CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

With her fingertips, Kate pushed the door shut behind him as she answered the call.

“Kate Bishop.”

“Kate, it’s Jeff.”

Kate’s brow twitched. “Jeff? That’s weird—your name didn’t show up on my phone.”

“It didn’t show up because I’m calling on a secure line.”

“A secure line? Why?”

“So I can give you the report you asked for on Jack Raines.”

“And you need a secure line for that?”

“Yes.”

Kate was taken aback. Jeff had never called her on a secure line before. She couldn’t imagine why he needed to this time.

“So then you were able to find out something about him?”

“Yes and no. This was a tough one, Kate. You have no idea what you were asking for. This comes close to making us even.”

Kate felt a worried chill at the seriousness of his admonition. Jeff Steele was more than an invaluable contact to her and someone she worked with occasionally; he was a good guy. As often as they had talked in the last couple of years, she considered him a friend.

“I’m sorry, Jeff. I didn’t mean to cause you a problem or get you into any kind of trouble.”

“No,” he said with what sounded like a frustrated sigh. “It’s not that.”

She wondered if Bert was capable of handling the man out in the hall if he had to.

“So what were you able to find out about him, if anything?”

“Well, you asked me to find out if he’s legit.”

“So is he?”

“Yes. But you aren’t going to be able to talk to him about his book.”

“Why not?”

“Because the guy’s a ghost.”

Kate glanced out the open slits between the slats of the blinds on her office window to see Jack Raines approaching Bert.

“A ghost?”

“That’s right. For all practical purposes Jack Raines doesn’t exist. At least, not officially. He wrote that book you mentioned, but that’s about the only time his existence shows up publicly. Other than that, like I say, the guy is mostly a ghost. He vanishes for years at a time before popping up on the grid again, like he did with that book. Even then, any evidence of his existence is pretty thin.”

“Jeff, you’re kind of freaking me out. What are you talking about? Is this guy dangerous or something?”

“No, it’s not that. The thing is, Jack Raines is known in the upper levels of some of our security agencies.”

“You mean he’s a threat?”

“No, he’s on our side. At least, I’m ninety-nine percent sure he is.”

“In other words, you’re not positive?”

“How much in life—or in our business—is one hundred percent positive? There’s very little about the guy to go on, but what I do know makes me feel confident that he’s on our side, if that helps.”

“Coming from you it does. What do you have to go on that makes you feel confident?”

“The biggest thing is that he’s known at the deepest levels inside some of our agencies—agencies that, as far as the public knows, don’t exist, if you follow my drift.”

Jeff Steele was a man who knew about those deep levels of security agencies. KDEX produced systems used by some of those agencies. That was why he worked with her. The security audits she conducted had the potential to expose threats to national security.

“I think I do.”

“In the past Jack Raines was the go-to guy when there were problems I’m not privy to—problems within the most clandestine circles.”

“So then he works for some of our national security agencies? He’s a spook?”

“Not exactly,” Jeff said. “He has helped them in the past, but as far as I could find out, only on occasion, and then as a consultant or advisor of some sort, not as an employee, but I don’t know what his consulting involved. With some of these shadow agencies it’s possible that he was more involved than I could find out about.

“The fact that they relied on an outside consultant in that way, rather than on one of their own, speaks volumes. Usually they try to pull that type of person into the fold. In his case, they didn’t and then he ghosted away again.

“Then about six years ago he resurfaced when they pulled him back out of the shadows for something. I gather from hints that it was some kind of profiling. Maybe like the FBI does for serial killers—I just don’t know. But whatever it is he does is apparently pretty invaluable and they wanted his services. He agreed to do the work, but as seriously interested as those agencies were, the program—whatever it was—was shut down and his services were canceled.”

“They went to him for help, he agreed to help, and then they turned down his help? Why?”

“Politics. The whispers I was able to pick up on say that the civilian oversight authorities, meaning political appointees, didn’t approve of the kind of services he was offering. The operatives did, but the oversight boards didn’t. Bureaucrats being bureaucrats, they didn’t want to get their agencies involved with anything they thought could threaten their big paychecks or their pensions, so they saw to it that his services were canceled.”

“You mean to say they would rather put the country at risk than work with him? And so they fired him?”

“In a word, yes. What I do know is that it was a choice made for purely political reasons. Some people I know very well were pretty damn upset that the door was closed on him.”

“So he decided to become an author?”

“No, that was later. After we turned down his services, he next showed up as an advisor to the Mossad.”

Kate blinked, taking it in for a moment. “He went to work for Israeli intelligence?”

“That’s right. As soon as he did, he went dark for five years. We think that during that entire period he was working for them, but it’s impossible to know for sure. The Mossad aren’t exactly chatty, so we can’t be positive.

“All I know is that for that five-year period he was off the grid. And when I say off the grid, I do mean off the grid. As far as any of our people know—people whose job it is to know such things—he wasn’t just off the grid, he might as well have been off the planet. He ceased to exist.”

“That would be consistent with him working under the umbrella of the Mossad,” Kate said.

“That’s right.”

“So you don’t know anything about what he offered to do for our intelligence agencies, or what he did for the Mossad?”

“Well, I was able to find out one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The Israelis paid him twelve point five million dollars for his services.”

Kate put her fingertips to her forehead as she paced across her office and back, not sure she had heard correctly. She glanced through the slats in the blinds again and saw Jack Raines talking to Bert. They were both chuckling and seemed to be getting along famously.

“Twelve point five million?”

“Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too.”

“Do you have any idea what he did in return for that much money?”

“No. I wasn’t able to get any information about that part of it. All I can tell you is that the Mideast is a seriously dangerous place.”

“Everyone knows that. What’s your point?”

“Israel is still on the map, isn’t it?”

Kate paced for a moment. “I guess that in that context maybe it doesn’t seem like so much money after all.”

“That’s the point. Like I said, I suspect that he was providing some kind of profiling expertise similar to what our bureaucrats had been fearful of and turned down.

“Apparently the Israelis were only too happy to have his services. When your very existence is at stake, you tend not to be quite so chickenshit about political heat. Israel doesn’t have the luxury to wring their hands over things the way we do here.”

“Why did he leave his work for the Mossad?”

“I don’t have that information. With the way he was turned down here, I think that maybe he thought it was important to get a wider audience than just one intelligence agency overseas, so he wrote that book you mentioned. From what I’m told, that book says more about the nature of his knowledge than anything else known about him.”

Kate paced for a moment, trying to let it all settle in.

“Anything else?”

“I wish I could tell you more, Kate, but like I say, the guy’s a ghost.”

Kate glanced through the blinds again. Jack Raines was standing beside Bert, leaning back against the wall, watching her with those strange, otherworldly eyes.

She thought that he might be the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. At the same time, he set off all kinds of alarm bells in her head.

“I sure wish I had the opportunity to talk to the guy sometime,” Jeff added.

“Maybe I can arrange it,” Kate said.

Jeff Steele was silent for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“I’m standing here looking at him. I’ll give him your number.”