“Impressive.”
“It’s part of my job, Decker.”
He had been probing the doll with his fingers until something gave and a compartment popped open. Decker looked inside, but it was empty. “You can see that there’s where the batteries would go.”
“Okay.”
He used the blade of his pocketknife to probe around inside the battery compartment. There was a tiny pop and the whole battery compartment slid out, revealing a space just behind it.
She said, “I’m betting that was not put there by the toy manufacturer.”
Decker nodded. “And it’s big enough for a roll of microfiche or a microdot or whatever else they used back then.”
&
nbsp; “How do you know about microdots?”
“I watched enough old James Bond films.”
He looked at the floppy disk. “Old technology like this.” He picked up the security badge. The name that had once been on it had been clipped out. But Decker held it up to Brown.
The golden torch with the black background and red atomic ellipses hugging the globe.
“DIA seal,” Decker said. “She wasn’t a whistleblower.”
“She was a spy,” finished Brown.
CHAPTER
38
DECKER, BROWN, BOGART, Jamison, and Milligan were sitting around a conference table at the WFO staring at the middle of the table.
Sitting there were the items Decker and Brown had found at the storage unit and then placed in evidence bags. All the items had been checked for prints and other forensics, but the tests had come back negative.
Bogart picked up the doll and examined the secret compartment.
Milligan slid the ID badge over and looked at it. “You said you checked and Berkshire, or whatever her name really is, never worked at DIA?”
“That’s right,” said Brown. “She would have been thoroughly vetted, undergone a background check, and her prints would have been taken and kept on our database. She’s not there.”
Bogart put the doll down, cleared his throat, and said, “We’ve checked all of our databases and can find no record of her. If she worked either in a government agency or as a contractor requiring a security clearance her prints would have been on file. They weren’t.”
Decker sat staring down at his hands.
Jamison glanced at him. “What do you think, Amos?”
“I think the part of the badge clipped out had someone else’s name.”
“If it were an RFID badge,” said Milligan, referring to radio frequency identification devices, “it would be full of the holder’s data unless it had been electronically wiped clean.”
“But it isn’t,” said Decker. “It was obviously issued before that technology was used, at least by DIA.”
Brown said, “Berkshire could have been the mole’s handler. She wouldn’t need to be on a database or have a badge to do that. The person on the inside would, of course. But Berkshire could have just managed the asset and collected the intel.”
“That is far more likely,” said Decker. “We just have to find out who that person on the inside was.”
“But do you think Berkshire was still acting as a handler?” said Milligan. “I mean the old badge, the floppy disk, the 1980s KGB communication, it all dates from another era.”
Bogart said, “That’s a good point. She might have retired and decided to do something else with her life.”
“Good works, you mean,” said Jamison. “Maybe to atone for what she’d done in the past.”
“But where does the money come in?” asked Brown. “Handlers are not known to make fortunes. And if she was working for the Russians, why not just go back there when she retired?”
“Maybe she couldn’t,” said Decker.
“But if she wasn’t caught but came forward voluntarily?” said Decker. “Maybe she didn’t reveal herself as a spy but rather as a citizen with some special knowledge looking to help?”
Brown thought about that. “I don’t know how likely that would be.”
Bogart said, “The tricky part is how do we organize an investigation along these lines? We have four items here and a dead woman who might or might not have been a spy or a handler or something else.”
Decker said, “The first thing we have to do is find out who Anne Berkshire really is. Or was.”
“What the hell do you think we’ve been trying to do, Decker?” exclaimed Milligan.