She drove to Virginia and stopped in front of an imposing building that was relatively new.
United States Courthouse.
It was inside here that justice was supposed to be accomplished. It was inside here that wrongs were supposed to be righted. The guilty punished. The innocent absolved.
Reel didn’t know if any of that happened in courthouses anymore. She wasn’t a lawyer and didn’t understand the intricacies of what lawyers and judges did.
But she did understand one thing.
There were consequences to choices.
And a choice had been made by someone in that building and she happened to be the consequence of that choice.
She waited for another hour, her car parked on the street, its engine running. There was virtually no parking around here. She had been lucky enough to snag a spot and didn’t want to give it up.
The clouds had steadily moved back up the river and thickened. A few drops of rain plopped onto her windshield. She didn’t notice; her attention was riveted on the front steps of the courthouse. Finally, the doors opened and four men walked out.
Reel was only interested in one of the four. He was older than the rest. He should have known better. But perhaps with age, at least in his case, did not come wisdom.
He was white-haired, tall, and trim, with a tanned face and small eyes. He said something to one of the other men and they all laughed. At the bottom of the stairs they parted company. The white-haired man went to the left, the others to the right.
He opened his umbrella as the rain became steadier. His name was Samuel Kent. His intimates called him Sam. He was a federal judge of long standing. He was married to a woman who came from money. Her trust fund fueled a lavish lifestyle with an apartment in New York, a historically important eighteenth-century town home in Old Town Alexandria, and a horse farm in Middleburg, Virginia.
A year ago, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court had appointed Sam Kent to the FISC, which stood for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the most clandestine of all federal tribunals. It operated in absolute secrecy. The president had no authority over it. Neither did Congress. It never published its findings. It was really accountable to no one. Its sole purpose was to grant or reject surveillance warrants for foreign agents operating in the United States. There were only eleven FISC judges, and Sam Kent was thrilled to be one of them. And he never rejected a warrant request.
Reel watched Kent walk down the street. She knew his Maserati convertible was parked in a secure section of the courthouse garage, so he wasn’t driving anywhere. His town home would have been within walking distance of the old federal courthouse in Old Town, which was now used by the bankruptcy court. But it was too far to walk from this courthouse. There were two Metro stops in the area, but Reel doubted he would be taking public transportation. He just didn’t seem the sort to mix with regular people. At this hour of the day she assumed he might be going to grab a bite to eat at one of the nearby restaurants.
She pulled out onto the street and followed the judge at a discreet distance.
In her head Reel had her list. There were two crossed off.
Judge Kent was the third name on that list.
She had covered the intelligence sector. Now it was time to move on to the judiciary.
Kent was very foolish for walking alone even in daylight, she thought. With Gelder and Jacobs dead he would have to know.
And if he knew, he should be aware that he was on the list.
And if he didn’t know, he was not nearly as formidable an opponent as she thought.
And I know that’s not the case.
Something was off here.
Her gaze hit the rearview mirror.
And that’s when Jessica Reel realized that she had just made a very costly mistake.
CHAPTER
21
“YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR GOVERNMENT pension got shit-canned,” said Robie as he walked next to Blue Man down the hallway.
“It did. But that’s not why I’m upset.”
“I didn’t think they could take pensions away from federal employees.”
“We’re not the Department of Agriculture. It’s not like we can write an op-ed in the Post because we’re upset.”
“So where are we going?”
“To talk.”
“Just you and me?”
“No.”
“Who else? I’ve already spoken with Evan Tucker. And number two is no longer with us.”