by Orion Gaudio
“Let me go!”
She started screaming. That was precisely what he needed to avoid. He aimed the pistol at her and squeezed off a round. It pierced her heart and she slumped to the floor, leaving a streak of blood down the wall. If nobody had called the cops yet, he was sure they would now. Turner ran back into the bedroom and grabbed her purse. He put his hand inside and felt around. There was a telltale bump under the lining. He ripped it out in a swift motion and shoved the flash drive into his pocket. Turner dropped the gun back into his backpack and swung it over his shoulders as he walked to the front door.
He ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and burst out the front door. He slowed his pace as he walked away from the apartment building with his eyes focused on the ground.
Ying was never going to make it out of the apartment alive, but he hadn’t told her that. She had seen his face and heard his voice—something that was unacceptable in his line of work.
Turner needed to get somewhere safe fast. He needed to know the contents of the flash drive, so he could discover what secret Ying was willing to die for.
3
The main branch of the New York Public Library had just opened. A few people were already climbing the stairs as Turner made his way inside. He found a desk without anyone around, pulled out his laptop, and sat down.
Turner took a deep breath, inserted the flash drive into his computer and opened it. He wanted to see what was on it before he informed NIA that he had acquired it and eliminated Ying in the process. There were two files on the flash drive. The first was unnamed. He opened that first and leaned back in his chair. It was an intelligence report on him, complete with recent photos of him entering the flophouse he had been staying at while in the city.
He glanced around the room to make sure nobody was close enough to him to see the screen and then turned his attention back to the file. They didn’t have his name or any notation that he was a part of NIA, which was a relief to him. The report was sparse, but did include his movements since arriving in New York City. He expected it to be a report from the Chinese government, but everything on it was in English and there was no agency notation, which struck him as odd.
Once he finished reading the intelligence report, he closed the document and tried to open the other file, which was labeled ‘Chimera’. A popup appeared on the computer asking him for a password. His years of training had been focused on counterintelligence, weapon skills, the reading of facial expressions and body language, and most importantly… how to eliminate a target in a number of ways, but he had no experience in how to break a computer encryption. It was a vital part of the work they did, but it had been left to other people at NIA who specialized in just that.
Turner copied the contents of the flash drive to his laptop as a precautionary measure in case something happened before he made it back to NIA headquarters. He ejected the flash drive and put it into his backpack before logging onto the VPN and accessing the dark web.
Merlin
In safe location. Package in possession. Secondary target neutralized.
He waited for a few seconds before the response showed up on his screen.
Gyr
Use caution. Return with package. Utmost care required.
That usually went without saying, so it took him by surprise to see the words on his screen. They were wiped a few seconds later and he closed his laptop before putting it back in his backpack.
A wave of relief passed over Turner. Next objective: make it out of the city and make it back to headquarters in central Pennsylvania.
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
Turner glanced up. A woman was standing on the other side of the table from him. She had shoulder length blonde hair, which he could tell was a dye job, and piercing blue eyes. She pushed her round glasses back up her nose and smiled at him. He could tell by the way she was dressed that she was trying to look younger than she actually was. The tiny wrinkles around her eyes and mouth gave away her true age, he guessed her to be mid-thirties, but her clothes and attitude were that of someone in their early-twenties.
“Go for it, I’m just leaving.”
She shrugged and sat down as he stood up. Turner glanced over his shoulder as he walked toward the exit. The woman was taking a book out of her tote bag. Perhaps he was wrong, but something about her seemed off and he was glad to have already finished with his work before she showed up.
He walked outside and headed toward the bus station. He’d be back in Altoona in seven hours.
4
Howard walked over to the window and surveyed his domain. An underground bunker in central Pennsylvania had been transformed from an old coal mine into the North American headquarters of the preeminent counterintelligence agency in the world. And Howard oversaw all of it.
Directly below his office sat three rows of computers and the agents that manned them around the clock. They were the heart and he was the brain. His field agents were his hands. Countless operations had been launched from his office over the last twenty years. Governments had been toppled and new ones installed in their place.
He walked back to his desk and sat down just as the door opened.
“Mr. Castle?”
“Yes?”
It was his assistant, Jess. She carried a file over to his desk and set it down in front of him.
“Thank you,” he said.
She nodded and retreated out of the room. He waited until she was gone to open the file. Inside were the details of their latest operation in New York City, which had been tasked to his top agent… James Turner.
He read through the documents and tossed them back down on his desk.
“Sloppy.”
Howard shook his head.
He personally recruited Turner ten years earlier, plucking him out of obscurity after he graduated from West Point. He had originally been slated to work in Military Intelligence, so it wasn’t much of a stretch when Howard asked him to come work at NIA. Three years of intensive training followed before he ever sent Turner into the field. He quickly rose through the ranks and became the top agent just before he turned twenty-seven. Five years later, he was still their best option when it came to delicate operations.
Lately, though, Howard had become concerned with the performance of Turner. His previous two operations had ended in less than favorable ways. He had hoped New York City would get Turner back on track… it was supposed to be an easy assignment, but it seemed to him that his agent had found a way to foul it up.
He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. Something had to change because he couldn’t afford to have Turner in the field if he was going to continue to make mistakes that could put their operations in jeopardy.
Howard pressed the button on his intercom.
“Jess?”
“Yes, Mr. Castle?”
“Can you get Rhonda for me?”
“Of course, sir.”
He tapped the end of his pen on his desk as he waited. A knock came a few seconds later.
“Come in,” he said.
The door opened and Rhonda walked in. She sat down across from and cleared her throat.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Fine… fine. I wanted to talk to you about Turner.”
“What about him?”
She leaned forward in her chair.
“Did you notice anything… unusual in your last two sessions?”
It had been policy as long as he’d been there that agents returning from a target elimination mission would have to see the resident psychiatrist, which had been Rhonda for the last three years.
“In what sense?”
“Was he… normal?”
She sat back in her chair and shrugged.
“You know what these agents go through.”
“I know,” he said, nodding. “I just need to know.”
“Did you read my session notes for those two missions?”
“I did.”
He h
ad glanced at them, but Turner had always been a rock and it crossed his mind that he might have missed something in the notes that could clue him into the near failure of Turner during his mission in New York City. Howard could have reread the session notes, but he thought it would be easier for Rhonda to explain it to him.
“Well, I’m not sure if he’d be willing to admit it… but I got the sense that the job is wearing on him. He seemed… off.”
“In what sense?” Howard asked.
“Like most of the agents here at NIA, they’re hardened and have an impenetrable shell when it comes to their emotions. They’re trained to be this way. I can say this, he’s losing his edge and it might have something to do with his mission load over the past few months.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Howard shook his head and looked down at his desk.
“I… I did make a note of it, but like I said… it’s just speculation at this point. Besides, most of the agents go through something like this periodically.”
“Is there any way to get him to open up about what’s happening?”
“Why? Did something happen?”
Howard sighed and shook his head.
“Not exactly, but he had a close call… and almost lost control of his mission.”
“Well, I mean… I’ll work with him to see if I can find an underlying cause.”
“Yes, do that. Let me know what he says. I’m worried that he might not be fit for duty right now.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, Rhonda.”
“Is there anything else?”
Howard shook his head. She stood up from the chair and left the room. Howard sighed and pounded his fist on his desk. He couldn’t afford to have his best agent down for any amount of time… but he also couldn’t have Turner in the field if he was going to be a liability.
5
The brakes on the bus squealed in protest as it came to a stop in Altoona. Turner grabbed his backpack and exited. He was the only one getting off there, which seemed about right given it was such an insignificant place on the route from New York City to Pittsburgh.
He headed toward the house he’d been living in since starting at NIA. It wasn’t much, but the town had been his home since he graduated from West Point. He kept to himself, as was typical for everyone that worked there. The town was under the impression that the mine had reopened and that it was a good source of jobs for the local people. NIA had moved people into the town years before their headquarters opened and the people they ‘hired’ were their own who were already on payroll. It made things easier for everyone and allowed them to operate out of the control of any governmental agency. NIA was the go-to for any operation deemed out of the realm for the CIA, and Turner didn’t mind. It kept him in a job and he was doing his part to make the world a safer place. That’s what he told himself, at least.
Once he was back in his house, he took a quick shower and changed his clothes. The stench of the flophouse still filled his nostrils, but at least his clothes were clean and untainted by the activities of the last twenty-four hours. Turner threw his dirty clothes into his washing machine and set it on hot.
Turner set his laptop on his desk, but left everything else in his backpack—they would dispose of the CF-98 since it had been used in several shootings and was covered in his fingerprints.
He grabbed his backpack and headed to his garage—what he really wanted to do was to get something to eat and go to bed, but that would have to wait. They were expecting him at headquarters where he’d be put through the normal procedure for any agent returning from a mission: a meeting with his boss, and a psychological evaluation with Rhonda. He hated every minute of it, but it was all part of the job.
The beat-up Honda Civic sputtered to life and he opened the garage. He turned down the dirt road leading to the mine a short while later. One of the security guards stepped out of the guard shack at the entrance to the compound and Turner stopped his car. He rolled down his window. The cloud of dust kicked up by the car on the dirt road settled around them as the guard walked up to the car.
“Sir.”
Turner nodded in response and held his thumb onto the scanner the guard was holding. It scanned his print and then flashed green.
“Have a good day.”
“You too.”
The gate lifted and Turner pulled into the parking lot. There was a fence around the entire compound, but the only visible deterrent to trespassers was the guard shack and the twelve-foot fence topped with razor wire. There was also a thirty-foot-deep minefield around the perimeter of the fence. As long as he had worked there, nobody had tried to make their way through it. They were far enough out of town that the locals had left them alone. Turner knew there were likely other defensive measures in place he didn’t know about. It was the only place in the world he felt safe… he could close his eyes and not worry someone might be watching him.
Turner parked, got out of his car, and headed to the entrance to the mine. He pulled open the access panel next to the steel door and leaned forward for the retinal scan. The screen turned green and the disembodied voice spoke.
“Access granted.”
He closed the panel and waited for the blast door to slowly open. He stepped into the corridor and the automatic lights flickered on. The sound of his footsteps echoed down the hallway as he walked deeper into the mine.
Jess was waiting for him when he walked through the door at the end.
“Mr. Castle is waiting for you,” she said.
He responded with a nod and followed her. She knocked on his door and pushed it open. Howard looked up from his desk and waved Turner into the room.
“Take a seat.”
He took off his backpack and took the chair opposite his boss.
“So, you got the flash drive?”
He pulled it out and set it on the desk.
“Good.”
Howard scooped it up and put it into his drawer. Turner wasn’t about to mention the file on it was encrypted—it wasn’t part of his job to investigate what was on the flash drive and he knew Howard would be furious if he found out he’d tried to access the files. Turner had spent a good deal of the bus ride thinking about the mysterious file… Chimera. There was nothing he could do without the password, and he wasn’t about to ask any of the techs for help in accessing it. They were all fiercely loyal to NIA and wouldn’t hesitate to report him for trying to access a restricted file. Not that he blamed them, it could easily be categorized as treason.
“So, Turner… what happened?”
He shrugged and took a deep breath.
“What do you mean?”
Howard shuffled a few papers around on his desk and looked at his agent.
“I hear you had a close call.”
“Yeah, but I handled it.”
“What happened with Fei?”
“Nothing. I got him in the bathroom of a diner.”
“There was a sign of a struggle.”
“It was unavoidable.”
“And what about the place you were staying? I heard you were followed.”
He nodded.
“Maybe. I was very… careful… to make sure I wasn’t.”
“But they still found you?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened?”
“Three guys showed up, they were armed. I took a CF-98 off one guy, knocked him out… shot one of the other ones in the leg… and climbed out the fire escape.”
Howard sighed and shook his head.
“So, you were compromised?”
“It was dark. They might have gotten a look at me for a few seconds, but that’s it.”
Turner shifted in his chair. Howard was usually much more results-oriented, so he couldn’t help wonder why he was so interested in what happened.
“Right… well… you got the flash drive.”
“Yes. It wasn’t in the safe. Ying, the wife of Fei, she showed
up when I was in their apartment. She had it stashed in the lining of her purse.”
“And what about her?”
“I took care of her.”
“Good… good. Anything else?”
Turner opened his mouth, but then closed it and shook his head. Part of him wanted to mention that he found the file on himself on the flash drive, but he knew that would only get him trouble. Howard would see the file soon enough, so he decided to keep his mouth shut for the time being.
“Right. Go see Rhonda.”
“Sure.”
Turner stood up and walked toward the door with his backpack in his hand.
“James?”
He stopped and turned around.
“Yes?”
“Are you… are you doing OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine… why?”
“Just checking.”
He nodded and left the room. Howard picked up the flash drive and inserted it into his laptop. He glanced back at the door. It was clear to him that something was off with Turner, but he planned to wait until Rhonda had finished her evaluation to make a decision. They had an operation scheduled for later in the week that he needed Turner on, but he wasn’t sure he’d be up to it. He sighed and opened the drive. Two files.
“Chimera.”
He frowned and clicked on it.
6
Turner knocked on the door and waited.
“Come in.”
He opened the door and walked into her office. Rhonda was seated behind her desk. She closed her laptop and looked up at him.
“James… how are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Good. Take a seat.”
She pointed to the couch. He sat down in the middle of it. She rose from behind her desk and sat down in the chair across from him. The room was sparsely decorated, but it did have a little more color in it than the other offices in the repurposed mine. He assumed that was an attempt to get the agents to feel more at ease and to open up to Rhonda during sessions. The rest of the place had a cold and almost clinical feel to it.
