Part 56 (1/2)
”Who's your favorite Post Post reporter?” reporter?”
”Sean, please, let's--”
”Personally, I'm torn over where the Pulitzer should land--Mideast desk or national desk? Hey, what do you think?”
”She's dead.”
”Dead how? Heart attack? Another fake suicide? Another skiing accident? What made her heart stop ticking, Phyllis?”
”No . . . it was murder. Open and shut.”
”Tell me about the murder.”
”About seven weeks ago, jogging in a park, at night, not far from here, somebody drove a hatchet through her forehead. No fingerprints, and no forensic evidence. Even the footprints were swept clean with a broom. There were some bruises on her arms, suggestive of a slight struggle, and her killer was right-handed.”
”And obviously her killer wasn't caught. Who are the suspects?”
”There are no suspects. Just theories.”
No suspects? I thought about this. ”But you knew it was premeditated and planned, and the killer understood enough about police procedure to clean up the trace evidence. You knew she wasn't an arbitrary victim and you knew it probably was related to her work.”
”Those were our a.s.sumptions, yes.”
Except that the killer had made no effort to mislead about the cause of death, this smelled a lot like the murder of Cliff Daniels. But before I made that leap, I needed to know more. I took a stab in the dark and asked, ”Had she been tortured?”
”Yes . . . no.” She said, ”Two fingers had been cut off. Her right pinkie and ring finger.” She added, ”Possibly it was torture. Or, just as possibly, she tried to use her hand to fend off the blow.”
”What did she look like? Physically?”
”I don't believe this is getting us anywhere.”
”Wow, nice building. I'm cruising the block around the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post. Do you think they'll run my picture? I didn't have time to shave.”
”Stop threatening me.”
”Start telling the truth.”
”All right . . . she wasn't . . . she was not overly attractive. Short, about five foot one, chubby, dark-haired, and . . . Is there a point to this?”
This was my turn to ask questions, so I ignored her and asked, ”So you became worried when you learned she was murdered?”
”We became . . . concerned. Sad. Diane was one of our own, Sean. She was a nice person and well liked. Nearly twenty years of good and honorable service.”
”You know what I'm implying.”
”Yes . . . we considered it. Of course we did. But we weren't married to any particular theories.”
”Tell me about your other theories.”
”Andrews had worked other things, been involved in other sensitive operations. The monsters that haunt us often have long shadows.”
As she had from the start of this thing, Phyllis was parsing and limiting information. Had I known about Diane Andrews in the beginning, I would've understood we were dealing with two connected murders, I would've approached the investigation differently, I would've flipped over different rocks, and maybe I would've found Bian lurking beneath one. But Phyllis had put secrecy above effectiveness, and inst.i.tutional a.s.s-covering over truth. When you get your priorities wrong, you get bad results, and a p.i.s.sed-off subordinate.
I couldn't resist. ”Speaking of long, guess who her boyfriend was?”
Her not having observed Daniels's one memorable anatomical feature, this clue sailed by her.
”Here's another hint,” I told her. ”She and her lover are now forever together. In heaven--maybe that other place.”
This clue struck home, because she promptly said, ”There was zero indication of that. Mating habits are always always probed during polygraphs. Cliff Daniels never came up.” probed during polygraphs. Cliff Daniels never came up.”
Interesting phrasing. But during my plane ride, I had given some thought to this mystery, and I asked, ”Her murder, did it happen before or after you initiated your leak investigation?”
”It was . . . the exact dates, I can't remember . . . but I think, nearly coincident. Why?”
”I'll lay you even money the affair occurred after her last polygraph session, and that she didn't live long enough for another one. Check it out.”
”Who told you about this affair?”
”Does it matter?”
”Sean, stop acting paranoid.”
”Stop? I should've been this way from the beginning.” I should've been this way from the beginning.”
She took a moment to clear her throat, or to turn off the recording machine. ”Please come in, Sean. Now. We all want the same thing.”
But that wasn't exactly true. What Phyllis and her boss wanted was to get the Agency off the blameline for the lousy prewar intelligence, with enough ammunition to screw the Pentagon, and enough clout to remain first among beltway equals at a time when Congress was considering a new national intelligence apparatus that might knock their beloved Agency down a few pegs. At least, that was what they wanted at first at first.
But once she and her boss learned the scale and breadth of this thing, their appet.i.tes swelled. And why not? Handled properly, the President and his political people, who for four years had treated the Agency like a bureaucratic pi-ata, would be made to see the error of their ways. In exchange for four more years, the President would have to do a little penance, his people would have to kiss a lot of Langley b.u.t.t, and in return, the Director would keep a special file locked in his office safe, labeled ”For Emergency Use Only.”
Or alternatively, this President was already so high on Langley's s.h.i.+t list that a contract extension was out of the question--and his compet.i.tor would be awakened in the dead of the night by a dark man in a trench coat and handed a packet of interesting information, and Phyllis and the new President would share a victory waltz at his inauguration ball.
Either way, the Agency couldn't lose. Perfect. What could go wrong?
Bian Tran could go wrong. Neither Phyllis nor her boss had factored her into the equation. They missed what people in Was.h.i.+ngton usually miss: the human factor.
With that thought in mind, I told her, ”If you and I wanted the same thing, we wouldn't be where we are.” You can't slam down a cellular, so I settled for punching off with my middle finger.
Now I had another important piece I needed to consider. After Mark's death, Bian had returned from Iraq, mad with pain, grief, and guilt; not emotionally mad, not metaphysically mad--literally mad. And as it so often goes, pain bred anger, fury begat revenge, and revenge meant murder.
But where to start? That was Bian's question.
Kemp Chester had said that everybody in the G2 exploitation cell a.s.sumed that compromised intelligence--however it had occurred-- had caused the death of Mark Kemble. Chester also described Bian as a hunter by both training and natural instinct. For her, finding the betrayer would be child's play because, unlike the jihadis in Iraq, her prey had not a clue they were prey.
So, Diane Andrews. That was the one name Bian knew--that was where she would enter the trail.