One Last Scent of Jasmine (Boone's File Book 3) (35 page)

The DNI nodded. “Valka Gerard, continuing her homicidal rampage unhindered.”

“This is what a Level Zero case file is all about, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Exactly,” he confirmed. “The people who conceived the classification anticipated a breakdown of character in the chain of command. Our government depends on the integrity of those empowered to sustain the constitutional processes. Level Zero action was instituted as the ultimate check on the power of an embedded malefactor to continue to threaten national security or commit additional capital crimes.”

“But is it
legal?
”

Bradley smiled again. “Once a Level Zero case is closed, Boone, it ceases to exist. The legal system is only concerned with the actual.”

Boone’s head hit the back of his visitor chair, and her gaze went to the ceiling. He seemed willing to accommodate her internal conflict.

“If you can come up with an alternate plan of action to curb a runaway sense of entitlement in the Executive Branch, Doctor, I’d love to hear it.” He sipped again. “My suspicion is the only two people able to meaningfully affect Valka Gerard’s agenda are sitting in this room, pondering the ethics of pragmatic intervention.”

“I need time, Terry. This is a tough one.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “it is for me as well.” His coffee hovered in front of his face. “We need a course of action we can both accommodate. I wonder, though, how much time we have before someone else dies, and how much the responsibility would weigh.”

“Bad choices, and worse choices,” Boone mused. “The worst of which might be to do nothing.”

There was a long pause. “Sins of omission, the nuns used to call it,” he then agreed.

Boone stood, needing space now to weigh action and inaction. “Thanks for the talk, boss.” She exhaled. “I could be in and out today.”

“Welcome back, Agent Hildebrandt,” he replied.

Boone turned and walked to his door, seeing he was once more deep in thought, eyes fixed on his monitors as the man returned immediately to his many tasks.
I love him. I know it best when I’ve been away.

She slipped through the door, letting it close again behind her. For now, she knew he had more than enough of the troubles of the world flowing in through his computer screens.

Chapter 21 - Insights

He appreciated her closing his office door on her way out. For a time, the DNI needed nothing more than the opportunity to cloister.

The proper handling of intelligence involved not only its collection but verification of the resultant data set. Among the many sorts of human beings, Terry Bradley was in the category of those who understood this best of all.
I trust Boone explicitly, respect her immensely, and admire her intellect intensely … but I will not act on her observations until I document a concrete chain of evidence
. He had no choice but to pursue corroboration even, he knew, within the structure of a Level Zero case file: one which had all the historical permanence of flash paper.

His position occupied the top of the organizational chart delineating the hierarchy of the United States Intelligence Community. Necessarily, Bradley's status entailed command-level access to the systems used by the organizations under his umbrella of management responsibility. One of those child entities was the National Security Agency. There, his wizards of technology concerned themselves with not only the collection and transcription of foreign communication and signals intelligence, but also the protection of U.S. government communications and associated information systems.

In the course of the last few weeks, Bradley had made the documentation of secure communications within the Executive Branch a priority. Logging quietly increased, and the record of conversations and the routes thereof established. It was only an incremental step to add voice-analysis capability to the mix, a process which necessarily resulted in a temporary copy of the conversation in NSA storage. A portion of those recordings, particularly ones which emanated from the official and private devices of the Office of the Senior Advisor, had received an extension of their purge dates via his intervention. The end product was a searchable pool of conversations, records which could be filtered by query just as in any other database.

He began his substantiation of Boone's statements by constructing a timeline of the incidents to which she had been a witness. Each of them had been well reported even if the implications and interconnections were details shared only by the top levels of ODNI and InterLynk. The attempted assassination of Benedek Novak followed that of InterLynk’s Vice President. Working backward, he added the likely elimination of Delmar Givens, which itself came after what must have been collusion with the financier to attempt the espionage targeting the DARIUS missile defense system.

For each date in his chronology, he extracted another set of communications from the thousands of recordings available. Each grouping was further narrowed by international scope, reducing their number substantially. Telephone calls from Valka Gerard which specifically terminated in the United Kingdom were few indeed. The resulting chart correlated well, he could see in an overlay with each tick mark on his event timeline.
There she is … running it all.

Drilling down into the item occurring on the day prior to the last trip by Givens to Fort Marcy Park, Bradley saw the origin was determined if not the participants.
Electronic filtering to defeat voiceprint analysis was noted
in the report.
Not good enough. I need to be sure.

He isolated reasonably short segments of two call records, and plugged both into one of the NSA’s analytical engines. It was coded in synchronization to the most common algorithms in use by commercial voice-alteration units. One after another, the compensating sweeps cycled through, comparing the filtered voice patterns with Valka Gerard’s unguarded communications. As he waited, more of his morning coffee disappeared from his mug.

Finally, the scans ceased, and the flashing screen confirmed his intuition as well as the match in voice pattern.
There she is, arranging the murder of a White House Senior Advisor, and a man with whom she worked for more than four blessed years.

The evidence was at the same time incontrovertible and inadmissible as its development had resulted from intuition and opportunity, not court-ordered action. He clicked his mouse, and the data items and resulting analysis all ceased to exist in the NSA mainframe. Instantly they transferred into a Level Zero folder so restricted the administrators of his document-management system had not the privileges to see it, much less access the contents.

Bradley closed his terminal session to Fort Meade. Boone was right about everything, and his morning efforts had confirmed her reports. The Level Zero protocol had been satisfied, and he and his Senior Case Officer could proceed on their own initiative …
as long as our involvement remains equally untraceable as the case file itself
. Deniability, the DNI knew, would remain the overwhelming challenge.

Elements in my chain of command are themselves now documented to be national security risks, and it doesn’t matter to me whether the citizens of this country voted these people in willingly or blindly. My oath is to the Constitution, not the political process.
The full implication of his prioritizing settled in, and Bradley knew he had only to wait for Boone to come to the same conclusions.
Then we will act, because we are the only two people in this government who can.

Federal Security Service Command

Moscow, Russian Federation

Nine hours ahead of Virginia

Dmitry Gennadyevich Lyubov, no less harried an administrator than Terrence Bradley, was prone to keeping hours every bit as irregular. Unlike Bradley, however, it was highly unusual for him to receive calls direct to his desk phone from international numbers, much less one he recognized as American and from an area code he knew was in Virginia. Curiosity and duty trumped both his desire to end an already-extended workweek and his husband’s desire to return to his home and wife of thirty-one years. He picked up the call. Considering the source, he answered in English. “Federal Security Service—Lyubov,” he enunciated officiously.

“Dmitry Gennadyevich, what a pleasure it is to speak with you again,” came the response in Muscovite-accented Russian. “The last time was when you kissed my hand at the door of the conference room in Lubyanka.”

Bradley’s vixen, the Hildebrandt woman.
“Doctor …. this is an unexpected surprise,” the Director admitted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You owe me nothing,
tovarisch.
I seek a professional courtesy. Perhaps one which will benefit us both.”

Lyubov admired her salesmanship. “And what, Madam Hildebrandt, do you offer?”

“Through the course of my duties I have again encountered the Saudi, Yameen Amjad al-Khobar. You remember him from incidents in Vladimirskaya and Germany. I believe InterLynk’s General McAllen has been keeping the Federation apprised as to the Saudi’s whereabouts.”

“Of course,” the Russian acknowledged.
The woman’s hook is set.

“I have business with a person who might well be his current patron. It occurred to me you could be able to deepen my background information.”

“And who might this person be?”

The redhead’s voice took on a less casual tone. “Dmitry, what can you tell me of Valka Gerard?”

Lyubov felt his blood pressure rise. “Doctor, I dearly
hope
you have done me the courtesy of using a secured line.”

“Of
course,
Dmitry. Do you forget who it is calling you?”

I might never forget this one if I am not careful now.
He cleared his throat. “You pose a more difficult question than you know, Doctor. What specific question can I answer?”

“Oh, Dmitry, my phrasing was overly broad,” she apologized as one professional to another. She paused. “There are rumors of ties to her homeland which endure.”

“I can confirm those. Madam Gerard’s heart has not strayed far from Estonia … nor has it ever from her most dominant philosophies.”

“Do the two intertwine, do you think?”

Here I must be careful.
“There are rumors, perhaps, particularly among those in Estonia who do not favor realignment with the Federation. It was her leftist tendencies which made her such an attractive asset to your present administration, did they not?”

“I don’t dispute your analysis,
tovarisch.
” the voice on the phone conceded. “Regardless, Dmitry, from what you are saying, the woman still thinks of her homeland as
home
.”

“Ties in my culture bind, Doctor, but I hardly need remind someone whose command of my language flows so elegantly.”

“Dmitry, you silver-tongued
devil,
” she teased. “Back on task with you.”

Lyubov sighed. “Your President’s Senior Advisor retains her ties to Estonia, Doctor, and has buttressed them with continuing favors to her equivalents in Tallinn. Some in the government there consider her a Russian agent. She is a power there as well, though one well removed from casual scrutiny.”

“Just the reason I did not call a casual observer,” the dangerous redhead admitted. “You make an intriguing observation, as to Valka’s reputation in Tallinn. May I ask you to elaborate?”

He cleared his throat once more. “I can say I know of no official arrangement.”
True enough.
“Although, given the level of duplicity in your government’s current administration, should one come to light I would not find myself flabbergasted.”

She seemed for a long moment to be gauging his words. “
Spasiba, tovarisch,
for your candor.”

“The Saudi al-Khobar, you say, is now associated with her?” Lyubov inquired.

“Almost certainly. I can foresee the possibilities of us developing a mutually beneficial arrangement in this regard.”

“One in which everyone here would be
most
interested to participate, madam.”

She chuckled, sounding delightfully satisfied. “Mind your Inboxes, Director. The details could come through the channels of mutual friends.”

The InterLynk system, of course.
Lyubov understood her reference.
Thank God for her discretion
. “Such attention is usual, madam.”

“Until next time, then, Dmitry, regardless of the pleasure.”

“The pleasure was mine, madam. I wish you well in your endeavors. A patriot of any affiliation is in my mind preferential company to a traitor.”

“I understand completely and agree. Have the
best
of evenings, Director.”

Lyubov stared at the phone for a moment after their discussion had ended, pondering how his last call of the week was also his most intriguing. Boone Hildebrandt, from her tone, seemed pleased. The conversation had not taken nearly the toll on him it might have, had she asked entirely different questions.
I have been lucky this time. Stay well away from this one, Dmitry. She is dangerous in more ways than a married man should contemplate.

The remainder of the DNI’s Friday was devoted to more routine business. Bradley, always engaged, had left for his usual meeting of the Security Council, a trip which routinely entailed visits to Langley on the return circuit. In his absence, Boone had her own backlog of routine Level One paperwork to approve, spending the remainder of her own workday a prisoner of the ODNI document-management system. Nevertheless, the essential questions of the day did not seem to stray far from the forefront of the Senior Case Officer’s mind.

It was late afternoon when she looked up to a gentle knock at her door. Edna Reese stood there with a casual cup of coffee in hand. “Doctor? Do you have a moment?”

Surprised, Boone swiveled in her chair. “Of course, Ed. Come in.”