General Sanderson nodded and walked over to the table next to Daniel.
"You know, none of them hesitated to come back," he said, and looked directly into Daniel's eyes.
"And most of them were leading successful lives. Families, businesses, solid jobs…bright futures by American standards. Every one of them looked relieved when I asked them to join the new program. Their lives were covert missions, and they were waiting, praying to get out. You can't tell me you don't feel the same way, Danny. At least somewhat. You were one of the best to come out of the program," said Sanderson.
"I haven't had much time to think it over. My life has been pretty much gutted over the past twenty-four hours thanks to you."
"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn't have any confidence that you would take part in this voluntarily. The Ghani job had been assigned to another operative, but a problem developed at the last minute," said Sanderson.
"I don't believe you for a second," said Petrovich, and Parker interjected.
"He's telling the truth. The operative assigned to the Ghani job had a mental breakdown two days ago.
Petrovich started laughing, taking several seconds to regain control of himself. "Imagine that. Another one of your willing participants, General? And for the record, Parker, your glorious leader may be telling the truth about the last minute assignment, but his truths can be slippery. One way or the other, my life in Portland, Maine was scheduled to come to an end today. It didn't matter who killed Ghani. Once the list of operatives surfaced, I was burned. Having that assassination shoved down my throat gave me a little more time to prepare for the inevitable," said Daniel.
"Nice work by the way. Parker should have provided you with a knife," said Sanderson.
"I keep a few around the house for the occasional murder," replied Daniel, wondering how much the General really knew about what happened the night of Ghani's murder.
"Parker, what do you think?" asked Sanderson.
"Based on the profile workup I'm seeing in this laptop, and Brown River's involvement, I'm pretty sure we have two problems at the CIA. Keller's memory is one, and that needs to be erased, but I think we have a bigger problem out there. Someone moved pretty quickly to take you out, and they didn't hire a few ghetto thugs to do the job. Keller took the information back to the CIA, and within a few hours they found you. That's both impressive and frightening, and suggests the work of someone highly placed within the CIA, with NSA contacts…"
"Or a leak within your group," interjected Daniel.
"There's no leak here. Parker's the only one other than myself that knew about you, and I trust him completely. Whoever activated the Brown River team has a personal grudge against something you did while assigned to the Black Flag program. I can only think of one possibility."
Daniel tensed at the thought that someone at the CIA had made the connection to a secret he had taken every precaution to keep buried. Secrets like Daniel's died hard, and Sanderson's supernatural efforts to resurrect Black Flag might have raised a few other unintended specters from their burial sites. He had no choice but to finish this day's work for Sanderson. Black Flag would rise from the ashes, but Daniel's connection to Zorana Zekulic had to be put back under the ground, for good.
"Do you have anyone working in Langley?" said Daniel.
General Sanderson smiled, which gave Petrovich little satisfaction.
"We have a few people in the CIA, but not at Langley."
"I guess it doesn't matter. Colonel, what is Keller's status? Will he need to be hospitalized?" asked Daniel.
"No, I hit him with a Taser and gave him a specialized neurotoxin. He might be coming around right now. The toxin is harmless, as far as we know," said Farrington.
"They'll still take him to the hospital, or FBI headquarters for questioning. The FBI is going to shut everything down, I assume," said Petrovich.
"They'll be in a panic. As of thirty minutes ago, they lost every link to Black Flag and any hope of figuring out what happened today. The trail went cold for them," said Sanderson.
"We need to take care of the CIA problem immediately. I can breach hospital security. Might get messy, but they probably wouldn't expect it, especially since Keller was left unharmed at the Pentagon. I assume Farrington left him alive so we could find the bigger fish?" said Petrovich.
"Precisely. Brown River's involvement suggested a bigger issue. The pictures of you in this laptop confirms it. I don't think we'll need to draw any more public attention to ourselves tonight. I doubt Keller will consent to hospitalization. He'll want to report immediately to his supervising agent, who will probably want to stay away from the Pentagon and the FBI. I'm not the only one who will suggest the Brown River CIA connection. He'll most likely report in person, and I have an idea where they might meet. If my instincts prove correct, we'll be able to take them both out at once."
"I don't think we have the resources available to breach Langley," said Daniel.
General Sanderson gave him a quizzical look, and shook his head.
"You were always fucking crazy, and I mean that in a good way," said Sanderson.
"I didn't take it any other way."
"People talk in this town. Rumors fly…it's hard to keep a secret. There's a wonderful, quiet little street in Georgetown that I'd like you and the colonel to visit."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Special Agent D'Angelo led Edwards and Jessica Petrovich through a small maze of hallways and offices shared by several federal law enforcement agencies on the 4th floor of the building. The FBI officially occupied two rooms toward the back. One was Special Agent D'Angelo's office, and the other served as an administrative support center, with room for an assistant, several file cabinets, and a large all-in-one copy/fax machine. The different agencies shared a conference room past the DEA's offices, several doors down, and this was their destination. As team leader, Edwards had been given one of the spare offices used by agents on assignment to Maine, but hadn't felt the need to leave anything there. Everyone else processed the information he needed and reported to him, so there was little need to haul around a briefcase or files.
While he walked the key piece of the FBI's puzzle to the conference room, his team was busy at her house with local police detectives, searching for evidence and clues linking her husband to the murder in Cape Elizabeth. He didn't think they would find anything relevant at the house. The Cape Elizabeth murder scene had been sterile, and yielded nothing useful to the investigation. Still, he couldn't voice this opinion openly.
He had received a call from Special Agent Frank Mendoza stressing the importance of finding information that might help them locate Petrovich, so he put his relatively useless team to work processing the house. Address books with friends' information, computer contact lists, bank information, and the pictures. They seemed really focused on scanning and downloading every picture of Petrovich in the house. It sounded like another waste of time, but he could tell it was important to someone back in D.C. Hopefully D'Angelo would join his team at the house. So far she had proved useful dealing with the locals, and he had made a mistake keeping her out of the raid on Petrovich's house.
"Here you go, Mrs. Petrovich. Would you like some coffee, water, or a soda?" said D'Angelo, standing at the door to the conference room.
"I'm fine right now, thank you. Is there a bathroom I can use to change?"
"You can use one of the spare offices right across the hall. Do you have any shoes?" said D'Angelo.
"We sort of left in a hurry," she said.