“Our methods are none of your concern,” Frank Dorrien snapped back. “We’re here to share intelligence, not tell you how we came by it. Now, what do you have for us?”
Milton Buck looked at Greg Walton, who nodded his approval. Buck pulled out an old-fashioned Dictaphone voice recorder and put it on the table.
“While you’ve been unmasking the monkey,” the FBI man sneered, “we’ve been focused on the organ grinder.”
Jamie MacIntosh sighed. He was starting to find Milton Buck’s posturing deeply irritating.
“Your man Apollo may have pulled the trigger,” Buck went on, “but he was following orders from above.”
He pressed PLAY. A woman’s voice filled the room. It was American, educated, soft and low and the sound quality was excellent, as if she were sitting right there with them.
“Is everything ready?”
A man’s voice answered. “Yes. Everything has been done as you instructed.”
“And I will see it on live feed, correct?”
“Correct. You’ll be right there with us. Don’t worry.”
“Good.” The woman’s smile was audible. “Have him deliver the speech first.”
“Of course. As we agreed.”
“And at nine p.m. New York time precisely, you will shoot him in the head.”
“Yes, Althea.”
Milton Buck hit STOP and smiled smugly.
“That, gentlemen, was the authorization for Captain Daley’s execution. The woman on that tape, who goes by the codename Althea, is the real brains behind Group 99. We’ve been tracking her for the last eighteen months.”
“We already knew about Althea,” Jamie MacIntosh said dismissively, to the FBI man’s visible annoyance.
“But you didn’t know she’d directly ordered Daley’s assassination. Did you?” Greg Walton countered.
“No,” Jamie admitted. “What else have you got on her? An ID?”
“Not yet,” Greg Walton admitted, a little uncomfortably.
“You’ve been tracking this person for eighteen months and you still don’t know who she is?” Frank Dorrien asked, disbelievingly. “What do you know?”
“We know she channels funds to Group 99 through a complicated network of offshore accounts that we’ve mapped extensively,” Milton Buck snapped.
“We have some unconfirmed physical data,” Greg Walton added more calmly. “Witnesses at various banks and hotels we believe she’s used have suggested she’s tall, physically attractive and dark haired.”
“Well that narrows it down,” Frank Dorrien muttered sarcastically.
Milton Buck looked as if he were about to spontaneously combust.
“We know she orchestrated the attack on the CIA systems and the blackout of the stock exchange servers on Wall Street two years ago,” he snarled. “We know she personally arranged the kidnap and murder of one of your men, General Dorrien. All in all I’d say we know a hell of a lot more than you.”
“How long have you had this recording?” Jamie MacIntosh asked.
Greg Walton shot Milton Buck a warning look but it was too late.
“Three weeks,” Buck said smugly. “I played this to the president the day after Daley was killed.”
A muscle on Jamie’s jaw twitched. “Three weeks. And nobody thought to share this information with us sooner?”