The Fix

  “And we’re watching all of them. As well as scrubbing their personal financials.”

  “You really think Dabney was working with someone here to get the money to pay off the gambling debts?”

  “I can’t discount the possibility.”

  “Jamison thought it was unlikely that Dabney, if he was always on the legal side, was able to find a buyer for the secrets so fast.”

  Brown looked at Jamison. “I’m impressed.”

  “Thanks,” said Jamison curtly, though she looked pleased by the other woman’s comment.

  Brown perched on the receptionist’s desk. “You’re exactly right. It’s not that easy to find a buyer from scratch. It’s not like you can locate them online or walk down a dark alley and bump into someone engaged in espionage who can find ten million dollars to hand over. More likely than not you’ll run right into an undercover operation designed to catch people trying to do just that.”

  “So that either means Dabney was not as clean as everyone thought, or someone he worked with was dirty.”

  “The issue is even more complicated than that, Decker. The thing is, it could have been a coworker who helped Dabney with the sale, sure. Or it could have been someone else.”

  “Such as?” said Jamison.

  Decker answered. “Such as someone on the other side of the equation.” He pointed at Brown. “Someone from your side that Dabney was working with.”

  Brown crossed her arms and nodded, her features turning grave. “The more I think about it, we might have a spy in the ranks of the DIA. I’m not just talking about decades ago. I mean currently.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” said Decker. “As you pointed out to me previously.”

  Jamison said, “We thought it might be Dabney who was the spy all these years. From his career at NSA onward.”

  “But he had to get the secrets from inside the government once he went to the private sector,” pointed out Brown. “And there was the old security badge we found in Berkshire’s locker. That was from the DIA. And it’s very troubling that she had it in her possession.”

  Jamison said, “But regardless of whether Dabney was in the private sector, he could have gotten those secrets legitimately through his work. The persons he dealt with in the government might not know what he was doing with the information.”

  “That’s true,” said Brown. “And I hope that turns out to be the case. But we can’t take it as gospel that that is indeed the case.”

  “So you’re investigating your own agency too,” said Decker.

  “We have to.”

  “You mentioned the security badge. Did you find out something about it?”

  “It was used at DIA back in the late eighties and early nineties.”

  “No idea who it was issued to?” asked Decker.

  “None. Back then it was just laminated plastic with no electronic guts.”

  “Visitor or permanent?” asked Decker.

  “I wish I could tell you.”

  “Does that mean you don’t know or you can’t tell us?” retorted Jamison.

  “I wish I could tell you,” repeated Brown.

  Jamison looked like she was going to hit her. “Well, you know what they say, be careful what you wish for.” Then she turned and walked out of the office.

  “She seems to have an attitude problem,” noted Brown.

  “No, she just doesn’t like bullshit. We’re on the same page with that.”

  “Decker, I’m telling you as much as I can. Do you know what it cost me to even have you come to DIA and look at those files?”

  “Do you think Anne Berkshire was working with a mole in DIA way back too?”

  “It’s possible. In fact, with that badge, it’s probable that she was.”

  “But that mole was not Dabney?”

  “He was at NSA for part of that time, but then on his own. He did work as a contractor for DIA beginning later in the nineties, so it wasn’t his security badge. We can’t show that they ever met except for the encounter outside the Hoover Building. And if they had been working together for decades we would have been able to find something, Decker.”

  “So someone else, then?”

  “And we’re at square one on that.”

  “But you’re obviously hoping to pop something by doing a deep dive on the folks here?”

  “It’s a long shot, but when you don’t have better options, you have to go with something.” She paused. “So do you have any leads?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are they?”

  “I wish I could tell you.”

  Decker turned and left the room.

  CHAPTER

  44

  “WHY ARE WE here, Decker?”

  Jamison was staring down at him as he perched on a couch in Anne Berkshire’s million-dollar condo and gazed around.

  Decker didn’t answer right away.

  “I don’t like incongruity,” he said a few moments later.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as why buy a condo like this and buy a top-of-the-line Benz if you don’t decorate it with your stuff, in the case of the condo, or don’t really drive it around, in the case of the Mercedes?”

  “So she was eccentric, so what?”

  Decker shook his head and stood. “It goes beyond mere eccentricity. She also has a run-down farmhouse and a crappy car that she drives to work and on her rounds as the proverbial Good Samaritan.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “If you were a spy and had made money, you might buy this condo and that car, but you would enjoy them. Not just have them. Because you would have earned it. Now, if you just have them but don’t enjoy them, there must be a reason. So in Berkshire’s case, what is that reason?”

  Jamison thought about this. “I don’t know. We speculated she might have felt guilty.”

  “If she was still spying, she obviously was not feeling guilty.”

  “But there’s no evidence that she was still spying. She was a substitute schoolteacher. And look at the stuff in the storage unit. It’s old. Floppy disk and an outdated security badge.”

  “But at her farmhouse we found a flash drive. That’s not old 1980s technology. And added to that, someone nearly killed me to get it. And why have the old farmhouse with a flash drive hidden in the toilet paper holder if you’ve long since retired from espionage?”

  Jamison opened her mouth to say something but then closed it. “Good point,” she finally managed to say. “But if that’s the case, then she must have been working with Dabney. I mean, otherwise it’s quite a coincidence that he commits espionage and ends up gunning down someone who’s also a spy.”

  “Maybe,” said Decker doubtfully.

  “Decker, it has to be! You don’t believe in coincidences, not even small ones. You always say that. So if Berkshire was spying, it had to have been along with Walter Dabney. That would explain why he could find a buyer so fast for the secrets. Berkshire probably arranged it.”

  “And who tried to kill me at the farmhouse and stole the flash drive? And what was on it?”

  “More secrets. Berkshire probably wasn’t working alone. She gets killed and her associate goes there to get whatever materials she kept there. You saved them the trouble. They attacked you and found it. That all holds together,” Jamison said, a note of triumph in her voice.

  Decker went over to stare out the window.

  “You forgot to congratulate me on my brilliant theory,” said Jamison.

  When Decker said nothing, she walked over to him. “You don’t think I’m right?”

  “Let’s put it this way, Alex. I don’t know that you’re wrong.”

  “Well, that’s something. Do you have an alternative theory?”

  “Not right now, no.”

  Jamison looked around the space. ‘What happens to this place? And all her money? They haven’t found any family to leave it to.”

  “Haven’t given that any thought.”

  ?
??How did you leave it with Agent Brown?”

  “Vague,” said Decker.

  “You mean like you’re being with me right now?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “To where it all started.”

  * * *

  Decker and Jamison walked the route that Decker had when he’d been unwittingly following Walter Dabney to the man’s doom. They passed the guard shack and Decker circled back.

  The guard inside was the same man who’d been on duty that morning. He recognized Decker and stepped out of the shack.

  “Helluva thing that morning,” he said.

  “Helluva thing. Glad you were there to back me up.”

  “No problem. It’s my job.”

  “I’m sure you’ve already been asked this,” began Decker. “But had you seen Dabney before?”

  The guard nodded. “A few times. I think the last time was a couple months before. They told me he was going to a meeting that day.”

  “And Anne Berkshire?”

  The man shook his head. “No. Don’t remember her. But, man, lots of people pass along here during the course of a day. Faces get jumbled after a while.”

  “I hear you,” said Decker. “Do you remember seeing a clown that day? The person would’ve been up the street from you, closer to the café where Dabney was waiting.”

  “Give me a sec.”

  A truck with “GSA” painted on the sides had turned toward the underground garage entrance and the guard walked over to speak the driver.

  As Decker watched, the driver showed his ID and paperwork and then the guard pulled his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. Another guard came out a few seconds later with a bomb-sniffing dog. Another guard followed with a device that had a mirror used to look under vehicles. The two guards and the dog performed their tasks as the guard Decker had been talking to rejoined him.

  The man nodded. “Yeah, I did see the clown. I was thinking it was a little early for Halloween.”

  “You didn’t happen to see where the clown went?”

  “No. I keep my eyes roaming around, mostly looking for folks paying the Hoover Building too much attention.”

  “Is that a problem?” asked Jamison.

  “You get crazies for sure. Most are harmless. But it only takes one. And we’ve had problems.”

  Decker looked around. “Do you have exterior surveillance cameras?”

  The guard stepped closer and his voice dropped. “Dirty little secret is we used to. I mean the cameras are still there and visible, but most aren’t operational. One reason we’re moving out of this space. Place is falling apart.”

  “Right,” said Decker. “Well, thanks.”

  They continued on and reached the spot where Dabney had shot Berkshire. Decker stopped and looked down at the pavement.

  “Are you seeing blue?’ asked Jamison.

  He nodded absently, lifted his gaze, and looked around. “If Dabney and Berkshire were working together, why would they meet down here? Dabney had a meeting scheduled with the Bureau. And you wouldn’t think he’d want his partner in espionage within a hundred miles of the place.”

  This comment took Jamison aback as they started walking along. “Okay, I do not have an answer for that,” she said.

  “And it didn’t seem to me that Dabney and Berkshire even knew each other. Forget the point that Dabney apparently needed the clown to signal him that Berkshire was coming. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Dabney didn’t know what Berkshire looked like. He might have been shown a picture of her, though none was found on his person.”

  “He might have been given a picture and just memorized her features.”

  “Right. The clown thing was just about timing, allowing Dabney to intercept Berkshire. But when I saw them together that morning, it did not seem to me that they knew each other.”

  “And then he shot her?”

  “And then he shot her,” replied Decker.

  “It seems like we take a step forward on this case and then we take two steps back.”

  “Sometimes it seems that way on every case,” said Decker.

  “But we are going to solve this sucker, right?”

  Decker didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER

  45

  MELVIN MARS WAS WAITING out front for them when they got back to their apartment that night.

  “Why didn’t you just go up, Melvin?” asked Jamison. “You have a key and the passcode.”

  “It’s your place, not mine,” said Mars, smiling. “I’m not looking to intrude on your space.”

  “We haven’t had dinner yet. We could go out.”

  “That sounds great.”

  They all turned to see Harper Brown striding over from her car.

  “I’d been waiting for you to get back too,” said Brown. She looked up at Mars. “I didn’t know you were doing the same.”

  “Melvin Mars, this is Agent Harper Brown with the DIA.”

  Brown looked intrigued. “Melvin Mars, the former football player?”

  Mars smiled. “That’s not how most people would describe me. Usually it starts with ‘You mean Mars, Melvin, that dude on Texas’s death row?’”

  “And Decker got you off,” noted Brown.

  “We all got him off,” said Decker. “Including Melvin. He was there at the very end when we nearly got blown up. And he’s already saved my butt up here.”

  “Impressive,” said Brown. “I also read that you got a very sweet payoff from the government.”

  “No more than he deserved,” said Jamison. “In fact, money doesn’t come close to compensating him for twenty years of his life.”

  “I’m not arguing with that. So let’s go to dinner and I can get to know your friend better.”

  “Why?” asked Decker.

  “In my off hours I’m actually a very social person, Decker,” said Brown.