Дэвид Балдаччи - The Fix

Decker said, “Tell her to meet us at the Dabneys’.”

“Why?” asked Bogart. “What’s there that we need to go back?”

“Pretty much everything.”

Thirty minutes later they pulled up in front of the impressive mansion. Brown’s BMW was already parked near the front door. She got out as they headed to the house.

“What’s up?” asked Brown. “Why are we here?”

Milligan pointed at Decker. “Because of him.”

Jules answered the door. Decker said, “We need to speak to your mother.”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“If you must know, she’s at my father’s grave.”

“Where is that?” asked Decker.

“Can’t you just leave her alone?”

“Where is it?” Decker asked again.

Jules hesitated and then told him.

“One more thing,” said Decker. “I need to look at one of the photo albums you showed me earlier.”

They pulled into the cemetery through a set of open wrought iron gates. Brown had left her car at the Dabneys’ home and ridden over with them.

“I hate cemeteries,” said Jamison. “Buried in the dirt and eventually people stop coming to see you. No thank you. I’m being cremated.”

“I think you’ve got a while to think about that,” noted Bogart.

He steered the car down a side road using the directions Jules had given them.

A Jaguar convertible was parked at the curb. As they pulled up, they saw Ellie Dabney sitting on a stone bench in front of her husband’s freshly dug grave. The tombstone was not up yet.

As they all got out of the car, Brown said, “Decker, are you going to tell us what’s going on?”

“You’re going to hear everything in about two minutes,” he replied. He led them up a path until they reached Ellie.

She looked up at them with unfriendly eyes. “Jules called me to say you were headed here. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m visiting my husband. I would appreciate some privacy.”

“I can understand that,” said Decker. “Unfortunately, this can’t wait.”

He sat down on the bench next to her as the others encircled them.

From his pocket Decker took out a photo and held it out to Ellie.

“My parents,” she said. “Where did you get it?”

“They died in a mudslide?”

“Yes, it was horrible.”

“And everything was washed away? The house, the barn, them? Their bodies were never found. That’s what Jules told us.”

“If I hadn’t been at school I would have died too.”

“So you lost everything? Your family? All your possessions?”

“Yes! I had nothing left except the clothes on my back. I had no family left. I was sent to an orphanage.”

Decker nodded. “So where did this photo come from, then?”

Ellie started to say something but then stopped. She cleared her throat and said, “Fortunately, I had it with me. I carried it with me always.”

Decker nodded. “I thought you might say that.”

“Because it’s the truth.”

“I spoke this morning with a medical examiner from the FBI. Fortuitously, she had an uncle who worked as a team physician for the U.S. Olympic Team back in the seventies. He told her about what went on back then, with other countries. And she educated me about it this morning.”

Ellie said nothing.

Decker said, “Stasi, fourteen twenty-five? Ring a bell?”

Ellie’s eyes widened, but it was barely noticeable.

But Decker noticed.

“What?” she said sharply. “What is that?”

“You already know, but for the benefit of the others it’s the name of the East German program that built up a powerhouse Olympic team by giving anabolic steroids to mostly unwitting athletes. Translated into English it means State Plan Fourteen point Two-Five.”

“East Germany? What has that got to do with me? I was born in Oregon.”

“Oral Turinabol was the steroid of choice for the East Germans. It has another name that, frankly, I can’t even begin to spell, much less pronounce. It was a real turbocharger for athletic performance, but without some of the worst side effects. Still, it did have side effects. You remember the East German female swimmers from the seventies? They had facial hair, deep voices, and huge muscles. One American swimmer complained about it quite vocally, but everyone put her down as a sore loser. Turns out she was absolutely right, but the Germans still won all the gold.”

“An interesting history lesson,” said Ellie slowly. “But what the hell does it have to do with me? I’m not East German and I was certainly never in the Olympics.”

“But my guess is you were in the national athletic youth program they had over there. You were being groomed for the Olympics. From an early age, probably. You have the perfect athletic shape. Tall, lean, muscled. Over the years you were given Oral Turinabol or something like it, along with all the other hopefuls. They wanted to build something akin to Hitler’s perfect Aryan race. But even with that kind of chemical help, it’s a tight funnel on the road to the top in any sport. I know that better than most with my football career. Only the best of the best get to go, and they’d know by the time you were in your early teens.”

Ellie looked at Bogart. “Is he insane?”

Bogart said nothing.

Decker continued, “But you had other value to them. You couldn’t cut it as an athlete, but maybe as something else.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“You were taught English until you could speak it fluently with no accent. You were given a history, which you learned as if it was your own. Rural Oregon. Decades ago. A mudslide. An orphanage. No family. You came east to start a new life. Who could disprove any of that? You became a waitress at a place near, where else? The NSA. You would meet lots of people from there because everyone has to eat. You targeted the young Walter Dabney and he fell for beautiful Eleanor hook, line, and sinker. You married soon after. He brought work home and you stole it. He left the NSA and started his own firm and you hit the jackpot. Now he was doing work not just with the NSA, but with multiple agencies. Back in those days they had safeguards in place, but nothing like today. I can only imagine what was in his briefcase each night when he walked in the door. We always thought your husband was the spy, but it was actually you .”

Ellie stood and screamed, “How dare you insult me with all these lies right in front of my husband’s grave!”

Decker glanced up at her. “The problem was how to get this treasure trove of intel out to where it needed to go. But you weren’t working alone. You had a handler.” He paused. “Anne Berkshire.”

Bogart exclaimed, “ She was working with Berkshire? And not her husband?”

“Neither of us was working with anyone,” said Ellie shrilly.

“When your kids were little and you had Cecilia Randall working for you, the answer became clear. The dolls. You’d ship the information out using the dolls. I don’t know if Randall knew what was in those dolls. Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. I speculated that she might have been innocent, but maybe not. I mean, you’ve kept her on all this time even though your kids have long since moved on. Randall’s daughter said you took great care of them. I wonder what an inspection of Randall’s finances will show? And what will yours show? How did you buy your house all those years ago when your husband was still working at the NSA? The expensive Porsche? Did you tell him you had gotten a big settlement from the mudslide? An inheritance from some distant relative?”

Ellie started to walk off, but Bogart put a hand on her arm.

“You’re not going anywhere, Mrs. Dabney.”