The Nabatean Secret

by J C Ryan

  If she had been wondering about it before, now she was absolutely sure—she was going to be court-martialed. “I’m not prepared to answer any more questions. I want a lawyer.”

  General Fleming, surprisingly calm, took the receiver of his phone off the hook and held it out to her. “Go for it. Call him right now and tell him to get his ass over here post haste—we are dealing with a matter of national security. There’s no time to waste.”

  Kelly started to reach for the phone, but her hand started shaking uncontrollably. She pulled her hand back and leaned back in her chair.

  General Fleming kept the phone extended to her and, in total silence, held her gaze for what felt like a very long minute or two, before he spoke. “So, you want to lawyer up or not?”

  She shook her head. “What do you expect of me?” she asked quietly. “I’ve made a grave mistake… Is there… anything… What can I do to remedy it?”

  Fleming looked at Sean and Dylan inquisitively.

  Dylan spoke first. “For now, we” —he pointed to Sean and himself— “have no interest in pushing for disciplinary measures against you. But make no mistake, as far as I’m concerned, you deserve it. General Fleming can decide about that.”

  “We’ve got one concern and one only—national security,” Sean said. “In that regard, if you were serious about redressing your wrongs, you’ll have to work with us to prevent another disaster like the one at Patch Barracks.

  “You’ve seen the devastation there. And the DARPA scientists told you, that explosion was just a little warning of what the bad guys really have in store for us.

  “So, what’s it going to be?”

  “I’ll work with you… I want to apologize for—”

  “Save that for later,” Sean interrupted. “You’ll get ample opportunity to apologize to the people you maltreated, offended, and misinformed. For now, we need you to start answering our questions again.”

  “I’ll answer any questions you have.” She sounded relieved.

  “Russell McCormick,” Dylan started. “We want you to tell us everything about him—and best would be if you could persuade yourself that you have no romantic feelings for him.

  “Start from the moment you met up until now—leave nothing out—no detail is irrelevant.”

  Kelly felt like one who had received a presidential pardon from death row. She took a deep breath and dove into the details of her history with Russell, without reservation—embarrassing and private moments included.

  Every now and then, one of the men would interrupt her to clarify certain matters.

  And as she unwrapped the story for them, her brain, for the first time since she met the man, reigned over her emotions.

  Like a kaleidoscope, memories of Russell’s face as he surreptitiously, over time, persuaded her of the Devereuxs’ guilt overwhelmed her.

  Tears began rolling down her flaming cheeks as she realized how he’d manipulated her. She’d slept with the son of a bitch. This was worse than if he’d been married. Much, much worse—he didn’t only betray my trust, he used me and destroyed me.

  It all tumbled into place. From the “accidental” meeting at the Christmas party to the “convenient” timing of the package, just when she’d thought her investigation was at a dead end. It had arrived the day after she confessed to Russell she had no more leads.

  Russell’s gentle persuasion to convince her the evidence was above reproach and she had to make an arrest before the affluent culprits could use their money and connections to get away. Even saying she’d get all the glory—and a promotion.

  Castration’s too good for him.

  Her savage thought surprised her, but once she got over the surprise, she agreed with her subconscious.

  The more she talked, the more she became aware of the terrible injustice she’d done to the Devereuxs, to her team, to her President, her country—all of it to satiate her self-serving ambitions.

  Humiliated beyond words, she stopped talking and broke into heart-rending sobs. After a few moments, she became aware of the discomfort of the men in the room.

  She pulled herself together and whispered, “I think I know where that package came from.”

  Sean took a deep breath and let it out in a huff, echoed by Dylan.

  General Fleming’s scowl told Kelly all she needed to know—her career was over.

  “What can I do to help?” she pleaded.

  “It won’t be easy,” Sean cautioned.

  “I know that. I’ll have to—” She wrinkled her nose in disgust as she realized she’d have to maintain the relationship—even in bed. The idea filled her with nausea. But she’d do it. Give the bastard enough rope to hang himself. That’s if she didn’t hang him herself before that—which would be a pleasure.

  “We’ll get back to you with specifics,” Sean said. “We’ll have to bring the FBI Director into the picture and get his cooperation.

  “For now, you should behave as if nothing’s wrong,” he added, confirming her assumption.

  “Why don’t we just arrest the son of a bitch?” Fleming asked.

  “Shocking as it may be that a traitor could get that high in the FBI, we don’t think he’s the top,” Sean explained. “We need to watch him and see if he’ll lead us to whoever he’s working for.”

  General Fleming turned his gaze to Kelly. “I’m going to defer my decision about your indiscretions, White. You’ve been given an opportunity for redemption. From this moment, it’s in your hands and your hands only. Are we clear Special Agent White?”

  “Yes, sir. I thank you, and I promise, you will not regret it,” she said as she wiped the tears from her face. “When this is over, I’ll hand in my resignation.”

  “I’m not asking for that, White. You go and do your job, and we’ll talk about your future after.”

  Chapter 37 - An unreserved apology

  March 19, the day of the deadline

  Bill dressed carefully for his day, which would determine whether he’d leave Washington in disgrace or be thanked by his old friend, President Samuel Houston Grant, for acting outside his authority and investigating people he shouldn’t. That the goal sanctified the methods notwithstanding, Bill was breaking the law.

  With the support of his opposite numbers in the FBI and INSCOM, though, he might get away with it—if Grant didn’t take his head off for concealing it from him.

  A few hours later, he stood tall in the Oval Office, flanked by his fellow agency heads from the FBI and INSCOM, and confessed what he’d been up to. As he’d expected, Grant was more than a little unimpressed.

  “You did what?” Grant exploded. “And you two! You stood by… no! You aided and abetted while the Director of the CIA committed a felony? I should fire the lot of you! What were you thinking?

  “No one will believe I didn’t condone it… not to mention didn’t even know it! What’s worse, it will hand the other party the election. I could kill you with my bare hands! I’ve got a good mind to call the Secret Service agents in here and have you shot.” The President was shaking with anger.

  While ranting, Grant was pacing in a furious circle around the three penitents. None of them dared say a word in self-defense. Only when he spluttered to a stop, unable to find any more expletives to employ, did Bill venture a word of explanation.

  “Please, Mr. President. Jonas and Alec didn’t know I was doing it until it was done. If you must have a scapegoat, fire me. But before you do, I’d like to explain.”

  Grant looked at him expectantly but didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer. Bill took Grant’s silence as an invitation to continue.

  “Everything I did was necessary to keep up appearances. You have a viper very high in your inner circle, and any open accusation or investigation would have warned whoever it is.

  “Before you ask, we don’t yet know who it is, but we’ve narrowed it down to the National Security Council.”

  Grant made an involuntary noise, sounding as if he was about to t
hrow up.

  “May I brief you on what we’ve done so far, the current theory, and what we plan to do to catch this asshole?”

  Scott Eadie walked in just about the time Bill got the last phrase out. “What asshole?” The President’s glare at Bill was broken as he greeted his chief of staff.

  “Scott, these idiots have for the past twenty minutes been making my day. They’ve got the balls to walk in here and tell me how they’ve trampled all over Federal law because they think we have a traitor in the NSC. Rather than have them arrested, they’d like me to turn them loose to break more laws and find out who it is.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” drawled Eadie. “I mean, Mr. President, what on earth can possibly go wrong? We’re in so much shit already, it’s only the depth that can vary now.”

  The President threw his arms in the air. “Oh, my God. Another joker in our midst!”

  Bill ventured his first small smile of the day. If Scott was on their side, they had a chance.

  “All right,” Grant sighed. “Sit down and tell me this cockamamie scheme. And you’d better hope you’re right. One push of this button here” —he pointed to the intercom on his desk— “and the Secret Service will walk through that door, and I’ll order them to arrest you and ship you to Guantanamo Bay.”

  Bill knew he was on safer ground when he caught Grant’s slight wink at him. There was one thing about Grant’s famous temper. It ran white-hot but burned out fast. He didn’t think that would be the case for the traitor among the NSC members, though. He or she was likely to go down hard. But they had to catch the bastard first.

  Bill took a deep breath. This was going to be complex. “First, I need to tell you that from the beginning, Dylan and Sean were convinced of the Devereuxs’ innocence. Sean persuaded me that the evidence needed to be forensically analyzed. I used CIA resources to do so and discovered it was all fake.

  “Once the Devereuxs were cleared, Jonas, Sean, and Dylan confronted Special Agent White and got her admission that she hadn’t bothered to verify it for herself. She didn’t give us the full story in that briefing the other night, and McCormick backed her up because they were sleeping together.”

  At that, the President rolled his eyes. “Spare me the details.”

  “Right. Well, without going into detail, we suspect McCormick is a plant, and White is now cooperating with us to trap him. But before we spring the trap, we’d like to see if he can lead us to whoever he’s working for. And that leads us to our theory.

  “Actually, Carter came up with it. There are actually two sources of the leaks. We don’t yet have a theory about how the translations could have fallen into the hands of people with the means to put it to use. But we believe the Patch Barracks explosion came about because of that leak.”

  Grant nodded wearily. It was a lot to take in. “And the other source?”

  “The information about A-Echelon could only have come from someone who knew about them—someone who has a reason to want to embarrass your administration. We’ve narrowed it down to the NSC. We agree with Carter’s theory.” He waved his hand to include General Fleming, Alec Burnett, and himself.

  “We still don’t have a handle on who it is. Everyone is a suspect, and therefore, it has to be business as usual.

  “We can’t let any of them know we’ve cleared the Devereuxs. INSCOM and the FBI will continue to search for them, but Kelly White is now on board with their innocence. We’re certain Russell McCormick used her to frame them.

  “She’ll keep us informed if either agency is getting close, and we’ll move Carter and Mackenzie in time to keep them from being apprehended.

  “James and Irene will continue to keep a low profile, and I’ll brief them daily on our progress. However, they’ll be responsible for keeping the press and especially Congress off our backs. They’ll use delaying tactics, and both will develop extreme forgetfulness.”

  “What about that ranch of Carter’s?” Grant asked. “Did you eliminate anyone there as a source of the leaks?”

  “We did, sir. A CIA forensics team went over every electronic device on the place with a fine-tooth comb. We’re certain no one copied data from the servers or the plates.”

  “That means I owe the Devereuxs an unreserved apology,” the President noted.

  “Yes, sir. Not only you; all of us do.”

  “The briefings with the National Security Council are the only source we can think of where someone could have picked up so much and such accurate information about A-Echelon operations as we have seen so far.”

  Chapter 38 - Batten down the hatches

  March 21 to 22

  Sean received word from Bill it was now safe to bring the Devereuxs back to a more convenient location. He explained the manhunt for them was now a ruse to keep the Nabateans from suspecting their plot had been discovered. However, they must still exercise care, because the FBI agents under Russell McCormick’s control were still searching for them in earnest. They needed to let it stay that way until they were ready to confront McCormick.

  The first meeting in the new location was a bit stiff, as Sean and Dylan brought Kelly White with them. Fortunately, they had the foresight to give the Devereuxs forewarning about that. They were convinced that if they didn’t and just turned up there with Kelly, she would have been in mortal danger, especially from Mackenzie, who was becoming more and more like a grizzly mother with a sore tooth with every passing day she couldn’t talk to her children.

  However, Kelly started apologizing profusely, sincerely, and nonstop as soon as she stepped in the door.

  Mackenzie recognized Kelly’s genuine regret and deep embarrassment, and forgave her immediately. Carter, knowing his redhead didn’t forgive easily when her family’s health and safety were concerned, put aside his reservations and accepted the apologies as well.

  With that out of the way, they sat down and worked through their next steps.

  Discovering who had the means to obtain the translations was paramount. It was the full translations and nothing less that would have made the Patch Barracks attack possible.

  Sean reminded Carter, Mackenzie, and Kelly of what he and Dylan had already learned. The computer and hacking experts at Langley had cleared the translation staff and everyone else at Freydís and were in the process of doing the same within the CIA, where the vaults containing the translations resided.

  However, there were two theoretical possibilities for how it could have happened in transit.

  The experts hadn’t been aware of existing technology that could do it, but the Van Eck phreaking theory could have, maybe, sort of, possibly been adapted and perfected. In which case, the pilot and crew of the “milk” plane could potentially be involved. Or one or more persons might have rigged the plane with technical equipment that could read the mass storage devices.

  Everybody knew, now that Kelly had been read in on them, that “person or persons unknown” meant the Nabateans.

  “What can we do to help discover which?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Nothing. The experts are working on it. I mean, if either of you has a brilliant idea in the night, let us know. Meanwhile, it’s just for your information to let you know where we are,” Sean answered.

  “It’s so frustrating to be out of the action,” Carter lamented, putting his arm around Mackenzie, who nodded.

  “Frustrating maybe, but being in the action is nerve-wracking, especially when we get to play it one way for the media and the damned Nabateans, and another way for real.”

  ***

  Sean’s statement went double for the President and his staff. Between the media and Congress, it was approaching civil war with the President in the middle. With nothing but stalling tactics coming out of the A-Echelon offices, speculation and accusations were spreading like a brush fire.

  The opposition party had been handed a golden opportunity to discredit the President and thereby steal the election. They were the most vocal publicly, and it was becoming harder and hard
er to ignore them.

  James and Irene knew to stand fast and not defend themselves.

  Scott Eadie had a harder time not lashing back at those who would denigrate the President.

  Sam Grant was somewhat insulated from the clamor, but he couldn’t set foot outside the White House without being beset by screaming journalists with microphones. He was a virtual hostage to the issue.

  Supporters of the President spouted unreserved support, but they had no real information to back it up and were therefore on shaky ground. No one liked being in that position. The result was that members of the party, both in public office and private contact with the President or his Chief of Staff, were demanding answers.

  Answers that neither could or would give.

  Scott’s health was taking a beating, as he was responsible for the political stock of the President as well as running interference between the man and those who would take his time and energy.

  Party leadership wanted to know what the President was doing to redeem himself so they could count on his support for whichever party candidate won the right to run for next term. The convention was right around the corner.

  The loudest of all were the conspiracy theorists. They were having a field day. Previously relegated to late-night TV or supermarket yellow journalism, they now had the internet to thank for their platform. They made full use of it, leveraging social media to spout their theories, some even going so far as to manufacture news stories. Not since the assassination of JFK had they had such rich material.

  Even the lunatic fringe, as Theodore Roosevelt termed them, got into the act. Because A-Echelon was tasked with investigating unusual subjects, everyone with a theory about Area 51, time travel, star gates, remote viewing, mind reading, shape shifting, or that humans were actually creatures of an alien race had something to say about what A-Echelon was really all about. Each of them claimed to know the truth.

  It was all a circus, with James, Irene, and the President standing in the main ring and refusing to comment. When the noise became overwhelming, the President held a tightly controlled press conference. He read his statement to a carefully selected group of journalists, including Howard Crane, who’d started it all.