“Yes?” Special Agent Fiona Somerville said. The number of the incoming call on her cell phone was blocked. “Sorry, who is this?”
Doug Granger repeated his name, and explained that he was representing a friend who could not be named over the phone but had once given Somerville a ride on a motorbike through the midlevels of Hong Kong.
“Oh, right, I know who you’re talking about,” Somerville said. “And?”
“He says you need to make sure the FBI looks into an Army case that Jasper Brokaw worked. And to look into Dan Kong. I’ve just sent you a link to a wireless hard-drive, and the password, and you can read up on who he is.”
“Okay.” Somerville stood next to Zoe and opened the link that had been sent through.
“The Army case,” Granger said. “He wants you guys to look into Jasper’s old Army service, the early case he did liaising with the 110th MPs.”
“The 110th?”
“That’s what your friend told me.”
“Is that friend of mine still there?”
“He told me I can’t answer that.”
“Right. He seemed okay?”
“I don’t know what he’s normally like,” Granger said, “but he seemed like he could stop a freight train with his bare hands, if he had to.”
“What’s your connection with this?”
“Nothing. I don’t want any trouble.”
“We’ve just accessed the file. You’ve been looking into . . . Dan Kong’s ex-wife.”
“Yes, ma’am. Like I said, I don’t want any trouble here. Not with the government or anyone else.”
“Right. Is that all?”
“That’s all he told me to tell you, ma’am.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re sure this friend of mine is okay?”
“Ma’am, it’d take an atomic bomb to do that guy much harm. Goodbye.”
The call ended and Somerville smiled. Walker was okay, and she had work to do that would help him—and this situation—out. She tapped a text message to McCorkell stating that things were progressing, and sat down next to Zoe.
“I’ll work on the FBI, see where they’re at,” Somerville said.
“We just got a tap on that call’s location,” Zoe said. “Beaumont.”
“Where’s Beaumont?” Somerville said.
By way of answering, Zoe zoomed out on the map. “Near Palm Springs, about thirty miles west.”
Somerville said, “What’s near there, I wonder . . .”
“Maybe Walker made the guy travel away from LA to make that call?”
“No. I think that the caller stayed there, and that Walker has moved on. I think someone’s closing in on Walker, and he knows that, so he’s leaving breadcrumbs and obstacles to tie them up a little.”
“Who would be after him?”
“We need to find out.”
•
Walker gave the PI back his .38 rounds and nothing more was said between them as the older man headed away from the laneway, his mood and demeanor higher now that Walker had given him another job; clearly he was energized to be involved in something beyond following an ex-spouse around.
Monica remained silent, sitting in the passenger seat, as Walker started up the Cuda and feathered the gas, dropping into gear and taking a right onto the side street before looping back around the block to the main street in the direction of the interstate: east, toward Palm Springs.
The entire altercation with Granger had lasted fifteen minutes. Walker figured that if that team were back in LA, and they made Monica’s credit-card purchase just over twenty minutes ago and were mobile, on the road, to the east of LA, then he and Monica had maybe a half-hour window. He pushed the gas pedal down.
“You want to talk about it?” Walker said as they merged onto the highway. The time for being cautious was disappearing and he shot the engine up to a hundred miles per hour in seconds.
“Not really.”
Walker let it be. For now. But he wondered. Custody was no big deal and seemingly not relevant. But something else had occurred to him in the conversation with Granger. Monica’s husband, being a foreign national, raised some interesting questions about her clearance level.
Any employee of the US government, or holder of a classified and above security clearance, who came into contact with a foreign national from any country had to report it. If you traveled overseas you were quarantined from that clearance-level work for six weeks, relegated to general duties where you didn’t touch anything sensitive should you be compromised.
How had that worked out with regards to their marriage? Did he travel back and forth to China during their marriage? Did she? Did she come into regular contact with his Chinese friends and associates? If she did, then her clearance was virtually null and void, because she wouldn’t be able to access or use it for extended periods, while security analysts pored through all her calls and emails and looked into the background of each and every individual she met.
This wasn’t necessarily a problem, but there were some questions that could have answers relevant to this situation. What did her ex-husband do for work? Whom did he work for? What was his relationship like with Jasper? Did he know who Jasper’s employer was? When did they marry and when did it end—and at what stage in the relationship did he know that she had such high security clearance? Why did the marriage end? All these questions would come to the culmination of: Could your ex-husband have targeted you for a relationship to get to either your clearance or to Jasper?
But Walker let it be, for now. He gave the car a spurt of gas and overtook an eighteen-wheeler. The engine sounded good on the freeway when wound out. Heading east. Fast. Half an hour to go. They would meet this friend of Jasper’s and see what he had to say. It seemed the hotter lead; whatever the guy may currently feel about Jasper, he’d have some background and he’d be a resource for the tech side of things. He might even have some good ideas about what might be coming. Maybe even how to track Jasper through the broadcasts.
Walker looked at his watch. The hours were counting down to the next attack.