The Hunted

44

Jonathan Waller slammed the phone down and cursed under his breath. He checked his watch, which read 7:05 p.m. “Why does this shit happen to me?” he spat into the still air of his office. “My one night off in a week and I get a call.”

He grabbed the down elevator and within five minutes was approaching Haviland in the parking garage of the Washington Field Office. He was walking fast, the rapidity of his speech matching his stride. “Just got a call from Martinson at the Academy. Aside from a morning session, Agent Thompson didn’t make any of his classes today.”

“And what did Harper have to say about it?” Haviland asked, running to keep up with his partner.

“I can’t find him.”

“As in…”

“As in no one’s seen him, he’s not in his room, and he signed out his Glock from the vault.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

“What about his log-on codes? Has he logged onto the mainframe at all today?”

“Good thought. If he has, it’ll help us pin down his movements during the day.”

“And it may give us a clue as to what’s going on in his head.”

A moment later, they were in their car, headed toward I-95 South and Quantico, Virginia.

It was almost 9 p.m. when Payne walked up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the main entrance to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Orange traffic cones lined the curb encircling the entire city block, and cement planters were placed in front of the wide steps that led to each of the entrances. Although these measures were security precautions taken to combat terrorism against federal buildings, they isolated FBI headquarters from the neighboring structures and government agencies and gave it a sterile appearance.

Payne recalled the Bureau regulations that governed admittance to headquarters: anyone entering the building without an escort had to have a top secret security clearance and a special building pass. Since he had been in and out of the building before to meet with Knox, he already had clearance. And Knox himself had provided the building pass when Payne’s credentials were returned to him, in anticipation of future meetings.

As he pushed on the door to the entrance, he clipped the laminated pass to his jacket and pulled his shield from his pocket. He was immediately approached by Chuck Seamen, the FBI policeman, who recognized him from his prior trips to headquarters.

“How you doing, sir?” Seamen asked.

“Was hoping to turn in early tonight, but Director Knox wanted me to meet him here. I’m exhausted, that’s how I’m doing.” Payne closed his credentials case and shoved it into his jacket pocket. “How’s your evening?”

“Quiet so far, which is fine with me.”

“I hear you,” Payne said with a smile.

“You say you’re here to meet with the Director?” Seamen said to Payne’s back as he placed his gun, keys, and a small box on the conveyor belt.

“Yeah, he said to meet him here in an hour. I’m a little early.”

Seamen thumbed through the logbook and found the next vacant line as Payne walked through the metal detector.

“What’s in the box?” Seamen asked as he examined the innards of the electronic device on the X-ray monitor.

“Descrambler, for the Director. That’s what the meeting’s about.” Payne took the pen, signed in, listed the director’s office as his destination, and wrote in his pass number. He swiped his ID card and passed through the electronic turnstile.

“Thanks, Chuck,” he said as he headed toward the bank of elevators.

A bell clanged, indicating the car’s arrival. The doors slid open and Payne stepped inside. He left the elevator on the seventh floor and headed down a back hallway toward Mahogany Row. By taking this route to the director’s suite, it allowed him to bypass the security station. However, it meant he had to have a six-digit code for the keypad outside Knox’s office.

The keypad, though, was the least of his problems. With the descrambler he had appropriated from the electronics lab at Hogan’s Alley before leaving for headquarters, entry to the director’s office would merely be a temporary annoyance.

The more significant problem was one he could not have planned for: through the small fireproof window in the door, he saw lights on in Knox’s office and two bodies seated in chairs in front of the desk. Surprisingly, the director was still there, apparently in a meeting.

Payne could stay and wait around for him to leave, but the longer he remained in the building the greater the chance that he would be questioned as to his intentions.

Payne leaned against the mahogany paneling and tried to regroup. There wasn’t anything specific he had hoped to find when he decided to break into Knox’s office. Payne was gambling that a thorough search of the suite would tell him why he was being monitored, and why his contacts with the outside world were being controlled. He wanted a look at the bigger picture, not the pixel by pixel account he was getting.

But now his strategy would have to be altered.

He took the elevator down to the basement, where the Computer Analysis Response Team, or CART, was located. He saw the touch pad on the far wall and glanced around the corridor as he approached. It was empty. A camera was mounted on the ceiling behind him, aimed at the CART entrance. If he was good, and lucky — in that order — he could attach the descrambler and block the camera’s view with his body. That was the part that demanded considerable skill. But he would have to work fast and hope that security was not watching its monitors too closely. That’s where the luck part came in.

In a matter of seconds, without looking down or breaking stride, Payne removed the device from its box. He walked up to the keypad and pried off the front of the panel with his fingernail. He slapped the descrambler onto the microelectronic innards and waited while it went through its routine. He shielded the device from the camera, while moving his fingers slowly, as if he were punching in a number. If a guard glanced at his monitor, he wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. However, if he was intently watching, he would realize that it was taking the person on his screen a ridiculously long time to enter his code.

Finally, the red LED light on his descrambler went green. With his left hand he pulled down on the door handle, and with his right he removed the device and snapped the cover back on the touch pad. He was in.

After the door clicked shut behind him, Payne felt the rush of cool air and heard the whirring hum of the large air-conditioning system. He passed through the data center and moved toward the back of the suite. He stepped through a glass door and entered a room filled with cubicles, each one sporting a computer terminal. He looked around and noticed a few people working late at their desks, poking at keys and thumbing through manuals.

Payne walked down a couple of aisles and chose a vacant terminal. After settling into the seat, he began the log-on sequence. Realizing it would likely be difficult to break into the director’s files on the mainframe, and that the server administrator would immediately begin to monitor his movements should he attempt to do so, he decided to try a different approach. He logged in using his Academy pass code, the one he had been given to access portions of the Scarponi trial transcripts.

Again breaking his situation down to the barest common denominators, he came back to Knox and Scarponi. Figuring that obtaining information on Scarponi would be comparatively easy, he logged on to Division Six’s database, hoping to locate a psychological profile on the famed assassin. Although he was not entirely sure of what he was looking for, he hoped that one document might contain information that would lead him to another document, and so on.

During the next fifteen minutes, he crawled through hundreds of folders and files on the Division Six server. There were a variety of official records, some preceded by the word SECRET prominently displayed in large red letters across the top. Payne skimmed through the first paragraph of each of the reports — some of which would have been fascinating reading on another day and time: domestic terrorism-risk assessments, NSA encryption analyses, and a host of internal reports from the division. Serial-killer profiles. Criminal investigative analyses. Search warrant requests.

And a threat assessment prepared for Director Douglas Knox re Agent Harper Payne.

Payne looked around, over his shoulder and past the other terminals that sat to each side of him. He leaned in close to the screen and began to read. The cover page was splattered with the large, red-lettered words

He scrolled to the body of the report, where keywords and phrases caught his attention:

Payne paged down and found a scanned copy of the letter Knox had received at his house. One part caught and held his attention: “HARPER PAYNE. DEAD OR ALIVE, YOUR CHOICE. FAIL TO DELIVER HIM AND YOU’LL PLACE CERTAIN PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE AT RISK.” He stared at it until his eyes began to burn. Melissa Knox had been kidnapped, and then returned. It was a message. A message that Knox had better cooperate or next time she would be killed.

Payne buried his face in his hands, then began massaging his forehead to ease the emerging headache. Between lack of sleep and the stress he was under, the headache was not surprising — and was certainly the least of his problems. But he did not have time for it. The pieces to what was happening to him were starting to come together… as was his understanding of the players, the issues, and the rules of the game.

But more needed to be done.

He logged off the terminal, walked out of the data center, and in a daze, headed down the corridor toward the elevators.

His mind was a snowstorm of thoughts, swirling furiously. With each thought grappling for immediate attention, he fought to focus. Once more he reduced the situation to its fundamental roots: faced with choosing between the safety of his family or a former agent with a damaged mind, Knox would toss aside his Bureau hat and his fathering instincts would control his actions. FBI director or not, he was, above all else, a human being, a husband and father.

To what extent would he go to find other alternatives… such as focusing Bureau resources on taking Scarponi down to render the threat inconsequential? Knox would definitely go to great lengths to try. If nothing else, to give the appearance of a convincing effort. But even if he really pushed, how successful would he be against one of the most prolific and successful contract assassins in history — one who had escaped capture for years, even with the vast resources of the international law enforcement community trained on him?

And what did Payne know about Knox? Had his life been devoted to government service? Was he the kind of man who wouldn’t compromise his morals and duties to protect his family? Payne kept coming back to that question. Even if Knox did not plan on having Payne killed — or the equivalent, arranging for him to be unknowingly placed into Scarponi’s sights — there were other ways for Knox to meet the gist of the hit man’s demands.

He could discredit me. Leak the amnesia story to the press, deny it publicly, and put me on the witness stand to fend for myself. By withholding key information about the undercover operation, he’d make me look bad under cross-examination. It would just about guarantee a not-guilty verdict for Scarponi — who could never be tried again for the same charges. Case closed. Harper Payne, a discredited and useless former agent left to fend for himself. That’s why Knox pushed for an expedited trial date: to lessen the chance I’d get my memory back in time to testify.

I’m a pawn.

How deeply are Waller and Haviland involved?

Payne was massaging his temples again, fighting to contain his anger, when the elevator doors slid open. He walked past Chuck Seamen without seeing or acknowledging him.

“I thought you had a meeting with the Director.”

The voice came from behind him. He turned, his mind still a blizzard of thoughts. It was Waller, standing with Haviland near the bank of elevators.

“What are you doing here?” Payne asked, his brow arched downward and his hands clenched at his side.

“We were going to ask you the same thing,” Haviland said.

“I had a meeting with—”

“Yeah, we heard,” Waller said, a penetrating stare locked on Payne’s eyes. “Director’s in a meeting. He asked us to bring you to his home. He’ll be along in a little while.” Waller motioned toward the elevators. “Car’s in the garage.”

“I’ve got my own,” Payne said, turning toward the door.

“No, you’ve got Agent Ginsberg’s,” Waller said, forcing a smile. “You were obviously paying attention during the class on vehicular theft.”

“We have to talk, Harper,” Haviland said.

He sensed the firmness in Haviland’s voice. Payne stepped forward and joined them as they strode into the elevator. Not until the doors clamped shut did he realize he was losing the control over his life he had fought so hard to regain. With uneasiness beginning to well up inside his chest, he took a few deep breaths to try to make it go away. But as hard as he fought the emotion, a recurring thought was flooding his mind.

Bad things were about to happen.