Conspiracy

8

There was nothing in Frey’s description of the agent’s death that convinced Rubens it was anything but a suicide. The man was going through a painful divorce that promised to separate him from his children. Even Frey admitted that Forester could occasionally be moody and was most likely disappointed that he hadn’t advanced rapidly up the Secret Service hierarchy, despite early promise. And while Forester had handled literally hundreds of investigations during his career, he didn’t seem to have generated any enemies from them. The cases he had been working on before his death were typical ones as far as the Secret Service was concerned. The most serious involved an e-mailed death threat against a candidate for President — ironically, the candidate was Senator McSweeney, who had just finished grilling Rubens. Forester hadn’t closed out the inquiry, but Frey’s cursory review of the case made it appear there wasn’t much there.

The state police and the local prosecuting attorney had made it clear that, as far as they were concerned, the agent had killed himself. But Frey had ordered the Ser vice to conduct its own investigation.

“There are some interesting loose ends,” said Frey. “Before he died, Jerry received some e-mails that we’d like traced to the source.”

Frey reached into his jacket pocket and took out two pieces of white paper, which had printouts of the e-mails. Both e-mails had a Yahoo return address, and there was standard header information.

“The e-mail address has been falsified,” said Frey. “It originated somewhere overseas. It says Vietnam, but we think that’s false. We’d like to know from where, of course.” Rubens took the paper. Among the Secret Service’s lesser-known duties was the investigation of identity theft, and the agency had its own array of computer experts. If they couldn’t trace it, Rubens thought, the message must be suspicious.

“We don’t have the e-mails that Forester sent,” added Frey. “I’m afraid we don’t know whether that is significant or not. He worked on the road a lot, and routinely would have ‘shredded’ sensitive information on his laptop. The e-mail would have been erased.”

Rubens looked at the first e-mail.

The second e-mail was much the same:

“The business?” asked Rubens.

“I have no idea what it means. The e-mails seem to have come as he was investigating the threat made against Senator McSweeney. That e-mail was tracked to a library just outside Baltimore, where someone used a public-access computer.

But we couldn’t find a connection. Forester looked at constituents and other people who may have had a beef with the senator.

Doesn’t look like he found a link. He was still checking into it — he was going back to the area where McSweeney first served as assemblyman when he died.”

Rubens folded the e-mails and placed them into his pocket.

“Did you know the agent very well?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I broke him in. He was a good man.”

Before Rubens could find a way to tactfully suggest that Frey’s opinion might be clouding his judgment, the Secret Service director’s phone buzzed.

He answered it, and immediately his face turned grim.

“I’m on my way,” he told his caller after listening for a few moments.

He snapped off the phone and turned to Rubens.

“We’ve just had a report of shots fired at Senator McSweeney. I’ll need to get to my car.”