“And we’re watching all of them. As well as scrubbing their personal financials.”
“You really think Dabney was working with someone here to get the money to pay off the gambling debts?”
“I can’t discount the possibility.”
“Jamison thought it was unlikely that Dabney, if he was always on the legal side, was able to find a buyer for the secrets so fast.”
Brown looked at Jamison. “I’m impressed.”
“Thanks,” said Jamison curtly, though she looked pleased by the other woman’s comment.
Brown perched on the receptionist’s desk. “You’re exactly right. It’s not that easy to find a buyer from scratch. It’s not like you can locate them online or walk down a dark alley and bump into someone engaged in espionage who can find ten million dollars to hand over. More likely than not you’ll run right into an undercover operation designed to catch people trying to do just that.”
“So that either means Dabney was not as clean as everyone thought, or someone he worked with was dirty.”
“The issue is even more complicated than that, Decker. The thing is, it could have been a coworker who helped Dabney with the sale, sure. Or it could have been someone else.”
“Such as?” said Jamison.
Decker answered. “Such as someone on the other side of the equation.” He pointed at Brown. “Someone from your side that Dabney was working with.”
Brown crossed her arms and nodded, her features turning grave. “The more I think about it, we might have a spy in the ranks of the DIA. I’m not just talking about decades ago. I mean currently.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” said Decker. “As you pointed out to me previously.”
Jamison said, “We thought it might be Dabney who was the spy all these years. From his career at NSA onward.”
“But he had to get the secrets from inside the government once he went to the private sector,” pointed out Brown. “And there was the old security badge we found in Berkshire’s locker. That was from the DIA. And it’s very troubling that she had it in her possession.”
Jamison said, “But regardless of whether Dabney was in the private sector, he could have gotten those secrets legitimately through his work. The persons he dealt with in the government might not know what he was doing with the information.”
“That’s true,” said Brown. “And I hope that turns out to be the case. But we can’t take it as gospel that that is indeed the case.”
“So you’re investigating your own agency too,” said Decker.
“We have to.”
“You mentioned the security badge. Did you find out something about it?”
“It was used at DIA back in the late eighties and early nineties.”
“No idea who it was issued to?” asked Decker.
“None. Back then it was just laminated plastic with no electronic guts.”
“Visitor or permanent?” asked Decker.
“I wish I could tell you.”
“Does that mean you don’t know or you can’t tell us?” retorted Jamison.
“I wish I could tell you,” repeated Brown.
Jamison looked like she was going to hit her. “Well, you know what they say, be careful what you wish for.” Then she turned and walked out of the office.
“She seems to have an attitude problem,” noted Brown.
“No, she just doesn’t like bullshit. We’re on the same page with that.”
“Decker, I’m telling you as much as I can. Do you know what it cost me to even have you come to DIA and look at those files?”
“Do you think Anne Berkshire was working with a mole in DIA way back too?”
“It’s possible. In fact, with that badge, it’s probable that she was.”
“But that mole was not Dabney?”
“He was at NSA for part of that time, but then on his own. He did work as a contractor for DIA beginning later in the nineties, so it wasn’t his security badge. We can’t show that they ever met except for the encounter outside the Hoover Building. And if they had been working together for decades we would have been able to find something, Decker.”
“So someone else, then?”
“And we’re at square one on that.”
“But you’re obviously hoping to pop something by doing a deep dive on the folks here?”
“It’s a long shot, but when you don’t have better options, you have to go with something.” She paused. “So do you have any leads?”
“Yeah.”
“What are they?”
“I wish I could tell you.”
Decker turned and left the room.
CHAPTER
44
“WHY ARE WE here, Decker?”
Jamison was staring down at him as he perched on a couch in Anne Berkshire’s million-dollar condo and gazed around.
Decker didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t like incongruity,” he said a few moments later.
“Such as?”
“Such as why buy a condo like this and buy a top-of-the-line Benz if you don’t decorate it with your stuff, in the case of the condo, or don’t really drive it around, in the case of the Mercedes?”
“So she was eccentric, so what?”
Decker shook his head and stood. “It goes beyond mere eccentricity. She also has a run-down farmhouse and a crappy car that she drives to work and on her rounds as the proverbial Good Samaritan.”
“What does that tell you?”
“If you were a spy and had made money, you might buy this condo and that car, but you would enjoy them. Not just have them. Because you would have earned it. Now, if you just have them but don’t enjoy them, there must be a reason. So in Berkshire’s case, what is that reason?”
Jamison thought about this. “I don’t know. We speculated she might have felt guilty.”
“If she was still spying, she obviously was not feeling guilty.”
“But there’s no evidence that she was still spying. She was a substitute schoolteacher. And look at the stuff in the storage unit. It’s old. Floppy disk and an outdated security badge.”
“But at her farmhouse we found a flash drive. That’s not old 1980s technology. And added to that, someone nearly killed me to get it. And why have the old farmhouse with a flash drive hidden in the toilet paper holder if you’ve long since retired from espionage?”
Jamison opened her mouth to say something but then closed it. “Good point,” she finally managed to say. “But if that’s the case, then she must have been working with Dabney. I mean, otherwise it’s quite a coincidence that he commits espionage and ends up gunning down someone who’s also a spy.”
“Maybe,” said Decker doubtfully.
“Decker, it has to be! You don’t believe in coincidences, not even small ones. You always say that. So if Berkshire was spying, it had to have been along with Walter Dabney. That would explain why he could find a buyer so fast for the secrets. Berkshire probably arranged it.”
“And who tried to kill me at the farmhouse and stole the flash drive? And what was on it?”
“More secrets. Berkshire probably wasn’t working alone. She gets killed and her associate goes there to get whatever materials she kept there. You saved them the trouble. They attacked you and found it. That all holds together,” Jamison said, a note of triumph in her voice.
Decker went over to stare out the window.
“You forgot to congratulate me on my brilliant theory,” said Jamison.
When Decker said nothing, she walked over to him. “You don’t think I’m right?”
“Let’s put it this way, Alex. I don’t know that you’re wrong.”
“Well, that’s something. Do you have an alternative theory?”
“Not right now, no.”
Jamison looked around the space. ‘What happens to this place? And all her money? They haven’t found any family to leave it to.”
“Haven’t given that any thought.”
?
??How did you leave it with Agent Brown?”
“Vague,” said Decker.