Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

“Where does she call from?”

“Medellín.”

For three days after finding the binder and identifying the insignia, Orville Honeycutt nibbled at the edges of the Pike photo assignment. He burned a day of sick leave playing hooky. He had more than a month of leave, and what he didn’t use he would lose when he retired.

To see what was in Pike’s photos he needed to get at the lab in the basement when no one was there. The opportunity would come tonight. The painter was working downstairs. Nobody was going to stick around with the fumes trapped down below.

It was late afternoon, four thirty. He went online one more time, checking to see if Pike had responded to his e-mail to provide a method of payment. There was no reply. Honeycutt could send him one more notice and if he didn’t hear back simply close the file, but he didn’t want to.

He thought for a moment and then picked up the phone. He called a cell number across the river in the District of Columbia.

Freddy Younger answered.

“You got a minute?” said Orville.

Younger recognized the voice immediately. Freddy and Orville had worked together in army intelligence decades earlier when they were both young and stupid. They used to carouse at night before Freddy got married and had kids and Orville got old. They did the same type of work and it kept them in touch over the years, only Freddy’s pension was much better than Orville’s. He worked doing photo forensics at the FBI’s crime lab.

“What’s up?” said Freddy.

“Something I want to run past you.”

“Shoot.” Freddy listened but sounded distracted.

Orville told him about Emerson Pike and his pictures, about the old man in the military fatigue jacket, and about the insignia on the shoulder patch, the Seventy-ninth Regiment, what Orville had discovered about its history. It wasn’t much, just a few lines on a page in the old denim binder. This was filled with loose-leaf pages, periodically updated by U.S. intelligence agencies and given to their private contractors doing photo work. This was before computers and the digital age. The updates would come periodically by regular mail.

Intelligence, and particularly the military, always wanted to keep tabs on foreign troops around the world, their numbers and where they were deployed. The material in the binder was decades out of date. This may have been the only reason he found what he was looking for. Inside was a page with a picture of a shoulder patch identical to the one Honeycutt had found on the fatigue jacket.

“Are you near your computer?” asked Orville.

“Yeah.”

“I’m shooting you an e-mail. It’s blank, but check out the two attachments.”

Honeycutt sent him a copy of the enlarged shoulder patch and a second image showing part of the name over the breast pocket on the old fatigue jacket with the Cyrillic letters, only the first two of which were decipherable, H .

“It just went out. You should have it in a minute.” Orville had Googled the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and knew that the first two letters on the name patch translated to N I in English.

“Why so important?” said Freddy.

Orville explained that, according to the information in the binder, the Russians had reorganized all of their rocket brigades in the early 1960s. At that time the Seventy-ninth had only been up and running for a few years. It ceased to exist shortly after the reorganization, sometime between ’63 and ’64.

“So, somebody’s got an old Russian army jacket,” said Freddy.

Freddy sounded indifferent until Orville told him about the unit’s last overseas assignment. Then there was a long silence.

“How old did you say these pictures were?” asked Freddy.

“I didn’t,” said Orville, “but the same thought crossed my mind. That maybe somebody scanned some old photos into a computer. No, the files are too small and they aren’t TIFFs.” He was talking about Tagged Image File Format, the usual form of a digital image generated by a scanner. “They were all taken four months ago, on the same date,” said Honeycutt. “The man who sent them to me sent the original digital data files, complete, and they don’t lie.”

“What did you say this guy’s name was?”

“Emerson Pike.” Honeycutt took a deep breath and edged toward what he really wanted. “Can you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Write down the name Emerson Pike.”

“Pike, I assume, is spelled just like it sounds?”

“Correct. Obviously, I don’t have his date of birth or a social security number. I’m guessing he’s probably up in years based on the information in his e-mail and the way it was written. He lives in California, according to the electronic signature on his e-mail, a city called Del Mar. With the address and name, I’m sure you can find driver’s license records that’ll give you his date of birth. With that you could run a background check on him for me.”

“What?”

Orville was over the line and he knew it. Doing an unauthorized background check using Justice Department databases could land Freddy in big trouble. It could cut off his pension before he even got it.

“If you can’t do it, just say no.”

“No,” said Freddy.

“Listen, just do me this one favor. Just think about it before you say no.”

“I already said no, and I did think about it. If I got caught nosing around FBI background records, driver’s license data, and did an unauthorized disclosure, you know what would happen?”

“Don’t get caught,” said Orville.

“They’d fire my ass, then they’d arrest me, and I’d spend the next year and a half trying to explain to a federal judge how I was just doing a little favor for a friend. No thanks. And you know you should be very careful even asking me to do that.”

“That’s why I’m talking to you on your cell phone,” said Orville.

“Tell me what you’re looking for. You think the man’s got a criminal history?”

“No. I think you’re going to find big blanks, long periods of time with no entries, and probably files you won’t be able to access.”

“You think he’s a spook.”

“Retired spook,” said Orville.

“Then the answer is hell no,” said Freddy.

“Listen. I can tell you there’s a good chance I’ll find more information in the images. I’m still working on them.”

“How did you get this stuff?”

“Over the transom,” said Orville. “He sent them by e-mail. I don’t know if he took the pictures or if somebody else did. But whatever I find I’ll share with you if you help me. It may be nothing, then again, your people may want to know.”

“And if it’s nothing and I do a background check on this guy and somebody finds out, then what? Even if it is something, how do I go to them and tell them how we got the information? NO!”

“Thanks,” said Orville.

“Anytime.”

“Listen, if you change your mind and find anything on this guy, give me a call and I’ll show you whatever I’ve got at this end.”

“Let’s get together for a drink sometime,” said Freddy.

“Sure thing. Just think about it,” said Orville. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“You’re crazy,” said Freddy. “Take care.”

Honeycutt heard the line go dead. He hung up the phone and checked his watch. Another few minutes and the lab staff downstairs would be gone for the day.

The smell of paint made it difficult to work. But it was the price that Honeycutt had to pay if he wanted to use the photo-editing lab after hours. The painter was still at it.

Tonight he was busy finishing some of the smaller offices and work areas in the basement. He had been at it since five, and if his schedule held he would knock off just before midnight to clean up and start again the following evening.