Page 13 of A Walking Shadow

“It ended at, uh ….” He checked his watch. “At 1:11 p.m. this afternoon.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Hank and I were escorted out of the building.”

Her face went a shade paler and her green eyes popped. She took a sip of her scotch, and he watched her consider her next question.

“Since you don’t work there anymore, can you tell me what you did?”

He reached for the bottle again and shrugged. “Why not?”

She gasped. “Really?”

“Yeah, you’re right. There’s no reason to keep it from you now.”

This wasn’t strictly true. The position itself had been classified. But the rationale for that classification had been to protect the unit’s operations. But since he and Hank had been the entire unit, there was nothing left to protect.

“Plus,” she said, “I have spousal immunity if you ever get sued for telling me. They can’t make me testify against you if you get in trouble for it.”

“Spoken like the lawyer you are.”

She laughed. “Let’s move to the couch.”

They took their glasses into the living room. She curled up and, as was her habit, put her feet in his lap. He massaged her arches, as was his. The cat and the dog followed them in and took up their usual positions. Java in Mocha’s soft dog bed, and Mocha stretched out beside it on the floor.

“We really ought to get a second dog bed,” Leo said.

“I don’t know. I’m holding out hope that eventually Mocha will get the courage to crawl in there with the cat.

“If it hasn’t happened by now, I doubt it’s happening.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Sasha told him. Then she patted his arm. “So tell me.”

“Last year, Hank and I were approached by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

“Wait. You’ve been working for the FISC?”

“We have.”

Her eyes widened. She opened and closed her mouth but seemed unable to find the words she was looking for. Then she shook her head. “What could you two possibly be doing for the court?”

He understood her confusion. The FISC, or the FISA Court, existed primarily to hear and approve the government’s foreign intelligence-gathering activities carried out under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, especially those that take place in the United States involving U.S. citizens.

“The judges on the FISC regularly review top secret/SCI. You know what that means, right?”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s sensitive compartmented information, so they have to do it in a SCIF, right?”

“Right. And there had been a series of cases in recent years that didn’t raise any eyebrows or concerns in a vacuum. But when the court was putting together some statistical information for a big budget review, the data team found some irregularities.”

She took another small sip of her scotch. “What kind of irregularities?”

“The kind that required someone with SCIF access to clear them up. And Hank and I both have the necessary clearances.”

She looked at him blankly. “Okay. But don’t lots of people have those clearances?”

“They do. But since our agency was so small and didn’t really exist officially, we were the obvious choice.”

“That only makes sense if the court thought the intelligence agencies themselves were corrupt or compromised.”

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