“So does that mean DIA doesn’t do it?”
“I don’t. I can’t speak for others.”
“What else?”
“In 2008 we got approval to conduct offensive counterintelligence clandestine ops both domestically and abroad.”
“How would you do that?”
“Pretty basic stuff. Planting moles, disseminating disinformation, negatively impacting a country’s information systems. You might be interested to know that we coordinate with the Bureau on that last one. Then in 2012 we expanded our clandestine collection efforts. We took over the Defense Department’s HUMINT efforts and beefed up our espionage ops overseas, obviously focusing on the military component.”
“What’s your focus these days?”
“Nothing too surprising. Islamic terrorists including ISIL and Al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran, particularly weapon and nuclear technology transfers, and the Chinese and Russians beefing up their military capabilities.”
“How about the Russians hacking us to try to influence our politics?”
“That would be a yes, Decker. Strikes right at the fundamentals of our democracy.”
“So a lot of ground to cover.”
“Which is why we have about seventeen thousand people working on it.”
“You talked about planting moles. You guys ever have spies in your ranks?”
She nodded and her features turned grim. “All intelligence agencies have. The worst for us was probably Ana Belén Montes. Very high-ranking analyst here and very well respected. It was before my time. Turned out she’d been spying for Cuba for over twenty years. Did a lot of damage and probably cost some people their lives.”
“Never heard of her.”
“Not surprising. She was arrested right when 9/11 was going down. That pretty much trumped every other story out there for months.”
“How’d they nail her?”
“Good old-fashioned detective legwork. And our cause was helped by the fact that spies stick to basic protocols. Shortwave radio transmissions, encryption software, standard drops in crowded places, zigzags on foreign travel. They were able to piece the puzzle together because of that.”
“You’d think spies would wise up and try something new or vary their routines.”
She shook her head. “It’s like bomb makers, Decker. I learned a lot about them as an EOD. Once they learn a way to do something they don’t like to deviate from it. It’s called a bomb signature. That way they work out all the kinks and they don’t get blown up, but it also helps us identify a particular—”
Decker got up from his chair and walked out.
Brown jumped up. “Decker? Decker!”
She raced after him.
CHAPTER
37
“WOW!” EXCLAIMED BROWN.
She and Decker had just entered Berkshire’s luxurious condo.
Brown looked around in amazement. “You were right about her having money.”
Decker didn’t respond. He made a beeline down the hall and Brown quickly followed. He went into the master bathroom and then into the separate toilet closet. He snatched the toilet paper off the wall, slid off the roll, and opened the tube.
“Damn.”
There was nothing there.
“What did you expect to find?” asked Brown.
He pushed past her, left the bathroom, and moved down the hall. He entered the second bedroom and pushed open the door to the en suite bathroom. He stared down at the toilet paper roll.
He took it off the wall, slid open the tube, and there it was.
“A key,” said Brown.
“Like you said, spies don’t like to learn new techniques, like bomb makers.”
“So she used this device before?”
“At the cottage in the woods, yeah.”
“What’s it a key to?”
Decker looked at it more closely. “Could be lots of different things. A padlock, maybe.”
They left the bathroom and he perched on a chair in the guest bedroom. He closed his eyes and let the frames roll back and forth.
Brown watched him curiously. “Checking the old memory?”
He said nothing.
A minute later he opened his eyes and stood. He went out into the hall and over to the broad set of windows that looked out onto the street below.
“If you had something important that you didn’t want to keep here, but you wanted it close, what would you do?” he asked.
“Put it at a storage place.”
“There aren’t any around here,” said Decker, looking out the window. “This is too high-rent a district for it to make economic sense.”
“But, like you said, she’d want it reasonably accessible.”
“Yes, she would. Let’s go.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later they passed the Catholic school where Berkshire had worked. Decker pointed across the street.
Brown looked where he was pointing.
“A to Z Storage?”
“And hopefully everything in between.”
They drove into the parking lot and climbed out of the car. Inside, they showed the woman behind the counter their official creds. She looked up Berkshire’s name on the database. “She paid for one year in advance. Still has a few months to go.”
“Don’t count on her renewing,” said Decker. He held up the key. “Which unit?”
“I’m not sure I can allow that without a warrant.”
Brown said, “We have reason to believe that Ms. Berkshire has been storing explosives in that unit.”
“Oh my holy Lord,” exclaimed the woman.
“So before we call the bomb squad we need to check it out. Or we can wait for the warrant and just hope you and this business don’t get blown into the sky.”
“It’s Unit 2213,” blurted the woman. “Out that door and to the right. Do you think I should leave the premises? I don’t want to die for minimum wage.”
“I think now would be a great time for you to take a break, yeah,” said Brown.
The woman fled out the door, got into her car, and drove off with a screeching of tires.
Decker glanced at Brown. “I’m beginning to see you in a whole new light.”
She smiled but said nothing as they walked to Unit 2213. It was a single unit with a roll-up door. Decker used the key to unlock the thick padlock, then bent down, gripped the door’s handle, and pulled the door up.
Inside was a single shelf with a solitary box on it.
“Looks promising,” said Brown.
They walked over and examined the box. It was plain cardboard with no writing on the sides or top. Decker pulled out his pocketknife and slit the tape, unsealing the box.
He opened the flaps and looked inside. He started pulling objects out and placing them on the shelf next to the box.
What looked like a security badge.
A typewritten paper in Cyrillic.
An old floppy disk.
And a doll.
While Brown looked at the paper, Decker examined the doll.
Brown said, “This is dated May 1985. It looks to be some sort of official communication from Moscow. The KBG.”
“You can read Russian?”
“Along with Chinese and Arabic. And I can hold my own with Korean.”