Valley of Spies

by Keith Yocum

  “Colin McCarthy. NZSIS in Auckland.”

  “Hey, Colin. I’m in the states now. Forgot to tell you guys I was leaving.”

  “Right. We knew that.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “We’re in signals intelligence, Cunningham. You’re somewhere in Virginia right now, if we’ve got this right.”

  “Whatever. How can I help you?”

  “As a courtesy, thought we’d tell you that we found Forrester.”

  “Alive or dead?”

  “Quite dead.”

  Chapter 10

  It was a tip,” McCarthy said. “Email came into Crimestoppers. They get a lot of useless stuff, and the police don’t have the resources to check everything out. You know, pensioners who think their missing cat was kidnapped. Things like that.”

  “Yeah, so what was the tip?”

  “Have the email right here. It said, ‘That missing American psychologist can be found near the arch at White’s Bay Beach.’”

  “And?” Dennis said.

  “Police found her body there. Buried in the sand up from the beach.”

  “Was there a positive ID?”

  “Not yet, but they’re pretty certain it was her. Partially decomposed. Same clothes she was wearing. Jewelry. Everything matches. They’re expecting a DNA sample from the son any moment now. Husband has been alerted. Police recommended that given the poor condition of the body and the emotional stress from seeing that, that a DNA sample from the son would be a preferable method for identification.”

  “Autopsy?” Dennis said, moving over to the desk to turn on the lamp and get his notepad.

  “No results yet. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Tell me about the email. Your digital forensics folks trace it?”

  “Dead end, I’m afraid. The email header had a New Zealand IP address, but it was spoofed somehow. The sender certainly knew how to cover their digital tracks.”

  “Anything else stands out to the police there? How accessible is that beach? Is it popular?”

  “Well, this time of year there’s not a lot of folks going down to the water there, and it is a little isolated. Whoever took her down there had to carry her a bit. Good one hundred meters from the road.”

  “When will the autopsy be completed?”

  “Not sure about that. Your embassy here is pressing the case, and Mr. Forrester is clamoring for some answers. Quite agitated he is. Are you coming here to finish up your investigation?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure how quickly I can get a flight out. I’m going to want to talk to Detective Brown in Blenheim. And whoever is doing the autopsy.”

  “Not a problem. Let us know your travel plans. Cheers.”

  Dennis put the phone down and stared at the notes he scribbled in his notebook. He shivered, sitting in the air-conditioned room in his underwear.

  He reached over and pulled the thick hotel curtains back and looked out into the Rosslyn nightscape. The buildings looked like black, glossy stalagmites. Over the top of a building, he caught sight of the throbbing taillight of a passenger jet approaching Reagan International Airport from the north down the Potomac River.

  Dennis looked again at his notes, yawned, and then turned off the light. He reattached his phone to the charger and crawled back into bed.

  He no longer felt depressed, just confused.

  It was the mid-morning rush at the Starbucks, and Dennis grabbed a table that was marred with a spill of cold coffee and tiny sparkling white crystals of sugar. He used a napkin to clean it off and settled in reading USA Today.

  He spotted her little blond head through the glass doors before she entered. Louise was dressed in a navy-blue pants suit with a light-blue blouse. He was aware again how attractive she was. Why had he not been observant before? Was it her personality? Her ‘take-no-bullshit’ approach to Dennis’s ‘don’t-give-a-shit’ approach?

  Or had Dennis changed? Either way, it unsettled him.

  She sat down with no acknowledgment, carrying a folded Washington Post under her left arm.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” she replied, looking past him into the store.

  “Thanks for helping out,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

  “Whatever. Simpson’s excited. Says they found Forrester’s body.”

  “Yep.”

  “You going back there? How many days do you have left on this thing?”

  “I’m supposed to fly out later today. Got six days left counting today.”

  “Supposed to? Sounds a little ambivalent,” she said, finally looking directly at him.

  “It’s a long trip. I’m running out of time, and it will take me a whole day just to get there.”

  “Have you talked to Simpson?”

  “I’m calling him right after you leave, why?”

  “The Ghorbanis have skedaddled.”

  “Skedaddled where?”

  “Ankara. They were on a tourist visa and never came back.”

  “Just left their house and belongings in New Zealand?”

  “You got it,” she said, cradling her coffee in both hands and taking a tiny sip. “Don’t you think you should get back there and stop poking around here? This thing might be tied up now.”

  “As I said, I’m slated to leave later today.”

  For the first time, Dennis noticed Louise did not have her wedding band on. It was his turn to look away.

  “I’ve got your data. I didn’t bother looking at it. It’s in the newspaper here. Chasing Keating seems like a dead end to me.”

  “Yeah, well, I think he’s worth looking into.”

  “Maybe retirement suited you too well,” she said standing.

  He watched her walk with her slight limp out into the busy sidewalk and completely disappear.

  Dennis was not an expert at reading geolocation data from cell tower pings, but years ago an analyst showed him the basics in a prior investigation. Louise had delivered Keating’s agency cell phone location data printed on several sheets of legal-size paper, stuffed inside The Washington Post she left behind. Dennis sat in his hotel room poring over the rows of numbers and abbreviations.

  He also had Keating’s schedule of absences from work, including the dates around Forrester’s disappearance. Keating said he was at a religious retreat for one week and took a week of vacation afterward, for a total of two back-to-back weeks out of the office.

  Dennis identified the nearest cell tower to Keating’s home in Vienna, Virginia, since it registered the most pings during the evening and early morning hours. Dennis knew the agency issued customized encrypted iPhones with special GPS chips. Cell tower pings were not accurate for detailing precisely where the phone was at any time, but the combination with GPS provided better accuracy.

  Immediately he saw that during the period Keating was at a religious retreat in Maryland, and the following week on vacation, his cell phone appeared to be in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was there for almost the entire two weeks.

  Either Keating was at a religious retreat in Virginia and not Maryland, or he was not at a religious retreat at all. It was also odd that the phone remained pretty much at the same location for the entire two weeks, not just the week he was on the retreat. Dennis did not have the time to request Keating’s wife’s cell phone records; she was a civilian, and those records would have to be requested formally.

  “Dad, I can’t believe you’re back in the states and you didn’t tell me!” his daughter Beth said. “Why do you do things like that? And you came through Los Angeles, I bet. You could have easily flown up to San Francisco to see us.”

  “Beth, I told you I was on a very tight deadline and I could not take time off,” he said, squirming in the hotel desk chair. “When this thing’s over, I’m coming to visit.”

  To his sh
ock, she started to cry.

  “Beth, what’s wrong? Why are you crying? What happened?”

  “I’ve got some important news to tell you,” she said collecting herself. She put down the phone, blew her nose, then picked up the phone.

  “I’m pregnant. We’re going to be parents. You’re going to be a grandfather.”

  Dennis had been a disappointing father by most standards, including his own. He spent his life ensconced in work, running from his own ugly childhood. Over the years, he managed to build a thin shell of insulation between him and the real world of honest emotional attachment. He was an excellent investigator with OIG, and a barely passable father and husband.

  That eggshell of insulation cracked badly after his wife’s death in a car accident. The fact that she was having an affair at the time of the accident created enough psychic damage that he fell into a deep depression and only climbed out with the help of an agency-approved mental health professional named Dr. Jane Forrester.

  Slowly, and with great internal resistance from Dennis, Forrester brought him back from the brink, taught him to own his misfortune in life and embrace more life-affirming behaviors. That included trying to rebuild a fraught relationship with his adult child Beth.

  “Dad, did you hear me?”

  “Yes, I heard you. I’m just trying to process all this. Wow. You and Nathan are going to be parents. I’m going to be a grandfather. Holy shit. How are you feeling?”

  “I feel good. Everything’s normal. I’m only nine weeks in and have been warned that the first trimester can be iffy, so trying not to get ahead of myself. Still, it’s very exciting. Are you excited?”

  “Hell yes. I’m just caught off guard about being a grandparent. Who would have thought? Are you going to find out whether it’s a boy or girl, or wait to be surprised?”

  “Ha, Nathan wants to just wait and be surprised. I’m like, tell me whether it’s a boy or a girl and I can get pink or blue clothes.” Beth laughed, and Dennis found himself smiling.

  “This is such great news,” he said. “Listen, I promise I’m going to be done with this project in about a week. I’ll check in beforehand. Maybe I can get Judy to come with me to visit.”

  “That would be so nice. I like Judy. I think she’s good for you.”

  “I would agree.”

  “Here you go,” Karl said sliding a large manila envelope to him at the hotel bar. “Like I said, this pal of yours has a girlfriend. Pictures of him leaving in the morning to go to work, time stamped. Even got some of her leaving for work a little later. Charming couple. My guy says they’re very friendly, he patted her lovingly on her shoulder when they went shopping. Smiles a lot at her, stuff like that.”

  Dennis opened the envelope and slid out large color prints with time stamps. The first one showed Forrester walking into the high-rise condo complex with a small travel bag at 7:22 p.m. The next photo showed him walking out at 6:50 a.m. the following morning dressed for work with his travel bag. Two more photos showed the younger woman named Rebecca Cleary leaving the same day at 7:45 a.m.

  A single sheet of paper was paperclipped to the two photos of Cleary, detailing her age—thirty-three—her address, job title at the Department of Agriculture, her alma mater, and other boring details.

  Dennis looked carefully at the two photos. Cleary was about five feet two inches tall, with long, straight black hair that flowed halfway down her back. She wore plain work attire for a bureaucrat: tan slacks, a white blouse, a large pendant necklace, and no rings on her left hand.

  “So, they’re a couple,” Dennis said. “Any idea how long they’ve been together?”

  “No. That would take some time and you wanted this ASAP, right?”

  “Yes, but it would help fill in some blanks if I knew how long this has been going on.”

  “My guy says that from the look of them—now this ain’t scientific if you get my drift—but he thinks they’ve been together for a while. Very comfortable together, he said. Smiling at each other over dinner at restaurants, crap like that.”

  Dennis shoved the pictures back in the envelope and pulled out a letter-sized white envelope.

  “Here you go. Thanks for your help on this, Karl. I wish I could say it helps clarify things, but it’s made things muddier if that’s possible.”

  “Thanks for the business,” Karl said knocking back the remains of his Canadian Club and water. “Good to see you back in the game, you know?”

  “Check back in about a week to see if I’m still around,” Dennis said, staring into the glass of wine that he swirled on the bar. “People never stop surprising me, that’s for sure.”

  Dennis took a walk in the concrete jungle of Rosslyn as dusk fell. It might be winter in the southern hemisphere but July in the Washington, D.C. suburbs was unpleasantly hot, with stifling humidity and heavy air.

  He thought he’d navigate himself toward the Potomac, but the maze of traffic and the magnified sound of vehicles bouncing off the glass towers convinced him to turn around. He felt one of his phones vibrate and pulled out his burner.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Peter. How are you?”

  “Well, I’m trying to walk around over here in Rosslyn to stretch my legs, but it’s not very hospitable for pedestrians.”

  “Oh my, why would you stay over there, Dennis. That place is horrid.”

  “Can’t stand being on your side of the river.”

  “Well, there is that,” Harbaugh laughed. “I won’t detain you in your exercise schedule, but I told you that I’d poke around for you regarding your project.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Nothing definitive. But there is some scuttlebutt.”

  “About what,” Dennis said, moving into the entrance to a building and plugging his open ear with his finger. “I can barely hear you, I’m afraid.”

  “Your benefactor, the one who recommended you; well, it appears that this person is being groomed by Kenny to take the deputy position at operations.”

  “But that’s Simpson’s thing,” Dennis said.

  “Precisely. He may be feeling the competition.”

  “They hate each other, you mean.”

  “Professionally, that is,” Harbaugh said.

  “Guess I’m not surprised. Nothing like unabashed ambition.”

  “I’m afraid that’s all that I came up with,” Harbaugh said. “Simpson’s not a bad sort, Dennis. I’ve known him for a while. He can be a hard ass, I’m sure.”

  “I suppose. Thanks. That helps a bit.”

  “I’ll leave you with a bastardized quote from Mark Twain if you’ll permit me?”

  “Ha. Please. Fire away.”

  “In the first place, God made idiots,” Harbaugh said in a stentorian voice. “That was for practice. Then he made senior officials of intelligence agencies.”

  Chapter 11

  The text message from a blocked number came into his agency phone at 11:43 p.m., while Dennis was gamely trying to sleep. Before bed, he talked to Judy about Beth’s pregnancy and asked her to consider joining him in San Francisco to meet the happy couple.

  Judy seemed distracted and it bothered Dennis. When the text pinged, he was wide awake.

  this is Mr. Simpson’s assistant James Canton. Simpson will see you in your hotel restaurant for breakfast at 6:15 a.m. sharp. He is expecting an update

  Dennis tossed the phone onto the bedside table and waited for the screen to go dark. He sighed with a mixture of excitement at being a grandfather, and dread at having to see Simpson. And what was up with Judy?

  “Why the hell aren’t you in New Zealand, for chrissakes?” Simpson said, painstakingly eviscerating a breakfast sausage with the attention of a neurosurgeon. “Aren’t you the great investigator? The one everyone’s waiting to validate the conclusions already reached by professionals? The Gho
rbanis got away while you were dicking around here.”

  They were joined at the breakfast table by Cameron, Simpson’s administrative assistant. A small, thin man in his early forties, Cameron had combed his jet-black hair severely back onto his thinning scalp. He had a pronounced underbite that pushed his chin forward into a reptilian face, and the fact that he was chewing gum at 6:30 in the morning was strange. At the next table sat two squirrely faced men in black suits; Dennis took them for bodyguards. All five men were sitting cozily within four feet of each other.

  “As I explained, there were a couple of things here in D.C. that needed to be looked at,” Dennis said. “The director asked me to review the earlier findings and produce a recommendation on the accuracy of those findings. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “What possible ‘things’ in the D.C. area do you think are that important?” Simpson said. “You should be in New Zealand. Any decent investigator would be at the scene of the crime. Why are you still here?”

  “For one, there is Dr. Forrester’s husband. I thought he should be looked at.”

  “He’s a boring bureaucrat at Agriculture, Cunningham,” Simpson said stabbing another piece of sausage. “You don’t really think he had something to do with his wife’s disappearance?”

  “And there’s Keating,” Dennis tossed in quickly, distracting Simpson away from the subject of Mr. Forrester.

  “Keating? You’re kidding me. Keating? The Iran desk?”

  “Yes. I gather you knew he was seeing Forrester in therapy.”

  “Oh please. If it wasn’t for Keating, we might not have closed the loop on the Ghorbanis. So what if he was seeing Forrester?”

  “As I explained, in order to be thorough, I need to review all options. I think the director would expect that much.”

  Simpson made a face that Dennis took to be either patronizing, or a scowl, or both. He put down his knife and fork.

  “Kenny Franklin is the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He’s been in that position for thirteen months. Prior to that, he was a six-term congressman from Tennessee. The fact that he was a member of the House Intelligence Committee—not chairman, or vice-chairman but a member—does not provide him much experience in the intelligence business. As you well know, the president could replace him at any time, or Franklin could call it quits. Directors change, but the real work at the agency is done by permanent, long-time employees in operations and analysis.”