Takedown

“Deputy Director Caldwell is here to conduct an interrogation. I agreed to allow you to be present out of professional courtesy.”

Not only was Lawlor a fairly good judge of people, he was also better than average at reading between the lines. But Maxwell was very difficult to figure out. In fact, so was Stan Caldwell. They both, in their own fashions, were helping him out, but why? To a certain degree, he could understand Maxwell’s motivations. The man knew that Lawlor had the only team on the ground that was hot on the trail of the group responsible for killing his NSA employees, as well as their marine security details. Caldwell ’s motivations, though, were much less clear.

Lawlor had no choice but to go along for the ride. His only hope was that if any leads were to come of this that they came soon-real soon.

Seventy-Three

Before showing Lawlor and Caldwell into the small third-floor conference room chosen for the interrogation, Director Maxwell led them into another room across the hall. “Like a caged tiger,” he remarked as he pointed to a bank of monitors that showed a very agitated Mark Schreiber pacing back and forth. “After Stanton, he had the greatest access to the operation. It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together. The failed polygraph sealed it.”

Once he felt the men had seen enough, the lieutenant general said, “Go and work your magic.”

For some reason, Maxwell just rubbed Lawlor the wrong way. He wanted to tell him what he could do with his “magic,” but instead kept his opinions to himself and followed Caldwell out the door and across the hall.

When they walked in, Schreiber stopped pacing. He looked the two strangers over as he tried to figure out who they were. Caldwell wasted no time in enlightening him.

“My name is Agent Stan Caldwell,” he said as he held his credentials straight out from his shoulder in perfect form-a bit of Bureau conditioning he’d never really been able to shake. “I am the deputy director of the FBI. And this gentleman,” he continued as Lawlor did a casual flip-open, flip-closed of his badge and ID, “is Agent Gary Lawlor from the Department of Homeland Security. We’re going to ask you a few questions. Are you okay with that?”

Schreiber nodded his head.

“Good,” replied Caldwell as he and Lawlor sat down across the table from him. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

The young man did as he was told while Caldwell flipped open the file folder Maxwell’s assistant had given him and pretended to read through it. He’d already memorized the salient details as they made their way from the director’s office. “I see you’ve been with the NSA for five years.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Schreiber.

“Do you like your job?”

“It has good days and bad.”

“How would you characterize today?” asked Caldwell, not bothering to look up from the file. Lawlor, though, had his eyes locked on the suspect.

“Today would definitely be a bad day,” the young man answered.

At that, Caldwell looked up from the file and responded, “I’d be inclined to agree with you. Do you have any idea why we’re here?”

Schreiber hesitated a moment and then stated, “I would imagine it has something to do with the impromptu polygraph I was given earlier.”

“And you’d be correct. Listen, Mark, you can save us all a lot of time here. Just tell us why you did it.”

“I did it because Stanton wouldn’t listen.”

“Listen to what?” asked Caldwell.

“To me.”

With all the computer geeks employed by the NSA, the deputy director of the FBI wasn’t surprised that this case was quickly boiling down to attention. While most of these people could be brilliant at manipulating data or analyzing intel, many of them lacked the rudimentary social skills necessary to properly function in the real world. They’d rather hack sites, write code, or play video games in their off time than go out in the world and interact with other human beings. They served a vital role for the nation, especially with how rapidly technology was changing, but then something like this happened.

It had long been Caldwell ’s belief that a lot of these people were ticking time bombs. It was only a matter of when, not if, they would explode, and then the results were anybody’s guess. Based on Stan’s experience, it happened in one of two ways. Either the violence would manifest itself in a physical form such as a workplace shooting, or it would be more intellectual. The classic I’ll show them how much smarter I am betrayal was exactly what they were witnessing right now. Caldwell was sure of it. It was one of the worst ways an employee who handled sensitive information could lash out, and it could prove just as deadly as if Schreiber had managed to smuggle in an automatic weapon and a backpack full of pipe bombs to take out as many of his superiors and coworkers as possible before turning the gun on himself.

“So you decided to make Joseph Stanton listen to you. Is that it?” asked Caldwell.

“In a way.”

“I don’t blame you. In fact, why stop with Stanton? Why not make all of the NSA listen to you?”