Page 45 of PSYCHOlogical

The closet was a large his and hers walk-in, with a mirror on one end and storage space on either side. Clothes were scattered loosely about the floor, hung haphazardly on both sides of the closet, and in various organized piles. In seeing everything in such disarray, I found it hard to believe he was an expert in computer hacking, gathering intel, or anything else that required organizational skills.

Still wearing his no-iron slacks and crumpled dress shirt from his day at work, he sat in front of the mirror, facing me.

Standing at the closet entrance, I let out an exaggerated sigh. “I’m going to ask you a few questions. Your response can be as brief or as detailed as you see fit. Remember, if you attempt to scream for help, you will be shot in each of your limbs. Then, I will cut out your tongue and we’ll conduct the interview with a pen and piece of paper. Understood?”

He nodded.

“Sergeant Shephard was murdered after being removed from the program,” I said, not giving him a chance to claim otherwise. “Who drafted the order to have him killed?”

He stared.

I knew he had the answer. I needed to know what else he could tell me that I didn’t already know.

“Are you prepared to give a response?” I asked.

He nodded.

I approached him and removed the tape from his mouth.

He drew a deep breath, gazed at one of the piles of clothes for a moment, and then looked up.

“The order came from the DNI’s office,” he said. “Believe me, I didn’t like it. I was just following orders.”

The Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, was a post-9/11 position created within the executive branch of the federal government. The Office of the DNI housed the DNI, and the staff that supported him. They answered only to the President. The Director of National Intelligence oversaw the CIA, NSA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, DEA, ATF, and each of the military intelligence agencies.

“Did the DNI give the order to have him shipped out?”

“No. It came from somewhere in the Marine Corps.”

“So, the Marines ordered him to be shipped out, and the DNI ordered that he be eliminated prior to him shipping out?”

“Correct.”

If the Marines ordered Shephard to be shipped out, and the Office of the DNI gave an order to have him killed, my worst fear was correct. The DNI acted on its own, independent of the military. They killed Shephard to prevent him from talking.

“Who in the DNI office gave the order?” I asked.

“Nobody knows,” he responded.

I sharpened my glare. “What do you mean, nobody knows?”

“Everything’s encrypted,” he said. “We get the orders, and we act on them. No one has ever met the man in charge, and no one’s spoken to him directly. The Director of National Intelligence is the only one who knows who he is.”

“Bullshit!” I spat, waving the weapon in his direction. “Tell me what you know. Everything.”

He lowered his head, thought for a moment, and then gazed into the path of my stare. “After receiving the order to eliminate Shephard, I started looking into who the guy is. I doubted he was military, because he was giving an order to kill a marine. Just last week I got his computer’s IP address, but it doesn’t tell me much. His server is in the Washington, D.C. area, that’s all I really know. I’ll need a few weeks to pinpoint his location. Then, I’ll know where and who he is.”

“You’ve just recently started trying to figure out who this guy is?” I argued. “Over the course of three years, you’ve never wondered?”

“The order to eliminate Shephard seemed out-of-character,” he said. “So, I started digging. Believe me, when it came time to assign that mission, I was just following orders. Processing paperwork. I didn’t like it.”

“What about Martin? What were his thoughts about Shephard being eliminated?”

His expression went blank.

“He doesn’t know?” I asked.

“The orders come to me. I assemble the intel sheets, and Martin signs off on them. The directive of that mission was clear. Martin was to have no knowledge of the order to eliminate Shephard. After the mission was complete, we received word from the DNI that Shephard was KIA in Somalia.”