by Rachel Lee
Jessica, who wouldn’t have recognized a valid FBI identity card or badge if it had stood up and bitten her, stared at the contents of the wallet and registered the words Arlen V. Coulter, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Her blush deepening, she passed the wallet back.
“Please come in, Mr. Coulter. Or do I call you Agent Coulter?”
“If you insist,” he said with a smile as he followed her through the gleaming entry hall and into a living room where packing boxes still occupied quite a bit of space. “I’d prefer it if you’d just call me Arlen. We’re probably going to be seeing quite a bit of one another.”
Jessica smiled shyly as she offered him a seat. “You can call me Jessica. Would you like some coffee?”
“Not just now, thanks. Maybe later.”
Jessica settled onto the couch, facing the armchair where she’d seated Arlen, and watched as he pulled a pad and pen out of his breast pocket. He had blunt-fingered, large hands, competent, capable-looking hands. Their movements were calm, controlled. As was he, she realized. Everything about him was controlled, even his smile.
“I’ll probably need to get an official statement from you later, but for the moment, why don’t we just go over what happened?” He offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “The questions may get a little repetitious, but I need to be sure you aren’t inadvertently overlooking something. All right?”
Jessica nodded and clasped her hands tightly, wondering why the living room suddenly seemed small. She’d considered it a pleasantly large room until Arlen Coulter entered it, but he seemed to fill it completely.
And there was a wedding ring on his left hand. She noticed the gold band with an unexpected stab of disappointment and wondered why it should matter.
Arlen spoke. “Jessica, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your job and the kind of classified information you work with.”
“I’m a programmer,” she explained. “I work on software for Department of Defense applications. Right now I’m designing a package that’s intended to be able to pick out planes and incoming missiles from all the electronic countermeasures that are available to confuse radar.”
Arlen was impressed. “Can it?”
“It’s too soon to tell yet, but in theory it should work.”
“How long have you been working on defense applications?”
“Six years.”
In answer to his prompting, she described some of the other programs she’d worked on over the years. Listening to her, watching her, Arlen realized a couple of things. This lady was very bright, and she loved her work. As she spoke, she grew animated, using her hands and smiling, and her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. At this new glimpse of the woman behind the uptight, severe facade, Arlen wondered what had happened to her to make her want to hide her vitality. Not that it mattered, he reminded himself. He was here as an agent to do a job, not to wonder about a woman who was young enough to be his daughter.
Eventually he brought her back to the events of the past day. Her animation faded, to be replaced by the nervous worry he’d seen when he first arrived.
“At the end of the day,” Jessica explained, “I lock up everything I work with—my files, my hard drive from the computer, any paper I’ve scribbled on or written on. I don’t bother sorting at night, because I’m tired and might make a mistake. In the morning I’ll decide which stuff needs to be burned, but in the evening I just lump it all into an envelope and file it in my safe.”
“What kind of safe do you have?”
“It’s a GSA-approved four-drawer cabinet.” All safes used for the storage of classified information had to be approved by the General Services Administration, or GSA, an indication that the safe met certain standards.
Arlen nodded. “What level material do you keep in it?”
“Just Secret and Confidential. If I need to use Top Secret or special-access information, like Secret Compartmented Information, I check them out of the vault downstairs and return them at the end of the day.”
“And last night you followed your usual procedure.”
Jessica nodded, clasping her hands together so tightly that Arlen saw her knuckles turn white.
“Why don’t you run through it again for me? Just so I can be sure I have it right.”
Jessica nodded again. “I take my hard disk out—”
“Just a second,” Arlen interrupted. “You take your computer apart every night?”
Jessica shook her head. “I have an external, removable hard disk. It’s designed for this kind of thing. I can take it off my system in just a minute, and I always store it in the top drawer of my safe, unless for some reason there’s material of a higher classification on it. Then I take it to the vault.”
“Okay. You put your hard disk in the top drawer. Then what?”
“Then I pick up any documents I’ve pulled, and I file them in their proper folders in the other drawers. When that’s done, I pick up whatever scraps of paper there are that I’ve scribbled on, doodled on or whatever, put them in a manila envelope and file them in the suspense folder I keep at the front of the second drawer.” Seeing the question form on his lips, she hastened to explain. “The suspense file just means the stuff in it is suspended, set aside to deal with later.”
He nodded. “And that’s how you know the missing document was there last night?”
“That’s right.” Realizing suddenly that her fingers were aching from the tight way she had folded her hands, Jessica unlaced them and wiggled them to relax them. “I always put the suspense file right in front of it.”
Arlen watched her wiggle her fingers, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “And you’re sure it was there?”
Jessica’s eyes snapped to his face. “Yes.” She said it with conviction.
Arlen’s gray eyes lifted from her hands to her eyes, and they no longer held any of the warmth and friendliness she’d seen in them earlier. “I have to ask these questions, Jessica. They’re not intended to be offensive. How is it you’re sure the document was there? Usually when we do things in certain ways they become so habitual that we don’t really notice. Did you really see that document last night, or do you just think you saw it?”
Her hands knotted into fists on her lap. “I saw it,” she said flatly. “The folder it was in is red, and the three folders behind it are blue. If that folder was gone, I’d have noticed it instantly, the way I noticed it was missing this morning.”
Arlen nodded and wrote in his notebook. “Okay,” he said pleasantly. “I believe you. The folder was there last night. You filed the suspense file in front of it?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“I closed the drawer and locked the safe.”
“How did you lock the safe?”
Jessica sighed. “I turned the dial four full rotations and tested the lever. It was locked.”
“And it was still locked when you came to work this morning?”
Jessica opened her mouth to respond, and then hesitated, her brown eyes widening. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “I always turn the dial four times before I start to work the combination. And I never try the lever before I enter the combination.”
“So it could have been closed but unlocked this morning.”
She nodded. “But I don’t see—”
“Don’t you find it odd that the entire folder was missing?” Arlen asked her.
Jessica’s reply was tart. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t been allowed any time today to think about anything, least of all whether what happened was odd. Of course it was odd. It was odd that anything disappeared overnight. I still don’t see.”
“Well, if you were going to steal classified information, would you leave such an obvious footprint? Wouldn’t it make more sense to photograph the document and put it back? Or photocopy it and replace it?”
“Well, yes, of course,” Jessica agreed. “But if you didn’t have time—” Her eyes widened. “Oh!” she
said on a breath. “Oh!”
“Exactly.” Arlen smiled faintly. “Did you come to work early this morning, by any chance?”
The expression on her face answered the question even before she spoke. “I was a half hour early because I wanted to check out something I thought of last night.”
Arlen spread his hands, as if to say, “See?” “Could I take you up on that coffee now, Jessica?”
“Yes, of course.” She went to the kitchen to get it, impressed with how quickly Arlen Coulter had picked up on something she’d entirely missed, something even the security officer, Dave Barron, had entirely missed, in spite of all the questioning she’d endured today.
She was also uncomfortably impressed with a few other things, like how good Arlen Coulter looked. Few men her own age and younger looked half as good as Arlen did, and he must be somewhere over forty. He also made her uncomfortably aware of him. And of herself. She was most definitely not accustomed to such feelings, and she supposed she should be grateful that he was a married man and therefore could be no more than a passing and temporary ripple in her tranquility. She would get used to how good he looked, and that would be that.
An expression of determination on her face, she marched back into the living room with a tray bearing two cups of coffee, the sugar bowl and creamer. Setting the tray on the cherry coffee table between them, she asked, “Cream or sugar?”
“Black, thank you.” Arlen looked at the dainty china cups and saucers with their delicate pattern of roses and wondered when was the last time he had seen anyone serve coffee in anything but a mug. Aunt Celeste, he remembered. His wife’s great-aunt had always served coffee in bone china teacups. It wasn’t until Andrew was born that Celeste had astonished Arlen one day by handing him a large mug with his name painted on its side. “You’ve accommodated to our family customs a great deal, my boy,” she’d said in her stentorian voice, “and I thought it was high time we accommodated to one of yours.” Until she died at the age of ninety, Celeste had made sure that Arlen’s coffee was always served in a mug whenever he visited any of his wife’s relatives. Damn, he still missed the warm, wonderful, tough old lady.
“These are lovely cups,” he said now to Jessica, compelled by his memory of the elderly woman. Celeste had taught him whatever drawing-room manners he could claim, and Lord knew there were few enough.
Jessica smiled with pleasure. “Thank you. I found them in an antique shop a few months ago. The entire set, in fact, without a chip or a missing piece.” They’d cost dearly, but they were an essential part of the home she was trying to create.
“They remind me of some dishes my wife’s aunt used to have,” Arlen remarked. “I’ve been terrified of breaking the darn things ever since the first time I ate dinner at Aunt Celeste’s.” He gave Jessica a rueful smile. “She was a wonderful old lady, but her blasted dishes have haunted my entire adult life. They must be a hundred years old, and every time they get passed on to a new generation, they just take on more sentimental value. Aunt Celeste got them as a wedding gift from her husband. Then, when she passed on, they went to my wife, and now my daughter has them.”
His daughter had them? Jessica felt she had missed something somewhere. “Your daughter has them?” she repeated questioningly.
Arlen looked up from the cup, his gray eyes unfocused. “I’m afraid my wife is gone.”
“Gone?”
Jessica’s eyes strayed to his ring, and Arlen followed the direction of her gaze.
“I haven’t been able to bring myself to take it off,” he admitted. “She died over three years ago.”
Jessica hardly knew how to respond to that. “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly.
Arlen shook his head, giving her another rueful smile. “My fault for wearing the ring.” Lifting one of the delicate cups, he took a sip of coffee. “The coffee is delicious, Jessica.”
“Thank you.” A widower who still wore his wedding ring after three years was as safe as a married man, she figured. Maybe safer. And probably a whole lot safer when he was an FBI agent.
“Okay.” Arlen picked up his pad again and made a quick note. “Let’s get back to this morning, Jessica. What exactly did you do when you arrived at MTI? Start in the parking lot.”
So she took him step-by-step through a day that had grown more frustrating with each passing minute. From the parking lot she had entered the building through the main entrance. Most mornings security waved her through on sight because the day shift recognized her well after six years. This morning, however, she’d arrived before the shift change and had had to stop to display her identification. It had been a small, routine matter, and she had taken the opportunity to clip her badge on her collar, where it would have to stay the rest of the day anyhow.
The empty elevator had carried her up to the second-floor corridor, and a brief walk had brought her to the locked door of the controlled area that held her office, along with a dozen others. There she had keyed in her code on the alphanumeric keypad beside the door, and the door had unlocked for her.
Once in her office, she had opened her safe to remove the items she needed for work: first the hard disk, which she installed in the drive case attached to the side of her computer. Then she had pulled out the second drawer of the safe, and it was as she was removing the suspense envelope that she noted the conspicuous absence of the red folder that contained a Secret NATO document.
Her first thought, of course, was that she was mistaken, that somehow the hanging file folder had come off the tracks and slipped down between the other folders to the bottom of the drawer. Item by item she had examined the contents of the drawer, checking every red folder twice, finally examining each and every one of the blue folders and their Confidential documents, as well.
“And that’s when you called security?” Arlen asked.
“No.” Jessica flushed faintly. “I decided I must have been mistaken about where the folder was last night. So I looked through the bottom drawers, too. Document by document. That’s when I called security.”
Arlen’s pen made faint noises as it moved quickly across a fresh page in his notebook. “You said you were sure the document was there last night.”
“I was. I am. It’s just that when I couldn’t find it this morning, the last thought that occurred to me was that somebody had gotten into my safe overnight. It was easier to believe I was mistaken.”
He looked up, and his expression was reassuring. “I know. But I have to ask.”
And he kept on asking. At some point or other, Jessica started to feel immune to the implications of some of the questions and found herself more aware of Arlen. The longer she was with him, the more she became cognizant of his magnetism.
“Jessica?”
Her gaze focused on Arlen, and a painful blush crept into her face.
“You’re tired,” he said kindly. “Just a few more questions, if you think you can stand it.”
Her cheeks felt as if they were on fire, and she had to remind herself that Arlen Coulter couldn’t read her mind. “Sure,” she managed to say. “I’m not all that tired.”
“Did you change the combination on your safe today?”
Jessica shook her head. “I don’t know how to do it. Security always does that, and since they don’t believe that somebody got into my safe last night, I don’t think they’re going to change it.”
Arlen slapped his notebook closed and hooked his pen onto the cover. “I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen tomorrow. I may be wrong, but if I’m right, I want you prepared to carry it off.”
Jessica leaned forward a little, fixing her gaze attentively on his face. There was a faint, jagged scar under his lower lip, running diagonally from the corner of his mouth to the center of his chin. That must be what gave his smile that interesting lopsidedness.
“I think,” Arlen said slowly, watching her from intent gray eyes, “the missing document will turn up sometime tomorrow.”
Jessica’s eyes widened
behind her glasses, and her lips parted on a breath. “Why?”
Did she, Arlen wondered, have the least idea what that expression did to a man, even one as old and abused as he was? Probably not, he decided. If she had, she would have saved it for someone worth spending it on.
“Because,” he replied, forcing his attention back to business, “the only way to minimize the damage that was caused by your discovery of the document’s disappearance is to put it back in a way that makes it look as if you mislaid it.”
Jessica blinked and straightened with indignation. “Frame me, you mean!”
“I figured that would be your reaction,” Arlen said soothingly. “Just listen for a moment.”
Jessica’s eyes were snapping, but she sat back, compressed her lips and gave him a short nod.
Arlen managed to smother a smile. “Okay,” he said. “The document will turn up, and it’ll be pinned on you as carelessness or forgetfulness. Security will believe it, because they can get out of this with a decision that nothing’s been compromised, and a reprimand to you will close the entire matter. They’ll write their letter to the Defense Investigative Service explaining the events and the actions taken, and the worst that will happen is that DIS will pull an unannounced inspection to ensure that MTI’s security is up to snuff.”
“And I’ll have a written security reprimand in my personnel file,” Jessica reminded him sharply.
“Only temporarily,” Arlen said. “Only until we get this mess settled. I promise you I’ll personally see to clearing your record with the company. In the meantime, Jessica, how would you like to work with the FBI?”
“But I have a job.” At least for now, she added to herself.
“And you’ll keep it. No, I want you to work with me on this case. You’ll be my inside contact at MTI. For the moment, I don’t want anyone over there to know you’ve called the Bureau, but I still need to know what’s happening. Can you do that for me?”
