'Because I want to draw my own conclusions.'
'You don't believe me?'
'Did I say that?' Sara asked in an icy tone.
'Take whatever you want, Colonel.'
'Don't be sarcastic, Kerney.'
Kerney pulled up at the cottage.
'Are we fighting?'
Sara jumped out of the truck.
'Yes, but for now it's just a skirmish.'
Chapter 12
Sara booked a four-hundred-dollar suite at a downtown hotel, called for a cab, and hung up.
'I can give you a ride,' Kerney said.
'Weren't we supposed to spend the weekend looking at some property?'
'We were.'
'What's it going to take to get you to move out of here into something decent?'
'Enough free time to do it,' Kerney said.
'You've got about six months,' Sara said, patting her still-flat stomach.
'This baby isn't going to wait any longer than that.'
'We won't be living here when the baby comes.'
'Where will we be, I wonder.' She made a dismissive gesture.
'Never mind.'
Kerney followed her into the bedroom.
'Is that what you wanted to talk about?'
'Not now.' Sara's gaze skimmed across the clutter of paper, files, and tapes, her eyes frost-green.
'We'd be up all night and I'm too tired for a marathon.'
'Should I come to the hotel in the morning?' Kerney asked as he sorted through case notes and materials, passing pertinent items to Sara.
'Call me first,' Sara said.
He gave her field notes, progress reports, document inserts, lists of names, lists of informants, and duplicates of Bobby Sloan's investigative reports.
'Perhaps we could meet at the hotel restaurant for breakfast,' he said.
'I don't have much of an appetite in the morning, these days,' Sara said.
'Just call, okay?'
He gave her Sloan's summaries of the videotape contents, his own chronological event log, crime-scene photographs, and transcripts of recorded conversations.
'Okay.'
He pointed at the audio- and videotapes. Sara shook her head and zipped everything into her travel bag.
The taxi driver sounded his horn.
'Let me send the cab away,' Kerney said. He passed her one of the new cell phones and a new number to use to get in touch.
'I'll take you to the hotel.'
Sara grabbed her coat and stuck the cell phone in a pocket.
'I don't want you to. I'll see you tomorrow.'
Kerney watched her walk out the door, wondering what they were really at odds about. He decided it was a bit of everything: the investigation, the baby, the marriage, the army, the cheerless cottage he lived in, their busted weekend plans.
Sara confirmed his observation when he heard the taxi door slam shut.
Two blocks from the Santa Fe Plaza, in the basement of the federal courthouse, Tim Ingram, just back from El Paso, reviewed transcripts of police radio transmissions and phone calls made to and from the Santa Fe Police Department.
Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.
Once a bomb shelter during the early days of the cold war, the basement had been converted to a sophisticated listening post that targeted suspected foreign agents working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, thirty-five miles away. Within recent years a British Army major on detached duty at the lab and a visiting Israeli physicist had been uncovered trying to stick their hands into Uncle Sam's cookie jar of nuclear weapon secrets.
Four operators sat at consoles in the sealed room. Two worked the SWAMI data that flowed into computers from phone lines, cell phones, and wireless Internet devices. Much like the NSA computers, SWAMI automatically scanned for millions of key words and phrases and immediately downloaded any that were programmed for intercept. The current operating program was case specific to the Terrell-Mitchell containment operation.
A woman manned a Carnivore unit that tapped into the Santa Fe Police Department's on-line computers and retrieved electronic communications.
The fourth technician monitored vehicle tracking devices planted on key police department units, watched real-time video of the front of Kerney's house, and taped audio transmissions from external remote listening stations and the fixed bugs at the police department, Kerney's residence, and the state police chief's office.
Every person on duty was a member of a team of military intelligence specialists who'd been handpicked as watchers, listeners, and monitors.
When SWAMI launched in three months as a private corporate enterprise, every illicit, suspicious, or fraudulent electronic or wire transfer monetary transaction flowing out of Colombia would be tracked and either seized or frozen.
Because SWAMI could burrow into the data banks of financial institutions around the world, it would violate international laws, compacts, and trade agreements, and intrude on the sovereignty of nations.
Revolutionary in design and concept, SWAMI would also capture sensitive economic and financial data from foreign governments and multinational corporations. That capacity virtually guaranteed long-term continued American domination of technological intelligence gathering.
Ingram watched the videotape of Sara Brannon's arrival at Kerney's house, caught on camera by a transmitter placed on a neighboring house.
He watched Kerney's cautious approach and entry. He listened to the tape recordings of their conversations, including their after-dinner exchange in Kerney's truck that had been picked up by a mobile unit trailing a kilometer behind the vehicle.
Tim shook his head at the thought of Sara Brannon's involvement in the case.
With her army credentials and contacts, she just might be able to break through the Trade Source and APT Per forma corporate shields. While that wouldn't get her to the SWAMI secrets, it was unacceptable nonetheless.
Ingram knew Brannon personally. A recent blurb in the West Point alumni magazine had reported she'd been the first in their class to make lieutenant colonel and earn the highly coveted Distinguished Service Medal for exceptionally meritorious service while serving in Korea.
Elaine Cornell, aka Special Agent Applewhite, was a member of the same graduating class. He wondered how Applewhite would react to the news of Brannon's arrival.
He went to a SWAMI console, where one of the operators had locked into Sara's Internet server. The screen rolled data in from Saras laptop.
Information about Cornell from the West Point Association of Graduates Web site scrolled across the screen. It confirmed her cover as a resigned officer now serving as a special agent with the FBI. The next name Sara entered was his own.
Ingram clamped his mouth shut. How in the hell had she got onto him?
He was supposed to be embedded deep enough to be under anyone's radar.
