Primary Threat

by Jack Mars

  To put a phrase on it, Murphy was marginally attached. At best.

  He seemed to have one foot out the door.

  Well, if Murphy was going to come in on this job, Luke had better call him now. He glanced at his watch. Just after ten a.m. here in Greece. That suggested wherever Murphy was, it was probably late at night.

  He hesitated. Luke couldn’t call his own wife, just to see how she and his son were doing, but he could call Murphy. There was something not quite right about that.

  He looked at the word VIRTUOSO again.

  He pressed the CALL button.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  3:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (10:10 a.m. Eastern European Daylight Time)

  Bahia Vista Casino Hotel

  Nassau

  The Bahamas

  This life wasn’t real.

  It couldn’t be.

  Kevin Murphy stood at the bar inside his hotel suite, making himself a gin and tonic, on the rocks, with lime. He was barefoot, in jeans, and wearing a NYPD T-shirt, dark blue with white lettering. The gin and tonic struck him as a girly drink, but he didn’t care. He was in the mood for one, so he was going to make one.

  The hotel suite in question wasn’t a suite at all—it was a stadium. Two stories high, curved outward, with at least twenty giant windows overlooking the ocean. One entire wall was a fish tank, backlit and full of colorful exotic fish. There were a couple of small sharks in there, reef sharks, maybe four feet long.

  A staircase led to a bedroom that seemed to float in outer space. Right now, a sexy young blonde named Stacey was asleep in that bed, worn out after a night that had done nothing but get Murphy’s motor running even harder.

  He had showed up here in the early afternoon with a single suitcase, and a Nike gym bag stuffed with $200,000 in cash. He had them count the money and put it in the hotel vault. Instantly, they knew what he was here for. A manager came out in a suit, very friendly, and shook his hand.

  Suddenly, he had this… suite. Complimentary.

  He ate lunch and had some drinks in one of the hotel restaurants—signed it to the free room. In the casino world, they called it a “comp.”

  He was a player, and the whole stay was comped.

  Soon he was in the casino. He played Texas Hold’em for a while. Drank some more—the girl kept bringing them. The cards were ice cold, and he must have dropped twenty grand before dinnertime. That’s okay, he was just getting warmed up.

  Stacey came out of nowhere and inserted herself onto his arm. She looked great—big hair, tight sequined dress, a lot of body packed inside that thing, dressed up for the town in the middle of the afternoon. Blue eyes. Perky nose. She smelled nice, too. She smiled and laughed a lot—she had perfect teeth.

  “How much do you cost?” he said to her at one point.

  She leaned in seductively, close to his ear. “I’m a comp.”

  He looked at her. Her eyes were on fire. His game was in free fall.

  “My job is to make sure you keep losing,” she said, putting the facts of the matter right out there.

  Murphy laughed. “Honey, you have the easiest job in the world. All I ever do is lose.”

  They had dinner together. Comped. It was fun. They ordered four entrees and six desserts. They sampled everything. Murphy was roaring drunk by then, not that anyone could tell. One thing about being Irish—you seem the same, drunk or sober. No one can see the difference.

  They caught a show. Cirque du Soleil. Comped. Murphy couldn’t follow the story, if there was one, but he liked watching people in purple and yellow skinsuits flying through the air. After a while, he glanced at Stacey. Her eyes had glazed over. She looked like a clothing store mannequin. She was bored—of course she was. She worked here. She had probably seen the show thirty times.

  They left halfway through. Went back to the casino. Roulette now. He was too drunk to focus on cards. He dropped… a lot.

  They came here to the room. Did they do the deed? You bet they did.

  Comped.

  Now she was sleeping, and he was here at the bar, making a drink. The suite was mostly dark. Most of the light came from the fish tank. “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis played low through the speaker system everywhere.

  Murphy had sobered up quite a bit. He was thinking back through the day and night, trying to calculate… make a rough estimate… of the money he had lost. He thought it was probably between $50,000 and $60,000.

  That really was a lot.

  But come to think of it, he had put one last $10,000 chip on black right before he and Stacey walked out of the casino and came upstairs. It was a grandstand play, designed to please the crowd around the table. Murphy hated when he did stuff like that.

  The silver ball came down, bounced around, everybody holding their breath… and landed… on red. Stacey was doing her job, all right.

  And Murphy’s number was closer to $70,000 than $60,000.

  He sighed and took a sip of his drink. He’d been here just about fourteen hours so far.

  “Good Lord,” he said. “I need to slow down.”

  His cell phone started ringing.

  The ringer was off, but the phone itself was set to vibrate. It was perched on a granite countertop over in the kitchen.

  That kitchen was another thing. It was a wide open TV show, restaurant-style kitchen, with islands for cooking and food prep, and heavy pots hanging down from overhead. A small catering staff could come in there and prepare dinner for fifteen people.

  The phone made that buzzing sound phones made when they vibrated.

  Murphy walked over and looked down at it. He had no idea who would be calling him now. It was after three in the morning. He didn’t recognize the number. He picked it up anyway.

  Maybe it was good luck calling.

  “Hello?”

  He kept his voice low. He didn’t want to wake Stacey.

  “Murph?”

  “Yeah.”

  The voice was familiar, but Murphy’s mind was a little slow right now.

  “Stone,” the voice said.

  Of course. Murphy smiled and shook his head. He had been trying to get as far from this guy as possible. The man was a menace. So Murphy had run away. And he had run right into his own arms, and the arms of his apparent demons. He realized now that he could run to the other side of the world, and the only person he would find there was… himself.

  It was hard to say who the bigger menace was.

  Stone was just going to get Murphy killed.

  “What’s up?” Murphy said.

  There was a delay before Stone answered. It occurred to Murphy that it was because Stone had called on a satellite phone—the signal had to beam up into low-Earth orbit, around the world, and back again.

  “I need you, buddy,” Stone said. “I’ve got some things to do, and I’m pretty sure they’re not going to get done without you.”

  “Where are you?” Murphy said.

  “I couldn’t say. But if you call some friends of ours, they’ll buy you a ticket.”

  Murphy shook his head.

  “Not good enough, my friend. If I’m going to die, I at least need to know where it’s going to happen.”

  The pause was longer this time. Stone didn’t want to reveal much over the phone. Murphy understood that. But Stone owed him something. Murphy was gone. He had already embarked on his new life, such as it was. Stone probably understood that intuitively. That’s why he hadn’t asked Murphy how his days off were going. Days off were a thing of the past.

  If Stone wanted to pull Murphy back in, he was going to have to…

  “Lebanon,” Stone said.

  Murphy smiled, and this time the grin was nearly ear to ear. Where else?

  Everybody went to Lebanon to die. The place was a black hole that sucked random lives into its event horizon—US Marines, religious fanatics of all stripes, Syrian spies, college professors, newspaper reporters, Palestinian refugees, young Israeli foot soldiers—Lebanon did not disc
riminate.

  Murphy looked around the epic hotel suite. It seemed garish all of a sudden, like something out of a nightmare.

  He had dreamed all this—the money, the hotel, the gambling, the girl. None of it could be real. Murphy pictured himself staying here another night. He would lose another $70,000 easy, maybe another $100,000. He would have the hotel send him up another girl. Oh, he would keep Stacey on—she was doing a good job. But if they were going to bleed him dry, he might as well enjoy a Stacey #2.

  Before it was over, he’d probably get irritated at himself, or the situation, and throw a chair through the fish tank. Poor fish. He wouldn’t wish that on them.

  With the shattered fish tank figured in, and the flooded carpet, and all the exotic fish flopping around on the floor gasping their last breaths, he’d go well over $200,000. His gym bag would be empty, and as he walked out the door the friendly hotel manager from yesterday would hand him a bill.

  Frankly, desperate gunfights in Lebanon against chanting Islamic militiamen sounded like a much better deal.

  None of this even took into account the fact that there was no running away from the United States government. Murphy had been kidding himself the whole time, and deep down, he was well aware of that. Someone—the CIA, the FBI proper, the NSA, the DIA—knew where he was. They knew what he was doing. They knew everything. They always did.

  But maybe Stone didn’t know these things. Maybe if Murphy was on the team, the team would protect its own.

  He sighed.

  Wouldn’t it be nice if he and Stacey were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they could take the day off from the casino, and just have a nice breakfast, and go to the beach? Maybe do a little snorkeling. Hire a dive charter tomorrow.

  He shook his head. Stacey came with the casino. The suite came with the casino. He had come here as a player. If he stayed, he was locked in. You don’t switch from this suite to a room. And you sure don’t bring Stacey with you.

  “Lebanon, huh?”

  “Greece first,” Stone said. “We need to chat about the trip a little.”

  Murphy stared around at the massive suite for a long moment.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  9:55 p.m. Eastern European Daylight Time (2:55 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time)

  A Safe House

  Makrygianni District

  Athens, Greece

  “How you doing, Murph?” Luke said. “Thanks for coming out.”

  Murphy had just walked in the door of the apartment. The instant he did, Big Daddy had handed him a can of beer from the refrigerator.

  Murphy cracked it open and took a slug. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  They were in a yellow, five-story walkup building on a narrow, leafy, tree-lined street in the Makrygianni District, just south of the Acropolis. There was a porch off the kitchen, and the land behind the building dropped away, giving a view of the city spread out to the north and west.

  In the middle distance, the Acropolis was lit up in the night. The Parthenon was clearly visible from here, surrounded by construction scaffolding. Closer still were the ruins of the Theatre of Dionysus amphitheater. According to their host, the famous European tour guide Big Daddy Cronin, it was thought to be the oldest surviving theatre in the history of Western civilization.

  “What is this place?” Murphy said, sipping the beer. Murphy had just flown across the Western hemisphere, but he looked none the worse for wear.

  “It’s an apartment I use sometimes,” Bill Cronin said. Big Daddy himself had flown in from Rome for the occasion. He was a little bit sunburned. He wore a floral pattern shirt, khaki pants, and he carried a Glock nine-millimeter on his hip. He didn’t look nearly as relaxed or well-rested as he had in Rome.

  “It’s a good place to talk,” he said. “Between Mark Swann’s satellite encryption and the sanctity of this apartment, we should be able to have a candid discussion.”

  Ed Newsam came in from the porch. It was almost time for the call. Ed was unusually quiet—he had been ever since he looked at the bomb specs in the materials Swann had sent Luke. Ed was drinking a beer—also not like him.

  Ed had shaken his head when he saw the specs.

  “That can’t be right,” was all he had said about them.

  There was a satellite phone on the kitchen table. Big Daddy had plugged it into a black spider-like speakerphone device that sat next to it. A red light on the device came on and the device began to hum.

  “Okay,” Big Daddy said. “Here we go.”

  He tapped a button on the phone. There was a moment of open air.

  “Hello?” a female voice said. Trudy Wellington.

  “Hi, Trudy,” Big Daddy said. “Who’s there?”

  “Well, I’m with Don Morris and Mark Swann,” she said. Luke could hear the two men talking in the background. “Who’s with you?”

  “I’ve got Stone, Newsam, and Murphy,” Big Daddy said. “Plus myself. Don, how do you want to do this?”

  Don came on. “How’s the security?”

  Big Daddy shrugged. “This place is airtight. I control it, and my own people—people I trust—sweep it every couple of days. When I acquired the place, I had the walls stripped out and redone with soundproofing insulation throughout. I don’t think the Agency even knows I have this place, so if they suddenly find out, I’ll know who told them. Anyway, no worries on this end. How about you?”

  Swann’s deep, reedy voice came on. “We’re at my apartment. I’m paranoid, and I sweep it almost constantly. We are in my little home office, and I soundproofed the walls myself. The encryption on this call is state-of-the-art. We are bouncing from black satellite to black satellite, all over the world. No one can trace us, no one can decrypt us. I’m sure of that.”

  Luke stared at the spider contraption on the table. He had trouble imagining the legendary Don Morris, a man with shoulders the size of Chicago, crouched in the little home office at Swann’s apartment.

  “Can I ask an obvious question?” he said.

  “You don’t even need to ask,” Don said. “We’re at Swann’s because we’re in the middle of a lockout. The first thing you guys need to know, at this moment, is the SRT is one hundred percent SNAFU. We were raided by the Bureau proper and the Secret Service last night. I was called on the carpet today at the situation room in the White House. They still haven’t given me back the keys to the hotrod, and they’re crawling all over headquarters like a hive of termites on a shit mound.”

  Luke sighed. “Is it me?”

  “It’s not just you, son. Don’t take that on. They’re angry that we held the Serbian laptop as long as we did. They’re angry we traced the video signals to Russia and didn’t tell anybody. And yes, they’re angry we put together an infiltration, especially one that included… yeah, an agent under suspension. Okay, it is you.”

  “Great,” Luke said.

  “My point being that whatever we put together here is going to be just us, total secrecy, using whatever resources we can muster among ourselves, or with the help of very close associates. With that, I’ll put Trudy on. Let her tell her tale, and then we’ll figure out what to do about it.”

  Trudy came on.

  “I’m going to assume no one on this call has prior knowledge of the events taking place, or the intel we’ve acquired. Sound okay?”

  Everyone murmured their agreement.

  “The documents you’ve all seen by now are the contents of the hard drive that Luke and Ed took when they were in Moscow. There were many more files on that drive at one time, but it appears they were deliberately corrupted and deleted. Swann?”

  “Yeah,” Swann said. “We can probably resurrect those files at some point, if we have a few people working on it, and we have access to the SRT offices. We could also farm the drive out to NSA, or DIA, or CIA, but I’m assuming we don’t want to do that.”

  “Absolutely not,” Don said. “Something is going on that I don’t like
. The White House and the FBI just landed on us with both feet. We are all the way on the outs, and being marginalized.”

  “In that case, what you see is what you’re gonna get,” Swann said.

  Luke looked around the kitchen at Murphy, Ed, and Big Daddy. They were all drinking beer. That, combined with the things being said, gave Luke the urge to drink a beer. He went to the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled one out.

  Big Daddy looked at him. “Good man.”

  He mouthed the words without saying them.

  “So what we have is a mystery,” Trudy said. “Luke and Ed, where did you say this hard drive came from?”

  This was the part of these meetings that often frustrated Luke—bringing everybody up to speed and on the same page. But he saw the value in it.

  Luke looked at Ed. Ed made a hand wave gesture: The floor is yours.

  “The drive was on the computer of a man named Tomasz Chevsky. He was an engineer working for the Russian Academy of Sciences. But that was his cover story. He actually worked for a GRU spymaster named Oleg Marmilov, and was the go-between for Marmilov and the TV producer who doctored the video taken at the oil rig. Marmilov is operating some sort of clandestine project, but no one could or would say what it is. The oil rig attack was part of it.”

  “You said was,” Don said. “Is Chevsky dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what we have in front of us are three things,” Trudy said. “The first is a mosque in Beirut. The second are drawings and what appear to be size and yield specs for an enormous nuclear weapon, though the true details of it are spotty, and there’s no way to know if it really exists. The third is what appears to be a Russian military outpost on the ice near the North Pole, in a remote area of the Arctic Ocean often referred to as the donut hole.”

  She paused. “With me so far?”

  People mumbled various versions of yes. Murphy gave her the Ranger hoo-ah.

  “The mosque is known as the Al-Khattab Mosque. It sits on a hillside above a residential neighborhood in south Beirut. It was built in 1890, and is in a serious state of disrepair. Shelling in that area during the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli Occupation are thought to have undermined its structure. There was some talk of saving it, but it’s been closed to the public since 1994, and nothing appears to have been done about it since then.”