Hostage Zero

“I received notification several hours ago from a company called Triple-S-Special Surveillance Specialists. They said that a long-dormant listening station picked up key word combinations and kicked back into active mode. They monitored a lengthy conversation from an address in Jersey City, New Jersey.” She opened a leather portfolio and handed him the twelve-page transcription of the conversation. “That’s the address right there at the top of the page.”

Leger shushed her with an abrupt wave of his hand, giving himself time to read through the document.

Brandy had only recently learned that “bugging” a residence or a business was a nuanced task. It had never occurred to her that a listening device could live forever. Of course, it would be impractical to have a live person perpetually on the other end, twenty-four-seven listening to every word, so instead, smart devices could be programmed to “listen” passively for a certain combination of words, and then awaken itself to active mode. She imagined in this case that “Bruce Navarro” was the key phrase, but she had no way of knowing that for certain.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the secretary said, looking up from the report. “Who’s the person on the other side of this conversation?”

“We don’t know for sure. Apparently, introductions were finished before the device went active. I have to assume, though, that it’s Gail Bonneville, the private investigator who visited Frank Schuler in prison. It doesn’t appear as if they were friends.”

Leger laughed. “Hardly. It looks like the husband was ready to throw her out on her ass.” He glanced through the pages one more time with an expression of mild amusement. “All these years of stonewalling, and it all comes down to one stranger promising to save a life. I’ll be damned.”

“The level of knowledge shown by the visitor is concerning,” Brandy said.

Leger’s look of amusement continued. “Concerning,” he repeated. “How about damned troubling? The population of knowledgeable parties is multiplying like rabbits.” Something arrived in his face behind the amusement. Fear, maybe? His eyes bored through Brandy as he waved the sheaf of papers. “Who else knows about this?”

“From me? No one. Just you.”

He continued to stare, gauging her. Then he started through the papers again.

“There’s more, sir,” she said.

“From the look on your face, I was guessing there might be.” He continued to read.

“It’s about the investigator, sir.”

“The one who works for the company that somehow continues to get the better of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

Finally, his eyes rocked up to see her. “Despite the fact that we have access to some of the best talent in the world.”

Brandy’s stomach flipped. “I suppose so, sir.” If she layered the “sirs” on thickly enough maybe he wouldn’t explode in his chair.

Leger waited for it.

“Well, Mr. Secretary, at first we thought she was a nobody, you know? A retired sheriff from somewhere in the boonies of Indiana. Well, then we looked a little deeper and we found some disturbing facts. For example, she’s retired FBI. And she was tangentially involved in that big terrorist raid last year in Pennsylvania. You know, the one that involved the chemical weapons?”

The secretary’s shoulder sagged a little. He recovered quickly, but not in time for Brandy to miss it. “What does ‘tangentially involved’ mean? And we both know that that incident had nothing to do with terrorism.”

Brandy felt herself blushing. “Yes, sir,” she said. That incident had occurred during the early days of the transition between the past administration and the current one, and it had exposed the Department of Defense to huge embarrassment. “By tangentially involved, I mean that she was there at the farm in Pennsylvania. The original terrorist raid-excuse me, you know what I mean-happened in her jurisdiction.”

Leger’s face formed a giant question mark. “That’s tangential? What does direct involvement look like in your world?”

Brandy pretended that she didn’t hear. “Well, the firm she works for in Fisherman’s Cove is solely owned by a man named Jonathan Grave, who himself is former Special Forces. Frankly, I was unable to obtain any records on him, which leads me to believe that whatever he did was very, very black.”

Now Leger seemed stunned. “I’m the Secretary of Defense, for God’s sake. What records are sealed from me?”

“Jonathan Grave’s, apparently.” She heard the bite in her tone, and on a different day it would have bothered her. But today, when Jacques Leger was being a certified asshole, she didn’t much care. She continued, “When Gail Bonneville was with the FBI, she was part of the Hostage Rescue Team. There were some career difficulties along the way, and some job-hopping, but the fact that she landed at a company run by somebody who I assume was a Delta Force operator-or maybe something even blacker, although I don’t know what that might be-raises some major flags with me.”

Leger looked tolerant at best. “And what might those flags be?”