The Middleman Page 15

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “This is urgent, ma’am.”

  So she’d followed him back to his car, where he told her that he’d been ordered to drive her to the airport immediately.

  “Ordered by whom?”

  “By Headquarters.”

  “I’ll go after my interview’s done.”

  “I was told,” he said, hesitant, “that you will interview no one.”

  “By whom?”

  “The assistant director.”

  She’d turned around and started back toward the ambulance when two more agents materialized from the darkness, stepping into her path. From behind, Young said, “Agent Proulx, I’d really prefer not to get into a fight about this.”

  The Cessna was already on the tarmac, and the two nameless agents had come along to make sure she didn’t lose her way. As the plane was waiting to take off, she brought herself down a notch, reassessing, and realized that the anger she’d let loose back at the farmhouse had changed everything. She was now in a race against time. She checked emails that were coming in—names of the deceased, a preliminary inventory of the house, assorted updates from her people back at Headquarters—and began to write, because her only defense lay in her story. She first typed her version of Watertown, down to the smallest detail, and then utilized all her notes from the last weeks to write everything else, because this night, taken out of context, was no defense at all. Everything was context.

  Two more agents were waiting at Ronald Reagan, and they drove her directly to Paulson’s office. But Paulson wasn’t interested in her story. He was only interested in her final act, involving a laptop and Jakes’s head. He was fucking furious. Everyone was furious, it seemed. Everyone except preternaturally cheerful Owen Jakes, smiling even from his hospital bed. She’d gone through a lot. It was a tough night.

  Had Jakes not played the magnanimous role, she’d have ended up on her ass, out of the Bureau, and possibly behind bars.

  At morning therapy the nurse told her, “Slow down. Take it easy.” To spite her, Rachel leaned at a deeper angle on the treadmill, drenched, each pounding step shooting thick cables of pain through her reconstructed femur. On the wall in front of her hung a television and the twenty-four-hour news channel she chased every other day.

  This morning, she ran toward but never reached an update on the protests that had been simmering in more than twenty cities across the country, growing as the weather heated up for another record-breaking year. Global warming, the late-night comics joked, was the opposition’s best friend. The crowds were coming out in Charlotte and Houston, in Santa Cruz and St. Louis, and of course here in Seattle. They were even marching in Anchorage, two thousand strong. It had become, someone had said, the Age of No.

  Despite what everyone, including Rachel, had thought last year, the brief, bright life of the Massive Brigade had made the opposition nimbler. It had learned a lesson from Martin Bishop and Benjamin Mittag: All power lies in crowds. Five thousand people decide to do one thing, and it is done. Now, within hours, a single news story, amplified by social media, could trigger a million people and bring cities to a standstill.

  But the crowds filling her therapist’s screen—now in Manhattan, now in Los Angeles—hadn’t appeared overnight. They’d been building for months, as reporters dug into the sketchy details of the Massive Brigade’s bloody end in Watertown, South Dakota. The White House had done itself no favors by denying minor facts that turned out to be easily verifiable, and after noting these little lies the reporters dutifully returned to their beats and dug more. There was a lot of talk of smoke and fire. The cover-up, they said, was more damning than the crime, even if the crime itself was still unclear.

  It all came down to a single question: Why did so many people have to die in Watertown?

  In those first weeks, there had been little outcry, because the story made sense: The Massive Brigade had proved itself to be on a murderous rampage, and when it was cornered in Watertown it kept to its violent MO and came at the Bureau’s officers with guns blazing. The FBI had put itself in harm’s way to protect American citizens.

  Then the steady drip of revelations began. Conversations with rehabilitated Massive followers, photos unearthed from raided safe houses, and, most damning, anonymous leaks by Bureau agents troubled by their own recollections of Watertown. The director stonewalled the press, the president lashed out on Twitter, and surrogates denied every accusation with a counteraccusation against the media.

  From the start, journalists and activists had asked for one thing: the Bureau’s internal report on the Massive Brigade. A growing chorus demanded that it be declassified and made available to the public, while the counterargument—steadfastly elucidated even by Sam Schumer—was that releasing it would endanger agents and operations still in play, and reveal the Bureau’s secret methodologies at a time when the Bureau was working to keep a lid on the country’s simmering civil unrest.

  A BREAKING NEWS logo flashed across the screen, and she was surprised to see a familiar face: Assistant Director Mark Paulson, among a gaggle of congressmen. The Bureau, he announced, was in the process of declassifying the Massive Brigade report, and it would be released as early as next week. “Now I hope some of these people disrupting our streets will go home.”

  It meant something that she was learning this from television rather than a phone call from Headquarters, or from Paulson himself. It meant that she was no longer at the center of the storm. A slap in the face, yes, but also a kind of relief. Months of therapy had taught her that what happened outside her little world wasn’t her responsibility. What happened inside her world most definitely was.

  2

  BECAUSE OF demonstrations cutting off the streets around City Hall, it took over an hour to drive from the clinic to the FBI field office in the Vance Building on Third Avenue, and on the way NPR talked to Representative Diane Trumble, who had recently returned to Congress after recuperating from last summer’s gunshot. While grateful for the standing ovation she’d received upon entering the chambers, she made no secret of her anger that the Plains Capital–IfW investigation had been closed down only a few weeks after Paul Hanes, its chair, had been killed, and she had been laid up in the hospital. Legislators had abandoned it to join the new, constituent-pleasing investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Massive Brigade. “This is a cynical move by colleagues who get their funding from Wall Street,” she said, real bitterness in her voice. “Terrorists might disrupt our daily lives, but they should not disrupt the path of justice. Let’s not allow international tax dodgers to benefit from the tragedy of July 4, 2017.”

  “Amen, sister,” said Rachel, once again thinking about the irony of July 4—not only had the Massive Brigade delegitimized itself, but it had undermined one of the few government investigations that aimed to make corrupt bankers pay for their crimes.

  There were eyes on her as she limped to her fifth-floor cubicle. The pain had returned, a sharp rebuke from the morning’s therapy, but just as she’d learned to master her anger over the last half year she’d learned to master her face; other than a little twitch around the eyes, no one would have noticed her agony. Max, their Special Agent in Charge, was chatting with two visitors in his glassed-in office. Paula and Chuck stood with coffee cups, their conversation dying as she passed. Up ahead, rising from his own cubicle, Henry said, “Well, that’s some shit, isn’t it? Releasing the report?”

  Henry had spent the last four months trying to become her friend, but friends weren’t what you found in the Bureau. “We finally gave in,” she said.

  “Or maybe we’ve got them right where we want them,” he joked.

  “Rachel?” she heard, and turned to see Max’s unhealthily gray face sticking out of his office. “Come in here a minute?”

  She turned to cross the floor again, still working to master her face. While the pain would eventually fade, she could do nothing about the limp, and her doctor had assured her that she shou
ldn’t try. It would be with her the rest of her life.

  The visitors stood when she entered, and Max introduced them as Sarah Vale and Lyle Johnson, both from Headquarters. They shook hands. Johnson, a military stiff, had a salt-and-pepper mustache that made her think of how few men she knew wore mustaches, while Vale was a Latina who smiled a lot, her method of encouragement. Johnson clearly found that kind of forced friendliness a waste of effort.

  Stating the obvious, Johnson said, “We’re here about the Massive Brigade report.”

  As Rachel took a free chair, she spoke to cover her pain. “This is part of the declassification?”

  “You could say that,” said Vale. “A lot of people have been burned over these past months, and we don’t need more collateral damage after it’s released.”

  She understood their point. Two senior Bureau officials had stepped down from their posts after being caught in too many on-camera lies, and with the constant patter of press leaks the first order of business at the Hoover Building would be job security. “You might have tried not bullshitting the public for the last half year. That’s why we’re in this situation.”

  “Woulda, shoulda,” said Vale, smiling. “Let’s not drag history through the coals.”

  “If we wanted to do that,” Johnson said, “we might start by asking about your own contact with reporters.”

  Rachel gave him a sharp look. “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “No, he’s not,” said Vale.

  “I’m just making a point,” Johnson said, then shrugged. “Mistakes are always made. What matters is how you deal with them afterward.”

  Rachel’s thigh, which after reconstruction had begun to act as a bullshit detector, throbbed. It would have been a lie, though, to say she wasn’t interested in knowing what they were selling. Besides, when wasn’t there some level of bullshit when dealing with Headquarters? “Who sent you to me?”

  “No one,” Vale told her. “We’ve just been asked to make sure that what the Bureau shows the world is as perfectly aligned with the facts as possible. You were at the center of this.”

  “But you report to someone.”

  Vale looked at Johnson, who, almost embarrassed, said, “Owen Jakes.” They knew about her history with him. Everyone knew. “But this,” he went on, “is a request from higher up.”

  Rachel gazed at these two emissaries from DC. They looked young to her—but once you’ve been shot, everyone seems young. She turned to Max, who’d been so uncharacteristically silent all this time. “What’s going on, Max? Are you part of this?”

  Her SAC rose to his feet and headed to the door. “I think I’m going to get a coffee. Anyone?”

  Both Vale and Johnson shook their heads.

  “Okay then,” Max said, and left. Rachel watched him head not to the kitchenette but to the exit.

  Johnson said, “I thought he’d never leave,” and for the first time he cracked a smile.

  Vale turned to Rachel. “Have you read the final draft of the report?”

  “I was never put on the distribution list.”

  Vale arched a brow. She really liked showing off her feelings. “Does that seem odd?”

  It did, of course. That the final report on a case that had absorbed her for months and had culminated in nine deaths in Watertown—that that report wouldn’t be accessible to her was certainly odd. Then again … “Well, I did crack Jakes’s skull with a laptop.”

  There—in Vale’s face, a twitch of the lip. She was trying to hold down her smile.

  Johnson wasn’t amused. “Six stitches,” he said.

  Vale leaned closer. “How much of your own report had you written before you, uh, went on leave?”

  Rachel remembered the wild rush, the bleary-eyed hours in that Cessna, trying to get it all down before going to the office to face the ax. “Fifteen thousand words? Something like that.”

  Johnson said, “The final report is three times that length, but only about three thousand words are attributed to you.”

  This was news to her. “Well, it’s not all that surprising. Jakes and I would have come to different conclusions.”

  “Which is why we’re here,” Johnson said. “We want your version.”

  “You don’t have my fifteen thousand words?”

  “Missing,” Vale said, sadness filling her face.

  Rachel almost told them she had a copy if they wanted to see it, but by keeping that classified document on her personal laptop she’d broken a few federal laws that, in today’s climate, might not be so easily brushed aside. So she said, “Give me the report, and I’ll happily mark it up for you.”

  They were quiet a moment; then Johnson cleared his throat. “Like you said, you’re not on the distribution list.”

  3

  INTERVIEW ROOM 2 was a fluorescent box, typical with its two-way mirror and heavy door. Reinforced-concrete walls, ubiquitous gray table, three aluminum chairs. She took her place across from Vale and Johnson, who leaned a fashionable briefcase against the leg of his chair but didn’t open it. “Where is this going?” she asked.

  Johnson looked confused. Vale said, “How so?”

  “Paulson’s releasing this next week,” she told them. “Now that he’s said the words aloud, and the director has backed him up, Congress isn’t going to let us walk it back. Are you going to include our talk in an amended version? Will I get my own appendix?”

  “Let’s just see what we get first,” said Johnson.

  “Maybe you’ll turn the whole thing on its head,” Vale said as she placed her phone on the table. “Mind if we record this?”

  “Thanks for asking,” Rachel said.

  Vale pressed the red button and spoke. “It’s March 13, 2018, and we’re at the Seattle field office with Special Agent Rachel Proulx. The time is…” Though the time was right there on her phone, Vale made a show of looking at the slender gold watch on her wrist. “Ten oh eight in the morning.”

  Their initial questions were scene-setting and verification. Had she worked on the Massive Brigade case during the summer of 2017? She had. How long before the July 4 action had she begun her investigation? Two months. What had triggered the investigation?

  “The pressure came from outside,” Rachel said, thinking back. “You remember. People were claiming, without evidence, that the Massive Brigade was a terrorist organization.”

  “People?”

  “People like Sam Schumer. The talk shows. We’d never listed Massive as a threat—something to keep an eye on, yes, but not a threat. But then constituents began calling their representatives, who in turn asked the director why we weren’t closing down the group. People didn’t feel safe. So I was asked to look into it.”

  “You were the expert,” said Johnson.

  “I was knowledgeable.”

  Vale said, “Your study on radical movements is required reading.”

  “That old thing?” she asked. “I’m surprised it’s still around.”

  Johnson and Vale smiled, and she realized that both of them were fans. Had they known how slapdash those months on the West Coast had been, or how she’d been suckered by a Russian-speaking enigma named James Sullivan, then maybe they’d be less impressed. But wasn’t that the way with all great works? The composition is never as glorious as the result.

  She straightened herself, concealing her pride. “I may have been qualified, but now, looking back, I can see that I went into the Massive Brigade investigation prejudiced.”

  This seemed to interest them both. “How so?” asked Johnson.

  “I’d been sucked into the hysteria like everyone else. Two thousand seventeen was a year of absolutes. The new president, the marches that were just starting—Women’s, Science, Immigration, the Tax March. Jerome Brown—that was big. You were either a sympathizer or a fear merchant. There was no in-between. There was no gray in 2017.”

  Johnson snorted. “But July 4—that validated labeling the Brigade terrorist.”

  “Did it?�
�� she asked.

  “Three politicians dead, one injured.”

  “I suppose so,” she said, as if she’d never really thought about it before, though of course she had. She’d thought of little else over the last eight months. “But before July 4 they were labeled based on fear rather than direct evidence. You remember. A kind of psychosis took hold. Didn’t you feel that?”

  “That’s the question,” Johnson countered. “Did we feel it, or was there evidence of this psychosis?”

  It was a good point, and Rachel gave it to him. But she would not be swayed on the issue, for it had troubled her a very long time.

  “Can we move on?” Vale asked. Not impatient, just practical.

  “How much do you want to know?”

  “Well, we don’t really know how much of your work was left out of the final report.”

  “So, you want to know everything.”

  “We’ve got unrest in the streets,” Johnson said. “We’re worried about some nutcase taking his marching orders from whatever’s left of the Massive Brigade. We’re worried that if we don’t release this report the right way we’re going to have blood on the sidewalks. So, yeah, Rachel. Everything.”

  “Everything” lasted until the end of business. Seven hours of questions that prodded, sometimes painfully, at Rachel’s formidable memory. They weren’t memories she would have chosen to spend the afternoon with, but she could tell they were of interest to Johnson and Vale, and perhaps even helpful.

  After asking permission, Vale powered up a clumsy-looking e-cigarette that, in place of an ember, had a pale green light on the end that glowed stronger when she inhaled. Her exhales smelled faintly of sandalwood. She asked about June 18, the day Martin Bishop went underground, which led to a discussion of Bill and Gina Ferris’s party and, inevitably, David and Ingrid Parker. Everyone knew about David Parker—published excerpts from his forthcoming novel rehashed his experiences—but his estranged wife, Ingrid, was still missing.