by Jason Letts
Her annoyance growing, Jane flipped back to the page with the quote from Oliver Ip, part of a who’s who of the president’s critics parading through the text. Simply seeing his odious name got her hackles up, as did his nagging insinuations about what Alex’s divorce meant. The clock was ticking and her work wasn’t going to do itself, but the masochistic mood she was in to seethe at the president’s critics seemed insatiable.
Shifting to her computer, Jane went to the Washington Post website and was surprised to see that Oliver Ip hadn’t yet posted one of his trashy screeds that day. A click to his history of articles told her he hadn’t published a story since the previous Friday, an oddity as he pumped out another chunk of words every weekday. For him to go three days without writing anything…was he sick? On vacation? Her luck wasn’t good enough for him to be fired.
A lack of current material didn’t stop her from beginning to read his old articles one after another, and she glowered at each new petty rumor the journalist trotted out and every nobody from Facebook with a vile opinion that Ip evidently felt everyone needed to know about.
Eating up time in a way Agent Trice wouldn’t at all approve of, she made it back to Ip’s video interview with Alex, the article about the death threat the president had received online the day she’d met him, through so many articles between the inauguration and the transition, all the way back to the day of the election, a day that Jane now had personal reasons to remember bitterly.
In Ip’s first article following when Alex was declared the winner and the previous president was sent packing, Jane read his woeful pity party with an excessive dose of schadenfreude. The sorrowful laments and the bitter, resentful remarks Ip made were fun to read, but Jane found herself stopping when she got to a quotation from a woman named Elizabeth Dumpkins from Manchester, New Hampshire, who wrote that she “wept for the soul of our nation now that a force of pure evil has taken the helm.”
There was something about it that Jane found off-putting, and it wasn’t that calling Alex pure evil seemed a tad extreme. What kind of person would actually say that? And it seemed too perfect in the context of the article, an encapsulation of everything Ip was trying to get across conveniently packed into one sentence.
Opening up Facebook, Jane began searching for this Elizabeth Dumpkins and eventually arrived at a profile that seemed to fit how Ip had described her, location and all. The picture of a middle-aged woman with puffy cheeks and braided hair over one shoulder made her seem like a normal enough person, but there weren’t many details about who she was or what she did. Only two dozen friends. All the account posted were news articles once a week, many of them Ip’s, with no accompanying text in a way that seemed automated. Before long she’d gotten all the way down to when Dumpkins had created the account the previous March.
Staring hard at the page in front of her, Jane had to wonder what made this woman want to get onto Facebook for the first time right around when the presidential primaries ended in order to share political articles and nothing else. The suspicion hit her that this wasn’t adding up, and a Google search for this person from that place brought up nothing but the Facebook profile.
Clicking to another one of Ip’s articles at random, she began researching another supposed source and discovered that the account stopped being active at all only two weeks after the individual had shown up in the article. The next one she looked up seemed safely like a legitimate person, but the realization that she was finding something strange made her need to look up everyone to determine the extent of what she was really seeing.
Jane had done some tedious things in her life, but spending virtually the entire afternoon scrolling through Facebook profiles of random people after matching them to news articles had to be the most grueling.
It was the end of the day when she got up from her desk, the work she needed to get done barely started, and rushed over to the Investigative Division to crash into Nathan’s office. He was sitting and staring at the computer while rolling a baseball around on the desk, but he instantly turned to her with a smile.
“I’m about to go to dinner, if you want to come with,” he said, leaning forward and setting his arms on the desk.
Jane rubbed the bridge of her nose, feeling strangely manic and excited.
“First of all, I don’t know how things are done in Atlanta, but around here we don’t end sentences with prepositions. And second of all, you’re not going to dinner. There’s something I need you to look…at,” she said, biting her lip.
Nathan squinted at her.
“Alright, what is it for?”
“Now you’re just doing it on purpose,” she said, rolling her eyes and knowing she’d just asked for it. “But forget about that. Open a bunch of browser windows to Facebook. I’ve been trying to figure this out and I need someone to tell me I’m not crazy.”
“You’re not crazy,” he said as he clicked his mouse. “I’ve known some crazy women. You’re not one of them.”
Jane pursed her lips, wondering what else she was going to walk into before their conversation was through. She took the liberty of pushing his rolling chair out of the way so that she could get to the keyboard.
“Let’s see if you still feel that way in a few minutes. Now look at these three profiles. Elizabeth Dumpkins, Eddy Azarea, and Miles Coppera. All of them have produced remarks that Oliver Ip has quoted in his articles. Do you notice any similarities?”
Nathan glanced at her and then moved closer to the desk to begin looking over the pages.
“Not really. Just looks like three random people who happen to be news junkies to me,” he said. Jane smiled.
“Look at this,” she said, reaching over him to do some clicking and scrolling. “All three of these accounts were created on the very same day last March. Since that time, there are a dozen different instances where all of them shared Washington Post articles penned by Ip within minutes of one another.”
Nathan leaned back with a finger over his lip.
“So you’re saying…”
“Oliver Ip has been fabricating the comments that appear in his articles using fake social media accounts,” she said.
Nathan glanced over at her with a sly smile.
“OK, I’m convinced. But what’s the play here? You want me to call up the Post and get him thrown out the door? Leak it to another paper to discredit him? Let’s remember that we protect the president, not defend him by attacking his critics.”
He wasn’t quite seeing the bigger picture, though she couldn’t blame him for not getting it all. She saved the best for last.
“What if it turned out that critic was the one threatening the president’s life? If we’ve established that he’s created fake accounts on numerous occasions, what does that mean for the story he broke about the threat issued on Facebook right after the news came out about the divorce?” Jane asked, clicking over to the article Ip had written about the threat, which came up again in his interview with Alex.
Staring hard at the screen, Nathan judged it carefully.
“I remember talking to him about that and then speaking to the person who tipped him off, an ornery old woman who seemed to have full-fledged dementia. Other than being familiar with Ip, she couldn’t say anything about the threat other than that she sent Ip things she saw people post on Facebook all the time.”
When Nathan tilted his head down with his hand over his lip, Jane could tell he was getting it.
“I don’t think this person who actually issued the threat, Kevin Neilson, exists. There’s a reason we were never able to find him, the same reason Ip kept bringing up that threat over and over. And then all of a sudden we have someone abusing security clearances to make an attempt at the president’s life? I think Oliver Ip was attempting to make good on his threat,” Jane said.
She watched Nathan take a deep breath and lean back in his chair. The Secret Service was extremely adept at tracking down threats, and it irked everyone when one slipped by without resolut
ion. It looked like they’d just filled in a big question mark.
“I take back what I said. You are crazy, but you’re brilliant too,” he said, getting up from his chair and grabbing his jacket.
Jane was a little mystified by his sudden movement.
“Where are you going? You’re not headed out to dinner, are you?” she gasped. Now that they knew this, they had to make sure Oliver Ip was apprehended right away. Nathan shook his head.
“Dinner can wait. The agents investigating the bombing need to be notified. I’ll get them a message tipping them off, but they’ll need the whole story in person. We’re going to visit the FBI.”
A bright smile came to Jane’s lips, as if she’d finally captured something she’d wanted for so long.
And with that, they rushed out the door.
12
FBI Headquarters
935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C.
When Jane and Nathan arrived at the hulking cement colossus that housed the FBI not far from the Smithsonian and the National Mall, her nerves had flared up as doubts crept in about whether her theories would really hold up to the scrutiny they were about to face. After all, investigating crimes was not her job and for all she knew there was a chance she could be wrong about something.
After being escorted to the second floor, they reached an office along the side with floor-to-ceiling windows and a lot of computer screens beside an expansive workspace full of agents at their desks carrying out law enforcement tasks for the federal government. The first person they met was a well-built man on the taller side with messy dark brown hair, and then Jane was surprised to discover the office belonged to a woman, an assistant deputy director with short strawberry-blonde hair and a scar on her forehead over her right eye.
“I’m Nathan Carr,” he said, shaking the other man’s hand.
“Travis Greer.”
“Thanks for meeting with us so quickly. I’m Jane Roe, logistics agent for the Presidential Protective Division,” she said, shaking the woman’s hand. In a black pantsuit with silver pinstripes, she made the FBI look glamorous even with the scars.
“I’m Nora Wexler, and I’m overseeing the investigation into the Air Force One bombing. It’s been a long time since we’ve had anyone from the Secret Service in here. You’ve been doing your jobs very well,” she said.
Jane smiled, at once proud of the compliment and determined to live up to it.
“That’s nice of you to say, although of course if we’d had our way this never would’ve happened in the first place.”
The twinkle in Nora’s eye gave Jane the impression that she loved her job.
“I understand the sentiment, but we couldn’t have things get too quiet around here for us. Fortunately we were able to zero in on a suspect we have in custody by the name of Heath Bastion who we’re working with, but I gather from your message that you have some new information for us that might be important.”
Blinking, Jane realized this was her moment.
“Right. He’s the Washington Post’s technical assistant, I believe. What we’ve been able to do is connect his partner, the journalist Oliver Ip, to a history of threatening remarks against the president that he then amplified and repeated in his news stories. We’ve come to the conclusion that he’s the one behind the bombing,” she said.
Agent Greer scratched his chin.
“We have video evidence of Bastion carrying the bomb through the airport terminal at Andrews. All of the fingerprints we found at the truck and Post building suggest that he was the only one to touch anything. I’ll be honest that we haven’t yet determined how he built the IED or knew how to smuggle it through the X-ray scanner, but we’ll get there, no matter how adamantly he denies he had any involvement.”
Jane’s eyes widened as she came to understand how close they were to charging the wrong man with such a heinous crime.
“I’m not saying they couldn’t both be involved in some way, but I think we’ve locked onto proof that Oliver Ip had been using fake Facebook accounts in the same way that the threat he promoted was made, and that this pattern of behavior fits with what we know about what people do after making credible threats against the president based on historical data. Let’s not forget that the threat was a perfectly clear intent to blow the president up, using those exact words and specifically suggesting the use of a bomb,” she said, calm but serious.
Nora and Travis looked at each other without saying anything in a way that Jane found curious. Either the FBI had mastered the art of intuitive communication, or something was going on there. Finally, Nora turned back to Jane and Nathan.
“Fake accounts are something of a specialty for me,” Nora said with a smirk. “Looks like we’ll have to let the daycare know that we’ll be a little late to pick up Amber.”
“I don’t know why we don’t just bring her here,” Travis said. “She’d be more useful than you think.”
Jane laughed despite herself, a hand covering her mouth.
“Wait, you two are married?” she gasped. Without a doubt they were talking about their kid.
“Things in the FBI are looking a lot like they do in the Secret Service,” Nathan added.
Nora shrugged and leaned against Travis, who put his hand over her shoulder. They looked like a cute couple, and Jane couldn’t help but wonder when she’d have someone like that to lean against.
“Yes, we got married. I don’t know how it happened. Long story,” Nora said. Travis squinted at her.
“Seemed to go by fast to me.”
Nathan crossed his arms over his chest.
“Unless you want me to start sharing stories about my personal life—and believe me, I have some good ones—maybe we should start giving you more of an idea of what Oliver Ip has been up to,” he said.
“Let’s get right to it then,” Nora said, whirling around her desk to her chair.
They began pulling up the pages Jane had shown Nathan, the Facebook profiles and the Washington Post news articles. It wasn’t long until Jane noticed that Nora was branching out into things she hadn’t noticed and places she hadn’t gone to. The scope of what they were looking at kept growing and growing.
“This size of the schemes he was running are really starting to look breathtaking in size. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were enough fake people to fill a plane. And they’re performing all kinds of tasks, promoting his articles, commenting supportively on the Washington Post’s social media pages, and of course providing unverifiable quotations for his articles.
“He’s clever and tried to hide everything, but running a troll farm of this size all by yourself means there are going to be some loose ends. It’s not just some of the creation dates that are dead-ringers. Linguistic analysts would have a field day matching up common phrases, speech patterns, and favored words.”
The more they looked at, the more disturbing what he was doing appeared.
“Check this out. These two profiles, ostensibly of different people in different parts of the country, both have profile pictures featuring the same setting taken at the same time. I’m pretty confident that he has some real people that he works closely with, people who may not be entirely with it, and he’s harvesting their personal family photos to populate his fake profiles,” Nora said.
“Reminds me of the person who allegedly tipped off Ip about the threat in the first place. She couldn’t recall doing it and sounded very old,” Nathan said.
“Connecting him directly to the threat on one particular profile that wasn’t used for any other purposes and has since been deleted would be a challenge, but based on this we have enough to go on,” Nora said.
“As serious as all this is, I’m much more interested in tying him to the more serious crime of bringing a bomb in proximity to the president anyway,” Travis said.
Jane agreed, and an interesting thought floated through her mind. If she was an instrumental part of identifying the culprit of the Air Force One
bombing, that would have to carry some weight with the Office of the Inspector General investigation, possibly saving her job.
“The easiest way to do that is to have him admit to it. I’m ready to move in. Let’s pay him a visit,” Nora said.
“Looks like he’s over in Capitol Heights. Won’t take long to get a unit over there. I’ll get them going now,” Travis said, exiting the room.
That left Jane and Nathan with a few minutes to talk to Nora, who seemed just as disturbed by the bombing and hungry to put it to rest as they were.
“This whole situation really casts Heath Bastion in a different light. With this level of deception and manipulative tendencies, he may have been a completely unwitting participant in all of this,” Nora said.
Travis returned with a thumbs up, and Nora flicked on a monitor to give them a glimpse into a cam that one of the agents riding in a car was wearing. Jane wasn’t familiar with the roads through Capitol Heights, but judging from the area it didn’t seem any better than where she was living.
They watched the car come to a halt in front of a four-story apartment building of plaster and concrete in a densely developed area. A group of agents went inside, climbed the steps, and arrived at a door on the third floor that was notable only for its chipped paint, like it’d been scratched by a tiger or something.
While the cam had no audio, they were in radio contact with the agents and could hear the sound come through as one pounded on the door. There was no answer, and they pounded again, this time calling for Oliver Ip to open up.
“They’re going to have to bust through,” Travis said to Nora.
“Don’t you need a search warrant for that?” Jane asked as it occurred to her. Nora looked at her with a comforting smile.
“We had all the paper we need on everyone in the plane short of the president the day the bombing took place,” she said. “If need be, we could show up to your place and kick the door right down.”
That was less comforting, but Jane could’ve imagined harsher responses her question could’ve gotten.