Claudia and I entered, and I shut the door gently behind me. With a fortifying breath, I turned to face him. “Dad, I’m sure you remember SAIC Claudia Quinn from Hurricane’s detail.”
My father blinked at me, presumably startled by me addressing our relationship in front of someone else, but then stood and came out from behind his desk to shake her offered hand. “Of course. Good afternoon, SAIC Quinn. It’s nice to see you again.”
“Come on, Ben. We’ve known each other too long to stand on that kind of ceremony. Call me Claudia, please.”
Dad grinned at her, making me wonder exactly how well they knew one another and whether I’d be able to get either of them to dish whatever dirt they may’ve had on each other.
“Please, have a seat.” Dad gestured to the couch and chairs on the other side of his office away from his desk. He allowed us all a few moments to get settled before speaking again. “So, you ready to make the transition to OPO, Claudia?”
“Absolutely. The official mail notification should go out in the next few days or so. I’ve already pushed my date up, so the move will be quick.”
I was surprised they’d talk about something that was so closely guarded right in front of me, but if the notification was impending, I supposed it didn’t really matter in the long run. Besides, while Claudia might not have known me that well, my dad knew I wouldn’t tell anyone.
“They couldn’t have picked a better agent for the job,” Dad told her sincerely. “But I doubt you need me to stroke your ego. I imagine you’re here for a reason. What can I do for you?”
Claudia shot me a glance out of the corner of her eye. On the ride over, we’d discussed our strategy for breaking this news to him and had decided he might take it a little better if he heard it from me. It was just a theory we were working on, but it’d sounded as good as any other when we’d talked about it.
“Dad, I have something to tell you, but you have to promise to just listen to me and not freak out. Okay?”
My dad narrowed his eyes at me. “That’s normally not a good start to a conversation.”
“And it isn’t this time, either, I’m afraid,” Claudia interjected smoothly. “But before Ryan fills you in, I want you to know we have the situation under control. There’s absolutely nothing you need to do and nothing for you to worry about. This is just a courtesy notification. That’s all.”
“Also not a phrase that generally bodes well,” Dad remarked dryly.
I rubbed the back of my neck with the palm of my hand. “Ah. Yeah. Well, here’s the thing. Remember the other day when I told you I wanted to find out who killed Luce?”
“Of course. Although I’m surprised you do. You were pretty drugged. So, did you?”
“Not exactly. I mean, I think I found the burner phone the trigger man was using when he got the call to take the shot. But I couldn’t get much further with him.”
“I spoke with my contact in the FBI a few minutes ago,” Claudia informed him. “Their sources indicate the shooter was likely brought in for this one specific job. He used a fake ID and credit card to rent the room at the W that he fired the shots from, and the room was wiped completely clean. The crime-scene unit who worked it couldn’t find a single usable print. Not for prior guests, housekeeping staff, nothing.
“The surveillance footage from the cameras in the common areas at the hotel allowed us to get a pretty good look at his face and to determine that he slipped out a side door less than a minute after the shots were fired and got into a yellow cab. The driver has already been interviewed, and he stated he’d been paid to wait at the curb, which he did for about fifteen or twenty minutes before the guy came down. Then he dropped the guy off at JFK, where the guy paid his fare in cash.
“They considered dusting the back of the taxi but figured it’d be a moot point. There’d be hundreds of prints in there, if not thousands. Even if they could identify which ones belonged to the shooter, it’s doubtful they’d get a positive ID on him. The chances he’s of record with anyone are slim. And he’s almost certainly long gone by this time. It’s very likely he’ll never be positively identified through conventional investigative means. However, the Bureau is following up with the security cameras at the airport to see if they can pin him down to a specific airline, and they’re considering releasing the photos to the media to see whether anyone recognizes him.”
Dad’s expression was thoughtful. “I see. So, if you didn’t identify the shooter, who did you identify?”
“We know who orchestrated the hit.”
“Wonderful. Is he in custody?”
Claudia and I exchanged a glance. “Not yet, Dad. That’s actually why we’re here.” I paused to give myself enough time to gather the courage sufficient to utter the words that were almost certain to throw my father into a tailspin. “It’s protocol to inform the SAIC of a field office when one of his agents is about to be arrested for something of this magnitude.”
Dad stared at me blankly for a very long time. Then he shifted his attention to Claudia and back to me again. I could see the realization trickling slowly, almost reluctantly, into his eyes. “You’re saying one of my guys is responsible for this.”
Claudia took her BlackBerry out of its holster and began punching in the password required to unlock it. I appreciated her attempt to give us some illusion of privacy for this moment.
“Yes,” I replied simply.
My father had dedicated his entire life to the Secret Service. He loved this agency with every fiber of his being and was unbelievably proud of his tenure here. To hear that a fellow agent was responsible for something like this had to be breaking his heart, the fact that one of the casualties in the hit was his daughter notwithstanding.
Dad had clenched the arms of the chair he was sitting in so hard his knuckles were white. I could see the muscles in his throat work as he swallowed. “Do you know who?” His voice was calm, but I could tell that was forced. His lip twitched.
“Yes, Dad. It was Mark.”
“Mark who?” Dad’s tone had adopted a cutting edge, and his eyes were dark with rage.
“Mark Jennings, Dad. My AT.”
“Ben,” Claudia said softly. “I just got an email from the AUSA’s office. We have the warrant. I reached out to my contacts at the JTTF, and they sent someone over to Southern District to swear it out. Three other guys from the JTTF are waiting in the lobby to make this arrest. They’re in suits, so they won’t attract any unnecessary attention when I take them to Mark’s office. I just need for you to sit here for a few minutes until we have him in custody.”
Dad shot to his feet, and the anger radiating off him was enough to sour the air in the entire room. “I’m going with you.”
“We can’t, Dad,” I told him gently. “We have to stay here and trust Claudia to do her job.”
“I have a right to be there when one of my agents is arrested. Especially when the charges are of this nature.”
“You don’t, Dad. And neither do I. This hits much too close to home for either of us to be remotely objective. And as much as we both want to be there, you know any defense attorney worth his salt will find a way to use it to his advantage if either of us is present for this.”
“Fine. Then I want to be there when you interview him.”
I let out a huff of annoyance. Clearly, the personal was winning out over the professional here. Good to know. You know, for the next time one of my coworkers tried to off me. “No, Dad. We can’t sit in on the interview either. We don’t want him to walk on a technicality. Any technicality. We have to stay here until Claudia says it’s done.”
“This is ridiculous,” my father muttered darkly under his breath and began pacing the room. “Someone from the Service should be conducting this interview.”
“I’ll be there,” Claudia told him. “I’ve discussed it with the JTTF reps, and they’re fine with me taking the lead in the questioning.”
“I’d like to be there, too.” Dad seemed adamant about
that.
“Look, Ben.” Claudia placed a gentle hand on his arm, which stopped his back-and-forth. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s compromise. If you can promise me you’ll stay out of the room—and I mean a solid promise—I’ll interview him in one of your rooms downstairs, and you guys can watch.” Claudia pointed a warning finger at him and pinned him with a threatening look. “If the door handle to that interview room so much as jiggles while we’re in there, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
I smirked at the sight of my father being told what to do but managed to school my face back to a neutral expression just in time for him to look back at me. I blinked at him innocently and waited.
“Is that okay with you?” he asked.
“It’s fine. Whatever gets his ass in jail faster, I’m all for it.”
“I figured you’d want to talk to him. Find out why he did it.”
I shrugged slightly and lifted my hands in a careless gesture. “I gave Claudia my list of questions. She knows what I want to ask him. Besides, this isn’t her first rodeo. She can handle a custodial interview.”
“Ben, we have to go. We need to do this now. Can I trust you to stay here until I come get you?” Claudia’s eyes were serious as she assessed him.
Dad’s whole frame sagged as he sat down hard on the chair he’d been occupying previously. He waved one hand toward the door absently. “Yeah. Go do what you have to do.”
“Thanks,” Claudia said. She fixed me with a long look and squeezed my bicep once reassuringly. “I’ll be back for you in a few minutes,” she said softly.
I caught her hand as she turned to leave. “Mark almost never wears his gun when he’s here in the office. I don’t know where he keeps it, so I don’t have any idea how accessible it is to him, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him with it on. For safety’s sake, since I can’t tell you where the weapon is, you might want to either get him outside of his office altogether or, if you want to avoid a scene, at least get him out from behind his desk and into the center of the room to give you more time to react if he lunges toward something.”
Claudia smiled at me—probably because she’d been doing this for a lot longer than I had, and yet I’d still obviously felt compelled to give her a safety speech—and nodded once in acknowledgment. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”
I nodded back and released her hand. “Go get him, then.”
After Claudia had departed, I sat back down on the couch and started studying the carpet. I could see the tracks left by the vacuum and let my eyes wander up the line of one pass and down the next. Silence reigned between us for a very long time.
“Now what?” Dad said finally, his voice low.
“Now we wait.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We didn’t have to wait long. Maybe ten minutes. And while it was probably the longest ten minutes in my life to date, it wasn’t awful. I mean, it was nothing compared to the time one of my friends dragged me to a Cher concert. That had been torture. And I reminded myself of the differences in the experiences repeatedly as the seconds ticked slowly by. I also hummed “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” under my breath.
Finally, Claudia came back to the office to retrieve us. She informed us that Mark hadn’t fought them, and that outside of a few tense moments during which it had appeared that he might’ve been considering it, the entire experience had been pretty anticlimactic.
She then escorted us to a viewing room downstairs. I suspected she did that because she wanted to make sure neither of us went rogue on her and tried to burst in and beat the hell out of Mark, but I didn’t say that out loud. I merely chuckled silently to myself and trailed obediently behind her.
I left the lights in the viewing room off and stepped right up next to the one-way glass. I was trembling a little, but it was tough to tell whether that was due to fear, anger, or relief. Probably a mixture of all three. I didn’t have it in me to analyze it closely.
Mark was sitting in the room next door, one hand attached to a bar bolted to the wall by a set of handcuffs, looking dejected and beaten. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him look so small.
“He does, doesn’t he?” My dad’s whisper came from over my shoulder.
Curious, I glanced over at him. “What?”
Dad’s eyes never left Mark. “Look small.”
Oh. I hadn’t realized I’d voiced that thought aloud. I didn’t reply. There wasn’t much else to say.
I adjusted the sound on the speaker embedded in the wall next to the glass as Claudia and one of the JTTF guys entered the room. I didn’t recognize him, but the JTTF was pretty big, so that wasn’t necessarily unusual. I wished I knew what squad he was in.
My eyes were glued to the scene in front of me. Claudia’s face was completely impassive, which I deemed to be a pretty impressive feat, considering I knew she wanted to throttle the man sitting across from her. I placed my palm against the glass, allowing the cool smoothness to anchor me and keep me focused on something besides my spasming intestines.
“So, Mr. Jennings,” Claudia said, and I couldn’t help but grin at her deliberate failure to use his title. “I assume you know why you’re here.”
Mark was staring at the table in front of him with an intensity he normally reserved for scrutinizing my paperwork for mistakes. He didn’t answer for a very long time. I was actually starting to doubt he was going to—which frustrated and angered me to no end—when he cleared his throat. His eyes slowly tracked across the tabletop to Claudia’s hands, then trailed up her arms to finally land on her face. He nodded once.
“Good. Then I have some questions for you.”
“Aren’t you going to read me my rights?” Mark asked, a glimmer of his old swagger starting to appear.
“No,” Claudia replied. “I don’t have to. When the government has reasonable belief that lives are at stake, we’re allowed to demand answers to certain questions without providing you the benefit of a Miranda Warning.” A beat. “But you already know that.”
“Yes.” Mark had gone back to staring at the table again, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“So, Mr. Jennings. Let’s get right down to it. Who, besides the president of Iran, is being targeted by your little sleeper cell?”
I shot a wary glance at my father, who was glaring holes at Mark through the one-way glass. Claudia and I had deliberately avoided telling him I was the target of the assassination attempt and not the president of Iran. We’d discussed the issue and decided we wanted to see whether she could get Mark to admit it. We’d also thought that if my dad had been privy to that information before Mark was taken into custody, no power in heaven or on earth would’ve kept him from killing Mark. I knew we only had so much time before that little nugget of joy came out during the questioning, and I wasn’t sure having my dad here to witness the confession was the best idea. But I also didn’t know how to get him to leave.
Mark had lapsed back into silence, during which Claudia and her partner—whose name, I was ashamed to admit, I hadn’t caught when we’d been introduced earlier—merely continued to watch him. They were both the picture of patience. It was a damn good thing they were in there instead of me. I wasn’t very good at waiting when I wanted something. I probably would’ve resorted to tactics in direct violation of the Geneva Convention. And I wouldn’t have felt bad about that ever.
“Let me put this another way, Mr. Jennings. While we can tie several of your coconspirators to the plot to assassinate the president of Iran and have teams en route to pick them up, who do you think the Southern District of New York is going to be inclined to throw the book at? To make an example of? A bunch of Iranians? Or a special agent who swore an oath to protect and defend this country against all enemies both foreign and domestic?”
Mark still didn’t reply, but he squirmed in his seat a bit. My jaw was clenched tight, and every muscle in my body was rigid as I watched this scenario unfold. The fury churning within me was making it diffi
cult to keep still. Only the knowledge that my interference might blow the entire case kept me in that room, but only just.
“Another thing for you to consider,” Claudia went on, as cool and casual as you please. “Do you really think for one second that your Iranian friends will protect you? Do you really think they won’t try to offer you up as part of a plea deal to save themselves some jail time? Because if you honestly believe that, well, you’re even dumber than I realized.”
Mark’s eyes shot up to meet hers, and he glared at her for a long, tense moment before the whole of what she’d said sank in. The ire in his gaze withered and died, and a flicker of something akin to fear took its place.
“We don’t need you to tell us who else might be a target, Mr. Jennings. I was merely trying to offer you the professional courtesy of giving you the opportunity to talk first. But if you’re refusing to speak to us, well, we can just get right to booking you.” Claudia paused and glanced at her watch. “It’s late in the day, which means you’ll need to be housed at MCC for the night. There’s no way you’ll be able to see a judge today. Hopefully they can get you on the docket early tomorrow morning. Although, if I were you, I wouldn’t count on making bail. I don’t like to brag, but I made a couple of calls, and I can say with a fair amount of certainty you’ll be remanded until trial.”
A grin stole across my lips at her words, and I bit back a sharp laugh. Damn, she was good. As much as I itched to be driving the interrogation myself, I was really getting a kick out of watching her run the show. Not to mention the fact that she apparently had weapons in her arsenal I could only dream of.
“She can’t be serious,” Dad muttered under his breath. “She didn’t get a damn thing out of him! She can’t just process him and dump him without getting something.”
“Just watch,” I told him.
Dad turned to me with an incredulous expression. “How the hell can you be so calm?”
“I’m not. Believe me, I’m absolutely seething. But I trust her. She’ll get what she’s after.”
Worthy of Trust and Confidence Page 24