Breach of Protocol Read online

  “That was Charlie Rose reporting live from Louisiana, now on to other news . . .”

  Jana pocketed her phone and tried to put herself together, then walked toward the command center.

  “Where are Jana and Cade?” Uncle Bill said.

  “I don’t know where they are,” Knuckles replied. “They’re never late to anything.”

  Kyle glanced at the ground.

  “You wouldn’t be much for undercover work, Kyle.” Uncle Bill said. “That look on your face tells me they are indisposed at the moment but will be here shortly?”

  Kyle smiled.

  As Bill walked off, Knuckles said, “What’s up? Where are they?”

  “Well, there was a coat hanger on Cade’s door handle this morning.”

  The kid cocked his head to the side.

  “Oh, I forgot. You’re probably too young to have gone to college yet. How did you get this job anyway? Look, when you see a coat hanger hanging on someone’s door handle in the dorms, it means don’t knock.”

  Knuckles face flushed.

  “Really, Knuckles, how did you get this job? I mean, not that you’re not qualified. In fact, you are perfect for this job. But what are you, sixteen, seventeen? I can’t imagine how someone your age could get employed by the NSA with no degree.”

  “Well, it kind of runs in the family, the NSA I mean. And besides, what makes you think just because I’m so young I don’t have a college degree?” Knuckles walked closer. “Or a masters, or a dual PhD in physics and applied cryptography from Stanford University for that matter?”

  “How did you get a PhD by the age of seventeen? That’s impossible.”

  But when he saw Cade and Jana walk into the command center, he stopped, and a grin peeled across his face.

  “What are you laughing at?” Knuckles said. “You don’t believe me?”

  “No dummy, take a look.”

  “So? It’s Cade and Jana. What about them?”

  Kyle thumped Knuckles on the shoulder. “Jana has misbuttoned her blouse and Cade’s T-shirt is backwards.”

  The only thing that could distract Knuckles from the scene was the phone that rang on his desk. He picked it up.

  “They found a what?” Knuckles said into the phone. “They said it was a glass bead? What the hell does a glass bead have to do with anything? Is the assassin making jewelry or something?”

  He hung up the phone.

  “What was that about?” Kyle said.

  “Crime lab. The techs found a piece of evidence. They finally feel like they isolated the spot where the sniper was waiting when Director Latent came outside.”

  He looked up and saw Jana.

  “Jana, I’m sorry.”

  “Dammit. You guys have to stop avoiding talking about Director Latent’s assassination in front of me.” She averted her gaze and her eyes found the floor. “You have to stop treating me like I’m a delicate child. He meant a lot to me. But that’s why I have to find Jarrah and stop him. Latent would want it that way. He wouldn’t want me to stop.” She looked around the room. “There will be time for grieving after Jarrah is either in prison or dead by my hands.”

  “Jana,” Cade said. “I don’t like to hear that. You sound like a killer. That’s not you; that’s not who you are. And that’s not us. We aren’t here to kill people and you know it.”

  She said nothing.

  Uncle Bill ran into the room. “What is it? You’ve got evidence from the scene? Show it to me, pull it up on screen three.”

  Knuckles threw his hands into the air.

  “Uncle Bill, the data package hasn’t even arrived yet. All I’ve got is a report that shows they found a piece of evidence right at the spot on the rooftop where they think the sniper crouched. It’s a glass bead. But there’s something weird about it.”

  “A glass bead? You mean weirder than the fact that it’s a glass bead? Like what?”

  “The homicide detective said the bead is abnormally shaped.”

  “How so?”

  “He says it looks handmade. It’s tiny, a lot smaller than a glass marble. He also says there’s an object embedded inside the clear glass. I talked to him while he was examining it in the field, but he said he’ll need a dissecting microscope to get the magnification he needs to see what it is.”

  “All right, people,” Bill said, “let’s get on the horn to the FBI agents on the scene. Tell them to get that glass bead to the lab immediately.”

  Kyle MacKerren leaned around the corner. “Already being handled. We’ve got several CIA agents on the scene as well. They, ah, just procured the glass marble and are examining it in a field laboratory at the moment.”

  “Good God,” Jana said. “There are so many agencies on the scene, who’s in charge?”

  “The homicide detective is going to be pissed,” Knuckles said. “Murder is their jurisdiction, even if it was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who was killed.”

  “Jurisdiction-schmurisdiction,” Kyle said. “He who has the most agents on scene has jurisdiction.” He smiled. “Plus, all of us are practically working for the same agency now.”

  17

  DEAD END

  Bowling Brook Apartments, Laurel, Maryland

  It became apparent that staying in the NSA dorms could not go on too long without a visit home. By the time Jana got back to her apartment, she was exhausted. With all the anxiety of losing Stephen Latent and her friend Gilda, the stress was beginning to pile up.

  And weighing equally on her mind were the statements Waseem Jarrah had made to her. Jana wished she had been able to record those first phone calls. He said some strange things and she knew they meant something but had no idea what.

  When Jarrah had finally stopped questioning her childhood, he had used the phrase “a voice like thunder,” and the word “come.” To her it had seemed as though he were either quoting something from memory or reading a script.

  Between those cryptic statements and his taunting about her parents, Jana knew Jarrah was laughing at her. To him this was all a big joke, a game. He seemed like a person having the time of his life. With last year’s successful nuclear attack on United States soil, Jarrah seemed to have achieved his life’s ambition. He was not the same person anymore. Jarrah was right, his whole demeanor had changed.

  Prior to the success of the nuclear attack, everyone had believed he was losing his mind. And Jana now realized the psychological profile the FBI had been building on him was completely worthless. His comments about her parents were particularly troubling. She remembered things from her childhood in bits and pieces. Memories of her father were mere flashes. He had died of cancer when she was just two years old. In particular, she had one memory of his standing outside the front window of their modest home in the mountains of North Carolina. She was inside on the couch, looking out the long span of windows, and he was throwing snowballs at the window to make her laugh.

  She also recalled from somewhere around the age of six, her mother’s admission that she and her father had never married. They had been in love and living together, but to Jana the knowledge had felt like a punch in the gut.

  And then at the age of seven everything seemed to blur together. She remembered sitting in her second grade class on that terrible day when the school nurse had come for her. The nurse told Jana to collect her things and they walked to the front office. Once there she was startled to see a uniformed police officer. The only thing she could think of was that she was in trouble, although she had no idea why.

  What the officer said to her was something she never forgot. Her mother had died in a car crash and her grandfather was on his way now. The shock was overwhelming. She didn’t remember anything that was said after that, and her whole world came crashing down around her. There seemed to be no way out.

  In the weeks that followed, Jana learned she would go to live with her grandparents on their farm in rural Tennessee. When her grandfather and grandmother arrived in their rusty pickup t
ruck, she knew her life would be forever changed. Her parents were gone and they weren’t coming back. About a week later the trio drove to her grandparents’ farm and that’s where she spent the rest of her youth.

  Now, as an adult, Jarrah’s statements began to make her question her own family. Why have I never looked at the newspaper articles that surely would have been written about my mother’s accident? Why did I never ask my grandfather about my father? Jarrah’s statements put everything she knew about them into doubt.

  She heard the key turn in her apartment’s front door and looked over as Cade walked in. Although they didn’t live together, each had a key to the other’s apartment.

  “Hey,” he said. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”

  “Sorry. Just a lot going on right now, obviously.”

  “Listen, you’ve suffered a lot of loss in such a short time. And this case is killing all of us. No one would blame you if you took a few days off.”

  She glared at him. “A few days off? Cade, I just had a few months off. There’s no way I’m going to miss a minute of this. I’ve got to be there. He killed Latent. I’ve got to track him down. I’ve got to be the one who catches that son of a bitch.”

  “I hear you. But it’s starting to feel like last time. You always have this idea that it’s you against him. There are a lot of us working together on this, remember?”

  “I know,” Jana said. “It’s just that it’s so personal this time. He’s after me. And I don’t mean he’s trying to kill me. In fact, that’s the last thing he wants to do. He wants to see me suffer, he wants to see me burn.”

  “We’re worried about you. Worried about the PTSD returning. You’ve been doing so well over the past few months, but this is all so fresh, so stressful.”

  Lines etched into her forehead. “I’m not going to have another episode, got it? I’ve got control of it.”

  “Hey, I don’t mean to upset you. But in Spain—”

  “Screw Spain! I’m fine. But I feel like I’m walking around on plate glass. Everyone is watching me, especially Kyle, afraid I’m about to blow at any moment. I am not a little girl anymore, and it pisses me off.”

  This time it was Cade who had had enough.

  “Hey, Kyle cares about you. He just doesn’t want to see you get hurt, and he’s worried. And you, you’ve always had this chip on your shoulder, like everyone around you is treating you unfairly. Sure, the FBI is a man’s world, but there are few agents who have accomplished what you have. Everyone inside the bureau looks at you with respect. They don’t treat you any differently, and it’s starting to show that you are too sensitive about this male-female thing.”

  Jana crossed her arms. “I think you should leave,” she said. It wasn’t anger, but Cade could tell he had overstepped his bounds.

  “Fine,” he said, but turned before he left. “I care about you, Jana. I always have.” The door closed behind him and Jana slumped into a chair at the table.

  “Dammit,” she said to herself. “The one thing Stephen Latent wanted me to do is realize that our relationships are more important than anything else. And I’m going to screw this up.”

  With a long exhale she reached down and grabbed her laptop. After all these years without questioning her childhood, she had to know. She had to find out what public records existed about the death of her parents.

  In some ways, her lack of knowledge made her feel like a fool. Jarrah was playing with her, and she knew it. She thought to herself, The SOB is probably laughing at me for questioning my own upbringing. But even if Jarrah were playing mind games with her, she did have to admit she should have had more questions about her own childhood. But it never occurred to her that her grandfather would lie. He was such a gentle soul. And why would there be any reason for him to lie in the first place? Cancer happens. Car accidents happen. Jana could not understand what, if anything, there was to hide.

  After ten minutes of scouring the Internet for search results, she finally landed on a single article about her mother. However, as was common for the day, the details of the car accident were not mentioned. Reading her mother’s name in print brought those old emotions back, and they bubbled just beneath the surface.

  But where her father’s name was concerned, she could find nothing. Since he had died of cancer, the only thing she thought she might find was perhaps an obituary.

  “I guess Google hasn’t scanned every document and newspaper article from everywhere in the world just yet.” His death occurred way before the Internet had spread into popular culture, so Jana knew that if any records were to be found, they would be in the form of newspaper clippings at the public library in her hometown in Tennessee. They may even be on microfiche, the old method of archiving newspapers onto a roll of film. But wherever the records were, it was going to take a lot more than a simple search to find them.

  Exhausted, Jana closed the lid on the laptop, leaned her head onto the table and drifted into a fitful sleep.

  18

  SYMPTOMS

  NSA Command Center

  “It’s here!,” Knuckles yelled across the command center. “I’ve got the evidence package from the crime scene where Director Latent was murdered. The images from the rooftop, it’s all here.”

  “Well, get it up on monitor six, son,” Uncle Bill said as he clamored to make his way toward the monitor.

  People from around the room got up from their cubes and congregated below the monitor which hung from the ceiling, surrounded by other monitors.

  “Okay, it’s coming up now. There are several shots. Here, let me get to the close-ups of the glass bead they found.”

  Cade asked, “They didn’t find any other evidence?”

  “No, nothing,” Knuckles replied. “I just spoke with the NYPD homicide detective. He said the place was entirely devoid of forensic evidence of any kind. No cigarette butts where the killer would have been hiding, no fingerprints on the door that led onto the rooftop, no fibers, nothing. It was pouring down rain, so they figure any evidence would have washed away.”

  “What about video surveillance footage from security cameras inside the building?” Uncle Bill asked. “Did they catch anything?”

  As Knuckles scrolled through the photographs of the rooftop, people scrutinized every detail of the scene. Everyone wanted to be the one to discover a clue that might lead them somewhere in the case, anywhere.

  “Well,” Knuckles said, “they have the subject on video, yes. But the homicide detective said it’s a dead end. The sniper was completely hooded. He had on a backpack that apparently contained the weapon, but both he and the backpack are unidentifiable. You can’t see his face, labels on clothing, nothing.”

  “Crap,” Bill said. “Cade, Knuckles, I know the detective said he didn’t see anything on that video, but I want you two to take a look yourselves. Make sure he didn’t miss anything. Never hurts to put a couple of pairs of new eyes on it.”

  “Yes, sir,” they chirped in unison.

  “Okay, so those were the photos from the rooftop. Not much to see there. These next ones are close-ups of the tiny glass bead that was recovered.”

  Images of a small, oblong shaped glass bead appeared on the monitor. Each successive image zoomed closer to the object embedded in the center of the clear glass.

  “And how about this glass bead?” Bill said. “Was there no forensic evidence on it? No fingerprints, fibers, or, I don’t know, residue of cocaine, chocolate sauce, anything?”

  “Nothing, sir,” Knuckles replied. “They ran all kinds of tests on it. Nothing. In fact, the lab techs said they were a little surprised by that. They tested the outer surface of the glass for everything they could think of. And they said although the rain would have washed off a lot of evidence, usually something is left behind. They were baffled.”

  Jana and Kyle walked over.

  “Can we zoom in tighter on the bead?” Jana said. “We need to see what’s embedded inside the glass.”

  “Hold o
n,” Knuckles said. “The next set of images are photos taken through a dissecting microscope.”

  “A microscope?” Kyle said. “Just how small of an object is in that glass?”

  “No, Kyle,” Cade said. “Don’t you remember freshman year, your biology class? We’re not talking about a typical microscope. A dissecting microscope is used when you either dissect something, or closely examine an insect or other object. It doesn’t magnify to that level. It just lets you look really close, as if you’re holding a hugely powerful magnifying glass in your hand.”

  “Teacher’s pet,” Kyle retorted.

  “Men,” Jana said. “So, what is that thing inside the glass? It looks like, it looks like a tiny horse, doesn’t it? With something on its back, right? Am I imagining that?”