by Mark Henshaw
“Because he lives in Loudoun County,” Fuller said, trying to follow the trail that the analysts were laying down.
“Not exactly a quantum leap in deductive reasoning, but yes,” Jon conceded.
Kyra stood long enough to take an iPad from one of the men, who gave it up only on a silent order from Rhodes. She launched a mapping application and talked as she typed. “You have seen a case where the mole dictated the drop sites.”
“Robert Hanssen,” Rhodes said after a moment’s thought.
Kyra nodded at him. “In most HUMINT ops, the handler approves the sites. That makes it easier for him to spot surveillance and create a logical cover for action if he’s confronted, but it’s more dangerous for the mole. Hanssen knew that, so he refused to play by those rules. He controlled the times and places, and the Russians went along because his information was valuable enough to justify the risk. You know where Hanssen left most of his dead drops?”
“Nottoway Park, Vienna, Virginia,” Fuller told her.
“Three miles from his house. And where was the dead drop he had just serviced when he was finally arrested?”
“Foxstone Park,” Rhodes replied.
“One mile away from his house. He could get there on foot in fifteen minutes even if he wasn’t in a hurry,” Kyra replied. “The simplest cover for action is the best, so Hanssen picked locations where he could say he was just out taking a walk. Maybe the same principle applies here. Salem was the one taking all the risks in using Banshee Reeks. So how could the mole have cover for action there when he made the drop?” She held up the iPad, showing the group a map of the area that Rhodes’s team had raided the night before. There was the subdivision, a half mile away through the trees, through which Salem had fled.
Rhodes took the computer and scrolled around the map. There were only a handful of houses beyond the neighborhood within walking distance for miles in any direction. “You want us to investigate some random intel officer who might live in a subdivision because it happens to be a half mile through the trees from a drop site? Forget it,” he said. “Given how many of you people live in Northern Virginia, random chance alone says you’ve got some people living in that development. I’m not going to waste my people’s time checking into someone just based on their geography.”
“Your choice . . . a bad choice, but yours to make,” Jon said. He pushed himself to his feet.
Kyra shrugged and handed the iPad back to Rhodes. She followed Jon through the door into the hall, leaving the other men behind. “I’ll get the names of all of our people living in that neighborhood.”
“I’m sure the Bureau will appreciate your efforts on their behalf,” Jon replied, his tone dry.
“They’ll never say so.”
“It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re not interested in who gets the credit.”
• • •
Rhodes exhaled, a long slow breath designed to release the anger that had been rising inside him like a swollen river. “I don’t want him back in the building,” he ordered.
“What about her?” Fuller asked.
“Only with my approval,” Rhodes decided. “She’s halfway civil at least. Are the forensics back on the package?”
“The crime lab is still working on it, but preliminary results came back clean,” Fuller reported. “No fingerprints, no sample suitable for any kind of DNA analysis. The envelope and pages were all generic stock, probably came out of some supply closet at Langley. We imaged the thumb drive and gave a copy to Langley. I’ve got people interviewing the rangers out at Banshee Reeks, but I guarantee they won’t have seen anyone leave the package.”
“Yeah, we weren’t going to have it that easy,” Rhodes admitted. “Where does Hadfield live? Anywhere near Banshee Reeks?”
“In Ashburn, ten miles from there as the crow flies.”
“And he didn’t go anywhere near it yesterday?” Rhodes asked.
“No,” Fuller replied. “I checked with the surveillance team this morning. He follows the same routine every day. Gets up, spends the day at Langley, goes home. Maybe stops at the grocery store or goes to some drive-through to pick up dinner. Last night he didn’t even do that. Stayed in all night.”
Rhodes frowned.
“Okay. Stay on him.”
CIA Red Cell
Kyra’s habit had always been to reach her desk by 0600. Jon had always done the same until the Russians had crippled him, but she’d seen the wisdom of keeping the schedule of rising early and getting work done in the solitude of the morning. This month of the year, it was still dark outside at that hour, and only a few lights were on in the New Headquarters Building across the loading dock. Kyra did not bother to turn on the vault lights, instead letting the monitor do that work until the sun would come up in an hour or so and reveal the rest of the world.
She had put in a request to the Seventh Floor the night before to release the names of any CIA officers who lived in the subdivision that backed up against Banshee Reeks. There was only one, and it had taken a second request, this one made directly to Barron, to pry the man’s personnel file loose.
Personal Information
William Fallon
GS and Step:
Senior Intelligence Service (SIS)-1
Time in grade:
10 years, 7 months, 22 days
Entry on Duty (EOD):
13 April 1993
Military Service:
none
Awards and Commendations
12 Exceptional Performance Awards
Current Employee Data
Assigned Office:
Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI)
Career Service:
Directorate of Operations (DO)
Occupational Title:
Manager
Education
BA Mechanical Engineering, 1988, Stanford University
She was mildly surprised to find the promised files were in her in-box. She had sent the request to Barron’s late the night before and she hadn’t been sure his staff would even pass it to the director at all. The time stamps showed the files had arrived only four hours after she had asked for them. Barron, it seemed, had laid down the law with his staff on Kyra’s messages. For an Agency that normally ran at the speed of government, the request had been filled with astonishing speed and Kyra wondered what threats Barron had leveled to push those particular file requests to the head of the queue.
Kyra extracted the attachments from the e-mail and opened them, then decided to attack the files recovered from the Banshee Reeks drop site first. There were five of them, each a Microsoft Word document recovered from the brown envelope pulled away from Salem. Four of them clearly were Agency reports, with all of the usual marking, crypts, and file numbers. She searched for them in the Agency’s classified holdings and the system blocked her accessing any of them online. They’re all compartmented, she saw. That’s bad news.
One document differed from the other four. It was short and straightforward, bare of all formatting, a detail that told Kyra it was not a CIA report. It looked like someone simply typed it out on a word processor.
British Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) liaison has identified the buyer as Asqar Amiri, a British expatriate working from Kish Island for the Iranian government to arrange the clandestine acquisition of arms and sanctioned nuclear materials. British sources with indirect access to his department claim that Amiri is negotiating to buy radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) from a dealer operating near Kandalaksha Bay, Murmansk.
SIS is trying to recruit Amiri with a repatriation offer as the incentive. Amiri has not been vetted, but liaison has agreed to arrange a clandestine meeting for one case officer with Amiri in Basrah. Procedures will be onerous, but this might be a chance to get some detailed and specific information about his reported objectives for the Iranian government.
She read the report through twice, then brought up the interface to the Agency’s databases. She typed Asq
ar Amiri and ran a search.
The computer reported no results.
Kyra stared and began typing in other keywords and search terms, checking the report as she went for other unique keywords she could try. There were plenty of hits on Kandalaksha Gulf and RTGs, but nothing on Asqar Amiri.
She began typing again, this time an e-mail to the CIA director.
TO: Clark Barron
FROM: Kyra Stryker
SUBJECT: Recovered intel
The intel reports recovered from Banshee Reeks appear to be compartmented. I will need the access lists to those compartments.
One document references an Iranian operative acquiring illegal nuclear material from Russia—our mole problem and hunt for the strontium in the Haifa bomb might converge. The problem is that this report does not appear in any Agency database I can access. I need to know whether it’s being held in some compartment outside of the main system.
Kyra
She sent the e-mail, sat back in her chair, and stared at the icon on the monitor that represented the second file Barron had sent her. She clicked on the icon.
William Fallon’s record was lengthy, which she’d expected. The man had been in the Agency’s employ for more than twenty years. He had started as a case officer, but had applied for a position in management only five years after entering on duty. He had never stayed in any one assignment more than three years and in most for two, jumping from office to office, with no commonalities between the portfolios each assignment covered. More interested in moving up than learning anything, Kyra decided. He took whatever job was open as long as it was a promotion.
Reading the man’s annual performance evaluations took her an hour. His scores were high, but the comments entered by Fallon’s superiors were drafted in the diplomatic language of bureaucrats who wanted to avoid protests and appeals. None had any issue with Fallon’s operational skills, but a half hour’s reading revealed a common criticism and another half hour confirmed it. The words were carefully chosen, but anyone who’d read enough reviews could see the message. Fallon was a narcissist and quite possibly a sociopath.
She turned to the other file that Barron had sent her, but got no farther than the first page when Barron’s reply arrived.
TO: Kyra Stryker
FROM: Clark Barron
SUBJECT: Re: Recovered intel
Access lists attached. Had my minions do some research on the Banshee Reeks reports. Can’t find the one you’re looking for or the Iranian’s name in any compartment. Who wrote the report?
Barron
That’s a fine question. Kyra brought the Banshee Reeks files up again and read them through one more time, looking for evidence pointing to their author, but finished with nothing.
There was another possibility. She leaned over, took the mouse and keyboard, and navigated to the metadata window, showing the hidden information attached to every Microsoft Word file that stored its author’s name. The Agency had security tools that could strip the data out, but many officers forgot to use it on occasion.
She picked the first report, clicked the last few buttons, and the window came up.
Title: Iranian arms dealer trying to acquire uranium enrichment centrifuges
Subject: Nuclear proliferation
Author: Samantha Todd
Todd.
She looked at the other file Barron had sent her connected to William Fallon and reread the cover page. It was a file from the inspector general, only a few dozen pages long. Kyra stopped and stared at the screen.
REPORT OF INVESTIGATION
Disappearance of Samantha Todd(2016-0068-IG)
June 24, 2016
She picked up the black phone and dialed an outside line.
“Hello.” Jon’s voice was alert.
“It’s me,” Kyra said. “I need you to come in.”
“Lunchtime?” he asked.
“Bring your boss, if she’s available.” Kyra hung up the phone and began to read.
• • •
Agency Dining Room 2 was a restaurant maintained so the director’s chef could stay busy on days when there were no visiting guests. It had once been reserved for senior personnel only, but an egalitarian director had decided he didn’t like the elitism and had opened it to all comers, which kept it busy. One usually needed a reservation, but occasional exceptions were made for special guests such as former Agency directors.
A server seated the trio by the windows that overlooked the north Langley woods and the George Washington Parkway. The Potomac River was just a few hundred feet beyond. Kathy looked out at the sight, almost identical to the one she had seen from her office years before.
The server took their drink order and left for the kitchen. Kathy waited until he was a safe distance away, then looked to Kyra. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been going through the stuff that the FBI recovered at Banshee Reeks. I found something that I wanted to run by you two before I took it to Barron. What can you tell me about William Fallon?” she asked.
Kathy’s face darkened, a look Jon had seen only rarely and knew that she reserved for the few people she truly disliked. Kyra could feel the anger reaching out from the woman in waves through the air. “You’ve never met him?” the older woman asked.
“No.”
“He was our deputy station chief in Iraq when I was here,” Kathy explained. “He was the bureaucratic version of Genghis Khan. People either loved him or hated him, nothing in between. He played bureaucratic turf games the way prison gangs try to carve out new territory inside a jail. What’s the connection with him and this case?”
“Some of the intel recovered at Banshee Reeks was written by an officer named Samantha Todd.” Kyra saw Cooke’s face twist again at the mention of that name. “Director Barron sent me the Inspector General’s report on her disappearance and Fallon’s personnel file. The IG’s file was pretty thin.”
Kathy cocked her head. “I guess you wouldn’t know that story, would you?”
“Should I?” Kyra asked.
“No. The investigation was compartmentalized,” Kathy told the other woman. “Sam Todd was a case officer . . . She did a couple of tours, one in Pakistan, another in Argentina, a headquarters rotation. Then she volunteered for war zone duty. They assigned her to work Iranian nuclear proliferation and she landed in Fallon’s unit. He sent her to Iraq. A lot of Iranian expats live in the southern part of the country, where the Shi’ites dominate, and she went down there looking to develop assets, and she didn’t come back. The DO ran a manhunt in Iraq, but no one found anything. Fallon and several of his team were interviewed, but the investigation never went anywhere for lack of evidence. If ISIS or some other insurgent group grabbed her, they never went public. We were always afraid she would show up in one of those execution videos, but nothing like that ever came out. No propaganda movies, no nothing.”
“The Iranians have a habit of grabbing Americans who wander too close to the border,” Kyra noted.
“We considered that, but they usually try to squeeze us when they do that, at least for an apology, if not some kind of diplomatic concession. That never happened with Todd.” Kathy picked up her water glass and sipped at it, staring at her husband. Kyra could see that this was a painful subject for her.
“Eventually, we had to tell the family. They didn’t know she worked here and they didn’t take it well,” she said, looking at Jon.
“Do you think Fallon was responsible?” Kyra asked.
Kathy turned back away from the window. “Fallon was ambitious, he had an ego fit for a politician, and he liked to get creative with the rules and never took responsibility when things didn’t work out,” she recalled. “Todd wrote some of the intel that the Bureau recovered?”
Kyra nodded. “A report that the Brits were trying to recruit one of their expats who was trying to buy some radioactive generators for Tehran. He was unvetted, but SIS apparently agreed to put Todd in the same room with him anyway. But the report wasn’t for
matted like an Agency cable. It looked like an e-mail, and it isn’t in any of our databases or compartments. So the mole had a report from Todd that was never entered into the system.”
“A fabrication?” Jon asked.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Kyra said. “I can’t prove it though.”
Kathy cursed. “I wish we’d had that during the investigation,” she said. “I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that Fallon was running some kind of unapproved op. If he sent Todd to that kind of meeting and it went south, his career would be dead.”
“That would explain why they were sharing e-mails outside the regular systems,” Jon observed. “He could’ve sold it to her as some kind of covert communications protocol set up just for that operation. She might not have even realized what Fallon was doing.”
“What about the other reports the Bureau recovered?” Kathy asked.
“All compartmented. Barron gave me the access lists. Fallon and some members of his old team appear on them.”
“Sounds like the list of candidates for the mole just got very short,” Jon offered.
“Maybe,” Kyra agreed. “But I don’t know how to confirm the Todd report. Todd’s not here to do it. The mole could confirm it, if we knew who he was. But if we knew who he was, we wouldn’t need to confirm it. Catch-22.”
“There is someone else who could do it,” Kathy observed.
Kyra furrowed her brow, thinking. “I don’t—”
Jon smiled at his wife. “The expat arms dealer, if he actually met with Todd. Of course, you’d have to find the dealer, and he’s probably in Iran, which is denied territory. But I’m sure the director could clear the decks for that kind of operation.” He looked at his wife with new admiration. “I love the way you think.”
“I have my moments,” Kathy replied as she lifted her water glass, a serene look on her face.
CIA Director’s Office
“She’s not wrong,” Kyra observed. She set the hard copy of the Todd e-mail on Barron’s desk. “Finding the arms dealer and confirming the report would certainly narrow down the suspect list. And those Russian RTGs that Todd talks about in her report could be the source of the strontium used in the Haifa dirty bomb.”