44

This time the anonymous call came in the middle of the day, just before noon. Paige expected the voice of the Patriot, but she was surprised by the thin and reedy voice of the nervous young man who had told her about the drone strike.

“Congratulations on your win yesterday.”

“Thank you.”

Paige pressed 4 on her keypad. After the last call, Wellington had enabled the call recording function on Paige’s smartphone. Now she just had to keep this guy talking.

“I was hoping you would win. The government is definitely hiding something.”

“How do you know this?”

“Like I told you last time, they asked me to lie about some things.”

“Are you being honest with me now?”

“Of course. I don’t have any reason to lie.”

He sounded a little defensive, Paige thought. “Can you tell me your name?”

“No.”

“How can I get in touch with you?”

“You can’t. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Last time you said that you and some other drone pilots were asked to lie about a drone strike that occurred on March 11. I researched it like you asked me to do.”

Paige waited for a response. The last time they spoke, this man had not revealed that he was a pilot—only that he and others had been asked to lie about drone surveillance.

“What did you find out?” he asked

Paige smiled to herself. He was a drone pilot. “That three Houthi leaders were killed. That the Yemeni coalition government took credit for it, but that you or one of the other pilots fired the missile.”

“That wasn’t my mission.”

“Why did the CIA want you to lie about the surveillance associated with that strike?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. They didn’t say.”

“Have you killed civilians? Is that why you’re calling me? Too many civilians have died?”

“No. It’s got nothing to do with that.”

“Then what does it have to do with? And how do I know this is connected to my case?”

“Get the actual surveillance footage. It’ll show how long we had been focusing on that compound.”

“I can’t do that—the surveillance footage is protected. So you have to tell me. How is it connected to our case?”

The man hesitated before answering. “I don’t—if I figure it out, I’ll call back. But you can’t tell anyone that I’ve called. Not even your client.”

“I understand,” Paige said. She tried to keep her voice reassuring. She was going down the checklist that Wellington had prepared, question by question.

“Who asked you to lie? Can you give me his name?”

“No, but I can tell you that the conversation took place the day after the SEALs died.”

Paige’s heart started beating faster. “Let me get this straight—you’re saying that the conversation in which you were asked to lie happened one day after the SEALs died?”

“I can’t talk anymore. I’ll call back if I get more information.”

“Wait—” But it was too late. The drone pilot was already gone.

Paige immediately dialed Wellington. “Get over here,” she said. “I just got a call from our friend at the CIA.”

Though the number itself was untraceable, the recording was clear enough to hear every word and every inflection. Paige watched Wellington hunch over his computer, his face a few inches from the screen. He had installed voice stress analysis software that served as a sort of crude lie detector for audio recordings. Wellington swore that the accuracy rate was above 90 percent.

He worked for about ten minutes, then called Paige over. “Watch this graph,” he said.

As the audio played on Wellington’s computer, they watched the stress level in the drone pilot’s voice. He was incredibly nervous, and the meter registered consistently high, but for most of the conversation the software concluded that he was telling the truth. It spiked into the fabrication range on only two questions. The first was when Paige quizzed him on why he had been asked to lie about the surveillance.

“I don’t know,” the pilot had said. “They didn’t say.”

And on the very next question, even though the pilot hadn’t hesitated before answering, it registered a fabrication again. “Have you killed civilians? Is that why you’re calling me? Too many civilians have died?”

“No. It’s got nothing to do with that.” The meter spiked again.

“He lied,” Wellington said matter-of-factly. “But you asked him a compound question. It’s hard to know which one he was answering.”

They finished listening to the tape, and Wellington typed some notes, thinking out loud as he did so.

“Here’s what we know. Drone pilots running missions in Yemen were asked to lie about how long the CIA had been doing surveillance on the compound that was bombed on March 11. Our guy was told to lie the day after the SEALs were killed. They told him why they wanted him to lie, though the pilot for some reason wasn’t willing to tell us. And he’s probably killed a bunch of civilians.”

Wellington and Paige stared at the notes for a moment. “I keep coming back to my theory that Holloman was a CIA agent,” Wellington said. “Holloman gets arrested shortly after this drone strike on March 11. The Houthis claim he’s a spy. Maybe he discovered this compound while he was in the country doing interviews. The CIA wants people to believe that they had been watching that compound for nearly a month, well before Holloman came into the country.”

“That all makes sense,” Paige said tentatively. “But it still doesn’t explain why the president would send SEAL Team Six in if she knew it was a trap.”

“Maybe she didn’t know for sure it was a trap. Maybe she was worried about Holloman giving up state secrets and wanted to rescue a CIA agent.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what happened,” Wellington protested.

For Paige, there were still too many pieces that didn’t fit. Who was the Patriot, and why was he giving them information? Why hadn’t Marcano discussed this directly with the president instead of meeting with Philip Kilpatrick on a park bench? Why hadn’t the president sent in the Quick Response Force? Why did she work exclusively on the speech that she would give in case of a disaster?

“We’re missing something, Wellington,” Paige said. “We may be missing a whole lot of things.”

Things got even more confusing on Saturday when Paige got in touch with Daniel Reese. She thanked him again for personally meeting with Kristen Anderson to give her the CIA pension benefits. “As you probably know, that came in handy at our hearing.”

“Yes, ma’am, I heard that it did.”

Paige couldn’t decide if she loved or hated the “yes, ma’am” routine, so she let it go. “You said I could call if I needed help. Do you have a moment for me to bounce something off you?”

“Actually, I’m extremely busy right now, Ms. Chambers. And given the fact that the case appears to be proceeding forward into litigation, it might be best if we didn’t talk after all.”

Paige was stunned by the sudden turnaround. Somebody had gotten to him. “I’m sorry. I was just following up on something you said at Kristen’s house.”

“I appreciate what you’re doing for Mrs. Anderson,” Reese said stiffly. “But I really think it would be best if we didn’t talk.”