O'Malley followed the Mastermind as best he could, but he couldn't keep up. The guy was a runner. He didn't look like it, but he could move real well.

Then O'Malley lost him! "He's gone. Fuck me in the heinie. I lost him, Jimmy. I don't see him anywhere. This is not good."

Crews picked him up again. "I got him. I'm on foot too. He's still running like some pickpocket with my wallet."

"You keep up with him?"

"Hope so. We'll see. For fifteen million dollars I'll keep up with him somehow."

The Mastermind finally came out of the woods and on to a side street filled with brick townhouses. Crews was panting as he spoke into the mike on his headphones. "Thank God I run every day. He runs too. He's out on Morningside Drive... Awhh shit, he's heading back into the goddamn woods. He's picking up the pace again. The bastard must train on the Appalachian Trail."

It became an incredible game of cat and mouse. Even though they were good at it, O'Malley and Crews lost their prey twice more in the next twenty minutes. They were miles from the Holiday Inn, somewhere south of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Then Crews spotted him on a narrow side street called Powhaten Place. The Mastermind had turned into a back driveway or something. Crews followed. He saw a metal sign, and he almost couldn't believe what it said.

Crews reported back to O'Malley. Then he talked to Brian Macdougall who'd joined the merry chase.

Crews couldn't keep the irony out of his voice. "I know where the hell he is, fellas. Get this he's inside a nuthouse. He's on the grounds of a mental institution called Hazelwood. And now I've lost him again!"

Chapter Fifty-One

Monday morning, I got a call to meet Kyle Craig and Betsey Cavalierre at the Hoover Building on Tenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. They wanted me to be at the director's office at eight o'clock. An 'emergency7 meeting had been called.

The Hoover Building is sometimes called the "Puzzle Palace," and for obvious reasons. Kyle and Betsey were waiting when I arrived in the FBI director's conference room. Betsey looked tense for her. Her small hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles white.

I pretended to be annoyed that Director Burns wasn't there yet," He's late," I muttered. "Let's get out of here. We've got better things to do."

Just then, one of two polished oak doors into the room opened. I knew both of the men who walked inside. Neither of them looked very happy. One was FBI Director Ronald Burns, whom I'd met during the Casanova killings in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The second man was Secretary of Justice, Richard Pollett. I had met him when I'd worked on a case involving the President.

"We're getting an awful lot of heat on these robbery-murders. The big banks, Wall Street," Pollett said to Kyle. He nodded in my direction. "Hello, Detective," Then he looked at Betsey. "I'm sorry, we haven't met."