The Fix

by David Baldacci

  and feed her.”

  “Nice of you to do that.”

  “Oh, they paid me. They insisted on that. Mr. and Mrs. Dabney were very kind, Mrs. Dabney especially. I saw a lot more of her. Mr. Dabney was always working or traveling. Momma and I would be long gone before he got home from the office.”

  “Do you know where Mr. Dabney traveled to?”

  “Why?”

  “We’re looking into his death as well.”

  “I heard he killed himself.”

  “He did. But we still have to figure out why.”

  “Oh, well, I’m not really sure where he went. I think a lot of places in this country, different states. One time I was helping Momma put his luggage away after he came back from a trip and the airline baggage sticker was still on it.”

  “Do you remember the initials of the airport on it?”

  “No. But I do remember it wasn’t an American airline. I just can’t remember which one it was. But I remember Momma telling me that he traveled a lot overseas too.”

  “How did she know that?”

  Kaine smiled. “When she was little, Samantha got ahold of her daddy’s passport and hid it in the kitchen. They were looking all over for it. Momma found it in the sugar bin. She had to open it up to clean off the pages and get all the grains of sugar off it. And she said it was full up with stamps and stuff from all the countries he’d been to.”

  “Did your mother ever tell you anything out of the ordinary about the Dabneys?”

  “Out of the ordinary?” Kaine gave him a penetrating look. “Where is all this going?”

  “To the truth, I hope.”

  “The Dabneys are good people.”

  “I’m sure they are, but Mr. Dabney did murder someone.”

  Kaine’s expression changed to one of bewilderment and then sadness. “I still can’t believe he did it. He would have been the last person in the world I would have thought was capable of that. And him killing himself? And leaving Mrs. Dabney? They were so much in love. They were the perfect couple.”

  “Well, looks can be deceiving.”

  Decker glanced down at the box. “What’s in there?”

  Kaine smiled. “This was my old bedroom. It was just Momma and me. I had a brother, but he died when he was a baby, and my daddy passed when I was four.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She kept some of my stuff. I’ve got two daughters, so I thought they might want it, but they’re getting a little old for some of it.”

  “You mean toys?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stepped back and opened the door more fully. Decker saw a neatly made bed, a white chest of drawers, and two tall shelves packed with items.

  “These days if you can’t hook up to the Internet kids don’t want it. Dr. Seuss books, Easy-Bake Oven, puzzles. And even dolls. Now it has to be that American Girl thing. Do you know how much those cost? Mine were way cheaper and just fine. All you had to do was use your imagination.”

  Decker was only half listening. On one shelf he was staring at a series of dolls all lined up in a row.

  “Are those your old dolls?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that they’re exactly like the ones the Dabney daughters have?”

  “Are they? Well, I guess that makes sense.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Dabneys bought them for me.”

  CHAPTER

  71

  “THEY ALL HAVE the same secret compartments,” said Milligan.

  Decker was standing next to him while Bogart sat in his desk chair. Jamison and Brown were seated across from Bogart.

  Jamison said, “So Cecilia Randall’s daughter’s dolls were identical to those of the four Dabney girls and they all had places to hide stolen information?”

  Decker nodded and picked up two of the dolls. “This is Missy, which was Jules Dabney’s doll. This doll belonged to Randall’s daughter, Rhonda. Care to try to tell them apart?”

  They all drew forward and looked at the two dolls.

  “There’s even paint on the same shoe,” said Brown.

  Decker said, “Smell the hair of each.”

  Brown and Jamison did so. Jamison said, “They smell the same.”

  “Exactly. Jules identified her doll by the paint and the smell. My daughter used to do the same thing with the smell test. Lots of little kids do. Whoever was behind this was good at sweating the details.”

  Brown said, “So does that mean Randall was also part of the spy ring? Hell, she must have been.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Decker. “Her participation might have been unwitting.”

  “How could it be?” scoffed Brown.

  “After she told me about the dolls, I had a long discussion with Rhonda Kaine. She went on to tell me that she went with her mother to the Dabneys’ every day when she was too young for school. After she became school-age, Randall would go and pick her up from the local school. Apparently the Dabneys arranged for her to attend a school near their house. Randall would bring her back to the Dabneys’ and she would stay there and play or do her homework until it was time to go home. When she got older she helped with the kids and did some babysitting. She even helped her mother with tasks around the house. This was all after school as well, but she was there most days.”

  “But as she got older surely she didn’t carry a doll around with her,” said Jamison.

  “No. She didn’t. But for years she did. And she couldn’t tell me for certain whether the dolls were ever switched. I couldn’t really get into it with her without revealing confidential elements of the investigation, so I didn’t go there.”

  “Okay, but let’s say the dolls were used to convey stolen information,” said Brown. “How do you see it playing out? How did they do it?”

  “Walter Dabney brings secrets home from work. I don’t know how he got them out of NSA, but we know that people in the past have succeeded in doing that. Once he started his own business, taking secrets home would be much easier. Next, he has to get them to his buyer or handler. He puts them in one of the dolls. When Rhonda Kaine comes with her doll it gets switched out somehow. Rhonda takes her doll home. She told me that when she was little she would take her doll to school sometimes, or else her mom would bring it with her to work so she could play with it when she got to the Dabneys’. And when I asked her about it, she said that she would rotate her dolls out, play with one one day and another the next. So they wouldn’t get lonely.”

  “And then what would happen?” asked Brown. “If Cecilia Randall isn’t in on it?”

  “When Randall went to work someone could come into their house, take the information from the doll, and leave. She had no security system. It would have been easy enough.”

  “That could work,” observed Bogart.

  “That way Dabney never has to come into contact with the other person. Cecilia Randall was the go-between and would never have even known it. And it wasn’t like they were doing the doll thing every day. Dabney might have had a system in place that would somehow alert the other party when something would be in the doll.”

  “And when the kids got older and the dolls stayed on the shelf, Dabney probably turned to another technique,” said Bogart. “Like Berkshire and her use of the book.”

  Brown said, “So this guy has been spying and selling out this country for well over thirty years?”

  “Looks to be,” said Bogart.

  “You would have thought he would have been caught at some point,” noted Milligan. “I mean, other spies, even ones who got away with it for years, were eventually found out.”

  “We know about them because they got caught,” pointed out Decker. “There could be lots of spies out there who were never caught.”

  Brown nodded. “So Dabney’s weak spot was his daughter. He thought she was in danger and maybe he moved faster than he wanted to. Or else he had stopped spying and was rusty. Either way, he seeks out an old contact to do the deal to h
elp Natalie. But we caught on to it this time. But too late to stop him from selling the secrets and then killing Berkshire and then himself.”

  “Well, another factor that was different was that Dabney knew he was dying,” said Bogart.

  “We’ve already speculated that maybe by killing Berkshire and then himself, he was trying to make amends for all the wrong he’d done over the years,” added Jamison.

  Bogart looked over at Decker. “What do you think about that?”

  Decker didn’t answer right away. When he did his tone was distant, as though he wasn’t even speaking to them.

  “It all makes sense, but I’m not convinced it’s what happened.”

  “But why not?” asked Brown. “Why don’t you think it’s the right theory?”

  “It leaves too many questions unanswered—principally, who ambushed me and took the flash drive? And who killed Cecilia Randall? Because I think it may be the same people who set up Walter Dabney to steal the secrets to rescue his daughter.”

  “Well, it could be the spy ring that had worked with Dabney in the past,” said Brown. “Let’s say he stole secrets for years but then retired. They weren’t happy about that, but if they went after him he could retaliate and blow their cover. But then Natalie gets in trouble gambling and they see a way to manipulate him into spying again. If he believed she owed ten million dollars he would know that the secrets he would have to sell would be major ones. And they were. He provided a back door into our secure databases.”

  “And you’re sure about that?” asked Decker.

  “What? Yes.”

  “How can you be?”

  “Because we traced the stolen information to Dabney. He had access. His passcodes were on various entry points, entry points that he knew because of the work he did with DIA.”

  “It couldn’t have been someone else at his firm?”

  “There was also a biorhythmic security threshold, Decker. It was Dabney, plain and simple. It was a complicated electronic trail, which is why we didn’t get to him before he accomplished what he set out to do.”

  “So the recipients of this information have had the backdoor access for a while now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they could have learned certain secrets already?”

  “Undoubtedly they did.”

  “Any in particular of special importance?”

  “They’re all important!”

  “Granted, but anything really important come to mind?”

  “I already told you that it included overseas assets. And as I said, a number have already been killed.”

  “Anything else?”

  She sighed and thought about the question. “It wasn’t all having to do with DIA, actually. There was information involving other agencies—NSA, CIA, internal reports from the Joint Chiefs, DEA, even the FBI.”

  “Having to do with what?”

  “Having to do with things you’re not cleared for, but in the spirit of cooperation, I can tell you they had to do with joint agency ops in the Middle East, the hardening of several facilities, the strategies to be employed with ISIL, intel from the war in Syria, and Russia’s intentions toward the Baltic states and NATO’s responses thereto. Quite the assortment, actually.”

  “And they could be acting on any of these,” said Decker. “Because you said the chatter mentioned Dabney and that a threat was imminent?”

  “Exactly. It’s a lot of ground to cover. Too much, in fact.”

  Bogart said, “But we were told at the White House that the attack would be here, in the United States.”

  “And I’m not saying that intel is wrong,” said Brown. “I just have no way to confirm it.”

  “Berkshire was not Middle Eastern,” said Decker. “And yet the chatter was all in Arabic.”

  Brown said, “Well, the Russians could be working with factions in the Middle East. Look how involved they are in Syria right now. They want to be a regional power, and then build on that to become a superpower again. If we get distracted by an attack on our country to become even more isolated, it allows for a vacuum that Moscow could fill over there.”

  “I could see that strategy working,” said Decker.

  “Any recent chatter?” asked Bogart.

  Brown shrugged. “We haven’t heard the name Dabney used again, but we’ve learned from NSA that the same source where the chatter originated is increasing in frequency. In our experience that means things are building to a head. When that chatter ceases it means the attack is about to take place. At least that’s been the case in the past.”

  “So when they go silent, that means the bomb is about to go off?” said Decker.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s pray for chatter.”

  CHAPTER

  72

  DECKER WAS RUNNING. Only not in real life.

  In a dream.

  He wore the uniform of the Cleveland Browns. His twenty-two-year-old self was sprinting down the field on opening day of a new NFL season. He had made the team as a rookie walk-on due to his special teams ability, which largely meant running with abandon and throwing your body at other similarly sized young men with a recklessness bordering on insanity.

  Then out of nowhere had come the hit. The blindside plastering that had lifted him off his feet, knocked his helmet from his head, and tossed him down three feet away, unconscious and, though no one knew it at the time, dying.

  And when he awoke in the hospital the Amos Decker who had once inhabited his body was no more.

  He had been replaced with pretty much a complete stranger. As different from the original Amos Decker—emotionally and mentally—as it was possible to be.

  With this last fragment of the dream ricocheting through his brain like a fired round, Decker opened his eyes and sat up, breathing hard, sweat bubbling on his face though the room was cool.

  He stared across the darkness of his room. Outside he could hear car traffic, and a few moments later the throaty roar of a plane doing its climb out after lifting off from National Airport. Some rain drizzled at his window.

  Still, he stared across the room, his thoughts remaining on that football field. On the person he used to be. As precisely perfect as his memory was now, he couldn’t wrap it around the young man from twenty years ago.

  I can remember who I was, just not with any real accuracy. How ironic is that?

  He turned and looked at the doll resting on his nightstand. The one like Molly used to have. Only this one had probably been used for espionage.

  He lay back down and in his mind started parceling things.

  He had many strings in hand, but none that seemed paramount or more capable of leading to an answer than its neighbor. He could sense that all they were doing was running in circles, never proactive, never ahead of the curve.

  He was a detective and a good one. He had solved lots of cases over the years, but few as inscrutable as this one. He had told Brown that maybe they were looking at this the wrong way round,