“We wait here until we have the warrant. Then we move.” Bessolo was pissed. He was ready to go and the fax was still to come. He took the time to review procedure.
Roy Bessolo issued his instructions the way he did everything: military, direct, monotone. And what his voice didn’t say, his appearance did. Marine crew cut. Marine physique. Marine barrel chest. The only “ex” was his active duty status. He was as strong today as he was at the peak of his training.
“Let’s go through this once more.”
The team had already reviewed their assignments, but Bessolo was a stickler for proper procedure.
“Thomas. You start with the head. Tag prescription medications, illegal substances, birth control pills. Everything. Then you’ve got the subject’s bedroom. All the drawers. What’s visible and what’s not. Hidden compartments. Everywhere.”
“Everything, everywhere,” said Beth Thomas, one of the FBI’s brightest criminologists, and the only woman in the bureau to hold a PhD in the subject.
“Shik, you’re in the kitchen and living room. Drawers, cabinets, bookcases, desk. Over, under, around, and through.”
“Behind?” asked the agent.
“Behind,” Bessolo answered. “Anything outside the bedroom is yours.” Bessolo knew his man would not miss a square inch. Agent Dan Shikiar was the team’s most detail-oriented agent.
“And Gimbrone, get into her computer fast but carefully. Watch out for any embedded viruses that could be set as traps. I need to see what’s in there. Pull up everything on the subject’s computer. Read, copy, report. In-boxes and outgoing.”
“Yes, sir,” the third member of the team acknowledged. Like the others, Mark Gimbrone was an expert. His discipline: hacking and cracking.
“Thirty minutes, people. I want a continuous narrative. I’ll be monitoring each of you.” The team’s microphones were all fed to distinct digital tracks in the black, windowless van. “I want to know that this woman is cleaner than a baby’s butt.” He left out the important fact that she was no longer alive; a calculated deceit in order not to color their thinking. “Am I clear?”
He got the obligatory affirmation he sought. “One bit of intel for you, the rest you fill in for me: Our subject works for Uncle Sam. Find me anything that compromises her. Or give me your assurance she’s on the home team.”
The fax machine started to print out the court authorization. Bessolo grabbed the sheet when it finished printing. “The United States District Court for the District of Columbia says one, two, three — green light!”
One by one, the team exited the tricked-out van parked in front of a bank. Beth Thomas was the last to leave. She ducked back in when the others were out of earshot.
Bessolo shot her a confused look. “Agent Thomas?”
“Just a question, sir. Off the record?”
At first, Bessolo showed annoyance. But since he openly encouraged his team to speak their mind, he acquiesced. He reached over and paused her discreet audio channel on the computer recording. “Two minutes.”
“Less,” she began. “You always told me to keep my radar up. Well, my radar’s up. Warrant aside, are we examining a crime scene or spying on a citizen?”
“We have an assignment. That’s all you need to know.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
She knew he lied very, very well.
“Same answer on the record, Roy?” she asked using her boss’s first name.
“Agent, do your job. And don’t ignore anything. You go in with an empty canvas and paint me a fucking Rembrandt.”
He pointed the computer mouse at the record icon and left-clicked. The conversation was over.
“Scott…”
The phone call caught him while he was walking into the Pentagon. Recognizing the voice, he stopped just shy of security and returned outside. It was Louise Swingle, the vice president’s secretary. She kept him plugged into relevant administration issues. Morgan Taylor insisted on it, and the new president had agreed. Roarke’s access to breaking information was critical.
The conversations were always lighthearted and cryptic.
“What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“About to see Penny.” Swingle knew all about Captain Penny Walker. She was one of Roarke’s deep contacts inside the Pentagon and an old girlfriend.
“Are we conducting business today?” she asked mockingly.
“Nothing but.”
Roarke wanted to see if Penny could run a search on military veterans who might overlap one or more aspects of Depp’s profile. She was a master detective assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, who did all of her work on one of the Pentagon’s most interconnected computers.
“But if you need me now…” he began.
“No, just wanted to know if you heard the rumors?”
“Rumors? Nothing beyond the hustle out of L.A. a few days ago.”
Her sudden switch to business clearly suggested this wasn’t a conversation to continue on an open line.
“Why don’t you hit home later.” Home was the vice president’s office. “There’s something else.”
Louise Swingle never said anything that didn’t have meaning.
“You sure this can wait?” he asked.
“Yes, but don’t take all day. Bye-bye.”
With that he hung up and proceeded to security. Even his Secret Service ID didn’t earn him a quick pass. Not these days.
“Okay, Penny, do your stuff,” Roarke said after the preliminary explanation.
Penny was a slender, 5′6″ blonde beauty. Her looks always made men take notice; Roarke had. But her uniform usually made them stop and think twice. Roarke hadn’t. She was a U.S. Army captain assigned to intelligence. Two years earlier they had had a whirlwind relationship, all sex and no romance. At the time, it was what both were aching for. However, Penny understood that Roarke needed more than she would ever give him. That’s why she was happy he’d found Katie Kessler.
Walker finished typing. “Anything else you can think of?”
Roarke looked over her shoulder at the parameters he provided for her search: Caucasian. Ex-military. Marksman. Age range 28–40. Nothing more than possibilities. She also included approximate height and weight variables, and a composite picture created by Touch Parsons.
“Will the computer ignore the picture if it comes up with positives on these assumptions alone?”
“If that’s what you’d like.” She altered her typed prompts. “You know how I like to make you happy.” She looked back and blew Roarke a kiss.
“Then add in theatrical makeup as another parameter.”
“Geez, you’re easy these days,” she cooed. “She must be very, very good.”
“She is,” Roarke said smiling. “And thank you.”
Walker sighed. “Oh, what could have been.” She turned back to the keyboard. “Well, sweetheart, since I struck out with you, at least let’s see if I can come up with Mister Wrong.”
The sun beat down on the pristine white sand at Antiguilla’s Cap Juluca resort. The British West Indies facility is tucked away on a private self-contained enclave, spread along two miles of the Caribbean coast. Singles and couples alike flock to the Moorish villas, feasting in the five-star restaurants, working halfheartedly in the fitness center, diving, surfing, water skiing, sailing, or finding other more personally gratifying indoor sports.