Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

“I wish he could tell us,” said Thorpe. He made a note.

“NASA moved Leffort out of the particle physics project early on, before it ran out of money. Congress cut it off after pouring eighty million down a rat hole.”

“Who says they’re stupid,” said Thorpe. “Maybe this Leffort could find some way to teleport Congress to the moon. Now that would be worth a grant. I’d give him my pension. Anything else?”

“Well, yeah.”

The way Llewellyn said it Thorpe knew it wasn’t good news. “Give it to me.”

“It seems science wasn’t the only thing on the fringe for our man Leffort.”

“Go on.”

“He had a kinky nightlife.”

Thorpe’s head snapped toward Llewellyn. His eyes opened wide as he held the smoking cigarette off to the side. “You’re gonna tell me he fell in with some Russian belly dancer,” said Thorpe.

“No. At least I don’t think so. You can read the details tonight before you go to sleep.” Llewellyn flipped a copy of a document onto the desk in front of Thorpe. “I’d recommend you take a cold shower first. It’s Leffort’s last fitness report for his security clearance.”

“Cut to the chase. What’s in it?” said Thorpe.

“More to the point, you might want to ask who did the investigation and wrote it up.”

“Who?”

“The National Security Agency,” said Llewellyn.

“Why not us?” This was normally something done by the FBI.

Llewellyn made a question mark out of the expression on his face. “You’ll find some large portions of their report are redacted. Anything and everything having to do with the project Leffort was working on, as well as some other things. According to the report, they had their eye on him all the time.”

“Then why don’t they tell us where he is?” said Thorpe.

“Good question. To read it, they were getting ready to cancel his security clearance, dump him from the project, and castrate him; that is, if you believe what’s written on those pages. Of course, NSA never got the chance. It was a matter of unfortunate timing according to them.”

“Leffort rabbited,” said Thorpe.

Llewellyn nodded. “It makes for interesting reading, but if you’re smart, you don’t want to be sitting upright in bed when you open it. Cuz all that self-serving crap inside, it’s gonna spill out all over you and make for a damn mess,” said Llewellyn. “You want to know what I think?”

“That’s why we’re talking here,” said Thorpe.

“I think that report and the investigation that goes with it were both done after the fact.”

“You mean after Leffort disappeared?”

“Exactly. You can read it for yourself. Form your own conclusions,” said Llewellyn. “NSA is trying to cover their skirts. They redacted the names of all the witnesses they talked to, including the women Leffort had trysts with. You have to wonder why.”

“Maybe Leffort was into pillow talk about the project?” said Thorpe. “Classified information.”

“To read the report, the only classified information any of these women had was as to the location of warts on Leffort’s tallywacker. There’s not the slightest hint that any of them knew squat about Leffort’s work. Nor is there any indication that any of them were extorting him for classified information. First thing I thought of was spies,” said Llewellyn. “But there’s nothing there. Not even the slightest whiff that any of them were in the employ of a foreign power. NSA doesn’t even bother to raise the specter. So why withhold their names?”

“You tell me,” said Thorpe.

“Because NSA doesn’t want us talking to them,” said Llewellyn. “They deleted the names because they knew we’d get the cart back behind the horse. They knew we’d find out that they didn’t interview the witnesses until after Leffort disappeared.”

“I don’t get it,” said Thorpe.

“You will in a moment, all nine yards,” said Llewellyn.

Thorpe didn’t like the sound of that.

“It explains how they found out somebody was lifting information from the NASA computers. After the fact. When Leffort was already gone. The same way they got the names of the women. This guy was running wild on a top-secret, highly sensitive program and they had no clue. And now the shit is about to hit the fan, and everybody in town, except us, is looking for a rock to crawl under.”

“The White House and the brass at the Pentagon are looking for somebody to blame,” said Thorpe.

“Right,” said Llewellyn. “And NSA is a little too close to home to crap in that particular backyard. So they’re looking for someplace else to take a dump.”

“Us,” said Thorpe.

Llewellyn nodded.

“Next you’re gonna tell me that NSA had lead responsibility for security on this mystery project,” said Thorpe. “Whatever the hell it is.”

“No, not just lead responsibility,” said Llewellyn, “exclusive responsibility. Everybody else was cut out, all the defense intelligence agencies, protective services, security management at NASA-they were all cut out of the loop. That should give you a hint as to what’s going on here. It’s why we weren’t asked to do the security background update on Leffort.”

“And NSA blew it!” said Thorpe.

“Yep.”

“I knew it. I knew it. This thing smelled the minute I got that call from the White House.” Thorpe got up out of his chair, waving the cigarette around like a torch. “So now they dump it on us to find these guys, and if we fail, it’s our ass in the flames. And if that’s not enough, they want to play hide the ball. They can’t tell us what it’s about. Son of a bitch,” said Thorpe. “Damn it!” He stood there, face full of fury, tendrils of smoke surrounding the shadow of his head on the wall, the fumes appearing as if they emitted from his ears. He swallowed hard. It was one of the few times that Llewellyn could remember ever seeing signs of fear on his friend’s face.

Thorpe took a deep drag on the cigarette and sucked it into his lungs to quell the anger. He held the smoke for a long moment and then expelled it toward the ceiling.

“That shit’s gonna kill you,” said Llewellyn.

“What, this?” Thorpe held it up in front of his face and looked at the cigarette. “This is therapy. It’s the fucking National Security Agency’s gonna kill me.”

What are they doing now?”

Two FBI agents from the embassy in Bangkok stood in a room on the third floor in the office building in Pattaya. They were two stories above the green door, the entrance to the building, watching Madriani and the two people with him.

“They’re standing out on the sidewalk looking at the door from across the street. Can you beat it? Travel halfway around the world, then stand there with your thumb up your ass.” One of the agents looked through a spotting scope set up in the vacant third-floor office.

They had used a credit card to slide the cheesy lock open on the door and established a blind inside. They set up the spotting scope far enough back from the windows that with the interior lights out anyone looking in from the outside would see nothing. From here they got a bird’s-eye view of everything on the other side of the road. To cover this side, an agent in shorts and a tank top, looking like an expat, was camped out in a shop across the street. Another was in the Thai restaurant downstairs.

The radio crackled in the agent’s ear. “Do you see ’em?”

“Charlie One to Charlie Three, stay off the air if you can. They’re still on the street. We’ll let you know if they move.”

The problem was that the call for assistance from Washington had come without sufficient advance warning so that the embassy was unable to coordinate their actions with local Thai authorities. Consequently, the agents were on their own, using a communication channel that they couldn’t be sure wasn’t being used or monitored by the Pattaya police. Their instructions were to watch and report, to provide protection if necessary for the three U.S. nationals, and to watch for the man named Liquida, though they had no photographs, only a rough description.