Puzzle by Nora Phoenix
27
Branson had never been in the same place with so many powerful people. Coulson had called an emergency meeting, and they had crammed themselves into a way-too-small conference room in the CIA building, but nothing else had been available on such short notice.
Everyone had shown up, including the directors of the FBI and the CIA, the attorney general, FBI Special Agent in Charge Sheehan, and the national security advisor. Plus, of course, the usual suspects like Coulson and Seth. Branson was once again knee to knee with Ryder, asking himself why the fuck he’d subjected himself to this torture. Even Ryder’s smell turned him on, his cock half hard in anticipation. Traitor.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have Wesley Quirk in custody,” Coulson started the meeting, and boy, that had everyone’s attention. He explained how Officer Abramson had contacted him and what had happened afterward. Branson’s heart sped up as the story unfolded, and he forgot all about Ryder. Damn, that had been a close call for both Abramson and Coulson.
“You shot him in his hand?” Suzy Girardi, the attorney general, asked Seth.
“Yes.”
“Why his hand?”
“Because if I’d hit him anywhere else, he might’ve squeezed the trigger in a reflex, and with that many people around, including Officer Abramson, someone might’ve gotten hurt.”
FBI Director Huebner whistled between his teeth. “That’s excellent marksmanship, son.”
Seth shrugged. “I’m Secret Service. I don’t miss.”
Branson loved the man’s quiet confidence. He wasn’t bragging. He’d stated a fact, and in Branson’s eyes, that made it even more impressive. In his experience, people who excelled in something rarely bragged.
“The problem is that this may impact our investigation,” Coulson said. “We postponed the first round of subpoenas to prioritize building our case against El Sewedy, but this could jeopardize our timeline. For now, Quirk is in federal custody for assault with a deadly weapon on a federal officer. We got lucky he took a shot at me. Otherwise it would’ve been hard to charge him with a federal crime.”
“The Baltimore PD police commissioner contacted us,” Sheehan said. “He wasn’t happy, but when we informed him Quirk fired his gun at an FBI agent, he backed down. I didn’t get the impression he knows about Quirk’s involvement in the assassination, though he’s well aware the man is not squeaky clean in other areas.”
Coulson nodded. “The problem is that the security cameras around the McDonald’s caught the whole incident, which shows Officer Abramson. We’re not releasing it for now, but once we do, his precinct will know he’s involved.”
“They’ll know something is up anyway,” Gary said. “Abramson didn’t show up for his shift yesterday, and he’s in a safe location now. He called in sick, but at some point, his chief will figure out it’s connected.”
“What about his friend, the IT guy?” Seth asked. “How is he doing?”
“Emery Licari is still in the ICU, listed as stable but critical. We have plainclothes state police guarding him in case someone wants to finish the job. Traffic cams caught the accident, and it was a direct attempt to take him out. If he hadn’t been wearing a leather jacket and leather pants as well as a high-quality helmet, he’d be dead,” Coulson said.
“Did Quirk do it?” Branson asked.
Coulson shook his head. “No. He was on shift, and his alibi checks out.”
“State police are investigating, with our quiet assistance. As harsh as it sounds, finding out who was behind that is secondary to our investigation, so we haven’t provided a list of names of people who could be behind it to the state police,” Huebner said.
“What’s the impact on the investigation?” Heeder asked. “Give me the worst-case scenario.”
“Worst case is that everyone we’re investigating finds out we’re onto them now that Quirk is in federal custody, and they all go to ground…and destroy evidence,” Ella Yung, the national security sdvisor, said. “It would make everything a hell of a lot harder and time consuming.”
“Has Quirk used his right to speak to an attorney?” Branson asked.
“He contacted his union, the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police, and talked to one of their lawyers,” Gary said. “That’s good news because that means he still thinks this is unrelated to the assassination. Otherwise he would’ve reached out to a whole different type of lawyer.”
“In my estimate, we have twenty-four to forty-eight hours before the shit hits the fan,” Suzy Girardi said. “If we keep the current charge of assault with a deadly weapon of a federal officer, there’ll be an arraignment. The magistrate judge will release him pending trial on his own recognizance, since he’s a police officer with no priors, and the charge carries a sentence of under ten years of prison. Once he’s out, he can contact whoever he wants.”
“And if we add domestic terrorism charges?” Branson asked.
“That’s a whole different ball game. He wouldn’t be released, and the judge would most likely agree to strict confinement and no contact with anyone but his lawyer.”
“Are we ready to charge him?” Heeder asked. “Do we have enough evidence against him?”
Suzy Girardi gestured at Sheehan. “I think so, but I’d like to hear what the FBI thinks.”
Sheehan smiled weakly. “Coulson is our expert here.”
The man might technically be in charge, but he had so little input, Branson wondered why he even bothered showing up for these meetings.
“Yes.” Coulson’s answer was fast and firm. “We’ve had enough against him for a while, at least for the murder on Donnie Smith and for his role in the assassination. We’ve been surveilling him for months now, monitoring his calls and activities outside of work. That’s the only reason he could get to Abramson. He was on duty and walked over from the precinct. For obvious reasons, we can’t shadow him on the job, though we do monitor him there as much as we can.”
“And everyone else?” Heeder asked.
“We have sufficient evidence to link Naomi Beckingham and her boyfriend, Ralph Durrick, to the hacking of Christopher Hales’s laptop. Our cybercrime division has traced the hack back to Durrick, who’s an infamous hacker, so we have that all wrapped up. The ATF is confident Jon Brooks was the bomb maker for both the Pride Bombing and the assassination and has physical evidence for his arrest, linking the components to materials he bought, like the blasting caps. All we were waiting for was more proof on the role of Kingmakers and their connection to Hamza Bashir.” Coulson looked at Branson. “How are things on your end? Any fresh developments?
Branson loved that Coulson asked him and not Weston, who was also present. “We’ve dug up a lot more on Hamza Bashir, or Yazid El Sewedy, I should say. The Emirate authorities are cooperative after the British put pressure on them, and we have confirmed most of the details of his two meetings with Basil King, including the mysterious trip to Qatar where King disappeared for a few days. We have evidence he paid for a private plane to take him into Yemen, where El Sewedy had set up base by then.”
“What about the financial link between him and Kingmakers?” Coulson asked Ryder, who cleared his throat.
“If you’ll allow me to share some other developments first, I’ll get to that in a second,” he said, and Coulson smiled, as did Branson himself. Ryder was so adorable when he was all serious and nerdy.
Ryder took a deep breath. “Based on the assumption that someone else had paid for the Pride bombers to come to the US, Corey and I traced the tuition payments to the colleges they attended. They all came from a US bank account set up through Wise, which is a go-between financial service that allows non-US residents to set up a bank account in the US. That’s where we ran into a problem. That tuition was paid months before the first established contact between Kingmakers and El Sewedy. These three guys arrived in the US in July 2014. The first contact with Kingmakers wasn’t until September of that year.”
Silence descended in the room as the implications sank in. “You’re saying El Sewedy set these three guys up as sleepers in the US before he ever talked to Kingmakers?” Heeder then asked.
“Yes.” Ryder didn’t even hesitate for a second.
“We think that El Sewedy planned to do some kind of terrorist attack on US soil for the highest bidder,” Branson said. “He set everything up way ahead of time, before he’d even talked to potential clients, so it would all fly under the radar. And it did. The intelligence community didn’t pick up chatter on a new terrorist cell until February 2015, and the Pride Bombing happened in June of that year. El Sewedy set everything in motion, but he waited with establishing the terrorist cell until he had a client and knew what it had to look like. It all fits with our theory that he’s doing it purely for the money.”
“Jesus,” Huebner muttered. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all, we now have to worry about people committing these atrocities for money? I don’t know why, but that makes it ten times worse.”
Branson had thought the same thing when it had hit him. On some level, he could understand people who committed crimes out of a deep religious conviction. They were wrong, no doubt about it, but he could follow their reasoning. But killing for money? That meant having no soul at all, no compassion. No humanity.
“We subpoenaed Wise for the records, and the money was transferred into that account from another Wise account, one that Kingmakers paid a million dollars into over the course of the last six years. So for the first time, we’ve established a financial trace between Kingmakers and El Sewedy,” Ryder said.
“That’s fantastic work, guys,” Coulson said, and Ryder’s beaming smile made Branson’s belly flutter. Fuck, he was so stinking cute.
“Thank you, sir. We’re still working with the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates to get access to El Sewedy’s account, but I’m positive we’ll find what we need in time.”
Ryder sounded confident, as always when he talked about numbers, and it never failed to amaze Branson how sexy that was.
“Does that mean we have enough on the financial links?” Coulson asked.
Ryder looked at Corey, who gestured Ryder should answer. “For an arrest, yes, but a conviction in court would require more. To get that, we’d need full access to all Kingmakers’ financials, straight from the source, so to speak, not from third parties. I assume they have multiple hidden accounts we don’t know about yet.”
“The same is true for the companies we suspect of involvement in the fraud regarding Governor Winkelmann’s presidential campaign. I need access to their full financial information,” Corey said.
Coulson nodded. “I figured as much. The bottom line is that we have two choices. We can either let Quirk walk on charges of assaulting a federal officer and risk him alerting everyone in his network, thus compromising and complicating our investigation. Or we can make our move now and execute search warrants and indictments across the board for everyone on our list…except El Sewedy.”
“He’ll know we’re on to him,” Calix said.
“Yes. He’ll disappear,” Branson said. “And it may take us a while to find him again.”
“I have a third solution,” Ryder said, and the room fell quiet. “It’s what I would call the Al Capone approach.”
Al Capone? What did he have to do with anything? Oh, wait. In the end, they’d convicted him for tax fraud, not for the crime empire he’d built. Shit, of course. Tax evasion.
“You propose going after Kingmakers for tax fraud?” Huebner said. “Color me intrigued.”
Ryder nodded. “For tax fraud and the illegal elections contributions to Governor Winkelmann’s campaign. The IRS already flagged Kingmakers’ returns and set up an audit, so we have that precedent. There are plenty of factual anomalies in their returns, enough to build a case for tax evasion and fraud. We could go after the other four companies for illegal campaign contributions, and it wouldn't surprise me if they committed fraud to cover those up.”
“You’re saying use those charges as an excuse to subpoena everything, then later indict them for domestic terrorism,” Heeder said.
“Yes, sir. It would give us some extra time.”
The room grew quiet again. “All we’d have to do is classify the McDonald’s footage so the Baltimore PD or the media can’t get their hands on that,” Coulson said.
“And find a reasonable excuse for Abramson to quit his job,” Branson added.
“But Quirk knew Emery had that video of him stealing the car from the impound lot,” Seth brought up. “How will you make that go away?”
“We don’t. Quirk doesn’t know we already connected the dots. He fears he might get busted for stealing a car based on that video, not for anything else,” Coulson said. “And I doubt he’ll be shocked when Abramson leaves, not after the way he threatened him. In fact, he probably figures that solved his problem. The IT guy is in the hospital, and Abramson is gone. He’ll never expect them to contact the FBI because stealing a car isn’t a federal offense, not even if it involves a cop.”
“Do we have any evidence they’re planning another attack?” Ella Yung asked. “Because if they are, we can’t delay arresting them.”
“Not even a hint. We’ve been monitoring communication between all suspects as much as we can, and we've seen nothing that suggests they’re gearing up for another attack. They’re lying low.”
“Putting the pressure on them with Quirk’s arrest, followed by indicting them for tax fraud may, cause them to make mistakes. Even the most hardened criminals have a tough time keeping their heads cool when they suspect the feds are on their trail,” Huebner said.
The man made a good point. “They might contact each other to compare notes,” Branson said.
“If they do, it would play right into our hands.” Coulson rubbed his hands in a way that made Branson smile. “And the tax fraud indictment will prevent them from destroying financial evidence.”
“This is our course of action, then?” Huebner looked around the room. “Any objections? No? Okay, then everyone has their marching orders. Let’s get them, people.”
As everyone left the room, Director Heeder walked over to Ryder. “That was excellent work, Ryder.”
Ryder beamed, his entire face lighting up. “Thank you, sir.”
“From you as well, Branson,” the director said. “How’s your father doing?”
Branson was taken aback. How did Heeder know about his dad? But Heeder smiled, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I met your father several times throughout my career, especially when he was stationed in Jordan. He’s a good man, and I was sorry to hear about his diagnosis.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll let him know you asked about him. He’ll appreciate that. He’s hanging in there. The surgery took a lot, and his recovery ’sn't as quick as we’d hoped, but I’m confident he’ll fight his way through this.”
Heeder squeezed his shoulder, then let go. “He’s a fighter, that’s for certain. Tell him to kick this disease’s ass, would you?”
He walked off, leaving Branson and Ryder behind. “That was really nice of him,” Ryder said.
Branson smiled at him. “His compliment to you or what he said about my dad?”
“Both…but I’d lie if I said I didn’t value him affirming me.”
“It was well deserved, chéri. That was a brilliant suggestion.”
“Thank you.” He shuffled his feet, then looked up at Branson again. “I like it when you call me that.”
“What, chéri?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll keep calling you that, then.”
“Yes, please. I mean, that would be okay. Good. Fun even. Anyway, I’m rambling. Wanna grab lunch together?”
Warmth filled Branson’s heart. Ryder had initiated hanging out together—and this time not because of something that had happened with Branson. “I’d love to.”
