At My Husband’s Military Gala, My Mother-in-Law Pointed at Me in Full Dress Whites and Demanded That Military Police Arrest Me, Certain I Was an Impostor. Then My ID Was Scanned—and the Entire Ballroom Went Silent When the Screen Revealed Who I Really Was.

Chapter 7

I drove back to NCIS headquarters with a renewed sense of purpose, and Agent Webb was waiting for me with an expression that suggested he had found something important. “We traced the IP address used to open Arthur’s account, and it came from a hotel in Norfolk, room 412,” he said, and I nodded because that was likely Chen’s room. “But we also found something else,” he continued, and he pulled up a security camera image from the lobby of the hotel that showed a timestamp of 3:47 AM on the night before the gala.

Mr. Chen was standing at the front desk, and beside him was a woman I recognized immediately: Victoria. She was handing him an envelope with both hands, and her expression was calm and deliberate rather than coerced or frightened. “Your mother-in-law met with Chen the night before the gala,” Agent Webb said, and I asked whether Victoria knew about this footage. “Not yet,” he admitted, and I pointed out that Victoria had said she was asleep and hadn’t seen Chen in weeks, which meant that she had lied.

“Either she’s deeper in this than she admitted, or she’s being blackmailed too,” Agent Webb suggested, but I thought about Victoria’s pride and her stubbornness and her need to control everything. “Or she’s been working with him all along,” I said, and I looked at the image again where Victoria was calm and not being threatened or coerced but handing over the envelope willingly. “Why would she do this?” Agent Webb asked, and I explained that it was because she didn’t think she was doing anything wrong or because she had been convinced that she was protecting her son.

“Or she’s been paid,” Agent Webb said, and I thought about the money and the cash that Victoria had admitted receiving. “What if it wasn’t just a few thousand dollars?” I asked, and I told Agent Webb to check her accounts and her safe deposit boxes and everything he could find. I looked at the photograph one more time and thought about how Victoria had always wanted to control my life and Arthur’s life and everything around her, and maybe Chen had given her more than she had ever admitted.

The next morning, I stood outside Victoria’s house where she was under house arrest with an NCIS agent stationed at the front door, and the agent told me that she was inside and had been expecting me. I walked in and found Victoria sitting in the living room wearing a housecoat with her hair uncombed and her eyes red, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “Eleanor,” she said, and her voice was flat and empty as I sat across from her.

“I know about the meeting at the hotel, and I know you met Chen at 3:47 AM the night before the gala, and I know you handed him an envelope,” I said, and Victoria’s face didn’t change as she sat with her hands folded in her lap. “Are you going to deny it?” I asked, and she said, “No.” The answer surprised me, and I demanded to know why she had done it. Victoria looked at me with eyes that were different now, defeated and hollow, and she said, “Because I was trying to protect Arthur.”

“Protect him from what?” I asked, and Victoria’s voice was barely a whisper when she said, “From you.” I stared at her as she explained that Chen had told her I was the problem, that I was the reason Arthur wasn’t being promoted and that my career was holding him back. “He told me if I helped him, he could fix everything and get Arthur promoted and get you transferred and make everything right,” she said, and I felt a cold anger building in my chest as I told her that Chen was a foreign intelligence agent.

“I know that now,” she said as she looked down at her hands. “I didn’t know then. I thought I was helping.” I asked her whether she had known about the photographs and the flash drive, and Victoria’s face crumbled as she insisted that she didn’t know about the flash drive and that Chen must have put it in her bag when she wasn’t looking. “You met him at 3:47 AM to hand him an envelope, so what was in it?” I asked, and Victoria’s voice was barely a whisper when she said, “Arthur’s schedule, his deployment dates, and his unit’s contact information.”

“Those are classified information,” I said, and Victoria admitted that she knew. “You could go to prison,” I said, and she admitted that she knew that too. I sat back in my chair, and the anger was still there but it was mixed with something else, something that felt like pity because Victoria had spent seven years trying to diminish me and in the end her own insecurity had been used against her by a foreign agent who had studied her and understood her and exploited her completely.

“The NCIS will offer you a deal, full cooperation in exchange for reduced charges,” I said, and Victoria looked up with a glimmer of hope. “Will you help me?” she asked, and I thought about the years of insults and dismissal and being treated like I was nothing. “Not for you,” I said. “For Arthur. He doesn’t deserve to lose his mother because you made a mistake.” Victoria’s eyes filled with tears as she said, “Eleanor, I’m sorry,” but I stood and told her to save her apology for the investigators.

I walked toward the door, and Victoria called my name. “Did you know about Chen and the operation?” she asked, and I stopped but I didn’t turn around. “No,” I said. “But I should have, because I knew you hated me. I just didn’t know how far that hatred would take you.” I left and closed the door behind me, and the morning air was cold as I stood on the porch and looked at the sky and thought about how the investigation was far from over but I had a new lead and I was going to follow it because somewhere out there Chen was still operating and I was going to find him.