Collision (31 page)

“But it will take a long time and a lot of work to put them together and make sense,” Taylor said. “They'd probably have to hand it off to NSA experts. They're the folks with very dark techniques unknown outside the NSA. From what I've heard, there's no such a thing as a cleaned hard drive.”

After describing what had happened at FBI headquarters, Taylor said, “But I should thank Sarsfield for what he gave me.”

“What's that?” Taylor asked, sinking into his favorite living room chair.

“All along I've wondered why Cole lugged a laptop around when he could have just put a thumb drive in his pocket.”

“Right. I wondered that, too,” Taylor said.

“Turns out the USB ports were disabled, locked—but they could be activated on command. And it looks as if Sprague did use them.”

“Downloaded them before he gave the laptop to the DC police,” Taylor said, leaning forward. “I guess he did that to give the data to Hamilton.”

“Bull's-eye! Sprague made two phone calls while he had the laptop. One to the cops about turning it over and the other, I'll bet, to Hamilton, who gave him the commands to open the laptop and activate the port. So Hamilton would get what was on Cole's laptop—and the cops would get an empty laptop.”

“The FBI will figure that all out,” Taylor said. “They should be talking to Sprague, not you.”

“I think their real person of interest is Sprague,” Falcone said. “Sarsfield is incredibly thorough—and clever. He called me and set up his dog-and-pony show because he wanted to find out whether I was somehow involved with Sprague. Turns out Sprague didn't tell them what I had told him. It was a typical Sprague move: get me
into
trouble and keep himself
out of
trouble. But forget that. I know something that Sarsfield doesn't know.”

“What's that?”

Falcone told him about Sprague's computer illiteracy. “Now stay tuned,” Falcone said. He reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out his Best Buy cell phone. “I don't think they've got me linked to this number yet.” He tapped the number for Sullivan & Ford and asked for Ursula Breitsprecher, knowing she never let her phone ring more than twice.

“Ursula? Sean. Don't hang up. You need to hear this,” he said.

He could picture the frown rippling across her face, the good-sense part of her brain calculating.

“Make it fast,” she said icily.

“I have just visited the USG organization on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Falcone said, fearing that “FBI” would trigger an NSA keyword response. “I learned that on the afternoon of October fourth you provided your boss with your usual assistance. Twice. For your own good, you need to get that information to the correct USG officials,” Falcone told her in his most persuading voice. Now he pictured her, pursing her lips and raising her head, as if the answer were on the ceiling.
She has to know she tampered with evidence,
he thought
. And “USG” will get to her German soul
.

“How?” she asked in a firm voice.

“Easy. Meet me at the Starbucks near you in an hour. Bring the thing. I'll bring my laptop, load it in, and give it back. You will have cooperated. Problem solved.”

Seconds ticked by. Then, lowering her voice, she said, “Is this a client-lawyer conversation?”

“If you want it to be.”

“I do.”

“Agreed. As usual, Ursula, good thinking. See you in an hour.”

Taylor's car was parked down the block. While he drove Falcone home, they planned their next moves. At 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, Taylor parked underground. Then they took the elevator to the penthouse, where Falcone picked up his laptop and put two cups of morning coffee into the microwave.

Sitting next to each other at the kitchen counter, they completed their plan.

“I used to hate heated-up coffee,” Taylor said, extracting the cups and handing one to Falcone. “Not bad from a microwave, though.”

Falcone nodded. He took a couple of sips and said, “Right. Not bad. But not good. I've got another reason for looking forward to Starbucks. What do you think we'll be getting?”

“We'll be getting something that Hamilton wanted real bad. That's for sure,” Taylor said. “And remember Cole said to me that he blamed himself for Hal's death. He was scared. He thought he was in danger. And he was right. Hal dead. Cole dead.”

“Don't brood, Ben. We're both still vertical,” Falcone said. “See you soon with the goods.”

He finished his coffee, put his laptop in its carrying case, and headed for the door.

 

55

Falcone's bespoke suit and
cashmere topcoat did not blend into the Starbucks style, which favored jeans and hooded jackets with the hoods down. But his laptop certainly did fit in. He opened it and looked around. From his corner two-person table he counted twelve fellow patrons hunched over their laptops. He did not count the number of times he looked at his watch. Fifty-two minutes had passed since he said he would meet Ursula in an hour. He believed that she would be here in eight minutes or she would not come at all, because she did not know how to be late.

She swept into Starbucks with seven minutes to spare, her long blond hair and her crimson cape flowing around her trim figure. Several men looked up from their screens as she twisted through the tables to Falcone, who rose and extended his hand, which she did not take.

“Can I get you coffee—or tea. I nearly forgot, you prefer tea,” Falcone said.

“No thanks,” she said as she sat down opposite him and used her coldest voice. “Luckily Paul is in Middleburg for the day. But I'm jammed, as usual. Let's get to the business. I have what you want.” She pulled the cover off a black thumb drive and inserted it into the side of his laptop.

“I did not know what to do. I knew … knew something was wrong,” she said, her voice losing its frost. “Paul, always with secrets. I know he is doing something wrong and … pulling me in.”

“You're doing the right thing, Ursula,” Falcone said.

“But, Sean, what does it mean for me to do the right thing?”

“It means you are putting yourself on the right side of the law.”

Falcone's eyes were locked on the laptop. When the thumb-drive download ended, he grasped the drive with one napkin and wiped it with another before handing it back to her.

She slipped the thumb drive into her small black handbag and asked, “What will you do with this?”

“Hold on to it for now. I guess you know that the laptop was taken from Hal's office during the shooting.”

“Yes, although Paul did not tell me that.”

“You probably know more law than most of the partners. So I'm sure you realize that one important element in the chain of evidence is who secured the evidence and who had control or possession of the evidence.”

“So Paul was in possession—and tampered with the evidence,” she said, lowering her voice and leaning across the table. “And … and I helped him.”

“But you didn't know it was evidence, did you?”

“No. I walked into Paul's office and saw a laptop, and I did what he told me to do.”

“The usual ballet?”

“Ballet?… Oh, yes. The system for when he had to act like he knew how to use a computer. Oh, yes!” She smiled. “Like a pas de deux. Very funny.”

“I'll need you to give me a formal statement, giving all the details, such as how Paul got the passwords. I assume it was someone from SpaceMine.”

“Yes, it was Mr. Hamilton.”

“Wonderful! Then Hamilton himself literally gave Paul the key to tampering?”

“Yes. I see the need to give you a deposition as soon as possible. When and where?”

Falcone took a sip of coffee and then put the laptop in its case. Suddenly, he looked up and said, “I just had an idea, Ursula. Let's go to FBI headquarters.”

He told her about his session with Sarsfield's timelines and how the double download made him realize what had probably happened.

“Exactly how. The pas de deux,” she said, smiling. “I can see why going to the FBI is a good idea. I agree.” She leaned back and said softly, “I feel relieved. Very relieved. It's like I am two persons. One who works there”—she tilted her head toward the Sullivan & Ford Building—“and one who … who has a life … who tries to have a life.”

Falcone took out his cell phone and called Taylor to say, “I've got it. I'll be dropping it off shortly. Then I'll be going with my provider to where I was earlier. Can't say more.”

He next called Patterson's private number. “J.B., I need a return visit with Agent Sarsfield. Right away.”

“I would think you had enough of him for the day,” Patterson said dryly.

“No. This is hot, J.B. I have someone who wants to make a statement. A big statement. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, Sherlock. Sarsfield will meet you at the gate.”

 

56

Falcone and Ursula jumped
into a cab and took it to his apartment. Falcone handed the laptop to the doorman and asked him to deliver it to the penthouse, where there would be someone to take it. Then the pair sprinted two blocks to the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

Sarsfield was standing in front of the entrance to the courtyard. He checked Ursula's identification and swiftly ushered them through the security path to the elevator. On the seventh floor, they bypassed Patterson's office and entered the conference room. Falcone nodded to Agrawal and Poindexter, who were in the same seats. At the far end of the table, Falcone was surprised to see Director Patterson. Seated at his left was a woman in her fifties wearing a dark-blue blazer and holding an iPad. Sarsfield took the chair to Patterson's right.

“This is our general counsel, Marjorie Humphreys,” Patterson said, nodding toward her. “She'll handle any legal issues that may come up.”

Falcone, standing behind the chair he had recently occupied, said, “This is my client, Ursula Breitsprecher”—he spelled out her name and then went on. “She is the executive assistant to Paul Sprague, to whom I gave the laptop we had been discussing. She wishes to describe what happened on October fourth.”

Humphreys ducked and came up from her briefcase with a Bible, which was passed down the table to Ursula, who, under the general counsel's direction, swore to tell the truth.

As Ursula began describing the speakerphone system that she and Sprague had worked out, the door opened and a man slipped into the room. He took a chair next to Humphreys, who introduced him as Assistant Attorney General James Cosgrove.

After Humphreys gave Cosgrove a whispered summary of the deposition thus far, she signaled for Ursula to continue, step by step, describing the downloading and disabling on October 4. When she mentioned the phone call, she identified the other person on the line as Robert Wentworth Hamilton.

“What is the basis for your identification?” Humphreys asked.

“No other client of Mr. Sprague uses a telephone encryption system. It distorts the voices of both parties. I know his voice through that distortion. It makes him sound like one of those children on
South Park
.”

Humphreys smiled. Falcone was the only person in the room who laughed.

Finally, at Humphreys's request, Ursula handed the thumb drive to Poindexter, who accepted it with a gloved hand and placed it in a transparent evidence bag.

“Don't we get to read it?” Falcone asked the end of the table.

“It's evidence,” Sarsfield said. “It must be processed and analyzed.”

“What about a video of this deposition?”

After a long silence, Patterson had a whispered conversation with Humphreys and Cosgrove and finally said, “You will receive a copy for your client. Thank you both for coming here today.”

Sarsfield led Falcone and Ursula back through the security gauntlet and left them with a wave on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“There's a restaurant, D'Acqua, just a block from here,” Falcone said. “It's an Italian and seafood place, but you can get tea there, too, I know.”

“Come on, Sean, give me a break! Already it's been a full day. I'm going right home and…”

“Please, Ursula. This is something that I need to know. You liked Hal Davidson. He had never done anyone any harm. But he was shot to death.”

“Yes, a fine man. But, Sean, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I don't think so, Ursula,” Falcone said, pointing to the Starbucks on Seventh Street, half a block away. “I think he was murdered because somebody wanted him killed. Please, five minutes.”

“All right. You have my attention. I want to know why you think that.”

They entered from the side door. Ursula sat at a table along the far wall while Falcone ordered his coffee and her chai tea latte.

When he returned carrying the cups, she looked up and said, “I … I am grateful that you had me go to the FBI. Next, Paul will be hearing from Sarsfield. And I will be without a job.”

“He'd be a fool to fire you. And … there's your friend.”

“Ralph. He spends half of his time back in South Carolina. But, you're right. Having a member of Congress as a boy … as a friend, will help,” she said, smiling and pausing. “Maybe he could get me a job on the Hill.… Well, okay, what is it you want to know?”

“Hal Davidson made several recent trips to South Africa on a pro bono case of some kind. I have a hunch that whatever he was doing is somehow connected with his murder.”

“Murder?” Ursula asked. “I can't believe that.”

“I know it seems incredible, but I'm convinced that Hal was the target, and there had to be a motive.”

“All I know is that he had been helping South African miners for a couple of years when we took on Hamilton as a client,” Ursula said. “Helping those miners was like a crusade, a cause, for Hal. There was one day when the police and miners fought. Hal was there. The miners had clubs and machetes. The police had guns and killed a lot of the miners. Hal told me how horrible it was. He knew I was … dating … a congressman. Hal asked me to talk to Ralph and have Congress investigate the terrible conditions the miners worked under. But Ralph ran into a brick wall. He couldn't find any cosponsor for a congressional hearing. The word was out that big money—big donors—didn't want anything to do with the African miners.”