The Fix

by David Baldacci

  The slight bulge at her waist showed where she kept her pistol.

  Decker had on faded jeans, a rumpled flannel shirt, and a windbreaker.

  Brown eyed his clothing and said, “I take it the Bureau has suspended its dress code for you?”

  “Bogart already told you, I’m not a real agent.”

  “Your phone call was interesting,” she continued.

  “As I’m hoping your answers will be. So whose gambling debts were they?”

  “As I already told you, I haven’t decided whether you’re on or off this investigation, so I can’t possibly answer that.”

  “As I’ve already told you, I don’t think that’s within your power to decide.”

  “Did you forget the phone call the SecDef can make?”

  “I checked on that,” said Decker. “That won’t be happening. That was bullshit on your part and you know it.”

  She sat back. “Can you at least buy a girl a cup of coffee while you accuse her of dishonest things?”

  Decker rose, bought a black coffee, and carried it over to her.

  “Thank you,” she said sweetly. She took a sip and smiled. “Good and hot and just coffee. I could never understand all the crap people put in their cup.”

  Decker studied her and took a drink of his own coffee. “When I was a cop back in Ohio, I ran into someone who reminded me of you.”

  “Another cop?”

  “No, she was a criminal. Con artist. Really good at what she did.”

  “You flatter me, Decker.”

  “Then I must have said it wrong.”

  “I was raised in Alabama by God-fearing parents. They instilled a sense of honor and integrity in me.”

  “Alabama?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they’re fans of To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “You got that from my name?”

  “Harper Lee, yeah.” He leaned his bulk in toward her. “So last night didn’t you say you owed me? If you don’t want to pay the debt, enjoy your coffee and I’ll get on with my day.”

  When she said nothing he started to rise.

  “Just hold your horses,” she finally said, motioning for him to sit back down. She looked around the nearly empty café as Decker dropped back into his chair. “This is not the ideal place.”

  “Then let’s take a walk.” He eyed her cup. “As you can see, I got your coffee to go. Just in case you came over from the dark side.”

  Out on the sidewalk a breeze swirled Brown’s hair around her shoulders. The wind also caught her jacket and revealed her sidearm. Decker saw this and said, “A Beretta. That’s what Dabney used to kill Berkshire.”

  Brown buttoned her jacket closed. “So this is the route he took?”

  “You know it was. We were talking gambling debts.”

  “How do you know they weren’t Walter Dabney’s?”

  “Because you never said they were. And I’ve decided to take you quite literally.”

  “I actually always try to be as vague as possible.”

  “So much for honor and integrity. So was it Natalie?”

  She shot him a glance. “What makes you say that? Have you met her?”

  “You could say that, although we never actually spoke, principally because she was in an alcoholic stupor.”

  “But what makes you think it was her with the gambling problem?”

  “Her three sisters were distraught about their father, but none of them got so drunk they passed out. And she had farther to come, and was the last to arrive, which means she had more time to process the news. But she was shit-faced in the morning while her sisters were out making funeral arrangements and her mother was downstairs all by herself. I understand everyone is different, but, other things being equal, it struck me as odd. And the other sisters were angry about what happened. They were in disbelief. But Natalie didn’t look angry or surprised. And even though she was drunk, there was something in her expression, in the eyes, really, that made her look…guilty.”

  “And you can tell when someone looks ‘guilty’?”

  “I was a cop for twenty years, so I had a lot of practice,” he shot back.

  They walked along for another minute in silence. They passed by the guard shack and Decker nodded at the uniformed man inside. He was the same security officer from the morning Dabney had shot Berkshire.

  Across the street, workers were hauling construction materials through the open doorway of a building that was being renovated. Taped to the front window was a building permit. D.C., like New York, was constantly being stripped down and rebuilt. Decker had traveled to New York once, where a cab driver had told him that there were only two seasons in the Big Apple: winter and construction.

  Brown said, “We don’t think it was Natalie. We believe it was her husband, Corbett.”

  “He had the gambling debts?”

  She nodded. “And they were enormous. Apparently, some very bad people loaned him the money, and they wanted to get paid back. We’re talking Russian mobsters.”

  “So they were threatened?”

  “It was more than a threat. If the debt wasn’t paid, Corbett, Natalie, and their four-year-old daughter were dead.”

  “So she called her dad?”

  “Last hope. He had money, but not nearly enough in liquid assets, apparently.”

  “So he sold secrets to raise the money?”

  “That’s the way we see it.”

  “So Natalie blames herself?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why he killed Berkshire.”

  “No. We haven’t gotten there yet.”

  “How did you find all this out?”

  “Legwork. Asking questions, doing follow-up. We got a tip on Corbett’s end and ran it down from there. We got on to Dabney after we found out about his son-in-law’s gambling debts. Dabney’s firm is well known to DIA. Any connection to him that would lead to possible national security issues raises a red flag for us. It was connect-the-dots fieldwork.”

  “So Natalie knew what her father was doing?”

  “Unsure. We traced some of the calls after the fact with an assist from another agency.”

  Decker looked at her curiously.

  She explained, “Natalie used a couple of words that triggered an NSA algorithm so it got recorded and dumped in a data box that we accessed later on.”

  “I didn’t think NSA eavesdropped on U.S. citizens.”

  “Yeah, and I’d like to sell you the deed to the White House. Anyway, one end of the call was from overseas, so there you are. Loophole of all loopholes. Dabney pretty much told Natalie he’d take care of the problem. There was a tight timeline. But he didn’t say how he’d do it. We learned about this after the fact, of course, or else we would have stopped it.”

  “But he got the money and paid the debt?”

  “Natalie and her family wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t. They’d be in little pieces at the bottom of a river somewhere in Europe.”

  “When did the payment go through?”

  “The electronic trail wasn’t totally clear. Rough guess, six weeks ago. Maybe longer.”

  “Have you talked to Natalie?”

  “I haven’t, no. We’re actually not that interested in her. The gambling and the Russian mob connection is not our jurisdiction. We turned that over to international authorities.”

  “What secrets were sold? You said they were critical enough to trigger something worse than 9/11.”

  “I was not exaggerating when I made that comparison with 9/11.”

  “So if the stakes are that high, why wouldn’t you want the FBI helping?”

  “Need to know is not some bullshit line you hear in the movies, Decker. It does have real purpose.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “If you want it straight, it means we don’t really know who to trust on this. The fewer people looped in the better.”

  “And in doing so you might cut out the very people who could he
lp you solve this and save us from another 9/11,” he shot back.

  She looked uncomfortable at this, but didn’t argue the point.

  “Do you know who the buyers are?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t the Russian mob? Maybe he just gave them the secrets in exchange for forgiving the debts.”

  She shook her head. “The fact is, these mobsters wouldn’t know how to monetize stuff like that, nor would they even want to try. You don’t want to bring the U.S. military down on your head if you don’t have to. No, they got their cash from Dabney, and Dabney got that cash by selling secrets to someone else.”

  “Another government?”

  “Very likely.”

  “Why?”

  “Couple of reasons. Only another government would be willing to take this sort of risky operation. It takes resources and deep pockets. And only another government would be so wired in to the intelligence world that they would know what secrets they wanted Dabney to get them.”

  “So he didn’t pick what he stole? They did?”

  “Almost certainly. You’re not going to run an op like this and not get what you want as the prize. The people behind this, I’m certain, told Dabney exactly what they wanted and to which they knew he had access. This was very well planned out. Which makes me believe they had some inside help. Which is why we want to keep as many people out of the loop as possible. If we’ve been compromised, we could be doubly screwed if we read in the wrong people on this.”

  “Did you trace the money?”

  “On the back end. Ten million.”

  Decker’s jaw went slack. “Ten million dollars! Did this Corbett guy gamble twenty-four/seven?”

  “He played for high stakes, and when your creditor is charging a thousand percent interest a day, it adds up pretty quickly.”

  “But if the buyer has the secrets isn’t it already too late?”

  “Not how the game is played, Decker. If we find out who did it, and it is a foreign government, that’s a chit we can play later. Perfectly accepted diplomatic blackmail played out every day among allies and enemies.”

  “But what if it’s a terrorist organization?”

  “To execute on the information that Dabney sold takes infrastructure and lots of capital. Dabney worked on large-scale military projects: ships, tanks, and planes. That’s why we think it might be another government. ISIL is not shelling out billions to build a Zumwalt-class destroyer.”

  “So you’re going to keep looking for the buyer.”

  “Of course. That’s my job.”

  “And we’re going to keep looking for why Dabney killed Berkshire.”

  She stopped walking and looked at him. “And if there’s overlap?” she asked.

  “Then we have a joint investigation. And we’d welcome the cooperation.”

  “How sweet. Tell me, is that your best chess move?”

  “No, I always hold something back.”

  “You can keep doing what you’re doing, and so will I. How’s that sound?”

  “Great, if you actually mean it.”

  “You’re a smart guy. I’ll let you figure that one out on your own,” she said, and walked off down the street. “Thanks for the coffee,” she called back over her shoulder.

  CHAPTER

  25

  “WE FOUND WHERE Dabney went on the mysterious trip.”

  Todd Milligan was studying the computer screen in front of him. He, Decker, Jamison, and Bogart were sitting in a small conference room at the WFO, the Bureau’s Washington field office on Fourth Street. Decker had filled them all in on his conversation with Brown.

  “Where?” asked Bogart.

  “Houston. His name popped up on a passenger manifest. He went there exactly once five weeks ago today.”

  “I wonder why Houston?” asked Jamison.

  “Something to do with the sale of secrets?” ventured Milligan.

  Decker shook his head. “According to Brown, the payment happened about six weeks ago, or maybe longer. So why take a mysterious trip to Houston after the deal was done and his daughter was safe?”

  “Maybe there was some snafu or other issue?” suggested Bogart.

  “Or maybe it’s because the MD Anderson Cancer Center is in Houston,” said Jamison.

  They all looked at her.

  She said, “Dabney might have suspected something was wrong with his health and wanted to get an expert opinion. MD Anderson is one of the best places for that.”

  Milligan said, “How do you know that?”

  “When I was a journalist, I did a local interest story about a woman who went there when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer. They were able to get her into remission.”

  Milligan smiled and said, “I forgot you had a life prior to joining the FBI.”

  Bogart said, “That’s a good idea, Alex. You might be right.”

  “We can certainly check,” said Milligan. “Even with patient confidentiality, we can get his wife to contact them and see if Dabney was there.”

  Bogart said, “Todd, get going on that. If he knew he was terminal over a month ago, it might provide some motivation to do what he did, meaning kill Berkshire.”

  Milligan rose and hurried from the room.

  “Meaning he would never be tried for the crime,” Jamison said to Bogart.

  “Right.”

  “But it still won’t explain why he killed Berkshire,” Decker pointed out.

  “No, but it’ll fill in one more piece of the puzzle. And it may help us answer that question at some point. And the ME got back to us on the blood screens. Dabney was taking painkillers, which reinforces the notion that he knew he was sick.”

  Decker rose.

  “Where are you going?” asked Bogart.

  “For a walk.”

  * * *

  He started at the café. After a full breakfast at home, Dabney had stopped here, sat at a table overlooking the street, then got up, walked out and down the street, and shot Berkshire in the head before putting a round in his own brain.

  As Decker was sitting there the same female employee he had spoken to earlier came over.

  “I saw you in here earlier with that woman. You guys still looking into what happened?”