The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

3 |Your Call

"I can't justify keeping you here much longer, Agent Hotchner," Dr. Baker announced. The night had passed with no word of the warlord, and the next morning had been spent in varying degrees of frustration. Garcia checked paper trails and backgrounds as far as she could, still coming up with nothing to make sense of the present situation.

"At least let us stay until tonight," Hotch replied. "We have no other cases on the table for now, and there's still a chance that the man you're after is out there."

"Let's go over what we know again," Rossi suggested. "He's powerful, proud, and controlling. The plan to get him out of the country was weeks in the planning, and carefully crafting. Based on his profile, what makes the most sense? How would someone like him sneak on and off of a cargo ship?"

Turner, one of the lawyers, was shaking his head, rifling through a list of boats and itineraries and still coming up short.

"He knew on some level that we were monitoring him," Elise VanBuren suggested. "What if this whole thing was just a trick? A lie to throw us off his trail. He might still be in Sudan, we have no way of knowing."

The other lawyer, Marius, was shaking his head. "No, he was afraid of being caught. He would've left to avoid arrest. And we know someone using his alias was on that plane, his ticket was used. That's a lot of time and money to craft so many lies, and nobody to call his bluff." A collective disappointment settled over the room, and it was as though they could see their window of opportunity sliding shut, Okello safely on the other side.

But Reid was still thinking, taking in the profile, the facts... time he didn't have... listening in on intelligence... he knew... just a trick... off the trail... proud, powerful, controlling... the ticket... call his bluff... so many lies... it's almost like a spy movie, like when a lie covers for a lie that covers for the truth...

"That's it!" Reid declared. "It's a double bluff! If they knew we were listening, if there was some way they could guess intelligence was spying on them, they would also know we would be tracking tickets. So they tried to throw us off the trail, with the alias, right?" Everyone nodded.

"We profiled him wrong because of the information we had. Okello was said to be traveling by ship, and so the plane ticket in the wrong name would have to be an accomplice," he explained. "If we saw one of his fake names, we would assume it was his way of trying to get us to the airport so he could get in through the ports. But a guy like Okello, he has to be in control. He's narcissistic, controlling, and an egomaniac. There's no way he would ride in a shipping container, and wait for someone to come let him out. He needs to be in charge."

"What are you saying?" Judge Mogami asked, one thin, severe eyebrow rising.

"What if that name was part of a double bluff? He was lying about lying, confusing us. Almost like reverse psychology. I think it really was Okello on that plane- and there's an ally coming in by boat to help him."

"If that's true, then they could already by gone by now," Rossi said cautiously.

"Not exactly. I remember the shipping schedules, there was a boat from Egypt last night that docked around 10 at Red Hook. Okello would've only recently gotten in to the country, and wouldn't be able to arrive right away. It would be to suspicious. However, they'll eventually transport the containers from Red Hook over to GMD Shipyard. It's only about five miles from there. My guess is that they'll be at GMD by tonight. Okello wouldn't want to waste any more time than needed, so he'll probably go there this evening."

"I don't get how we could've missed him," VanBuren said, the sentence coming out a little too defensively. "We were right there where the plane let out, we had special clearance."