“Somebody impersonated Crosby,” Foley said, “and it’s possible that whoever it was, was Whitmore’s source. And that’s not all. There’s a guy named DeMarco involved in this thing. He visited Whitmore in jail the other day, and—”
“So who is he?”
“He’s a lawyer who works for Congress.”
“For Congress?”
“Yeah. And after he visited Whitmore, some woman visited Whit-more and showed her a picture of somebody. Whitmore told Clark—”
“Who the hell’s Clark?” LaFountaine asked.
Foley felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck and into his collar. “The agent we put in Whitmore’s cell.”
“Oh, that’s right. Go on.”
“Well, Whitmore told Clark DeMarco had information that could get her out of jail, and after that we intercepted a call from Whitmore to DeMarco. Whitmore demanded the name of the guy in a picture she’d been shown, but DeMarco wouldn’t give it to her.”
As Foley talked, LaFountaine looked like he was about to explode— and Foley could understand why. He was doing a
horrible
job of briefing the man, tossing out all these different names, making things sound even more confusing than they really were. He just wanted this meeting to end.
“So who was the woman who visited Whitmore?” LaFountaine asked.
Aw, shit
. “We’re not sure.”
“You’re not sure? What the hell does that mean?”
“The woman identified herself as Maxine Turner, a courier for a messenger service. But when we contacted the messenger service, they said that no one named Turner worked for them. She had a New York state driver’s license, and we’ve identified eight Maxine Turners in New York, but none of them match the woman’s description. And we didn’t get one clear picture of her off security cameras at MCC.”
“Jesus,” LaFountaine said. “So what else do you know about DeMarco, other than the fact that he works for Congress?”
“Well, we really don’t know much else.” Seeing the look on LaFountaine’s face, he quickly added, “But you remember a few years ago, that Chinese spy who was trying to get nuclear secrets from a shipyard on the West Coast? And you remember the Speaker of the House was kidnapped at the same time?”
“Yeah,” LaFountaine said, “but what does that have to do with…”
“This DeMarco character was on the edges of that whole mess. We never were able to find out exactly how he was involved, or what his role was, but he was mixed up in it. Anyway, we think DeMarco may work for John Mahoney but there’s nothing official that says he does.”
Foley heard LaFountaine mutter something. He thought he heard him say, “That fuckin’ Mahoney.”
“Could DeMarco be the guy who tortured Crosby?” LaFountaine asked.
“We don’t think so. DeMarco’s five eleven. From what we got out of Crosby, the guy who tortured him was at least six three. Plus, he had some kind of foreign accent.”
“What kind of accent?”
“Crosby wasn’t sure.”
LaFountaine shook his head. “Is that it?”
“Yeah, pretty much. We’re still trying to get a handle on DeMarco and the woman who visited Whitmore at MCC, and we’ve got a tech at Crosby’s house trying to find fingerprints.”
“Where’s DeMarco now?”
Aw, shit
. “We don’t know. He didn’t go home last night and after he talked to Whitmore he turned off his phone, so we couldn’t use that to find him. We’ll pick him up today when he goes to work and stay on him after that.”
LaFountaine shook his head and the expression on his face left no doubt about his opinion of Foley’s competence. Finally, he said, “So. At this point, you have no idea who leaked the story to Whitmore, but you think it might have been someone impersonating a CIA analyst named Derek Crosby. Crosby was tortured to determine his connection to Whitmore, but you don’t know who tortured him. You know a congressional lawyer talked to Whitmore, but you don’t know what they talked about or why the lawyer is involved in this thing. You know a woman showed Whitmore a picture that got her all excited, but you don’t know who the woman is or who was in the picture. And you’ve lost the lawyer. Now did I get all that right?”
“Uh, yes, sir,” Foley said. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Get out of here,” LaFountaine said, and Tom Foley limped toward the door as fast as he could.
It was time to retire, he thought, as he walked back toward his office. He was involved in an operation on American soil that was outside
the CIA’s charter and therefore illegal. But then what they were doing was illegal in so many other ways as well. They had infiltrated an agent into the prison where they were keeping Whitmore, they had broken into Whitmore’s apartment looking for information on her source, they had hacked into computers at the
Daily News
, and they were monitoring phone calls without warrants. And those were just the crimes that Foley knew about. People were going to go to jail if what they were doing ever got out.
What happened to Mahata was terrible, and every person at Langley felt bad about it, especially people like Foley who had known her. But LaFountaine … he was allowing this thing to affect his judgment: losing his temper with the media, publicly accusing Congress of leaking classified dope, doing things that were going to get the whole Company in trouble.
Then there was what had happened to Carson. That had been unbelievable.
Carson had been Mahata’s control, and as soon as LaFountaine found out that Mahata had been killed, he recalled Carson to Langley to find out what had gone wrong. He met with Carson privately so no one knew what was actually said during their meeting, but at one point LaFountaine’s secretary heard LaFountaine screaming at Carson at the top of his lungs, then heard furniture being overturned, and when Carson came out of the meeting he looked like he’d been in a barroom brawl.
Carson resigned from the agency the following day. He was old enough to retire, and after what had happened to Mahata his career was finished anyway, but Foley heard through the grapevine that LaFountaine had wanted Carson officially fired so he wouldn’t get a pension. Fortunately, the lawyers convinced LaFountaine that going after Carson’s pension wouldn’t be smart—not after he had beaten the hell out of the man.
As the florist pulled up to DeMarco’s place, he saw DeMarco rush out the front door with one of those travel bags on wheels. He cursed as DeMarco flung the bag into the trunk of his car and took off.
He followed DeMarco to Reagan National Airport and parked his car in the same lot where DeMarco parked. An airport wasn’t good; it was going to be almost impossible to follow DeMarco to wherever he was going. As DeMarco was walking toward the terminal, the florist went to the trunk of his own car and placed the .22 he had used to threaten Derek Crosby inside the trunk—he couldn’t take it with him into the airport—and removed the small duffel bag that he’d taken to New York. The clothes inside the duffel were dirty but that was the least of his problems.
He followed DeMarco into the terminal, and as DeMarco had never seen him, the florist stood in line behind him when DeMarco used one of the electronic check-in computers. But even as close as he was standing, practically breathing down DeMarco’s neck, he couldn’t see where the man was going. The florist wouldn’t be able to follow him into the terminal and past security unless he had a ticket himself. He was going to lose him again.
And then God smiled on him, as He had so many times before.
DeMarco had some problem with the check-in procedure and he called an attendant over and the florist heard him say, “I’ve got a reservation
on the next flight to Myrtle Beach but this fu … this computer won’t give me a seat assignment for some reason.”
The florist got lucky a second time when the flight to Myrtle Beach wasn’t full, and DeMarco didn’t even glance at him when he boarded the plane.
At the Myrtle Beach airport, DeMarco proceeded directly to the Hertz rental car counter and fortunately there were two men in line ahead of him. The florist went to Avis where there was no one waiting, and Avis—trying harder—processed him faster than DeMarco, and he was waiting on the airport exit road as DeMarco drove past. As he followed DeMarco, he wondered where he could get a gun. If he had the opportunity to talk to DeMarco in South Carolina, he might need one to control him or to convince him to talk.
DeMarco pulled into a strip mall a few miles from the airport and parked in front of a restaurant offering breakfast twenty-four hours a day—which reminded the florist that he was hungry, starving actually, as he hadn’t eaten in the last twelve hours. The florist knew that he should get something to eat while DeMarco was eating because he might not get a chance later. He looked around the strip mall to see if there was another restaurant—and saw the pawnshop.
The pawnshop owner was a big-boned woman with short gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She was wearing a man’s long-sleeved white shirt, blue jeans, and a wide hand-tooled belt with an enormous turquoise and brass buckle. Attached to the belt, on her right hip, was a holster containing a black automatic. She didn’t say anything when the florist walked up to the counter and looked at the weapons she had in stock. There weren’t any pistols but she had four shotguns and two rifles; not much of a selection but he didn’t have time to go to another store. The shortest weapon she had, and therefore the easiest to conceal, was a .20-gauge, pump-action Mossberg Bantam.
“The Mossberg,” the florist said. “How much?”
“Three hundred.”
He had no idea if that was a fair price or not; he hadn’t bought a weapon in twenty years.
“I’ll take it.”
“Cash,” the woman said.
The florist nodded, and the woman unlocked the case and took out the shotgun.
“I’ll need shells, too. I’d prefer deer slugs if you have them.”
With a grunt she stooped down and pulled a box of ammunition from the shelf beneath the counter.
“Don’t load that weapon in my store,” the woman said, and patted the pistol on her hip.
“I won’t,” the florist said, suppressing a smile.
“Good. That’ll be three thirty.”
The florist counted out four one-hundred-dollar bills and fanned them out on the counter.
“I’ll need to see your ID and…”
The florist put another hundred-dollar bill on the counter.
“Do you want a carrying case, too?” the woman asked.
DeMarco finished his breakfast, then checked his watch. It was half past ten.
Mahoney had told him to call Whitmore this morning and he figured now was as good a time as any. He knew Mahoney wanted him to check out Acosta before he called but he figured that even after he gave her Acosta’s name it was still going to be several hours before she could get to the judge and get out of jail. And he knew Acosta wasn’t going to tell him anything anyway.
Since he had no idea how to call an inmate at a federal prison, he called information, got a general number for the prison, got transferred until he reached someone in administration, said he was a lawyer from Congress, got transferred again, and then he was finally speaking with a slug named Riley.
DeMarco told Riley he needed to talk to Whitmore. Riley told him if he wanted to talk to a prisoner he could show up during scheduled visiting hours, the rules for which were posted on their Web site. This
caused DeMarco to repeat the words “lawyer” and “Congress” several times. For good measure, he told Riley that his need to speak with Whitmore was related to national security. To this, Riley responded by saying, “Not my problem. Visiting hours are…”
Finally, DeMarco landed a solid uppercut to Riley’s bureaucratic chin when he invoked the name of a liberal New York congressman. The congressman’s daughter had recently spent two days at MCC after throwing rocks at a federal building during a protest and was apparently not treated like the princess her daddy thought she was, and the congressman was currently trying to get all the prison bosses fired. Riley told DeMarco that he’d have to wait until he could get Whitmore to a phone, which could take a while.
The guard that came to Whitmore’s cell was white, but otherwise identical to the black guard she normally saw: big bust, big rump, big arms—and a permanently pissed-off temperament.
“You got a call,” she said to Whitmore.
“Who is it?” Whitmore asked.
“How the hell would I know,” the guard said.
As soon as Whitmore left the cell, LaTisha pulled her phone from her sock and called Tom Foley at Langley.
“They just took Whitmore out of the cell. They’re taking her to a phone. She’s getting a call from someone.”
“Well, hell, Clark,” Foley said. “We don’t have every landline at that jail tapped, you know.”
“Shit.”
“Pump Whitmore about the phone call when she gets back.”
“You just do your damn job, Foley. I’ll take care of mine.”
“The man who impersonated Derek Crosby is a guy named Dale Acosta,” DeMarco said.
“Shit,” Whitmore said. “So what do you know about Acosta?” She wondered if someone monitored the prison’s phones.
“Sandy, I’m not your research assistant. All I know is that Acosta lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and he doesn’t work for the CIA. I heard from a pretty good source that when he was younger he was a White House plumber type, but I don’t know that for a fact.”
“You mean like Gordon Liddy?”
“Maybe.”
“But why would he—”
“Sandy, you got the name. Call the judge and give up Acosta and get out of jail. Or don’t. I don’t care. Just don’t bug Mahoney again.”
The guard walked Whitmore back to her cell and as soon as she was inside LaTisha asked, “What’s going on? You look upset.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. It looks like whoever called you—”
“Quit buggin’ me! I need to think.”
“Hey!” LaTisha said. “Don’t you start actin’ the snippy bitch with me or there won’t be no cell phone, no cigarettes, no nothin’. I’m just tryin’ to be, you know, supportive and shit.”
Whitmore didn’t say anything. She flopped back down on her bunk and lit a cigarette.