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Chapter 2
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
7:10 A.M.
FBI field office, Los Angeles

After a short night's sleep, Don was back at the office. The other agents on his team had had Monday off in anticipation of the expected bust and the ensuing long night, but Don had already put in a full day's work before going to the port. So as much as he had wanted to get in on the initial interrogations, he knew he'd be better off with at least a few hours of sleep behind him.

His first stop was the sailors they'd apprehended. Entering one of the outer interrogation rooms, he asked, "What've you got, David?"

The younger agent turned off the speaker transmitting the conversation from the other side of the one-way mirror. "Nothing yet. We've been taking turns on him all night, and he won't say a word."

Don cast a glance through the glass at the short, brown-skinned man seated in a folding chair, his cuffed hands resting on the table in front of him. His fatigue showed in his slumped posture. "Has the good captain remembered his English?"

"Yeah, Balandra suddenly 'remembered' his second language when they got him back here. So did the rest of the crew, but we're interrogating them separately."

"Yeah, I know, I already looked in on the first officer. He hasn't said a word, either, but Adams thinks it'll just take time."

"Not this guy." David shook his head. "He's refusing to speak. He's afraid of something, or someone."

"I take it you've offered him protection?"

"Once we figured out that was his problem. But he says he doesn't believe us. I can give it another try, though."

"Nah, the guy's exhausted. So are you. Let him get some sleep and eat something. If he thinks we're taking good care of him, maybe he'll trust us."

"All right, I'll do that."

"And then you take care of yourself, too, okay? Get some food and some rest."

He moved on to the other interrogation rooms, informing each of the agents to take a break, for themselves and their subjects. No one had had any more luck than David, though it was fairly obvious that the four regular crew members didn't know much of what was going on anyway. It was all going to have to come from the captain and the first officer.

Don's next stop, after pouring himself a cup of coffee, was the forensics lab. He had poured out a second cup, adding enough cream to turn the dark black liquid a pale tan, and he juggled both styrofoam cups as he opened the door.

"Hey, Andrea, thanks for coming in so early. I know it's hard when you have two kids to get out the door." He held the cup out as an offering.

The blond agent looked up at him through her bangs. "Yeah, but at least John wasn't on call last night, so he was able to get them to school." She took the cup from his hand. "The color looks right, Eppes, but that better be strong coffee."

"I think David made it, so you can probably stand a spoon up in it if you want."

She took a sip of the hot beverage and smiled. "Okay, this'll keep me going for a little while."

Don sat down on one of the stools beside the lab bench next to his longtime friend and former Quantico classmate. "So, what have you been able to put together?"

"Well, you probably already knew that the documents we recovered from the bridge were pretty much burned to a crisp." When he nodded, she went on, "It looks like they were written on something like flash paper. When you saw the first officer go inside, and then there was the flash and the bang, he was setting them on fire."

"Why didn't we see any flames?"

"Flash paper burns instantly: no smoke, no flame. It's used in magic tricks or theater special effects, as well as in fireworks. It's not usually used for ship's manifests."

"They wrote their manifest on flash paper?"

"Actually, on regular paper that they chemically treated to act like flash paper. The only reason I figured it out is that it burned so hot, so fast, it left an imprint on the papers below it without doing more than singeing them. You can barely make out some of the words." She lifted a piece of paper with tweezers and laid it under Don's nose.

The paper was charred, all right, and the document that looked like a map of the port was overlaid with some words that Don couldn't even begin to make out. "You can read that?"

"A few words." She pointed with the tweezers. "This says 'electronics,' that one says 'chemicals.' Give me a few more hours and I'll have the rest of the list."

Don squinted at the black and gray mess on the paper. "You're pretty good, Sayers, if you can read any of that."

"You know I am." She shot him a smug grin. "Actually, I'm cheating a little. The two gentlemen belowdecks were trying to destroy another manifest when your team caught them. Some of it was lost, but we managed to recover about half of it. I'm guessing the one in the bridge was for Customs, but the one down in the hold was the real manifest."

"And they had to destroy both so any discrepancies wouldn't be noticed, like whether it was nitrous oxide or CFC-12 in a certain container of gas cylinders."

"Exactly."

He nodded. "Good work, Andrea. I think you earned that," and he gestured at the coffee, quirking the corner of his mouth.

She rolled her eyes at him. "I think I earned a double whip raspberry latte, but I don't see one on my desk, do you?"

"Well, keep at it and you never know what might appear later in the morning." Don swung himself off the stool. "Seriously, thanks. This is a great start. Now it's time to figure out the 'street value' of what we've got."

"Why the air quotes?"

"I still find it hard to believe that we're talking about the street value of freon. It's like smuggling helium or something."

"Except helium isn't damaging to the environment, nor is its production outlawed in the developed world."

He dropped back onto the lab stool. "Okay, enlighten me, Sierra Club girl."

Andrea grimaced. "I wrote a paper on the Montreal Protocol in college. That was the international agreement that banned the substances that are destroying the ozone layer. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, like freon are the worst. Two American scientists won the Nobel Prize for proving in the 1970s that these chemicals were contributing to the hole in the ozone over Antarctica. After their results were published, it only took thirteen years to get an international treaty signed."

"Only thirteen years?"

"Hey, that's fast. Look at global warming. Anyway, the production of these chemicals was to be phased out over a certain number of years. In the meantime, any of the substance that still exists can be recycled and used again. But since 1995, CFCs can't be produced in the U.S. or any other developed nation."

"It sounds like there's a catch." Don drained the last of the coffee from his cup, grimacing at the lukewarm temperature of the liquid.

She nodded. "The Montreal Protocol allowed for the developing nations of the world to delay implementation because they can't afford the costs of switching to new chemicals as easily. Until 2010, they can still manufacture CFCs. But there's still plenty of old air conditioners and refrigerators in this country that use freon. So Russia and China produce the stuff, and it gets smuggled over here to fill the demand."

"How pervasive a problem is it?"

"It's the second most lucrative product to be smuggled into the U.S., at least at some ports. The highest amount captured at a time is 1.6 million dollars."

Don whistled. "So where's the 'Just Say No to Freon' campaign?"

The corner of her mouth turned up. "It's not something individual consumers would buy, but industrial users. A tank of the chemical won't do you any good unless you know exactly what you're doing."

"Well, that gives us a place to start. We need to check out all the refrigerator and A/C repair shops in greater L.A. Presumably these guys weren't going to hang out a sign and announce that they had some freon for sale. We've got to find where their market is, their distribution network."

"Good luck with that." Andrea turned back to her microscope. "Me, I'll stick to the material evidence and not the messy parts like actually catching the bad guys."

"All right, I'll see you later."

He made his way back towards his desk, mentally reviewing his list of people. The interrogation, done. The forensics, done. As the elevator doors opened and he stepped out, lost in his mental list, he almost bumped into someone standing there. "Oh, excuse me," he said. Then he recognized the tall woman with the long, golden hair. "Dr. Fisher?"

Karen Fisher turned, and a small smile lit her face when she saw him. "Agent Eppes! How are you?"

"I'm fine," he replied. "How about you? You doing okay?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she said dismissively. "I'm back to my regular schedule at the clinic. I think a lot of patients were happy to find that their cancelled appointments reappeared all of a sudden."

"Yeah, I bet they were." He looked at her more closely. She seemed tired. The emerald green shirt she was wearing brought out her deep green eyes, but that only served to highlight the shadows underneath them.

"So, um, how are you?" she asked, gesturing at his arm. "You got that looked at, right?"

"Oh, yeah, it was just a scratch." He waved it off. "So, are you here to meet with someone?" Smooth, Eppes, he said to himself. No, she's just hanging out here because she doesn't have enough to do after being in witness protection for a week.

"Yes, an Agent Sinclair, I think it was. There was some kind of paperwork I had to fill out after, well, you know." She trailed off at the end, looking away as she did so.

"Right. Listen, I'm sorry, but we had something big come up last night, and David's not available right now. I'd help you out, but I'm kind of in the middle of it."

"Oh. Well, that's okay. I can come back another time." Karen took a step backwards towards the elevators. Looking at her, Don realized the vivaciousness and energy that she had projected in her office was missing. This Dr. Fisher was a far quieter, less assertive woman.

He took her elbow and steered her to the side of the hallway, away from the traffic hurrying back and forth. "Karen, are you sure you're okay?"

She had flinched a little when he laid his hand on her. Cursing himself for not thinking of that, he quickly pulled his hand away. But all she said was, "Yeah, I'm fine. I know you're busy, so -- "

He stepped a little closer and held his hands up in front of him. "Just hear me out, okay?" She nodded, and he went on in a low tone, "I don't want to pry, but have you talked to anyone about what happened with McDowd?"

She looked down, her honey-blond hair forming a curtain that shielded the sides of her face. "I'm fine, really. And I thought I couldn't talk about an active case, anyway."

"We have people here that are trained for that, you know," he continued in as soothing of a tone as he could. "Or, if you want to talk about it, I already know what happened, so it's not like you'd have to tell the whole story again…" He trailed off hesitantly, not sure if his concern was welcome or not.

Karen looked back up, and he was struck by the intensity of the emotions in her green eyes. He'd read her correctly. Now the only question was, would she go along with it?

"If it's not too much trouble…" she hesitantly started.

He gave her a warm smile. "Not at all. Just think of it as a follow-up visit." She did smile at that, and he relaxed. "Can you come by again on Thursday? I'll go over the paperwork with you, and we can grab lunch afterwards."

"I'll have to check my schedule, but I think that would be fine." She gave him another, less tentative smile. "I really appreciate this, Agent Eppes."

"Please -- it's Don," he said.

"All right." She reached behind her to press the button for the elevator, which instantly opened up. "I'll see you on Thursday, then."

"Take care," he said, watching her until the doors closed.

He strolled back to his desk, lost in thought. Cooper had given him a hard time when he'd been here a couple of weeks ago, observing archly that he didn't remember Don making so many personal visits to a witness in the past, but then maybe they hadn't had such good-looking women to protect, either. He'd laughed it off, reminding his former partner that getting involved with a witness was a bad idea for any number of reasons, and the teasing had subsided.

But Karen wasn't his witness to protect anymore.

"Don!"

Terry's voice interrupted his train of thought. She was hanging up the phone at his desk, and he hurried over. "What is it?"

"Your caller ID said it was the Customs office at Long Beach so I picked it up. Paul Everett, your tipster at the port? He's dead."

"What? What happened?"

"A longshoreman found him in one of the Long Beach warehouses this morning. One shot to the temple, very professional."

"Crap." He rubbed his temples with one hand, all thoughts of Karen Fisher suddenly gone. "That makes it a whole lot more serious. As if a dead Customs agent wasn't bad enough."

Terry nodded grimly. " Whoever is behind this knows an awful lot, if they know how we found out about the contraband and were able to act on it so quickly."

"Maybe Balantra's right to be scared," Don mused. "If our informants have become compromised somehow, who knows what else has?" He sighed. "I'd better spread the word. So much for a break on the interrogations. We need some answers, and we need them now."