Teddy couldn’t get over the pictures on Millie’s phone.
“He photographed the guy?” Teddy said. “It’s a brave new world. In my day, if you wanted to confront your significant other with infidelity, you hired a private eye.”
“Are you suggesting that’s better or worse?” Holly said.
“Well, it’s certainly different. All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
Millie scrolled through the pictures on the phone.
“This is incredibly disappointing,” Teddy said.
“I know.”
“The guy’s three-quarters profile and he’s in the dark.”
“The boyfriend was afraid to get any closer.”
“Could he see any better? Can he describe the guy at all?”
Millie shook her head. “He couldn’t. Of course, he was drunk when I met him and I couldn’t push the point, but I really don’t think he knows.”
“What you see is what you get,” Teddy said. He scrolled through the photos, chose the one with the best angle. “All right, let’s see if we can make this any better.”
Teddy sat down at Holly’s computer and loaded the picture into Photoshop. He cropped the man’s head, enlarged it, and played with the color and contrast. A face emerged from the shadows.
Millie sucked in her breath. “Look!”
“Nicely done,” Holly said. “You think it’s our guy?”
“Let’s find out. Millie, that’s all for now. On your way out, call Margo Sappington in the White House counsel’s office and ask her to drop by, would you?”
Margo wasn’t happy to be called back. “I told you everything I know,” she protested when Holly ushered her into the conference room.
“I’m sure you did,” Teddy said. He slid a copy of the photo across the table. “Do you recognize the man in the picture?”
Margo studied it and frowned. “It’s a bad shot.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Are you asking if this is the agent who spoke to me?”
“Is he?” Holly said.
“He could be. Like I said, it’s a bad shot.”
Holly looked at Teddy. He nodded.
“Okay, thanks for coming in,” Holly said.
“That’s all you wanted?”
“That’s all.”
Margo went out.
“So, what now?” Holly said.
Teddy took a breath. “All right. We know Margo Sappington bugged Stone Barrington’s phone. We don’t know who told her to do it.”
“An Arab-looking guy posing as a CIA agent,” Holly said. “Most likely the guy in the picture.”
“Right. The question is, how did the bogus agent know Stone would be at Margo’s table?”
“Aren’t there several possibilities?”
“Actually, no. Stone didn’t know he was going until that very afternoon. He was summoned to the dinner by the President’s chief of staff, Ann Keaton.”
“It wasn’t her.”
“Are you sure?”
“She’s a personal friend of Stone Barrington, and fiercely loyal to the President. She wouldn’t have told anyone.”
“She had to tell the tailor who made his suit.”
“She had to tell him Stone’s measurements. She would not have told him what table he was sitting at, so he couldn’t have tipped the phony agent off to get Margo Sappington to plant the bug.”
Holly’s intercom buzzed. She picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“Lance Cabot is here to see you.”
“Just a moment.” Holly covered the mouthpiece. “Lance is here.”
“Oops,” Teddy said.
“He won’t be long. Wait in the conference room.”
Teddy slipped through the door.
Holly uncovered the phone and said, “Send him in.”
Lance came in with a manila folder. He smiled. “Is that payback, Holly?”
“What?”
“Making me wait.”
“Thirty seconds,” Holly said.
“It’s symbolic.”
“What’s up, Lance?”
“We got the shooter.”
Holly raised her eyebrows. “What!”
“Well, we don’t have him, but we think we’ve identified him.”
Lance took a photograph out of the folder, passed it over. The CIA had gotten it right. It was a picture of the man who was the actual shooter.
“This gentleman here. We’re running facial recognition on him. So far we don’t have a match.”
“What makes you think he’s the shooter?”
“This picture was taken from the surveillance video of the building where the shot was fired. He took the elevator up to the nineteenth floor at nine-fifteen that morning. He took the elevator down from the eighteenth floor at one-oh-five. The building is twenty-one stories high. We figure at nine-fifteen he got off at nineteen, slipped through the fire door, and took the service stairs up two flights so as not to be seen getting off on the floor with access to the roof. We figure after the shooting he lost track on the stairs and went down an extra flight.”
“Is there any company with offices on both floors?”
“No. And he didn’t take an elevator from one floor to the other.”
“That’s a good deduction. Did they have his name at security?”
“No. The guards at the desk make you present photo ID. If your face matches the face on the ID, they let you in.”
“They don’t keep written records?”
“No.” The inflection in Lance’s voice showed what he thought of that practice.
“It’s just an office building, Lance, with no government affiliation.”
“Yes, I know. It’s just frustrating.”
“What are you going to do with the photo?”
“We’re going to let the D.C. police put it out as a person of interest they’d like to question.”
“Why not put out a general alert?”
“We don’t want to cause unnecessary panic. Though we suspect terrorism, we haven’t yet discovered this man’s identity or affiliations. If we basically declare that the assassination was a terrorist attack, the populace will wonder when the next one is coming.”
“Do you think there’s more to come?”
Lance looked grim. “Given what we know, it seems a safe assumption.”
“You want to tell me what this guy would be doing with a CIA shell?”
“No. And I’m glad I don’t have to be telling anybody else.”
Lance smiled, and went out.
Teddy came out of the conference room. He picked up the photo and could see immediately it wasn’t the same man they’d identified in the photo from Karen’s ex-boyfriend. “So. Another terrorist. I wonder what Lance would think if he knew we had one, too.”
“I’m surprised facial recognition didn’t work,” Holly said. “This shot is certainly clear enough.”
“These guys aren’t mainstream, that’s been clear from the start.”
“So who are they?”
“And why in the world would they care about some bill in Congress?”
“It’s a veterans aid bill,” Holly said. “Maybe they’re disgruntled vets.”
“Disgruntled Middle Eastern terrorist vets? Trying to pass a bill? What the hell is that all about?” Teddy shook his head. “Can you get someone in here who knows something about Congress?”