by Eva Hudson
“What about his landline?”
“Different file. We’ll check that next. But.” Ingrid pointed to the screen. “DeWalt jumped at seven fifteen. But look.” She jabbed her monitor. “He received a call at seven oh-seven.”
“What are you waiting for?”
Ingrid dialed the number, a UK-based mobile. Adrenaline flooded her veins as she waited for the call to connect.
“I’m sorry. The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please check the number and try again. I’m sorry—” Ingrid exhaled and ended the call to stop the message repeating itself.
“What?” Marsha asked, eagerness lighting up her face.
“Number doesn’t exist. I don’t suppose you have any really good contacts in the data forensics team?”
“Course I do,” she said with a smile.
Marsha called her contact in DC and asked for a full report on the number within an hour. Ingrid checked DeWalt’s landline—nothing—then looked to see which numbers from the log were already in the FBI’s database. An initial glance suggested he had made the same sorts of calls he always did, his ex-wife, his bank, the office. She wondered if she should call Penny and ask her to come back to the office after all. She needed someone to match up his call records with his diary appointments, and she didn’t have time. Ingrid exhaled hard.
“You look like a woman in need of a shoulder rub,” Marsha said. “I would offer, but I don’t want to cross any boundaries. I mean, technically, I’m your boss.”
“Technically, you used to be my instructor.”
“I seem to remember you had graduated.” Marsha stepped away, putting some distance between them.
“Oh yeah,” Ingrid said. “I’d forgotten how ethical you are.”
“Ethical? That’s your abiding memory of me?”
“You know it’s not,” Ingrid said quietly. She looked away as a recollection surfaced. Her last night at Quantico. Almost everyone from her intake had made the grade, and they’d gone out to celebrate. On the way back to their barracks, they bumped into Marsha. Ingrid remembered with acute embarrassment the choice she made that night. Marshall or Marsha. Marsha or Marshall. At least neither would notice if she called out the wrong name in the heat of the night.
And although it had indeed been a hot night, at sunrise Ingrid had left Marsha’s bed and walked dreamily through the town to the Quantico complex. Finally certain of something, she knocked on the door of Marshall’s dormitory. Yes, she told him, she would go out with him.
They had followed each other’s careers and had exchanged occasional emails, but Ingrid hadn’t seen Marsha again until she’d given her speech in the bullpen that morning. She remained the only woman Ingrid had ever been intimate with. There had been enough men since to convince her she had made the right choice.
Marsha wandered back over to the spare desk and tapped one of the photos. “This is the skylark, right?”
Ingrid stood beside her and checked which image she was pointing to. “Yes.”
Marsha tapped the next photo. “So, what’s this bird?”
“It’s a starling.”
Marsha froze. Only her Adam’s apple moved. Then her eyes popped. “You’re kidding me.”
38
Ingrid carried on staring at Marsha. “Tell me.”
“I… I just need a minute.” She walked over to the window where a diffuse pale sky leaked through the slatted blinds.
Ingrid heard her heartbeat in her ears. “Tell me!”
Marsha ran her tongue over her teeth, looked over at Ingrid, and narrowed her eyes. “It might be nothing.”
“Geez, Marsha, just spit it out!”
Marsha blew out her cheeks. “Okay. About eighteen, nineteen years ago, a Russian diplomat walked into the New York field office and said one of our men was currently having a meeting with his boss. The codename we gave our traitor was Starling, in part, because it gave us deniability.” She pressed her lips together. “Anyone asked about ‘Agent Starling’ we could tell people they were confusing fact and fiction. If they searched for Agent Starling, they got a photo of Jodie Foster and a review of The Silence of the Lambs.” She paused. “It was the perfect codename for an agent hiding in plain sight.”
“Okay,” Ingrid said. “So, who was Starling?”
Marsha eyeballed her. “No one. It was a wild goose chase. We gave the operation a team of agents. They put saint Frank Geest in charge, gave them a separate office, a separate building in fact. It turned out to be an impossible task because Starling didn’t exist.” She inhaled so deeply her chest heaved upwards. “We’re more familiar with Russian disinformation campaigns now, but this was one of the first. Setting us against ourselves, tying up our resources, and demoralizing our guys because their mission was doomed to failure.” She shook her head. “Guys killed themselves because they were accused of being traitors.”
Ingrid’s skin rippled with a shiver. “And what do you think now?”
Marsha scrunched up her face. “Either Starling is still out there, or Skylark is just another goddamn goose chase.”
Ingrid folded her arms across her chest as she parsed what Marsha had said. “So we go back to what we know for sure.”
“And that is?”
“That Dennis Mulroony is being held in the hell wing of the Black Dolphin prison.”
Marsha didn’t say anything.
“Nick Angelis—”
“Nick?”
“You know him?”
Was Marsha blushing? “We go way back.”
Ingrid’s lip curled. Why wasn’t that a surprise? “According to Nick Angelis, the Kremlin will extract Skylark tomorrow night. That gives us one day to find him and save the life of an agent who deserves that we do everything we can to bring him home.” Ingrid stood in front of Marsha and looked her right in the eye. “If this is some Russian mind game, it only lasts for another day, right? And if it isn’t, then we’re close on Skylark and we get to rescue Mulroony.”
Marsha nodded. “Okay. Twenty-four hours. We give it everything we’ve got.”
“So…” Ingrid stood a little straighter and ran a hand through her hair. “I need to analyze DeWalt’s phone records, his diary. I need to scrape and analyze all of these.” She gestured to Saskia Cole’s notebooks. “Who is there who can help?”
Marsha shrugged. “You know I can’t allocate resources to this. We make too much noise, then you risk someone marching in here and shutting this down.”
The muscles tightened in Ingrid’s neck. “So much for brothers-in-arms. Promise me, if I’m ever where Mulroony is, you won’t let me rot.”
“Not a chance. Listen, I have to take a meeting, but then I’ll come back to help. I think that Brady guy is still at his desk. Where’s Penny?”
“Right here.”
Ingrid and Marsha both turned to see Penny in the doorway.
“You came back!” Ingrid said, relief infusing her voice.
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
“You sure? What about the doctor?”
“I’m not actually ill.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Ingrid smiled. “Okay then, let’s get started.”
Marsha departed for a meeting and Penny got to work cross reffing DeWalt’s diary, his phone contacts with any possible link to the Metropolitan Police. Ingrid busied herself with the scanned and digitized versions of Saskia Cole’s notes. She found another interview with Sidney Baxter, and this one had clearly been conducted after the arms dealer had been sent to prison.
SC: I need to verify what you’re saying. Who can prove that these arms sales aren’t about profit but about ideology?
SB: It’s not ideology, it’s blackmail.
SC: Who can verify that?
SB: [long pause] The only name I can give you is the man who blackmailed me. He’s hardly going to fess up, is he?
SC: Give me his name, anyway. Let me investigate him independently. If I find enoug
h to put him in jail, you’re a hero.
SB: [heavy sigh] No, I won’t. It’s more than my life’s worth, but––
SC: Yes?
SB: I’m going to give you a different name. He’s a detective in the Metropolitan Police. I think he’s investigating this stuff. He might talk to you.
SC: Great. What’s the name?
SB: [heavy sigh] It didn’t come from me.
SC: Understood.
SB: No. Changed my mind. Too high a price.
SC: Really? For the name of a detective?
SB: No. I’m not saying anything else. But if you sit at the bar in a place called Mojito Joe’s for long enough, the story will more than likely come to you.
Ingrid tapped the desk with her forefinger and stared at the screen. She could almost sense the pieces of the case circling her head, threatening to coalesce into a single, coherent whole. Although her brain was revving, the gears weren’t engaged, and she realized she wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how hard she glared at her computer.
Ingrid pulled up Libby’s list of the people who had attended the gala at Mojito Joe’s. Was Skylark’s name on the list? She studied the names of the celebrities and business executives she hadn’t heard of. Not knowing one of them from the next, her only option was to google. Sure enough, a Russian businessman was on the US sanctions list. It felt like progress.
Stop. Slow down.
It wasn’t progress, was it? It was another distraction. She was in danger of following Cole’s line of investigation, rather than her own. She wasn’t looking for an illegal arms dealer, she was looking for a spy. The clock was ticking. She didn’t have time for diversions.
Mulroony certainly didn’t.
“Duh.” Why hadn’t she thought to enter the word ‘skylark’ into the digitized cache? Annoyed at herself, typed in the letters, but before the results populated, Penny cleared her throat. “Ingrid?”
“Yep.”
“You might want to take a look at this.”
Ingrid crossed the office to see Penny’s screen, her bare feet sticking to the carpet. “What have you got?”
Penny looked up at her. “Can I just preface all this by saying that I normally book meeting rooms and make diary appointments. This isn’t exactly my forte.”
“I worked with you enough to know you can turn your hand to anything.” Don’t you know you’re Wonder Woman? “What have you found out?”
Penny tapped the screen. “These are the calls DeWalt made on his cell in the five days before he died.” She paused. “God, it’s weird saying that. I mean, I might as well just say the calls he made last week.” Penny bit her lip, then continued. “And these are the calls he made from the office. Same time period.”
“Okay. Is there a pattern?”
“There’s almost an absence of one. Completely different numbers for each phone.” She shrugged. “Not that surprising, I guess. But, there is one number he called from both. The Ravensbourne Golf Club. He was a member there.” Penny glanced up at Ingrid. “He loved golf.”
Ingrid pictured the set of clubs in his apartment.
“On Friday, he asked me several times if the club had called back. I didn’t really pay attention—it’s all sportsball, isn’t it?—but I think he wanted to get a non-member in for a round, or to let a non-member play on the main course. I dunno. It was tedious boys’ stuff, so like I say, I didn’t pay attention.” She pointed to another open document. “This is his diary. And the weird thing is that there’s no golf in it for the weekend.”
Ingrid chewed the inside of her cheek. “And was that sort of thing normally in his diary?”
“Yah, you bet.” She scrolled through and showed Ingrid not just entries for golf, but for soccer and handball. “So, it’s a bit odd that this super important golf match—are they even called matches?—wasn’t in his diary.” Penny pulled up another document while suppressing a smile. She had found something. “This is an AGM report from the golf club. It has an addendum of all active memberships. And this,” she said, opening yet another file, “is our database of Met officers. It’s not been updated much recently, but it’s a record of all our liaisons with the Met. Most of the entries for the past few years have been made by you.” She filled her lungs. “And this is the crossover. Met officers who are also members of Ravensbourne Golf Club.”
Ingrid leaned in to get a closer look. Eleven names. “Penny, this is fantastic information, well done.”
“For the record, it is way more fun doing this than working for the SSA.”
Ingrid raised an eyebrow. “Well, there may be an opening.” She really didn’t want Libby back. If she could have Penny and Zeke, that would be a dream team.
Penny sat a little taller. “You want me to phone these eleven people?”
Ingrid peered at the names. “No, I know a couple of them. Let me call them first. Can you email me the list? And then can you call the golf club and tell them we need the name of everyone who played a round on Saturday.”
“They’ll just tell me?”
“They might.”
Penny looked dubious. “Okay, I’ll give it a go.”
Ingrid returned to her desk. The search results for ‘skylark’ in the Cole cache were on her screen. The word appeared twice in her documents. She clicked on the first entry and found herself looking at a handwritten note in a page of jotted notes, as if Cole were making a record of a phone call.
DSS/Met. No active investigation. London trade is ‘Total black hole’ for MI5. FBI turns blind eye. US embassy ‘willfully’ ignores requests for assistance. Mole/spy/double agent? Really??
‘Mole/spy/double agent’ was circled in a different colored ink. An arrow led from the circle to another note that said, simply, ‘Skylark?’ The note was dated March 1, 2012. Six days before Cole was killed.
Ingrid re-read the note, then scrolled through the neighboring pages. Lots of the entries started with a similar code. AW/Deloitte. HG/Raytheon. FM/Pentagon. It seemed to be the initials of the person Cole was speaking to, and the name of their employer. DSS/Met. Whose initials were they? She checked the list of the eleven golf playing officers. None of the names had the initial DSS. Maybe DS was Detective Sergeant? None of the last names began with S. Ingrid got over the disappointment and clicked on the other entry for Skylark in the digitized cache.
“Ah,” she said out loud.
Penny looked over, irritated, every time Ingrid made a noise.
It was a scan of another note from a different notebook. This one had the word Skylark and three phone numbers written next to it. One of them was Ingrid’s direct line, which explained the calls she’d been getting. One number had a Florida dialing code, and the third was a UK mobile. She instinctively lifted the phone to call it, then thought twice. Far better to get some analysis on both numbers before cold calling.
“Ooh. Maybe, if I’m really lucky…” She switched back to her emails.
Marsha’s contact had been good to his promise and had sent over the analysis of the phone that made the seven-oh-seven call. Ingrid immediately emailed back and asked for further assistance on the Florida number and the UK cell. As she was typing out the numbers, she stopped. She checked. Then she checked again.
“Bingo.”
The UK cell in Saskia Cole’s notes was the same number that had called DeWalt minutes before he died. Ingrid swallowed hard and blinked at the screen. The number had to belong to Skylark, didn’t it?
39
Ingrid took her time walking back from the commissary. She hadn’t wanted anything to eat, but she had been in desperate need of a break from her screen.
The walk made her realize that McAvenny was a distraction. The Cole cache was useful, but it wasn’t going to help her find Skylark before the Spetsnaz team extracted him. She needed to go back to basics. She needed to be sure of her facts. There was too much information swirling round, and not enough knowledge. She saw the irony: flooding the world with information, and never letting on what w
as real and what was not, was straight out of the Kremlin playbook.
Back at her desk, her mind partially cleared, Ingrid opened up the analysis of Skylark’s number. Unsurprisingly, it was an unregistered SIM. It had been in use for six years but was mostly turned off and therefore only traceable when making or receiving a call. In six years, it had only made seventy calls, to twenty-three different numbers, mostly to other UK cell phones. It had called DeWalt’s number precisely five times; three times in the past month. That looked like a pattern of escalation.
The number it called most frequently, a total of twenty-two times in six years, belonged to a man called Patrick Lawson. There was an asterisk next to Lawson’s name. Ingrid scanned for the footnote.
Leader of England for the English (EFE), a political party, currently serving a sentence for aggravated assault in Belmarsh Prison.
Ingrid’s instinct was to jump on the bike and head straight to Belmarsh, but she couldn’t spare the manpower. Instead, she looked at the most recent call it had made. A London number, a few hours beforehand.
“Penny?”
“Yep.”
“Can you find out who this number belongs to?”
“Do I just call it?”
“Absolutely not.” She gave Penny the number and turned to the next page of the report, and her mouth fell open. It was a map of all the locations the phone had been used. At first, it looked like it had only ever made one call. Then Ingrid zoomed in. “Oh, my.” Her eyes bulged. “Oh my, oh my, oh my.”
“What is it?” Penny asked.
“The phone that called DeWalt before he died?”
“Yes?”
“I’m looking at a map of all the locations it’s ever made calls from.”
“And?”
“Every single call has been made from the exact same place.”
Penny looked puzzled. “That can’t be that unusual, can it? I mean, most of my calls are made from my house.”
“These calls aren’t being made from inside a building.”