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
CONFIDENTIAL
FOR DIRECTOR’S EYES ONLY
He scrolled to the body of the report, where keywords and phrases caught his attention:
High level of sophistication...
Offender went to great lengths to obtain confidential information, specifically Director’s home address...
Conclusion/Threat assessment:
High risk level.
Recommendations/Options:
1-Place security detail on high alert;
2-Assign additional HRT operators to members of Director’s family;
3-Initiate 24/7 surveillance on Director’s home;
4-Review current security procedures at Director’s residence;
5-Restrict Director’s access and movements;
6-Perform frequent sweeps of HQ for weapons of mass destruction, i. e., explosive, chemical, biological devices;
7-Launch comprehensive investigation immediately, to include a warrant to secure the retrieval of all phone LUDs of Anthony Scarponi, visitor logs to Scarponi at Petersburg, and an interrogation of Scarponi;
8-Employ electronic surveillance methods in accordance with Bureau procedure and regulations memo G98Q;
9-Comply with offender demands per threat letter (inconsistent with standard Bureau protocols outlined in MIOG).
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.
Hector DeSantos entered the situation room, his Coach leather attaché in hand. Brian Archer was sitting at the conference table, papers scattered beside his laptop. His hair was a disheveled mess and he was huddled over a document, tracing a portion of it with a pencil and an index finger.
“Brian,” DeSantos said, “I’m sorry—”
“You’re sorry you’re late again,” Archer said without lifting his eyes from the page. “I know, Maggie kept pulling you back into bed for another go-round and you couldn’t break away.” He looked up at DeSantos. “Or is it that you slept late because the alarm didn’t go off? Or did you drop your keys down the sewer—”
“All right, all right. Point taken.”
“At least you’re not bullshitting me by saying it won’t happen again.”
DeSantos took a seat next to Archer and handed him a piece of Juicy Fruit.
“What is this, a peace offering?” Archer took the gum, folded it into his mouth, and nodded at the paper-strewn table. “The computer finished decrypting the first NSA document.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.” Archer selected a paper from amongst the maelstrom of pages on the table and handed it to DeSantos. He took the document and read from it: “CARD Report. Memogen Project confirmed with SCP. Subject Scarponi is an ideal blank blank. Blank blank blank excellent proposal. Cooperation with blank blank blank blank is required. Approval blank assistance blank blank blank. Blank blank secret.’” DeSantos looked up from the document, his brow knitted with consternation. “Three days of word crunching and that’s all it came up with?”
“It’s a little incomplete.”
DeSantos tossed the page onto the table. “A
little
incomplete?”
“Our decryption software isn’t that swift.”
“You mean it sucks.”
“It needs work,” Archer corrected. “But that’s why we have the NSA.”
“Yeah, but in this case we can’t give it to NSA because that’s where we got it from in the first place. They’ll know their own code.”