The Eighth Sister

by Robert Dugoni

  After thanking Baker and disconnecting, Jenkins turned to his son. “Hey, CJ, you about ready for some breakfast?”

  “I had a bite,” he said. “A few more minutes?”

  Jenkins checked his watch. It was just after 8:00 a.m. “Half an hour. Is that fair?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said, bringing the rod back over his shoulder and flinging the lure out toward Sloane’s moored boat. The lure hit the water with a splash and CJ clicked over the bail and started reeling, moving the tip of the rod up and down as Jake had shown him.

  “I’ll go up and get breakfast ready for your mom,” Jenkins said. He wanted to call Sloane, tell him what Claudia had told him, and ask if he had any additional advice.

  The tide was out, leaving a thirty-foot stretch of rocky beach from the water’s edge to the lawn leading to the covered back porch. When Jenkins reached the porch, he heard the doorbell, quickly crossed through the house, and answered the door. Chris Daugherty stood on the porch dressed in a suit beneath a down jacket and a knit ski cap. A second agent, standing behind him, had also dressed for the cold.

  “Mr. Jenkins,” Daugherty said. “I hope this isn’t too early.”

  Jenkins was glad he’d left CJ at the beach. “No. It’s fine. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

  “My wife is trying to get some sleep and my son is home.”

  “We could do it at our offices downtown,” Daugherty said.

  “Did you speak to the CIA?”

  “I did.”

  “And did they fill in the blanks like I told you?”

  “I’m still working on it. Some additional questions were raised. Just a few things I need to clear up.”

  Jenkins had sent Daugherty on this trail, and the FBI agent appeared, at least, to be digging for answers. He decided it best that he continue to cooperate. “I’ll call David and see if he’s available.”

  “We’ll see you both in an hour,” Daugherty said.

  An hour later, Jenkins sat beside Jake at a table in a utilitarian conference room at the FBI’s field office. Sloane had an arbitration in Port Angeles and told Jenkins to reschedule the meeting with Daugherty, but Jenkins didn’t want to do that. He told Sloane of his conversation with Claudia Baker, and said that Daugherty had confirmed that he’d spoken to the CIA and had some follow-up questions.

  “I’m anxious to get this behind me. Alex is close to her due date and I want to get home and get things prepared before the baby comes. And CJ wants to go back to school with his friends and play soccer. You and Jake have been more than accommodating, but it’s time to get home.”

  Jake, who had a limited license under Rule 9 that allowed him to practice law, was the compromise. Jake’s role primarily would be to take notes, ensure the questions were appropriate, and not allow the FBI to record the conversation.

  Chris Daugherty and the second agent walked into the conference room, pulled out chairs, and sat across the table from them. “We made some phone calls, as you suggested,” Daugherty said. “Your service record indicates you voluntarily retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1978. That was after only a few years of service, correct?”

  “Two years and a month.”

  “Did you leave the CIA on good terms?” Daugherty asked.

  “Not particularly, no.”

  “Why not?” Daugherty asked.

  Jake sat forward. “What does this have to do with the current operation in Russia?”

  “Just a foundational question . . .” Daugherty looked at the business card Jake had provided him. “Mr. Carter, I want to establish his background, who he worked for at the CIA before he was reactivated. Those kinds of things.” He looked to Jenkins. “Why did you not leave on good terms?”

  “I still don’t see the point of the question,” Jake said. “How is it relevant?”

  “It’s okay,” Jenkins said. He knew Jake was just trying to do his job, but he also wanted Daugherty to do his. “I felt that the agency had misled me with regard to a specific operation and as a result people died.”

  “You were upset with the agency?”

  “Back then I was, yes.”

  “But not any longer?”

  “That’s a long time to hold a grudge. I’d moved on. I just wanted out. If you checked, then you know that I moved to the farm on Camano Island. I’ve been there ever since.”

  “That farm means a lot to you, I take it?”

  “It’s been home for a long time.”

  “You’re married with a son.”

  “Correct.”

  “And another on the way?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So how did CJ Security come about?”

  “I was approached by the CFO of the investment company LSR&C.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Randy Traeger.”

  “How did you and Randy Traeger know each other?”

  “His son and my son played together, and I must have discussed in passing that I worked as a private investigator and provided security, when asked, for David Sloane and his clients. Traeger said LSR&C was looking to expand overseas into foreign markets and they needed security in those offices for when high-profile investors were brought in.”

  “And one of those foreign offices was in Moscow?”

  “Correct.”

  “Your wife also works for CJ Security?”

  “She did, but she’s pregnant and her doctor put her on bed rest.”

  “Did she also meet with . . .” Daugherty flipped through his notes. “With Carl Emerson?”

  “No,” Jenkins said.

  “Did she ever meet him?”

  “No.”

  “When you started CJ Security, did you take out a business loan?”

  Jenkins knew where Daugherty was going. He just didn’t know Daugherty’s purpose for going there. “Not initially,” he said.

  “Did those circumstances change?”

  “LSR&C began to quickly grow. In order for me to keep up with their security concerns, I needed to hire additional security contractors. I didn’t have the capital to do it.”

  “So you took out loans. What did you use for collateral?”

  “The farm.”

  “Your home.”

  “Yes.”

  “And at some point LSR&C stopped paying CJ Security, but you continued to work for them.”

  “I was told by Randy Traeger that they would get caught up.”

  “Did that happen?”

  “Not initially and not entirely.”

  “Were you being pressured by your vendors and security contractors?”

  “Some.”

  “Past-due notices, threats to stop providing services?”

  “Yes. We went through this before, Agent Daugherty.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be thorough and make sure I understand all of this.”

  Jenkins was no longer buying that to be the reason for the questions. He now suspected the presence of the second agent was to confirm what Jenkins had to say, since Daugherty had been alone during the first interview. He began to wonder what game Daugherty was playing.

  “And in the midst of this shortfall . . . this is when Carl Emerson showed up at your farm, unannounced, and made you an offer to be reactivated?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how much did Mr. Emerson say he would pay you?”

  “We agreed on fifty thousand dollars to start.”

  “And you used that money to pay CJ Security contractors, vendor invoices . . . business expenses, those kinds of things?”

  “Again, I told you that I did.”

  Jake jumped in. “Unless there is something else, Agent Daugherty, we’re going to leave. He’s answered all of these questions before.”

  Daugherty sat back but kept his gaze on Jenkins. After a moment he said, “I called the CIA, as you asked. They had no information of an operation in Russia.”

>   “And I told you they won’t admit to the specific operation because it would put agents’ lives in danger.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Daugherty said. “They had no information of any operation or that you were reactivated.”

  Jenkins froze.

  “If the CIA can’t acknowledge you were reactivated, what am I supposed to think?”

  Jenkins’s mind scrambled for an answer. None came.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” Daugherty continued. “The CIA said Alexei Sukurov, one of the names you admitted that you divulged to the FSB, was still active.”

  Jenkins felt another sharp blow. “I was told he had died.”

  “He did die, but recently and under mysterious circumstances.”

  Jenkins could not believe what he was hearing. He’d been set up from the start. He felt light-headed and fought against the onset of an anxiety attack. He couldn’t breathe and took several quick breaths. It didn’t help.

  “What the hell have I done?” he said under his breath but loud enough that it caused Jake to turn his head.

  “Let’s take a break,” Jake said.

  “Do you want to confess and make a deal, Mr. Jenkins?” Daugherty asked.

  “Charlie, let’s take a break,” Jake said, pushing his chair away from the table.

  Jenkins couldn’t catch his breath. He felt the walls of the room closing around him. His right hand began to shake. He pulled it from the tabletop. Perspiration rolled down his face. He looked to Daugherty. “This isn’t what you think it is. I didn’t do it for the reason you think.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I took a polygraph,” Jenkins said, trying not to sound like a drowning man gasping for a breath of air. “I did not disclose any unauthorized information. The polygraph confirmed that.”

  “When you were trained as a CIA field officer, did that training including techniques to pass a polygraph test?” Daugherty asked.

  “Charlie, let’s take a break,” Jake said with greater urgency.

  “The CIA is also having difficulty reaching another agent in Moscow. Someone they say disappeared from their radar at the same time you said you were over there. Her name is Paulina Ponomayova. Did you have any contact with her?”

  “Hang on,” Jake said, raising a hand.

  But the name anchored Jenkins. He pulled himself together, though not completely. “If I was a spy, Agent Daugherty, a spy guilty of treason . . . as you’re intimating, why would the CIA tell you the name of a current operative in Russia and have you ask me to confirm it?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you think?”

  “I don’t think they’d be so stupid.”

  “Are you a spy?”

  “I already answered that question,” Jenkins said. “And you have a polygraph test confirming I was a spy, and that I didn’t disclose any unauthorized information.”

  The two men stared at one another.

  “Am I free to go?” Jenkins asked.

  Daugherty motioned to the door as if to say go ahead, but Jenkins knew “free” was just an expression. He would have at least one car and two agents following his every move from the moment he left the building.

  50

  Neither Jenkins nor Jake said much on the drive back to the office. Jenkins now knew the CIA would not come to his defense, would not even acknowledge he had been reactivated. The question was, Why not? Was it because the CIA would do nothing to acknowledge the seven sisters, not even internally? Or was the reason something more nefarious?

  In his head, Jenkins heard Alex’s warning. We both know someone went to great lengths to keep you from coming home, to silence you. If you start talking, that person, whoever he is, will have to respond.

  Someone had given Chris Daugherty ammunition to not just discredit Jenkins, but to accuse him of espionage, and possibly put him away, maybe for life. What Jenkins couldn’t understand was why Daugherty hadn’t arrested him on the spot. Why he had allowed Jenkins to leave the building, even with the escort following them, which had doubled to four agents in two cars, now parked across the street from Sloane’s offices.

  “I should have cut it off,” Jake said. “David would have cut him off.”

  “You tried,” Jenkins said. “I was stupid. I thought the CIA would fill in the blanks for Daugherty, that they would at least acknowledge I had been reactivated.”

  “It has to be Emerson, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe. It could also be that the CIA is protecting an operation that has been ongoing and effective for forty years and will sacrifice both Emerson and me to do so.”

  “They could try you for espionage,” Jake said.

  Jenkins looked again at the two Fords parked bumper to bumper at the curb of the undeveloped lot, and he thought again of CJ’s question the night he’d gone into the boy’s room to put him to bed.

  Dad, are you going to jail?

  Jenkins and Jake looked up from the computer monitor as Sloane returned to his office from Port Angeles. The three had discussed Daugherty’s interview on a conference call.

  “It looks like we opened a can of worms when we went to the FBI,” Jenkins said.

  Jake turned his laptop to face Sloane and pulled up the news story that had run earlier that afternoon. “The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating LSR&C for fraud and corruption,” he said. “They’re saying the entire company is one big Ponzi scheme.” Jake hit the button and the recorded newscast played again.

  A female reporter spoke into her microphone outside the Columbia Center, the black monolith in downtown Seattle. The reporter said LSR&C had come under investigation by the IRS two months earlier, but that had gone nowhere.

  “That does not appear to be the case with the SEC investigation. The SEC filed its complaint in federal court today alleging fraud against LSR&C’s COO, Mitchell Goldstone, and its CFO, Randy Traeger, as well as the company’s other officers,” the reporter said. “The pleading alleges LSR&C sought wealthy donors through the fraudulent misuse of prominent Seattle names.”

  Jenkins took out his cell phone and called Traeger, as he had done the first time he saw the newscast, without success. This time Traeger answered.

  Jenkins hit the “Speaker” button so Jake and Sloane could hear the conversation.

  “Charlie?”

  “Randy, what the hell is going on? I’m watching the local news.”

  “I don’t know,” Traeger said. “This started several weeks ago with that reporter from the Seattle Times. She asked to interview the officers about the company’s rapid growth. I had a bad feeling about her then, and I told Mitchell to turn her down. He assured me I was overreacting. A day after the request, we received a letter from the IRS asking for financial information and alleging that the company had failed to pay taxes, but Mitchell again told me not to worry about it. He said it would be taken care of.”

  “Taken care of how?”

  “I don’t know how, but the investigation went away.”

  “Went away? How?” Jenkins asked, knowing that the IRS rarely, if ever, went away.

  “I don’t know how,” Traeger said, clearly on edge. “Mitchell told me he’d handle it, and I never heard anything more about it. I was right about the reporter, though. She wasn’t interested in our growth. She was interested in the names of our investors.”

  “So then what’s going on now with the SEC?”

  “I don’t fully know. All I can tell you is the shit has really hit the fan. They’ve assigned a bankruptcy trustee and they’ve seized all of our assets. Have you spoken to Mitchell?”

  “No. You haven’t either?”

  “I have no idea where he is. I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. There’s money missing, Charlie.”

  Jenkins looked to Sloane. “How much?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but it’s millions of dollars. I went through my files before they seized our computers.”

  “Who seized the computers?”


  “Federal investigators came in this afternoon and told everyone to get out of the office.”

  Jenkins paused, thinking, then he said to Traeger, “Where are you now?”

  “I’m at home watching the television and waiting for my attorney to call. If this is true . . . I’ve got a wife and three kids, Charlie. I’ve got to go. Someone is calling me.”

  Traeger disconnected. Jenkins looked across the table at Sloane and Jake. “We need to go,” he said.

  “Go where?” Sloane asked.

  “I’ll tell you in the car. Jake, pick us up outside the back of the building. I don’t want the FBI to follow me.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Jake pulled into the parking garage beneath the Columbia Center and Jenkins led them up several sets of escalators to the building lobby. They stepped inside an elevator bank that serviced LSR&C’s business offices on the fortieth floor. Jenkins swiped his access card and pressed that button, then held his breath that access had not yet been shut off. The light illuminated and the elevator rose.

  On the fortieth floor, Jenkins stepped off the elevator and came to an abrupt stop.

  The office fixtures, furniture, and other equipment had been completely removed. He didn’t see a desk or a cubicle wall anywhere. Every computer had been taken. No prints or paintings adorned the walls. No nameplates identified the persons working in the offices. Jenkins did not see a scrap of paper, a pen, or a discarded paper clip anywhere. Even the carpeting had been removed, the floor now just bare concrete.

  51

  They returned to Sloane’s conference room and continued the conversation they’d started in the car. Jenkins told them the fact that LSR&C’s offices had been cleaned out within hours of the SEC news breaking changed things dramatically. This was no longer just about a leak at the CIA. This called into question the very existence of the company Jenkins thought he’d been protecting, and Traeger’s statement that money was missing triggered still more red flags.

  “Explain to me again what you mean by a CIA proprietary?” Sloane said, clearly still trying to wrap his head around what Jenkins had been telling them.

  “Simply put, it’s a company owned and operated by the CIA,” Jenkins said.