by Keith Yocum
Dennis burst out laughing. “Where exactly do you come from? Do they teach that at cryptology school?”
“Hell, no. That’s just Freddie being Freddie. And that was a Henny Youngman joke at the end there. I’m not that creative.”
“Do you always refer to yourself in the third person?” Dennis said.
“You want first person?”
“No, no, that’s fine.”
“Enough hilarity,” Fred said, pushing a thick, bound volume of papers across to Dennis. “Let’s get down to business.”
✦
After ninety minutes Dennis pushed the pile of papers to the side and said, “Are we on rations here, or does the NSA have things like coffee, or water, and for that matter, toilets?”
“No toilets, just water,” Fred said.
“Ha, ha.”
“Fair enough,” Fred said, “let’s get out of here.”
Dennis followed as Fred led him through two consecutive doors, where they encountered a taciturn young woman sitting at a desk. Both men had simple stick-on paper name tags plastered to their shirts. The woman reached out with a bar-code reader and scanned the name tags. She looked at her computer screen then at both men.
“Where are you going?” she asked Fred.
“The caf.”
“For how long?”
“About a half hour or so.”
She typed something into the computer and then opened a drawer and took out two small, gray metal squares that had safety pin-type catches on the back. Dennis followed Fred’s lead by putting his on the front of his sweatshirt.
“Thirty minutes, men,” she said and waved them through yet another door.
After five minutes of walking through a maze of corridors, Dennis found himself inside a small cafeteria, where he grabbed a cup of coffee and a pastry. Fred took a Diet Coke and a glazed donut. They sat at a small, round, Formica-topped table.
“How come there’s no cashier here?” Dennis said. “This stuff free?”
“Of course it’s not free; you’re paying for it, and so am I, in our federal taxes. Our budget is about $10 billion, and yours is about $15 billion.”
“Well, at Langley we have to pay for our food,” Dennis said.
“Ah, we’re not in the main cafeteria, where indeed we do have to pay,” Fred said. “This is the high-security caf, and it would be too much trouble to have us go retrieve our cash or credit cards then have someone here to take the money … you get my drift. No need for that kind of exposure here. Cheaper and safer just to let us get fat on bad coffee and stale glazed donuts, courtesy of US taxpayers.”
“You know, I’ve been to a lot of facilities throughout the world,” Dennis said, “and I’ve never been through this kind of security just to review case files. It seems kind of excessive, don’t you think?”
“Ah, if you knew what we knew about the dangers lurking out there, your employer would be more careful,” Fred said, taking an enormous bite of the donut. “But you lot at Langley really are neophytes when it comes to this stuff. We live and breathe it, so we’re a little more careful. The number of breaches over there is hilarious; we’d just as well not be contaminated.”
“That’s bullshit,” Dennis said. “We run a very tight ship. Everyone does now.”
“Dennis, you have no idea what you’re talking about. We won’t even let you folks into our secure areas here at Fort Meade. You’re one of the first in a long time, and it’s only because of this particular case.”
Dennis did not like a lot of things in life, but one that was guaranteed to push his buttons was being called out as stupid or uninformed.
“That’s NSA crap,” he shot back. “Part of the narrative you nerds love over here: those stupid agency idiots running around screwing everything up while we purists over here run a tight little ship and are above the fray, scanning teenagers texting each other in Finland and hacking Russian military facilities as the Russians are hacking our facilities. Come on, Fred.”
“Oh boy, aren’t we a wee bit sensitive,” Fred said, finishing off the donut in one huge bite.
Dennis took a sip of coffee and tried to control his irritation; he took most negative comments personally, whether they had anything to do with him or not. It was a weakness and a sign of insecurity, he now understood, thanks to Dr. Forrester. Still, it rankled him, and he found himself scowling at his Danish pastry.
“So is this the Dennis the Menace I’ve heard so much about?” Fred chuckled.
“Why does that name follow me everywhere?”
“I give up, why?” Fred grinned.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” Dennis said. “You know that?”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
“You’re a child in college kid’s clothing,” Dennis said.
“I know you are, but what am I?”
“Oh God, can you understand why we hate dealing with you jerks over here?”
“Lighten up there, kemosabe. All is right in the world,” Fred said, displaying the grin that was getting on Dennis’s nerves.
“You’re not old enough to know who kemosabe was,” Dennis said. “Jesus, where do you get this stuff from?”
“The Lone Ranger; ran on TV from 1949 to 1957. Clayton Moore played the Lone Ranger, and Jay Silverheels was Tonto.”
Dennis put down his coffee and stared at his table partner. “Fred, you are one of the weirdest people I’ve ever met, inside or outside the intelligence community, which as you know is chock full of nutbags.”
In complete contrast to what he expected, Dennis found Fred laughing hysterically and slapping his ample thighs. “Yer killing me,” he laughed. “Absolutely slaying me.”
“Can we go back to work now?” Dennis said.
“Sure, kemosabe.”
“Stop calling me kemosabe.”
“Okay, Dennis the Menace.”
“Stop calling me Dennis the Menace.”
“Okay, Dennis. But I have one question.”
“And what would that be?”
“Are you going to finish that Danish?”
Dennis pushed the paper plate over.
“You know, I don’t know if I like you, Fred.”
“Oh, you’ll like me, don’t worry,” Fred said, putting the rest of the Danish in his mouth. “I’m going to be your best friend. And I’ll make you laugh, which is something I think you need more of.”
Dennis sighed, partly out of exasperation, but also out of recognition that indeed, he did need to laugh more.
✦
The pistol still had the safety on, but Judy’s finger was right on top of it, ready to flick it to life.
She, Clive and four uniformed West Australian policemen, along with a leashed drug-sniffing female dog named Halo, were spread out around a junkyard in Rockingham. The group was slowly making its way toward a large corrugated-roofed building. The drug task force had received reliable information that this nondescript graveyard for all kinds of vehicles was in fact a transit center for the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The owner of the business had retired and left it to one of his sons, who used the facility to move the drugs to other distributors throughout the west.
The tip was that a shipment was concealed in a wrecked Toyota Corolla that had been towed to the junkyard that morning. The plan was to find the Corolla, put Halo onto the package and arrest the son and whoever was nearby.
Or that was the plan; Judy knew enough about the task force’s intelligence unit to be wary of their predictions. She and Clive had been embarrassed by too many erroneous leads in the past to feel much comfort in this undertaking.
As she stepped closer to the building, she could see Clive about thirty yards to her right, making his way forward. Twenty yards to Judy’s left was the dog handler, Marvin, and Halo, a six-year-old Labrador
retriever. Halo’s snorting was getting on Judy’s nerves, as was the warning from the task force about the potential of guard dogs at the junkyard.
Judy did not like large dogs, nor did she much like dogs in general. But large dogs of any sort made her uneasy since childhood, and she was unnerved when Captain Rogers of the WaPol had mentioned the possibility of Rottweilers running loose on the property.
The sun was directly overhead as the team made its way toward the building, and Judy could feel her breathing grow labored. Clive suddenly raised his right arm straight up, and she stopped, as did Marvin and Halo. Clive suddenly stooped down and pointed sharply to his front several times, as if he was hacking a piece of meat with a cleaver.
Judy turned to look and felt her stomach swirl as she saw a huge dog at full speed racing toward Marvin and Halo.
“Hey,” Marvin yelled as Halo stood on her hind legs, trying to get loose of the leash. In seconds the Rottweiler had closed on Halo, oblivious to Marvin and Judy.
There was a huge swirl of dust, saliva and deathly guttural growls as Marvin let Halo loose to fend for herself. Judy barely had time to turn back toward Clive as he yelled her name.
Another two dogs were racing from the building towards the dog fight, and as the duo drew close to the quarrel, one of the dogs veered off toward Judy. She raised her gun. Whether it was her fear of dogs or the fact that it was — strangely — more disquieting to shoot an animal than a human with a gun, she froze. The chaos of the dog fight to her left and the sounds of Clive screaming at her finally broke through, and she pulled the trigger.
The safety was still on, and before she could flick it off, the dog was airborne.
CHAPTER 3
Aman like this does not simply disappear,” Dennis said. “There’s no narrative. I can’t find the storyline. Guy is a pro, lives and breathes clandestine street craft. He knows almost everything that’s going on in Europe, has access to the NSA’s intercepts, lives a boring life and then, on a Tuesday morning, fails to show up to work. No surveillance video of him being hustled into a car. Nothing. Poof.”
Fred was sitting far back in his chair with one chubby leg pulled up so his foot rested on the chair seat. “Putin’s folks wouldn’t touch him, that’s for sure,” he said, running fingers through his thinning hair for the hundredth time. “I’m with you, Dennis. No story line. No links, motives, no nothing. That’s why this is so much fun.”
“Fun?”
“Well, yes. It’s a wonderful puzzle. I bet we can bust it. You and I. We can do this.”
“Jeez, Freddie — I’m going to call you Freddie, and I don’t care if you don’t like it — I like your enthusiasm. But look at the other reports. You folks followed his emails, his web browsing history, you patched together what little CCTV you could find from London authorities. You’ve got his two trips to Menwith Hill fully accounted for on video and electronically time-stamped.”
“Yeah, that’s what makes this so cool. It’s like he’s defying us to find him, you know?”
“I guess I can’t hold this back any longer: what’s up with Arnold and Menwith Hill? Why’s the NSA all worked up about him?”
“What do you mean?” Fred asked.
“Come on, you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re not telling me something,” Dennis said. “I can smell it. I’ve been at this game for a while. As we old timers say, ‘this isn’t my first rodeo.’”
“You know that’s the one thing I’ve always wanted to do,” Fred said. “Go to a rodeo. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Guys riding these huge bulls. Cowgirls riding their horses. Stuff like that.”
“So you’re not going to tell me?” Dennis said.
“Nope.”
“So much for teamwork.”
“It’s not about teamwork; it’s about me keeping my job.”
“Now that,” Dennis said stretching his arms and yawning, “is something different, and I understand completely. I’m done for today, Freddie.”
He pushed his pile of papers over to Fred, who nodded and gathered them into a large pile.
“You want to do something completely out of the ordinary on this case?” Dennis said.
Fred stopped fussing with the papers and squinted. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying do you want to step outside the logical framework of this ‘puzzle,’ as you call it, and do something obtuse and not expected? I’m talking about the unexpected. Something your boss — who is your boss anyway? — would never expect you to do?”
“You’re getting weird on me, Dennis, and my boss is Stephen Manfort.”
“So let’s say we shake things up a bit and follow an instinct I have, which of course could lead absolutely nowhere and down another rabbit hole of nothingness. Or maybe it could be the thread of a lead we need.”
Fred avoided eye contact and resumed shaping the paper pile. “You wouldn’t get me in trouble, would you?”
“No, why would I do that?”
✦
The dog’s slobbering mouth hit Judy right below her sternum, knocking her backward with such force that she experienced whiplash as the pistol flew from her hand.
Everyone, it seemed to Judy, had some secret fear, like being torn apart by a shark or being bitten by a spider or snake. One of her friends would only go swimming at Cottesloe Beach for two minutes at a time then rush out onto the beach, frightened as she was by sharks.
For Judy, it was fear of dogs. It was why she barely heard the two rapid shots from Marvin’s Glock as he hit the dog in full flight.
As she and the dog fell to the ground, Judy shoved the animal off her with all the dignity of someone running from a swarm of hornets. She pushed, shoved, screamed, kicked and crawled away from the inert animal as the sounds of gunshots and animals kept ringing in her ears.
Run, she told herself. Judy, run!
Getting to her feet, she took off and was instantly bear-hugged by Clive. “Judy! Stop!”
She shoved him like she had shoved the dog, but he kept yelling into her face until she sagged, out of breath.
“It’s all right, Judy,” he yelled, grabbing his cheek where Judy’s fingernail had cut him. “Stop!”
✦
“I don’t like this,” Fred said.
“Oh, calm down,” Dennis said, pulling into the driveway. “You should get out of the office and into the real world more often. Step away from your algorithms and databases. Talk to real people.”
“I can’t believe you got me into this.”
Dennis turned off the car, got out and walked to the front door of the modest center-entrance colonial house in Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. He waited until Fred trudged up to join him before ringing the doorbell. It was early evening, and the glare of the porch light was blinding.
An attractive woman in her mid-forties opened the door.
“Mr. Cunningham?” she said.
“Yes, and this is my colleague, Mr. Kaczka. May we come in?”
“Of course, I’ve been waiting for you. I appreciate you being prompt — as I told you on the phone, I have to meet some friends for a birthday party.”
“We won’t take too much of your time,” Dennis said.
Dennis and Fred settled into a couch in the living room while the woman sat in a large, wing-backed chair, facing them.
“Well, Mrs. Arnold,” Dennis said, “again, we appreciate you taking time out to meet with us. I know you’ve been interviewed before on this subject.”
“Five times,” she said.
“Really?” Dennis said, looking at Fred. “Our records show only three interviews.”
“Five interviews,” she said. “You’re number six.”
“In that case, we’ll get right down to business and make this as quick as possible.”
“That would be nice,” she said.
“Your former husband has gone missing, as you’re well aware, and because of the nature of his position, it’s caused quite a stir.”
“So I gather,” she said. Dennis guessed that she was perturbed by this intrusion. Six interviews? he wondered. Who were the others? Why were only three recorded?
“The files show that you and your husband were divorced almost four years ago, and that you remained in the house with your teenage children at the time, correct?”
She nodded.
“And that Mr. Arnold moved into an apartment in Crystal City?”
She nodded again.
“Did you ever visit him in Crystal City to see the apartment?”
“No, why would I do that?”
“Did any of the children visit him there?”
She frowned, thought for a second and said, “I’m not sure about that. No, I don’t think either of them visited him there. Why do you ask?”
“His apartment was very Spartan, as if he never really lived there,” Dennis said.
“Well, you know more about his work schedule than I do, but he traveled a lot. And then he was stationed for quite a while in London.” Dennis watched as she stiffened at this last statement; her face tightened slightly, stretching her lips taut at the corners into a barely perceptible frown.
“We don’t have a record of this, but did any of your children visit him in London?”
“Good lord, no,” she said. “He was working all the time. Don’t you remember? That’s all you folks do is work.”
“Yes, it’s a difficult job, and very hard on family life,” Dennis said.
She stared at him.
“The records show that he had no known hobbies, like tennis, golf, photography, things like that.”
“His hobby was work.”
“Is there anything else that you think we should know about him, in the way of his personal habits or interests that wasn’t already disclosed? Anything?”
