by Margaret Kay
A smirk set on Vargas’ face. “Mrs. Andrews, you have to understand. It’s not that easy.”
“It’s an easy question. I know my husband was an honest man.” A gut check hit her. No, he hadn’t been honest with her, but she believed he was doing what he thought was best. “Why did you trash my house? Why the fuck did you destroy it?” She demanded.
Vargas shook his head. “That wasn’t us.”
“Who was it?” Cooper asked, beating Sienna, who was about to ask it as well.
Vargas’ eyes went to Sienna. He remained silent.
She let out a sarcastic laugh. “You still don’t trust me? My God, my husband was one of you!” She paused and concentrated on Vargas’ face. “Or is it, you didn’t trust him either?”
“What was he working on?” Cooper asked.
Vargas hesitated.
“I carry the authority of Deputy Director Mason. Shall we call him up?”
Vargas’ eyes shifted to the three other CIA agents in the room. “Emory doesn’t have the proper clearance to know the details.”
Emory was the man who accompanied Cooper, Madison, and Garcia into the room.
Cooper flashed him an authoritative glare. “You are dismissed. Return to your post and tell no one of the events in this room under the direct order of Deputy Director Mason. You will be debriefed at a later time.”
Emory glanced nervously around, as he had when they first entered the room. “Yes, sir,” he said. He nodded, and then left, closing the door behind himself.
Vargas motioned to his tablet. “Andrews left a protected file, something he was privately working on. He was a good agent. I gave him the latitude to follow some lead that had him all worked up.”
Cooper nodded to Garcia who lifted the tablet from the table, clicked several keys, and scanned the file. “It’s a standard shared-secret encryption cipher,” he told the group. Then his eyes met Sienna’s. “Your husband locked down the data. Details that presumably only you and he would know, are the keys. Each piece of information you provide unlocks a portion of the text, looks like every eighth word.”
Vargas nodded. “There is programming in place that after three wrong answers to any question the section of text protected is unrecoverable, unless there is another way to access the info or provide the correct answer after the fact, which we haven’t figured out. We tried to guess, without success, on the first question.” His eyes shifted to Sienna. “The question was, a one and a two and a, followed by three spaces we assumed to allow three words.” He chuckled. “All Google gave us was Ching Chong Potato. That didn’t work. Neither did three, four, five. After we entered, here we go, that question locked.
Sienna’s eyes teared up as she chuckled. “Dig down deep,” she replied softly. Then her eyes met Anthony’s and she felt an odd pang of guilt. She knew in that moment that this was going to be an uncomfortable trip down memory lane. And she didn’t want to be insensitive to his feelings. “I coached a youth cheerleading summer camp and that was our saying to rally the girls to dig into themselves for that extra energy when they were exhausted. I can’t believe Greg remembered that,” her voice grew softer as she spoke, and tears spilled from her eyes.
Anthony embraced her.
“That still doesn’t explain why you mistrusted her. You could have brought her in, gotten the info you needed and kept her in protective custody,” Cooper said.
Vargas’ eyes stared with no emotion at Sienna. “We needed to watch her further. She was under constant surveillance by us from the moment Greg Andrews was found dead.” He nodded at the tablet, still in Garcia’s hands. “Find the file titled SA Surveillance. The password is banana boat supper, all one word, no caps.”
Garcia clicked around. His eyes went wide when the photo of Sienna and the man with the violent scar near his right eye that they had been searching for, for over six months displayed. Ernesto Mendoza was a known Colombian cartel lieutenant. He had slipped from the DEA’s surveillance in Chicago the prior November and hadn’t been on anyone’s radar since.
Sienna and Mendoza stood close to each other, appeared to be talking in a pleasant and friendly conversation. The expressions on their faces showed they were engaged, interested, and responsive to each other. These did not appear to be two strangers discussing the ripeness of the bananas. They were in the produce section of a grocery store. Mendoza was handing a bunch of bananas to Sienna.
Garcia’s eyes met Cooper’s and then flashed to Madison’s. His gaze shouted, you are not going to fucking believe this. He turned the screen, so all could see the picture.
Madison’s eyes went as wide as Garcia’s had been. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Sienna was confused by her reaction.
“So, you know who that man really is,” Vargas said to Cooper. It wasn’t a question.
Cooper did not answer him. “Sienna, who is that man and how do you know him?” Cooper asked, keeping his reaction in check.
“That’s Raul Valle. He’s the father of one of my students.”
Garcia clicked through the five other pictures in the folder, all showing Mendoza talking with Sienna. They were all taken at different times as the two wore different clothing in each picture, and they were taken in various locations.
Sienna’s expression turned from confused to outraged as the slideshow of pictures displayed. “Those last two were taken before Greg was killed. I remember those days clearly.” Her voice was strong with both anger and bewilderment dripping from her words.
“So, you lied. She was under surveillance before her husband was killed,” Garcia hissed.
Vargas shrugged.
“What’s going on?” Sienna asked. Her eyes settled on Vargas. “Why?”
“That man, Raul Valle is really a Colombian cartel lieutenant. Greg had dealings with him when he was in Colombia and was investigating him,” Vargas said.
“Did Greg know he was the father of one of my students?”
“More importantly, did Valle know who your husband was?” Cooper asked.
“I’m not sure how he could,” Sienna said. “I don’t have any pictures of Greg in my classroom and I don’t recall ever running into Raul Valle when Greg and I were together.”
“What is that student’s name?” Garcia asked. He had already brought up the secure CIA browser. He would hack the school records and get all her information, including address, parent’s names, and their phone numbers.
“Sophia Valle.”
Garcia clicked into the school district records. “Tell me about this Luisa Santana. Is she Sophia’s mom, nanny, or what?”
“I’m not sure of the relationship,” Sienna answered. “I thought mother at one point, but after seeing Luisa Santana and Raul Valle together I wasn’t so sure. Sophia has called her madra and mama, but she has also referred to her as Luisa.”
“What words has she used to refer to her father?” Cooper asked.
“Just padre and papa.”
“Garcia,” Cooper said with a headshake towards the door. It was time she left.
Garcia walked Sienna to the door. Then he turned back and faced Vargas. “One last thing, Vargas. You were Andrews’ section chief, his handler. You knew everything about him. Why did he break off all sexual relations with his wife?” Garcia asked.
“Anthony, no, it’s okay,” she began, but Garcia interrupted her.
“I have a feeling, and you need to know,” he said. His gaze shifted to Vargas. “Answer the question.”
“It’s what you think,” Vargas said, his eyes on Garcia. “He had to keep his cover in a shit-hole strip club in Colombia. He had sex with several of them that night and just couldn’t bring himself to possibly infect his wife with anything he may have picked up. Even after all his tests came back negative, repeatedly, he couldn’t go there with her ever again, said it was only a matter of time till it came back positive.”
“Now,” Cooper said, his eyes on Garcia.
Garcia pulled her fro
m the room. Sienna leaned against the wall, covered her eyes with her hands, and took a deep breath. The world was spinning. She had just about all the answers to the questions she had, but those answers brought her no peace.
When her eyes reopened, they affixed on Anthony. “You knew.”
He nodded. “I had a feeling. It was all that made sense.”
“And all these years, I thought it was me, something not sexy enough, or not good enough in bed, or that he just didn’t love me any longer.”
“He thought he was protecting you.”
“I didn’t know him at all. Our entire marriage was a lie.”
“Not a lie, Sienna. I think he worked it out the best he could. He was between a rock and a hard place.”
“You’re defending him?”
“Not defending. I understand. I think he truly loved you and hated what your relationship had become, and what he had become because of the job.”
Sienna thought about that for a moment. It brought her incredible sadness, and anger.
Back within the room Vargas stared Cooper down. “Are we done here now?”
“Not yet. There are a few more things you have to answer for,” Cooper told Vargas.
Vargas sighed and rolled his eyes.
“I still carry Deputy Director Mason’s authority,” Cooper reminded him.
“Fine, what?”
“You were running an off-the-books Op. You were letting Andrews run one too, by the sounds of it. I assume you have files. I want to see them. There has to be some accountability.”
“I gave Andrews a long leash. I have a few notes from him, not much though. I told you he was a good agent and had good instincts. If he suspected there was more to Ernesto Mendoza and New Mountain Enterprises, I believed him and gave him a lot of latitude to find proof.”
Cooper and Madison exchanged glances. Then he went to the door and opened it. “Garcia, I need you back inside.” His eyes went to Sienna. “Will you be okay to wait here alone for a few minutes? This is important.”
She nodded that she would.
Garcia gave her a quick kiss on her forehead. “Just wait right here.”
Once they reentered, Cooper had Vargas repeat his last statement.
“Did Andrews have a proven link between Mendoza and New Mountain?” Cooper asked.
Vargas nodded. “The corporate filings and money trail in and out of that facility were Andrews’ focus. He even did on-site recon and saw Mendoza there while it was filled with product. It was apparent to Andrews that Mendoza helped orchestrate moving it in and out.”
“Do you have any proof on that beyond Andrews’ notes?” Garcia asked.
Vargas pointed to the tablet Garcia still held. He told him the locations of several files. One had recon photos in the folder of the New Mountain Enterprises facility. In the photos, Mendoza was there and so was a shit-ton of marijuana in various phases of production. He shared the screen with those in the room. Then he noticed the date. “I was at that location one week after these photos were taken and there was nothing there, no product, no workers.”
“It’s a transitory and intermittent production center,” Vargas said. “Andrews believed ninety percent of the weed was processed and sold to licensed growers in various states. He also noted cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin production and packaging occurring at that site.”
“Why wasn’t the DEA called in immediately?” Garcia demanded.
“There wasn’t time and he didn’t want to tip them off. Andrews didn’t want them to just pull up stakes and open up operations someplace else. He wanted to gather intel and bring the whole network down, including the so-called legal growers who he believed were buying the illegal weed.”
“Greg Andrews was one of the good guys. His loyalty and the intel he collected was never suspect,” one of the men Madison had been covering said.
“Just his wife was,” Madison replied sarcastically.
“Did Andrews note transportation method and was any interdiction attempted?” Cooper asked.
“He didn’t get the opportunity to discover that,” Vargas said. “He observed and took photos that first day assuming from the amounts he saw that when he returned the following morning before sun-up that he’d learn more. But the whole place was cleaned out in a matter of ten hours. He had no signal near that facility, assumed they were using a jammer. And guess what? That next day when the place was empty, no more jammer.”
“These photos were taken just over a month before Andrews was killed,” Garcia piped up. “That coincides with the phone messages left on the residence phone.”
“What phone messages?” Vargas asked.
They filled him in on the messages they were investigating that Sienna had told them about.
“Greg Andrews never would have given his home phone number to anyone,” the other man who had brought Sienna down to the room said.
“So, he never reported these messages?” Cooper redirected.
All three of the CIA Agents in the room confirmed he had not. They all found that odd too.
“Last question,” Cooper said. “Who killed the two dead NSA Agents in the trunk of the burned-out car?”
“That’s complicated,” Vargas said, exchanging glances with the two other men. “It wasn’t any of us. The car they were found in wasn’t even the one we used to pick Sienna Andrews up in, just the same make and model.”
“Uncomplicate it and tell us who killed them.”
“I don’t have proof, but I believe it was Mendoza cleaning house. From what we’ve pulled, it looks like those two agents were on the cartel’s payroll. I also believe there are a few agents in the DEA working with Mendoza, but again, I don’t have proof, just Andrews’ gut feeling that I believe.”
“Why did you pick her up with fake or stolen NSA Credentials? Why not your real CIA Creds?” Madison asked.
“We wanted Mendoza to believe his people picked her up. He and his people were behind the break-ins at the Andrews residence after his death, were probably the one’s responsible for his murder.” He shrugged. “We actually think that since those two agents didn’t turn her over or admit they picked her up is why they were killed. Mendoza thought they had turned against him.”
“So, you suspected those two NSA Agents before they were killed, sent fake NSA Agents in to get Sienna Andrews, and more than likely caused their deaths?” Madison charged in outrage.
Vargas nodded.
“Why did you suspect them?”
“Surveillance photos of them both with Mendoza and some bank records.”
Garcia opened the door, relieved to see Sienna leaning against the wall. “Come on,” he said, taking her by the arm. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What about Vargas?” She asked.
“Cooper’s handling him.” He led her back to the elevator he, Cooper, and Madison had used. He hit one and the elevator ascended. His hand was on his weapon as he escorted her across the lobby. Emory was back at his post at the reception desk. He came to his feet, his eyes silently questioning Garcia as to what was going on. “Agent Cooper will debrief you when he is through with Vargas.”
After they passed through the doors to the parking garage, Sienna finally spoke. “What about the protected file that Greg left? Don’t I need to answer those questions to unlock it?”
“You will back at your place. I copied the file.”
Garcia and Sienna waited in the SUV in the back seat. Garcia’s gun was in his hand, which unnerved her. Until they were away from this facility he would be on his guard. Twenty minutes later, Cooper and Madison approached. Only after they pulled out of the parking garage did anyone speak.
“How did you leave it with Vargas?” Garcia asked.
“Left him on the phone with Mason. For what it’s worth, I believe him. I suggested to Mason we work together and bait a trap for Mendoza.”
“For who?” Sienna asked.
“Raul Valle’s real name is Ernesto Mendoza. He’s a really ba
d guy and is responsible for a lot of illegal drugs making it onto every American street. He or one of his men most likely killed Greg,” Garcia said, not caring if Cooper wanted this information released to her or not.
Cooper’s eyes flashed to his in the rear-view mirror. When he returned them to the road, he spoke. “Sienna, I hate that we are going to ask this of you, but we’re going to need you to call him into school for a conference. Madison will be in the room with you and there will be a lot of cover nearby.”
“Do you think he will remember me from the park last year?” Madison asked.