Father Carson wiped away her tears. “My child, is there anything I can do to help ease your pain?”

Pulling in a deep breath, Kathy nodded. She made the sign of the cross and bowed her head.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was…”

Chapter Seven

“An investigation in Kiribati?” Nate asked. “That’s certainly different.”

“It’s not just different, it stinks.” Jeff Binghamton, a gray-haired FBI assistant director in the Criminal Investigative Division, pushed a microcassette across his desk. “That’s the audio from the initial complaint. Listen to it later, but the gist is, some corporate schmuck claims the government is illegally harassing his company, AgriMed. It’s a genetics research multinational headquartered in the US. Some of its offshore assets were destroyed.”

“Isn’t that normally an issue for the country where the assets were destroyed?” Nate asked.

“You know it. But this guy’s claiming that it was the US military that did the destroying. Here’s what we know. The maritime authorities for the nation of Kiribati received an emergency personal rescue request coming from a remote island. That island is leased by AgriMed—it seems they’ve invested millions on this island, growing some medicinal herb cocktail or some shit—so Kiribati contacted AgriMed directly.” Jeff grabbed the coffee mug off his desk and took a sip. “Those are the facts. But the corporate guy claims that when they responded, their island was a smoking wreck and some heavily armed soldiers were boarding a boat with US military markings. Further, he says one rescuee was deposited at an AgriMed facility on the main island of Kiribati.”

“Shit,” Nate said. “Did we have some operation going on over there?”

Jeff wrinkled his nose and shrugged. “That’s the thing. We got this complaint quite a while back, and I filed requests for information over at the DoD’s Inspector General’s Office. They basically returned a non-denial denial. You know the kind. ‘I’m not doing anything you need to know about.’”

Jeff leaned forward, and the bags under his eyes reminded Nate why he never wanted to go into management. The political runarounds that managers at the Bureau needed to deal with would have made him want to hurt someone, and not figuratively.

“So I did a little digging on my own, with the help of a buddy of mine at the IG’s office. Let’s just say that there were some military assets in that area at the time. So AgriMed’s complaint is at least plausible.”

“And you want me to figure out what really happened.”

“Yes. I’ll assign you a team, but I want you to take the lead.” Jeff leaned across his desk and jabbed his pointer finger in Nate’s direction. “And Nate, be careful. We don’t know what kind of crap you’ll find out there. I don’t trust these AgriMed people. My spidey senses are tingling.”