A.N. Not quite to the action yet. Work travel may slow me down for a bit, and I didn't want to leave you hanging in the midst of crisis. So this chapter will leave you hanging...before the crisis.
Before I Sleep
Chapter 53
It was late afternoon before Reid managed to compose a message that satisfied him.
He reviewed it with a visiting Morgan, who was perched on the edge of Reid's desk.
"So, what does it say?"
"Infidels help FBI help infidels. Death to FBI. Death to America. Insects all people. No savior." He handed a copy to Morgan.
The senior agent read it over and over again. "So…it's sort of nonsense, and sort of not."
"It had to look angry enough to be consistent with the other messages, but there also had to be a reason why it would have gone directly to the FBI for translation."
"Well, it definitely does that. And…the 'Death to America' thing….are we thinking the traitor is tied to the DTA group…the one that owns those properties?"
Reid shrugged. "I thought it was worth a try. If the mole in the DHS hierarchy is part of DTA, he'll definitely respond to the message when Hirsch brings it to the combined operations leadership meeting."
That sparked an idea for Morgan. "We should see if Garcia can…."
"She's already on it. Apparently having specific names to check against should help her trace the ownership. She'll run all of the DHS top brass, and then the rest of Hirsch's COL group, just in case."
"Good thinkin', Pretty Boy. Now, scoot."
"Scoot?"
"Leave, go. You can try convincing Hotch that you're all right, but I was there with you, remember? Both times. You did almost pass out yesterday, and you were definitely sucking air this morning. Go home and get some rest. I don't want to be picking up pieces of Spencer Reid in that parking garage."
Reid swallowed back his snark. After all, Morgan was only trying to look out for him. And he was right.
"All right. I'll go and rest. But, for the record, I feel fine."
"Sure you do. As long as you don't have to accomplish anything strenuous like…..oh, standing up?"
"Very funny."
Morgan stood, preparing to head back to his office. "Seriously, Reid. I know it was you who sent JJ home earlier. You were infected with the same virus, and you were in the same explosion. So it stands to reason that you're gonna need to recuperate as much as she is. C'mon, Pretty Boy. For the team."
Reid threw his well-meaning colleague a look that said, 'oh, you didn't just pull the team card'. But, yes, Morgan had. And it was working.
"All right, you're right. I'll go and eat some of what Garcia left for me in my freezer. It's supposed to be good for treating anemia."
"See? You didn't want Baby Girl to go to all that trouble for nothing, did you? Now, give me a clean copy of the message and I'll get it to her so she can start 'discovering' it. What does the decoded message say, by the way?"
"It says, 'Want asylum US, give spy. Big boss. Meet Parker garage. One am."
"One AM? No date? How will our mole know when to show up?"
"Hirsch says it happens all the time. Some of these guys show up at the meet location every day until something happens. But our traitor will know which day I'm going to show up, because Hirsch will tell him. He won't be able to afford to wait for another chance."
Morgan changed his mind about leaving right away. He wasn't quite done advising his younger colleague.
"You need to be in a vest. You and Hotch both. If I thought we could get away with it, I'd have you both in helmets, too."
"Tell that to Hotch. He'll be in more danger than I will. He'll be the mole's main target, because he's supposed to have the information. I'm not a threat to the mole until after I get the information."
Morgan nodded. They'd been through this. "That's why Hotch will hang back while you hang around at the meet location. If we can spot our mole before Hotch has to show himself, we'll keep him in our sights until he makes his move." The move they had to let him make.
For JJ, this part of the planning had been an emotional see-saw. She'd thought they might be able to identify and arrest their mole before Reid and Hotch had to pretend to exchange information. On the down side, Hotch wouldn't exactly be at Reid's side. Her weakened best friend would be on his own, a lone target for someone who might want to take him out. On the other hand, it was possible that the mole wouldn't try anything against Reid if he thought the BAU agent had not yet received the incriminating information. Anxiety and relief competed within. And then anxiety won the day when Rossi ran through the full scenario. Because that's when she realized that they would have to let the exchange of information play out. They would have to let the mole try to attack one or both of them. Without the attack, there was no specific evidence against the mole, and, thereby, no case.
It was why she'd pleaded with Reid to rethink the whole thing, and why she'd been so afraid for both her best friend and her unit chief. Hotch was, like she, parent to a young child. He couldn't afford to take such risks. Jack couldn't afford for him to do so.
Reid handed Morgan a clean copy of the message, and watched as his friend headed off to Garcia's lair with it. But Morgan pointedly stopped at the head of the stairs, looking down at Reid. The genius got the message. He stood, packed his messenger bag, and started for the glass doors leading into the hallway. Reid looked back over his shoulder and caught Morgan's approving nod. Then, with a little smirk and a tug on the strap, he was on his way.
In one way, Reid was grateful for the remnants of his infection and the infusions. Before the ordeal in the hospital, he'd often found sleep to be elusive. Even once he'd given in to the persistent dreams of Maeve, even when he'd begun to look forward to them…..they'd often proven to be just beyond his reach.
But the physical depletion of what he'd just been through had been a godsend, in that regard. He'd been so viscerally exhausted by the end of each day that even his psyche couldn't keep him awake.
Not so this night. Although it was still early evening, Reid recognized the all-too-familiar churning of images in his mind. There was too much to sort through, too much he couldn't put away until he'd dealt with it. This night would be one of those sleepless non-adventures he'd gladly left behind for a week or so.
It wasn't the thought of impending danger that troubled him. His concerns weren't for himself. The images running through his mind were of Gary, and Henry, and the young, lost, Jose, interspersed with images of a host of other children whose names he would never know. He felt responsible for them, responsible to them. It was a feeling that he recognized as coming from deep within. Not a sense of altruism, or a generic caring about the next generation. He felt responsible. If he hadn't known better, he would have said he felt paternal. But he couldn't make sense of that.
No matter how I feel about Henry, I'm not his father. I may never be a father. And, God knows, I never really had one. So, where is this coming from?
He didn't know. He just knew he was compelled to do something. He was thankful that the boy closest to his heart was growing up with his sense of innocence intact, still able to wonder happily about a future that seemed to hold nothing but promise. But that's not how it is for kids like Jose. Or even any of those kids in the terror pipeline. Any of those kids who are so disillusioned about their world and their future that they latch onto the first false promise that comes along. There has to be something better.
It wasn't the first time he'd wished the world ran differently. In his line of work, there were almost constant reminders of the ravages that trauma, or even just a lack of nurturing, could impose on a human psyche. But something felt different about this. As he'd told JJ, it all felt so….personal. Like, maybe, it could have been me. I could have been influenced, I could have attached myself to the ideas of any adult who professed an interest in me.
In the years after his father left them, before Diana totally devolved, he'd had her. He'd had the love of his mother. As inconsistently as she'd been able to express it, he'd known he had it. But then she had devolved, and he couldn't be sure of anything any more.
I was still so young, then. I would have been completely vulnerable to it. With my intellect, I can only imagine the trouble I could have caused if I'd latched on to someone who'd wanted to influence me.
That brought him up short. Because, he realized, that was exactly what had happened in his life. He had been approached by a person of influence, and he had followed that person. All the way to the FBI. Thank God it was Gideon, and not someone else.
The whole cycle of thought broke his inertia and moved Reid to look through his phone for a certain number. A quick glance at his watch told him it wasn't too late to call. As he punched in the digits and waited for a response, he thought, 'She's doing something. She's offering them an alternative. I told her I might do it, too. Time to turn 'might' into 'will'.
The call connected, and she answered. "Hello?"
"Hello, Stephanie? Spencer Reid here. I was hoping I could talk to you about something."
At Hotch's insistence, Reid was to come in only for the meeting that would finalize the plans for the following night's rendezvous. The subject matter was too risky to allow for a phone-in, so there was no avoiding the trek to Quantico.
JJ, under the same 'meeting-only' orders, was already in the front seat of Kate's car when the two swung by Reid's apartment to pick him up.
"Sorry," Reid apologized as he got into the back seat. "Hotch's orders." The unit chief didn't want his resident genius chancing anything behind the wheel of a car just yet. And there was still too much walking involved with taking the Metro. Reid would be chauffeured until further notice.
"Kimura's orders," corrected JJ. "Did you forget signing that release so she could 'officially' communicate your status with the Bureau?"
"Are you serious? I thought it was Hotch who wouldn't let me drive."
"It was, apparently. But I guess he and she had a little pow-wow about how you've been doing, and she agreed that it was too risky."
"Well, what about you? You didn't almost pass out…..did you?" Suddenly concerned that maybe she'd kept something from him.
JJ heaved a sigh. "No. I'm operating under orders from my husband. He's worried. He didn't even want me coming back to work yet, but I convinced him I would only be consulting, and he gave in. Which meant I had to give in about doing anything strenuous."
"Like driving?" Reid and Kate said it at once.
JJ gave a small guffaw. "I know. That was my reaction, too. But….well, you know, anything to keep the peace."
Reid sat back against the seat. "Well, anyway, I'm sorry, Kate. I think we took you out of your way."
She waved it off. "It was only a few extra minutes. And, anyway, what are teammates for?"
Which reminded JJ. "Speaking of teammates….Henry's got a soccer game this weekend, Spence. Do you want to come?"
If he hadn't already been excited about participating in any- or every-thing in his godson's life, Reid's ruminations of the night before would have made the decision for him.
"Of course! Well...provided…."
"Understood. You know, someday I'd like to live in a world….or even just have a line of work…where I didn't have to work my schedule around that of a serial killer."
Kate laughed. "It can be arranged, you know. But then you'd just have to work your schedule around child traffickers or kidnappers. Trust me, I'm the voice of experience."
JJ chuckled, but sobered quickly. "Seriously, Kate, how did you do it with Meg? She seems like a great kid, and the two of you seem close. But you spent time undercover, and your unit had to respond to emergencies. How did you manage to raise such a normal kid?"
Kate understood, parent to parent, what she was being asked. "I like to think that I was able to strike a balance. You know, say the occasional 'no' to work, when there was something absolutely crucial-or that seemed crucial...to Megs...going on. I learned the hard way that, in fact, I wasn't irreplaceable. I made sure not to do it often, because I didn't want my colleagues to think they couldn't count on me. But, whenever I had to, I sat one out. I was there for Meg. And, you know what? Most of the time, they caught the bad guy without me."
JJ absorbed Kate's words in silence. They resonated with sentiments expressed by her husband countless times.
Kate wasn't quite finished. "But, to tell you the truth…..I often think Megs has turned out as well as she has…and, you're right, she's a terrific kid, if I do say so myself….it's all been by the grace of God."
JJ was still silent. Time after time, Will had asked for compromise. Maybe I should . Maybe I can. But Kate's right. It's all by the grace of God.
From the back seat, Reid simply took in the exchange between the two parents, not feeling privileged to offer his own thoughts.
But, if you asked me, I would tell you. They both are great, Henry and Meg. Because they've got terrific mothers. I should know.
"It's been delivered," announced Sid Hirsch. "There was a briefing of the COL this morning. I brought them the 'original' message, its translation, and Dr. Reid's decoding."
"And…?" asked Kate.
"And, they didn't seem to notice anything different about the appearance of the message….congratulations, Miss Garcia."
Penelope smiled broadly at the tribute to her skills in subterfuge.
Hirsch continued. "They did ask why it went to an FBI translator rather than the usual CIA or DHS. I told them that it had been sent straight to me because it contained a direct threat to one of our agencies. It's not unheard of, but it hadn't been a part of this flurry of messages before, so they had to acknowledge the elevated risk. And then I told them that I knew I'd be meeting with Dr. Reid here yesterday, so I brought the message along for him to work on."
At this point, he directed his words specifically to the BAU genius. "It turns out you've acquired quite a reputation among them, Dr. Reid. It may have taken them a while to come around in the first place, but they are impressed with the work you did in deciphering the original threat, and they're inclined to follow your lead on this one."
Pride and unease competed in JJ. It's about time other people saw what we see. But….I don't want them to steal you away from us, Spence!
Hotch wanted more information. "Who, specifically, was at the meeting?"
Hirsch rattled off a list of six names, which included two assistants who were running messages back and forth. Garcia took them all down, for the purpose of researching them against DTA. The only names the members of the team actually recognized were those of Charles Walker, the director of DHS, and William Pickering, one of the associate directors. The latter name brought a bad taste to the mouth of David Rossi.
"No offense, Sid. But Pickering is a bit of an asshole, isn't he?"
Hirsch didn't agree. "I don't know why you say that, Dave. He's entirely an asshole. But, unfortunately, that may disqualify him as a spy. It does take some intelligence to get to where our mole has gotten."
Morgan was disquieted by Hirsch's words. "We profiled our mole would be from DHS. If you don't think it's Pickering, are you saying it's Walker? Are you saying it's the director of DHS?"
Hirsch shook his head. "I don't want to say it. To my mind, Charles Walker has always been a solid citizen. And he's a good leader. But I'm being disciplined about this. I'm keeping my mind open. Pickering and Walker are both on my list of possibles. But so are the associate director of CIA and the homeland operations director of NSA."
"What about the two assistants who were at the meeting? Are they usually in attendance?" JJ wanted to make sure they didn't exclude anyone prematurely.
"There's a rotating staff, so it's doubtful. But I'll get hold of the minutes…I've got clearance….to see which assistants were present at which meetings, and the specific subject matter discussed. Best to be thorough."
"And the rendezvous?" asked Rossi.
It was a mark of how well the two men had worked together. Rossi had picked up on something Hirsch had been holding back.
"The rendezvous." The DHS agent sighed. "I had to fight for it a bit. CIA wanted to cover it. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they went ahead and showed up anyway. They have a tendency to think they're in charge, all the time. But I did manage to….suggest….that it would be best to keep the operation small, considering the nature of it."
Hotch's stare was intense. "And did they agree?" The whole thing would be risky enough, especially for himself and Reid. He trusted the people around the table with his life and the life of his youngest. But, no matter whose acronyms they carried, he couldn't say the same about a bunch of strangers.
"They agreed. But, like I said, there's agreeing, and there's 'agreeing'. I'm afraid we won't really know until we're in it."
His remarks were met with considered silence around the table, as each agent absorbed the additional uncertainty that would overshadow their efforts tomorrow night. Not lost on any of them was the irony of feeling threatened by backup from one of their colleague agencies.
Hotch was wise enough not to allow excessive rumination. He moved them along to Garcia's presentation on the surveillance photos of the Parker garage.
"It's got only the one entrance and exit, which are side by side, so that's in our favor." She clicked through a few slides. "It's got four levels, not counting the roof." Clicking through a few more slides. "Mostly it services a doctors' office, a few law firms and several accountants. It's pretty empty at one AM, but the gates in and out still operate, because of the cleaning crews."
Reid had been silent up to this point. Now he was concerned about potential collateral damage.
"How many crews, Garcia?"
"Only three. They each work one of the office buildings. And, I checked…they all park on the second level, because it has a skywalk that goes across to the center building."
"So, we'd have to pass their vehicles to get to the meet spot…..and so would the mole."
"You would. But I also checked their schedules. They're all eleven to seven crews. They should all have been there for a couple of hours by the time of the rendezvous, so they should all be in the office buildings when everything…..anything….happens."
Reid was satisfied. "Good. The last thing we need is for a civilian to get hurt because of something we set up."
"Agreed," said his unit chief. "All right, let's review. JJ, Kate, you'll have the gate area. Provided…JJ, are you sure…"
She wasn't about to be left out of this. "I'm sure. I'm fine, Hotch, really."
"All right. Morgan, Rossi and Hirsch, you'll arrive an hour ahead, to position yourselves. The cleaning crews should already be in place, so you shouldn't have any onlookers. Park on level four and position yourselves with safe cover."
The three men nodded. It had been agreed that the meeting would take place on the level just below the roof, out of the way of any stray garage traffic, yet not visible to surveillance from taller buildings.
"Sid, I'm going to ask you to stay out of any confrontation, if at all possible. We'll need you to be able to testify to the identities of anyone who shows up to meet with me as the defector. I don't want to risk your not being able to make those identifications."
"Understood," said the DHS agent.
"Reid, you'll arrive precisely at one, and park on level four, in the far corner." He pointed out the area on a diagram projected by Garcia. "I'll arrive fifteen minutes later, on foot." He would have parked on the level below. "Garcia, you'll be monitoring the garage's cameras. Are you certain you'll be able to take over their controls?"
"Tried and proven, my liege. I'll be able to rotate them in any direction necessary."
"Good. We'll all be in open channel communication, but please remember that Reid and I will have to remove our earpieces for the actual meet. And we should limit communications to those that are absolutely necessary."
He looked around the table and accepted the nonverbal affirmations offered.
Rossi had something to verbalize. "How's the fuzz coming along?" Stroking his cheeks and chin.
Hotch restrained a smile. "I'm a three day man. Counting yesterday, I should be reasonably convincing by tomorrow."
There was an unexpected eruption from Garcia. "Ooh, Sir!" She actually raised her hand, to be heard, and then carried on without being called upon. "I've been thinking about that. I know how to spray on a spectacular tan…"
Hirsch saw that Hotch was about to turn her down, and intervened. "You know, it's not a bad idea. You can just darken the exposed areas. If you want to look convincingly like you're from the Middle East or Asia, it would help to have some color. Not to mention it will help conceal you."
JJ had to cover her mouth not to laugh at the look of triumph on Garcia's face. It wasn't exactly a nurtured fantasy to spray tan Aaron Hotchner. But it might as well have been.
What was that Spence said when his mother sent that postcard from the Grand Canyon? 'It's like Hotch at the beach!'
The rest at the table were suppressing smiles as well, some with more effort and success than others. Whether Rossi's hadn't met with effort or success was debatable.
The unit chief wasn't amused. "I'll consider it. Moving on…Reid, you'll exit your vehicle and move to the center concrete column, keeping your back as close to it as possible." Thereby limiting the possibility of attack from behind. "Rossi, Morgan, Hirsch, you'll be positioned to the sides and directly across from the column. I'll come up the ramp from below, moving through the vehicles. We should probably assume our mole will be doing something similar. Remember, if you spot him, don't intervene unless there is specific danger to one of us. We need to let this play out if we're going to have anything to prosecute him with." The attorney in Hotch had risen to the surface.
Morgan understood, but he wasn't happy. "Which means we need to wait for him to attack." He shifted in his seat, and cast his eyes at each of the others around the table. "Reid and Hotch will be wearing vests, but we all know that vests offer limited protection…and they don't repel head shots. If anybody sees this bozo aiming at one of our own, take him out. We'll have it on camera. We can defend it."
There were nods all around, save for Reid. "I understand, Morgan. But, the truth is that we don't really have evidence. We can defend the shoot, but we can't prove we have a mole in our midst. It's all built on theory. If we want anyone to follow the trail, we've got to prove our mole is just that….a mole. There's a whole network behind them. I don't want to lose the chance to take them down."
He'd just spoken what each of them knew, but didn't want to acknowledge. There was no way around it.
If they were to have a chance to take down the terror network, they would be forced to risk the lives of two of their own.
