EPILOGUE
HOOVER BUILDING
MONDAY, TWO DAYS LATER
Executive Assistant Director James Maitland began reading the report Goldy, his gatekeeper assistant, handed him. Goldy had read the report first and now she listened to her boss’s usual grunting, a couple of greats occasionally interrupting his humming silence.
Maitland read:
Lance Armstrong, former field operative and Claire Farriger’s lover and longtime assistant and collaborator, is in custody, charged with assault and detention of Special Agent Lucy McKnight. It’s unclear whether hecan be indicted for the murder of Eleanor Corbitt unless compelling evidence can be found. The CIA is scrambling, as you can imagine, and Director Lindsey is demanding a full investigation into any and all of Farriger’s activities that might have exposed or compromised CIA operations in her theater of activity. He is not a happy man, an understatement. Lindsey has temporarily assigned Alan Besserman, Justice Cummings’s boss, to Claire Farriger’s position at the CIA. Perhaps we can benefit from cooperation from him in the future if he remains in this position. Farriger was released from the hospital this morning and taken into federal custody.
Maitland made a mental note to follow up on Armstrong. There had to be a case against him in Eleanor Corbitt’s murder he could convince the district attorney to make. He continued reading:
Nikki Bexholt and her cohorts, Jasmine Palumbo, June (aka Cricket) Washburn, and Dr. Craig Cook, creator of the “smart wall”—all Bexholt employees recruited by Ms. Bexholt—are in custody. Garrick Bexholt and the Bexholt Group have so far been spared the collapse of the company stock that very possibly will follow public disclosure. Mrs. Bexholt is the only one in the family championing Nikki Bexholt, her daughter.
Exactly how Claire Farriger and Nikki Bexholtcame to work together remains unclear, as both refuse to answer any questions and deny all charges. We do know they met in their official capacities on several occasions (a project the Bexholt Group did for the CIA) and were also identified as taking the same weekly aikido classes at the Maru Dojo in Dupont Circle. It appears Farriger’s role was to make use of her European and Russian contacts to sell the smart wall. Needless to say, the meeting room for the upcoming negotiations between the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank has been double-checked to ensure nothing remains of Dr. Cook’s smart wall. One of Farriger’s contacts was probably the source of the chatter Justice Cummings came across a little over two weeks ago.
We are only beginning to examine the listening device itself. It appears to be a material they were installing in place of conventional acoustic tiles. In essence, the material absorbs and transduces sound waves into a faint electromagnetic signal that can be amplified and analyzed using their own algorithms to bring out the signal in the electronic noise. In other words, it is an undetectable microphone that allows for old-fashioned eavesdropping. What’s new about it is that you would never know you were being bugged. The negotiations between the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank were to be the test run of their smart wall, believable proof it worked as every word spoken would be recorded.
Knowing the outcome of those banking negotiationsbefore their public release would have allowed Bexholt and Farriger to make a killing in the financial markets, betting with that inside knowledge on anything from interest rates to oil and commodity futures to individual government bonds. And it seems that was only one relatively small part of their plan. Once they had proof the smart wall worked, they would have sold or auctioned the technology itself to the highest bidders, to any oligarch or foreign government willing to pay for it. Bugging safe rooms at embassies, top-secret government and international meetings, financial industry and corporate boardrooms—there seems to be no end to the clients who might have paid them a fortune for their smart wall. We are very fortunate we have prevented any adversarial foreign intelligence service from purchasing it without our even knowing of its existence.
Justice Cummings, the CIA analyst whose work led to our discovering this labyrinthine plot, has told us he’s decided to leave the CIA and enter the private workforce. I imagine his wife will be pleased, as I’m sure he can name his own salary. He is a very lucky man and he knows it.
Turning to developments in Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith’s case in Gaffer’s Ridge, Virginia, the three living kidnapped girls, Heather Forrester, Latisha Morris, and Linzie Drumm, have been reunited with their families. Their memories are hazy from all the drugs, but fortunately they are physically unharmed. Amy Traynor, the teenager kidnapped from Radford, was evidently killed when she tried to escape.
Rafer Bodine is in custody. He has confessed to murdering his sister when he was eleven years old, but his more easily provable crimes are the kidnappings of the four girls and the assault and kidnapping of Dr. Carson DeSilva. He denies killing Amy Traynor, but refuses to name either his father or his mother as the killer. He denies knowledge of where she is buried. The State of Virginia and the federal courts will determine his future.
Jessalyn Bodine, his aunt, buried his sister Camilla, according to Rafer. He claims not to remember where Camilla is buried and Jessalyn Bodine denies all knowledge. Unless a body is found, there is no evidence to charge her.
Booker Bodine remains sheriff of Gaffer’s Ridge. Someone removed evidence at Rafer Bodine’s house, but we have no proof of his involvement. Agent Hammersmith is satisfied with the outcome. Let me add he and Dr. DeSilva were able to spend time with Dr. Alek Kuchar, the Nobel Prize laureate she had come to interview. I believe Agent Hammersmith will be in New York City for the rest of his vacation time.
There will be further developments, there always are. I will keep you apprised as they come to me.
Special Agent Dillon Savich, CAU