“I had to send a team out to Los Angeles,” the older man said. “And we started tracking you, your boyfriend,” he nodded in DePresti’s direction, “and everyone else involved with ILIAD. We had to prevent a spill, a leak. We had to make sure that the only people that knew what was going on in the SAP were the carefully vetted people who had been read in.”
“To include Dr. Pham?” she asked.
“Yes,” Everson said, “who wasn’t our most willing participant, but he was read into the high side.” He went on. “Then, we tried to make you stop. A phone call directly to you, having your management tell you to stop, even a visit from yours truly,” Everson said. “But, Ms. Parkowski, you are quite determined to get to the bottom of this.”
He took a breath. “Then, you went to Dr. Pham. You forced the issue. We were similarly forced to take drastic measures, ones that I did not want to have to do, but that were necessary. Our leadership believed that based on the information we had at our disposal, Dr. Pham was going to reveal the crown jewels of the operation, the big secret that everyone wants to know.”
“And what would that be?” Parkowski asked, a little annoyed.
Everson ignored her again. He wasn’t going to tell them anything that Parkowski and DePresti didn’t already know. “I had to make the call to one of the other organizations that exists within our larger one,” he continued. This was almost like a carefully prepared monologue to himself, like DePresti and Parkowski weren’t sitting there in front of him. “They eliminated the threat — Dr. Pham — and attempted to eliminate the two of you as well. However, you escaped the initial attack and somehow eluded our pursuit. We lost your position at San Bernardino. From there, you could have doubled back to Los Angeles, gone to Barstow or Las Vegas, or cut south to Riverside and Orange County.
“We started to search for you but our leadership pulled us back. They had another idea. The two of you, particularly you, Ms. Parkowski, got frighteningly close to unraveling what my organization has spent years planning. If you could do it, given your relative lack of experience, other people could do it, too.”
Parkowski’s mouth fell open again, this time in horror. She knew what he was going to say next.
“We went from elimination mode to reconnaissance mode,” Everson explained. “We didn’t initially know where your base of operations was located, but we knew it was in the Barstow area. It was easy enough to keep tracking teams in the city and trail you on your excursion in and out of Los Angeles as well as your road trip across the country until we lost you in Texas, but we knew your final destination. We even had a fun time staging a shootout at Chang’s house — neither of you was really in any danger. Your friend is fine, by the way, just in federal custody until we can take care of this issue. We had to keep you moving along in your investigation.
“We briefly lost contact with you today, and to be honest I’m not entirely sure how exactly you got on base, but we had sensors placed at all of the relevant BKT buildings for the launch campaign that we reactivated yesterday. We were already on base, working on another project, when we realized that someone had gotten into our hangar. And imagine my shock when I found you here. Now, we can close all of the doors that you opened and lock and bar them so that no one else can learn what you did.”
It was her worst fear, something that she had suppressed for days. It had been far too easy for them. They had been allowed to get as far as they did because Everson and whoever he worked for wanted to make sure that no one would ever travel down the path they had taken again.
DePresti gave a short, nervous laugh. “You’re part of some spooky, unnamed intelligence agency. I’ve heard of organizations like yours. You get funded off the books through the CIA or DIA or whatever agency they funnel the money through, but your name and purpose remain hidden. The IC is full of people like you. You’re totally unaccountable to Congress and to the taxpayer.”
Everson laughed back at him. “What makes you think we’re part of the intelligence community, or really, part of the government at all?” he said, refuting DePresti’s central argument.
“The American intelligence community is a mockery of the word intelligence,” he continued, pointing a finger at DePresti with his free hand, “if they told me the sun was going to come up tomorrow, I would have to go out in the morning to verify it. We work in the shadows, in the cracks, to advance our interests forward.”
“And what would those be?” DePresti asked. Parkowski was still in shock. She had led herself to believe that they had outsmarted and outmaneuvered their pursuers; instead, they had just let them see how far they could get so they knew which holes to patch.
Everson didn’t answer her boyfriend’s question. Instead, he just sat there, handgun pointed at Parkowski.
