"I was in the private sector for a while."
She said, "I was too. I was a security consultant for a major software developer. I can't really mention which one but we had a huge piracy problem. Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. You're into computers, you know source codes."
"Of course." He gave a subtle eye roll.
I heard duBois say, "We had a situation where an employee was being blackmailed into giving important parts of source codes to a competitor. I managed to track him down. There were some similarities between that situation and your case. I kind of leapt on that."
"I told you there wasn't a problem. You kept pushing."
"Yes, I know. I got a little focused."
"Or blinded, you could say."
"Blinded," duBois agreed.
"So you had a taste of success at your other company and you wanted to relive it."
"I . . . that's about right."
"You're an ambitious little thing, aren't you?"
She was silent.
"Ambition's fine. But you need the goods, you need to deliver."
"Yessir. I didn't have the goods."
"If you don't have them, you can't deliver."
"Right."
"No delivery." He offered her a drippy, condescending smile. "I'll give you two pieces of advice. First, and this is from somebody in the business: Computers can only do so much. They point you in a certain direction. You need to use that pretty little brain of yours in deciding where to go from there. How do you learn that?"
"Well . . ."
"From life experience. The most important thing in the world. You can't bottle it, you can't buy it."
"Yessir. What's the second bit of advice?"
"Give people the respect they deserve. You're young, you're spunky. But you'll go further faster if you keep in mind where you fit in the scheme of things."
"That's true. I sometimes don't remember where I fit."
I glanced at Graham. "Anything else we can do?"
"Your little lady and I've come to an understanding. I don't think the matter needs to go any further."
"That's kind of you."
"You keep that attitude in check," he said to my protegee.
A fraction of a moment's silence, as duBois nodded slowly. Her skin turned ruddy. "My teacher in seventh grade said the same thing once. Of course, he--"
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Graham," I interrupted quickly. "And your generosity. We'll leave you alone now."
We walked out the door, then climbed into the Honda. As we pulled out, watching a smug Eric Graham close the door, I said to duBois, "That was helpful."
My highest compliment. It didn't seem to wash today, however.
She nodded, glum.
"I know it was tough."
"Yeah."
The clipped one-word response meant duBois was very upset. I couldn't blame her. I supposed she would have preferred a rolling, four-person tactical entry against an armed hostile to the humiliation she'd just suffered.
But I'd had to ask her to do it. There was absolutely no logical explanation for Graham's dropping the case, and the fact that "somebody powerful" had gone to the MPD to make sure the investigation died suggested all the more that this was a likely motive for Ryan Kessler being targeted. I needed to do whatever I could to find out what was going on with Graham, even if it meant my protegee had to suffer.
Pretty little brain . . .
Claire duBois's prostrating herself to an arrogant chauvinist like Graham was bitterly hard for her, especially since her star shone a thousand times brighter than his. But I'd remembered what Abe Fallow had told me.
Keeping people safe is a business, like any other. You ask yourself, What's my goal and what's the most efficient way to go about achieving it? If that means you beg, you beg. Grovel, you grovel. If that means you bust heads, get out the brass knuckles. Cry if you need to. A shepherd doesn't exist outside the context of his mission.
So I'd had to put duBois in play--to beg forgiveness--while I had become invisible and studied Graham's reaction when duBois told him again about our theory that he was being blackmailed. I'd noted his mannerisms, his eyes, his verbal and body language. I'd also gazed around his study for anything helpful.
Which I believed I might have found.
I plucked the video camera pen from my breast pocket and handed it to her. "I captured about a dozen pictures of people on Graham's wall. Upload them to our server. I want facial recognition on everybody. Run all the data you get, along with the facts of the case, through ORC."
This was the computer that duBois had alluded to in her mea culpa performance with Graham. The official name of the impressive program, residing on our tech wizard Hermes's massive servers, is the Obscure Relationship Pattern and Connection Determiner. But we shorthand it to Obscure Relationship Connector and tighten it even more to the evil creatures in Tolkien's fantasy novels, a thought of mine after a marathon bout of playing Lord of the Rings, which is a very good board game.
The algorithm at ORC's heart was elegant--the mathematician in me was truly impressed with how it worked--and if there was any relevance to be found in the evidence I'd gathered, ORC could do so. "And run a facial and kinesics profile on him. A lie-detector scan."
DuBois took the pen, hooked up a USB cable and sent the video into the stratosphere. She stared out the window. I wondered for how long I'd lost her.
I wondered too if this had changed something permanently between us.
As we drove back to the Hyatt in silence to collect her car, I heard my phone buzz. It was still in her hand. She started to hand it back, saying, "You've got a text."
"Read it."
"It's from Transport. A copy of a message to Westerfield."
"Go on."
She sighed. "The armored van you'd ordered left the safe house fifteen minutes ago. It's headed for the prison now."
Chapter 25
AS THE SKY grew more and more overcast, I pulled into the safe house compound in Great Falls.
I climbed out and stretched, as leaves tumbled past in the fitful wind.
The rustic setting made me feel very much at home--the trees, brush, sloping fields of renegade grass. My early adult life was rooted in classrooms and lecture halls, and my recent professions and personal life have found me in offices and safe houses, but I have always found a way to get outside, sometimes for hours or days at a time.
I glanced enviously at the paths that led to the Potomac or farther into the dense woods, then I turned away, looking down at another text from Billy about the progress of the armored van to the slammer in D.C. I wondered if Jason Westerfield and his associate would be there to greet it. Then I realized: Of course they would.
Climbing the stairs, punching in the code. The door of the safe house eased open.
And I nodded a greeting toward Maree and Joanne, who sat across a wobbly card table from each other, with tea and cookies at hand.
Yes, an armored van was en route--a lengthy, complicated route--but it was empty.
Inscrutable . . .
There was no way I was going to send the Kesslers to a slammer, especially a medium-security facility in the District. Nothing had changed from earlier, when I'd refused to incarcerate them, and if Westerfield was convinced I was using my principals as bait, that was a problem of his, not mine.
I knew that if the stink got big enough, Aaron Ellis might fire me. But he wouldn't fire me until the job was concluded. For one thing, he didn't know where I was and it would take some effort to find out. Nor could he do so without risking that somebody on the outside would learn of the Kesslers' whereabouts. Which he wouldn't do.
I was amused to see that the sisters were playing a board game plucked from the shelves in the living room. Backgammon. The game, where you roll dice and move markers in an attempt to remove all yours from the board first, goes back nearly five thousand years. A variation was played in Mesopotamia, and the Romans' Game of
Twelve Lines was virtually the same as the backgammon people play now.
I left the sisters to their competition and greeted Ahmad, who stood at the back door, looking out. He assured me everything had been quiet. I made a call to the spec in West Virginia, who reported that there'd been no hint of surveillance from the outside.
Nor had the deer, badgers or other animals been behaving oddly.
Ahmad was standing in a way I could only describe as anticipatory, shoulders at one angle, hips at another. Eyes were scanning the windows, his job, but also avoiding mine. He said, "I heard you ordered a transport to the Hansen Detention Center."
"That's right."
He was nodding, understandably confused; the people supposedly inside the van were no more than thirty feet away from him.
I asked, "Anybody call you about it?"
"It went out over the wire."
I told him of my ploy. "You won't be in trouble. You can plead ignorance."
The young officer nodded, curious, but I said nothing more. Like Abe Fallow, I'm always aware of my responsibility to teach proteges what I can about our business--there is so much to learn. But this was a situation I decided not to elaborate on, since I hoped he'd never find himself in one like it.
All he said was, "It was a good call, sir. A slammer'd be wrong for this situation."
"Where's Ryan?"
"Working in his room. That accounting project of his, I think."
I realized the downstairs was filled with a new smell, spice, which I took to be from shampoo or perfume.
I was struck by the domesticity, replayed hundreds of times in the safe houses where I've stashed my principals, and it's always jarring to me, the contrast: the homey, even mundane routine that's the antithesis of the reason these men and women are here.
As it did occasionally, the comforting imagery made me feel somewhat sentimental. Certain memories again arose but I didn't shoo them away quite so quickly this time. I recalled last Friday night after work, alone in the town house, eating a sandwich for dinner before I went to my gaming club up the street. I'd found the list for the party that Peggy and I had thrown years ago. I'd stared at it, my appetite gone. I'd become aware of the smell of the place, bitter from the cardboard, paper and ink of the many boxed games lining the walls. The town house had seemed unbearably sterile. I thought I should get some incense or do what people did when they were selling their houses, boil cinnamon on the stove.
Or bake cookies. Something domestic.
As if that would ever happen.
The game between the sisters now ended and Joanne returned to her room. Maree gave me a smile and booted up her computer.
I asked, "Who won?"
"Jo did. You can't beat her. At anything. It's impossible."
As a statistician, Joanne would have had a talent for math and that meant a talent for games--certain types, in any event. I knew my skill at numbers, and my analytical mind, helped me play.
In backgammon, which I happen to be good at, I knew the general strategy was to play a "running game," moving quickly around the board, offensively. If that didn't work, players had to fall back on a holding action, trying to create an anchor on the opponent's side. While not as complicated as chess, it's a sophisticated game. I would have liked to see how Joanne played. But the interest was purely theoretical. In all my years as a shepherd, I'd never played a game with a principal, though on occasion I'd been tempted.
Maree gestured toward her computer. "Tell me what you think?"
"What?" I asked.
"Come 'ere, Mr. Tour Guide. Take a look."
She motioned me over and typed some commands into her computer. A logo came up, GSI, Global Sofware Innovations. I'd heard of them but couldn't recall where. After a moment the program loaded. It was apparently a picture editing and archiving program; folders of Maree's photos appeared.
Maree's fingers paused, hovering over keys. I thought at first she was unfamiliar with the software, but it turned out the hesitation was due to another reason. With a wistfulness in her eyes, she said, "It's Amanda's program. We had a lot of fun installing it together. . . . I feel bad for her. She's got to be terrified about this whole thing."
I glanced into the woman's eyes, focused blankly on the logo. "She's stronger than a lot of my adult principals. She'll be fine." This was not just for reassurance; it was the truth.
Maree exhaled softly. "Jo thinks she's stronger than I am." A look up at my face. "As a rule I never agree with my sister but she's right about that."
Then she seemed to toss aside the serious thoughts--as I'd been doing all day--and concentrated on the photo software.
She typed quickly and two pictures flashed onto the screen side by side.
"I can't decide which of these two are the best." She laughed, looking up, and patted the chair beside her. "It's okay, I don't bite."
I hesitated then sat down. I noted that, unsurprisingly, she was the source of the pleasant spice, not Joanne. And, as I'd observed yesterday, she was wearing makeup, skillfully applied. She had ironed and donned a new outfit--a sheer skirt and silk maroon blouse. This was curious. Not only do principals tend to ignore fashion like this when their lives are in danger but if Maree was as flighty as she seemed and the artist she claimed to be, I would have thought she'd have been inattentive to personal details. Or been more of a jeans-and-sweats woman.
She leaned close. I felt her arm against mine and the sweet aroma wafted around me. I must have eased away slightly because she laughed again.
I felt a ping of impatience. But I did as she'd asked and I looked at the computer screen. "The gallery show I was telling you about? I'm submitting one of these. I've got to send it in by Tuesday to meet the deadline. What do you think?"
"I . . . what're you asking? Which one I like better?"
To me they were almost identical although one was more tightly cropped than the other. They depicted two somber men in suits, businessmen or politicians, having an intense discussion in the shadow of the government building in downtown D.C.
"Who are they?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. I was just walking down the street last week, near the Treasury Building, and saw them standing there. They look powerful, they look rich. But don't they seem like little boys in a way? On the school yard? Forty years younger, they would've started a shoving match."
At first, I didn't get that but then I saw, yes, she was right.
"The theme is about conflict," she explained.
"I don't see much difference."
"The one on the left? It's tighter. The emphasis is on the men. But there're no angles, no sense of composition. The one on the right is better stylistically. You see more of the Treasury Building. You see the sunlight, that band of light there, cutting into the stairs near them? It's aesthetically better . . . So?" she asked.
"Which one I like better?"
"That's the question, Mr. Tour Guide."
I felt suddenly awkward, like I was being tested on something I hadn't studied for. I didn't really know which one I liked more. The only photos I looked at regularly were surveillance and crime scene shots. Aesthetics didn't count.
Finally, I pointed to the picture on the left. "That one."
"Why?"
I hadn't known I had to show my work. "I don't know; I just do."
"Uh-uh, commit."
"I really don't know. They're both nice." I glanced up the hall. "I've got to talk to your brother-in-law."
"Come on, Corte. Humor me. You've screwed up my weekend pretty bad. You won't even be my masseur. You owe me."
I banked my irritation again and looked at the pictures. Suddenly I had a thought. "I like it because you have to ask yourself, what's your goal? You said it was to show conflict. The one on the left does that better. It's more focused."
"Even though it's less artistic."
"I'm not sure what artistic means, but yes."
She lifted her hand to give me a high five. Reluctantly I lifted
mine and she slapped it. "That's just what I was thinking."
Maree then touched the pad. The GSI software instantly shrank the pictures to thumbnails and she directed them back to a folder. She then started a slideshow and the pictures faded up to fill the screen, remained for a few moments then went to black and a new one was displayed.
I have no artistic ability whatsoever but I can appreciate something that's technically well executed. Her pictures were all in focus and seemed well composed. But it was the subjects that appealed to me. Had they been still lifes or abstracts I wouldn't have been interested but Maree specialized in portraits and she seemed to be able to capture the spirit of her subjects perfectly, though I supposed since she used a fancy digital camera there were a hundred outtakes for every keeper. As the show continued I noted the controls and paused several of them. Maree was leaning close.
Workers, mothers and children, businessmen, parents, policemen, athletes . . . There was no theme, but whoever they were, Maree had caught them in a moment of emotion. Anger, love, frustration, pride.
"They're good. You're talented."
"You do something enough times, you're going to get a few chops down. Hey, you want to see who you're guarding?"
I frowned.
She typed and another folder appeared. It took me a moment to realize what she meant--and what I was looking at. Family albums of Maree, Joanne and who I guessed were their parents and other relatives. Maree was calling out names and information.
I heard Abe's voice.
Learn only what you need to learn to keep them alive. Don't use their names, don't look at their kids' pictures, don't ask 'em if they're all right, unless you've been dodging bullets and you need to call a medic. . . .
I said, "I really have to talk to Ryan."
"Don't be scared of a few family pictures, Corte. They're not even your family. I'm the one who should be scared."
A picture of a trim, crew-cut man in khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt faded in. Maree hit PAUSE. "The Colonel. Our father . . . and, yeah, people called him 'the Colonel,' capital C. Lieutenant colonel, a little bird, not a big bird."
Still, the man was imposing, no question.
Maree's voice dropped. "Don't tell Freud but Jo thought she was marrying him. She got Ryan instead. Dad was career military, strong, quiet, distant, didn't laugh. . . . Ha, like you, Corte. . . . Hey, you know I'm messing with you."
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