Uzi shoved the toothpick to the left corner of his mouth. “Director Knox mentioned that Ekrem thought Hezbollah might have some involvement in this plot. Around the time the whole thing came to a head with Iran achieving nuclear capability, we intercepted communications indicating that Hezbollah had sleeper cells across the country in dozens of US cities. It sounded like it was a well established network that had been going on for years.”
“That’s never been verified,” Bolten said.
Uzi bobbed his head. “True. But … NSA captured a conversation between someone in southern California and a mobile in Mexico. It belonged to one of the Mexican drug cartels: Cortez. We began piecing it together with HUMINT,” he said, referring to human intelligence — confidential informants, interrogations, and the like. “We’re still working on it but all we’ve been able to verify is that the cartels and Hezbollah have been working together in some financial capacity.”
“That’s a long way from sleeper cells in dozens of US cities,” McNamara said.
“Call it a working theory. Could be that Hezbollah teaches them how to build tunnels and Cortez pays them for the engineering know-how. Or maybe it’s something else. But my instincts as a law enforcement officer tell me that this type of connection makes sense and can’t be ignored. It may just be a matter of finding proof. I’ll double down and check with my DEA guys on the task force.”
“Hector?” Knox said. “Any thoughts on this?”
DeSantos straightened up in his seat. “If we look at a potential threat matrix, if the US went beyond sanctions against Iran and bombed its reactors, and if there were sleeper cells here, their operatives would likely set off bombs here. We’d be under attack within our own borders. The invading army would have been living among us for years.”
The room got quiet.
Finally Bolten said, “We need to know if this sleeper theory is rooted in fact — and if it’s got anything to do with what happened tonight.”
“I can have our CIA and DEA reps on the task force check in with their CIs. But they’re gonna ask why. To get it right, they have to have all the facts.”
“No,” Bolten said. “You can’t say anything about tonight. The president made it quite clear.”
“Some are going to put it together anyway. But the JTTF is a terrorism task force made up mostly of law enforcement officers. This is what we do. That’s our job.”
“Your job, your orders, are to work this from inside OPSIG. This is bigger than law enforcement. It’s a matter of national security and we need to be able to operate without every goddamn blogger commenting on it, crying about privacy intrusions and racial profiling, without journalists bombarding us with questions and hampering our ability to do our work — which is finding these fuckers. You need more help, Secretary McNamara and Director Knox will get you personnel with security clearance.”
“I’m not sure that’s enough,” Uzi said.
“For now, it’ll have to be.”
4
When Vail walked into her house at 3:30 AM, her chocolate brown Standard Poodle puppy, Hershey, greeted her at the door. He stood up on his back legs and bathed her face with kisses. She gave him a piece of duck jerky and found Robby asleep on the couch, a bag of Trader Joe’s spicy flax seed chips on the coffee table perched beside an empty hummus container.
She inched her left buttock onto the edge of the seat cushion beside his thigh and stroked his face. His eyes fluttered open.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Very late at night or very early in the morning. Depends on your perspective.”
He sat up and hung his head. “I was dreaming.”
“About me?”
“Of course.”
“Right answer. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”
Hershey followed them into the bedroom and hopped onto the mattress as Robby stepped up to the adjacent vanity and pulled open his drawer.
“So why did I have to leave? And what the hell is going on?”
Vail had been dreading such a question, which she knew would be among the first he asked. “Look, when you’re undercover, you can’t talk about the case, right?”
He popped open the cap on the toothpaste. “What’s that got to do with this? You don’t work undercover.”
“I can’t say any more.”
He stood there, the tube in his right hand and the brush in his left. His brain was not fully awake yet so it was taking him longer to put it together. He set the toothpaste down. “You’re telling me you’re undercover?”
Vail started removing the makeup she had put on before she and Robby had left for the evening. She glanced at him in the mirror and he seemed to get it: she could not talk about it.
He went back to his teeth, then spit and rinsed his brush. “Is it dangerous?”
Vail thought about that, about her run-in with the terrorist tonight, about what Uzi had said about how she had handled it. “Yes.”
Robby set the brush down and looked at her image in the mirror. He apparently decided against commenting.
What can he say? His undercover ops with DEA are dangerous too.
“I don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot.”
Vail tossed the cotton cleansing pad in the garbage. “I know.”
Vail arrived at the Behavioral Analysis Unit at 8:30 AM — and found a note on her desk from Lenka, the administrative staff for her boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Thomas Gifford.
Rather than lifting the phone, she walked over to Lenka’s desk.
“Morning.”
“Agent Vail. I left a note—”
Vail held it up. “Found it. Boss wants to see me?”
Lenka nodded.
“He pissed about something?”
Lenka nodded again, then buzzed Gifford and told him Vail was there. “Go on in.”
Vail pushed through the door and Gifford motioned her to sit.
“I got a strange call this morning,” Gifford said, “from Liz Evanston. Do you know who Liz Evanston is?”
Not even a hello. Yeah, he’s pissed all right.
“Your ex-wife?”
“No.”
He didn’t say any more, so Vail asked, “If this is twenty questions, sir, can I have a pad and pen?”
“She’s Director Knox’s executive assistant.”
She raised both hands, palms up. “You just ruined the game. I had at least another nineteen guesses left.”
“She had a message for me. From the director. And it was about you.”
“Right. Now I understand why I’m sitting in your office.”
“Well, that makes one of us. I was told that you’re on special assignment. But when I asked for clarification and details — like how long this assignment would last — she said she didn’t know. When I asked if I should reassign your active cases, she said, ‘Probably’.” He leaned forward and rested both forearms on his desk. “Now your unit chief and I have the BAU to run, with a lot of cases and very few agents. As hard as it is for me to admit it, you’re one of my best analysts. So when you’re removed from the equation, I kind of have to know why, and for how long.”
“Well, you don’t really have to know why.”
Gifford looked at her.
“I’m just saying. ‘Why’ isn’t releva—”
“Karen,” he said through clenched teeth. “What the hell is going on?”
“I can’t go into it. But I do need to be excused from my duties for the foreseeable future. I’ll be working offsite.”
“I’m your ASAC. And that’s not an acceptable answer. Where are you getting your orders?”
“I don’t think I can say.”