She’d actually been reclaiming the money that her father had stolen from her, but the protocols here did not involve long explanations.
“Are you working in collaboration with the intelligence service of a country other than the United States?”
“No.”
“Do you reside in California?”
“Yes.”
The operator alternated provocative questions with innocuous ones, the better to measure the jump in Dagmar’s response.
“Do you work in an office?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in the pay of a foreign government?”
“No.”
“Have you ever cheated on a school exam?”
“No.”
If she had, she couldn’t remember it.
“Have you ever engaged in a conspiracy to commit murder?”
Well, there it was.
“Yes,” she said.
There was a two-second hesitation before the next question, which was, “Do you own an automobile?”
She was nearly as surprised as the operator. She hadn’t intended to answer in the affirmative; she’d just fallen into the rhythm of giving truthful answers. She considered what answer she should have given-a denial would almost certainly have been detected as a lie. The leap her heart gave at the question would have given her away.
Maybe she just really wanted to talk about it. Confess to somebody.
Still, she wasn’t under oath. None of this could be used as evidence. And anyway, it would only confirm what Lincoln already suspected.
Dagmar went on answering questions. She admitted to using marijuana, denied using cocaine.
More questions came along, each layered between trivialities so quotidian that the crucial questions might as well have been shouted aloud.
“Did you kill Judy Strange?”
“No.”
“Do you know who killed Judy Strange?”
“No.”
“Have you ever killed someone?”
“Yes.”
The operator was beyond surprise by now. The next question-about whether or not she liked football-came right on schedule.
“Did you engage in a conspiracy to kill Judy Strange?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone about the location of the apartment you shared with Judy Strange?”
“No.”
The operator gave her a thoughtful look as she rose from the chair at the end of the interview.
She let her police escort take her back to the ops room, where she began her prep for the day’s operation. Other members of her crew joined her as their own interviews were completed. Byron arrived last, averting his eyes. As she moved around the room, she could hear him breathing heavily through his nose.
Lincoln returned to the ops room after being briefed by the polygraph operator and called Dagmar into his office. She could see herself reflected in his shades as she took her seat.
“The test suggests you have no complicity in Judy’s death,” he said.
Dagmar nodded.
“The operator offered an advisory of his own, however.”
Dagmar thought about it. “I’d prefer to leave it to my imagination,” she said.
He looked at her, folded his hands on the table.
“This is the point at which I’m supposed to say, ‘If we don’t clear this up, you could be in trouble.’ ”
“Unless you intend to extradite me to Indonesia,” Dagmar said, “there’s not a lot of point in digging any further.”
Lincoln frowned in surprise.
“Indonesia,” he repeated.
“There’s a lot of the Indonesian story I haven’t told anyone.”
Having spent the morning telling the truth, she was now madly sowing lies. Her frantic inventions looped the trail of her life back on itself, obscuring her footprints by running over them with another set of her tracks, all in hopes of concealing her past sins in California.
Lincoln considered this, then held out a hand.
“I said at the beginning,” he said, “that I didn’t want to know anything.”
She nodded.
“I’ll stand by that statement,” he said.
Dagmar was only too pleased to escape the subject. “How about Ismet?” she asked.
“Also cleared. But we have anomalous readings elsewhere.”
“Yes?”
Lincoln opened a manila folder, looked at his own handwritten notes.
“Byron was so angry at being polygraphed that his responses were completely off the scale. The operator was unable to get a baseline to make a judgment concerning what answers were deceptive or not. It’s as if Byron answered every single question by screaming and throwing a desk across the room. His blood pressure was so high the operator was afraid he was going to have a stroke.”
“Interesting,” Dagmar said. She really didn’t know what else to say. Angry Man was staying in character.
“On the other end of the scale, Lloyd was uncannily calm throughout his interview. He passed with flying colors, but his lack of normal response indicated that he might have been trained in techniques for beating a polygraph.”
Lloyd’s father was a retired colonel, Dagmar remembered, perhaps a supporter of the new regime.
“Was he trained to defeat polygraphs by the Company?” she asked.
“I’ll ask him. But of course he’s been polygraphed before as a matter of course. He might just be able to relax through the whole thing.”
“Okay.” Not knowing what that meant.
She seemed to specialize in not knowing anything about Lloyd.
Lincoln scrubbed his chin with his hand.
“Polygraphs aren’t reliable at the best of times,” he said. “Even the most optimistic of the polygraph experts claims only a ninety percent reliability-and that means one in ten black hats walks. And agents would have been trained in beating a lie detector, so the failure rate there is much larger.”
“So,” Dagmar asked, “why are we bothering with the polygraph at all?”
Lincoln sighed. “Because it’s what we’ve got. I can’t afford to ignore any tools at my disposal-and besides, we hit the occasional jackpot.” He waved his notes. “Two of the subjects indicated persistent patterns of deception,” he said. “Helmuth and Magnus.”
Dagmar actually felt her mouth drop open in complete amazement.
“Helmuth?” she said.
“Yes.”
“My Eurotrash?”
Lincoln gave her a cold glance.
“If he doesn’t clear this up,” he said, “there could be trouble.”
“And how is it cleared up, exactly?”
Lincoln spread his hands. “Further interviews.”
“Like you’re doing now.”
“Yes.” His shades gazed at Dagmar in their unblinking way. “Do you want to try getting to the bottom of it? Or should I?”
Dagmar considered that her preexisting rapport might do well with Helmuth. Besides, she had enough experience as his boss to maybe know when he was lying.
“I’ll take Byron,” Lincoln said.
Dagmar called Helmuth into her office. Today he wore soft wool slacks, a polo shirt, and retro Italian shoes with a little gold chain across the instep.
“There’s a problem with your polygraph results,” she said.
“Really?” he said. His eyebrows lifted in an expression of perfect innocence, an expression that only irritated her.
“You lied like a fucking rug,” Dagmar said as viciously as she could. “And I want to know about it.”
For perhaps the first time in her experience, Helmuth seemed physically uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair, patted his sleek hair, and pursed his lips.
“It has nothing to do with what we’re doing here. Or with Judy being killed.”
“Yes?”
He gave her a quick glance.
“There are certain things I’m not prepared to admit to the government,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Such as?”
He gave her a stony look.
“Things that could get my green card revoked,” he said. “Which would mean I’d have to lose my lovely job working for you in Los Angeles and return to Germany.”
“You may have lost that anyway,” Dagmar said.
Again Helmuth shifted in his seat.
“Are you going to tell Lincoln?” he asked.
“Depends.”