and Devices. I’d been there-what?—just under two years, I think. So she was Kreiss’s ex?”
“Yep. I think she had a medical degree.”
“I would have liked to talk to her,” Janet said.
“You said she was getting the divorce when you worked that case together. She ever talk about it?”
“Not really. She seemed more sad than mad. There was one child involved. That must be your misser. But listen, I think she said she had talked to one of our in-house shrinks. Maybe there’s a file?”
Janet thanked her and then called the Administrative Services Division at headquarters. An office supervisor listened to her question and promised that someone from Employee Counseling would get back to her.
Then Janet went to the morning staff meeting.
At 2:30 that afternoon, the RA of the Roanoke office, Ted Farnsworth, called Janet into his office. The nearest full-scale FBI field office was in Richmond. The Roanoke office was subordinate to the larger Richmond office, and, as such, its boss was not called special agent in charge, but, rather, Resident Agent. Farnsworth was a senior supervisory agent who was nearing retirement age. He was generally a kind and not very excitable boss, but, at the moment, his New England accent was audible, which meant that he was perturbed.
“Got a call this afternoon from a Dr. Karsten Goldberg, number-two shrink in the headquarters Counseling Division. Says they received a call from this office concerning a Bureau employee, since deceased, named Helen Kreiss Morgan? I thought this missing kid case had been sent up to MP?”
“It has,” Janet said.
“Or it will be, as of Monday. I think Larry Talbot is still finishing up the paperwork.” She then related the incident involving Barry dark, and her suspicions that Edwin Kreiss might be going solo in the search for his daughter.
Farnsworth cupped his chin with his left hand and frowned.
“And you’re looking for some background on this former special agent, Edwin Kreiss.”
“Yes, sir. His ex-wife worked in the lab in Washington. She was killed in that plane crash in the Bay in late 1994. A contact at headquarters told me she’d been to the counselors during her divorce proceedings. I was hoping—” “Close that door,” Farnsworth said, indicating his office door. Janet was surprised, but she did as he’d asked. In today’s supercharged sexual harassment atmosphere, it was a rare male supervisor indeed who would conduct a conversation with a female employee behind a closed door. He had her attention. She sat back down.
“Now look,” Farnsworth said.
“What I’m going to tell you is not for general dissemination, despite what you might have heard from Larry. I hesitate even to go into this, because you’re not supposed to be working this case anymore.”
“Yes, sir,” Janet said.
“But as I understand it, we’ll keep a string on it even when it goes to MP? And I haven’t been assigned to anything else yet.” Even as she said that, Janet realized her reply sounded a little lawyerish.
Farnsworth smiled patiently.
“Janet, you’re a smart young lady. A Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in materials forensics, right? Almost nine years in the outfit, with two Washington tours and a field office tour in Chicago? And now you’re down here with us mossbacks in the hills and hollows doing exactly what with all that specialized knowledge?”
Janet colored. During her first year back in Washington following the Chicago tour, she had twice managed to embarrass the assistant director over the laboratory by filing dissenting opinions in some high-visibility evidentiary reports. Subsequent reviews proved her right, but, given the rising legal storm over irregularities at the FBI lab, her mentor at headquarters, a female senior supervisory agent, had hustled Janet out of headquarters before she got into any more career-killing trouble. With Farnsworth’s acquiescence, she had been transferred to the Roanoke office under the rubric of getting some out-of-specialty, street-level investigative experience. She nodded.
“Okay,” Farnsworth said.
“Now, there are two reasons why this case is going to MP. First, because I said so, and SAC, Richmond, agrees. There’s no evidence or even any indication that there’s been a crime, and we’ve got other fish to fry. Second, one of the kids was Edwin Kreiss’s daughter.”
He paused to see if she would understand.
She didn’t.
“Yes, sir. And?”
He sighed.
“Edwin Kreiss was not just a senior field agent who elected to retire down here in rustic southwest Virginia. He was Edwin Kreiss.”
“Still is, I suppose, boss. I guess my question is, So what?”
Farnsworth got his pipe out, which told Janet she was not going anywhere soon. He didn’t light it, in deference to the nonsmoking rules, but he did everything but light it. Then he leaned back in his chair.
“I don’t know any of this directly, other than by being an RA and being plugged into that network. Okay? So, like I said, don’t quote me on any of this. But Edwin Kreiss was a specialist in the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Division. In the mid-eighties, he went on an exchange tour at the Agency. He got involved in that Chinese espionage
case—you know, the one where they got into the atomic labs and allegedly stole our warhead secrets.”
“Yes, sir. It supposedly went on for over ten years.”
“Or more. Anyhow, you know that the Agency is restricted to operating outside the continental United States, while the Bureau is responsible for operating primarily inside our national borders.”
“Except we do go overseas.”
“Only when asked by foreign governments, or when we ask them. But the Agency may not operate here in the States, except when they feel they have a mole, an Agency insider who is spying. Then they sometimes team up with the Bureau FCI people to find him.”
“And the Department of Energy case involved a mole? I hadn’t heard that.”
“Well, not exactly a mole. Our people began to wonder why the doe’s own investigation, as well as the Agency’s, seemed to be taking so damn long. It turned out that the Chinese had some help.”
“In our government?”
“Worse—in the Agency’s Counterespionage Division. A guy named Ephraim Glower.”
“Never heard of him, either.”
“This wasn’t exactly given front-page coverage, and, again, I’ve never seen evidence of all this. But here’s the background on Kreiss. While he was on this exchange tour with their CE people, he supposedly uncovered Glower, who, at the time, was an assistant deputy director in the Agency’s Counterespionage Division.”
“Wow. Talk about top cover.”
Farnsworth smiled.
“Precisely. The Agency was furiously embarrassed.
When Kreiss forced the issue, they got him recalled to the Bureau. J. Willard Marchand was the new ADIC over the Bureau’s FCI Division, and he clamped the lid on Kreiss. They stashed him at headquarters for a while, but then the flap about the Chinese government making campaign contributions blew up, and Kreiss resurfaced his accusations. Marchand stepped on Kreiss’s neck. Kreiss then apparently decided to go confront this guy Glower.”
“You mean Glower still had his job?”
“Yes. Kreiss had no proof, or not enough to convince the Agency, so they got rid of Kreiss and left Glower in place.”
“That’s unbelievable.”
“They do it all the time, Janet. Then if it blows up, they cover their
asses by saying they were just letting the bad guy run so as to control what he did or gave to the other side. What’s important is that the Glower episode ended in a very bloody mess out in a little village called Millwood, Virginia, up in the Shenandoah Valley. Glower ended up dead.”
“Wow. Kreiss?”
“Well, after he got stepped on the second time, Kreiss went to Millwood and confronted Glower. Glower
