Executive Order

Eight

Patti Rogers, in her favorite gray suit with a black silk blouse beneath, strode with purpose into the Special Situations bullpen at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Though she’d barely slept, Rogers had been up early, ready to go — or anyway, ready after grabbing a tall coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby of her apartment building.

First order of business: talk to the team’s resident computer expert, Miggie Altuve, who was as good at his specialty as anybody the FBI had.

He was in the office next to hers, at the back, first in, the other desks empty. He was using his private tablet, not his work computer. The small space had windows onto the street, his door always open because he could focus in a hurricane, and anyway, he was always welcome for more input.

“Hey you,” she said, strolling in without knocking on the jamb.

“Hey you,” he said, not looking up.

While his razor-cut hair was “Werewolves of London”-perfect, his navy suit coat was already draped haphazardly over the back of his desk chair, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up a couple turns. Formerly a pudgy nerd, Miguel Altuve had lost weight and ditched his wire-frame glasses, but inside this handsome, diminutive man a nerd still lurked. Right now his eyes were red-rimmed — likely his contacts had been in too long — and his dark complexion looked uncharacteristically sallow.

She lowered herself into the chair alongside his desk. “How long have you been up?”

“Twenty-four... uh, twenty-six hours.”

She almost felt guilty, having dropped Reeder’s suspicions on Miggie last night... using the burner phone of course. Almost guilty.

“No sleep at all?” she asked.

“I was working,” he said, as if that explained it, and actually it did. “I napped for an hour or two. Hey, I’m fine. My blood is thirty percent caffeine.”

“How far did you get?”

“I’m still on Tony Evans.”

Her eyebrows tried to join each other. “You spent all night tracing an alias?”

He leaned back in his swivel chair. “That was part of it. But I was also looking into the fascinating life and times of Anthony J. Wooten.”

“And just who is Anthony J. Wooten?”

With a sly smile, Miggie said, “He and Tony Evans are one and the same... at least according to the fingerprints from the DC Homicide morgue.”

She was on the edge of her seat, like a kid at a horror movie. “What do we know about the late Mr. Wooten?”

“Ex-military. Black ops stuff in Afghanistan.”

“So, he’s CIA?”

“Not so you’d notice. But clearly an asset.”

She shifted in the chair. “Okay, back up. How do you even know Wooten did ‘black ops stuff in Afghanistan’? That’s got to be classified.”

“Oh, it is. Way down deep.”

“Then you found out how?”

He folded his arms, shook his head. “We’re in that if-I-told-you-I’d-have-to-kill-you area. Or even worse, if-I-told-you-they’d-have-to-kill-me.”

“Or both of us?”

He sighed and thought for a moment. Rocking a little, he said, “Let’s just say I know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who could get me the answers we wanted.” He stopped rocking. “Are you planning to take this to court?”

“Not in the immediate future.”

He started rocking again. “Then we’re on a need-to-know basis... and you don’t need to know.”

“For now... okay. So, Evans... or I should say Wooten... was, what? A mercenary?”

Nodding, Miggie said, “In that he got paid to do some bad shit, yes... but he was never open to the highest bidder. Never was a part of Air America or anything so mundane. He was, it seems, a contractor, but only for very specific employers.”

“Then we are talking CIA...?”

“Mostly... but also the occasional freelance job for employers within the government.”

“What kind of employers?”

“Highly placed ones. Generating the kind of classified activities that don’t get talked about even in congressional hearings.”

She processed that for a while. Then: “And this CIA asset, this governmental handyman, is who befriended Glenn Willard, to gain access to Secretary of the Interior Yellich... to assassinate her?”

“Sure seems that way.”

She stared past him at Washington, DC, out his window. “You’re saying... we’re saying... that someone within the United States government dispatched Wooten to kill Yellich. That simple.”

“That simple,” Miggie said. “That terrible.”

Her eyes went to his. “You’ve shared this with no one else.”

“Of course not.”

She nodded toward the monitor on his desk. “Is there a government computer that has any record of your searches?”

He made a face. “You don’t have to be insulting.”

She twitched the tiniest smile and rose. “We need to tell Hardesy.”

Miggie looked up at her in surprise. “He’s in Reeder’s inner circle on this?”

“He is. And with you, that makes four of us.”

She fetched Lucas from the bullpen, where he and the others were trailing in, and led him into Miggie’s office to hear what the computer expert had learned.

When Miggie finished, Hardesy — in the chair Rogers had vacated — was shaking his shaved head, making the overhead light reflect. “Un-fucking-believable,” he said.

Standing next to him, arms folded, looking down at him like a teacher checking a student’s paper, Rogers said, “You don’t buy it?”

Hardesy’s smirk was humorless. “No, I don’t want to buy it.” His sigh was deep and sounded like somebody had opened a distant boiler door. “So, there’s a rogue element in the government? This shadow group that Reeder posits?”

Rogers said, “Looks that way.”

“And they assassinated a member of the goddamn cabinet?”

“Yeah.”

He turned up both hands. “To what end?”

“It would be nice to know,” Rogers said.

“And nice to know,” Miggie added, “who in this rogue group put the Yellich murder in motion. Have to be somebody pretty high up.”

“Maybe as high up,” Rogers said, “as someone capable of getting CIA agents sent to Azbekistan.”

The color had drained from Hardesy’s face and wasn’t coming back very fast. “Do we think this case is tied to Reeder’s presidential mission?”

Her shrug was barely perceptible. “You tell me — or do you still think it’s a coincidence, dead CIA agents here and abroad, a mercenary taken out with extreme prejudice, and an assassinated cabinet secretary?”

“You had me at dead CIA agents,” Hardesy said dryly. “Okay, let’s say I’m convinced. Where do we go from here?”

She let a grave look travel from Hardesy to Miggie and back again. “I go to AD Fisk with what we know,” she said, “and with what we suspect... and ask her to assign our task force to this case.”

Miggie asked, “Do we empty the entire bag on her desk?”

“We hold nothing back,” Rogers said, nodding.

Hardesy frowned. “Should we run all this past Reeder first?”

She shook her head. “We’ll fill him in at the next opportunity. But Wooten’s identity only confirms what Joe’s already thinking — he knew coming into this investigation that there must be some kind of government involvement, when the President’s own directive was ignored. Those four CIA agents didn’t just suddenly decide to check out Azbekistan as a vacation spot on the eve of a Russian invasion. No, Reeder’s already got a mission from the President, and he’s staying off the grid as he carries it out. Meanwhile, we need to get the Bureau to stand behind us on our side of it.”

Rogers made a quick call to AD Fisk’s office and learned that the Assistant Director was in a meeting, but should be free momentarily.

Soon, seated in Fisk’s reception area, she checked the burner phone to see if a text had come through from Reeder — it hadn’t — then got out her other phone, which had a text from Kevin about seeing her tonight. The AD’s inner-office door opened and a tall man with dark hair came out. Pleasant enough looking, he had a Cost Cutters haircut and generic gray Men’s Wearhouse suit that screamed government drone. He gave her the nod that was a stranger’s hello and strode out.

Two more minutes passed before the AD’s male secretary interrupted her perusal of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin on her cell phone, to say, “Ms. Fisk will see you now.”

Rising, Rogers took in a breath, let it out. She strode into the inner office to find Margery Fisk staring past her, her expression cold. Not welcoming.

But as Rogers neared the aircraft carrier of a desk, AD Fisk met her eyes and said, as if uttering an expletive, “Accountants.”

Obviously Fisk was referring to her previous visitor.

Taking the waiting chair opposite her seated boss, Rogers shrugged, smiled just a little, and said, “Accountants.”

“GAO’s threatening another audit,” Fisk said, her voice matter-of-fact, her eyes hooded.

The Government Accountability Office audited, evaluated, and ran investigations for Congress. Another GAO audit would be the first step in the process of stripping the Bureau of much-needed dollars. Theoretically, the GAO could recommend more funds, but Rogers knew that with the economy in a downturn, such a thought bordered on fantasy.

Sensing an opening, Rogers said, “Would it help if we successfully took on the biggest case the Bureau ever had?”

Fisk’s smile had a bitter edge. “I believe, Agent Rogers, that John Dillinger is no longer at large.”

Rogers kept her tone businesslike. “Suppose, just hypothetically mind you, that there was a rogue element in the US government. A shadow government within the government, manipulating certain events.”

To Rogers’ relief, the AD neither laughed out loud nor threw a paperweight at her. But the woman did say, “So, you’re a conspiracy theorist now.”

Rogers had expected a reaction like this, and had decided not to point out to her superior that just a few years ago evidence had finally surfaced clearing Lee Harvey Oswald.

“It doesn’t seem to be just a theory, ma’am. I’m confident I can prove it.”

Fisk straightened in her high-backed chair. She studied Rogers, as if perhaps the need for a major crime for the Special Situations Task Force had turned the younger agent desperate.

Then Fisk said, “Make your case.”

Rogers laid out everything that she, Altuve, and Hardesy knew, as well as what Reeder had contributed... without compromising his presidential mission, merely reminding the AD that four CIA agents had been killed in Azbekistan despite their presence in that country contradicting a presidential directive.

When Rogers was done, Fisk said nothing for several endless moments.

Just when Rogers thought she had blown it, her boss said, “About half of the dots you’re connecting aren’t there.”

Deflating a little, Rogers said, “But what about the other half, ma’am?”

Fisk mulled that, but only for a moment. “You may not have a convincing argument where your ‘shadow government’ theory is concerned... at least not yet... but your case for Secretary Yellich having been assassinated is sound. And obviously that is a very serious matter, a threat to the government itself. We’ll start there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Make this investigation your task force’s priority. Get right on it.”

She rose, nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”

Rogers was halfway out the AD’s inner-office door when Fisk called out, “Oh, and Rogers?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Good work.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She flew through the outer office, thinking that sometimes a trip to the principal’s office wasn’t so terrible after all.

When Rogers got downstairs to the bullpen of the Special Situations Task Force, the team was waiting for her, having been assembled by Miggie at her request before she went up to see the AD.

Half a dozen desks, with no cubicles but plenty of space, faced a video screen that took up much of a wall; a small table looking back at them was reserved for Rogers in briefing mode, and she took her seat there. Smaller video screens were here and there around the room, and of course several offices in back — her own, Miggie’s, and an unassigned one that had been reserved for Reeder as consultant.

Miggie was sitting at the desk he used when not in his office. Hardesy and his usual partner, Anne Nichols, had desks next to each other. Tall and fashion-model striking, the African American Nichols was as tough as she was stylish, and she was plenty stylish. Today she wore a single-breasted, gold-buttoned black business suit and leopard-print blouse.

The other pair of field agents, Jerry Bohannon and Reggie Wade, made up the more senior team, having been partners for years now.

The craggily handsome, fortyish Bohannon had started dating a woman his own age a while back, his post-divorce second childhood finally over, and consequently had stopped dyeing his hair, the natural gray at his temples giving him a distinguished look. So did his navy worsted suit, solid light blue tie, and blue-and-white-striped white-collared shirt.

The six-foot-four, African American Wade was a seasoned investigator who liked to push the limits of the Bureau’s regulations of what comprised the acceptable “look” of an FBI agent. Today he was risking a black vested suit with black shirt and black skinny tie — all that black, yet the style of it said Italian.

The final member of the team, behaviorist/profiler Trevor Ivanek, was a balding human scarecrow with a broad forehead over deep-set eyes. Open-collar dress shirt under a sweater vest gave him the air of the scholar he was. For a man who spent so much time trying to understand monsters, he had a quick, easy wit.

Rogers got up from the table facing the team and rolled out a whiteboard that she’d asked Miggie to call down for. Something this low-tech was rarely used anymore, but it gave her a form of communication that the security camera behind her could not witness.

When she finished outlining what she and Fisk had just talked about, to an audience whose expressions ranged from squinting skepticism to wide-eyed alarm, Ivanek was first to speak up.

“With all due respect, Agent Rogers, you and Mr. Reeder are bucking for a psychiatric evaluation.”

Wryly amused, Wade asked, “That your considered expert opinion, Doctor?”

His eyes staying on Rogers, Ivanek said, “I don’t doubt that you have outlined some troubling events, chiefly the assassination of a cabinet member. And that seems entirely appropriate for an examination by this task force. But making the leap to a conspiracy within our government is ill-advised, reckless, and even foolish.”

Hardesy said, “Then put me down for a psych session, too, Doc. I was standing right next to the black ops operative who got eliminated by a sniper. And I for one find it highly suggestive when four CIA agents get themselves killed where they were forbidden to be by, oh, just the President.” He glanced around the bullpen. “Reeder and Rogers are right. We’ve got players on the inside who’ve gone rogue.”

Shaking his head, Ivanek said, “Conspiracies are fine in fiction, but in the real world they’re almost impossible to keep hidden, especially something on this scale.”

Rogers said, “But we don’t know the scale of it. We could be dealing with a handful of people... but powerful people.”

“Most so-called conspiracies,” Ivanek said, “are simply the individual acts of, say, police officers trying for the makings of an easy conviction, or politicos drumming up pseudo-scandals on a major figure from the other side. But sending agents overseas to die and tying it to the death of a cabinet member, even the probable murder of that cabinet member... it’s strictly Through-the-Looking-Glass stuff.”

With a pretty eyebrow arched, Nichols said, “That little party at the Capitol last year — you were here for that, right?”

Ivanek nodded. “I was. And ever since 9/11, we have lived in a curiouser-and-curiouser world. I grant you that. But Agent Rogers and Mr. Reeder are still making an ill-advised leap. My opinion is that we begin with the assassination of Secretary Yellich and treat it like what it is: a murder case.”

“I have no problem with that,” Rogers said. “But I would request that everyone here keep in mind the context that I’ve provided. If the people we’re up against are as powerful as I think, then every person in this room is an insect that could easily be swatted.”

Wade shifted his long-legged body and said, “Okay, so we’ve got a case, and just the kind of major-league case that might just keep our little Sit boat afloat. Where do we start, boss?”

“We’ll begin with computer checks,” she said, for the benefit of any bugs in the room. But on the whiteboard she wrote: NO USE OF BUREAU EQUIPMENT. WILL EXPLAIN. STRICTLY SUB ROSA. Then she wiped it clean.

“Why?” Bohannon asked, a question that might have been for either the spoken comment or the written one.

Rogers said, “They may have left a computer trail, and we’ll get Miggie all over that.” But again, as she spoke, she wrote: MOLES. TRUST NO ONE BUT THE TEAM. She wiped the board clean.

“Reeder can be considered a part of this team,” she went on, “but he has his own agenda. Our focus is, as Trevor has correctly advised, finding out who is behind the murder of Secretary Yellich.”

As she spoke, she wrote: NO PERSONAL PHONES. NO BUREAU EMAIL. Again she wiped the board clean.

Bohannon rose, smoothed his suit coat, and went to the whiteboard, taking the marker from Rogers, and wrote: HOW DO WE COMMUNICATE? He erased that and watched her write: BURNER PHONES ASAP. She erased that, and Bohannon nodded and returned to his desk.

Wade asked, “So, where do we start, boss?”

Writing REAL ASSIGNMENTS on the whiteboard, Rogers said, “Reggie, you and Jerry take another look at Yellich — personal life, her staffers... make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

Wade nodded. Bohannon, too.

“Miggie, these people must have left a trail somewhere. Find it. Follow it.”

She wrote: APARTMENT HOUSE SHOOTER’S DNA. FROM DC HOMICIDE.

Miggie nodded as she erased the message.

“Lucas,” she said, “you, Anne, and I have a job in the field to do.”

She wrote in very big letters, and underlined: WATCH YOUR ASSES. Then she swept the board clean.

When she, Hardesy, and Nichols were in the corridor, Rogers said, “We’re going to visit Tony Wooten’s parents.”

“Do you think they know,” Hardesy asked, “what kind of mischief sonny boy was up to?”

Bohannon said, “Name a terrorist who lived at home whose mommy didn’t know he was making bombs.”

“Good point,” Hardesy admitted.

“Don’t assume the worst about them,” Rogers advised. “Remember, they won’t have been informed about their son’s death — Miggie’s digging is what turned up Tony Evans’ real identity, and so far we’re the only good guys who know it.”

“Understood,” Nichols said.

Soon, with Nichols at the wheel of a Bureau Ford, the two-hour drive to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, was spent going over Wooten’s file as e-mailed by Miggie to Rogers’ burner, though there was precious little in it.

Wooten had entered the military after getting an associate degree in police science from Harrisburg Area Community College. Rogers figured that (like her), Wooten had intended to become an MP, but (unlike her) never made it into the Military Police. Instead, he’d entered sniper school, at which point his military record became conspicuously sparse; nothing of note beyond an unremarkable tour of duty stateside. It was as if he went to sniper school then just disappeared for eighteen months until his honorable discharge.

Rogers wondered where Miggie had gotten the information about Wooten’s black ops in Afghanistan. Were there more off-the-books activities of Wooten’s in that part of the world, or others for that matter?

A sleepy burg of fewer than 25,000 souls, Chambersburg depended mostly on tourism — thanks to its rich history, quaint downtown, and Appalachian setting — though with the surrounding communities, the greater metro area swelled to about 50,000 with some decent manufacturing jobs available. Amish and Mennonite farmers beyond the city limits made up part of the population as well. It reminded Rogers of her home area back in Iowa, even down to the fields of corn surrounding the town.

The biggest employer, though, was five miles north — Letterkenny Army Depot, the place from which Wooten’s father had recently retired. Amos and Constance Wooten lived in a brick bungalow on a two-lane highway called Edenville Road, where lawns large enough to require riding mowers overwhelmed modest houses like theirs.

Rogers left the car in the driveway and the three FBI agents walked up a brick walk. The quietude reminded her of her farmland home, too — this was just far enough toward the edge of town not to get regular traffic, with only the barking of a dog and the breeze whispering through trees to test the silence.

Rogers knocked on the door and waited. She was just about to knock again when a shadow crossed the thin curtains behind the wooden door’s glass.

Another second and the inside door opened, leaving only the screen between her and a slender man in his sixties with thinning gray hair and Tony Wooten’s nose. He wore a Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt and new-looking jeans.

“Mr. Wooten?”

“Yes...?”

She held up her credentials. “Special Agent Patti Rogers with the FBI. With Special Agents Anne Nichols and Lucas Hardesy. May we come in, sir?”

“What’s this about?” Mr. Wooten asked, understandably taken aback. One FBI agent on his doorstep would be bad enough... but three?

“I’d rather not discuss it out here, sir,” Rogers said. “May we come in, please?”

With a frown, Wooten swung open the screen and they trooped in. The living room was smallish but nice, homey. Family pictures — son Tony with a younger brother and older sister peered at them pleasantly from over the years — rested on perfectly dusted end tables, a sofa with a knitted afghan hugged one wall, a BarcaLounger sat next to a couple of wing chairs, each facing a flat-screen TV on a stand.

Hardesy asked, “Is Mrs. Wooten at home?”

At first alarmed, then reluctant, Mr. Wooten twisted toward the back of the house. “Connie,” he said, barely raising his voice.

“What is it, dear?” came a voice from a doorless doorway onto the kitchen. Plates were clinking. “I’m busy right now!”

Bringing his wife into the mix had brought home to their host how serious a visit this was, and Amos Wooten said simply, “FBI.”

A short, stocky, aproned woman, her hair a shade of red unknown in nature, stepped into the room drying her hands on a towel. Her eyes were light blue and very pretty. “Did you say FBI?”

Rogers made the introductions again, ending with, “Perhaps we might all sit down.”

The Wootens traded a look and moved to the sofa and sat down side by side. Within moments, their hands found each other. The agents assembled seats around the humble living room.

Every law enforcement officer hated this part of the job, hated it like poison. Rogers had been the bearer of bad news more than once back in her county deputy days, and it never got easier. As a federal agent, she usually came in well after someone had already received the worst news of their lives.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wooten,” she said, “your son Tony died last night in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.”

The wife’s grip tightened on her husband’s hand, her knuckles turning white.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” Rogers continued, “but Tony was murdered.”

She waited for the tears, the explosion of grief, but instead found herself staring at two people whose wide-eyed confusion said they didn’t understand a word she was saying.

Mr. Wooten said, “In Maryland, you say?”

“Yes. Hillcrest Heights. He was living there, but you probably knew that. Did you know that?”

Mr. Wooten looked at his wife, bewildered, and she looked back at him the same way. “There has to be some mistake, Agent Rogers — Anthony isn’t even in the country.”

Was there any way Miggie might have misidentified the shooting victim? No, the file photo matched. And she was not about to show these parents the photo from the coroner’s office. On the burner phone, she called up Tony Wooten’s military file and his photo.

She held the phone out to the father who studied it, squinting at it, as if trying to make out a distant figure on the horizon. He gave Rogers a look that asked for the phone, and she nodded and gave it to him.

Soon father and mother were looking down at the photo on a phone that was in both their hands.

“That is your son?” Rogers asked.

They didn’t need to reply. Tears trailing down the mother’s cheeks, and the tremor in the father’s hand as he handed back the phone, gave the answer.

Rogers said, “We’re very sorry for your loss.”

Mrs. Wooten’s head tipped forward and a small sob escaped. Hardesy got up and went to her and handed her his handkerchief. She accepted the offering with a nod of thanks, and he went back to his chair.

Mr. Wooten gave Rogers a hard, direct look. “What happened to Anthony?”

“He was shot. From a distance, by a man with a rifle.”

Tears welling, the father asked, “Who in God’s name would want to shoot our son? In Maryland! He was a good boy — he served his country honorably.”

“We were hoping, sir, that you and your wife might have some idea.”

Spreading his hands in surrender, the father said, “We told you! We didn’t even know he was in the country. We thought he was overseas.”

“Where, specifically?”

The barest hint of a smile crossed the man’s face, then disappeared into sorrow. “He always said that if he told us, he’d have to kill us.”

The echo of what Miggie had said to her a few hours before gave her a shiver.

Mrs. Wooten looked up from her lap and said, “It was all top-secret work for the government.”

Great. No help. “What kind of government work was he doing if he was out of the Army?”

Mr. Wooten shrugged and shook his head a little. “Well... he was working as a contractor.”

“Do you know what he was contracted to do? Who might have contracted him?”

The father shook his head. “Anthony just said ‘top secret,’ and we respected that.”

Another dead end.

“Whatever it was,” Mr. Wooten volunteered, “there’s a strong possibility it was... that it wasn’t strictly... legal.”

His wife drew in a breath and gave him an I-can’t-believe-you-said-that look, and Rogers felt her stomach tighten.

Resting a hand on his wife’s knee, Mr. Wooten said, “Connie, these people are from the FBI. If they look into our financials for five minutes, they’ll find the money. I used to work for the government — I know.”

“Sir,” Rogers asked, trying not to betray the stir within her, “what money are you referring to?”

Mr. Wooten glanced at his wife, who closed her eyes and gave him a tiny nod.

Then he said, “A few months ago, Anthony put some money away for us.”

“Away where, sir?”

“In an account in the... what are they called? Cayman Islands. Under our name.”

“How much?”

“... Quite a bit.”

“How much, sir?”

“... One hundred thousand dollars.”

The agents traded looks.

Rogers asked, “Did Anthony tell you where that money came from?”

Mr. Wooten tried to maintain eye contact with her, but couldn’t. “Anthony said his contract work was paying nicely, and he just wanted to put some retirement money away.”

Hardesy asked, “For himself or for you?”

“For... well, for all of us. Whichever of us needed it more. I have a decent pension, and we don’t want for much of anything, so... really, I suppose it would eventually go to Anthony. Would have gone.”

Rogers asked, “You didn’t press him on where he got that kind of money?”

Shaking his head a little, Mr. Wooten said, “Agent Rogers, I’ll admit to you that I... I didn’t really want to know.”

“Do you have the account information?”

He sighed. Seemed defeated, and not by his guests — by life. “Connie can get it for you. We’re going to lose that money, aren’t we?”

Rogers shook her head. “I don’t really know.”

Anthony’s mother got up and went to a bedroom in the back of the house, Nichols tagging along with her. Several awkwardly silent minutes passed before the two women returned; Nichols, with a manila folder in hand, gave Rogers a nod.

Rising, Rogers said, “We’ll look into this, Mr. and Mrs. Wooten. We will, I assure you, do everything we can to find the person responsible for your son’s death... Is there someone you can call to come stay with you?”

The Wootens were on their feet, too, standing hand in hand.

“Thank you,” Mr. Wooten said. “We’ll be fine. Our other children are still in the area, and we’ll call them right away. Do you... do you have any idea what Anthony was doing in Maryland?”

Rogers knew exactly what he was doing — he was plotting the assassination of the Secretary of the Interior.

“No, sir,” she told him, “no idea at all.”