Дэвид Балдаччи - The Fix

“I don’t see how. The whole point of being a whistleblower is that you blow the whistle and come forward. So we would have a record of it.”

Decker sighed and closed his eyes.

Brown said, “By the way, did you spot any other mistakes in there?”

“Nine. Nothing substantive, so I decided to let the ‘good colonel’ find them.”

“You’re a real piece of work. But Carter is also an asshole, so it’s no skin off my nose.”

“So not a whistleblower, then,” said Decker, opening his eyes.

“Apparently not, unless she did something unrelated to the defense sector or DIA. That’s possible.”

“Bogart is looking into that.”

“So where do we go from here?”

Decker looked around. “How about you talk to me about your world.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

She considered this and said, “Okay, follow me.”

She led him down the hall and into her office. It was small, utilitarian, and had no windows. And there wasn’t a scrap of paper on the desk. Just a small laptop.

By way of explanation she said, “We don’t like paper much. And we don’t like windows. Surveillance issues, you know.”

She pointed to a chair, which Decker took. She sat behind her desk.

“What do you want to know?”

“What can you tell me?”

“How about the very beginning? Robert McNamara created DIA when he was SecDef under the Kennedy administration.”

“McNamara. Right, and later he did such a great job managing Vietnam.”

“I’m just giving you the facts, I’m not providing commentary.”

“What’s your principal role here?”

“Intelligence gathering. We use HUMINT to get there, unlike some other agencies.”

“Human intelligence, you mean?”

She nodded.

“Do you operate only internationally?”

“Why would that make sense when so much of what’s going on now happens domestically?”

“So you operate in this country?”

“It’s no secret.”

“Have there been changes in how you do things?”

“Where is this going, Decker?”

“In the direction of the truth, one would hope.”

“Whose truth?”

“Any truth works for me right now.”

“You saying you don’t think I’m telling the truth?”

In answer he pointed to a small poster tacked to the wall behind her. It was a DIA recruitment poster.

Decker read off the words printed on it: “You speak the language and live the culture. You could be anybody, anywhere.”

He dropped his gaze to look at her. “Are you anybody anywhere?”

“I could just say it comes with the territory.”

“Yeah, you could. Or you could go farther than that. Maybe with something more recent than freaking Robert McNamara.”

“I’m not sure I want to.”

“Well, since I’m a cop, let me tell you what comes from the territory I occupy. People commit crimes and the cops track them down and arrest them. It’s a pretty linear philosophy. A to B to C.”

“Not how my world works.”

“Right. So you want the criminals to blow up the world while you’re working some sort of backdoor convoluted spy bullshit maneuver that you can use in your next life?”

She put her feet up on her desk and leaned back in her chair. “Okay, I see your point.” She gathered her thoughts. “Over a decade ago, DIA requested the ability to recruit U.S. citizens to spy and be informants.”

“Is that so unusual?”

“No. But DIA also wanted to do it without having to reveal to said citizens that we were a government agency.”

“How does that make sense?”

“It apparently didn’t. That language was removed from the bill authorizing the recruitment provision.”

“So does that mean DIA doesn’t do it?”

“I don’t. I can’t speak for others.”

“What else?”

“In 2008 we got approval to conduct offensive counterintelligence clandestine ops both domestically and abroad.”

“How would you do that?”

“Pretty basic stuff. Planting moles, disseminating disinformation, negatively impacting a country’s information systems. You might be interested to know that we coordinate with the Bureau on that last one. Then in 2012 we expanded our clandestine collection efforts. We took over the Defense Department’s HUMINT efforts and beefed up our espionage ops overseas, obviously focusing on the military component.”

“What’s your focus these days?”

“Nothing too surprising. Islamic terrorists including ISIL and Al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran, particularly weapon and nuclear technology transfers, and the Chinese and Russians beefing up their military capabilities.”

“How about the Russians hacking us to try to influence our politics?”

“That would be a yes, Decker. Strikes right at the fundamentals of our democracy.”

“So a lot of ground to cover.”

“Which is why we have about seventeen thousand people working on it.”

“You talked about planting moles. You guys ever have spies in your ranks?”

She nodded and her features turned grim. “All intelligence agencies have. The worst for us was probably Ana Belén Montes. Very high-ranking analyst here and very well respected. It was before my time. Turned out she’d been spying for Cuba for over twenty years. Did a lot of damage and probably cost some people their lives.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Not surprising. She was arrested right when 9/11 was going down. That pretty much trumped every other story out there for months.”

“How’d they nail her?”

“Good old-fashioned detective legwork. And our cause was helped by the fact that spies stick to basic protocols. Shortwave radio transmissions, encryption software, standard drops in crowded places, zigzags on foreign travel. They were able to piece the puzzle together because of that.”

“You’d think spies would wise up and try something new or vary their routines.”

She shook her head. “It’s like bomb makers, Decker. I learned a lot about them as an EOD. Once they learn a way to do something they don’t like to deviate from it. It’s called a bomb signature . That way they work out all the kinks and they don’t get blown up, but it also helps us identify a particular—”

Decker got up from his chair and walked out.

Brown jumped up. “Decker? Decker!”

She raced after him.

“Wow!” exclaimed Brown.

She and Decker had just entered Berkshire’s luxurious condo.

Brown looked around in amazement. “You were right about her having money.”

Decker didn’t respond. He made a beeline down the hall and Brown quickly followed. He went into the master bathroom and then into the separate toilet closet. He snatched the toilet paper off the wall, slid off the roll, and opened the tube.

“Damn.”

There was nothing there.

“What did you expect to find?” asked Brown.

He pushed past her, left the bathroom, and moved down the hall. He entered the second bedroom and pushed open the door to the en suite bathroom. He stared down at the toilet paper roll.

He took it off the wall, slid open the tube, and there it was.

“A key,” said Brown.

“Like you said, spies don’t like to learn new techniques, like bomb makers.”

“So she used this device before?”

“At the cottage in the woods, yeah.”

“What’s it a key to?”

Decker looked at it more closely. “Could be lots of different things. A padlock, maybe.”

They left the bathroom and he perched on a chair in the guest bedroom. He closed his eyes and let the frames roll back and forth.

Brown watched him curiously. “Checking the old memory?”