by Lisa Harris
“But no long-term effects?” Bree asked anxiously as they started for the room.
“She’ll be fine. I promise.”
Jack hesitated outside the door, feeling the need to give Bree her privacy with her grandmother if that was what she wanted. “I’ll wait here—”
“No,” Bree said, turning to him. “I want you to come in too. Besides . . . she likes you.”
“Aubrey . . .” Mary Ramsey’s eyes lit up when her granddaughter walked into the room. “You’ve come to visit me. It’s been so long. I miss you.”
“I’ve missed you too, Nana. I didn’t bring any pudding this time, but I did bring Jack. Do you remember him?”
Nana motioned for him to come closer, then reached up and felt the stubble on his face. “Jack.”
He took her hand. “You remember me.”
Her smile brightened.
“Jack Sprat . . . you’re handsome.”
“Thank you, Mary.”
“Are you going to marry my granddaughter?”
“Your granddaughter?” Jack let out an uncomfortable laugh.
“Aubrey Jean. She was born on a . . . Wednesday, I think. It was spring. Just after Easter.” Confusion flickered in the elderly woman’s eyes. “Where is your mother, Aubrey?”
“She’s not here, Nana. It’s just Jack and I.”
“I’m glad you’re here, but you didn’t answer the question, young man. Are you going to marry my granddaughter?”
“Bree and I are just . . . friends. We’ve been friends for a long time.”
“She needs to get married. Have a family. Someone to take care of her when she’s old like me. I have a son. His name is . . .” A tear fell down Nana’s face. “Why can’t I remember his name, Aubrey?”
“It’s Charlie, Nana.”
“That’s right. Charlie. He came to see me.”
“You remember?” Bree glanced at Jack, then turned back to her grandmother. “What did you talk about?”
“He brought me flowers.”
“I saw them in your room. They’re beautiful.”
“And he gave me something else.”
“What’s that, Nana?” Aubrey asked.
Her grandmother pulled a postcard from the pocket of the red housedress with white flowers she’d been wearing this morning and handed it to Bree.
“He gave you another postcard?”
“He told me he was going to take me on a trip with him. I told him I wanted to go to Australia. I always wanted to go to Australia and see a koala bear. He promised to take me. Said we could go on a boat.”
Bree flipped over the travel postcard and shook her head. “There’s writing on the back and an old postmark. It’s one he sent her a few years ago. She’s just confused.”
“He always sends me postcards,” Nana continued. “For my birthday. When he goes on a trip. I like to keep them in my pocket.”
Bree squeezed her grandmother’s hand. “I need to go now, Nana. But I’ll be back. I promise.”
“Will you bring Jack?”
Bree blinked back the tears, not wanting to leave her. “Of course I will, Nana. Of course I will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE FBI ALREADY HAD a search warrant secured and had started combing through John Bryant’s house by the time Aubrey and Jack returned. Jack had insisted she needed to eat something, so they grabbed barbeque on the way. She managed to finish half a sandwich and some potato salad. But her stomach was still queasy over the day’s events. She was trying not to think about what might have happened to her grandmother if they hadn’t shown up in time, but that was proving impossible.
She could feel the tendrils of fear closing in around her and threatening to drag her down. But as much as she wanted to stay with Nana at the hospital, there was too much that needed to be done. Too many things that needed to be resolved. Until they found her father and ended this, there was no way to guarantee her grandmother’s safety. Yet the more they searched for answers, the more tangled the web around them seemed to become. And John Bryant had managed to spin it even tighter.
Agent Kendrick ushered them inside the house where they’d first attempted to arrest Bryant. It looked just like the interior of the typical suburban ranch-style home—except for the dozens of stacks of documents lining the walls.
“What is all this?” Jack asked.
“We found them all throughout the house. In the dining room, office, a spare room down the hallway . . . We’ve found schematics of US Navy aircraft carriers, destroyers, and mine countermeasure ships. There are also detailed plans of Air Force fighter planes, jets, and other warplanes . . . and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve found everything from printouts on biological attack plans to classified US intelligence on defense systems against nuclear and chemical attacks.”
Aubrey stared at the stacks of documents. Classified documents . . . US intelligence . . . This had to be connected to her father.
“The problem is that going through this much information is going to take weeks,” Jack said. “We don’t have that kind of time.”
“My agents have already started boxing everything up, but you’re right. It’s going to take time. I’ve also got IT going through Bryant’s phones and computers.”
“What about his wife?” Aubrey asked. “She had to know about this.”
“I’m counting on it,” Kendrick said. “She was picked up fifteen minutes ago and is on her way now to be questioned. In the meantime, I’m going to suggest you start looking through Bryant’s office. Hopefully you’ll get lucky.”
While agents continued boxing up the stacks of documents, Aubrey and Jack spent the next hour searching Bryant’s office, hoping to find something that directly connected him to her father. A motivation as to why he’d arranged for someone to kidnap her grandmother. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined one wall and were filled with hundreds of dusty books that were interspersed with a few photos and knickknacks. Four metal file cabinets stood against another wall, jam-packed with more files and documents. Finding that needle in a haystack was going to take a miracle. But the connection to her father had to be here somewhere. They just had to find it.
“Bree.”
Aubrey looked up at Jack. The muscles in her lower back had tightened into knots from kneeling on the floor and going through the bottom drawer of one of the file cabinets. “Did you find something?”
“Maybe.” He stepped back from some books he’d been riffling through and walked over to her. “What did Rachel do for a living when she was with your father?”
“Rachel?” His question took her by surprise.
Jack nodded.
“I don’t know . . . I think she was a secretary for some big corporation.”
“For AKL International?”
“Maybe . . . why?”
“I found this photo on one of the shelves behind the books.” He flipped around the frame and held it up so she could see the photo. “Her hair’s blonder, and she’s ten pounds or so heavier, but if I’m not mistaken, this is her with our dead suspect.”
Aubrey felt her stomach churn as Jack handed her the photo. Three people stood smiling in what looked like a lobby in front of a sign that said AKL International. The one in the middle was definitely Rachel.
“It’s her, though this had to be taken at least twenty years ago. Maybe right out of college.”
“This could be a coincidence, Bree,” Jack said.
She shook her head. “This is a photo of my father’s second wife with our dead suspect, and both men are linked to the selling and buying of classified information. I’d say we just found our connection.”
The unsettled feeling she’d carried with her all week seemed to multiply in her stomach. She’d been told her father was a traitor. That he’d sold out his country and had been passing on classified information to foreign governments. Had Rachel been involved somehow in her father’s treason?
Jack stepped into the hallway and asked Agent Kendric
k to join them.
“Ever heard of AKL International?” Jack asked, once the three of them were back in the office.
Kendrick nodded. “It’s a government-contracted company here in San Antonio that works extensively for the National Security Agency and the CIA. Why?”
“What kind of contracts?” Jack asked.
“Mainly ones that provide intelligence. For example, military contracts to our forces in the Middle East.”
“The government contracts out that kind of work?” Aubrey asked.
“Military contractors have become the norm now, for everything from managing satellites, to manning listening posts, to supplying interrogators for US prisoners. What’s going on?”
Aubrey’s mind battled to put the pieces together as Jack explained to the fellow agent what he’d found.
“It definitely sounds as if she’s involved in this somehow,” Kendrick said.
Jack caught Aubrey’s gaze. “Rachel needs to be picked up, and we need to head back to Corpus now and talk to her.”
They spent most of the three-hour trip in silence. A call to the hospital had assured her that her grandmother would be fine. Aubrey’s job was simply to find out why someone had attempted to grab her, but she was tired of the continued ripple effect of his actions.
Thirty minutes outside of Corpus, Jack received a call from Kate at the local FBI headquarters back in San Antonio reporting that Rachel had been picked up by local law enforcement and was waiting to be questioned upon their arrival. He put her on speakerphone.
“But that’s not all,” Kate said. “I did some digging into Rachel Porter’s background.”
“And . . . ,” Jack said.
“Rachel immigrated to the US in 1999 from St. Petersburg. Six months later, she got a job at AKL International. Her real name is Lidia Tyurina.” Kate paused, as if she realized they needed time to let things sink in. “From what I’ve managed to uncover, it looks as if even though the Russians sent her here, she wasn’t guaranteed diplomatic protection from their government if anything went wrong.”
“So this is looking like she was brought to the US and put into this company for a very specific reason,” Jack said.
“With what I know about the situation, I would guess she was probably a spotter, trained to identify American assets for Russia.”
Aubrey’s nails bit into her palms as she clenched her fists. Her father had married a spy. Not an immigrant who’d come to this country for a better life, but a Russian spy.
“Thanks, Kate, and let me know if you find out anything else.” Jack ended the call.
“Explain exactly how that works,” Aubrey said.
“To put it simply, before a foreign government can recruit an asset, they have to know who to target. So they often place a person in universities or corporations whose job it is to identify targets. They do an extensive background report on the potential recruit, then hand the information over to an intelligence officer, who will make the final assessment and make contact.”
“So she wouldn’t have been the one to approach my father?”
“Probably not. As a spotter, she would have observed your father, and then passed her information on to the contact person. That way, if your father refused to become an asset, he would never connect her with the contact person, and she could keep her job as a spotter.”
But then they’d become romantically involved. Her father, working for the Russians and eventually marrying a Russian spy. The odds of all of this just being a coincidence were now clearly impossible.
Jack’s phone went off again as they were getting out of the car in Corpus. He glanced at the message, then turned back to Aubrey. “It’s Kate again. She just found us the leverage we need.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in another interrogation room, this time with the woman Aubrey had always known as her father’s second wife. She sat across from them, fear clearly reflected in her eyes as she picked at a chipped fingernail.
“You’ve been told already the reason why we brought you in?” Jack asked.
“Yes, but I don’t know what evidence you think you have, because whatever it is, you’re wrong.” Rachel leaned forward. “Four agents showed up at my door and accused me of treason. Of being a spy. I don’t understand.”
“Is it true your real name isn’t Rachel Brook?” Jack asked.
“Yes. I moved to the US a lifetime ago, and yes, I changed my name. But there isn’t anything illegal about either of those things.”
“And is it true that you were employed by a company that was contracted by the NSA and the CIA?”
“Yes, but just because they handled classified government contracts doesn’t mean I knew anything about that. Do you actually think they would have given me—a low-level secretary—access to government secrets?”
“Your access to government secrets isn’t the issue at the moment,” Aubrey said. “Let’s start with what you really talked to my father about when he came to you a few days ago. What did he want from you?”
“I already told you about our conversation. He came to me and asked for money. I told him I couldn’t help him. And that was it. I didn’t pass on any secret documents, or spy gadgets, or whatever it is you think I did.”
“That’s not exactly true, is it?” Jack said. “I don’t have time to beat around the bush, so here’s what’s going to happen if you refuse to cooperate.” He set a photo on the table. “Do you recognize this little girl?”
Aubrey watched Rachel’s face pale as she stared at the photo, unable to hide her emotions.
Jack continued. “I was told her name is Marianna. She’s eight years old and adorable. You share custody with the girl’s father, a man in Woodsboro who you had a relationship with before your current husband.”
“Marianna has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, but she does. Because there are requirements that go along with the issuing of a green card. Requirements that even I can’t control. One of them is that the card can be taken away if you are suspected of espionage. You would then be repatriated back to Russia.”
“No . . . Her father is an American citizen, and he has partial custody. If I have to leave the country, I’ll never see her again.”
“Then you need to think about cooperating with me now, if you want a chance that the courts will cooperate with you and allow you to stay in the country.”
Rachel’s jaw tensed. She hesitated. “What do you want?”
“What was the meeting with my father really about?” Aubrey asked.
She turned the photo of her daughter over before answering the question. “He told me he was in trouble. He had been selling government intel for years—which I knew—primarily to the Russians and the Chinese. Once he retired from his government job, and his security clearance was gone, new intel became harder for him to get. He told me he’d been selling carefully chosen declassified intel off the internet to both countries, but when his handlers found out, they threatened to kill him for double-crossing them.”
“So he needed to get away,” Aubrey said.
“Yes, but that requires money, and the only way he could get enough money to disappear was one more sale. So he promised both the Russians and the Chinese a list of names that included the real names and aliases of dozens of US intelligence officers posted overseas.”
“The Chameleon List,” Jack said.
Rachel nodded. “But when he couldn’t make good on what he promised, both governments believed he was holding out on them—especially when he wouldn’t meet with his handlers—so they tried to draw him out.”
“The Chinese tried to use me as leverage,” Aubrey said. “And the Russians tried to use my grandmother.”
“Yes. Your father came to me, needing a name. Someone who has access to that list. Someone he could blackmail into giving it to him.”
“What name did you give him?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t want to help him. You have to believe me.”
> “What name did you give him?” Jack repeated.
“Sean Christiansen.”
“Who is he?”
Rachel’s jaw clenched.
Jack held up the photo of her daughter. “Who is he?”
Rachel turned her head. “I told you. Someone who has access to the list. Someone who could be blackmailed.”
“And as a low-level secretary, how did you know that?” Aubrey asked.
Rachel stared down at the table, avoiding their eyes. “There were a lot of things I saw working at my old job that I had to keep confidential. And I did.”
“Things you thought you might be able to use one day?”
“No—”
“You weren’t just a low-level secretary,” Aubrey said. “You were a personal assistant, weren’t you? To Sean Christiansen. You had access to classified and confidential information on a daily basis. And now, you know about his new government job with the CIA and how to blackmail him.”
Now Rachel looked up at her. “I knew I shouldn’t have told him, but he threatened me. He said he would tell the authorities that I was a spy, even though that’s not true. He told me I could lose Marianna. I guess that’s going to happen anyway.”
“That list could get people killed,” Aubrey said.
“I didn’t give him the list—”
“No, but you’re involved in him accessing it, Rachel.”
“What about my little girl?”
“That’s out of my hands,” Jack said.
“Please . . . You told me if I cooperated—”
“He told you that if you wanted any chance of staying in the country, you needed to cooperate, but the final decision isn’t ours,” Aubrey said. “What you did has the potential of sealing the fates of dozens of American operatives. The men and women on that list are on your conscience just as much as my father’s.”
Rachel stared right through Aubrey. “You don’t know your father, not like I do. He always knew what to say to convince me he was right.”
“Then you just played into his hands,” Jack said.