Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [66]
“I will. You have a thing for this guy, Roseann?”
“No, Joe, I have a thing for you.”
He considered pressing her about Thomas and their dinner together but thought better of it. She’d been honest with him, and he was sure there wasn’t more to it than she’d said there was. Besides, he reminded himself as he stood up, he was lucky she was there at all, considering how he’d been acting. He touched the back of her neck as he passed her chair, felt her fingertips on his hand, and went to the phone.
Chapter 22
The Next Morning
The J. Edgar Hoover Building
“You’re confident about this?” Russell Templeton asked.
“Yes, sir,” Sydney Wingate, one of the Bureau’s handlers of special agents working undercover, responded.
FBI Director Templeton sat at a round table in his office with Wingate and with Joe Harris, head of the Bureau’s counterterrorism division. “Joseph?” Templeton said, looking at Harris, to whom Wingate reported.
“It looks solid,” Harris said. He consulted a computer printout. “We’ve had someone inside five—no, make that six militia groups. Recently, I’m talking about. These are the six our intelligence indicated were most active and likely to mount some sort of an attack in the near future. It’s a crapshoot, as you know. With more than five hundred identified hate groups in the country, and damn near fifteen hundred web sites, you hope you choose right. In this case, it looks like we did.”
“The Jasper Project.”
“Yes, sir. We got lucky in another way. They blew Scope’s cover a day ago. He’s fortunate to be alive. But he is alive—very much so—and got out of there with the goods.”
“Where is he?”
“We’ve got him secluded in Virginia, one of the safe houses,” Wingate said. “He’s finished his report, and I’ve seen the documentation he brought with him. He’s done a hell of a job.”
Templeton glanced at a paper on his desk and read aloud from it, paraphrasing: “Traxler, Donald, nickname ‘Skip,’ sixteen years’ service with the Bureau, plenty of commendations, nothing negative in his file. Divorced, no children, former wife with State Department, teaches part-time at GW. Worked undercover past eleven years, speaks fluent Spanish, passable German, psychological profiles negative.” He stopped reading and grimaced as something on the paper stopped him. “What’s this report from the psychiatrist?”
Wingate said, “Not too bad. It was after his last undercover assignment in New York. The debriefing psychiatrist passed him, but commented that he felt Traxler was prone to taking greater risks than prudent, and tended to be scornful of authority. Not an unusual profile for someone in his line of work. It’s high-risk to begin with.”
Templeton picked up another sheet of paper. “This shooting death of a member of the Jasper group— Traxler?”
“Yes, sir,” Wingate replied. “As I said, his cover was blown and he had to shoot his way out. They sent two men from the ranch after him. He killed one, disabled the other. Our agents in the area have things under control with local authorities. Assailant unknown. They won’t push it.”
“Will Jasper push it?”
“Unlikely. He’s already gotten the word out in the community that it was a hunting accident. Wouldn’t look too good to his followers that he had an FBI agent in his compound for almost six months and didn’t know it.”
Templeton sat back, rubbed his eyes, and took in Harris and Wingate. “Is Jasper and his organization national?”
“National?”
“Yes. The three aircraft downings occurred in three diverse geographical areas—New York, Idaho, California. They’ve got followers in all those places?”
“These militia groups are forming alliances every day, sir. The networks they’re establishing make them especially dangerous.”
“So we might be talking about groups other than Jasper’s.”
“Affirmative. But Jasper is the point man. Scope’s nailed that down.”
Templeton sighed. “All right,” he said. “If what Scope says is true, and if his proof holds up, I’ll take it to Justice. Until then, it stays strictly with us. No leaks. I want a personal briefing