir?"
"Don't screw this up. Markowitz is one of ours."
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