Breach of Protocol

by Nathan Goodman

  Uncle Bill said, “Good, you got our message?”

  Cade said, “Got your message? The blaring of the iPhones scared the hell out of both of us.”

  “Good.”

  Jana looked at the others. “So what’s the news?”

  Knuckles said, “We have some information about Director Latent’s assassination. It’s a bit unsettling. Maybe you should have a seat, Miss Baker, I mean Jana.”

  “No sense sugarcoating it,” Jana said. “Tell me.”

  Uncle Bill said, “It’s about the autopsy, the autopsy of Stevie, Jana. We were just . . .we were just concerned talking about the details might upset you.”

  Jana swallowed. “What about it?”

  Knuckles looked at Uncle Bill, who nodded. “Well, during the autopsy on the BBC reporter that was killed along with Director Latent, they removed the crossbow bolt from his chest.”

  Jana’s stomach tightened. The thought of the BBC reporter and Stephen Latent lying on a mortuary slab with their chests cut open gave her chills.

  Jana’s legs became wobbly, and she slumped into a seat, then looked to see if anyone had noticed.

  “What did they find that’s so strange?”

  “Well, obviously we wanted to know every detail about the bolt and the broadhead—the manufacturer, the type, style, composite materials, all of that basic stuff. We’ll use that information to track down anyone who may have purchased such an item, the problem being of course that these are readily available. But we needed to see if any customizations have been made that might help us narrow our search.”

  Kyle crossed his arms. “Look, it’s not as if we’re talking about blood and guts here. Just tell her what we found,” he said.

  Knuckles exhaled. “They removed the arrow, then unscrewed the broadhead from the shaft. That’s when they found it.”

  Jana’s scowl deepened. “Found what?”

  “Evidence. They found things embedded inside the broadhead. It appears that the base had been drilled out. That left a cavity inside where they found a strange residue.”

  Jana cringed.

  “Poison?” Cade asked.

  “No, that’s what I would’ve thought as well,” Knuckles said. “Instead it was packed with the pulp from a fruit. Fig, to be exact.” He let that sink in for a moment. “We have no idea what it means.”

  21

  PURPOSEFUL CLUES

  NSA Command Center

  “Fig?” Jana said. “What do you mean fig? You’re telling me that the inside of the broadhead was hollowed out, and it was packed with fig preserves? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Uncle Bill looked over his glasses at her. “No kidding. And it’s certainly not as if we are assuming the assassin spilled his Fig Newton cookies just before he fired the crossbow bolt at Stevie.”

  Cade looked at Knuckles with a grin on his face and said in his best British accent, “It’s not a cookie mother, it’s a Newton.”

  Knuckles looked like a lost puppy.

  Cade added, “Oh, you’re too young to remember that commercial.”

  “Commercial?” Knuckles said. “What commercial?”

  “All right, boys, enough,” Jana said. “Hysterical. Yes, the commercial where the little English boy gets in trouble for eating Fig Newtons in his bed. You two are a laugh a minute.”

  “Also stuffed inside the broadhead were two other things. An insect, a wasp, and a small stone.”

  “A wasp?” Jana said. “A wasp, a rock, and figs? Are you sure the lab isn’t just messing with us?”

  “Don’t we wish,” Knuckles said. “We had an entomologist at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History take a look at the wasp. She preliminarily identified the insect as either belonging to the genus Blastophaga or Wiebesia, which are very similar to one another. They’re running more tests to be sure. The wasp is tiny, only about two millimeters long. We also had a geologist there take a look at the stone. It’s a piece of rose granite.”

  “The question is, what on earth could any of it mean?” Uncle Bill said. “All we know at this point is that the crime lab has definitively confirmed fig pulp, rose granite, and a particular wasp. They’re working to further analyze them to see if they can learn anything else.”

  “Like what?” Kyle said. “What Walmart they bought the Fig Newtons from?”

  Uncle Bill said, “These are not Fig Newtons, people. These are just figs. You know, figs. It’s a fruit. Jeez, it’s getting hard to work around here.”

  “Oh Bill, they’re just being boys,” Jana said.

  Bill continued. “They’ll want to find out if the figs were fresh. Perhaps they can determine where they were grown based on soil contaminants, pesticide residue, nutrients in the soil, pollen grains, things like that. The same thing with the stone. They’ll try to trace the origin of each item.”

  Kyle stepped forward. “I’ve got the FBI crime lab working double time on it. Who knows? Maybe it will lead us somewhere.”

  Cade turned to him. “Dude, you work for the CIA now. What are you doing calling the FBI’s crime lab and making them work overtime?”

  “I have people over there.”

  “You have people over there? Uh huh. What people?”

  “Just people.”

  “You mean a girl. What kind of favors are you doing for her?”

  “If you people don’t get back to business,” Uncle Bill said, “you’ll go to bed without your suppers. Don’t make me call Mrs. Uncle Bill Tarleton. She’s not as forgiving as I am.”

  “Thank you, Bill,” Jana said. “Let’s think about the list of clues. We’ve got these items, the fact that Director Latent was killed with a crossbow is weird in and of itself, and a glass bead with a tiny figurine of a man riding a horse and carrying a bow. It’s obvious that the figurine with the rider carrying a bow is symbolic of Director Latent being murdered with a bow, but what does that mean in the first place? What’s a bow got to do with anything? And why is Jarrah going to all this trouble to leave these clues behind? What is he trying to tell us?”

  Knuckles turned his head to the side. “Not what he’s trying to tell us, what he’s trying to tell you, Agent Baker. I mean Jana.”

  “Well I agree he’s certainly trying to talk to me, I just don’t know what he’s saying. He said a lot of things to me on those phone calls. I just wish I had had a way to record them. I keep thinking back to his asking me if I’d never been to church. Do you think any of this has something to do with religion?”

  “To a jihadist,” Uncle Bill said, “everything has something to do with religion.”

  “And besides,” Cade added, “this is a guy who grew up with Islam. I have no idea why he would make any references to a church, the Bible, Christianity, or anything like that. That is not his world.”

  Uncle Bill’s fingers disappeared into his cavernous beard as he scratched his chin.

  “Sounds like a wild-goose chase, the kind he would want us to go off on. He’d want us to disappear down a rabbit hole as we scoured the Bible or something.”

  Jana, however, was not so convinced. To her way of thinking, Jarrah was leaving clues purposely. Leaving clues for them to follow. Her concentration, however, was faltering. She was distracted by the comments Jarrah had made about her mother and father. The quick Internet search may have yielded nothing, but she had to find out. Then a wandering thought occurred to her and she stood. “Hey, did anybody listen to the news report about the sheriff who was assassinated a few days ago?”

  Uncle Bill said, “Sheriff? What sheriff?”

  “A sheriff somewhere in Louisiana. I didn’t think anything of it when I heard it on the news. But he was apparently killed by a sniper as well. Witnesses didn’t even know what happened until he collapsed. They never heard the shot, as if the rifle had been silenced.”

  “Two days ago? The day after Director Latent was killed?” Knuckles said.

  “It’s probably nothing. But look it up, son,” Uncle Bill said. “What is the n
ews reporting about it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Knuckles said as he spun his chair around toward his computer. “Hold on, let’s see. Okay, AP Newswire reported that . . .” His finger traced across the monitor, “Looks like it was out of Saint Tammany Parrish, just north of New Orleans.” Knuckles mumbled under his breath as he read forward, scanning for important details. “Just like Jana said, sniper rifle, didn’t hear the shot . . . truck driver was killed as well. . . yeah, that’s about it. His name was Sheriff Will Chalmette.”

  “What?” Jana said in a voice devoid of tone.

  “The truck driver? Yeah, a truck driver was killed at the same time.”

  “No, his name,” Jana said. “What was the sheriff’s name?”

  “His name? It says his name was Sheriff Will Chalmette.”

  Uncle Bill looked at Jana. “Is anything wrong, Jana?”

  “It can’t be. Is there a picture of him?”

  “Sure,” Knuckles said as he turned the monitor toward her.

  She looked at the photo, then put her hands over her mouth. “That’s Willy. Oh my God.”

  Uncle Bill said, “You recognize him?”

  Jana shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Will Chalmette? Are they sure?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Knuckles said.

  “He was a friend of the family, kind of an uncle-in-law. When I was a little girl, he’d come to the house every Christmas to see Mom. I called him Willy.”

  “He was your uncle?” Bill asked.

  “Not a real uncle, no. When Mom was in high school, her parents took in an exchange student from France during her senior year. She became very close to the family. Her name was Michelle. That’s where my middle name came from. She stayed in the US and got married to Willy. He was from Louisiana but I remember the two of them sitting around the Christmas tree, always talking to each other in French and laughing. I was little, so I don’t remember much, but the two eventually divorced. Michelle, I think, moved back to France. He’s really gone?”

  “This can’t be a coincidence,” Kyle said.

  Tears welled in Jana’s eyes. “He always brought me marzipan. Dark-chocolate-covered marzipan.”

  “What?” Cade said.

  “It’s candy,” Jana said. “Kind of a New Orleans thing . . .” Jana’s voice trailed off. “I hadn’t seen him in years.” Her lower lip began to tremble and she turned away from them.

  Bill looked at her. “Kyle is right, this is not random. Jarrah is behind this. He’s chosen another person Jana knew, and we missed it. I want the three of you down there. We need to make sure they didn’t find anything unusual at the scene where the sniper was crouched, like a glass bead.”

  “Wait, Bill,” Cade said, “I get the fact that Jana knew the victim, but it’s a longshot at best. He was a sheriff. Sheriffs have a lot of enemies. He was probably killed by some guy he sent to jail. Besides, if they’d found a glass bead, we’d know it by now.”

  “We need to make sure we see no connection between Director Latent’s and Gilda’s deaths, and the assassination of the sheriff.”

  “But the sheriff was killed with a sniper rifle,” Cade said. “What’s that got to do with—”

  “Son,” Bill said, “we just need to be sure. Yes, it’s true it was a sniper rifle, but think about it. Director Latent was killed with a crossbow, and Gilda with a sword. Those are two seemingly unrelated weapons as well.”

  “Are you thinking we should expect more killings? With different kinds of weapons?” Cade said.

  “Not just more killings,” Jana said, “more clues.” She stared off across the room. “To Jarrah, leaving a corpse behind is just a delivery vehicle for some new clue he wants us to find.”

  “Sir?” Cade said. “Louisiana? I’m not field personnel. I’m an analyst, remember?”

  The smile on Uncle Bill’s face widened just enough to be visible under his thick beard.

  “That’s what I told Steve Latent when he called and asked me to come pick up the encrypted data from you and Jana two years ago when this whole thing with Jarrah started. My wife is still pissed that her minivan was destroyed.”

  Jana said, “Didn’t the government reimburse you for that?”

  Bill looked at her over the tops of his glasses.

  “You ever tried to write off the cost of your wife’s minivan on a government E-06 expense form?”

  22

  LOSING FOCUS

  NSA Command Center

  With a new travel assignment about to commence, Jana became more aware of how exhausted she was. No matter how much she tried to sleep, she would wake but still feel tired. It was a never-ending spiral that she could not escape. It was time for a mental break from the search for terrorists.

  She slumped into a chair and stared at the computer terminal through bloodshot eyes. Then a wandering thought occurred to her. She had been unable to find much information about her parents on the Internet. But she wondered if here at NSA headquarters, she could access her own personnel records on the FBI’s database. Surely the NSA had access to all FBI personnel files. Perhaps there was more information there.

  “Personnel records are sealed,” she said just under her breath. “But these are my personnel files. I wonder if I can access them, or whether I’d get in trouble for trying. Like I’ve always said, take action now and ask for forgiveness later. I’ve earned the right to a few transgressions.”

  A few keystrokes later and she found herself staring at the FBI’s personnel file for one Jana Michelle Baker. She laughed at the photo of herself: a head shot that reminded her of a criminal mugshot. In the photo she looked so young, so full of ambition, like it had been taken in another life. Now, three years into her career as a federal agent, she thought back to those days when things had been simpler. Perhaps Cade was right. Perhaps she had changed.

  Much of the information in the file was info she was already familiar with. After all, she had submitted much of this on her original FBI job application. But what she had never seen were the comments made by various special agents who had interviewed her during that time. Here, too, she found few surprises. Most of it was standard reporting on her answers to questions during the panel-interview portion of the process—terse and to the point.

  But when she got to form SF-86, the Questionnaire for National Security Positions, the preemployment background check, she leaned closer to the monitor. She read and reread the typewritten notes from the investigation. This, too, was all fairly standard. The FBI had sent agents to interview everyone in her past: friends, employers, school teachers, and the like.

  After reading the comments from these people, she could see why personnel files were sealed. This was confidential information and she knew it. She shook her head and moved the cursor into position to close the file, but then a single name jumped off the page at her—a name she could not identify. It was the name Richard Ames.

  “Who is Richard Ames?” Jana whispered.

  The further she read, the more perplexing the notes became. Large sections of the document had been redacted—blacked out so they could not be read. Her only guess was that someone with much higher security clearance would be able to read the redacted information.

  She scanned farther into the record but found most of it unintelligible. She could not locate any other mention of the name. Her curiosity spiked and she flipped back to page one of her employment application.

  Her finger then traced across the monitor to the section labeled Basic Information. In this section was found the applicant’s name, address, next of kin, prior addresses, and educational background. She had filled out this section herself and submitted it five years ago as she embarked on what had become a two-year hiring process.

  And there again sat the name: Richard Ames. She couldn’t avert her eyes from it. It was as if the surrounding information on the page became blurred in her vision. Only the name remained in focus.

  It had a familiar ring to it, but she had no idea why. Her father�
�s first name had been Richard. But Ames? What was the name Ames doing in her employment file? She didn’t know anyone named Ames. Her eyes slid to the left of the document and read the label identifying what information was to be entered into that field in the first place. Her breathing became erratic. Jana closed her bloodshot eyes and rubbed them, then looked again.

  This time her breathing stalled. She read and reread the label. It said: Biological Father. This form field was to contain the name of the applicant’s biological father.

  “Richard Ames? My biological father isn’t someone named Richard Ames, it’s Richard Baker. What the f—”

  “Miss Baker?” Uncle Bill yelled from across the command center.

  Jana bolted upright from her chair. She knew she was not supposed to read her own personnel file, and scrambled to close it.

  “War room. We need to do a sitrep,” he said.

  Jana stood and walked, but her mind was focused on her personnel file.

  23

  LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED

  Fort Meade Flying Activity, Tipton Airport, Fort Meade, Maryland

  In the morning the three friends waited on the tarmac as the Gulfstream 6 jet approached. A thin layer of mist covered everything, yet it was more humid than hot. It was early, and the sun had yet to crest the horizon in the eastern sky, yet light had begun its triumph over the darkness.

  Cade yawned. “Can someone tell me why we have to go to Louisiana? This is a goose chase.”

  “What, you don’t like Cajun food?” Kyle said with a grin.

  “Love it. But that’s a good question. Jana, I guess I don’t even know whether you like Cajun food or not,” Cade said. “In fact, the only seafood restaurant we’ve ever been to together is Casey’s Crab, where we first got hooked on those fried scallops.”

  “No,” she replied, “I love Cajun food.”

  Cade said, “I just don’t understand why we have to go ourselves. Don’t we have field personnel down there? I mean, it’s Louisiana for God’s sake. We’re not talking about a foreign country.”