“Sorry, Colonel, this was all done in a rush.”
“Of course it was, which is why this guy is sitting here. And when you rush you screw up, but that’s not my problem. It’s yours.”
He hit some more keys.
“Okay, we have fifteen possibilities.” He glanced at Decker. “Aren’t you going to write any of this down?”
“I’m good,” said Decker.
Carter visibly rolled his eyes, gave Brown a seething look, and turned back to the screen.
* * *
Hours later they had run through all of the whistleblower files. Brown turned to Decker and said, “I didn’t see anything helpful. Not even any of the peripheral players could be Berkshire.”
Decker nodded. He turned to Carter. “There’s a mistake in your files.”
“Impossible,” barked Carter.
“Frame sixty-four and frame two hundred and seventeen. Sixty-four says Denise Turner was stationed in Islamabad in July 2003. Frame two hundred and seventeen says it was Faisalabad. You might want to pick one.”
Decker got up and walked out.
Carter hit some keys and brought up the frames in question.
“He was right,” said Brown thoughtfully as she looked at the screen.
“Sonofabitch got lucky,” Carter shot back.
“Don’t believe that for a minute.”
She rose.
Carter said, “Who the hell is that guy?”
Brown stared after Decker. “Still trying to figure that out myself, Colonel.”
CHAPTER
36
DECKER WAS WAITING for her outside the room. He leaned against the wall, his hands shoved into his pants pockets.
She said, “I think you shook up the good colonel.”
“Yeah, look, could there be any other whistleblower cases out there? Maybe that no one knows about?”
“I don’t see how. The whole point of being a whistleblower is that you blow the whistle and come forward. So we would have a record of it.”
Decker sighed and closed his eyes.
Brown said, “By the way, did you spot any other mistakes in there?”
“Nine. Nothing substantive, so I decided to let the ‘good colonel’ find them.”
“You’re a real piece of work. But Carter is also an asshole, so it’s no skin off my nose.”
“So not a whistleblower, then,” said Decker, opening his eyes.
“Apparently not, unless she did something unrelated to the defense sector or DIA. That’s possible.”
“Bogart is looking into that.”
“So where do we go from here?”
Decker looked around. “How about you talk to me about your world.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
She considered this and said, “Okay, follow me.”
She led him down the hall and into her office. It was small, utilitarian, and had no windows. And there wasn’t a scrap of paper on the desk. Just a small laptop.
By way of explanation she said, “We don’t like paper much. And we don’t like windows. Surveillance issues, you know.”
She pointed to a chair, which Decker took. She sat behind her desk.
“What do you want to know?”
“What can you tell me?”
“How about the very beginning? Robert McNamara created DIA when he was SecDef under the Kennedy administration.”
“McNamara. Right, and later he did such a great job managing Vietnam.”
“I’m just giving you the facts, I’m not providing commentary.”
“What’s your principal role here?”
“Intelligence gathering. We use HUMINT to get there, unlike some other agencies.”
“Human intelligence, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Do you operate only internationally?”
“Why would that make sense when so much of what’s going on now happens domestically?”
“So you operate in this country?”
“It’s no secret.”
“Have there been changes in how you do things?”
“Where is this going, Decker?”
“In the direction of the truth, one would hope.”
“Whose truth?”
“Any truth works for me right now.”
“You saying you don’t think I’m telling the truth?”
In answer he pointed to a small poster tacked to the wall behind her. It was a DIA recruitment poster.
Decker read off the words printed on it: “You speak the language and live the culture. You could be anybody, anywhere.”
He dropped his gaze to look at her. “Are you anybody anywhere?”
“I could just say it comes with the territory.”
“Yeah, you could. Or you could go farther than that. Maybe with something more recent than freaking Robert McNamara.”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“Well, since I’m a cop, let me tell you what comes from the territory I occupy. People commit crimes and the cops track them down and arrest them. It’s a pretty linear philosophy. A to B to C.”
“Not how my world works.”
“Right. So you want the criminals to blow up the world while you’re working some sort of backdoor convoluted spy bullshit maneuver that you can use in your next life?”
She put her feet up on her desk and leaned back in her chair. “Okay, I see your point.” She gathered her thoughts. “Over a decade ago, DIA requested the ability to recruit U.S. citizens to spy and be informants.”
“Is that so unusual?”
“No. But DIA also wanted to do it without having to reveal to said citizens that we were a government agency.”
“How does that make sense?”
“It apparently didn’t. That language was removed from the bill authorizing the recruitment provision.”