Ryan gazed down at the ocean, forty-two thousand feet below him. The VIP treatment wasn't hard to get used to. As a directorate chief he also rated a special flight from Andrews direct to a military airfield outside of the NATO headquarters at Mons, Belgium. He was representing the Agency at a semiannual conference with his intelligence counterparts from the European Alliance. It would be a major performance. He had a speech to give, and favorable impressions to make. Though he knew many of the people who'd be there, he'd always been an upscale gofer for James Greer. Now he had to prove himself. But he'd succeed. Ryan was sure of that. He had three of his own department heads along, and a comfortable seat on a VC-20A to remind him how important he was. He didn't know that it was the same bird that had taken Emil Jacobs to Colombia. That was just as well. For all his education, Ryan remained superstitious.
As Executive Assistant Director (Investigations), Bill Shaw was the Bureau's senior official, and until a new Director was appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, he'd be acting Director. That might last for a while. It was a presidential election year, and with the coming of summer, people were thinking about conventions, not appointments. Perversely, Shaw didn't mind a bit. That meant that he'd be running things, and for a case of this magnitude, the Bureau needed an experienced cop at the helm. "Political realities" were not terribly important to William Shaw. Crime cases were something that agents solved, and to him the case was everything. His first act on learning of the death of Director Jacobs had been to recall his friend, Dan Murray. It would be Dan's job to oversee the case from his deputy assistant director's office, since there were at least two elements to it: the investigation in Colombia and the one in Washington. Murray's experience as legal attach in London gave him the necessary political sensitivity to understand that the overseas aspect of the case might not be handled to the Bureau's satisfaction. Murray entered Shaw's office at seven that morning. Neither had gotten much sleep in the previous two days, but they'd sleep on the plane. Director Jacobs would be buried in Chicago today, and they'd be flying out on the plane with the body to attend the funeral.
"Well?"
Dan flipped open his folder. "I just talked to Morales in Bogot . The shooter they bagged is a stringer for M-19, and he doesn't know shit. Name is Hector Buente, age twenty, college dropout from the University of the Andes - bad marks. Evidently the locals leaned on him a little bit - Morales says they're pretty torqued about this - but the kid doesn't know much. The shooters got a heads-up for an important job several days ago, but they didn't know what or where until four hours before it actually took place. They didn't know who was in the car aside from the ambassador. There was another team of shooters, by the way, staked out on a different route. They have some names, and the local cops're taking the town apart looking for them. I think that's a dead end. It was a contract job, and the people who know anything are long gone."
"What about places they fired from?"
"Broke in both apartments. They undoubtedly had the places surveyed beforehand. When the time came, they got in, tied up - actually cuffed - the owners, and sat it out. A real professional job from beginning to end," Murray said.
"Four hours' warning?"
"Correct."
"That makes it after the time the plane lifted off Andrews," Shaw observed.
Murray nodded. "That makes it clear that the leak was on our side. The airplane's flight plan was filed for Grenada - where the bird actually ended up. That was changed two hours out from the destination. The Colombian Attorney General was the only guy who knew that Emil was going down, and he didn't spread the word until three hours before the landing. Other senior government members knew that something was up, and that could explain the alert order to our M-19 friends, but the timing just isn't right. The leak was here unless their AG himself blew the cover off. Morales says that's very unlikely. The man is supposed to be the local Oliver Cromwell, honest as God and the balls of a lion. No mistress to blab to or anything like that. The leak was on our end, Bill."
Shaw rubbed his eyes and thought about some more coffee, but he had enough caffeine in his system already to hyperactivate a statue. "Go on."
"We've interviewed everyone who knew about the trip. Needless to say, nobody claims to have talked. I've ordered a subpoena to check phone records, but I don't expect anything there."
"What about -"
"The guys at Andrews?" Dan smiled. "They're on the list. Maybe forty people, tops, who could have known that the Director was taking a flight. That includes people who found out up to an hour
"Physical evidence?"
