Disclaimer – I don't own them, I just borrowed them. Numb3rs and its characters are the property of those that created them. No copyright infringement intended. All real organisations are used in a fictional sense. Original characters and the storyline are mine however.
A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, your comments have helped to clarify some points and tweak the story even more. Read on. . .
CHAPTER SIX
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"Surveillance footage." Colby said in disgust as they left the briefing. "They want us to get surveillance footage. Anyone can do that."
"Alright genius." David started. "How are we going to get it? It's not like we can walk in and ask for it, remember?"
"Guys." Megan interrupted. "We know why we've been given this job. They don't trust Don so they don't know if they can trust us. Let's just do it right. It's the only way we can help him now."
"So how do we get the footage?"
"We need to find out what sort of system they use. If we're really lucky they have an internet based system."
Colby grabbed the tasking sheet from her hand. On it was the mall phone number along with the timings for the footage based on Don's briefing. Luck was definitely with them, the mall belonged to a company that had all surveillance footage from their properties downloaded to a central site. All it took was another phone call and they were provided with the internet address and an administrator level passcode granting them full access to the site. On a normal day they would have been tied up with days of paperwork getting a warrant but under these circumstances they would have got one from a federal judge in about an hour since an emergency had been declared. Given the situation however, the company was only too anxious to be helpful and no warrant was needed.
They headed to the computer lab to get to work. As they stepped into the lift to head down David noted that one had started upwards from the ground floor.
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Charlie stepped out of the lift following the NSA agents. He was at a bit of a loss as to what was going on. Two NSA agents had interrupted his late afternoon class on the math of the Loop Quantum Gravity Theory, something he'd been helping Larry with. They told him to bring all his work on Zuheen with him. It had taken him a moment or two to pull his head away from the complex math he'd been teaching to recall the other work he'd been doing recently. He'd been consulting on the international terrorist at the joint request of the CIA and the NSA in order to provide a predictive algorithm for the NJTTF. They'd told him a couple of weeks or so ago that they wanted the algorithm as they believed the terrorist had managed to make his way past the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and was on US soil.
His first thought when the agents had interrupted his lecture had been that something had happened to Don but that didn't make any sense. If that had been the case it would have been someone from the FBI dragging him out of class, not the NSA. The fact that it was the NSA and they needed his data on Zuheen suggested that something big must have happened for them to have all but dragged him from CalSci and then race him with sirens screaming to the FBI LA Field Office. There he found himself in the lift from the basement garage with the head NSA agent from LA and several other agents. A briefing had been promised once they got to the FBI.
Charlie looked around as usual, hoping to spot Don but not really expecting to. As there was obviously some sort of emergency going on he figured Don would be out there somewhere chasing the bad guys. Subsequently he was surprised to see Don staring at him from only a short distance away.
"Don!" Charlie called out.
"Hey, Charlie. What are you doing here?" Don asked but then got a good look at the tag on Charlie's lapel. It was an NSA ID tag rather than his usual FBI tag. "The NSA bought you in."
Charlie looked at the NSA agents waiting for him. "Go ahead. I'll catch up in a sec."
Don held out a hand barring the path of the NSA agents. The whole group stopped, looking at the FBI agent curiously. "No, wait up. Charlie, I can't talk to you about this, about anything for the moment."
Charlie saw Don glance back at the young man standing behind him and then on to the older man standing near an interview room. Both strangers were wearing DHS tags. Charlie looked back to his older brother in confusion, it almost looked like the younger DHS agent was a guard by the way he was standing. But that couldn't be right, Don still had his ever-present gun attached to his hip and badge on his belt. The fact that something was definitely off though was very clear. "Don, what…"
"Charlie." Don interrupted firmly. "I can't talk to you. They'll brief you on all you need to know. You'll understand then, okay buddy?"
"But-" Charlie started then changed his mind. He saw his brother's split and swollen lip. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Don lowered his restraining hand. "Now go."
The NSA agents headed off but Charlie hesitated until Don deliberately turned away and walked off, followed by the DHS agent. Charlie looked over at the older DHS agent and found him watching him with a measuring gaze. Charlie wasn't sure he liked the look but shook it off and hurried to catch up to the others. Don had promised he would understand once he was briefed.
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Seeing his brother had been nice but frustrating when he knew he couldn't talk to him. Don worked on distracting himself by typing up his report.
"Agent Eppes." Merrick interrupted.
Don sat back from his computer, looking up at the ADIC. He then saw the other, older man and noted that the colour of the man's FBI tag indicated he had extremely high level access. Don rose to his feet.
"Agent Eppes, this is Deputy Assistant Director Ryder."
Don immediately extended his right hand. "Sir." He recognised the name, if not the face. Ryder was the head of the Criminal Investigations Division of the FBI. A very senior agent indeed, in overall charge of the division under which all the field offices, including the LA field office, operated. Don and even the ADIC were well down the food chain.
"Pleased to meet you, agent." Ryder said, shaking his hand. "Bit of a mess this. I haven't been fully briefed yet but I understand you are in the middle?"
"Yes, boss." Don confirmed.
"Alright. We'll see what we can do to fix that. Carry on."
"Thanks, boss." Don said as Merrick and Ryder headed towards the MIR. Don sat back down.
Wachowski watched the new man walk away with interest. He'd known Agent Eppes for all of, he checked his watch, forty-five minutes now but the impression he'd already formed didn't fit with the somewhat submissive responses the FBI agent had just given the new man. He looked back to his charge. "Big boss?"
"Yeah." Ryder only had two superiors, three if you counted the President of the United States.
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A little over half an hour later Charlie was furiously working on his laptop. He now understood why his brother wouldn't talk to him. It rankled but he could understand. Before the briefing had even gotten properly underway he'd been introduced by the NSA and then almost thrown straight out. There followed a heated argument with the NSA insisting that Charlie be allowed to stay and work, that any taint attached to Don was nothing to do with their math expert. The other members of the JTTF had insisted that the NSA find another math expert, but the NSA, with the backing of the CIA, had just as stubbornly insisted that they would only work with the best. Besides which Charlie had already been working on a Zuheen matter for them and was fully cleared. Grudgingly, the JTTF had accepted Charlie on the condition he not have any further contact with his brother. Now Charlie saw why Don had held the NSA agents back to hear the whole conversation they'd had upon exiting the lift.
"Professor Eppes?"
Charlie looked up from his typing to see one of the NSA agents.
"It's been cleared. There was more arguing but they've acceded to your request on two conditions."
"Yes?" Charlie asked.
"They only get briefed after the JTTF. The JTTF can also order you to hold back some information if they feel it too much of a risk."
"That's it?"
"We impressed upon them how important your work was. The ADIC helped as well. It is mostly the DHS that have a problem with Don's team and that's only because of Don. And since your brother is keeping clear, and they've assigned an agent to keep watch, they had less of a leg to stand on." The NSA agent shrugged. "So it's all good."
It's not all good, Charlie thought, they don't trust Don. That was also confirmation that the DHS agent was guarding his brother, not to protect him but to ensure that Don didn't become the threat. But he understood what the NSA agent meant. "Thanks."
Charlie had to put thoughts of his brother aside for now. He had got his concession and now had to produce a result. He wouldn't really have walked away as he'd let them think, although he was fairly sure that the NSA realised that, but he wanted to help Don as much as he could. If he couldn't help his brother directly, then he would help his brother's team.
He got straight back to plugging the new data into his predictive algorithm. It was a complex bit of work involving not only predicting targets but movement of Zuheen as well, which both effected and was affected by the targets. The algorithm was not as complete as he would like, there were more variables that he wanted to factor in but so far, in testing, it had worked perfectly. There was now no time for fine tuning. They needed the data now and couldn't wait for a few extra variables that probably wouldn't greatly change the outcome anyway.
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Nothing, there was nothing.
The team were in the computer lab each viewing a computer screen looking at different sections of the mall. They had gone over the footage from all the cameras, up to a full half hour either side of the times they'd been given. Nothing, there was no sign of either Don or the terrorists. Megan even rang FBI control to confirm the time that Don had called in the emergency 1324hrs, 1:24pm. They worked back from there but still no footage of what they were after.
Colby sat back. "Something's not adding up here."
David had an abrupt thought. He should have checked earlier. "Hang on a minute." David clicked back to another screen showing real time footage of the mall. He ignored the images of people wandering around confused, others sitting around on the floor waiting. Everyone had expected full blown panic to break out inside the mall but for some reason it hadn't happened. Shock probably. David, along with everyone else had been amazed but that was not what he was looking for. He looked instead to the time on the bottom of each camera view. He double clicked on one camera view at random to enlarge the image. He pointed at the screen after checking his watch. "I thought maybe the times on the footage were out but they are correct."
"So where does that leave us?"
"Alright. Instead of working backwards, let's work forwards. What time did Don leave this morning to speak to that witness?"
Megan looked at her watch, she had no idea why, it just seemed to help. "Not long before nine."
"Do we know if he actually spoke to the witness?"
They looked at each other. It hadn't been mentioned. Megan got up and went over to the internal access terminal at the side of the room. She logged in and looked up Don's worksheet for today, as his partner she had joint access to any files they were working on together. He'd logged the name of the witness but no results as yet. That was understandable considering what happened afterwards. A few more clicks and she had the witness's details and phone number from the database.
"Mr Sheckley? This is Agent Reeves of the FBI. I wonder if you could help with a quick question. … What? An agent was coming to see you this morning, Mr Sheckley… I'm sorry Mr Sheckley?… He left here just before nine… You weren't home then? … Did he leave you a card? … He did? Can you tell me what time is on the card? … 9:20am. Thank-you Mr Sheckley… No, I'm sorry, it won't be today… Yes we do take this matter seriously… We've had a major incident come up, we'll be tied up on this for some time. Good-bye Mr Sheckley." Megan rolled her eyes as she hung up.
Colby and David sympathised. They'd all dealt with such people before, both as witnesses and complainants. Obviously Sheckley hadn't yet seen the news, but then again from the sounds of it, the mall probably didn't rate anything as more important than his own issues anyway.
David looked at his notepad, getting back to the issue at hand. "So Don was there at 0920hrs. From there to the mall would take?"
Megan checked the witness's address. "About ten minutes or so depending on traffic. We know its bad today so let's say twenty minutes, 0940hrs."
"I'm starting at 0920hrs." Colby announced, typing the start time into the search field on his screen. "We know exactly where he was then."
"Alright. Focus on the entrance cameras. We know he parked near the east entrance so he should have gone in there but David and I will double check the others."
The room fell silent as they each carefully watched their monitors on fast forward.
A/N (2): In case anyone was wondering, I didn't make them up. The Joint Terrorism Task Force, the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force all exist.