The Fix

Chapter 32

They printed off the files from the flash drive and spent the rest of the day going through them at the WFO. Bogart and Milligan had joined them.

“They have a lot of clients, big and small,” observed Milligan.

Bogart added, “And most of them have been with Dabney for decades, which doesn’t make it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

“Maybe it’s one of the partners,” suggested Jamison, as she went over some pages. “A number of them have been with Dabney since nearly the beginning. He told his daughter you think you know someone but really don’t. That might apply more to a fellow partner you see every day rather than a client.”

Decker said nothing. He kept going over the files, imprinting all of the information onto his memory.

Bogart said, “If we interview each of these people and companies, it could take months, maybe a year. And by then whatever intel was stolen could be used to attack us.”

Decker still said nothing. He was hearing everything that was being said, but his focus was on the files. Bogart was right. They had to cut this list down somehow. The answer might not even lie in these pages. Dabney might have been referring to someone outside his business. And while Decker believed that the comment Dabney had made to his daughter was connected to all this, he couldn’t be absolutely certain of that either.

Milligan dropped a file, sat back, and said, “I hope we’re not whistling in the wind here.”

Decker glanced over at him, then abruptly rose and left the room. The others didn’t notice right away.

A few moments later Bogart said, “Wait a minute, where did he go?”

Jamison just looked toward the doorway and shook her head.

“You know I can’t really come running every time you call me.”

Harper Brown was staring at Decker across the front seat of her BMW.

“You tend to show up when you want to show up,” said Decker, who was in the passenger seat.

She ran her fingers over the steering wheel. “Your call was intriguing, I have to admit.”

Decker just stared at her, making no move to speak.

“You have quite the gift of patience, waiting for the other person to speak, and maybe slip up.”

Decker put his hands over his belly. “Do you want to slip up?”

“Why in the world would you say that?”

“You seem to have been skirting around the edges ever since you showed up in the middle of this investigation.”

“It’s dinner time. You hungry?”

“Look at me. I’m always hungry.”

“I know a burger place,” she said.

“You don’t strike me as a burger sort of person.”

“You don’t really know me yet.”

They drove to the place, parked, and walked in. It was a dive, and Decker could smell the lard coming from the kitchen before he passed the first table in the small dining area.

They found a semi-private spot near the hall to the bathrooms. When the waitress came, Brown said, “Number Twelves for the table. And two Especials. Just the bottles, save the dishwashers some work.”

The woman nodded and walked off. A moment later they could hear her calling out the order to the cooks in the back.

“Number Twelve?” said Decker.

“Trust me, you’ll love it.” She leaned back in her chair, stretched out her long, jean-clad legs, and looked at him. “Slip-ups?”

“You open the tap and then turn it off. You tease. You play bad, then good. You sort of agree to help, but pull back. You threaten to kick us off the case, but won’t or can’t make good on it.”

She shrugged. “Just trying to do my job.”

“Bogart checked on you with a buddy of his at DIA.”

“Good for him.”

“He didn’t know you. Never heard of you.”

“Where is this ‘buddy’ assigned at DIA? We operate in over one hundred and forty locations overseas in addition to a big footprint here.”

“DISC in Reston.”

“Defense Intelligence Support Center. He’s probably a civvie and a paper pusher. I’m neither. And are you somehow implying that I don’t work at DIA?”

“Your badge and creds look real.”

“That’s because they are.”

“I’m not saying you’re a phony. They never would have allowed you inside Hoover if your creds were fake.”

“So what exactly are you saying?” snapped Brown.

“That you’re interesting, and I still don’t know what you’re actually after.”

“I thought I made that perfectly clear. Whoever Dabney sold the secrets to. That’s who I’m after.”

“Made any progress?” asked Decker.

“What, you’re here to try to ride my coattails?”

“Just interagency cooperation.”

She smiled and said demurely, “I’m sorry, and I know you’ve been dancing around this issue, but I don’t remember saying that I needed your help.”

“Everybody needs help once in a while.”

Their beers came and they each took a long sip.

“So you’re here to help me?” she asked, setting her bottle down. “How generous of you.”

“I don’t really care how I get to the truth, so long as I get there. I figured if we combined resources we might get there faster, instead of running on parallel tracks. Hell, you’re the one saying this could lead to an apocalypse. Excuse me for taking you at your word.”

She took another sip of her beer and then rubbed her mouth with a napkin. “Okay, I get the point. But I did try to explain why I was reluctant to bring others into the loop.”

“I’m not a damn spy, Brown! I just got to this town a few months ago. Your world is stranger to me than living on Mars would be, but I just want to get to the truth. That’s all.”

She considered this and said, “Okay, where do things stand with your investigation?”

“We have two angles to exploit: Dabney’s end and Berkshire’s background.”

“I told you I’m only interested in Dabney.”

“But you might be interested in Berkshire. Or at least you should be.”

She looked intrigued. “And why is that?”

“If someone blackmailed Dabney to kill Berkshire, they could be the same people he sold the secrets to, or someone who knew about it and used it to manipulate Dabney. If that’s correct, then that party is looped into this whole espionage circle and could be a national security threat. That’s right up your alley.”

They didn’t say another word until their food arrived a couple minutes later. Decker stared down at a double-stacked burger with thick bacon strips, two fried onion rings, and a fried egg topping it all, with a large steak knife drilled right through the middle of it. A giant mound of fries was delivered along with the burger.

He looked up from the meal to Brown. “You’re really going to eat this? You weigh, what, one-twenty? And you look like fat wouldn’t dare attach itself to you.”

She plucked a fry from the stack and bit half off. “Genetic gift, a fabulous metabolism. Plus, I work out, a little.”

“Right, a little.”

They began to eat. She poured ketchup onto a small plate in the middle of the table and said, “Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you’re right. How would you attack the problem?”

“Dig on both ends. We met today and discussed going at it from the two angles like I said. Maybe we get lucky and end up meeting in the middle.”

She took a bite of her burger, while Decker chewed on an onion ring.

She said, “Dabney’s end has a lot of potential suspects. Guy’s had a long career in the industry.”

“It was suggested that it might be somewhat like Strangers on a Train. The third party who has a beef against Berkshire gets Dabney to kill their enemy in exchange for their not revealing what he’s done. Dabney may have no connection to Berkshire at all.”

“He obviously had no idea we were already on to him,” said Brown thoughtfully. “Or he would have known that the game was over.”

“If he had known that, he might not have bothered to kill Berkshire.”

“Or you could be totally wrong and he did have a connection with Berkshire, only you haven’t found it yet.”

“Perfectly true,” said Decker, taking a huge bite of his burger. He dipped a fry into the ketchup, ate it, and then wiped his fingers on his paper napkin. “But we have to start somewhere. And if that is the case, we should turn that up when we look into their backgrounds, especially Berkshire’s.”

“But you have no leads right now,” she said.

“We have a clown,” said Decker.

She had taken a sip of beer and almost spit it out. “Come again?”

He told her about the possibility of the clown being the signal for Dabney.

“Let’s finish up here and go some place we can talk in private,” she said.

“Like where?”

“Like my place.”

After they finished their meals and she paid, Harper drove them to a street full of old high-dollar row houses that looked newly renovated. It was a couple blocks off Capitol Hill. She pulled into a space and cut the engine.

Decker looked out the car window. “Nice area.”

“Yeah, it is.”

She got out and led him to the front steps of a three-story house with a façade of white-painted brick with another wing fronted by stone. The door was solid wood and looked about a century old. There was a gas lamppost in the small front yard, which was enclosed by a three-foot-high wrought iron fence. She opened the door and turned off the alarm. Decker followed her inside.

The interior was warm and inviting, the furnishings tastefully selected, the rugs thick and subtly patterned and colorful. The walls were brick in some places, stone in others, and solid plaster in still others. What looked like original oil paintings hung on several walls.

Brown led Decker into a small study off a kitchen that was outfitted with stainless steel appliances, granite counters, a pot filler over the Viking range, and cabinets that looked straight out of a Tuscan villa. She poured herself a scotch from a small bar set against one wall and asked Decker if he wanted one.

“Scotch isn’t really my thing.”

She sat down across from him in a leather wing chair. She picked up a remote on a side table, pressed a button, and a fire burst forth in the stone fireplace situated in the center of one wall.

She took off her holster and set her gun down on the table next to her. She slipped off her shoes, curled her legs up under her, and cradled her drink.

“You must be wondering how a federal agent can afford a place like this,” she said. “And the BMW.”

“Never crossed my mind.”

She smiled. “Ever heard of Hewlett-Packard?”

“Me and a few billion other people.”

“My great-grandfather was one of the earliest investors in HP and about six other now — Fortune 500 companies. He set up a trust fund. I also inherited money from him. When my parents died, I inherited still more. This house actually belonged to my grandfather.”

“Must be nice.”

“It is nice. I feel very fortunate.”

He eyed the Beretta. “But you obviously didn’t take the path of living off your money and doing nothing else with your life.”

“I came by that naturally. My father was military. Maxed out as a full colonel. He was in Vietnam, two Purples and a Bronze. He was a helluva soldier.”

“That’s impressive, Agent Brown.”

“Just make it Harper. We’re off duty, Amos. My father was the reason I joined up. He could have sat back and lived off money he didn’t earn too. But he decided to put on the uniform and serve.”

“So you were in the military?”

“Technically, I still am. Army. Did two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“What was your job?”

“EOD specialist.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Sorry, we tend to talk in acronyms. Explosive ordnance disposal specialist. I defused unexploded bombs and IEDs.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Everything over there was dangerous. It was dangerous waking up and it was dangerous going to sleep. And it was dangerous for everything in between.”

“I can see that. Is that what your dad did in the military?”

“No. He thought I was a nut job for joining the EOD. But I was really good at it.” She took a sip of her drink. “So, back to the case. You proposed an arrangement of some type?”

“I think working together makes sense. But you obviously wanted to talk in private, which is why we’re here.” He sat back and eyed her expectantly.

She rubbed her bare foot and took a few moments to marshal her thoughts.

“The secrets that Dabney sold were critical to the security of this country. Without going into too much detail, he may have divulged a back door into some of our most important cyber-security platforms.”

“Wait a minute! You told me before that these stolen secrets had to do with tanks and planes and stuff terrorists couldn’t afford to build.”

She sipped her scotch. “That was before I knew you better.”

“So you lied.”

“I used a standard tactic to allow me sufficient opportunity to calculate your trustworthiness.”

“So you lied,” Decker said again.

“But now I’m telling you how it really is. We have unauthorized back doors into our intelligence platforms.”

“Which means they’re hackable?”

“Which means they’ve probably already been hacked.”

“But now that you know about the theft, can you take steps to prevent further damage?”

“Easier said than done. The thing is, we don’t know precisely when Dabney conveyed the secrets. Thus whoever he sold them to could have already installed malware or spyware on the systems. We can’t shut everything down. And secrets may already have been stolen and national security compromised.”

Decker nodded. “I can see the problem.”

“No, I don’t think you do. I wish they had simply stolen stuff on tanks and planes. That takes a long time to build. This... this can be used against us immediately. In fact, it may already have been used against us. We could be sitting on a time bomb right now and have no idea where it is or when it’s going to go off.” She added coolly, “What do you think about that?”

“I think I’ll take that scotch now.”

She rose and poured it out for him before settling back down in her chair. Decker took a small sip of the drink and let it burn down his throat.

“How do you know exactly what Dabney stole?” he asked.

She drank some scotch before answering. “I have a DIA top secret clearance with an SCI, or Sensitive Compartmented Information, access kicker. Anyone at CIA or NSA with those security clearances from their agencies would not be allowed to know that information, because that’s just how our world works. There’s no reciprocity on that score.”

“Which is your polite way of telling me you can’t answer my question.”

She held up her glass in affirmation of his statement. “But what I can tell you is that we are satisfied that we’re correct in what was stolen. We just don’t know who has it, or how long they’ve had it. Or what they’ve done with it.”

“So how do we work this together?”

“Can you really remember everything?”

“More or less. Emphasis on the more.”

“How many people were in the restaurant tonight?”

Decker clicked through his frames. “Fourteen, not counting us or the staff.”

“There was a guy sitting at the right side of the bar. What was he wearing?”

Decker told her, down to his sock color. Then he added, “Your odometer reading on the BMW is 24137. Do you want to know your VIN? I saw it the first time you gave me a ride, so I’ve got that too.” He recited it for her. She grabbed her purse, took out her wallet, slipped out her insurance card, and read out the VIN. Her expression said it all — Decker had been perfect.

She sat back. “That’s remarkable.”

“So, again, how do we work this? Together?”

“As I said before, Dabney interests me more than Berkshire. Do you agree?”

Decker shook his head.

“Whoever got Dabney to kill Berkshire blackmailed him to do it. That means they know about the secrets he sold. And I’m betting that they know who he sold them to. It actually might have been one and the same party. We figure out the Berkshire end, then we solve your problem too.”

She put down her scotch. “That actually makes a lot of sense.”

“So you’ll work with us on Berkshire?”

She nodded. “Yes, I will.”

“Good, I might have some information that will help.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe what Anne Berkshire used to be.”