“I wouldn’t have any idea.”
Hanley didn’t think this was going anywhere, so he yanked down the sheet between himself and the woman. Zack and Court just looked at him in surprise, but neither of them lowered their gaiters. He said, “Listen very carefully, Irene. We have been surveilling you because we thought you were involved in the intelligence leaks—your log-in was used to obtain intelligence about Nicaragua that was used by the enemy—but we quickly realized there was another group watching you, as well. When they sent a known killer after you tonight, we took it on faith thatyouweren’t the real problem, and whoever is causing the compromises in the IC knows you are a threat to them, and they want you taken off the playing field.”
Court spoke to the woman, who now seemed fixated on Hanley. “We’re just trying to get an idea about who or what is behind—”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the older man in the cabin chair in front of her. Finally, she interrupted Court. “Mr…. Mr. Hanley?”
Matt saw both Court and Hightower lean back now, sharing a frustrated look with each other.
But Hanley said, “Do I know you?”
“No, sir. But I’ve seen you speak a few times. You came to ODNI for some luncheons, talked about the work of the Special Activities Division—Center, I mean. I still call it Division.”
“I still call it that, too,” Hanley said. “That would have been several years ago.”
“Yes. But then when you became deputy director of the CIA, I saw another speech you made, this one at Langley.”
“How were my speeches?”
She faltered a moment. Looked down, then back up at him. “Frankly, you seemed like you’d rather have been somewhere else.”
Zack sniffed out a laugh.
Hanley laughed, too. “You’re a talented analyst.”
Irene looked around at the plane, at Jill and Arnold, at Court and Zack; Travers’s stocking feet were just in view where he lay.
“How is he?”
“Took a zinger in the neck. A close call, but he’ll be back one hundredpercent in no time. More than I can say for the five Gauntlet men and the assassin someone sent to your condo.”
She eyed Hanley with incredulity. “You used to be the DDO. Are you on some kind of a…afieldteam now?” She said it with a mixture of shock and derision, as if the idea of being in the field and not behind a desk was a fate worse than death.
“Hell of a demotion to be working with these degenerates,” Hanley said, and Irene smiled for the first time. He added, “We are working outside the official infrastructure of the intelligence community. I’ll just leave it there.”
Her eyes cleared a little and she nodded. “That’s a good idea. And it sounds like you already have your answer, sir. The people at the heart of this are from Gauntlet Group.”
“Why did you follow Lewis Shaw to the Hirshhorn Museum today?”
“I didn’t follow him there. I knew he had a meeting. I went to see who the meeting was with.”
“And what did you find out?”
“Nothing at all. The person he met with was wearing some kind of a face mask. It looked like a real person, it really did, but it wasn’t.”
“We saw that. Why were you interested in Shaw in the first place?”
“I realized someone had accessed some files using my credentials, files regarding communications between the CIA station in Managua, Nicaragua, and Langley. Lewis was the only one who had the administrator access to have done it without leaving a record that I could easily find.
“I confronted him, told him I had proof. I was bluffing, I had nothing tangible. He denied everything, of course, but there was something in the way he denied it.”
“What do you mean?”
“A threat. An insinuation that he had connections in the building. That I should shut up and not mention anything about the access of those files again. He acted like he was doing me a favor by warning me to be quiet.
“So I thought Lewis was involved, but I didn’t think it was just him. Yeah, he could have been pulling the files with his administrator access, but why? Who was he doing it for? He’s just some computer geek. I didn’t know what to do, but then it happened.”
“What happened?” Zack prompted.
