"Well, random, it looked random. Smash and grab. They got a gym bag, some clothes, nothing classified or sensitive."
I asked for details, names, phone numbers, addresses. He opened his large briefcase, which was filled with hundreds of papers, and found a manila folder. He gave me the information I'd asked for. I reassured him again that we wouldn't jeopardize his investigation.
"Appreciate that."
"What's the other big case you're working on?"
"A Ponzi scheme," he answered.
"Like Madoff?"
"Lot smaller. But the theory's the same. It looks like he could be causing just as much damage, relatively speaking. Madoff ruined a lot of rich people's lives. My suspect could ruin a lot of poor folks'. You ask me, that's even worse. They don't have anything to fall back on."
He explained that the investment advisor under investigation was accused of preying on people in a lower-income, primarily minority quadrant of the District.
"What's the suspect's name?"
"Clarence Brown. He's a reverend."
I lifted an eyebrow.
"I know. Could be legit but it's also a good cover to win over investors, especially in that part of the city. He got his divinity degree mail-order." Ryan added that he'd been surprised to find that the man had nearly a thousand clients, so that, although the amounts each contributed were small, the total in the portfolio was significant.
He explained that over the past month several of those clients had tried to get their money out but Brown kept stalling, making excuse after excuse--the classic symptoms of a Ponzi scheme. The clients complained to the police and the case landed on Ryan's desk. He'd just taken a dozen victims' statements and was starting to piece together Brown's operation. The delays in getting the money were just technical problems, because of some of the particular investments he'd picked, Brown had explained to Kessler. The advisor didn't live the sweet life. The office was modest and based out of a storefront in South East D.C. Brown lived up the street in a tenement.
"I'm just curious," I said. "If it's a securities violation, why's Metropolitan Police handling it?"
Ryan gave a tight smile. "Because it's small potatoes: the crime, the victims. So a small-potato cop gets the case."
An awkward silence.
Another excavation of the big briefcase. Documents appeared and I took down relevant details on this investigation too. "No other cases it could be?"
Another shrug. "Like I said, it's a quiet time. The other cases're small. Credit-card scams, identity theft. Low-dollar amounts. Mostly misdemeanors." He pulled out a pad and wrote the details. "Pennyante stuff." A shrug. "That's it."
I gave him a nod of thanks. "This is helpful. I'll get somebody on it right now."
I took my notes to a table in the corner, clicked on the light--it was dim inside with the shades and curtains drawn--and made a call.
"DuBois."
"Claire. Got some info on Kessler's cases. I want to find out if anybody connected to them--suspects, witnesses, victims, anybody--could be the primary who hired Loving. I want you to start backgrounding all the players."
"Okay, I'm ready."
DuBois never calls me anything. She's about twelve years younger than me, which puts her squarely between "sir" and "Corte."
I gave her the details of the cases Ryan Kessler was running.
She said, "The forgery case? The guy works for Defense. That can be tricky. Sometimes you're dealing with military, sometimes civilian government, sometimes private contractors. If there's one thing they don't like to do, it's talk to outsiders. Even inside outsiders like us. Do you have any contacts there?"
"No," I told her.
She was silent a moment. One of her habits was tucking and retucking her brunette hair behind her ears. I pictured her doing this now. It never stayed in place but then neither did she. "I know somebody who dated a friend of mine. He was wacky. Played games a lot. Not your kind of games. And not boyfriend or husband games. I mean he'd run scenarios for the Pentagon and CIA. Like World War Three scenarios. And World War Four scenarios. There really is such a thing. Now, that's pretty scary, don't you think? I always wondered if there was a Five. Anyway, I'll call him. And I'll get on the Ponzi scheme too. I myself don't invest. I like the mattress theory."
As we disconnected I heard a jangle I was sure came from her bracelet.
I knew that if there was any connection, however slim, between Ryan's cases and Henry Loving's primary, duBois would find it. Despite her youth, she was better than I at the investigation side of our job--tracking down leads. She didn't have a game player's mind, which I seem to have been born with, so the deadly chess match between me and lifters and hitters didn't come naturally to her. But she was persistent as a terrier, sharp and wily when the script called for it. Because of her frenetic nature and dancing mind, she chatted up a storm with the subjects she interviewed, who ended up overwhelmed or intimidated. Or captivated. (She'd actually gotten a marriage proposal from a principal we'd protected about a year ago, after she'd spent some hours interviewing him. Since he was a former organized crime enforcer, duBois had declared him "not prime dating material.")
About a year ago Barbara, the personal assistant I share with another shepherd at the office, caught me gazing at duBois with what was apparently a smile, an uncharacteristic expression for me. It was only a look of admiration after the woman had poured out a flood of helpful details she'd unearthed about a potential primary. That smile, though, was enough for Barbara, a single mother of fifty and a regular in the online dating world. She assumed my gaze was romantic and had later asked why I'd never asked duBois out. (She mentioned something about "May-September," which seemed to me a little harsh for a mere twelve-year difference.)
In any case, of course, I deflected the suggestion. But my professional enthusiasm for my protegee was unrelenting and I didn't pull back from expressing it, though admittedly in my typically subdued way.
I now typed my own notes into my laptop, encrypted the file and saved it.
Maree joined us; for some reason she'd changed clothes and renewed her makeup. A flowery scent of perfume surrounded her. She seemed even more attractive than earlier. Interestingly, though she and her sister resembled each other in many ways, only Maree was what I'd call sexy, and this had nothing to do with the age difference. She walked to the coffee station and poured some. She then set the cup down, cocked her head as she looked at an arrangement of flowers on the dresser. Lifting her camera, she shot a dozen or so fast pictures. I made a mental note to review all the photos she'd taken since the family had come under my care; I'd make sure she deleted any that depicted me or anyone else on the team.
Then she returned to the coffee, glanced my way and refilled my cup.
"Thanks."
"Anything in it?"
"No, this is fine."
She looked at me as if she wanted to say something else but kept silent.
I received a text message, read it and then sent a reply. I turned to my principals. "The new SUV's here. We'll be leaving soon."
Ryan joked, "Just about to take my shoes off and put the game on." His attitude was completely different from when we'd first met. The mission I'd given him and the liquor helped, I assessed.
I rose. "Stay here." I looked at Ryan. "Don't open the door for anybody but me."
He nodded and adjusted his holster.
I stepped outside and circled our wing to the parking lot behind the motel. A dark green GMC Yukon pulled up, trailed by a Ford Taurus. I gave a wave and the two vehicles stopped nearby. Two men emerged from the SUV.
A young officer in my organization, Lyle Ahmad, was a solid, olive-skinned former marine with a trim crew cut. He was a clone, a close protection officer. I had met Ahmad when he was a marine guarding the U.S. embassy in Warsaw and I was an agent with the State Department's protection and investigation arm, Diplomatic Security, where I worked before joining my present outfit.
He was quiet and sha
rp and boasted impressive multiple-language skills. He was a rising star in our organization.
Driving the SUV was our transport man, Billy. The gangly man, whose age I couldn't begin to guess, had shaggy hair and a crooked incisor you had to force yourself not to look at. He absolutely loved cars, trucks, motorcycles, anything that moved by what he called "dead dinosaur"--gas or diesel fuel. He not only maintained the fleet but he would play Rubik's Cube with the three or four dozen vehicles we use--swapping them and shuttling personnel and principals around the area. We had quite a collection--after salary and safe houses, transportation was the biggest item on our budget. Vehicles are like fingerprints. Along with cell phones and credit cards, there's probably no better way to trace somebody than through his car. So we made sure to swap vehicles often.
Billy nodded at the Nissan. "She ready to go?"
"Yep." We swapped keys and he drove off.
The man who had emerged from the Taurus was Rudy Garcia, the young FBI agent Freddy had brought with him to the Kesslers' house.
I shook his hand and introduced him to Ahmad and we started back to the motel room.
I introduced the new arrival to the Kesslers and Maree, who whispered to her sister, "He's cute," drawing a blush--but no other reaction--from the unmarried Ahmad. I noted dismay behind the nod Ryan gave, as if the presence of other guards might rob the D.C. cop of his chance to see some action as my wingman in the operation to take down Loving.
It was then that my phone rang. The caller ID was from my organization but I wasn't expecting this particular individual.
"Hermes," I said. That was the real name--pronounced without the H--of our technical director, the man in charge of surveillance devices, computers and communication systems.
"Corte," he said urgently, his voice tinted with an indiscernible accent. "Believe it or not, we got a hit on the squawk box, the one connected to the Armada. Then fifteen minutes ago somebody made a call to the North East D.C. trap."
I felt my heart begin to thud quickly.
"All right, thanks, Hermes."
I disconnected. I thought for a moment. Yes? No?
Then I told my principals, Garcia and Ahmad that there was a slight change in plans.
"You'll be staying here a few hours longer. If you want some food, Lyle or Rudy can order room service. Nobody leave the room. I won't be long."
Ryan asked, "Corte, what's this all about?"
I gave what I thought was a nonchalant shrug. "I have a meeting with somebody about the job."
I headed out the door fast, not explaining that that somebody happened to be Henry Loving himself.
Chapter 10
THERE'S SOME DEBATE about exactly what the role of a shepherd should be in personal security work.
The nickname itself is telling. "Shepherd," to me, doesn't refer to a motley farmhand with a hooked staff, but to a very big dog.
I'm not a canine person myself but I know there are herding dogs that move sheep around a field and then there are herding dogs that both guard the flock and attack predators, however big and however numerous. Which of those two roles should we personal security officers have? Abe Fallow used to say, "A shepherd's job is to protect the principals. That's it. Let somebody else catch the lifter and hitter and their primaries."
But--one of the few areas in which I disagreed with my mentor--I didn't subscribe to that theory. I think our task is both to move the herd to safety and rip out the throats of any wolves who're threats. Protecting the principal and neutralizing the lifter or hitter and the person who hired him are, to me, inextricably joined.
Driving fast toward the District in Garcia's Taurus, I was speaking with Freddy, who would lead up the hunting party. The one department my organization doesn't have is tactical. I've always wanted one (and had the nickname, "gunslinger," all ready to go) but Ellis got shot down, so to speak, in committee; tac departments are surprisingly expensive. So we rely on the FBI and, in some cases, local SWAT.
After I laid out the plan that I hoped would snare Henry Loving, Freddy said, "You think this is gonna work, Corte? Sounds like Santa Claus meets the Tooth Fairy."
"Are you there yet?" Based out of Ninth Street, in the District, he had a shorter drive than I did.
"Make it twenty minutes."
"Move fast. How many do you have?"
"Plenty, son. Peace through superior firepower," he said, a quote from somewhere, I believed. We disconnected. I sped on, toward Washington, D.C.
Hermes's call had been about a flytrap, a ploy we regularly use to lure the bad guys to a takedown location. They work once in twenty, thirty times but that's no reason not to try. All of our cars and most shepherds' mobile phones have inside them an electronic device we call a squawk box, which periodically transmits a fake phone call that's encrypted but traceable. A lifter or hitter with the right equipment can pick up the number that these phones call, a landline whose location they can track down through your basic commercial reverse look-up.
According to Hermes, Loving had picked up one of these automated calls from the Armada, when it was parked at the Kesslers' house. He'd called the landline, a phone in a warehouse in North East D.C. The message he would have heard was that the place was no longer in business. The kicker was that I had recorded that message myself, so that anyone with a print of my voice, as I imagined Loving had, would think that it was indeed the place where the Kesslers were being kept.
Given the pressure to get information from Ryan by Monday night--and avoid the "unacceptable consequences" mentioned in the email Loving had received in West Virginia--and given Loving's unrelenting drive to finish his assignments I thought it was likely that he and his partner would at least conduct some surveillance at the warehouse.
The contest between Loving and me was now about to begin in earnest.
I often put my job in terms of something that I (an otherwise dispassionate person, I've been told) am passionate about: board games, which I not only play but collect. (The FedEx package that had arrived that morning was an antique game I'd been looking for for years.) One of the reasons I picked the town house in Old Town Alexandria is that it's about two blocks from my favorite gaming club, just off Prince Street. The membership is reasonable and you can always be sure of finding somebody inside to play chess, bridge, Go, Wei Chi, Risk or dozens of other games. The members are a great mix: all nationalities, levels of education, ages, though most are male. All manners of dress and income. Politics vary but are irrelevant.
In the town house are sixty-seven games (and I have even more, 121, in a house near the water in Maryland), all arranged alphabetically.
Naturally I prefer the more challenging games. My present favorite is Arimaa, a recent invention and a variation on chess but so elegant and challenging that the creator's prize to anybody who can write a program so a computer can play is as yet unclaimed. Chess itself is certainly a good game and I enjoy it. It has, though, been so written about and studied and deconstructed that when I sit down across from an experienced player I sometimes feel that I'm not playing against him but against a crowd of stuffy, eccentric ghosts.
What do I like about board games as opposed to, say, computer games, which certainly offer the same mental challenge?
For one thing I like the art. The design of the board, the playing pieces, the cards, the die, the spinners and the wooden or plastic or ivory accoutrements, like sticks and pins. The aesthetics are pleasing to me and I like it that they also serve a functional purpose, if you can call playing a game utilitarian.
I like it that a board game has longevity and is tangible, it doesn't go away when you shut off a switch or pull a plug from the wall.
Most important, though, I like sitting across from a human being, my opponent. Much of my life involves playing a match of life and death against people like Henry Loving, who are invisible to me, and I can only imagine their expressions of consideration as they pick their strategies to capture or kill my principals. Playing chess or Go or
Tigris and Euphrates--a very good game, by the way--I can watch people as they choose their strategy and note how they respond to something I've done.
Even uber-techie Bill Gates is a devout bridge player, I've heard.
In any event, playing games has honed my mind and helps me as a shepherd.
So does game theory, which I became interested in while I was getting one of my graduate degrees, in math, also for the fun of it, lolling in academia and delaying entry into the real world.
Game theory was first debated in the 1940s, though the ideas have been around for years. The academics who formulated the theory originally analyzed games like bridge and poker and even simple contests like Rock, Paper, Scissors or coin flipping, with the goal not of helping win leisure-time activities but to study decision-making.
Simply put, game theory is about trying to make the best choice when presented with a conflict among participants--either opponents or partners--when neither knows what the other will do.
A classic example is the Prisoners' Dilemma, in which two criminals are caught and held in separate cells. The police give each one a choice: to confess or not. Even though each doesn't know what the other will pick, they do know--from the information the police give them--it will be for their mutual good to confess; they won't go free but they'll get a relatively short sentence.
But there's also the chance that by not confessing, they will get an even shorter sentence, or none at all, though that's riskier . . . because they could instead receive a much longer one.
Confessing is the "rational" choice.
But not confessing is acting with what's called "rational irrationality."
In the real world, you see game theory applied in many situations: economics, politics, psychology and military planning. For instance, customers might know that it's better not to withdraw all their savings from a troubled bank, because if they do they'll contribute to a panic, the bank will fail and everybody will lose. On the other hand, if they're the first to get their money out, they won't lose anything; to hell with the common good. By withdrawing all their funds fast, rational irrationality might save them individually, even though it will start a run on the bank and ruin it.
How does this affect my job as a shepherd?