THIRTY-FOUR

There had been no point going to the car rental counter at Reagan National and double-checking what the agents from WFO had already done, but Monk did it anyway. Sung Kim had used the name Gayle Kirk to rent the black Navigator, he was told, and provided a Maryland driver’s license to match. The rental agency hadn’t photocopied the driver’s license as they sometimes did. Leaving the airport, Monk had run a 10–28 and 10–29 on both the name and DL, but neither Maryland motor vehicle records nor the bureau’s National Crime Information Center could make an ID. The license was counterfeit, of course, but he’d known that going in.

So he went back to WFO and got started on the tough part.

On the fourth floor, he sat at a desk just off the rotor clerk’s area in the Squad 13 bullpen. He’d chosen that particular squad room for a reason. He needed privacy, and using 13 would give him more chance to be alone than any other space at the field office. The squad worked “91s”—referring to the bureau’s classification number for the crime of bank robbery—and, as usual, every last one of the agents was out of the office. BR people spent their days on the street, responding to the newest of the bank robberies that went down every day of the week, talking to victims and witnesses, working their informants, and attending lineups for the robbers they’d already caught. Or making up the clever names the media liked to print. Like the “Whistling Bandit,” for the guy who whistled through his teeth while the victim-teller filled his canvas bag with money, and “Filthy Harry,” for the older man who reeked of whisky and urine. Bottom line: There was no squad busier, and there was no better place to find an empty desk.

But sitting there, Monk realized he was still not comfortable. Despite the fact that the room was empty now, any number of agents might come wandering through and wonder what he was doing there; they might even ask him to explain his presence. The SOG would have been much better, but the off-site building wasn’t an option. He was here to review files, and there weren’t any files at the SOG. Bureau rules forbade the removal of files from the field office. You could charge out “serials”—the documents in the file—but not the file itself. He didn’t have time to go through the hassle, so he’d have to risk exposure while he worked.

Monk sat back in his chair and considered how to proceed.

There were three main sources of possible information pertaining to Thomas Franklin.

The first was the computer on the desk he was using, and what he could gather from a search of Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It was astonishing what was available from the Internet without having to look for a word in official FBI files. These days one didn’t have to be famous to be very well documented, and Thomas Franklin was more than famous enough to justify a warehouse filled with information. So Monk opened his briefcase, pulled out a long yellow pad and a government ballpoint pen, and got down to business.

He started with the Google search bar, typed in the name Thomas Franklin. A moment later the screen blinked, and Monk saw that he’d been right. The Google search engine had come up with more than five hundred hits on Franklin’s name. Way too many for any kind of efficient research. He would have to refine the terms. He went back to the search bar and typed “Thomas Franklin + biography.” Again the screen blinked, again there were far too many hits. His eyes ran down the list of publications, and he chose a magazine article from Time. He opened the article and pulled his yellow pad close, then stared at the screen and smiled. Time had made his job a little easier.

In the course of an extensive article on movers and shakers in the president’s “kitchen cabinet,” the magazine had included sidebars on several of them: separately boxed areas on the page that stood out sharply from the rest of the article. The sidebar he wanted covered nearly half a page, a capsule biography of Thomas Franklin that would provide much of what he needed.

He highlighted the bio, hit the print key, rose from the desk, and walked past Ginny Alexander, the Squad 13 rotor clerk—the lady who maintained the steel bin that held the hundreds of current bank robbery files. Ginny looked up as he passed, smiled, but said nothing. Monk walked over to the network printer on a table behind her desk. The big printer was whirring quietly as it discharged the page he’d sent over. He grabbed it and went back to his desk, where he sat and reread the bio.

Thomas Jefferson Franklin was born in 1946, just months after the Japanese surrender. He seems dedicated to building a corporate empire unlikely ever to fall. He was orphaned at the age of twelve when his parents, Edgar and Mary Ellen, died in the crash of their private plane into Chesapeake Bay. Franklin attended all the right schools, finishing with Princeton University, where he met and became friends with the man who would one day become president of the United States: the man with whom Franklin’s life and fortune have been intertwined ever since. The charismatic chairman of the board of Global Panoptic was a multimillionaire well before his fortieth birthday, when he burst onto the international stage in a nearly two-billion-dollar deal with the struggling South Korean government. The deal provided most of the telecommunications infrastructure that would propel Seoul into the stratosphere of a rapidly industrializing Asia. The money did not come without a price, however. The wunderkind’s best pal—by then a third-term congressman—was accused of playing favorites, and for the first time Franklin’s link with the man now in the Oval Office looked like it was going to take both men down. Most Americans remember the bitterness of the hearings on Capitol Hill, but the controversy died in a maelstrom of political sound and fury that in the end signified nothing. One thing’s certain: In the decades since those hearings, both men have made it all the way to the top, one way or another. Forbes lists Franklin as a solid top-tenner this year—enough billions to keep him from having to sweat the rent—but even so, his money hasn’t made him immune from scandal. His seventeen-year marriage to Christina Atwood Franklin ended two years ago in the “divorce heard round the world.” Despite their relentless efforts, the feverish paparazzi have failed to link him with anyone new.

There was more but Monk skimmed it quickly before tossing the page aside. Interesting stuff, but to find Sung Kim, he’d have to do a whole lot better.

He pulled the computer keyboard closer, brought up the Google search screen again and typed in the words, “Thomas Franklin + art.” A moment later he scanned the results, then spent twenty minutes confirming what he already knew, that Franklin was a respected collector of fine art, of paintings and sculpture primarily, but ceramic pottery as well. There wasn’t a word to suggest he was now or ever had been involved with anything stolen.

He went back to the search bar and typed in “Thomas Franklin + Madonna with the Yarn Winder.” The screen blinked, no hits. He tried “Thomas Franklin + Leonardo da Vinci.” Again no hits. Monk had to smile. If it were that easy, anyone could do it. He typed “Thomas Franklin + thefts of art.” Nothing. What the hell, he thought, as he tried “Thomas Franklin + Sung Kim.” Nothing … big shock there. “Thomas Franklin + North Korea.” Nothing. He typed Franklin’s name and added South Korea. The screen lit up with references, again far too many to be of value. Finally he tried “Thomas Franklin + FBI.” This time there were seven hits. Monk pulled them up.

Every one of them dealt with the president’s use of Battle Valley Farm for important meetings with foreign dignitaries, and the bureau’s cooperation with Secret Service in the security necessary for those meetings. Nothing Monk could use. But looking at the articles triggered another thought.

He typed in “Thomas Franklin + foreign leaders,” and this time there were twelve full pages of hits. It took Monk an hour to review the list, and what he discovered was that Franklin played an important role in the president’s dealings with leaders around the world. Many of them had visited Franklin’s farm at one time or another, but there was nothing Monk could see that might lead him to Sung Kim.

Next he tried Yahoo. He ran the same searches, but came up with little to add to what Google had provided. He did it one more time with the MSN search engine, and again found nothing particularly useful. Monk stretched his arms over his head and yawned. Almost two hours without much to show for it, but that was FBI work for you. Hours, days, months, and years. Sometimes you never found what you needed.

Now it was time to start on the field office files.

With a few keystrokes, he brought up the indices screen, the database containing all of the current and closed files in the Washington Field Office. More than a hundred thousand files, most of them closed, but thousands still current, still being worked by the hundreds of agents at WFO. He typed in the name Thomas Jefferson Franklin. The screen blinked, then showed the message “486 files located containing the name Thomas Jefferson Franklin. Would you like to see main files only?” Meaning the cases where Franklin was the principal subject of the investigation. Monk clicked Yes and the screen blinked again. “Four files located. Would you like to see the abstracts?” Single-paragraph synopses of the files. Again Monk clicked Yes, and a screen appeared with four abstracts.

Background investigations, all four of them. SPIN cases—White House Special Inquiries—that wouldn’t tell Monk a damned thing. He’d supervised the same kinds of cases before being transferred to the SOG, and he’d seen enough of those files to know he wouldn’t find anything surprising.

SPIN files were filled with accolades from people who had too much to gain by the nominee’s success. In the case of those who made it through the process unscathed, there’d be nothing derogatory in the file. His mind went back to one of those SPIN cases, one he’d never be able to forget. The Brenda Thompson background investigation for her nomination to the Supreme Court. Justice Thompson’s file was still maintained in the closed files section here at WFO. The final report contained not a single word of derogatory information, but it didn’t come anywhere near telling the truth, either, and Franklin’s SPIN file wouldn’t be any different.

Then Monk considered the almost five hundred other files in the office containing Franklin’s name, cases where Franklin was not the subject of the investigation but whose name had come up along the way. Five hundred files. Impossible. Might as well be zero. He’d need an army to go through that many files for tidbits of something he might be able to use. He had to do better than that. He had to see the files that dished the dirt, the ones that contained nothing but the dirt. He had to take a look at the confidential files.

Like every FBI office, WFO maintained thousands of informant files, filled with all kinds of criminality, but that was the problem with them. The informant files had no filters. The raw intelligence might not be true at all—too much of the time it was nothing more than wild speculation by informants with every sort of ax to grind—but that’s just what Monk needed. He needed somewhere to start, something to link Thomas Franklin with stolen art. Or a woman. Or a North Korean sleeper. Monk grinned. He wouldn’t find such a link, not spelled out as perfectly as that, but the truth might be in there all the same. When dirt was dished, you never knew what might rise up out of the mud.

But there was a problem, of course.

In the FBI, there was always a problem. In this case it was bureau security.

The confidential files were just that—confidential. They were stored in a special vaultlike room with a dreadnought clerk by the name of Betty Clement, who guarded them like a dragon at the mouth of her own rent-controlled castle. Monk glanced at the computer. He couldn’t use it for what he needed, not even to check for references to Franklin in the confidential files. It was a separate computer system altogether—requiring a special password—designed to restrict access to the agents who operated the informants and to the support staff who maintained the files. Monk himself had informant files in that vault. Like most agents, he was expected to maintain a handful of confidential informants and he could see those files anytime he wanted to … as long as Betty Clement or one of her assistants was there to let him in. He could take the elevator to the third floor, go to Betty’s lair, and request his files. She would check them out to him, check them back in, but he could do anything he wanted while they were in his custody.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to do him any good.

His own informants were a bunch of lowlifes who couldn’t have identified Thomas Franklin in a lineup, much less provide meaningful information on the man, and Monk knew he wouldn’t be allowed to see any other agent’s informant files. There might be a ton of dirt about Franklin in Betty’s files, but he had no way of finding it. Not unless he took three or four weeks to canvass every agent assigned to WFO, and there were two problems with that. First, it would simply take too long; second, such a survey would surely catch the attention of one or more supervisors who would see Franklin’s name and want to know what the hell Monk was looking for.

He stared at his notepad, at the little bit of information he’d gathered. There had to be a way to look at Betty Clement’s files without her knowing, without anyone in the bureau knowing. Monk’s mind began to play with the problem, and thirty seconds later he had a solution. Maybe. He stuffed his papers into his briefcase and hurried out of the squad room.

In the elevator on the way to the basement garage he checked his watch. It was almost three. Betty got off at five. He could still make it to the trolley barn and back here before she left for the day. Traffic would be murder, but he could do it if he hurried.