Oracle's Diplomacy

by A. Claire Everward

  “It would have to be someone with access. Do you know whether the actual downloads were done at ARPA or not?”

  “Not yet, my tech is checking.”

  “So it’s either someone who can move through ARPA unhindered or someone outside it who was able go into the ARPA building and kill Berman.”

  “Ever considered being an investigator? I could use someone like you in my unit.” He traced a finger on the back of her hand.

  “Sure. And we’ll get a lot of work done,” she said, laughing.

  Good point, he thought. Damn, she looked so inviting in his shirt. “You’re right on, of course.” He tried to focus again. “With what I learned today at ARPA and at your Advanced Technologies Research, and knowing ARPA’s security and certainly yours—IDSD’s—so that even an insider couldn’t easily do this, I’m thinking this murder was deliberately set up to look like something it’s not, by an insider with considerable access. But then there’s the main question. Why. Why steal Sirion, go to the trouble of completing it, then use it to take this particular person, this ambassador. I mean, beyond the obvious political motive—to stop the peace treaty. Why do it this way?”

  She shrugged. “To use it as a means to an end. Their end.”

  He frowned in question.

  “You’re thinking about whoever is behind this. I’m talking about whoever actually did this. And whatever their agenda is, it’s important enough for them to risk taking the ambassador instead of killing him. That’s some risk, because if Russia finds out they did, it can still continue with its original plans, as if the ambassador is dead, because it knows we can’t just claim outright that he’s not dead because we can’t prove it, but at the same time, it will go after whoever was supposed to kill him, and do so with vengeance.”

  “You’ve put some thought into this,” he said.

  “Sixty-eight years old, held by people who have no problem shooting innocents in the back of the head and double-crossing the Russian Federation,” she said simply.

  Yes, he thought. That would prompt her to get into this. An innocent in the hands of some very bad people, who needed to be brought home.

  He wondered if she had considered the possibility that Ambassador Sendor really was dead.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Donovan was in his office, the animated buzz of activity on the SIRT unit’s busy floor coming through the open door. He was surrounded with information about the Berman murder, and was going through it at a focused pace. He went through points highlighted by Emma, some questions the investigative team working under her had tagged, the answers they had found. He then called up all the interviews done at ARPA the previous day—the day of Berman’s death—and some complementary ones his investigators had done earlier that morning. He went through everything, even though he suspected he would find nothing. Considering where his mind was going with this theory of his, before he went in deeper he wanted to make sure he’d been thorough and had missed nothing—and no one—in the investigation, and in the process to back up his gut feeling with the facts he did have.

  He’d asked his investigators to run current in-depth background checks on several of the ARPA employees they had interviewed, and he called these up now and went over them. Where he saw reason to, he used his own clearance to dig even deeper. As the umbrella organization for what used to be the separate investigative departments of the different military arms, USFID had access to all their resources, and as the agent in charge of SIRT, Donovan could easily get what he needed. He then had a look at several of Sirion’s personnel. For them he had the background checks periodically done for everyone involved in ARPA or IDSDATR high-level projects—to those working at IDSD he was given uncensored access thanks to Emero. He found nothing, just as he had expected.

  He then focused on the two people he was most interested in. The first was Berman himself. Donovan had the full version of his file not many were cleared to look at, including the level five projects he had worked on, Sirion being the latest. There was nothing there. The man’s finances were clean. His military salary had been enough for him. He had no life outside his job and had apparently spent all his waking hours in whatever project he was working on. He seemed to be nothing more than a reliable, efficient man, good with people, good at bridging over differences. ARPA’s projects competed to have him as their liaison, and Sirion was not his first ARPA-IDSDATR joint project.

  Donovan checked the man’s travels and compared them with the Sirion project’s off-site logs. Ever since he was assigned to the project full time, Berman had traveled quite extensively, all the more so since the technology became viable and required frequent field testing. All his travels, without fail, were for the project, were on IDSD or ARPA jets or cargo planes, and coincided with the Sirion project logs. Nor did he ever travel alone, he was always accompanied by others in the project as well as by the protective agents assigned to the project personnel in their travels.

  And that was it. He was single, had parents and a sister, all living in Virginia. No apparent contact with anyone outside his work other than a few friends, all from previous projects he’d been involved in, people he’d met along the way. He could have rendezvoused with an accomplice in his travels—it was easy to slip away for a few minutes, bump into someone, or simply leave storage media somewhere with the project files on them. But then, he could have done this in the vicinity of where he worked and lived, no need to travel for that. All phone calls came back legit, too, although he could have owned another, an unregistered phone. But considering the apparent use of the tactical radio his body was found near, Donovan doubted that. Either way, his investigators had found nothing of the sort, and they were thorough.

  Donovan leaned back thoughtfully. By all appearances, Berman was a boring, reliable man who had made his job his life and who had spent years building a reputation as the man to trust.

  The perfect spy.

  “Or the perfect man to tag as a spy,” he said to himself. That was his problem here—too much added up too seamlessly. Berman looked the part too well. He had both access and unlimited freedom because of the trust in him. Motive? Could have been money, hidden somewhere it couldn’t be readily found. Could have been ideology. Ideologies could be safely hidden away in one’s mind.

  Okay, that would be true if he was guilty. But what if I’m right, what if this is too perfect? Donovan played devil’s advocate. What if this guy really is innocent? If not him, who?

  Bourne, his gut answered without any hesitation. He’d tagged the guy since he had first met ARPA’s director. Bourne had been exceedingly forthcoming when Berman was found. Quick to offer his help, quick to offer information. Donovan would have expected him to be reserved, agitated, to worry about the invasion of the swarm of nosy outsiders, the USFID agents roaming ARPA, considering the sensitivity of its projects. No one welcomed an investigation. Yet Bourne certainly seemed to go out of his way to help. He had voiced no objections, and had seemingly placed no boundaries, even as others present at ARPA at the time did. And yet the moment he had the chance, he had subtly tried to stonewall Donovan, de facto threatening to delay the investigation. And then there was the look on his face when Evans, US Global Intelligence’s director, chose to confide in Donovan instead of him. For a split second there, before Bourne had regained his composure, Donovan thought he saw apprehension in his eyes.

  And then, that morning, he had called USFID’s director, in an attempt to show his cooperation with the investigation, Donovan thought, perhaps try to gain White’s trust as his peer. Was he worried that the investigation was now backed by US Global Intelligence’s director, that the lead investigator had access, too much access? The man was hiding something, Donovan was sure.

  Donovan had Bourne’s file, procured in a way that Bourne would not know it had been requested. Procured such that no one would know, in fact, using one of the ways Donovan had available to him for his most sensitive cases. It was the only file he had procured this way in
this investigation. The ARPA director’s service file—his intelligence file, to be more accurate—was highly detailed, as Donovan had expected it to be. Going over it, he frowned. The man was clean. Despite his position, he had no technical background. A degree in political science, rose up through the ranks, steady career over the years, asked and received the assistant director position at ARPA, was a natural choice for director in due course. Ran ARPA efficiently, no real enemies. The perfect background, the perfect career, his way to ARPA paved by his ambition, nothing out of the ordinary there. Sensible finances here, too. Family money, though not so much that it would stand out. His only income came from his job, a generous salary at ARPA. He wasn’t military like Berman, but a civilian employee from the start. Still, that didn’t stand out, either, since the backgrounds of ARPA’s personnel varied. Married for many years, one adult daughter who lived in Brisbane, Australia and was a tenured political science lecturer. No outstanding political affiliation, no outwardly voiced opinions, not him nor anyone in his family. Nothing extreme. Nothing not extreme, either. The man was steady, dedicated, clean.

  Donovan shook his head.

  “Guess what I found.” Emma stood at the door.

  “Bourne?” he asked absentmindedly.

  “No. Berman. A bank account in Detroit, under his brother’s name.”

  “He doesn’t have a brother.” Berman’s brother drowned in the family pool when he was eight.

  “Didn’t stop Berman from opening an account in his name. All legit-looking, opened remotely with all the right credentials. I sent the info to your screen.”

  Donovan had a look. The account was opened seven months earlier. Fifty thousand dollars had been deposited in it every month since, in two installments, almost immediately after the dates on which the Sirion files were downloaded. Until one month earlier, when a final sum of two hundred thousand dollars had been deposited, as a single amount.

  “Must have opened it when he succeeded in selling the tech, then was paid off after each delivery until they had what they wanted,” Emma said. “Nice pension cushion.”

  “Mmm.” A neat closing touch on Berman’s guilt. So perfect. Too perfect.

  “You’re not convinced.” Emma looked at him quizzically. Donovan’s investigators had long learned to trust his gut feeling.

  “No, I’m not.” Simply too neat, he thought again once Emma had left. How could everything point to Berman, if he was in fact innocent? How could nothing point to Bourne, if he was indeed the one who betrayed his country by selling Sirion? And did he sell, or did he simply give it away—was he also in on Sendor’s abduction and the motives behind it? And did he kill Berman, who was killed in the exact same way as everyone on the ambassador’s jet? But then, why kill Berman at ARPA, necessarily turning everyone there at the time, including him, into suspects?

  Donovan leaned back again in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. No answers there, while the case against Berman and his accomplice turned killer, whom they could not trace—there was simply no evidence there—was adding up too well. Cases that added up too well always made him uneasy. Every thread here was in place. Each and every thread. And they all led in the same direction.

  He sat up. That, precisely, was the problem. It all led in the same direction. But there were two things missing. One was a motive. And he wasn’t convinced money was it. Over the years, Berman had had access to many other technologies that were more straightforward in their use, some weapons that could do much damage, portable systems that could be sold to rogue militaries for huge profit. And yet Sirion was where he chose to betray his country? An unfinished technology whose success, when he had begun to sell it, was not yet entirely assured? Sold for the meager sum of, what, half a million?

  And then there was the question of the buyers, for whom there were no leads. Which was interesting, since while they had obviously taken great care to conceal themselves, they had made no effort to hide the technology they had procured. It was completed and then used immediately, and this, even without Berman’s framing and killing, revealed its theft, which could otherwise have been hidden for much longer. With the ambassador disappearing and the announcement of his death made to the world by Russia, this was looking more like the deliberate acquisition of a technology that someone—apparently Russia, pending the oddity of their inferring that the ambassador was dead—planned to use to discredit the Internationals and the United States and their efforts to bring about a peace treaty in a region that Russia bordered with and had had an eye on in the past. A region Russia might have controlled by now, in fact, had the Internationals not stood in its way.

  Donovan’s brow furrowed. Helping this type of people stood against everything Berman seemed to have believed in, this man who had wanted everything he was helping make to be used to do good. Did anything happen to change him? Did he do it after all for the politics of it, to destabilize the treaty? But if it was all about ideology for him, he wouldn’t have been paid as he was. This looked more like a thief being paid regularly until he provided all the information he was hired to steal. And that didn’t fit this guy’s profile.

  Was he blackmailed? There were no indications of that, either. Emma had already spoken with his parents. They were in shock and had no idea who would want to hurt him, and neither did his sister. Nothing, they said, had bothered him recently. He was, as always, happily engrossed in his work. He had been to dinner at his parents’ only the evening before his death—the medical examiner had determined he had been killed early the morning he was found—and had brought his mother memorabilia from the country he had just returned from, the last in a line of locations he had visited in this latest project he was helping, he had told them.

  No matter how Donovan looked at it, Berman simply did not fit in the context of this, of all of it—theft, hijacking, abduction. Berman was an honest man, a dedicated professional.

  The problem was that the same could be said about Bourne. Donovan looked again at everything he had on ARPA’s director. He simply couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off with this guy.

  He was contemplating what he knew so far and considering having a talk with Emero when a call from Brussels came through to his office. He took it on his wall screen.

  Emero eyed him. “So, now that it’s just the two of us,” he began, “you were in on that recent situation we had at our IDSD Missions over there, that’s why they pulled you in on this one, isn’t it?”

  Donovan said nothing. The reason why Lara had not been in the conference room during the call the day before made it all too clear to him that he could never know what the person he was talking to knew, even if that person was from IDSD. Emero knowing about the incident that had involved Lara didn’t mean he knew about Oracle, even if he was a senior agent and the agent in charge of the ambassador investigation at IDSD. And while Scholes had noted that Slaviek didn’t know about Oracle, he never specifically said that Emero did. It wasn’t about rank or position at the international organization. It was simply about need to know.

  Emero laughed, clearly amused. “I originally started out as a protective agent at IDSD HQ Security before I decided to get the training required and transferred to the Office of Special Investigations. So a couple of years ago, when there happened to have been a need for it, I was seen as having the necessary expertise and was asked to head the protective detail assigned to ensure someone was protected when that someone happened to come to IDSD HQ. And it worked out well, despite someone disliking protection, because I befriended someone, we got alone right from the start. So on the occasion that someone comes here, I make sure I oversee the protection of that someone if I can. And I’m rather pleased to know a guy like you does that in the United States, too, knowing how someone adamantly refuses to be properly secured at our complex there. That someone is rather a miracle worker, one we wouldn’t want to lose, isn’t that right?”

  Donovan’s nodded in appreciation. The guy was o
bservant. And he knew about Oracle. “Nicely put.”

  “Yes, well, we in intelligence love being all mysterious,” Emero said with a chuckle, and then his eyes became serious again. “Meanwhile, I’ve got zilch here. So far, we’ve found no one connected to the theft, or any trace of the technology. I’m sending you the medical examiner’s report on everyone who died on that jet. Basically, they were all unconscious when it landed, pressure drop did that—Dr. Rebecca Tanner, our expert in charge of the inspection of the jet, confirms the proper controllers in it were remotely manipulated to cause that and whoever did it also made sure the emergency oxygen system didn’t work. And hypoxia set in quickly, which explains why there was no struggle. All the perpetrators had to do was land the jet, walk in, shoot the crew, the protective detail and Ambassador Sendor’s assistant, and take the unconscious ambassador with them when they left.

  “Also, all Sirion personnel and everyone either directly or indirectly involved in the project are accounted for. We have some of them working on the jet right now. I’ve cleared them, and they’re working with Dr. Tanner in her lab. A senior aviation engineer, Brendan Ailee, you’ll see his name on the Sirion personnel list, and several of his people who were on their way from a field test back to the United States when this happened. All clean, all eager to help. They’ve run additional tests and have confirmed that a Sirion copy was how the jet was taken and landed, and they’re trying to reverse engineer it now, see if they can figure out which Sirion features would have been completed by the perpetrators, maybe even changes made in them or new features added—we’ve already told them which specs Berman allegedly stole—and perhaps use this to identify trademark practices of whoever may have participated in recreating the stolen technology. There was also something about the unique markers of the signal through which the technology communicated, whatever, I swear I tried to understand.