An Absence of Light

“Graver, it’s Paula. We’ve been trying to get to you on your secure line, but it’s been constantly busy. Can you call us back on it? Arnette and I want to speak to you at the same time.”

Graver called Arnette’s number.

“Okay, here’s a quick recap of what we’ve pulled off of Dean’s tape so far,” Paula said. “It looks like Besom and Tisler were selling CID records to Faeber’s DataPrint for six months before Dean ever began to suspect anything was going on. Just about the time he was figuring this out, he was contacted by a guy named Geis. No first name. Geis is CIA.”

“Bullshit,” Graver said instantly. “This is what Dean’s got in those tapes? Is this his answer to the man at the Transco Fountain?”

Paula hesitated, surprised at his flash of anger. “Yeah, but wait a minute. Let me go on here.”

Graver was silent, conscious of strong and confused feelings about Burtell. What in the hell had he done? Had he gone back and rewritten his own record to cover himself? Graver was embarrassed for him. This smacked of self-serving damage control, and to see Burtell trying to sweep his own culpability under the rug by rewriting the record of his own dishonesty was doubly disappointing. Graver could understand why Dean had lied to Ginette, being too ashamed to want her to know what he’d done, but at least he should have given the rest of them the credit for knowing a scam when they saw it.

“Burtell was contacted by this guy who told him what Besom and Tisler were doing, told him about the Faeber/Kalatis connection. He then gave Dean essentially the same data on Raviv/Kalatis that Arnette has here. He has in his record almost the identical information. So maybe Geis is CIA.”

“Why would you believe that?” Graver interrupted heatedly. “Arnette, are you on the line?”

“Yep.”

“Why would you believe that, Arnette? If you have the information, why couldn’t someone else outside the agency have the information too? Don’t you think you should be a little skeptical about this?”

“Why don’t you let her go on, Marcus?” Arnette said. She was cool, her voice even and steady.

“Shit” He was furious. “Go ahead.” He felt like he was being led around by the nose, and he was getting tired of it. He was impatient and almost too angry to sit still.

“According to Dean,” Paula began again, “Geis tells him that he thinks Kalatis is setting up some kind of enormous sting operation through his drug smuggling business with Brod Strasser. He outlines the same drug operation that we picked up on the tape from Sheck. Same bogus companies, same operational methods. Everything.”

“His detail here is exact, Marcus,” Arnette interjected. “Your point is well taken about other private intelligence companies having what I have, but you know as well as I do-and I’ll write off your slight to frustration-that I’m a little different from ‘most’ private intelligence operations. I don’t know of anyone else… anyone… with my access. That’s why I was so excited to get onto Kalatis.” She hesitated for emphasis. “Nobody but the majors have him, baby. We’ve got to take this Geis seriously.”

Graver said nothing. All along Arnette had insisted the man at the Transco Fountain was “government.” Now Dean’s records were confirming her assertions. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to believe him. Paula went on.

“Geis wanted Dean to work his way inside and help them find out what Kalatis was up to. Geis was pretty damned uncomfortable not knowing what Kalatis was doing besides the drug business. So he gives Dean what he needs to know. Dean ‘discovers’ Besom’s and Tisler’s information-selling operation and demands a piece of it, or he’ll blow it. Soon, with Geis’s background help and guidance, he’s well into the operation.”

“And getting paid off just like they were,” Graver added cynically.

“Apparently so,” Paula said. “He doesn’t hide that It’s all right here. They were making a lot of money. Kalatis was paying generously.”

“And the Seldon investigation?”

“Just what we thought, another cooked operation. Kalatis wanted Seldon out of the way. Dean never really spells out why, just that Seldon was the next target.”

“Is that it? What did Dean find out for Geis?”

“Not a lot. It was months before Dean ever met Kalatis, but when he did it seems that Kalatis found him a little more to his liking than either Besom or Tisler. Before long Dean was handling most of the communication between the CID guys and Kalatis/Faeber. Kalatis came up with the idea of the bogus investigations as a means of eliminating competitors and put Dean in charge of the operation. Probst is the first target. It comes off beautifully. Kalatis is pleased. Friel is next. Then Seldon.

“But Kalatis was careful. Besom and Tisler never knew about anything except their own little areas of operation. They never knew about Sheck’s network, for instance, or about his back-door connection to Kalatis. They never had a sense of the size of the organization.