Color of Blood(46)

“OK. Let me grant you everything up to now. But how do you know he’s alive? This is just bullshit speculation. Come on, Cunningham, for Christ’s sake. We’re not idiots. We do this for a living. This is all you have? A drop of transmission fluid?”

“He called his parents,” Dennis said.

Massey exchanged another quick glance with his friend, this time lingering a bit, almost like they were lovers. When he returned his gaze to Dennis, there was something new in the man’s demeanor: a kind of low-grade anger.

“I assume you can provide corroboration for the contact between the parents and son?”

“I have unauthorized phone records that I will not turn over to you. But you can go through channels and get them yourself. And I talked to the parents. They’re lying to protect their son. We could pressure them if we had to, but I wouldn’t recommend that approach.”

Massey stared at Dennis; it was a cold, hostile glare, and it unnerved Dennis the longer it went on. Finally Massey pursed his lips and said, “I want you to stay in this room. Under no circumstances are you to leave or communicate with anyone until we return. No phone calls, emails, or texting. I’m going to have someone watch the door. You got that?”

“That’s a strange request,” Dennis said.

“You’re a strange man,” Massey said, standing. The two men left the room.

In all his years at the Agency he’d never been ordered to stay in a room. Was he going to be arrested? He began to berate himself for his stupid attempt to go directly to Massey. The longer he waited in the room, the deeper the funk became. After nearly fifty minutes stewing, the office door finally opened.





Chapter 20


Massey entered first, followed by his silent friend, then Marty and Betty, Massey’s secretary. There were now five people and four chairs in Massey’s once-spacious office. A flurry of activity ensued, and another chair was procured for Betty.

Marty never acknowledged Dennis, and Dennis did his best not to look in his direction, though they were sitting next to each other.

Betty opened a spiral-bound notepad and clicked a ballpoint pen. In sensitive meetings like this, Dennis knew, the Agency preferred to have written notes. They could easily record the meeting electronically, but digital records needed to be protected, stored, encrypted, and catalogued. More importantly, those records could be requested by troublesome outsiders like the IG’s office, congressional committees, and lawyers. Written notes, on the other hand, could be sufficiently manipulated and edited—or destroyed—to avoid disclosure. And participants’ recollections of meetings were, by their nature, vague and subjective enough to provide inconclusive results.

“Cunningham, while you’ve been disobeying orders in pursuit of solving the disappearance of one of our young agents, it appears that you’ve come up with some valuable information. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you how surprising this information is. If young Garder is, in fact, alive and well, as you suggest, it would explain something that’s been puzzling us.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’re missing some funds,” Massey said.

“How much?”

“One million dollars. Perhaps a bit more.”

“And you just discovered it? The missing money was never mentioned in the earlier investigation. I never saw a single reference to it in any of the reports.”

“Suffice to say Garder had access to the funds. The money disappeared over a three-month period, and we thought it was accounted for. We were wrong. It’s complicated.”

“Sounds odd that the loss wasn’t picked up earlier,” Dennis said.

“I couldn’t care less what you think,” Massey said.

Silence settled over the room; the only sound came from Betty, who had a nervous habit of clicking her ballpoint pen.

“If you suspected he had stolen the money, why didn’t you just tell me?” Dennis said. “I’m a little confused about the timing of my investigation on the heels of the earlier one done by Operations. They must have picked up on the missing funds.”

“We didn’t find out that his payments were bogus until after you left,” Massey said. “As you can imagine, it’s a delicate task to confirm that people he listed as sources were in fact not sources at all. And then you report back from Australia that he’s been eaten by a shark. Your report seemed pretty definitive about his death, no?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Dennis said. “So, let me guess: you were a little embarrassed—is that too strong a word—by the missing dollars, but now that Garder was dead, well, why report it back up the chain?”

Massey raked Dennis with a withering stare.

“Fuck you,” Massey said. “Is that too strong a word?”

Betty clicked her pen twice in succession.

“Well,” Dennis said, standing, “Garder’s running around with your million dollars. Go get the bastard before he spends it all.”

“Sit down,” Marty said.

Dennis sat down.

“We want you to help us find Garder,” Massey said with a half-smile, half-grimace.

“I don’t do that kind of work,” Dennis said. “Marty can vouch for that. That’s typically handled within Operations. You guys do that for a living. We always maintain lists of bad agents circulated to all the other friendly intelligence agencies. The Germans, Brits, or Israelis will find him. There’s nothing a lone IG investigator could do in this circumstance.”