“I am aware of my position.”
Terrence looked down at the cuffs.
“Are you?”
Carver stood.
The interview ended ten minutes later without progress.
Terrence made one request.
“I want a telephone call.”
“To your attorney?”
“To the Department of Defense.”
Langley laughed first.
Carver followed.
Doyle did not.
Something about Terrence’s calm had begun bothering her.
Not because she believed him completely.
Because she had seen liars.
They overexplained.
They changed details.
They became defensive.
Terrence had done none of that.
Carver shook his head.
“You can call the Pentagon right after you call the moon.”
Terrence looked at him.
“You should write that down too.”
Carver stopped smiling.
They placed Terrence in a holding cell.
The cuffs came off.
He sat on a narrow bench beneath a small reinforced window.
For almost forty minutes, no one spoke to him.
Terrence did not complain.
He watched a rectangle of afternoon light move slowly across the floor.
Waiting had once been part of his profession.
Waiting for aircraft.
Waiting for intelligence.
Waiting for weather.
Waiting for approval from people six thousand miles away who had never seen the ground they were discussing.
He had learned early that impatience made people reveal themselves.
So he waited.
At the front desk, Langley tried the federal query again.
RECORD RESTRICTED.
He restarted the computer.
Same result.
He called Gavin Stroud, the department’s civilian IT technician.
Gavin arrived carrying a half-eaten sandwich.
“What’d you break?”
“I didn’t break anything.”
Langley pointed.
Gavin leaned toward the screen.
His chewing slowed.
“That’s not a normal error.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean that’s not an error.”
Langley frowned.
“What is it?”
“Restriction response.”
“From what?”
“Federal identity service.”
Carver approached.
“Can you override it?”
Gavin laughed.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I enjoy not going to prison.”
Carver’s expression darkened.
Gavin pointed to a code near the bottom.
“This says the associated record requires verification through a protected federal channel.”
Langley stared.
“So what does that mean?”
“It means somebody doesn’t want a local terminal pulling his full file.”
Carver crossed his arms.
“Could be witness protection.”
“Could be.”
“Criminal informant.”
“Maybe.”
“Or fake.”
Gavin looked at him.
“A fake identity usually doesn’t generate a legitimate federal restriction.”
No one spoke.
For the first time, Langley looked toward the hallway differently.
The possibility entered the room.
Not belief.
Possibility.
Then the front doors opened.
Special Agent Declan Rhodes entered carrying a leather document case.
Rhodes worked out of a federal field office seventy miles away and was in Ashford that afternoon to deliver paperwork connected to an unrelated financial-fraud investigation.
He knew Captain Sloan professionally.
Barely.
Enough to shake hands.
Not enough to share birthdays.
Rhodes signed in.
As an officer walked him toward Sloan’s office, they passed the holding area.
Rhodes glanced through the small reinforced window.
Then stopped.
Terrence sat inside.
Back straight.
Hands loosely folded.
Eyes raised toward the narrow window.
Rhodes stared.
Something stirred in his memory.
Not a name.
An image.
A secure briefing room at Fort Meade almost fifteen years earlier.
Rhodes had been a young agent assigned to an interagency task force.
A general had entered midway through the briefing.
Everyone in uniform stood.
The man had told them to sit immediately.
He had asked three questions.
Each question exposed something the entire room had missed.
Rhodes remembered the eyes.
He stepped closer to the cell window.