even if she hadn’t understood exactly what that meant.
Maybe I don’t either.
Everything seemed to come back to Walter Dabney. That was partly by default. They had been able to thoroughly dig into his past, whereas they had had far less to go on when it came to Berkshire.
By far his biggest asset was his memory, so he turned to it once more.
His eyes closed and the frames flipped past.
There was something that someone had said. He wasn’t sure it was even related. For some reason it seemed an outlier comment, but perhaps with a secondary meaning that would shed light on something.
The frames slowed and his brow furrowed.
It was almost like the reels of a slot machine clacking away and then slowing as the cycle neared its end, showing you to be either a loser or a winner, if the images all lined up perfectly.
Come on. Line up for me. Make me a winner. I could use it.
Surprisingly, the image of Melvin Mars came into his head. They had been talking about something at Harper Brown’s house right before they had been attacked.
The clacking sound diminished; the frames continued to slow.
Mars had said something about Brown. It had sounded perfectly innocuous when he had said it. It had flowed very naturally from the conversation they had been having. It wasn’t related to the case at all.
One…two…three.
The clacking slowed down more. The whirring images too, so that Decker could start to see a firm image taking shape.
Mars had been telling Decker how impressed he’d been with Brown. How well traveled she was, but how she put on no airs even with all the wealth she possessed. Mars had said he had admired that. He liked hanging with her.
She was fun and cool and she made him feel good.
But, no, it was not that. It was something else.
It was like he was holding a piece of flypaper, and bits of confetti, representing the facts of the case, were swirling in the air. If he could just get them to drop down and stick to the flypaper, things might start making sense.
More clacking and more spinning images.
Five…six…seven…eight.
Jackpot.
The single word burst into his head, jumping out in the same way the highlighted ones in the Harry Potter book had leapt from the page.
He sat up so fast he became a little dizzy.
Athlete.
CHAPTER
73
DECKER WALKED OUT of the FBI morgue after having talked to Lynne Wainwright again. He had had new questions and she had given him helpful answers.
He went to the WFO, sat at a computer, and started searching. The information started to flood in, and the pieces started dropping into place at an increasing pace. It was like the dam had opened and the water was flowing freely.
Finally.
He found terms he had never encountered before, including several he couldn’t come close to pronouncing. He looked at pictures of people from decades ago.
So many of them.
Disgraced now.
Diseased now.
In pain. Dying before their time.
It had all been monstrous. And the world had largely looked the other way.
But it had obviously given others opportunities. And they had seized them.
And he had also remembered something else.
A picture where a picture should never have been.
He should have seen it before, but he hadn’t. It had seemed unimportant, when he should have realized that there was no such thing as something unimportant in an investigation.
He got up, walked out, and headed to Bogart’s office.
The FBI agent was there with Milligan and Jamison. They told him that Agent Brown was on her way.
Decker said, “Tell her to meet us at the Dabneys’.”
“Why?” asked Bogart. “What’s there that we need to go back?”
“Pretty much everything.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later they pulled up in front of the impressive mansion. Brown’s BMW was already parked near the front door. She got out as they headed to the house.
“What’s up?” asked Brown. “Why are we here?”
Milligan pointed at Decker. “Because of him.”
Jules answered the door. Decker said, “We need to speak to your mother.”
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“If you must know, she’s at my father’s grave.”
“Where is that?” asked Decker.
“Can’t you just leave her alone?”
“Where is it?” Decker asked again.
Jules hesitated and then told him.
“One more thing,” said Decker. “I need to look at one of the photo albums you showed me earlier.”
* * *
They pulled into the cemetery through a set of open wrought iron gates. Brown had left her car at the Dabneys’ home and ridden over with them.
“I hate cemeteries,” said Jamison. “Buried in the dirt and eventually people stop coming to see you. No thank you. I’m being cremated.”
“I think you’ve got a while to think about that,” noted Bogart.
He steered the car down a side road using the directions Jules had given them.
A Jaguar convertible was parked at the curb. As they pulled up, they saw Ellie Dabney sitting on a stone bench in front of her husband’s freshly dug grave. The tombstone was not up yet.
As they all got out of the car, Brown said, “Decker, are you going to tell us what’s going on?”
“You’re going to hear everything in about two minutes,” he replied. He led them up a path until they reached Ellie.
She looked up at them with unfriendly eyes. “Jules called me to say you were headed here. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m visiting my husband. I would appreciate some privacy.”
“I can understand that,” said Decker. “Unfortunately, this can’t wait.”
He sat down on the bench next to her as the others encircled them.
From his pocket Decker took out a photo and held it out to Ellie.
“My parents,” she said. “Where did you get it?”
“They died in a mudslide?”
“Yes, it was horrible.”
“And everything was washed away? The house, the barn, them? Their bodies were never found. That’s what Jules told us.”
“If I hadn’t been at school I would have died too.”
“So you lost everything? Your family? All your possessions?”
“Yes! I had nothing left except the clothes on my back. I had no family left. I was sent to an orphanage.”
Decker nodded. “So where did this photo come from, then?”
Ellie started to say something but then stopped. She cleared her throat and said, “Fortunately, I had it with me. I carried it with me always.”
Decker nodded. “I thought you might say that.”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“I spoke this morning with a medical examiner from the FBI. Fortuitously, she had an uncle who worked as a team physician for the U.S. Olympic Team back in the seventies. He told her about what went on back then, with other countries. And she educated me about it this morning.”
Ellie said nothing.
Decker said, “Stasi, fourteen twenty-five? Ring a bell?”
Ellie’s eyes widened, but it was barely noticeable.
But Decker noticed.
“What?” she said sharply. “What is that?”
“You already know, but for the benefit of the others it’s the name of the East German program that built up a powerhouse Olympic team by giving anabolic steroids to mostly unwitting athletes. Translated into English it means State Plan Fourteen point Two-Five.”
“East Germany? What has that got to do with me? I was born in Oregon.”
“Oral Turinabol was the steroid of choice for the East Germans. It has another name that, frankly, I can�
�t even begin to spell, much less pronounce. It was a real turbocharger for athletic performance, but without some of the worst side effects. Still, it did have side effects. You remember the East German female swimmers from the seventies? They had facial hair, deep voices, and huge muscles. One American swimmer complained about it quite vocally, but everyone put her down as a sore loser. Turns out she was absolutely right, but the Germans still won all the gold.”
“An interesting history lesson,” said Ellie slowly. “But what the hell does it have to do with me? I’m not East German and I was certainly never in the Olympics.”
“But my guess is you were in the national athletic youth program they had over there. You were being groomed for the Olympics. From an early age, probably. You have the perfect athletic shape. Tall, lean, muscled. Over the years you were given Oral Turinabol or something like it, along with all the other hopefuls. They wanted to build something akin to Hitler’s perfect Aryan race. But even with that kind of chemical help, it’s a tight funnel on the road to the top in any sport. I know that better than most with my football career. Only the best of the best get to go, and they’d know by the time you were in your early teens.”
Ellie looked at Bogart. “Is he insane?”
Bogart said nothing.
Decker continued, “But you had other value to them. You couldn’t cut it as an athlete, but maybe as something else.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“You were taught English until you could speak it fluently with no accent. You were given a history, which you learned as if it was your own. Rural Oregon. Decades ago. A mudslide. An orphanage. No family. You came east to start a new life. Who could disprove any of that? You became a waitress at a place near, where else? The NSA. You would meet lots of people from there because everyone has to eat. You targeted the young Walter Dabney and he fell for beautiful Eleanor hook, line, and sinker. You married soon after. He brought work home and you stole it. He left the NSA and started his own firm and you hit the jackpot. Now he was doing work not just with the NSA, but with multiple agencies. Back in those days they had safeguards in place, but nothing like today. I can only imagine what was in his briefcase each night when he walked in the door. We always thought your husband was the spy, but it was actually you.”
Ellie stood and screamed, “How dare you insult me with all these lies right in front of my husband’s grave!”
Decker glanced up at her. “The problem was how to get this treasure trove of intel out to where it needed to go. But you weren’t working alone. You had a handler.” He paused. “Anne Berkshire.”
Bogart exclaimed, “She was working with Berkshire? And not her husband?”
“Neither of us was working with anyone,” said Ellie shrilly.
“When your kids were little and you had Cecilia Randall working for you, the answer became clear. The dolls. You’d ship the information out using the dolls. I don’t know if Randall knew what was in those dolls. Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. I speculated that she might have been innocent, but maybe not. I mean, you’ve kept her on all this time even though your kids have long since moved on. Randall’s daughter said you took great care of them. I wonder what an inspection of Randall’s finances will show? And what will yours show? How did you buy your house all those years ago when your husband was still working at the NSA? The expensive Porsche? Did you tell him you had gotten a big settlement from the mudslide? An inheritance from some distant relative?”
Ellie started to walk off, but Bogart put a hand on her arm.
“You’re not going anywhere, Mrs. Dabney.”
She ripped her arm free and said, “Are you arresting me? If not, I’m leaving and calling my lawyer and he’s going to sue all of you!”
“We’re detaining you, which we have every right to do,” said Bogart firmly.
She glared at him and then folded her arms over her chest and gazed off into the distance.
Decker said, “After the dolls became useless because the kids grew up, I guess you could have gotten rid of them, but you were perhaps afraid that someone might find the hidden compartments. Better just to keep them.”
“Just because you say something does not make it true.”
“When did you realize that the anabolic steroids were responsible for the stillbirth and the miscarriages? And your health problems? And your daughters’ health issues and birth defects? I understand that Jules and Samantha have had trouble in that department.”
“I had no control over that. It was…it was genetics. It was natural.”
“There was nothing natural about it. It was chemical-based. I wondered how such fit-looking people could all have such bad health. So I decided to trace the source back. And I did. To you.”
She slowly turned to look at him.
“It must have been a shock when all the stories came out about Stasi, about Oral Turinabol. It causes both liver and kidney disease, bone density loss, high cholesterol and asthma, all conditions which you have and for which you’re currently taking medications.”
Ellie pursed her lips but still said nothing.
“And it also causes miscarriages, and birth defects, like the ones your daughters have. And you’re also on Zoloft, for depression. I can see how you might be depressed.”
“How did you know about the stillbirth and my miscarriages?” she said quietly.
“I think you know the answer to that,” replied Decker. When she didn’t reply, he said, “Cissy Randall. She told me. She told me about the girls’ issues too. And then you found out she had. And she had to be taken care of because you had no way of knowing what else she might say.”
“You think I killed Cissy! I was in bed asleep.”
“Your daughter checked on you at one. Randall was killed between two and three. At that late hour it gave you plenty of time to go there, kill her, and get back. There were no signs of forced entry. Randall had a key to your house. What are the odds that you had a key to hers? If we search your house thoroughly I think we’ll find it.”
Ellie turned and looked at her husband’s grave.
Decker rose and stood beside her. “You knew Anne Berkshire when her name was Anna Seryyzamok. She was your handler, until you did something, I think, that no one expected you to do.” He paused as she glanced over at him. “You stopped spying.”
“I am not a damn spy!”
Decker ignored her. “You quit. But Berkshire still was working with other spies in the area. This is D.C. after all. If you’re going to spy, this is the place. We found out about her recent use of Dominion Hospice and her work with the Gorskis and Alvin Jenkins. But you quit on her. And she wasn’t happy about it. But she couldn’t expose you without you exposing her. She made a comment to a teacher at the school where she volunteered. ‘You
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