But here was what I could observe: The victim was male, latefiftyish, neither ugly nor attractive, tall nor short, skinny nor fat, and so forth. An everyday Joe. A man with bland features and a gray brush cut, physically ordinary and entirely unmemorable.
It occurred to me that if you walked past him on the street or sat beside him on the subway, you would look right past or perhaps through him.
And there, I thought, was one putative motive for going either postal or suicidal--fatal anonymity. "How long have you been here?" I asked Ms. Tran.
"Thirty minutes, more or less." She was jotting notes in a small notebook. She shifted her shoulder and--accidentally, I'm sure-- blocked my view of her notebook. She asked, "What about you?"
"Just arrived. How about a little help getting oriented?" What I failed to mention was why I was here in the first place, which had something to do with the victim's phone being tapped by people from the FBI, who were working with people from the CIA, who had overheard a phone call from a distressed lady to the local cops, reporting a corpse.
The victim was what is termed in the intelligence business a target of interest; was being the operative tense. Now he was an object of mystery, and in every mystery there are five basic questions. Who died was obvious, as was where, leaving the three questions I was sent here to figure out--when, how, and with any luck, why.
Nobody informed me why and in this business, don't ask. If you need to know, they'll tell you. Irritating, certainly, but there are valid and important reasons for this rule. The fate of our nation might depend on it, so you have to swallow your curiosity, avoid speculation, and get on with it.
Anyway, suspicion of espionage--that was my guess. I mean, the FBI and CIA don't even like or trust each other. They are the Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, except in cases of espionage, when the crap lands on both their doorsteps. Then you have two prima donnas sharing the same small stage, and we all know what that gets you.
Also worth noting, with the country at war--in Afghanistan and Iraq--espionage had become a more noteworthy matter than during the cold war, where spies mostly just gave up other spies, like homicidal incest. By all the spook thrillers and Hollywood flicks you'd think that was what the whole cold war thing was about. In truth, it was little more than the waterboys at a pro football game snapping towels at each other's butts. Entertaining, for sure: Ultimately, however, the successes were never as great, and the failures never as dire, as they sounded. The more serious stuff would be handled by the millions of armed troops glaring across the inter-German border; the genuinely serious issues by a pair of gentlemen with briefcases who could turn out everybody's lights.
Post-9/11, however, was a new world. Times change--espionage today meant falling towers, crushed nations, and soldiers' lives.
About that latter point, you can bet my interest was more than passing.
Which brings us to me--a newly promoted Army lieutenant colonel by rank, attorney by trade, Judge Advocate General Corps by branch, temporarily assigned to the CIA, though neither Ms. Tran nor the local cops were supposed to know any of that. The CIA is really into disguises, covers, and concealment. Inside the United States, usually this means we're impersonating other federal agencies, and you have to get your act straight. CIA people tend to be intelligent, clever, snide, and arrogant, and you have to suppress that. Feds tend to be intense Goody Two-shoes, wholesome, nosy, pushy, and obnoxious, so I was good to go on three out of five. I think it's fairly obvious which three.
Anyway, Ms. Tran had returned to ignoring me, so I asked her, "Are you going to help me out or not?"
"Why should I?"
"I'll make it worth your while."
"Will you? How?"
I smiled. "Afterward, you can take me to lunch, dinner, Bermuda, whatever."
She replied, without visible enthusiasm, "Let me think about it." Apparently she became distracted by something on the other side of the room, and she wandered away.
I should also mention that, at the moment, I was assigned to a small and fairly unique cell inside the CIA titled the Office of Special Projects, or OSP. About the only thing special about this cell that I can see is it gets the stuff nobody else wants--this job, for instance. In my view, it should