It took the lady a minute to get her plastic gloves off and retrieve her phone from her purse in the back, and another minute to pull up the clip. She played it while holding it for Andy at first, but about thirty seconds into the video, he ripped it from her hands.
Then he said, “What the hell is this?”
It wasn’t high quality by any stretch, but the video showed enough for Andy to realize he was seeing something that no one in the local police had admitted. These were clearly wounded D.C. Metro officers, three of them being helped out of the elevator and placed into a pair of cruisers. All three men bled from their faces, and two of them were all but dragged by their colleagues. Just as they finished loading them, the elevator door opened again, and another cop staggered out and fell into the arms of his colleagues. This man looked as if he was bleeding profusely from multiple gunshot wounds. He was placed inside one of the cruisers himself, and the cars rolled off, east on Q Street NW.
Right before the video ended, the squad cars rolled right by the woman holding the cellphone that made the recording.
When it was over, Andy looked up from the phone at the Chinese sandwich artist.
“Did you show this to the police?”
She shook her head and looked down. Andy had met enough foreigners in the District to read the signals. She didn’t have papers to work legally here, so she kept her contact with authorities to a minimum.
He stopped the video and pushed it back a few seconds, then let it play again. The woman offered to sell him the entire phone for $500, but he declined, gave her a hundred bucks for her time, and e-mailed the video directly from her phone to his Washington Post e-mail account.
A minute later he was seated at a table in the restaurant, and the Chinese lady was looking at him like she thought he might try to steal her cell phone. Instead he pulled out his own phone and called a buddy in the D.C. Metro Motor Pool, an old cop who used to work out in District Seven but was rewarded with a cushy desk job for the last few years before retirement.
“What can I do for you, Andy?”
“I’m trying to find some cops, but I don’t know their names, only the numbers of their squad cars. If I give you the numbers, can you tell me who drove them on a particular shift?”
“I could tell you what police district they were assigned to and what PSA — that’s police service area. You could call somebody at that PSA and get more info. Who was behind the wheel depends on who was assigned to what unit that day. Bunch of variables.”
Andy read the number on the first cruiser to the sergeant. As soon as he finished the sergeant said, “Nah, you’re one number short.”
“No, that’s it. That’s the entire number on the cruiser.”
“Sorry, Andy. We haven’t used that number since… well, let me look it up. Since nineteen ninety-seven.”
Andy quickly read off the next number. It was six digits long.
The sergeant looked through his computer while Andy waited. “Okay. Yeah, that’s a Chevy Tahoe, over in PSA four oh three. Actually… it’s here in the motor pool for repair. It’s been here for almost a week waiting on a new oil pump.”
“You’re sure it’s not a Ford Taurus that was in Dupont Circle on Wednesday?”
“Sure as I can be, kid. Dupont is PSA two oh eight. Somehow you screwed both vehicle ID numbers up.” The sergeant laughed. “It’s all them nights, Andy. Get you some sleep, kid.”
“Will do. Thanks.” Andy hung up the phone and slipped it back into his pocket, certain now that he was sitting on the biggest story in America.
Fake cops involved in a shoot-out in the middle of Washington, D.C.
While Tel Aviv would be Catherine’s ground zero for getting to the mystery of the story about Six, Andy’s ground zero was right here, just a mile away from the Washington Post’s headquarters.
“Oh my God,” he said to himself, but he knew there was much about this he didn’t understand. He worried that if he called Catherine King right now with what he knew, she’d just pass on his information to her investigative reporters. In fact, he was certain of it.
No, Andy told himself. He’d dig into this even deeper, connect the dots, and only go to King when he had done the investigative reporting himself.
He looked up at the woman behind the counter. “Do you guys sell coffee?”
63
Jordan Mayes arrived at Langley at eight in the morning and then, after dropping off his coat and briefcase on the seventh floor, he attended a few meetings he had scheduled with staffers who were working through the weekend. Just after noon he took the elevator down to four to visit the Violator TOC. He was surprised to find Brewer out of the office. But he’d just poured himself a cup of coffee when she entered, briefcase and travel mug in hand.
She looked like she had just changed into fresh clothes. Mayes wasn’t a particularly kind man, although working his entire career next to a frosty personality like Denny Carmichael made him appear that way sometimes. But still, he found himself pleased to know Brewer had scheduled a break to rest and attend to herself.
“Hope you had a chance to recharge your batteries,” he said as he held up the pot to refill Brewer’s cup.
But she shook her head and took him to the side of the room. “Actually, sir, I’ve been up all night. Most of it here. I had a change of clothes in my office, but I haven’t been home in over forty-eight hours.”
Mayes was about to order her to leave the TOC for four hours to go home and catch some sleep in a real bed, but she took him by the arm and led him even farther away from the group. “Sir, I’m glad you are here. I need you to see something.”
For the next five minutes Brewer showed Mayes a collection of images from all the Violator sightings of the past week. Specifically, these images were of a group of Middle Eastern — looking men who showed up either during or just after several of the sightings.
“What made you look for these men in the first place?”
“Dakota, the JSOC operative. He and his team had noticed these unknown subjects at multiple locations.”
Mayes was as confused by this as Brewer, and he told her so, but he got the impression she did not believe him. When he asked her for her conclusions as to who these individuals were, she seemed to weigh each word carefully before it came out of her mouth.
“My conclusion is, either someone working here in the TOC, or someone in a leadership role who has access to real-time TOC analysis, is sending this proxy force out into the field to assist with the Violator operation.”
Mayes said, “That leaves someone in this room”—he looked around and counted twelve analysts and technicians, all of whom he had known for some time—“including yourself, myself… and Denny, of course.”
Suzanne Brewer agreed. “I recognize the fact I might not be read into everything going on, but I can’t help but think some of my concerns earlier in the week that I was missing part of the puzzle might make a little more sense now.”
“You thought Gentry did not shoot Babbitt or Ohlhauser, and you thought Gentry had been injured somewhere other than in Chevy Chase.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jordan Mayes was confused, and didn’t know what to make of all this, and this made him feel both impotent and angry. He took it out on his subordinate. “Well, Suzanne, what do you want me to say? These images are indeed troubling, but I don’t have the answers for you. I can assure you Denny and I aren’t running these personalities ourselves. If your operation here is tainted, you need to get a handle on it posthaste. We have enough problems without a group of unknowns shadowing our movements.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and Mayes saw in her face she wished she hadn’t brought it up at all.