“No.”
“We went out on this dirt road to the base of some mountains, and he dug a pit. He had a crazy look in his eyes. He told me it was a celebration. He had ice in a cooler and a bottle of tequila and had packed everything else into a duffel bag of his father’s. In it were his air force uniforms, his letter of acceptance into flight school, commendations for performance as an RPA pilot, photos with friends who flew remotely piloted aircraft, and other things. He emptied everything into that pit and poured all the gas on it. It made a huge ball of flame. He was crying and laughing and drank most of the bottle of tequila alone. I drove us home. Before he passed out, he said some things that were way out there. Way beyond that letter. Should I have told the agents who came to see me?”
“What did he say?”
“Crazy, drunk things. Have you seen what the media is doing to him?”
“It’s hard to miss.”
“But you’re not doing anything about it.”
“There’s nothing I can do. He’s getting looked at, and then the investigation will move on.”
“Really, you’re just watching too?”
The line clicked as she hung up, disappointed in me. I couldn’t get the conversation out of my head all afternoon, and didn’t lose it until trolling through Jane Stone’s computer files downloaded from the flash drive. I opened one labeled Vacation Ideas.
Some were vacation spots—Tulum, Mexico; the Fiji Islands; touring the fjords of Norway; a spa in France; skiing at Val Gardena. I went from one to the next. Most predated Jane’s February transfer to the DT squad, but not the last four. The first of those was titled Hong Kong. I scrolled through typical tourist stuff, Victoria Heights, Kowloon.
I opened Argentina next and looked through the photos and places to stay. Jane made notes on where to eat in Mendoza and hike in Patagonia. I read a restaurant menu, then backed out and opened the second-to-last travel file, New Zealand. In New Zealand were trout streams to fish, hiking routes on the South Island, mountain-biking tours, and after the cycling tours came a file with snippets of conversation captured in a chat room by the NSA and forwarded to the FBI.
What the fuck? What’s this, Jane?
I backtracked through the previous files, then returned and read transcripts between a Lebanese businessman with ties to Hamas bomb makers and another as-yet-unidentified man within the United States, intercepted in Mexico City in mid-May. A transcript excerpt read:
“Is it on?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, we helped with things.”
“And they are safe?”
“Everything is waiting. If everyone does their part the events will be spectacular.”
“Good.”
“If this is successful, this will be the new way we do business.”
“I will pray that I do my part.”
Jane had moved this into her Vacation Ideas file under New Zealand. I didn’t know what to make of that. She had a labyrinthine, borderline paranoid way of coding information when she worked a case. She tucked investigative pieces away in places seemingly with no connection. Maybe the key here was travel or route of travel or something else she heard that tied an aspect of this to New Zealand. But I couldn’t get there by guessing. All I knew was that the intercepted conversation mattered to her and that New Zealand tied in somehow.
I took a late afternoon sip of cold coffee and made a call to Metro detective Perth and left another message for Philip Ramer as I turned the NSA intercept in my head. The word events was used, not event. When I hung up, Venuti was standing in front of me looking haggard.
“Hey,” I said, “I just found something in Jane’s files. Do you know anything about an NSA intercept of a Lebanese businessman in Mexico?”
“She mentioned something. She said the date of it fit with a comment your informant made.”
“Mondari wasn’t mine anymore. He was Mondi by then and Jane’s and had been for months. Do you remember exactly what she said?”
“No.”
“I don’t know how you could forget if you knew what was on the transcripts.”
“I track a lot of things, Grale. I see a lot of transcripts from the NSA with suspicious conversations. You made a run at supervisor and you went back to being a GS-13, and you’ll probably retire a 13, but you were there long enough to know you can’t read and absorb everything.”
“I’m not holding your feet to the fire. I’m just trying to get my head around Jane’s notes. She thought that transcript was important.”