LeMay uncradled his chin and leaned forward on the desk, his big hands folded together and his eyes fixed upon Hannah’s as he replied.
‘There are forces at work here, Agent Ford, that extend far beyond the boundaries of the homicide in Virginia. I have been researching the same material as you, for some time in fact, and it has become clear to me that elements of the intelligence community have begun an initiative to subvert the authority of the FBI.’
Hannah stared blankly at LeMay. ‘How, and why?’
LeMay took a deep breath and replied in what sounded to Hannah like a resigned tone.
‘The FBI has long since ceased to be the most powerful of our country’s agencies. In the wake of nine — eleven precedence has been given to overseas intelligence gathering, the work of the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.’
‘But the greatest problem for us is the homegrown terrorist,’ Hannah said, ‘the lone wolf nobody can see coming but us. Look at the attacks at the Boston marathon. The FBI’s role can’t be downgraded in favor of hunting down enemies of the state in countries thousands of miles away. If we’re not patrolling our own back yard then who’s going to stop the next bombing or another nine — eleven?’
‘My sentiments exactly,’ LeMay replied and slapped one open — palmed hand down on the desk between them in a display of satisfaction. ‘But Congress is still trying to bust us down along with the other agencies, especially after the Edward Snowden affair. We’ve all been up in front of the Special Committee and explained that we cannot protect this country with one hand tied behind our backs. Increasingly, terrorist activities are being conducted by people who otherwise look, sound and act like Americans. We have to listen in on them, we have to pry into their lives, but if they turn out to be innocent…’
‘Then they have nothing to fear,’ Hannah completed the sentence.
She knew well the furor created by human rights activists appalled at how agencies such as the super — secretive National Security Agency could listen in to any phone call or monitor any digital communication they chose, breaching any number of privacy laws under the protective veil of the Patriot Act. But she also knew that the agencies in question did so in order to seek out terrorists, not to find out if somebody’s aunty’s grandmother had steak for dinner. The NSA’s servers could monitor millions of communications every second, but it was a task far too gargantuan for human beings to pore over the immense reams of data the agency produced every day. Instead the data was scanned, analyzed and filtered by computers specifically programmed to hunt out only the kind of communications transmitted by those who might intend to cause harm to others. The human rights activists too often forgot that while fighting to protect the human rights of citizens, they could also inadvertently place them in harm’s way.
Gordon LeMay folded his hands once more as he spoke.
‘The Defense Intelligence Agency has seen fit to reactivate a covert intelligence operation that was shut down by the CIA and FBI some years ago. Warner and Lopez are a central part of that operation and have already escaped arrest on numerous occasions by operating beneath the protective umbrella of DIA undercover investigations. I want you to start monitoring what they’re up to and report to me directly.’
Hannah almost fell out of her chair.
‘What about the Virginia office?’ she asked without thinking. ‘Jenkins will do everything that she can to sabotage anything I do and…’
‘I wouldn’t worry about Jenkins,’ LeMay said. ‘I will ensure that she gives you all the support you require.’
Hannah composed herself, re — engaged her brain. ‘Sir, you’re effectively asking me to spy on a sister agency.’
‘I’m asking you to spy on its agents,’ LeMay corrected her. ‘I can reveal to you that Warner and Lopez received a full presidential pardon after what happened at Crescent Dunes and appear to have a close link to the incumbent president that I was not aware of. I’d like to know more about that, with the aim of bringing the pair of them to justice for their crimes. If they do anything illegal, anything at all, I want them brought in.’
Hannah thought hard for a moment.
‘What about Mitchell? He’s in the frame for the murder of Stanley Meyer.’
‘Use this operation to find out more about Mitchell,’ LeMay said. ‘I believe that the DIA are looking for him too. Two birds…’
Hannah nodded, not entirely sure of what she was getting in to.
‘Report to me alone,’ LeMay repeated as they stood. ‘Let’s bring this injustice to an end, and honor the values we swore to uphold when we joined the FBI.’
‘Yes sir,’ Hannah replied.
VII
‘We’ve got something.’
Ethan looked up from where he and Lopez were searching through traffic camera footage from around Fort Benning, hoping to detect vehicle movements that would coincide with General Thompson’s suicidal rampage.
‘What is it?’ Ethan asked Hellerman as he hurried over.
Hellerman was holding a flash — RAM drive that he plugged straight into a nearby laptop, accessing a series of files as he spoke.
‘Traffic camera footage from Columbus, Georgia. We managed to pick up General Thompson’s drive to Fort Benning on the morning of his death. He left real early out of Parkwood, his family home, so we spotted him easily.’
Ethan watched with Lopez as a series of stills appeared on the screen, each depicting the general’s champagne — colored sedan making its way south out of Parkwood toward Fort Benning. It didn’t take long for them to figure out what Hellerman had seen.
‘There’s a goods vehicle in all of the shots,’ Lopez identified it.
A white van, non — descript, travelling in the same direction as the general’s vehicle all the way to Fort Benning. Ethan leaned close to the screen, but the poor resolution prevented an identification of the license plates or the occupants.
‘We already found the vehicle though,’ Hellerman informed them. ‘Local law enforcement found it burned out near a town called Preston, fifty miles south of Fort Benning. The vehicle had been stolen forty eight hours before in Alabama.’
Ethan frowned thoughtfully.
‘That was a dumb move. The smart play is to simply abandon a vehicle, not burn it and advertise its presence to law enforcement. They could have driven it into deep woodland and it wouldn’t have been found for months.’
‘What’re you thinking?’ Lopez asked him.
‘Professional, high — tech equipment used to reprogram a senior soldier’s brain to commit an act of mass homicide, and yet the perps’ are too dumb to conceal their vehicle? That smacks to me of hired help of some kind. Either our perps are not real smart and got somebody else to do their technical work for them, or they’re very clever but are entrusting the actual trigger — pulling to local thugs.’
‘It figures,’ Hellerman said. ‘The labs still haven’t finished working on the implant device yet but they all agree that it’s state of the art, literally. They haven’t seen anything so advanced in their careers to date, and believe me they’ve seen some stuff you just wouldn’t believe.’
‘So have we,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Project Watchman, for instance. Maybe we could use that to check these guys out and find out where they went after they dumped the van?’
Ethan looked at Hellerman expectantly. He and Lopez had learned of Project Watchman during a previous investigation into a man who had apparently been able to see into the future. Desperate to get ahead of their quarry, Jarvis had enlisted the help of NASA and revealed Watchman, a program that enlisted spy satellites to record events on the continental United States in unprecedented detail from multiple angles, and compile the resulting data into a virtual world through which investigators could walk. Despite its flaws, Watchman could have revolutionized criminal investigations, but it was Jarvis who shattered the hope of using Watchman on the case.