Three short, sharp knocks came at the basement door.
I was puzzled. I wasn’t supposed to have another client until early afternoon.
When I opened the door, Ned Mahoney was standing there. Mahoney and I used to work together at the FBI, and he was normally as stoic a man as you’d find. But he was clearly upset as he came inside and shook snow off his pants legs.
I shut the door, and he looked at me. “There’s some kind of shitstorm brewing, Alex. We’re going to need your help on this one, and more than part-time.”
Chapter 7
Mahoney stared at me expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“I have just a few clients at the moment, Ned,” I said. “The rest of my time is yours. Senator Walker’s case?”
He hesitated before digging in an inner pocket of his coat. “You’ve signed a recent nondisclosure form with us, the Bureau?”
“It’s in the formal contract, but I’m happy to sign again if you think it’s necessary.”
“No, no, of course not,” he said, pulling out his phone. “It’s just that this is sensitive in the extreme. You can’t tell anyone, Bree and Sampson included.”
“John’s on vacation in Belize, and I’ll keep this close until I hear otherwise.”
“Good,” Mahoney said, and he looked at his phone. “This was caught on a Dulles security cam a little more than two hours ago.”
He showed me a video still of a severe, dark-haired woman, more handsome than beautiful, who looked to be in her late thirties. She was dressed in denim, from her jeans to her blouse to her jacket. A shopping bag printed with a painting of the Eiffel Tower dangled off one arm. A leather knapsack hung from her other shoulder. She was pulling a carry-on roller and was in full stride.
“Who is she?”
“We believe her name is Kristina Varjan,” Mahoney said. “A Hungarian-born freelance assassin.”
My mind raced. An assassin at Dulles International at 8:30 a.m., roughly three hours after Betsy Walker was shot?
I held up my hands. “Wait. You believe this is Kristina Varjan?”
Mahoney paused, thinking, and then told me that two hours and twenty minutes before, a highly regarded and experienced CIA field agent was moving through crowded security lines en route to London and spotted her walking by. The agent had evidently had an up-close-and-personal run-in with Kristina Varjan in Istanbul several years earlier and had almost died as a result.
Having heard about the killing of Senator Walker, the agent got out of the TSA line and tried to pursue the woman to make sure. But the woman had vanished.
The agent missed the flight, made calls, pulled strings, and spoke to the Dulles security people. Camera feeds were rewound fifteen minutes, and they quickly found Varjan passing by the security lines. They tracked her, using footage from other security cameras, until she went outside into the snowstorm and walked off.
“So the agent had them track her backward,” Mahoney said. “Turns out Varjan came off a Delta flight from Paris at eight a.m. That picture was taken in Customs. She’s traveling using a Eurozone passport under the name Martina Rodoni.”
I studied the picture a long moment, then looked up at Ned. “Which means she couldn’t have killed Betsy Walker. The timing is off.”
“Correct.”
“Which means there are two professional assassins in the Greater DC area, one of whom killed a sitting U.S. senator.”
Mahoney nodded.
“Second assassin, second target?”
“I can’t believe Varjan’s here to see the monuments.”
“Put her picture in the hands of every cop within a hundred miles of DC.”
Mahoney looked conflicted. “The director wants to keep this in-house with a full-court press to locate and pick her up for questioning.”
I cocked my head. “He give you a reason?”
“National security,” Mahoney said though he didn’t like it. “Something about CIA intelligence-gathering methods. All above our pay grade. He did get the president to order heightened security for all members of Congress. In the meantime, you and I are supposed to find Varjan and bring her in.”
I thought about that a moment. Me and Ned in the field again. That felt good, so good that I put aside the questions about national security that kept popping into my head and turned to the task at hand.
“Can we get a file on Varjan? Something to help us put together a profile?”
“I can do you one better,” Mahoney said. “We’re going to talk to the CIA agent she almost killed.”
Chapter 8
On the way to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, I called Bree to tell her that the FBI had optioned my contract.
“Senator Walker’s case?”
“Can’t talk details.”
“The FBI’s gain and Metro’s loss,” she said. “Remember, the game’s tonight.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Promise?”
“Absolutely.”
Bree paused, then said, “Got to go. The chief wants me in his office in ten minutes.”
Our connection died just as we pulled into the parking lot outside the CIA’s security facility, a rectangular block built of bulletproof glass next to two solid steel gates that rose out of the ground to prevent unauthorized vehicular access.
We presented our credentials. The guards seemed to have been alerted to our arrival beforehand because, with no further ado, one of them took our photographs, printed visitors’ badges with our faces on them, and clipped them to our jackets.
“Main entrance,” he said. “Wait in the lobby. Someone will meet you there.”
“Someone,” Mahoney said after we passed through screening devices and were walking toward the main building. “Do you think they always say that?”
“Makes sense.”
“I suppose.”
The wind picked up and blew granular snow at us, so we hustled to the entry. We entered a vaulted lobby with a large CIA seal set into the black-and-gray polished granite floor. We stood near the seal and watched as academic-looking folks in suits and others who were buff and more casually attired passed us.
“Analysts and operatives,” I murmured.
Before Ned could reply, a woman said, “Special Agent Mahoney? Dr. Cross?”
We turned to find a trim, unassuming brunette woman in her thirties wearing a frumpy blue pantsuit walking across the lobby to us. She squinted at us through nerd glasses perched on the end of her nose, and she did not extend her hand.
“Would you follow me, please?”
She didn’t wait for an answer but spun on her heel and marched off with us following close behind. We went down a long hallway, passing doors that had no identifiers. There were a lot of them, so I had no idea how she chose the right door to stop and use her key card on.
There was a soft click, and she turned the door handle and led us into a nondescript conference room with an empty table and chairs. She went around the table, took a seat, and folded her hands.
She squinted at us again. “What can I tell you about Kristina Varjan?”
That surprised me. I thought she’d been taking us to see the spy.
Mahoney’s eyebrows rose. “You’re the operative who spotted her this morning?”
“I am. You can call me Edith.”
“You look more like a soccer mom than a spy, Edith,” I said.
“That’s the point,” she said dismissively.
Mahoney said, “Tell us what we need to know to catch Varjan.”
“Catch her?” Edith said, and she laughed caustically. “Good luck with that, gentlemen. God knows I tried. Here’s what she gave me for my troubles.”