* * *
They were seated at a table in the middle of a Vietnamese restaurant in D.C. Brown had suggested it.
Decker looked at the menu and said, “I don’t recognize one thing on here.”
“I can order for you, Decker,” said Brown.
Decker dropped his menu. “Sounds good to me. Do they have fries?”
Mars handed her his menu. “I’m in the same boat as Decker, so you can order for me too.”
Brown looked at Jamison. “You good, or you want me to do the honors for you too?”
“I love Vietnamese food,” replied Jamison in an irritated voice.
When the waitress came, Brown ordered for the three of them, in Vietnamese.
“Impressive,” said Mars as the waitress walked off. “I can barely make my way around English.”
“Come on, Melvin, you graduated from UT early with a business degree,” pointed out Jamison.
“Prison doesn’t improve one’s brainpower. At least not mine. Not after twenty years.”
“Did you find anything in the files at Dabney’s office?” Decker asked Brown.
She shot Mars a glance. “I doubt he’s cleared to hear this.”
“Neither are we,” pointed out Decker. “You can trust Melvin,” he added.
“Okay, no, we found nothing in the files, but we’re still looking. We were hoping for a smoking gun but didn’t find one. How about you?”
“We haven’t found a gun, much less a smoking one. But we have questions, like if Dabney was working with Berkshire, why meet near the Hoover Building? He already had a meeting scheduled that morning. And if she was a spy I doubt she would be attending.”
“That’s true.”
“And as Jamison pointed out, if they weren’t working together it’s a helluva coincidence to have one spy kill another unrelated spy.”
Brown glanced at Jamison. “Another good observation, Jamison. You’re showing a real talent for this area.”
Jamison didn’t respond to this remark.
Decker added, “And if Berkshire wasn’t spying anymore, she had a weird retirement. Million-dollar condo and six-figure ride paired with a crappy farmhouse and an old, dented Honda.”
“I don’t disagree,” said Brown. “It’s all weird.”
“And we still haven’t accounted for the person who nearly killed me and stole the flash drive. Berkshire was dead and Dabney was on his deathbed at the time. So there’s a third party out there.”
“Who wanted that flash drive,” observed Brown.
“And I wonder what was on there?” said Decker.
“What else? More stolen secrets,” replied Brown.
“You think?” he said.
“What else could it be?”
“If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t be asking the question. But if Dabney and Berkshire were working together, we should be able to find some connection.”
“All I can tell you, Decker, is that the first inkling we had that Dabney had gone bad was recently. He’s worked on other DIA projects before and we had no problems. And he also had no incentives to steal. The guy was in great shape financially. It was only this gambling debt problem that pushed him over the edge.” She glanced at Mars. “You carry this to your grave, okay?”
He put up his hands in mock surrender, smiled, and said, “Hey, I’m on your side, okay? I’m going to forget everything you guys say tonight.”
Brown smiled and said, “I knew I liked you.” She turned back to Decker. “And Dabney had to routinely take polygraphs to keep his security clearance status up to date. He never failed one.”
“So you’re convinced that this was just a one-off?”
“Unless you can show me something to the contrary.”
Jamison interjected, “But he was able to sell the secrets very quickly.”
“I know. You said that before and it’s a valid point. But it’s a leap of logic to go from that to the conclusion that the guy’s been stealing secrets for a long time.”
“Well, we’ll see if we can get your logic to match up with ours at some point,” said Jamison tersely.
The two women did a bit of a stare-down.
Fortunately, their food came right then and they started eating.
Brown eyed Mars. “So how do you spend your time now?”
“Doing a little coaching at the high school level. Basically trying to figure the rest of my life out.”
“You two have something in common,” said Decker.
“What’s that?” asked Mars.
“You’re both rich.”
The man, in response, pulled the hammer back on his gun.
“Just do it, Alex. No more questions.”
She cuffed Decker’s hands behind his back.
The man came over and inspected them. Then he pushed Decker and Jamison toward the door.
“Where are we going?” asked Jamison.