The Hammer of Eden by Ken Follett Page A

She would go into the office and do it on her computer. Better to be out doing something than sitting at home getting cabin fever.
    She picked up her gun, then hesitated. Agents were on duty twenty-four hours a day and were obliged to be armed except in court, inside a jail, or at the office.
But if I’m no longer an agent, I don’t have to go armed
.Then she changed her mind.
Hell, if I see a robbery in progress and I have to drive on by because I left my weapon at home, I’m going to feel pretty stupid
.
    It was a standard-issue FBI weapon, a SIG-Sauer P228 pistol. It normally held thirteen rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition, but Judy always racked back the slide and chambered the first bullet, then removed the clip and added an extra round, making fourteen. She also had a Remington model 870 five-chamber shotgun. Like all agents, she did firearms training once a month, usually at the sheriff’s range in Santa Rita. Her marksmanship was tested four times a year. The qualification course never gave her any trouble: she had a good eye and a steady hand, and her reflexes were quick.
    Like most agents, she had never fired her gun except in training.
    FBI agents were investigators. They were highly educated and well paid. They did not dress for combat. It was perfectly normal to go through an entire twenty-five-year career with the Bureau and never get involved in a shoot-out or even a fistfight. But they had to be ready for it.
    Judy put her weapon into a shoulder bag. She was wearing the
ao dai
, a traditional Vietnamese garment like a long blouse, with a little upright collar and side slits, always worn over baggy pants. It was her favorite casual wear because it was so comfortable, but she knew it also looked good on her: the white material showed off her shoulder-length black hair and honey-colored skin, and the close-fitting blouse flattered her petite figure. She would not normally wear it to the office, but it was late in the evening, and anyway she had resigned.
    She went outside. Her Chevrolet Monte Carlo was parked at the curb. It was an FBI car, and she would not be sorry to lose it. When she was a defense lawyer she could get something more exciting—a little European sports car, maybe, a Porsche or an MG.
    Her father’s house was in the Richmond neighborhood. It was not very swanky, but an honest cop never got rich. Judy took the Geary Expressway downtown. Rush hour was over and traffic was light, so she was at the Federal Building in a few minutes. She parked in the underground garage and took the elevator to the twelfth floor.
    Now that she was leaving the Bureau, the office took on a cozyfamiliarity that made her feel nostalgic. The gray carpet, the neatly numbered rooms, the desks and files and computers, all spoke of a powerful, well-resourced organization, confident and dedicated. There were a few people working late. She entered the office of the Asian Organized Crime squad. The room was empty. She turned on the lights, sat at her desk, and booted up her computer.
    When she thought about writing her résumé, her mind went blank.
    There was not much to say about her life before the FBI: just school and two dull years in the legal department of Mutual American Insurance. She needed to give a clear account of her ten years in the Bureau, showing how she had succeeded and progressed. But instead of an ordered narrative, her memory produced a disjointed series of flashbacks: the serial rapist who had thanked her, from the dock, for putting him in jail where he could do no more harm; a company called Holy Bible Investments that had robbed dozens of elderly widows of their savings; the time she had found herself alone in a room with an armed man who had kidnapped two small children, and she had persuaded him to give her his gun …
    She could hardly tell Brooks Fielding about those moments. They wanted Perry Mason, not Wyatt Earp.
    She decided to write her formal letter of resignation first.
    She put the