Michael McGarrity - Under the color of law

"I'll add them in as SWAMI key words."

He typed in the names and SWAMI answered back.

"People who attended Mrs. Terrell's funeral," the operator said.

Ingram pulled up a chair.

"Let's see where else she goes."

It was after midnight when Kerney knocked on Sara's hotel room door.

She opened up wearing shorts and a sleeveless tank top. She had a ballpoint pen clenched in her teeth.

Kerney resisted an impulse to take her in his arms. He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. She pulled back.

"You called?" he asked.

"Do you really want to hear my take on this?"

"I do."

Sara walked barefooted to the large writing desk in the nicely furnished sitting room, and picked up a notepad.

"First, Trade Source and APT Performa are legitimate companies with solid performance records as military subcontractors, and as far as I can tell SWAMI isn't being treated like some big secret government project. Instead, it's being touted as a private-sector technological breakthrough."

"I'm aware of that," Kerney said.

"But private outfits have been fronts for intelligence agencies before.

The CIA used both private companies and nonprofit aid agencies to run covert operations in Vietnam."

"True, and more recently they've done the same in Latin America. But that's the CIA. I've never heard of the military going outside their sphere of authority."

"Would it be possible?"

Sara moved to the couch and sat.

"Possible, but not likely."

Kerney took the easy chair.. "We have Thayer on tape referring to Ingram as 'major' and telling him the commanding general of INS COM-army intelligence-had ordered something done."

"It could simply be a matter of Thayer using military etiquette. I did some Internet surfing. Ingram and Cornell-that's Applewhite's real name-are West Point graduates. In fact, they were members of my class.

I was able to easily identify them from the photographs you gave me.

According to their alumni biographies they resigned their commissions as captains. But Ingram may be serving in the reserves as a major. I haven't checked that out yet."

"How well did you know them?" Kerney asked.

"Not well. They were in the middle of the class academically and both were hard-core jocks. Ingram seemed nice enough, Cornell was the competitive type who hated to lose."

"What were their service branches?"

"Both were in military intelligence before resigning and joining the FBI."

"That doesn't ring any bells for you?"

"Not in and of itself," Sara said.

"On the federal level its not difficult to transition between law enforcement and intelligence work. Stay with me, Kerney.

As I mentioned, APT Performa is an army subcontractor. It could be that Thayer was talking about a procurement fulfillment order for INS COM "Placed by the commanding general?"

"It's common practice to reference the highest authority for a procurement.

Especially one that has priority."

"That's a stretch, Sara, and you know it."

"It's within the bounds of possibility."

"I think you're seeing things the way you want to see them."

Sara gave him a withering glance.

"Let me finish, before you accuse me of shortsightedness. If Ingram and Applewhite are military intelligence, they could have a legitimate assignment that's connected to APT Performa's contract with INS COM "Like meddling in a civilian criminal investigation and posing as FBI?"

"You've heard of undercover work, haven't you?" Sara snapped. She tossed the notepad on the cushion.

"But since you brought it up, let's deal with it. You were told right at the top of the investigation that national security was involved and your role was to offer support. That's not meddling, to my way of thinking."

"The feds didn't play it that straight with me." Sara sighed in frustration.

"Because, if it's a national security matter, you don't have a need to know."

"What about Terrell's murder, Mitchell's murder, Stewart's murder? The disappearance of Terjo and Browning? I have a need to know about all of that."

"Do you have even one remotely credible homicide suspect?"

"No, but that doesn't address the fact that Charlie Perry and Applewhite took Terjo into custody and lied to me about it."

Sara shook her head.

"That's a guess you've made. Which means you're down to one missing person, Browning."

"That's right, I'm guessing. But I'm not guessing that Perry faked the lab results that turned Scott Gatlin into a murderer."

"Gatlin may well have been the murderer in spite of the faked physical evidence," Sara said.

"Granted, Randall Stewart had sex with Phyllis Terrell the night she was killed, and that does cast suspicion in his direction. But it proves neither Stewart's guilt nor Gatlin's innocence."

"Stop giving me the party line, Sara," Kerney said.

"I can get that from Charlie Perry or Agent Applewhite."

"You're acting like a blockhead, Kerney. If you came here expecting a knee-jerk endorsement of your theories, you might as well go back to that dump you're renting. Do you want to talk this out or not?"

Kerney composed himself.

"What else have you learned?"

"Here's where it does get interesting. Clarence Thayer is a retired army finance corps colonel. That could easily explain why he addressed Ingram by his rank. He was on the promotion list for his first star when he left the service. Lifers don't normally do that, so I called a friend who took a Harvard MBA and served under Thayer. He said Thayer was recruited to head up APT Performa, offered four times his salary, and jumped at the opportunity."

"That just makes my case about APT Performa stronger," Kerney said.

"Lifers are part of a good-old-boy club, Kerney. There are thousands of retired field-grade and general officers working in defense related industries. They recruit one another for plum civilian jobs. It's a common practice."

Sara peeked at her notes.

"What did grab my attention were some of the people who put in an appearance at Phyllis Terrell's funeral. The special assistant to the undersecretary for international affairs is a former lieutenant colonel.

He's a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, fluent in Spanish, and served in DOD as a strategic intelligence analyst."

Sara flipped a notepad page.

"The treasurer of Trade Source is an ex-navy captain who served as deputy director of DOD financial services. At that level he was privy to information about all clandestine operations throughout all service branches."

Her finger ran down the page.

"Treasury sent the financial crimes enforcement director who was once an air attache at the U. S. embassy in Panama. Those postings normally carry intelligence-gathering responsibilities. And the Justice Department sent an ex-Marine JAG attorney who was on staff at the National Security Agency and who holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the Joint Military Intelligence College."

"Are you still thinking it's just a good-old-boy club and I'm having paranoid delusions?"

Sara put the notebook aside and curled her feet up on the couch.

"Not at all.

These are policy-level intelligence specialists who advise important decision-makers. I think you've cornered an angry mountain lion that's about to bite your head off."

"How do we crack it?"

"Are you really that naive? Missions like this have been blessed by the White House, cabinet secretaries, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and every cooperating spy-craft shop, including the military."

"I can't walk away from this, Sara. People have been murdered, possibly by agents of the government. That can't be tolerated in a free society."

Sara's eyes stayed on Kerney's face.

"It violates what I believe in also, dammit. But you can't solve every homicide. Nobody can, nobody does. That only happens in the movies, or in bad pulp fiction. This time the stakes are off the chart."