“Please, Mr. Zeichner, call me Angie. We’re going to be working together until Sea Base returns to Pearl or we catch the foreign agent working on board. This agent stuff makes it sound as if we’re on an adversarial basis, don’t you think?”
Zeichner smiled, knowing Naval Criminal Investigative Service headquarters had an ulterior motive for sending Montague. “You’re right,” he said after a few seconds. What’s your game? he asked himself, his gaze fixed on her.
Gainer dragged a chair into the small compartment from the outer office, scraping it along the rough carpet that covered the metal deck.
Both Zeichner and Montague stopped talking and watched Gainer push the chair against the port bulkhead of Zeichner’s office. Gainer straightened, cocked his head to each side once as if assessing the location of the chair, and then sat down. His eyes widened when he saw both of them looking at him. “What?”
“Nothing, Kevin. You comfortable?”
“Yes, sir,” Gainer replied, gripping both arms of the straight-back chair and shaking them once. “As comfortable as Navy chairs will let you.”
“They’re not built for comfort,” Montague added, and then turned back to Zeichner. “Agent Zeichner…”
“Please, call me Richard. As you pointed out, Angie, if the three of us are going to be working together, it would make it a little awkward in private if we kept up the ‘Agent’ business.” Montague raised her left hand, running it along the side of her head. “Yes, sir, but I would feel better… you’re the senior NCIS agent on board the battle group… I’d feel better if you’d allow me to address you as either Mr. Zeichner or Agent Zeichner. I think it would be only appropriate.” She looked at Gainer. “What do you call him?”
Gainer looked at her and then quickly glanced at Zeichner. “Think of your answer carefully, Kevin,” Zeichner said with a smile.
Gainer leaned back in the chair against the bulkhead. “I call him Boss.”
Zeichner watched Montague. Unfortunately, he found himself liking this young lady. He leaned back against the chair, consciously keeping his full weight off it. The last thing he wanted in front of this beautiful… what was he thinking! Pleasant to look at didn’t mean she wasn’t sent here to screw him… figuratively speaking… and take credit for his hard work.
“Headquarters asked me if I would come out here and augment your efforts in discovering whether we have a spy on board Sea Base or not—”
“A spy,” Gainer interrupted. “Sounds almost like a movie script or a good novel when we say the word out loud.” Montague smiled in acknowledgment. “It does, doesn’t it? This will be my fourth time ferreting out traitors. Spy is too respectful a term in my book, as I am sure it is in yours.” Gainer blushed, stuttering slightly. “You’re right. Spy is too…” His words tapered off.
“Kevin and I aren’t completely convinced we have a traitor or a spy or whatever Headquarters wants to call this unidentified suspect. That being said, we have gone through the rosters of the ships and we have been keeping a travel log on several contenders.” He leaned forward, giving Gainer a withering glance. “Angela, while I appreciate Headquarters’ desire to help with this investigation, you have to know that I requested no augmentation. At this point in Agent Gainer’s and my investigation, we have yet to come up with any strong evidence to support this idea.”
“I understand, sir, but they sent me anyway. I hope you will allow me to work with you.” She leaned forward, the loose blouse dipping down.
Zeichner deliberately looked at her forehead although instinct cried out for him to take a peep at the top of her breasts. “I have no intention of excluding you,” he said. “We can use all the help we can get on board Sea Base. I hope you understand that I have no intention of limiting your work to seeking out what may be a nonexistent foreign agent.”
She leaned away from the desk, looked behind her, and sat down in the chair near the door.
He brought his eyes down to hers. There was a hint of mischief in them. Without thinking, he smiled at her as if to say “Touche.” She was smarter than she seemed and she was telling him as much.
“In this case, Boss, we have evidence to the contrary,” she said.
“You want to share that evidence with us?”
She twirled her finger around the compartment. “What level of conversation can we have in here?”
“Secret. If it’s higher than that, we will have to go up to radio, and if it’s anything compartmented, then the USS Boxer is the nearest facility.”
“I think secret is fine.” She crossed her legs. “A fellow agency in the government has contacts within the Chinese Ministry of State Security. Information provided to NCIS reflected insider knowledge of Sea Base operations being provided to the Chinese.”
“That information could come from Stateside.”
“But it didn’t. It came from on board Sea Base. The type of information confirmed it.”
Zeichner shook his head. “That doesn’t mean it came from someone out here. It could still have originated from Pearl Harbor, or Washington, D.C., or even one of the multitude of contractors who won bids to build this contraption.”
Montague lifted her briefcase and unzipped it. She pulled out a folder and handed it to the head NCIS agent on board Sea Base. “These are photographs that the foreign agent sent along with his or her reports.”
Zeichner took the folder and opened it. He lifted one eight-by-ten photograph after the other, slipping each to the bottom when he finished with it. Then he handed the folder to Gainer. Zeichner put his arms on the table and locked his fingers together. “I would say you have strong evidence, Angela. The question I now have is why didn’t Headquarters send this information to us. Why are we finding out this from you?” He knew his voice was rising. He was angry. What in the hell was Headquarters trying to prove? Trying to prove he was incompetent?
“I believe it was because we knew the only two ways we could get the proof to you, sir, was either by sending it over communications, in which case we ran the risk of the sensitive information being leaked, or by sending it with someone they trusted. Ergo, I am here.”
“What if I said Agent Gainer and I are capable of doing this on our own — we’ve been doing it on our own for five months.”
Montague uncrossed her legs and in a calm voice replied, “Then you can send me home, sir. But if we do have a traitor on board Sea Base, Mr. Zeichner, I can help you find him. And I do know how to work for someone.”
“Or find her,” Gainer added.
“It’s a him,” she said emphatically.
“How do you know?”
“You told me,” she replied, turning her gaze back on Zeichner.
“We did?” Zeichner asked.
“You identified eight suspects earlier in your investigation.” She touched her chest. “I am a trained counterespionage agent. As I told you, this won’t be my first case.”
“What number will it be?” Zeichner asked, his anger fading as he realized he could march her fancy butt up to the flight line and have her off Sea Base on the next available flight.
“I told you, this will be my fourth.”
“And what is your success rate?”
“Two positives, one proven to be false, and the other one just petered out: unable to determine if we had one or didn’t.
“Nationalities. France and China were the two positives. The French espionage was business-related. They just wanted to get some technological edges they could interject into their own businesses. The Chinese was a visiting professor who made the rounds of some of our universities. Unfortunately, they were universities that had government contracts and we caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. As for the unsolved one, we don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Someday, I will reopen the case.”