30
SEAN WAS SEATED ACROSS FROM Mary Hesse at a restaurant in Chantilly, Virginia. She was in her mid-forties, attractive with dark hair and a slim figure. She seemed to have a problem making eye contact with Sean. She wore glasses but kept taking them off and wiping the lenses with her napkin.
Nerves all around, observed Sean.
“So you worked with Sam Wingo?” he prompted for the second time. This was shaping up to be like pulling teeth, he thought. But in situations like this patience was a virtue even though it felt like an ulcer.
She nodded. “Sam was a really nice guy. It was just—” She broke off, looking slightly dazed.
“It was just what?”
He put a hand across and tapped her wrist. “Ms. Hesse, I know this is hard. But as I told you on the phone I’m working with Sam’s son, Tyler.”
“Sam spoke of him all the time. He was really proud,” she said.
“I’m sure he was. Tyler is a great kid. But he’s terribly worried about his dad.”
“They said he had been killed in Afghanistan.”
“We don’t believe that to be true. And I think you were about to say that you thought something was off about Sam, weren’t you?”
She looked surprised at his observation. “How did you—”
“I’m former Secret Service. We get really good at reading body language.”
“Well, he just appeared one day at DTI. No one had seen him previously. No one that I knew had even interviewed him for the job. And while we’re not that big a company we do have certain protocols.”
“And these weren’t followed with Wingo?”
“They didn’t appear to have been followed,” she corrected.
“What else?”
“He spoke Dari and Pashto, but not, well, not at the level of the other people at the firm.”
“But I understood he was a salesman. He drummed up business for the company.”
“We don’t need drumming, Mr. King. We’re swamped, even with the winding down of the wars in the Middle East. There’s still a large military footprint. And commercial companies are starting to go there. They all need translators.”
“So business is booming and you don’t need salesmen. So what was Wingo doing for you?”
At this simple question Hesse seemed perplexed. “I’m not really sure.”
“You’re not really sure? You told me you worked with him.”
Her face paled, and for an instant Sean thought she might be sick.
“Take a sip of water and catch your breath,” he advised.
She gulped some water and wiped her mouth with her napkin.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “You see, he wasn’t really working for us.”
“So what was he doing?”
“I was teaching him Pashto and Dari. At least building on what he already knew.”