"Does Senior Agent Nooney know that I'm the director's one-man flying squad?" I asked Woods. Tell me that he does. I don't need more trouble down at Quantico. "We'll let him know posthaste where you're going," Woods promised. "I'll take care of it personally. Go to Atlanta, and keep us posted on what you find down there. You'll be briefed on the plane. It's a kidnapping case." But that was all Tony Woods would tell me on the phone. For the most part, the Bureau flies out of Reagan Washington National. I boarded a Cessna Citation Ultra, tan, with no identifying markings. The Cessna sat eight, but I was the only passenger. "You must be important," the pilot said before we took off. "I'm not important. Believe me, I'm nobody." The pilot just laughed. "Buckle up, then, nobody." It was perfectly clear that a call from the director's office had preceded me. Here I was, being treated like a senior agent. The director's troubleshooter? Another agent jumped aboard just before we took off. He sat down across the aisle from me and introduced himself as Wyatt Walsh, from D.C. Was he part of the director's "flying team" too? Maybe my partner? "What happened in Atlanta?" I asked. "What's so important, or unimportant, that it requires our services?" "Nobody told you?" He seemed surprised that I didn't know the details. "I got a call from the director's office less than half an hour ago. I was told to come here. They said I'd be briefed on the plane." Walsh slapped two volumes of case notes on my lap. "There's been a kidnapping in the Buckhead section of Atlanta. Woman in her thirties. White woman, well-to-do. She's the wife of a judge, which makes it federal. More important, she isn't the first."

EVERYTHING WAS SUDDENLY in a hurry-up mode. After we landed I was driven in a van to the Phipps Plaza shopping center in Buckhead. As we pulled into the lot off Peachtree, it was obvious to me that something was very wrong there.