Free Friends at Homeland Security by Carl Douglass

out all of the details.”
    I raise my one eyebrow in a withering look. He doesn’t seem to wither.
    My first call is to a friend from my time in the FBI, Darryl Strathmore.
    “To what do I owe this honor, McGee?” he asks. “Oh, I think I can guess. You want something, and it is probably something you shouldn’t have.”
    “I think I should have it,” I say as lightly as I can under the circumstances.
    “It’s your nickel—shoot,” he says.
    I give Darryl better than a nickel’s worth of explanation—more like the two-buck version—of what is happening in our case. He is patient.
    “Tell me more about Homeland’s involvement, McGee,” he asks when I finish.
    “I don’t know more than what I told you. They came on like gangbusters and threatened to shut us down, but we haven’t seen or heard anything more of them since.”
    “Don’t be too sure that they’re out of the picture. Everyone thinks the FBI is hard to deal with. They just haven’t run crosswise with Homeland Security. Keep your guard up,” Darryl says seriously.
    “We are, and we will.”
    “Now, exactly what can I do for you?”
    “We’ve got a lot of useful dirt on the key players at Global Investment Bank—enough to put some of them away for decades. We know who the actual murderer is, even though we probably don’t have enough on him to extradite him or to get him into court yet. More importantly, we are sure that he works for much more important and much more secretive puppet masters; and we want them. What we need is for you to get a joint investigation into Viachaslau Mazurkiewicz with your counterparts in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and get the police to pick him up and to hand him over to us.”
    “You know that’s a tall order. Russian police have never been all that willing to cooperate with us, even in their own best interests. They are like the rest of the Russian agencies—secretive, dogmatic, arrogant, and very sensitive to slights. I’ll get on it today. It happens to be a slow news day, and I need something interesting to do. But I can’t make any promises.”
    “Your word that you will try is good enough for me, Darryl. Thanks.”
    My second call is blocked. So is my attempt at sending an encrypted e-mail. Our communications are all shut down tight. I know what comes next; so, I send Ivory and Caitlin out to do their work in person.
    I am right. Less than ten minutes after I get them out the door, four large unsmiling men in dark suits, fresh white shirts, power ties, and shiny shoes walk into McGee and Associates Investigations with a search warrant and subpoena duces tecum in hand.
    “I warned you,” the older of the four agents says. “Now keep out of our way. Interfere, and you get an obstruction of justice charge and get to make an extended visit to Homeland Security offices here in New York or Washington, DC, or Elk Wallow, Idaho—whichever suits our fancy.”
    “Nice to see you again, Agent...?” I say with exaggerated politeness.
    “It’s Special Agent Hinckley, and you can skip the sugar. We’re here on the business of national security. You’re here to watch and keep out of the way of the real cops.”
    I show him my “much chastened” face and leave him to his search. Of course, since Hinckley’s last search we have moved all of our sensitive records to our secret office in Vermont, and I am not worried. Having our communications jammed up is most inconvenient, however; and my next task of the day is to get them restored.
    I walk to the outer office and saunter over to stand in the group of office workers to watch our government’s finest security officers do their duty.
    When the agents stop looking at me, I quietly turn aside to a low-level administrative assistant and whisper, “Nancy, here’s a credit card. Go out and buy a box of burner phones and three voice distortion gadgets. Find Ivory and Caitlin and get those purchases to them. Don’t be too obvious about