“Thanks, Chuck,” he said as he headed toward the bank of elevators.
A bell clanged, indicating the car’s arrival. The doors slid open and Payne stepped inside. He left the elevator on the seventh floor and headed down a back hallway toward Mahogany Row. By taking this route to the director’s suite, it allowed him to bypass the security station. However, it meant he had to have a six-digit code for the keypad outside Knox’s office.
The keypad, though, was the least of his problems. With the descrambler he had appropriated from the electronics lab at Hogan’s Alley before leaving for headquarters, entry to the director’s office would merely be a temporary annoyance.
The more significant problem was one he could not have planned for: through the small fireproof window in the door, he saw lights on in Knox’s office and two bodies seated in chairs in front of the desk. Surprisingly, the director was still there, apparently in a meeting.
Payne could stay and wait around for him to leave, but the longer he remained in the building the greater the chance that he would be questioned as to his intentions.
Payne leaned against the mahogany paneling and tried to regroup. There wasn’t anything specific he had hoped to find when he decided to break into Knox’s office. Payne was gambling that a thorough search of the suite would tell him why he was being monitored, and why his contacts with the outside world were being controlled. He wanted a look at the bigger picture, not the pixel by pixel account he was getting.
But now his strategy would have to be altered.
He took the elevator down to the basement, where the Computer Analysis Response Team, or CART, was located. He saw the touch pad on the far wall and glanced around the corridor as he approached. It was empty. A camera was mounted on the ceiling behind him, aimed at the CART entrance. If he was good, and lucky — in that order — he could attach the descrambler and block the camera’s view with his body. That was the part that demanded considerable skill. But he would have to work fast and hope that security was not watching its monitors too closely. That’s where the luck part came in.
In a matter of seconds, without looking down or breaking stride, Payne removed the device from its box. He walked up to the keypad and pried off the front of the panel with his fingernail. He slapped the descrambler onto the microelectronic innards and waited while it went through its routine. He shielded the device from the camera, while moving his fingers slowly, as if he were punching in a number. If a guard glanced at his monitor, he wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. However, if he was intently watching, he would realize that it was taking the person on his screen a ridiculously long time to enter his code.
Finally, the red LED light on his descrambler went green. With his left hand he pulled down on the door handle, and with his right he removed the device and snapped the cover back on the touch pad. He was in.
After the door clicked shut behind him, Payne felt the rush of cool air and heard the whirring hum of the large air-conditioning system. He passed through the data center and moved toward the back of the suite. He stepped through a glass door and entered a room filled with cubicles, each one sporting a computer terminal. He looked around and noticed a few people working late at their desks, poking at keys and thumbing through manuals.
Payne walked down a couple of aisles and chose a vacant terminal. After settling into the seat, he began the log-on sequence. Realizing it would likely be difficult to break into the director’s files on the mainframe, and that the server administrator would immediately begin to monitor his movements should he attempt to do so, he decided to try a different approach. He logged in using his Academy pass code, the one he had been given to access portions of the Scarponi trial transcripts.
Again breaking his situation down to the barest common denominators, he came back to Knox and Scarponi. Figuring that obtaining information on Scarponi would be comparatively easy, he logged on to Division Six’s database, hoping to locate a psychological profile on the famed assassin. Although he was not entirely sure of what he was looking for, he hoped that one document might contain information that would lead him to another document, and so on.
During the next fifteen minutes, he crawled through hundreds of folders and files on the Division Six server. There were a variety of official records, some preceded by the word SECRET prominently displayed in large red letters across the top. Payne skimmed through the first paragraph of each of the reports — some of which would have been fascinating reading on another day and time: domestic terrorism-risk assessments, NSA encryption analyses, and a host of internal reports from the division. Serial-killer profiles. Criminal investigative analyses. Search warrant requests.
And a threat assessment prepared for Director Douglas Knox re Agent Harper Payne.
Payne looked around, over his shoulder and past the other terminals that sat to each side of him. He leaned in close to the screen and began to read. The cover page was splattered with the large, red-lettered words
CONFIDENTIAL
FOR DIRECTOR’S EYES ONLY
He scrolled to the body of the report, where keywords and phrases caught his attention:
High level of sophistication…
Offender went to great lengths to obtain confidential information, specifically Director’s home address…
Conclusion/Threat assessment: High risk level.
Recommendations/Options:
1- Place security detail on high alert;
2- Assign additional HRT operators to members of Director’s family;
3- Initiate 24/7 surveillance on Director’s home;
4- Review current security procedures at Director’s residence;
5- Restrict Director’s access and movements;
6- Perform frequent sweeps of HQ for weapons of mass destruction, i. e., explosive, chemical, biological devices;
7- Launch comprehensive investigation immediately, to include a warrant to secure the retrieval of all phone LUDs of Anthony Scarponi, visitor logs to Scarponi at Petersburg, and an interrogation of Scarponi;
8- Employ electronic surveillance methods in accordance with Bureau procedure and regulations memo G98Q;
9- Comply with offender demands per threat letter (inconsistent with standard Bureau protocols outlined in MIOG).
Payne paged down and found a scanned copy of the letter Knox had received at his house. One part caught and held his attention: “HARPER PAYNE. DEAD OR ALIVE, YOUR CHOICE. FAIL TO DELIVER HIM AND YOU’LL PLACE CERTAIN PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE AT RISK.” He stared at it until his eyes began to burn. Melissa Knox had been kidnapped, and then returned. It was a message. A message that Knox had better cooperate or next time she would be killed.
Payne buried his face in his hands, then began massaging his forehead to ease the emerging headache. Between lack of sleep and the stress he was under, the headache was not surprising — and was certainly the least of his problems. But he did not have time for it. The pieces to what was happening to him were starting to come together… as was his understanding of the players, the issues, and the rules of the game.
But more needed to be done.
He logged off the terminal, walked out of the data center, and in a daze, headed down the corridor toward the elevators.
His mind was a snowstorm of thoughts, swirling furiously. With each thought grappling for immediate attention, he fought to focus. Once more he reduced the situation to its fundamental roots: faced with choosing between the safety of his family or a former agent with a damaged mind, Knox would toss aside his Bureau hat and his fathering instincts would control his actions. FBI director or not, he was, above all else, a human being, a husband and father.