The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(109)

Velasquez paused, as if flipping through her notes. She wanted that information to stick with the jurors. It did. Several looked at the defense table. Then she asked, “What did you do next?”

Daugherty said, “The FBI opened an investigation into Mr. Jenkins’s actions and learned that CJ Security had received a payment of fifty thousand dollars into its checking account shortly after Mr. Jenkins’s return from his first trip to Russia.”

“Did you attempt to determine the source for those funds?” Velasquez asked.

“We asked a forensic accountant to trace the source of those funds.”

Jenkins and Sloane had a copy of the report and had agreed to its admissibility.

“What does the report conclude?”

“The accountant determined that the funds had originated from a Swiss bank account. He was not able to further trace the source of those funds.”

Velasquez led Daugherty through what Jenkins had told him during their second conversation at the FBI’s field office in downtown Seattle.

“Did you tell Mr. Jenkins what you had learned with respect to the two operations he disclosed to the Russians?”

“I did.”

“What was his response, if any?”

“He shook his head and he said, ‘What the hell have I done?’”

Again, Velasquez let that response linger a moment before she asked, “Did you respond?”

“I asked him if he wanted to confess and make a deal.”

“What was his response?”

“He said, ‘This isn’t what you think it is. I didn’t do it for the reason you think I did.’”

With that seemingly damning statement, Velasquez thanked Daugherty and sat.

Sloane rose and slowly walked to the lectern. “Agent Daugherty, you mentioned that you asked Mr. Jenkins if he wanted to confess to having committed a crime, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Would you please produce to the court the confession that Mr. Jenkins signed in your offices that day.”

Daugherty cleared his throat. “I don’t have a signed confession.”

“How about an unsigned confession then?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t it be standard procedure, when interrogating a witness who confesses, for you to get the witness to sign and date a confession before the witness leaves your office?”

“There are a lot of different procedures—”

“And wouldn’t one of those procedures be that the FBI agent—you—would get a signed confession before the witness leaves the meeting?”

“It would.”

“You never even pursued a confession, did you?”

“No.”

Jenkins watched the jurors. Two of the men smirked, amused.

“You said Mr. Jenkins told you, ‘This isn’t what you think it is. I didn’t do it for the reason you think I did.’ Is that right?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Didn’t he say he revealed those two names because Carl Emerson authorized him to do so?”

“He said he didn’t reveal any unauthorized information, but I couldn’t find any corroborating evidence to support that it was authorized.”

Sloane flipped the pages of the typed document. “You did write in notes that Mr. Jenkins said, ‘That isn’t the whole story. For the whole story you need to go to the CIA.’”

“Yes.”

“And you claim that you called the CIA, and you were told they had no record of any operation in which Mr. Jenkins had been reactivated, as you put it. Is that correct?”

“They said they had no record of it.”

“So, you assumed no such operation existed, right?”

“I suppose that is correct.”

“But you also told this court that the FBI handles what happens inside the country and the CIA handles what happens outside the country, didn’t you?”

“Something like that.”

“You would agree, wouldn’t you, that one agency doesn’t always know what the other agency is doing, and the two agencies don’t always tell one another what they’re doing?”

“Yes, I would agree with that.”

“Wouldn’t it also be true that while the FBI and the CIA’s ultimate objectives might be the same, how those two agencies achieve their objectives are not the same?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me see if I can make it clearer for you.” Sloane had handled an FBI case before. “Isn’t your motto at the FBI, one of them anyway, ‘AIJ—put the asshole in jail’? You’ve heard that among FBI agents, haven’t you?”

“I’ve heard that, yes.”

“Black-and-white, isn’t it? Just put the asshole in jail.”

“I’ll agree to that.”

“What’s the CIA’s creed among its case operatives, do you know?”

“I don’t.”

“‘And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall piss you off.’ Have you heard that?”

Daugherty smiled. So did several jurors. “No, I haven’t.”

“Any idea what that means?”