Jack & Jill

Dr. Cross. You’ll see in a moment”
    Jeanne Sterling was certainly far removed from the stereotypical CIA Brahmin of the fifties and sixties. She spoke with a folksy, enthusiastic, mid-Southern accent, but she sat on the Agency’s Directorate of Operations. She was considered crucial to the CIA’s turnaround; indeed, its very survival.
    We entered her large office, which had a commanding view of woods on two sides and a planted courtyard on another. We sat at a low-slung glass table covered with official-looking papers and books. Photographs of her family were up on the walls. Cute kids, I couldn’t help noticing. Nice-looking husband, tall and lean. She herself was tall, blond, but a little heavier than she ought to be. She had a friendly smile with a slight overbite, and just a hint of the farmer’s daughter about her.
    “Something important
has
come up,” she said, “but before I get into it, I just heard that the gun used at the Kennedy Center wasn’t the same one used for the previous murders. That raises a question or two; at least, in my mind it does. Could the Kennedy Center murder have been a copycat killing?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “Not unless the copycat and Jack or Jill happen to have the same handwriting. No, the latest rhyme was definitely from them. I also think it qualifies as a celebrity stalking.”
    “One more question,” Jeanne Sterling said. “This one is completely off the beaten track, Alex. So bear with me. Our analysts have been searching, but we’re not aware of any useful psychological study that’s looked at professional assassins. I’m talking about studies on the contract killers used by the Army, the DEA, the Agency. Are you aware of anything? Even we don’t have a comprehensive study on the subject.”
    I had a feeling we were easing into what Jeanne Sterling wanted to discuss. Maybe that was also why the head of internal affairs for the Agency was involved with the crisis team. Contract killers for the Army and CIA. I knew that they existed and that a few lived in the area surrounding Washington. I also knew they were registered somewhere, but not with the D.C. police. Perhaps for that reason they were sometimes referred to as “ghosts.”
    “There’s not much written about homicide in any of the psych journals,” I told Jeanne Sterling. “A few years back, a professor I know at Georgetown ran an interesting search. He found several thousand references to suicide, but less than fifty homicide references in the journals he sampled. I’ve read a couple of student papers written at John Jay and Quantico. There isn’t very much on assassins. Not that I’m aware of. I guess it’s hard to get subjects to interview.”
    “I could get a subject for you to interview,” Jeanne Sterling said. “I think it might be important to Jack and Jill.”
    “Where are you going with this?” I had a lot of questions for her suddenly. Familiar alarms were sounding inside my head.
    A soft, pained look drifted across her face. She inhaled very slowly before she spoke again. “We’ve done extensive psychological testing on our lethal agents, Alex. So has the Army, I’ve been assured. I’ve even read some of the test reports myself.”
    My stomach continued to tighten. So did my neck and shoulders. But I was definitely glad I’d taken the time to visit Langley.
    “Since I’ve been in this job, about eleven months, I’ve had to open a number of dark, eerie closets here at Langley and elsewhere. I did over three hundred in-depth interviews on Aldrich Ames alone. You can imagine the cover-ups that we’ve had over the years. Well, you probably can’t. I couldn’t have myself, and I was working here.”
    I still wasn’t sure where Jeanne Sterling was going with this. She had my full attention, though.
    “We think one of our former contract killers might be out of control. Actually, we’re pretty sure of it, Alex. That’s why the CIA is on the crisis team.
We think one of ours might be Jack.”

CHAPTER
48

    JEANNE STERLING and I went for a ride through the surrounding countryside. The CIA inspector general had a new station wagon, a dark blue Volvo that she drove like a race car. Brahms was playing softly on the radio as we headed for Chevy Chase, one of Washington’s small, affluent bedroom communities. I was about to meet a “ghost.” A professional killer. One of ours.
    Oh brother, oh shit.
    “Plot and counterplot, ruse and treachery, true agent,