So the FBI explained. They said they had detained Dr. Aziz as a suspected terrorist under the provisions allowed by the Patriot Act, and they did this because he was helping Iran build a nuclear weapon. And, they pointed out, Dr. Aziz confessed. He confessed because you tortured him! the congressman shouted. We didn’t torture him, the FBI said, we just didn’t let him sleep too well for a couple of days.
Then there were problems with the legally obtained intercepts. There were some questions regarding the accuracy of the translation, but the biggest problem was Owens Corning, Dr. Aziz’s employer. Owens Corning, unfortunately—at least it was unfortunate from the FBI’s perspective—utilizes high-temperature castings to make fiberglass, which is in turn used for insulating houses. Dr. Aziz was now claiming that’s what he’d
really
been talking about with his Iranian buddy—how to make fiberglass—and it was only because he was tortured that he’d said otherwise. Bullshit, the FBI said, and complex technical arguments were given to show Aziz was lying, but because the arguments could only be understood by egghead scientists, and because Dillon couldn’t let the FBI have the recording the NSA had illegally made, Dr. Aziz and his congressman eventually won the day.
But Dillon Crane was satisfied, even though Dr. Aziz would most likely win a very large judgment in his upcoming lawsuit related to all the mental and physical anguish that he’d suffered. He was satisfied because he’d identified a traitor and because the U.S. government now knew the Iranians needed a bomb-making component that they couldn’t currently buy or build. Dillon knew that this wouldn’t stop Iran from eventually building a nuclear weapon but it would slow them down, and that was the best he could do.
Dillon escorted Aaron Drexler back to his office and pointed the lawyer-scientist to a chair in front of his desk. “Coffee?” he offered. “A soft drink, perhaps?”
Drexler just shook his head, his hooded eyes taking in Dillon’s office.
“I’m curious, Mr. Drexler. What’s the relationship between Aziz and this review you’re conducting? We did everything by the book on Aziz.”
Drexler smirked and repeated the statement made in the attorney general’s office. “There are rumors the NSA knew more about Dr. Aziz’s activities than you could have possibly discovered via the legally obtained recordings submitted into evidence. The president is concerned about those rumors.”
“I see,” Dillon said, although he’d heard no such rumors, and if there had been any he certainly would have. “So exactly where would you like to start? Mi casa, su casa, as they say.”
That would be the day.
Drexler ignored the question. He was staring at a painting on one wall of Dillon’s office.
“Is that a Picasso?” he asked.
“Yes. From his blue period.”
“That’s an odd size for a print.”
“A print?” Dillon said. “Oh, no. That’s the original. My mother gave it to me when I graduated from high school.”
“Your mother gave you a Picasso? When you were eighteen?”
“Sixteen, actually. But, yes, she was quite fond of me. My brother only received a Grant Wood when he graduated, but then his grades weren’t quite as good as mine.”
Drexler frowned, not sure if Dillon was pulling his leg. He looked away from the Picasso, and said, “What I want is a random sample of a few intercepts, and all warrants and reports associated with those intercepts. To narrow things down, I’d like to see transmissions originating in the D.C. metro area on … oh, let’s say, April nineteenth. That day’s as good as any.”
Dillon Crane played poker at the professional level. Had he not done so, he was quite sure the shock of what he’d just heard would have registered on his face.
Dillon called in a few mid-level managers and had them start compiling the records Drexler asked for, and then he phoned Clyde Simmer, one of his poker-playing friends. Clyde worked at the Department of Justice.
“Do you know a man named Aaron Drexler?” Dillon asked, when Clyde came on the line. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Clyde didn’t know Drexler; Justice was a big place.
But Clyde did. “He slinks,” Clyde said.
“Pardon me?” Dillon said.
“He slinks. He’s a slinker. I mean, I really don’t know him all that well but that’s the impression I get, that he’s an arrogant bastard who slinks about looking for an opportunity to stab someone in the back. There’s something ferret-like about him, but I’ve been told he’s quite bright and not afraid to work. “
“Is that it?” Dillon said.
“Well, let’s see. I know he came to us from some other agency, some odd place for a lawyer to have come from, but I can’t remember which one.”
“The Pentagon,” Dillon said.
“Yes, that’s it. The rumor was that he came to us under a cloud of some sort and we wouldn’t have normally hired him, but his wife’s family was cozy with the fool who was attorney general at the time. Not Scranton, but the fool before him. I can find out more if you’d like, Dillon.”
“No, don’t bother. If I need to know anything else I’m fairly certain I can obtain the information.”
Dillon wondered if Clyde appreciated the understatement.
Claire didn’t understand why Dillon was wasting her time telling her about this man Drexler. So what if he was doing a review to see if they were complying with FISA? The head of the NSA didn’t know what Dillon was doing; there was no way some outsider from Justice was going to find anything. And right now she was up to her ass with a million other things and she didn’t have time to deal with nonsense like this.
“Dillon,” she said, “what does this have to do with me?”
“Claire, Mr. Drexler has asked to see the transmissions we intercepted in the D.C. area on the day Paul Russo was killed. He pretended he was selecting a random date and place for this so-called spot check he’s doing, but I would assume his selection wasn’t the least bit random.”
Claire sat for a moment, stunned—just as stunned as Dillon had been when Drexler had told him what he wanted. Then she said, “Aw, shit!” Then she said it again, “Aw, shit, Dillon, what did I do? I must have screwed up. I must have tripped an alarm somewhere.”
“Yes,” Dillon said quietly, “I think you did.”
Dillon, in spite of his life-is-but-a-game attitude, took mistakes made by his subordinates quite seriously.
“But what?” Claire said. “What could I have done that would have told anyone we were looking into Russo? Mostly all I’ve done is record searches, background checks on Hopper, the tomb guards, that sort of thing. I wonder if Hopper could have spotted the surveillance we have on him.” She was thinking about the agent she suspected might have a drinking problem—and kicking herself for not pulling him immediately off the detail.
“Possibly,” Dillon said. He paused before he added, “Claire, what was the name of that agent who died recently? That young woman?”
“What?” Claire said, confused for an instant by the question. “Her name was Alberta Merker. She had a heart attack.” Then Claire realized what Dillon was getting at. “The fingerprints? You think they caught on to us when I had that soldier fingerprinted?”
“Either that or when you accessed the fingerprint files. I believe you said the files were flagged.”
“Are you saying you think Alberta was killed by these guys?” Before Dillon could answer, Claire said, “I
know
she had a heart attack, Dillon. She was autopsied by one of the docs we use. And because she was an agent, I had them do a complete tox screen on her. She had a heart attack. She had a family history of heart problems.”
“I don’t know if she was murdered or not, Claire, but the fact that she took the man’s fingerprints and died soon afterward is probably not something we should assume to be a coincidence.”
“What does this have to do with Drexler?”
Normally Claire would have been able to answer that question without any help from Dillon, but he could tell she was having a hard time concentrating. She had just been told it was possible that one of her agents had been killed in the line of duty—and Claire had never lost an agent before. Dillon knew how devastating that could be, even for someone so seemingly cold-blooded.
“Well, this is what I think is going on,” Dillon said. “Whoever killed Russo knows somebody is investigating his death and they suspect it might be us, the NSA. Why they suspect this I don’t know, but they do. And so they sent in Drexler, and his job is most likely threefold: to confirm the NSA is aware of Russo; to determine exactly what we know; and, most important, to determine who at the NSA knows about Russo.”
“But what does this have to do with Alberta?”
“It may have nothing to do with Alberta. She may have simply had a heart attack. But what if they identified Alberta, questioned her, and
then
she had a heart attack?”
“Are you saying they tortured her, Dillon? If you are, I don’t buy it. Her autopsy didn’t show anything like that. And if they did torture her, she must not have told them anything.”
“I agree with your last conclusion,” Dillon said. “If she had told them anything, Mr. Drexler probably wouldn’t be here.”
What Dillon meant, but didn’t say, was that if Alberta had told anyone about the Russo intercept, Claire Whiting might have found herself strapped to a chair watching someone extract her long, polished fingernails.
“So what are you doing about Drexler?” Claire asked.
“I’m complying with his request, of course.”
“You’re what?”
“I’ve given him all the transmissions we intercepted in the D.C. area on the night in question—verbal, e-mail, and text. The legal intercepts, that is.” Dillon laughed. “Drexler had no idea how much information he was asking for. I’ve buried the poor fellow in electronic files and paper. Then, to make his job even harder, I’ve told him we’re behind schedule transcribing some of the conversations we’ve recorded—I didn’t tell him the computers do most of the transcribing—so he’s going to have to listen to hours of garbled, barely audible transmissions. It’ll take Mr. Drexler weeks to review everything I’ve given him.”
“I don’t get it, Dillon. Why would Drexler even think you’d give him an illegal intercept, whether it was related to Russo or any other case?”
“He may think he swooped down on us so fast that we wouldn’t have time to separate the legal from the illegal. But I suspect Mr. Drexler knows it’s unlikely that the Russo intercept is lying in the stacks of files I’ve given him. I think this is just his opening salvo, and what he’s doing is getting the lay of the land. He’s trying to figure out how we operate and who does what, and what he’s really looking for is the people who might have listened to a transmission of Russo being killed.”
“Then he’s wasting his time. He’ll never identify the techs who work for me by reviewing authorized wire taps and, if by some fluke he did, none of them would talk.”
“If Mr. Drexler asked them politely, I’m sure they wouldn’t, Claire. But how long do you think the redoubtable Gilbert would resist if somebody connected a car battery to his—uh—manly appendage?”
Claire reluctantly nodded her head in agreement. A couple of bitch slaps to the head, and Gilbert would give up his own mother.
“So what are we going to do?”
“I’ll keep an eye on Mr. Drexler,” Dillon said. “What you need to do, and quickly, is figure out why Russo was killed and who ordered the killing.”
“I know that!” Claire snapped. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”
“I also think you need to do a little research on Mr. Drexler. A friend of mine has given me reason to believe that there might be a skeleton or two lurking in his closet.”
“Okay,” Claire said, rising from her chair, anxious to be on her way.
“Oh, and one other thing,” Dillon said. “Your idea to use Mr. DeMarco? I think you should proceed with that.”
Claire Whiting wasn’t the type to pump her fist into the air and shout, “Yes!” She simply nodded her head but Dillon saw the gleam in her eyes. She made him think of a cat creeping up on an inattentive canary.
“This is Joseph DeMarco, Agent Hopper, and I wanted you to know that—”
“No, no!” Claire said. “You have the voice down, the New York accent and all, but the … the
tone
is wrong. He’s not so formal. He’s sort of laid back. And if he was pissed, it’d be more like: Hey, Hopper, this is DeMarco, and I just found out—Do you understand?”
“I guess,” the impersonator said. He could imitate almost anyone, including most females. At Christmas parties, after a couple of drinks, he’d do an impression of the president and his wife talking after sex that was so funny that even Claire laughed. At this point she didn’t know what she wanted him to tell Hopper but, when she did know, she wanted the impersonator to be ready.
“Go practice some more,” she said.
Claire needed to spook Hopper.
She needed to make him run, literally, to whoever was controlling him and the best way she could think to do that and keep the agency’s involvement secret was to use DeMarco. If she could get Hopper to meet his boss, that would be ideal. The other possibility was that Hopper would call his boss and his boss would decide to do something about DeMarco. They—whomever Hopper was working with—had already killed Russo and most likely the reporter, Hansen. They’d kill DeMarco, too, if they had to. So she would put people on DeMarco and when they tried to kill him or snatch him, she’d follow whoever was assigned—and try to protect DeMarco as best she could.
DeMarco. Again, records could only tell you so much, but the impression she had was: average guy, maybe
below
-average guy. He was a lawyer and had passed the Virginia bar, but had never practiced law. He was a GS-13—a rank that wasn’t all that impressive in D.C.—and had been one for a long time, meaning that his career had most likely stalled. He had an office in the subbasement of the Capitol—the location of his office another indicator that he wasn’t a power player—but he wasn’t on the staff of any member of the House or Senate. So she couldn’t figure out exactly what he did but finally decided it didn’t really matter. He was just some sort of low-level legal weenie stuck in a dead-end job.