City of Shadows

Chapter 13

12 September 2001, Washington DC

Cooper was up and at work despite the time. The Department was as much his home as the single-bed studio apartment he kept in Queens Chapel, DC. Thirty-nine, with no family, no partner, no children, not even a pet, one might say this twilight office with empty desks, a watercooler that hadn’t been switched on in years and a fading poster of Jane Fonda was his life.

Custodian of secrets so secret even Presidents aren’t privy to them. That’s me.

Perhaps not the world’s most exciting job. But an important one nonetheless.

Last night he’d stayed here, slept in the cot he kept in his personal office.

His PC was on and he was streaming MSNBC, watching it as his coffee and breakfast bagel cooled enough to have without burning the roof of his mouth. It was quite early in the morning; outside in the world, the sky was still dark. On the monitor he watched a news camera pan across rescue workers picking through the smouldering rubble of the World Trade Center. Brilliantly stark floodlights illuminated the enormous mound of rubble and twisted spars of metal. Dots of neon-orange light-reflective jackets decorated the mounds of dust and concrete; dozens of emergency workers picked through the remains of the towers in the vain hope of finding survivors.

The phone rang.

Cooper looked at it. The phones down here never rang. Well, rarely anyway.

He picked it up. ‘Cooper.’

‘Coop, it’s Damon.’

Damon Grohl. A friend from the FBI Academy many years ago. Friends still. Christmas cards were exchanged every year and every now and then they shared a beer, if that counted.

‘Damon!’ Cooper’s mood lifted. ‘Well, been a while! How are you, ol’ buddy?’

‘Fine. Fine. The Bureau down this way is chasing around like a headless chicken with what went down yesterday.’

Headless chicken? Damon was probably right about that. FBI heads were going to start rolling pretty soon over this. Letting something like this slip through their fingers.

‘I can imagine. Not much fun.’

‘Look, Coop, something’s come up that, uh… might be, well, your thing, if you get my meaning.’

Cooper’s curiosity was piqued. ‘My thing?’

‘We’ve got a double cop killing over in Brooklyn. Happened after midnight this morning.’

‘How’s that anything to do with me? The Department?’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Is this linked to yesterday…?’

‘Twin Towers? Who knows? Might be. We’re looking at pretty much anything that moves right now.’

‘You said this cop killing might be my sort of thing?’ A little careless of him, to be honest, talking so candidly like this over the phone.

‘Your phone line is encrypted, right?’

‘Yes. But keep what you say foggy… if you know what I mean.’

‘Foggy? Sure. So, Coop, are you still doing that whole X Files thing down in Washington?’

‘You know I can’t comment on that.’

He heard Damon draw a breath.

‘Damon? What the hell is it?’

‘I think I’ve got something you might want to take a look at, if you can get up here quickly.’