“I think this is a monumental waste of time, Kate.”
“If that’s so, it won’t be the first time.”
“I don’t really have the budget for that sort of tiling, and officially, those apartments belong to the State Department.”
“Charge it to a renovation of the apartment, which is what we’re going to have to do when the search is over. If you have any trouble with State, let me know, and I’ll deal with it. One more thing, Hugh. Majorov says that when they were confronted, the Moores drew weapons and started firing, and that it was self-defense on the part of his people. I want to know what weapons the Moores had drawn from the station’s arsenal and if they were ever recovered.”
English looked at her for a moment. “You’re determined to get Rawls pardoned, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. I’m determined to know the truth about this. There’s more going on here than you know about, Hugh.”
English looked incredulous. “More than
I
know about? More than the fucking DDI for Operations knows about?”
“Not all the information we possess arises from your operations, Hugh. Stuff comes in from outside all the time, you know that.”
“Well, if there’s something you know, why don’t I know it?”
“Because it’s not time, yet. If we find a bug in that apartment, you’ll know everything soon. You’ll have to be content with that for the moment.”
“Right,” English said, getting to his feet and heading for the door.
“And, Hugh?”
He stopped and turned. “Yeah?”
“I want work to start on that apartment today.”
English looked at his watch. “It’s four-thirty in Stockholm now. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“I want the occupants out tonight—put them in a hotel, if necessary. I want a crew in there at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, and I want them to work ‘round the clock until they’re done. Clear?“
“Clear, Madame Director,” English said. He turned and stalked out of her office.
Kate swallowed her anger and went back to her desk. She was getting tired of swallowing her anger where Hugh English was concerned. Sooner or later, he was going to have to go. At his level, there was no sideways move for him; he either had to be promoted or fired, and the only job he could be promoted to was hers. She’d wait until Will was reelected, when there wouldn’t be as much political fallout.
40
BOB KINNEY STOOD on the doorstep of the house, wearing booties, latex gloves, and a hairnet. He hated wearing the hairnet, but it had to be done, if the scene was going to be preserved and protected from contamination.
“You ready?” the criminalist asked.
“Jack, this is the most important scene you’ve ever worked. The president has taken an interest, and I want everything done right, by the book.”
“That’s the only way I know how,” Jack replied. He nodded to his three assistants. “This is a full-scene sweep,” he said. “That means everything, and with maximum caution. Let’s go.” He turned the key, opened the front door, and stepped inside. “Uh-oh,” he said, looking around.
“What’s the matter?” Kinney asked from the doorway.
“Man, this is clean, and I mean
clean
.”
FOUR HOURS LATER, Kinney, who was sitting in a chair on the front porch, looked up to see Jack coming out of the house, stripping off his latex gloves. Kinney stood up. “You’re not done, are you?”
“Let me tell you about this house, Agent Kinney,” Jack said. “This house has been cleaned by a professional crew, maybe two or three professional crews, then it’s been wiped down by a pro.”
“You mean you found
nothing
?”
“No, I found the fingerprints of eight people on the doorknobs, on the refrigerator, and on the bathroom medicine cabinet—all the places you’d expect to find the prints of people who are considering buying a house. I’ll run them all, but I’m telling you now there is not a fingerprint, not a hair, not a ball of fluff in this house that can be used to trace your man. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Kinney sighed. “All right, if you say so. Can I go in now?”
“Yep, but wear the gear, if you want the scene preserved.”
Kinney got dressed again and pulled on the latex gloves. He walked through the front door and stood in the middle of the living room. Everything shone with cleanliness—the hardwood floors, the trim, the kitchen beyond. Only a thin layer of dust revealed the footprints of the crime scene team, and only the black fingerprint dust here and there marred the pristine cleanliness.
He walked around the house, into the bedrooms, bathrooms, and closets, encountering yet more of the obsessive cleanliness. He opened a door, flipped on a light switch, and walked down the stairs into the cellar, which was larger than he had expected, and, of course, spotlessly clean. Every corner was brightly lit by the dozen fluorescent ceiling fixtures. He looked around with some envy. This had been one hell of a workshop, one he would have been thrilled to own himself. The worktables were fixed to the walls, and the walls of the large room were lined with pegboard, which had the outlines of tens of dozens of tools meticulously painted on them. It was possible to tell from the outlines the extent of the equipment in the shop, and it was breathtaking. Teddy Fay could fix anything, Mrs. Coulter had said. Well, he certainly had owned the tools required to fix anything or, for that matter, to build anything.
“This is our guy,” Kinney said aloud to himself.
“I don’t doubt it,” Kerry Smith said from the stairs. “You ever seen anything this clean?”
“No, and neither has anybody else.”
“Quite a workshop he had, too,” Smith said, looking around.
“What have you got?” Kinney asked.
“You’re not going to like it,” the young agent replied.
“Tell me anyway.”
“There was no file on Teddy Kay among those that the CIA sent over.”
“That’s not possible, unless the Agency is holding out on us.”
“I’ve spent the last two hours on the phone with a guy in personnel over there, Harold Broward, and he swears that the Agency has no record of
anybody
named Fay ever having worked there.”
The two men stood silently, while Kinney tried to work this out.
“Not that Teddy Fay never worked there,” Kinney said finally, “but that they have no
record
of his ever having worked there?”
“That’s what Broward said.”
Kinney walked over to a wall and pointed at a receptacle. “That’s for a fast Internet connection,” he said. “Let’s suppose that our Teddy was as good at computers as he was at everything else.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that.”
“Is it possible that, while doing his job, he could have obtained the passwords necessary to erase all record of himself from the CIA’s computers?”
“Well,” said Smith, “let’s say that if he knew what he was doing and had the time, it’s not impossible.”
“Did you run a credit report?”
“I ran all three major reporting agencies. He lived in this house for thirty years, had one employer for all that time, a CIA front business, which, according to Broward, has no record of him, either. He paid off his mortgage ten years ago, had one bank account, one brokerage account, and three credit cards, all canceled by his executor upon his death.”
“His death?”
“That’s what the credit reports said. Same for his bank account, driver’s license, and Social Security account. Officially, Teddy Fay no longer exists.”
“Who was his executor?”
“The law firm of Schwartz and Schwartz, which doesn’t exist, either. The proceeds of his estate were placed in the nonexistent firm’s trust account, which was closed shortly after the funds were wire-transferred to a Cayman Islands bank, a little over a month ago.”
“In short, Teddy Fay took a deep breath and disappeared up his own ass.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Smith agreed. “And if he indeed worked at Technical Services at the CIA, then he had all the tools at hand to create a new identity—or multiple identities—for himself before he retired and disappeared.”
“You know what this says to me?” Kinney asked.
“What?”
“He intends to get away with it.”
“With all these killings? You think he expects to just walk away?”
“That’s exactly what I think. He’s not some fanatic who wants to kill a lot of people, then commit suicide by police. He’s completely rational, if not exactly sane. He’s a planner—methodical and meticulous—and he expects to walk. Otherwise why would he have cashed in and vanished?”
“This is scary,” Smith said.
“It’s worse than that. It’s depressing. Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to go and see Mrs. Coulter again, then assemble all the people on her Christmas card list who knew Fay at the Agency. Put them in my conference room. If we don’t have access to any official record of Fay, then we’ll have to rely on people who knew him.“
“Will do.”
“Get them there this afternoon, if at all possible, and send transport for anybody who needs a ride.” He took out his cell phone. “Now I’ve got to call the president.”
41
Kate got back to the family quarters at the White House a little after seven. Will was sitting in the living room watching CNN. She headed for the bar.
“Not so fast,” Will said, switching off the TV. “You’re still on duty.”
“I am? Until when?”
“Until I tell you some things. Have a seat.”
Kate sat down next to him on the sofa and kissed him.
“No kissing the commander-in-chief,” Will said.
“All right,” she replied, folding her hands in her lap. “No sexual harassment until the workday is over. Get to it. I want a drink.”
“Kinney at the FBI called this afternoon. He thinks they’ve found the killer. Well, not found him, exactly, but identified him.”
“Who is he?”
“It’s bad news.”
Kate’s face fell. “Not one of mine.”
“Yes, but fortunately, he retired before you took charge.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Theodore Fay.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell with me.”
“He was in Technical Services, so as an analyst, you probably wouldn’t have had contact with him.”
But Ed Rawls might have, she thought. As much as she hated learning that the killer was ex-CIA, she was relieved that she wasn’t going to have to deal with Rawls to find out who he was. “Is the evidence against him strong?”
“Well, that’s the problem. There isn’t any evidence just yet.”
“Then how do we know Fay is the guy?”
“First, he has all the qualifications—the skills to make the bombs and poisons. That’s apparently what he did at the Agency. Second, he’s faked his death, cashed in everything he owns, except his house, which hasn’t sold yet, and sent the proceeds out of the country. It seems likely that he would have created one or more new identities for himself before he left the Agency.”
“But how is the FBI going to connect him directly to the killings?”
“I don’t know. Maybe their lab will find something in one of the crime scenes that will connect him. Or a witness will turn up, somebody who can put him at a scene.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“This evening—right now, in fact—Kinney is assembling some retired Agency people who knew Fay. He wanted to do it earlier, but none of them would talk to the FBI without Agency approval. I want you to call Kinney’s office, speak to the group on speaker-phone, and tell them to cooperate fully.” He handed her a sheet of paper. “This is a list of their names.”
“Okay, I can do that right away.”
“Then I want you to let the FBI talk to anybody in Technical Services who can help them catch Fay.”
“Where?”
“At the Agency, where they work.”
“You want me to let FBI agents into Technical Services? My people down there would rather meet with Osama bin Laden and his boys and show them around the shop.”
“Kate, this is not about interservice rivalry, this is about catching a murderer who is an embarrassment to the CIA and to this administration. Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, two FBI agents are going to present themselves at Langley, and I want them to talk directly to anybody they need to talk to who can help them find him.”
“They don’t have to see the labs and the shops, do they?”
“They are to see anybody and anything that will help them.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it until they need something else. And there will be something else. When they catch this guy there’ll be a trial, and an appropriate person in Technical Services is going to have to testify about how he made the Vandervelt bomb and the Calhoun poison and about any other skills or devices he has employed to murder people, and when that happens, I don’t want any crap from the Agency about revealing its secrets.”
“You’re really a barrel of fun, you know that?”
“You’re talking to your commander-in-chief. Watch it”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s better. Now, are we perfectly clear on what you have to do?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then go do it, and then you can have a drink.”
Kate went meekly to the phone and made the calls. When she came back, there was a gleaming vodka martini waiting for her on the coffee table.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her.
“Hey, Will,” she said. “How was your day?”
“I’ve had worse,” he said, touching his glass to hers.
42
KINNEY WATCHED THE FACES of the five men and women sitting around his conference table as they listened to Katharine Rule Lee instruct them on cooperating with the FBI. He understood that these people had spent their working lives not talking about their work, their coworkers, or their employer, and he was hoping to see the bland defiance in their faces dissolve into something more amenable. It did not happen.
Mrs. Lee finished her instructions. “Does anybody have any questions?” she asked.
A man spoke up. “How do we know you’re who the FBI says you are?”
Mrs. Lee’s voice came back. “Call the White House switchboard and ask for me. Use the code name Huntress.”