The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(88)

Jenkins couldn’t catch his breath. He felt the walls of the room closing around him. His right hand began to shake. He pulled it from the tabletop. Perspiration rolled down his face. He looked to Daugherty. “This isn’t what you think it is. I didn’t do it for the reason you think.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I took a polygraph,” Jenkins said, trying not to sound like a drowning man gasping for a breath of air. “I did not disclose any unauthorized information. The polygraph confirmed that.”

“When you were trained as a CIA field officer, did that training including techniques to pass a polygraph test?” Daugherty asked.

“Charlie, let’s take a break,” Jake said with greater urgency.

“The CIA is also having difficulty reaching another agent in Moscow. Someone they say disappeared from their radar at the same time you said you were over there. Her name is Paulina Ponomayova. Did you have any contact with her?”

“Hang on,” Jake said, raising a hand.

But the name anchored Jenkins. He pulled himself together, though not completely. “If I was a spy, Agent Daugherty, a spy guilty of treason . . . as you’re intimating, why would the CIA tell you the name of a current operative in Russia and have you ask me to confirm it?”

“I don’t know. Why do you think?”

“I don’t think they’d be so stupid.”

“Are you a spy?”

“I already answered that question,” Jenkins said. “And you have a polygraph test confirming I was a spy, and that I didn’t disclose any unauthorized information.”

The two men stared at one another.

“Am I free to go?” Jenkins asked.

Daugherty motioned to the door as if to say go ahead, but Jenkins knew “free” was just an expression. He would have at least one car and two agents following his every move from the moment he left the building.





50



Neither Jenkins nor Jake said much on the drive back to the office. Jenkins now knew the CIA would not come to his defense, would not even acknowledge he had been reactivated. The question was, Why not? Was it because the CIA would do nothing to acknowledge the seven sisters, not even internally? Or was the reason something more nefarious?

In his head, Jenkins heard Alex’s warning. We both know someone went to great lengths to keep you from coming home, to silence you. If you start talking, that person, whoever he is, will have to respond.

Someone had given Chris Daugherty ammunition to not just discredit Jenkins, but to accuse him of espionage, and possibly put him away, maybe for life. What Jenkins couldn’t understand was why Daugherty hadn’t arrested him on the spot. Why he had allowed Jenkins to leave the building, even with the escort following them, which had doubled to four agents in two cars, now parked across the street from Sloane’s offices.

“I should have cut it off,” Jake said. “David would have cut him off.”

“You tried,” Jenkins said. “I was stupid. I thought the CIA would fill in the blanks for Daugherty, that they would at least acknowledge I had been reactivated.”

“It has to be Emerson, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe. It could also be that the CIA is protecting an operation that has been ongoing and effective for forty years and will sacrifice both Emerson and me to do so.”

“They could try you for espionage,” Jake said.

Jenkins looked again at the two Fords parked bumper to bumper at the curb of the undeveloped lot, and he thought again of CJ’s question the night he’d gone into the boy’s room to put him to bed.

Dad, are you going to jail?



Jenkins and Jake looked up from the computer monitor as Sloane returned to his office from Port Angeles. The three had discussed Daugherty’s interview on a conference call.

“It looks like we opened a can of worms when we went to the FBI,” Jenkins said.

Jake turned his laptop to face Sloane and pulled up the news story that had run earlier that afternoon. “The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating LSR&C for fraud and corruption,” he said. “They’re saying the entire company is one big Ponzi scheme.” Jake hit the button and the recorded newscast played again.

A female reporter spoke into her microphone outside the Columbia Center, the black monolith in downtown Seattle. The reporter said LSR&C had come under investigation by the IRS two months earlier, but that had gone nowhere.

“That does not appear to be the case with the SEC investigation. The SEC filed its complaint in federal court today alleging fraud against LSR&C’s COO, Mitchell Goldstone, and its CFO, Randy Traeger, as well as the company’s other officers,” the reporter said. “The pleading alleges LSR&C sought wealthy donors through the fraudulent misuse of prominent Seattle names.”

Jenkins took out his cell phone and called Traeger, as he had done the first time he saw the newscast, without success. This time Traeger answered.

Jenkins hit the “Speaker” button so Jake and Sloane could hear the conversation.

“Charlie?”

“Randy, what the hell is going on? I’m watching the local news.”

“I don’t know,” Traeger said. “This started several weeks ago with that reporter from the Seattle Times. She asked to interview the officers about the company’s rapid growth. I had a bad feeling about her then, and I told Mitchell to turn her down. He assured me I was overreacting. A day after the request, we received a letter from the IRS asking for financial information and alleging that the company had failed to pay taxes, but Mitchell again told me not to worry about it. He said it would be taken care of.”