“Not at all. Apparently you not only work nights, but you also work weekends. Is that it?”
By way of explanation, Andy said, “I’m a cops reporter.”
Catherine understood. “I guess criminals don’t work bankers’ hours.”
Andy smiled. “Only bank robbers.”
Catherine returned a polite smile at the joke. “Did you find out anything new about the Brandywine Street murders?”
“The victims are all still in the hospital — one is in ICU — but I doubt they will be talking to me or the cops.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They are all getting charged with possession with the intent to distribute. They will lawyer up, and their lawyers will tell them to button their lips.”
“Any more from the police?”
“No description of the killer other than male, white, thirties. There was one thing that was really weird, though.”
“What’s that?”
“The killer left a bunch of fingerprints.”
Catherine scrunched up her mouth. That didn’t seem weird to her at all.
“In a symbol,” Andy added.
“A symbol?”
“Well, a number. He used his right thumbprint to make a big number six on a nightstand in the room with the dead guys.”
“It sounds like a calling card of some sort. Have you seen that at any other crime? A gang sign or something?”
“I haven’t, and I checked a nationwide database on gang signs. A six by itself doesn’t seem to mean anything.”
“Could be a message.”
Andy said, “You mean, to the CIA?”
Catherine gazed out the window and down onto 15th Street. “I don’t know.”
Andy asked, “Did you find anything out about the spooks who toured the scene?”
“Jordan Mayes I told you about. The woman’s name is Suzanne Brewer. She’s CIA as well, in their Programs and Plans office. Her job is to identify threats against the Agency, terrorists and such, and then task assets to eliminate the threats.”
“What does she have to do with Mayes?”
“No idea,” said Catherine. “According to my contacts she served in Baghdad protecting facilities, and then she served in Kabul and Sana’a, Yemen. She came back to HQ three years ago with a lot of accolades and commendations for her work and a promotion to go with it. She has an excellent reputation in the Agency.”
Catherine sat quietly a moment, just thinking. Andy did not get in the way of the process. She said, “It makes me wonder if Mayes and Brewer had information about the perpetrator last night. That he was somehow related to a threat against CIA. It would have to be something substantial to bring out the AD of NCS and a senior program officer.”
“What do you want to do now?” Andy asked.
“I’d like to know more about the man they are after. I’ll stay away from Carmichael for now.”
Andy said, “If you want I can reach out to Mayes. Just play dumb and ask him what he was doing there.”
King shook her head. “He won’t talk. At this point the best we can hope for is an official CIA press officer comment, which would be worthless.”
Andy sighed. It was clear to Catherine that he wanted a story, and he wanted it now. He said, “In your world, you can’t get people to talk. When I go to a crime scene to get an interview, I usually can’t get people to shut up.”
Catherine laughed. “Do what I do long enough and you learn to read between the lines. Often I get more information by what the CIA doesn’t say.” She spun back around to her computer, indicating to Andy she was ready to get back to work. “Keep your nose to the ground, Andy. My interest is piqued about Mayes and Brewer.”
Zack Hightower had been handed a garment bag in the Eurocopter, and in it he found a suit and tie. The control officer on board asked him to change out of his hunting gear, not because CIA demanded formality, but rather so he did not draw attention to himself in the building dressed in camo and muddy boots. He stripped down to his boxers as they flew high over Northern Virginia, and as he did so he could immediately tell his new outfit had been borrowed off another man; it didn’t fit very well around his muscular arms, and there was a hint of both antiperspirant and BO.
Zack smelled like a goat, however, so he just shrugged and put on the suit. The control officer kicked off his own wing tips and Zack slipped them on, finding them just one size too small.
The helo descended over the rolling hills of Virginia and landed on CIA property at seven p.m., setting down in the nearly empty parking lot on the bubble side of the Old HQ building. Even before the rotors spooled down, Zack was led out and then through the side door. He followed his control officer through the security checks, then to the elevators, where he stepped inside.
The Langley headquarters was familiar to him, but only from visits for an occasional briefing, seminar, or retirement party for a senior coworker. He’d never had a desk here, and as far as Zack was concerned, that was okay with him.
He raised an eyebrow when he realized they were heading up to the seventh floor. Zack worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for eleven years before being dismissed, but this was his first trip all the way to the top. Seven wasn’t exactly a hangout for paramilitary operations officers, after all.
Zack had spent the majority of his stateside time with CIA in training, mostly in Virginia and North Carolina but also in the mountains of Montana and Colorado, firing ranges in Mississippi and Arizona, the deserts of Nevada and the streets of D.C., where he and other SAD men honed their surveillance skills.
Zack’s unit of Ground Branch officers did have its own headquarters, an unmarked building in Norfolk, Virginia, but Zack had spent several years leading his six-man outfit of shooters to all points in the War on Terror, and in those years he and his team spent very little time stateside.
As he rode the elevator up with the other man, Zack did his best to act like this sort of shit happened to him every day, but in truth his mind was racing. Why were they pulling him in? Some old op needed a full accounting? Some new op needed the eyes of a veteran to straighten it out?
Was he being offered a way back in CIA?
Hightower didn’t dare hope for this.
A minute later Zack took a seat at a mahogany table in a dark-paneled conference room, and within moments of his sitting down, a side door opened and in walked Jordan Mayes, the second-in-command at NCS.
Zack was surprised to see such a highflier, but more surprised that Jordan Mayes looked like hell, as if he’d been up for forty-eight hours.
Hightower knew Mayes from both of their days in SAD, although Mayes had always been enough rungs higher on the management ladder to where he didn’t need to slum with labor much. From time to time Hightower would find himself face-to-face with Mayes, but he could count those occurrences on one hand.
Zack knew Mayes had always worked directly for Denny Carmichael. He hoped that was no longer the case. Carmichael had fired Zack a couple of years earlier, unceremoniously and cruelly. Hightower had been in intensive care at the time with a gunshot wound to his chest and a dangerous infection in his lungs, and Carmichael sent word down through a low-level flunky that his services would no longer be required. Zack had been devastated by this, but he was a good soldier. He filed no protest; he made no complaint. He just lay alone in the hospital till the doctors released him, then he went home from the hospital to his apartment in Virginia Beach, and did nothing but lay there and watch TV.
For a year.
He had no family other than an ex-wife who lived somewhere in Colorado with a daughter Zack had never met, so he basically sat at home and recuperated, watched the news and wished he was still part of it.