'Don't know exactly. We're picking up different locations, but they keep changing. Maybe he's on a cell phone in a car. Cell phones are harder to trace.' I could see that we were getting off the D Street Exit. Then we headed into the Third Street tunnel. Where was he?

'Everything all right, Alex? You seem a little distracted,' the Mastermind said.

'No, I'm right here with you. Partner. Enjoying our little breakfast club.'

'I don't know why this is so goddamn hard,' the FBI techie complained.

Because he's the Mastermind, I wanted to yell at him.

I saw the Washington Convention Center on the right. The van was really clipping along, doing sixty or seventy on the city streets.

We passed the Renaissance Hotel. Where the hell was the Mastermind calling from?

'I think we have a fix on him. We're real close,' one of the young agents said in an excited voice.

Suddenly the FBI van stopped; it was chaos inside. Sampson and I pulled out our guns. We had him. I couldn't believe we had him.

Then everyone inside the van groaned and cursed. I looked outside and saw why. I shook my head in disgust.

'Jesus Christ, do you believe this shit!' Sampson yelled and pounded the wall of the van. We were at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, the J. Edgar Hoover Building. FBI headquarters.

'What's happening now?' I asked the agent in charge. 'Where the hell is he?'

'Shit, the signal is roaming again. It's moving outside Washington. Okay, now it's back in the city. Christ, it just skipped out of the country.'

'Goodbye, Alex. For now anyway. As I told you before, you're next,' the Mastermind said. Then he hung up on me.

Chapter Five

The rest of my day was long, hard, and depressing. More than anything, I needed a break from the Mastermind.