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The Investigators

2012 . . . Le Roux turns on a dime . . . A boat lost at sea . . . Chasing Oz and Berkman . . . The story begins again

A few hours before dawn on a balmy September morning in 2012, Kimberly Brill and Kent Bailey stood on a tarmac in White Plains, New York, awaiting a plane carrying the man they’d been chasing for five years. Beside them was Derek Maltz, the Spe- cial Agent in Charge of SOD. Weeks ago, the plan had been differ- ent: Maltz had agreed that Brill should travel on the mission to capture Le Roux in Monrovia. But the agents from 960 had pushed back, insisting there was no room for her on the flight. Instead, Brill and Bailey had been invited to meet the plane when it arrived.

It was an ominous sign of things to come, but on this morning, at least, Bailey recalled that Maltz was in a complimentary mood. ‘Kent,’ he was telling me, ‘I’ll never forget the first time you briefed me on this case. You were absolutely right: This guy is the largest international criminal that I’ve ever dealt with.’ The plane touched down around 3 A.M., and Bailey noted to himself that it seemed large enough to have accommodated not just Brill but a dozen more agents. The investigators from Minnesota caught a