CHAPTER 61
I CAN ALWAYS TELL when I’ve hit a nerve.
The two CIA agents look at each other. Walsh fiddles with his wrinkled lapel.
“What did Phillips do when he stepped out on you?” I ask.
Perkins breaks the silence. “Broke a bunch of laws and regulations. He joined up with other Special Forces members out there, freelancing, conducting confidential missions against orders. He self-deployed for about six months before coming back stateside. We also know he later spent some time in a VA hospital in Virginia, then checked himself out after some trouble there.”
“A month after that,” says Walsh, “is when the first bomb went off.”
“You guys think there’s a link between those bombings and what Phillips was up to overseas?”
“We know there’s a link,” says Perkins.
I sit quietly for a minute, running through the case in my mind. Every conversation. Every interview. Every detail.
Then it hits me.
“The C-4! That’s it, right? When ATF asked Langley for the taggants we found, somebody got spooked. Because the taggants matched the supply Phillips brought back from his mission in Afghanistan.”
Perkins and Walsh look at me but say nothing. Which means I’m on the right track.
I decide to keep going. “Whatever he was doing over there needs to stay buried. So you guys need to get to Phillips before he decides to go public with something that will compromise the Company.”
“We think Phillips was deep in-country, trying to rescue some interpreters and informants who worked for us before the fall,” admits Perkins. “He failed in that mission, but he brought out some of the C-4 that we left behind. Stuff that had been in the hands of the Taliban.”
“Why would he take it?” I ask.
“Maybe he was planning the bombings already,” Perkins says. “Maybe he figured there’d be no way to trace it.”
I can see Walsh getting itchy in his ill-fitting suit. “So are you with us or not?” he asks bluntly.
“Tell you what. Add Anna Rizzo from ATF to the team. Make her a consultant too,” I say.
I don’t know how much leverage I have with these guys, but why not push it?
“Give her the taggant data and anything else she asks for. We need to know how much C-4 Phillips had access to and how much he brought back with him. And how much he might have left in his stash.”
“Okay,” says Walsh. “We’ll get Rizzo cleared.”
Perkins stands up and pulls a card from his wallet. He puts it down on my counter. “We’ll stay in touch. You do the same.”
I pick up the card. “In other words, you keep my secrets and I keep yours.”
“Something like that,” says Walsh.