Mike Lawson - House Divided

The good news was she’d know if DeMarco made a call. Right now her technicians were laughing as they listened to him curse as he cleaned up his kitchen.

She picked up her phone. “Where’s Alice?” she said, to the agent who answered.

“Don’t you remember?” the guy said. “She’s running all around Northern Virginia.”

Claire had forgotten. She’d told a technician to hack into Virginia law enforcement computers to identify shady garages and wrecking yards where the reporter’s Volkswagen might have been taken after he was killed, and Alice was now checking out those places. Claire figured Alice would be wasting her time but if they could get some physical evidence regarding Hansen’s disappearance it could prove useful.

But since Alice wasn’t available, who could she use? She wished Alberta was still with them; she still couldn’t believe Alberta was dead. “How ’bout Sylvia?” she asked.

“She’s in New York. Her mother-”

“Oh, that’s right,” Claire said. Christ, she was losing her mind.

“Hey, I can search the church if you want,” the guy said.

Claire’s lips drooped with scorn. Yeah, right. Men can’t find anything. She was going to have to search the church herself.

“No. Your job,” she said, “is to make sure DeMarco doesn’t go to the church anytime today or tonight. If he heads in that direction, stop him.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Hell, I don’t care. Use your damn head. Ram him with your car if you have to. Hit him hard enough they have to tow his car away.”

“With my car?” the agent said, realizing Claire was serious. “How ’bout I get a car from the pool?”

“And what? Hit him with a government vehicle that can be traced back to this agency?”

“But what about my insurance rates?” the agent said.

Claire was thinking about who she’d take with her to search the church when Henry, the technician who shared the cubicle with Gilbert, walked into her office.

“What is it?” she snapped. Henry was a whiner, constantly bitching about something, and she wasn’t in the mood to deal with him right now.

He handed her a manila folder. She opened it and began to flip through the documents. As she flipped, a small smile appeared, and the more she flipped, the wider the smile became. She closed the folder and looked up at Henry who was still standing before her desk, shuffling his feet, hoping Claire was not displeased. She was not.

“You did good, Henry,” Claire said.

Henry exhaled in relief.

On the cover of the folder were the words AARON TYLER DREXLER.

It was time to remove a thorn from Dillon’s paw.

Claire removed her ID badge and walked into Drexler’s temporary office without knocking.

“Who are you?” Drexler asked, frowning at her.

Claire noticed his eyes were bloodshot and he needed a shave, and she wondered if he’d worked through the night.

“Oh,” Drexler then said, answering his own question, “you must be the gal that putz Dillon was supposed to send over to give me a hand with some of this crap. I’m telling you, honey, this is the most fucked-up, disorganized operation I’ve ever seen. It’s no wonder you people couldn’t stop nine/eleven.”

Claire sat down, unasked, in the only other chair in the room.

“To answer your question, Aaron, I’m not the gal sent to help you. I’m the gal who’s been sent to straighten your ass out.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Who are you?”

“I’m a messenger, Aaron. And the message is: Go home. Go back to whoever sent you and tell them you couldn’t find whatever they sent you here to find.”

“Who the hell do you think…” Pointing a finger at Claire’s face, he said, “Now you listen to me, lady. I was sent here by the attorney general and I’m not leaving until I-”

Claire slapped a file folder on Drexler’s desk, the sound like a bomb exploding.

“What’s that?” Drexler said.

“That’s the end of life as you know it, Aaron.”

“What are you-”

“When the bottom fell out of the market in 2008, you lost almost a half a million dollars.”

“So what? Everybody lost money during that time.”

“That’s true, but everybody didn’t do what you did to recover their losses. At the time your portfolio turned to dust, you were a member of the Pentagon’s legal staff assisting the Justice Department in their case against Ames Incorporated, and-”

“Again, so what?”

Ames Inc. was a company that had received a multimillion-dollar contract to design and install improved body armor on army personnel carriers, and a whistleblower informed the Pentagon that Ames was screwing its Uncle Sammy. Ames was charging for work that had not been performed, for overtime that had not been worked, for materials that had not been used, and anything else they could think of to increase their profit margin. The Justice Department had a strong case against a colonel at the Pentagon and a couple of executives at Ames, but Justice also wanted to nail Burton Ames, the company’s founder and CEO-a man reportedly worth three billion dollars who owned multiple mansions, a private jet, and a yacht the size of a light cruiser.

Burton, naturally, claimed he had no idea what his executives were doing with regard to the Pentagon contract; he just wasn’t a hands-on manager. Bullshit, the federal prosecutor said. Unfortunately, the case against Burton Ames was complex and hardly a slam-dunk but the prosecutor felt, if he presented his evidence clearly and cleverly, he could convince a jury to put greedy Burton in a cell for a few years. However, when the prosecutor got to court it became apparent that Burton’s lawyers knew his strategy and every weakness in his case. Burton Ames walked out of the courtroom smiling, and the prosecutor ended up with egg all over his face.

The prosecutor knew someone on the legal staff at the Pentagon had helped Ames’s lawyers. He knew, in fact, that the person who had done this was Aaron Drexler. He knew it-but he couldn’t prove it. Drexler was placed on administrative leave while the prosecutor attempted to get enough evidence against him to convict him for abetting Ames but gave up after four months when he couldn’t find any. And then, in the ultimate irony, Drexler sued the government, saying the prosecutor’s investigation had destroyed his reputation and ruined his career at the Pentagon, and Drexler was awarded three hundred thousand dollars in damages. Then, to add insult to injury, Drexler obtained a job at the Justice Department-the same organization that had been trying to convict him. The daughter of the last attorney general-the one who preceded Robert Scranton-had been in the same sorority with Drexler’s wife, and Drexler’s wife was able to convince the AG that her brilliant husband was the innocent victim of a Pentagon witch hunt.

“I’ll tell you so what, ” Claire said, answering Drexler’s question. “The only reason you’re a free man today is because one very pissed-off prosecutor couldn’t prove you tanked his case against Burton Ames. Well, Aaron, I can prove it.”

“Bullshit,” Drexler said. He was obviously thinking that if Justice couldn’t find any evidence against him after four months of digging, it was highly unlikely the NSA had been able to find anything in the few days he’d been at Fort Meade.

Aaron Drexler did not yet fully appreciate the NSA’s capabilities.

“When the government was preparing its case against Burton Ames,” Claire said, “they got warrants for his computers, and in those computers they found several encrypted e-mails. They asked the NSA to decode the e-mails but we said we couldn’t. The truth is, Aaron, we could decode them but we didn’t want to because doing so would give away the fact that we had that ability. In other words, putting you in jail just wasn’t worth it to us, as that would have meant revealing some of our secrets. Well, Aaron, now it’s worth it.”