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“Just sex for you. Was it just sex for him?”
“Maybe it was.” She set her cup down and stared at him. “You really do care about him?”
“Why do you sound so surprised by that?”
“Unfairly or not, some view you as this machine without a lot of human touches.” When he didn’t respond, her features softened. “I don’t include myself in that group, Decker. I’ve seen you being human. You’re being human right now with your concerns about Melvin. It’s…it’s nice, actually
.”
“If you two hit it off, great. He could use someone like you.”
“Meaning what?”
“You may have to deceive as part of your job, but I see you as honorable, Agent Brown. Your father got on that wall because he served his country faithfully. I don’t see the apple falling far from the tree. And Melvin is a very honorable person. So you two have that in common. I would say you both deserve nothing less.”
This was obviously not what Brown had been expecting. She took a sip of coffee and looked away. When she turned back her eyes held a shimmer of moisture.
“Let me rephrase what I just said about you being human, Decker. I actually think you’re one of the most human people I’ve ever met. And call me Harper, please.”
They both sat there in silence for another few seconds until Brown cleared her throat and said, “Why were you at the hotel in the first place?”
“I’d called Melvin a few times and he never answered. I was worried.”
“I think he turned his phone off. He was fine when I left him.”
“Good to know. Thanks.”
She fingered her cup, her gaze pointed at the tabletop. “We did talk some. Mostly about you. How amazing he thought you were. How, if not for you, he’d still be in prison.”
“That’s a stretch.”
“Not according to him.”
“It was nice of him to say,” Decker said quietly, not looking at her either.
“What really happened to your face? I’ll find out eventually.”
Decker took a few minutes to tell her what had happened. Brown’s jaw sank lower with each sentence.
“Is Jamison okay?”
“Not now, but she will be. It’s not easy, killing someone. You don’t just get over it in a day.” He looked over at her. “You know that feeling.”
She nodded. “The guy in your parking lot was not my first. And though I know I didn’t show it that night, I went home, drank a bottle of wine, and didn’t sleep a wink. I kept looking down at my hand and thinking that there was one less person alive that day because of me.”
“I figured as much.”
She smiled weakly. “I guess I’m not as tough as you thought I was.”
“Actually, that makes you tougher than I thought you were.”
“Every time I think I have you figured out, Mr. Decker, you throw me a curve.”
“Not my intention.”
“I wonder.”
“How did you leave things with Melvin?”
“That I very much wanted to see him again.”
“We still have a case to work,” he replied.
“I compartmentalize with the best of them. Speaking of the case, any revelations since we were last together?”
“Berkshire was a spy or a spy’s handler. Dabney may or may not have been her mole. We have no real record of her past ten years ago. She might not have been in this area all that time, but Dabney has. Same house, same wife, big family.”
“So you’re saying there’s an incongruity if we think Dabney and Berkshire were working together long-term?”
“You tell me. Do the spy and the handler need to be in the same place?”
“Absolutely not. I mentioned Montes before? Her handlers were in Cuba. She’d meet with them sometimes. They’d either come here or she’d go to them. But only periodically.”
“So Dabney, who undoubtedly traveled a lot for his business, would have had the means to go to her?”
“Yes. And use the cover of his business to do so.”
“And since we have no idea where Berkshire was thirty years ago, we can’t trace that. But—”
Brown said, “But we know where she was maybe ten years ago. And we could match that up with Dabney’s travel during that same period.”
“If she met him in the places where she lived. If not, we might be able to check where she traveled, if she went by train or plane or bus.”
“So you’re leaning to the conclusion that these two have worked together before.”
“Let’s put it this way, I can’t rule it out,” replied Decker.
“But we haven’t had any other instances of spying that we could connect to Dabney, other than the secrets sold to pay off the gambling debts.”
“But Dabney didn’t just work with DIA. He worked with the FBI, NSA, and at least a half dozen other government agencies.”
Brown’s features tightened. “If he stole from all of them, it’s a big problem.”
“I always thought this was a big problem,” retorted Decker.
“We can start checking out the travel angle to see if we can place these two in the same place at the same time.”
“I’ll have Bogart’s people get on it.”
“But Decker, if Dabney and Berkshire were working together all this time, why would he kill her on the street in front of the Hoover Building?”
“Regret? Some friction or falling-out we don’t know about?”
“Well, if they were working together, her contacts got him the ten million bucks to pay off his son-in-law’s gambling debt and save his daughter’s and granddaughter’s lives. You’d think he would have been grateful toward her, not homicidal.”
“It’s funny how the human mind works. It all depends on perspective.”
“And the third party you mentioned? The one who almost killed you and stole the flash drive you discovered?”
“They’re clearly still out there. They’re connected to this at a level I don’t understand yet, but that connection is deep. And I have a feeling we’re going to have to go face-to-face with them before we solve this thing.”
Brown took out her Beretta and laid it on the table. “Well, let’s hope they don’t get us before we get them,” she said.
