The Hunted

by Alan Jacobson

  “So what have we got going here?” DeSantos asked.

  “I ran my worm program.”

  “Is that an earthworm or wiggle worm?”

  Archer sat back from the keyboard. “I would’ve thought that after listening to me all these years, you would have picked up some of this stuff by now.”

  “You’re assuming I was listening. What you took for nodding my head in agreement while you were talking to the screen was really the bob of my head while I was napping.”

  Archer made a face. “Are you listening to me?”

  “If I nod off, just kick me.”

  “I’ll do more than that.” He swiveled his chair to face DeSantos. “Worm programs are like viruses, except that they don’t attach themselves to files. They’re used by hackers who are trying to get into someone’s computer network to destroy data. A good worm, like mine, moves quickly from server to server undetected, searching for information that matches the parameters you set for it.”

  “Don’t worms destroy data?”

  “Good, a semi-intelligent question. At least you’re listening. I’m not destroying anything. I’ve modified the program. I’m using it to look for specific information on those mainframes, kind of like a search engine does on the Internet. In this case, I’m looking for anything having to do with Anthony Scarponi. When it gets a match, it compiles a list and sends it back to me.”

  DeSantos tilted his chin back and looked at Archer through discerning eyes. “You’re a lot smarter than I thought you were.”

  “Thanks.” Archer leaned forward and struck a few keys, then pulled a USB cable from a receptacle in the adjacent tech wall and attached it to the back of his computer. He pressed another key and sat back. “We’ll have an answer in a minute.”

  “I’m glad I have you around, you know?”

  “How glad?” Archer asked. “Very glad or just somewhat glad?”

  “Right now? Very, very glad.”

  Archer moved over to the far wall and lifted a few pieces of paper from the printer. “I’m never gonna let you forget you said that.”

  “Hey, we’re a team, you know? We each do our thing. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Archer was flipping through the pages, scanning the printout. “And what ‘things’ do you do as a member of our ‘team,’ Hector?”

  “I’m the breadwinner, my man. You play the keyboard, I play the politicos. Without me, you wouldn’t have all this computer shit to do all your... shit on.”

  “We complete each other, is that what you mean?”

  “‘Complete each other?’” DeSantos held up a hand. “Now you sound like Maggie. Don’t be getting philosophical on me, Brian. Get enough of that crap at home.”

  Archer picked up the other pages that had emerged from the printer. He rifled through them, and then pointed to one of the entries. “Hmm. Looks like we’ve gotten some interesting hits here.” He moved back to the laptop, entered an entry code, and navigated through a series of security screens. “NSA and DOD documents. Shall we call them up and read them?”

  “Yes,” DeSantos said in a formal British accent, “we shall.”

  A moment later, the screen was filled with a memo that corresponded to the documents they were looking for.

  “Hit the print button. Let’s get a hard copy of this stuff before we’re kicked off the system again.”

  “It’s all in code,” Archer said.

  DeSantos turned to his partner. “Does that surprise you? It’s the fucking NSA. They live in code. I bet they talk to each other in code.” He looked back at the screen. “Except I don’t know how they’d pronounce these words...”

  Archer ignored him and moved over to the printer again. He removed the new document, took it to his scanner, and placed it face down on the glass. “I don’t know how long this will take. Could be hours.”

  DeSantos put his feet up on the conference table, closed his eyes, and folded his hands across his stomach. “In the meantime, I guess I’d better earn my salary.”

  36

  Payne was seated in the back row of the small, sloping stadium-style classroom at the Academy, stifling a yawn. Sleep had not been coming easy the past few days, and it was now reaching the point where he considered asking the doctor if he could get a prescription for some sleeping pills.

  He blinked a few times and looked around the room, taking in the mix of new agents around him. Many were in their late twenties, while a couple were in their midthirties, barely getting in under the Bureau’s cap of thirty-seven.

  The instructor was discussing proper forensic crime-scene procedures, a topic Payne found fascinating. But as soon as the overhead graphic depicting mathematical formulas consisting of sines and cosines of angles was displayed, his mind began drifting off.

  Suddenly, an image of a house on a hill popped into his mind. And a car, a late-model Chrysler. Forest green, high polish. It was the same one he had seen in his dreams. He sat there, trying to trace the memory, when suddenly the instructor stopped talking. The entire class had turned and was facing Payne, apparently expecting a response from him.

  “Agent Thompson,” the instructor said, “I’ll take that as a no, that you don’t have anything additional to offer.”

  Payne felt his face turning crimson. “Uh, no, sir. Nothing to offer.”

  “Very well,” the man said as the heads swiveled back to the instructor. Even though he was the only field agent taking the class, he felt that he might as well have been one of the rookies, longing for the day when he was to be presented with his credentials and job assignment. Of course, no one in the class, including the instructors, knew his true identity. With the mole still unidentified, the fewer people who knew he was at the Academy, the better.

  At 5:10, class ended and the students left their assigned seats for the dining hall, where dinner awaited them. Waller was waiting in the hallway as Payne walked out of the room.

  “Director Knox wants you in on the briefing of the kidnap situation,” he said.

  “When’s that?”

  “Forty-five minutes. We’ve got to leave now.”

  They were in the car a few minutes later, heading down the winding two-lane road toward the main gate at Quantico.

  “Were you ever able to retrieve your e-mail?” Waller asked.

  Payne turned away and looked out the side window. He had told Waller over breakfast that he was having difficulty getting through to the Hotmail site.

  “Yeah, it worked,” he said, realizing that he needed to talk with someone about the message he had received. He had originally decided to keep knowledge of his wife’s e-mail to himself, feeling that the internal conflict he was suddenly facing—the realization that he had made a mistake in giving up his former life—was best handled without meddling interference. But as the day wore on, guilt welled up inside him. As any man should, he felt a responsibility to the woman he had evidently married. He knew instinctively that he could not run away from such a commitment. At the same time, acknowledging that he needed an outlet, someone he could bounce his concerns off, he turned to Waller.

  “I got a message,” Payne said with a chuckle. “From my wife.”

  “Your wife—”

  “Yeah, can you believe that? I live in a small town, some place called Placerville, and I work as a network account manager.”

  “Far cry from life as an agent,” Waller said.

  “Yeah, sounds about as interesting as watching lettuce grow.”

  Waller sighed. “What it is and what it sounds like could be very different, Harp. I find it hard to believe that you’d go from the kind of career you had to living a boring lifestyle.”

  “I guess. Maybe I needed the change after what I’d been through.”

  “You’ve got to believe in yourself, buddy. No one has as much vested in yourself as you do. No one. I’m sure you did what you thought was best at the time. But things have changed. You’ve been through a lot in the past several days. I say we first get you t
hrough this trial, then you can regroup, make some decisions.”

  Payne nodded, but looked away.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know, okay? And I’m not just talking about Bureau stuff. Anything.”

  Payne thanked him, then fell silent, nearly drifting off to sleep several times while staring out the window as they made the forty-minute drive along I-95, up Pennsylvania Avenue, and into the parking garage at headquarters.

  They took the elevator up to the lobby, where they were greeted by Chuck Seamen, the FBI policeman who had been assigned the lobby’s four-to-twelve shift for the past nineteen years. Graying at the temples with an expanding waistline, he had come to enjoy the second most relaxed schedule at headquarters. Seamen engaged them in some playful banter as Waller logged them in and headed to the elevator.

  After receiving clearance from Liz Evanston, Waller led the way into the vacant office. A moment later, the director entered and took his seat behind the desk.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” Knox said, nodding for them to sit. “Agent Haviland should be joining us in a moment.” While fiddling with some papers, Knox glanced up at Payne. “I asked you to be here because I felt it’s time to begin integrating you into the current Scarponi situation, to bring you up to speed.”

  Payne nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “As I’m sure Agent Waller has informed you, my daughter was taken by Scarponi’s men yesterday morning. She was returned unharmed last night.”

  Haviland walked in and sat down next to Waller. “Sorry I’m late, but I was waiting on verbals from the ME and the lab.”

  Knox motioned him on with the wave of a hand. “Your report.”

  “Agent Stanfield’s body was discovered this afternoon a half mile from GW’s main campus,” Haviland said. “Single gunshot wounds to the chest and cranium. Preliminary findings indicate he was shot in the chest first, at extremely close range with a forty-caliber semiautomatic, most likely a Glock. The head wound was inflicted a short time later, while he was lying down. Body was found in his trunk, where he apparently bled out. But he wouldn’t have recovered even if immediate medical attention was rendered.”

  Knox sighed. “Assessment.”

  “As I see it,” Haviland said, “someone approached Stanfield either in the guise of a fellow agent, campus police, or Metro PD. We suspect he engaged Stanfield somewhere in the quad and drilled him in the chest with a suppressed round. Stanfield was then taken to a waiting car nearby where he was driven to his own parked vehicle, half a mile away. They stuffed him in the trunk and popped him in the head. His credentials case was missing, so whoever took it probably used it to lure Melissa into a false sense of security.”

  Knox was nodding. “Any video?”

  “We’ve secured every second of surveillance tape from every camera in the vicinity. None captured the shooting.”

  “Given Scarponi’s level of expertise and planning,” Waller said, “that’s not surprising. He knew where and when to hit.”

  Knox tightened his jaw, then said, “Anything else?”

  “Just questions, sir,” Payne said.

  Knox looked at him. “Go ahead.”

  “Was that Glock a Bureau-issued weapon?”

  “Ballistics is checking it out,” Haviland said. “They’re running the slugs against the database of every handgun issued at the Academy.”

  “Stanfield was with HRT, right?” An affirmative nod from Knox told Payne to continue. “So I’m wondering how a trained, seasoned agent like that would allow anyone he didn’t know to get so close to him.”

  “Like I said, he could’ve been dressed as campus police, a fellow agent—”

  “I don’t buy it,” Payne said. “I say he knew the guy. Maybe he’s one of ours.”

  “I agree,” Waller said. “I think it needs to be looked into.”

  Knox was nodding. “Excellent. That’s the way you should be thinking, Agent Payne. Agent Haviland, I’d like you to follow up on that. Get me that report from ballistics ASAP.” Knox pulled a computer-generated drawing from his desk and handed color copies to each of the people in the room. “Meantime, we’re attacking this on another front. Melissa’s given our ID tech a description, and he’s produced this computer-generated likeness. It’s being circulated to all the regional SACs, ADICs, and ASACs, including the ones Stanfield served under when he was stationed in Kansas City. So far, none of them have identified this suspect as an agent under their direction, past or present. It’s possible he could’ve altered his appearance, so we have to realize this may not be of any use to us.” Knox looked at the three agents. “Anything else?”

  With no further questions, Knox rose. “Okay then. Agent Payne, would you give us a moment?”

  Payne nodded and turned to Waller. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  Knox waited for the door to close, then looked at Waller and Haviland. “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s not only soaked everything up we’ve given him, but his confidence is coming around, too,” Haviland said. “He feels real comfortable in the role.”

  “Excellent. Then you don’t foresee any problems?”

  Waller threw a sideways glance at Haviland. “Not exactly a problem, sir, but maybe a distraction.”

  Knox folded his arms across his chest. “Explain.”

  “He received an e-mail from his wife this afternoon. It seems to have shaken him up a bit.”

  “E-mail?” Knox’s forehead was deeply creased, his eyebrows arched downward. “Where in the hell would he get access to a PC? The Bureau’s systems aren’t connected—”

  “I’m afraid that’s my fault, sir. I brought him my laptop. I didn’t see it as being a problem, and SAC Lindsey said—”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about what Lindsey said. This investigation is being run through my office, do you understand, Agent Waller?”

  Waller sighed. “Understood, sir. It’s just that Harper felt like a connection with the outside might help him regain his memory faster. I thought that was our goal.”

  “Agent Waller, this is a highly sensitive investigation. More than just the Scarponi case is at stake. The president has taken substantial heat over his release, and he’s been on my ass to make sure we put him away for good. What’s never been made public is that there were some very delicate negotiations with the other countries when Scarponi was taken into custody. Even though we had jurisdiction over the Foster murder, the other countries all claimed they had first crack at him. In order to avoid a big pissing contest, which would’ve jeopardized our case against Scarponi, the president moved quickly. He had to virtually guarantee them that Scarponi would pay for what he’d done.”

  Knox sat down heavily. “You can imagine what hit the fan when Judge Noonan released him on bail. If it gets out that Scarponi’s on the loose and that we don’t even know where he is, it would almost certainly screw up the arms pact negotiations the president has worked so hard to get them to agree to. The timing couldn’t be worse.”

  “But it could backfire,” Waller said. “If they find out the president knew he’d escaped and didn’t alert them, wouldn’t that be worse?”

  Knox broke a crooked smile. “That’s the point, Agent Waller. The president can’t tell them what he doesn’t know. If he doesn’t know about it in the first place, he can’t be accused of lying to them.”

  “You’re insulating him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means you take the heat if we don’t find him.”

  Knox shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “We will find him. And Agent Payne’s testimony will put him away. On the other hand, his failure to testify will have the opposite effect. It all depends on what actions we take or don’t take in the next few weeks. That’s an enormous burden on all of us, but I’ve chosen to put a lot of the heat on you two because I thought you could handle it. Now I see you make a rookie mistake with this e-mail—”

  “Sir,” Waller said, sitting ramrod strai
ght, “I can assure you that it won’t happen again.”

  “You better believe it won’t or I’ll pull you off the case and transfer you to the resident agency in Fairbanks, Alaska.” Knox stood up and began to pace in front of the darkened window. “I found out about his wife just before we brought Payne in. When our Sacramento field office called and told me they had a lead on him in the Placerville area, we put a few agents on him. But we were too late. Turns out he’d left on some kind of ski vacation in Colorado. They did a search of the airlines’ databases for flights leaving Colorado and immediately went there to intercept him.”

  “Why didn’t we just tell him about his wife?” Haviland asked.

  “I don’t owe you an explanation.” Knox stared the man down, then shook his head. According to protocol, he did not, of course, need to say anymore. However, he knew it would be best if he could provide them with a reasonable rationalization, if nothing else, in case they had to give Payne some kind of justification for their actions to maintain his trust. “If we bring his wife into this, we’d be placing her in harm’s way. We’d have to worry about Scarponi getting to her and using her to get to him. Not to mention the fact that she’d probably be a huge distraction for him. We need Payne totally focused on this trial.”

  “But if the Bureau found Payne and his wife, shouldn’t we have assumed that Scarponi would, too?”

  Knox sighed. “We made a tactical error.”

  There was an uneasy silence, finally broken by Haviland. “So what’s the plan? Do we just tell him—”

  “Nothing. Tell him nothing. This is not his decision, Agent Haviland. I want to be very clear on this. He is not to communicate with his wife. At all costs, I want that line of communication severed.”

  “And if he insists?”

  “Then handle the situation. You understand the forces at play.”

  “He’s got my laptop,” Waller said. “He may’ve already put out a response to her message.”

  “Where’s the computer?”