"Nothing, just a coincidence." Tyrone picked up a newspaper and buried his face behind it.

"Hey, Ty. Talk ol" buddy."

"I can"t and you know it." Tyrone sounded adamant.

"As a friend? I"ll buy you a lollipop?" Scott joked.

Ty snickered. "You know the rules, I can"t talk about a case in progress."

"So there is a case? What is it?" Scott probed.

"I didn"t say that there was a case," Ty countered.

"Yes you did. Case in progress were your words, not mine. C"mon what"s up?"

"s.h.i.t, you media types." Tyrone gave himself a few seconds to think. "I"ll never know why you became a reporter. You used to be a much nicer pain in the a.s.s before you became so nosy."

Scott sat silently, enjoying Ty"s awkwardness.

Tyrone hated to compromise the sanct.i.ty of his position, but he realized that he, too, needed some help. Since he hadn"t read any of this in the papers, there had to be journalistic responsi- bility from both Scott and the paper. "Off, off, off the record.

Clear?" He was serious.

"Done."

The train rumbled into the tunnel at the Northern tip of Manhat- tan. They had to raise their voices to hear each other, but that meant they couldn"t be heard either.

"As near as I can tell," Tyrone hesitantly began. "There"s a well coordinated nationwide blackmail operation in progress. As of yesterday, we have received almost a hundred cases of alleged blackmail. From Oshkosh, Baton Rouge, New York, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, LA, the works. Small towns to the metros. It"s an epidemic and the local and state cops are absolutely buried.

They can"t handle it, and besides it"s way out of their league.

So who do they all call? Us. s.h.i.t. I need this, right? There"s no way we can handle this many cases at once. No way. Washing- ton"s going berserk."

"Who"s behind it?" Scott asked knowing he wouldn"t get a real answer.

"That"s the rub. Don"t have a clue. Not a clue. There"s no pattern, none at all. We a.s.sumed it was organized crime, but our informants say they"re baffled. Not the mob, they swear. They knew about it before we did. Figures." Tyrone"s voice echoed a professional frustration.

"Motives?"

"None. We"re stuck."

"Sounds like we"re both on the same hunt."

The train slowed to a crawl and then a hesitant stop at Grand Central. Thousands of commuters lunged at the doors to make their escape to the streets of New York above them. Scott won- dered if any of them were part of Duncan"s problems.

"Scott?" Tyrone queried on the escalator.

"Yeah?"

"Not a word, ok?"

Scott held up his right hand with three fingers. "Scott"s honor!" That was good enough for Tyrone.

They walked up the stairs and past a newsstand that caught both of their eyes instantly. The National Expose had another sensa- tionalistic headline:

FBI POWERLESS IN NATIONAL BLACKMAIL SCHEME

They fought for who would pay the 75 cents for the scandal filled tabloid, bought two, and started reading right where they stood.

"Jesus," Tyrone said more breathing than actually saying the word. "They"re going to make a weekly event of printing every innuendo."

"They have the papers, too," muttered Scott. "The whole blasted lot. And they"re printing them." Scott put down the paper.

"This makes it a brand new ball game . . ."

"Just what I need," Tyrone said with disgust.

"That"s the answer," exclaimed Scott. "The motive. Who"s been affected so far?"

"That"s the mystery. No one seems to have been affected. What"s the answer?" Tyrone demanded loud enough to attract attention.

"What"s the answer?" he whispered up close.

"It"s you." Scott noted.

Tyrone expressed surprise. "What do you mean, me."

"I mean, it seems that the FBI has been affected more than anyone else. You said you"re overloaded, and that you can"t pay atten- tion to other crimes."

"You"re jumping to conclusions." Tyrone didn"t follow Scott"s reasoning and c.o.c.ked his head quizzically.

"What if the entire aim of the blackmail was to so overwork the FBI, so overload it with useless cases, and that the perpetrators really have other crimes in mind. Maybe they have already hit their real targets. Isn"t it possible that the FBI is an unwill- ing dupe, a decoy in a much larger scheme that isn"t obvious yet?" Scott liked the sound of his thinking and he saw that Tyrone wasn"t buying his argument.

"It"s possible, I guess . . .but . . ." Tyrone didn"t have the words to finish his foggy thoughts. It was too far left field for his linear thinking. "No this is crazy as the time you though that UFO"s were invading Westchester in "85. Then there was the time you said that Columbian drug dealers put cocaine in the water supply . . ."

"That wasn"t my fault . . ."

" . . .and the Trump Noriega connection and the other 500 wild a.s.s conspiracies you come up with."

Scott dismissed Tyrone"s friendly criticism by ignoring the derisions. "As I see it," Scott continued, "the only victim is the FBI. None of the alleged victims have been harmed, other than ego and their paranoia levels. Maybe the FBI was the target all along. Scott suggested, "it"s as good a theory as any other."

"With what goal?" Duncan accepted the logic for the moment.

"So when the real thing hits, you guys are too f.u.c.ked up to react."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Square, Manhattan.

The flat white and gla.s.s square building, designed in the "60"s, built shoddily by the lowest bidder in 1981, in no way echoed the level of technical sophistication hidden behind the drab exteri- or. The building had no personality, no character, nothing memorable about it, and that was exactly the way the tenants wanted it.

The 23 story building extended 6 full floors below the congested streets of Lower Manhattan. Throughout the entire structure well guarded mazes held the clues to the locations of an incredible array of computing power, some of the world"s best a.n.a.lytical tools, test equipment, forensic labs, communications facilities and a staff of experts in hundreds of technical specialties required to investigate crimes that landed in their jurisdiction.

The most sensitive work was performed underground, protected by the solid bedrock of Manhattan island. Eavesdropping was impos- sible, almost, and operational privacy was guaranteed. Personal privacy was another matter, though. Most of the office staff worked out in an open office floorplan. The walls between the guard stations and banks of elevators consisted solely of bullet- proof floor to ceiling triple pane gla.s.s. Unnerving at first, no privacy.