Chapter 4

It was a perfect, blue-skied morning in Washington - well, almost perfect. The Mastermind was on my cell phone. ‘Hello, Alex. Did you miss me? I missed you, partner.’
The bastard¹ had been making obscene, threatening phone calls to me every morning for over a week. Sometimes he just cursed at me for several minutes; this morning, he sounded positively² civil.  ‘What’s your day look like? Any big plans?’ he asked.
Actually, yes. I was planning to catch him. I was inside an FBI van
that was already on the move. We were tracing his call and would
have the exact location very soon. A court order had been put
through the FBI and the phone company was involved in ‘trapping’
the call. I was in the rear of the speeding van with three Bureau
agents and my partner, John Sampson. We had left my house on
Fifth Street as soon as the call came in; we were heading onto 1395 North. My job was to keep him on the line until the trace was
completed.
‘Tell me about Betsey Cavalierre. Why did you pick her instead of me?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, she’s much, much prettier,’ the Mastermind said. ‘More fuckable.’
One of the techie agents was talking in the background. I tried to listen to both conversations. The agent said, ‘He’s living up to his name. We’ve got a wire tap and should be able to trace the call immediately. It isn’t happening for some reason.’ ‘Why the hell not?’Sampson asked and moved closer to the agents.
‘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 Renaissance³ 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 chaos⁴ inside. Sampson and I pulled out our guns. We had him. I couldn’t believe we had him.  Then everyone inside the van groaned⁵ 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.

1 bastard   

n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子

参考例句：

• He was never concerned about being born a bastard.他从不介意自己是私生子。
• There was supposed to be no way to get at the bastard.据说没有办法买通那个混蛋。

2 positively   

adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实

参考例句：

• She was positively glowing with happiness.她满脸幸福。
• The weather was positively poisonous.这天气着实讨厌。

3 renaissance   

n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴

参考例句：

• The Renaissance was an epoch of unparalleled cultural achievement.文艺复兴是一个文化上取得空前成就的时代。
• The theme of the conference is renaissance Europe.大会的主题是文艺复兴时期的欧洲。

4 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

5 groaned   

v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦

参考例句：

• He groaned in anguish. 他痛苦地呻吟。
• The cart groaned under the weight of the piano. 大车在钢琴的重压下嘎吱作响。 来自《简明英汉词典》