by Dick Couch
“And the boat was satisfactory?”
“It was a little cramped, and I think AKR resented the fact that I took the owner’s stateroom, but we managed. After all, I have seniority.”
“How did he like playing the bad cop?”
Steven leaned forward imperceptibly, watching Garrett closely. It was an important question, and both of them knew it. Steven was asking a great deal more than whether or not Kelly-Rogers was happy with his new job. Could their new man do this kind of work because it had to be done, professionally and dispassionately, or were there other motivations?
“He’s every bit as good as you thought he might be, maybe better. He’s a good gun in the file.”
Both Steven and Garrett were former military special operations types—Steven had a tour with Special Forces before joining the Agency. A man who was a good gun was someone you trusted and with whom you were willing to go into harm’s way. Steven considered this a long moment before he spoke.
“That’s good to hear. We can use him, perhaps sooner than you think. I got a cryptic e-mail from Mr. Grummell yesterday afternoon.” Armand Grummell was the current Director of Central Intelligence. The DCI was one of the few people in government who knew the purpose and some of the inner workings of Guardian Services International and IFOR. “He thinks he may have a problem and would like our FBI liaison officer to read us into the situation.”
“Iraq? The Middle East?”
“I’m not sure. I sense it may begin there, but again, he was very vague. I think one of his key analysts has surfaced a number of indicators that may have triggered some concern.” Steven paused, as he often did, before he continued. “He asked if we were capable of operating in Africa, but didn’t elaborate. One thing is certain. He wouldn’t be contacting us if he wasn’t worried about something, perhaps very worried.”
“Or there was no one else he could turn to,” Garrett observed.
“That too.” Steven smiled.
“When do you want me to leave?”
“The plane is ready when you are. If you leave sometime late this afternoon, you could be there for a breakfast meeting. That is, if you’re up to it,” he added.
“Oh, I think I can manage it, boss.”
“Give my regards to our liaison officer.”
“I’ll do that.” They shook hands warmly, and Garrett took his leave. He set his full cup of coffee on the sideboard as he headed for the door. No matter how good it smelled, it always tasted much too harsh.
Later that afternoon he relaxed on the gray tucked-leather lounger and tapped his code into the computer that swung into place at his elbow. He brought up the front page of the Washington Post and began to scan for items of interest.
“What could I start you with, Mr. Walker?”
He glanced at her name tag. “Cindy, how about a scotch, neat, with a twist.”
“And something to eat?”
“What do you have?”
“Well, we have caviar or truffle pâté, with French bread or toast points.”
Garrett smiled easily. “I think the day calls for caviar, but would you see if you can dig me up some Ritz crackers.”
She smiled and headed back to the galley area. Garrett glanced out of the large oval window to a cloud-dotted Pacific Ocean below. The extended-range Gulfstream G550 had climbed quickly to 48,000 feet. Fuel economy was not an issue with an aircraft with this much legs. Hawaii to Washington, D.C., was an easy nonstop flight for a G550. They were well above normal commercial airline traffic, and the ride was so smooth that it seemed they were suspended in space. The two Rolls-Royce BR710 engines barely filled the luxurious interior with a gentle whisper, even as they raced along at a cruising speed of .87 mach.
“Luxury yachts, my own Gulfstream, and caviar,” Garrett mused. “Helluva way to fight a war.”
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” the attendant said as she set the drink on the arm of the lounger—an amber liquid in leaded crystal.
“I was just saying,” he said as he swung the computer away from his lap, “that I’ll bet I can kick your butt in cribbage.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then turned and strode back to the galley. He watched her go, admiring the swing of her hips. It was, in fact, a terrific tush—worth far more than an indiscriminate kicking. She came back with a cribbage board, a deck of cards, and a plate of caviar ringed with Ritz crackers. There were only four on the plane—the two of them and the two pilots up front.
She sat across the table arm from him and began to shuffle the cards.
“What shall we play for?” she asked. She was drop-dead gorgeous; he almost said, “Sexual favors,” but this was not where he was right now.
“Looser flies,” he responded with a grin.
“All right, but it’s only a soda for me. FAA rules.”
He thought he detected a hint of disappointment in her voice.
2
Storm Warnings
The Gulfstream received immediate clearance to land at Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington. The pilot was a little surprised at the approach vectors. Normally he was routed around the metropolitan area in a complex, low-level landing pattern, wasting time and thousands of pounds of fuel. Not this time. The Andrews controller brought him straight in with only one turn that put him on final. Once on the ground, he was directed to a patch of hardstand where a Lincoln town car was waiting. That made sense—a single passenger and a single car on arrival. While the attendant dropped the boarding ladder, Garrett stuck his head inside the cockpit.
“Great flight. Thanks for the lift, guys.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” the pilot replied. “Have a nice stay in the D.C. area.”
“I’ll do my best,” Garrett replied.
“What else do you do besides take advantage of young women at cards?” the attendant asked, stepping aside to allow him access to the aircraft exit door.
Garrett leaned close and in a low voice said, “Can’t tell you, Cindy. If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.” He winked, then added, “Thanks for the company.”
They had been just over nine hours in the air. Garrett had napped, ate, drank, and thoroughly trounced Cindy at cribbage. He felt surprisingly refreshed. They had departed Hawaiian airspace at 5:00 P.M. and raced to meet the sun, landing at Andrews just before 8:00 A.M. Prior to landing, he had retired to the aircraft’s well-appointed lavatory to get a shave and change—same blue jeans but a different aloha shirt. He carried only a small grip that held his dopp kit, slacks, a dress shirt, and a change of underclothes. Garrett wore a faded, wheat-colored corduroy sport jacket over the printed shirt and a pair of scuffed saddle oxfords.
Garrett Walker, Cindy pleasantly noted, looked a great deal like the actor Tom Selleck. Only he had green eyes, his hair was lighter, and at six-one, he was smaller than the six-foot-five Selleck. She also noticed that Garrett moved with the easy grace of an athlete. His wide shoulders and hands seemed outsize for his frame, and they were hands like those of a workingman. He had an even, easy smile that delivered crows’ feet to the corners of his eyes. Garrett was a smooth article and could have been taken for a CEO of a major corporation. The intensity and charm were there, but something about his persona suggested he was someone who fought battles, but not in the boardroom and not for market share.
A damp breeze was blowing with the temperature in the low forties as Garrett stepped from the aircraft. He felt the chill, but temperature variations had little effect on him. He descended the boarding stairway and headed for the idling town car, a black sedan with smoke-tinted windows, and sprouting several small antennas. No one appeared from the interior to greet him. He opened the rear door and tossed his bag onto the floor of the rear compartment.
“Mata Hari, I presume,” he said as he eased himself onto the pleated leather upholstery.
“The first thing you need to do,” she replied coolly, “is burn that shirt. Well, maybe not the first thing.” She then grabbed him
and kissed him hard on the mouth.
The Gulfstream retrieved its stair-door and taxied back out toward the main runway. The only marking on the all-white aircraft was “GSI” blocked in black letters onto the tail. Immediately cleared for takeoff, it lifted neatly into the air.
“Do we have any idea who that guy was?” the copilot probed his fellow pilot. Their instructions were to drop him at Andrews, make the short jump up to Baltimore-Washington International, refuel, and wait. They were to stand by in a comfortable motel near BWI until Mr. Walker had completed his business, then take him back to Hawaii. A lot of Fortune 500 companies couldn’t afford that much airplane for that period of time for a single executive. Guardian Services International was not a Fortune 500 company, nor was it listed on any stock exchange. In fact, it had been in business for only three years. The company was wholly owned by a philanthropist named Joseph Simpson. A number of entities operated under the umbrella and cover; Steven Fagan and his IFOR were just one such organization. The Gulfstream that had brought Garrett from Hawaii to Washington was only one of several belonging to GSI.
The pilot shrugged as he swung the plane onto his departure vector from Andrews. “Hey, we just pick up the packages and deliver them. GSI does a lot of business with the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe they have a big contract that needs to be worked out.”
“You think that guy is here to negotiate a contract? He doesn’t look like some corporate mouthpiece to me. Gotta be something else.”
“Yeah, well whatever it is, it doesn’t concern us. And if you keep asking questions, you’ll be flying boxes for FedEx at a fraction of what you’re making now.”
The town car with Garrett and Judy was caught up in Beltway traffic, but the driver made skillful work of it. They crossed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to Old Town Alexandria and looped around to pick up the George Washington Parkway into the city. It was stop-and-go in Old Town.
“How about a bagel?”
“Love one,” Garrett replied.
She said something to the driver, and he maneuvered to the right-hand lane and took a side street. After a few turns and dashes down narrow brick and cobbled streets, they pulled up in front of a storefront with no name. She led him inside, and they found a table along the wall. It was small, crowded, and smelled of yeast.
“You wait here,” she ordered and dove into the queue at the counter. In an amazingly short period of time, she returned with two steaming mugs of coffee. His bagel came just as he liked it—sesame seed, toasted, with no topping. Hers was nuts and raisins, covered with a thick icing of cream cheese. She deftly managed the order like a waitress at a short-order house. Once seated, she raised her mug to him.
“Well, sailor. Welcome to the capital of the free world.”
Judy Burks, as Garrett often mused, was a piece of work. She was not a tall woman, perhaps five-five in heels, but she exhibited a much taller presence. At thirty-something, she still had the wide-eyed enthusiasm of an undergraduate. She was pretty, not beautiful, with unremarkable, regular features, auburn hair, and a mouth that was just a little too big for her face. But her eyes were anything but ordinary; they were two dark pools of intensity. She ate like a longshoreman, but her figure was trim to the point of petite. Garrett worshiped at the altar of hard physical training and kept himself in top shape. Judy Burks, however, would not walk a block if there was a taxi stand nearby, but she gave every appearance of fitness and good health. She was, in fact, an accomplished tennis player and an excellent swimmer. They had become, according to Judy’s term for it, an item, or as much of an item as their work allowed. Garrett often wondered why he was attracted to this spring-loaded wisp of a girl. But he had come to see that she was a lady with heart and spirit. Perhaps, he admitted to himself as he touched her mug with his own, he simply found her intriguing. Garrett never knew what she was going to do next. He had met her shortly before he joined GSI and IFOR, while she was on special assignment with the Bureau. Their paths had crossed under unusual circumstances—but then Judy Burks seemed drawn to circumstances that were unsual.
“So,” he said in a low voice, “what’s going on? A plot to kidnap the president? A secret terrorist cell in Congress? Or maybe a mole on the Supreme Court?”
“Could be any one of the three,” she replied. “Or, maybe, I just wanted you back here so I could have my way with you.”
Garrett considered this. “That works for me, but no concerts.” The last time he was in the capital she had dragged him to the Kennedy Center for an opera. “Unless, of course, Willie Nelson is in town. Seriously, Judy”—again his voice dropped a notch—“what’s going on? Steven seemed to think that there were some people in this town who are more than a little concerned about something. He used the word scared.”
Judy Burks was an FBI agent whose current assignment was liaison officer for Guardian Services International. GSI was a worldwide provider of physical and consulting security services. GSI did many things. They provided counterterrorist training for commercial interests doing business overseas and to government agencies, including the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. They had a reputation for being expensive and very competent. But Judy Burks’s liaison assignment had nothing to do with GSI’s training or consulting services. The Bureau nominally, and she personally, was the link between the U.S. government and the GSI subsidiary known as the Intervention Force. IFOR was buried deep within the GSI corporate structure, and for all but a select few in GSI and the government, it did not exist. The facility on Hawaii was simply a site where GSI trained bodyguards and security personnel. IFOR had been created in total secrecy. It was to be a response element for those situations that called for something stronger than a diplomatic protest and less visible than a special operations forces response. It was a force that operated without a portfolio or federal funding, and with complete U.S. government deniability.
Judy turned it over in her mind, hesitating just how to tell Garrett about why he had been summoned back to Washington. Had it been of more immediate concern to the national interest, someone far more senior to her would have met Garrett or his immediate superior, Steven Fagan. In the current lexicon, this one was in the “grave and gathering” category, rather than the “clear and present danger” one.
“Uncle Armand find some more loose nukes laying about?” he prompted. He was referring to Armand Grummell, the entrenched and unflappable Director of Central Intelligence.
“It’s nothing like that, or at least, it doesn’t appear to be. This one is more like a favor based on a hunch.”
“Say what?” Garrett asked, lifting his eyebrows. A look of irritation passed over his handsome features.
“Now, take it easy. Your boss wouldn’t have sent you here if there wasn’t potentially a good reason.”
Garrett rolled his eyes. “You know, we’re not some global relief program or a cultural exchange. We deal with nasty people, and we do bad things to them. We move on hard intelligence, not hunches.”
“Hey, don’t blame me; I’m a liaison officer—a messenger. And if it makes you feel any better, this did come through the Director of Central Intelligence, okay? Well, from the DCI to the Bureau and then finally to me.” She was feeling a little wounded. She knew that she herself would have taken just about any frivolous excuse to see him, but he was not that way. “Now, if you’ll settle down, I’ll tell you about it. You eat, and I’ll talk.”
Garrett reluctantly took up his bagel and leaned back in his chair to listen.
“Of course, I’ve only been told what l need to know, but as I understand it, there are some unexplained events taking place in Zimbabwe. We have no national interests there, just humanitarian concerns, but there could be something brewing that could develop into a security issue. At least, that’s what the folks out at Langley seem to think. I assume you’ve read up on southern African geography and postcolonial politics?”
“Why, certainly, but how about you bringing me up-to-date? Uh, the execut
ive summary will be just fine.”
“Sure, no problem,” she replied, warming to the subject. “When the colonial powers left Africa, Marxism and tribalism returned with a vengeance—usually one followed the other because the Soviets provided arms and advisers to any tribal thug who said he was a Communist. That’s what happened in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was a British colony, then called Rhodesia. It was stable, productive, and racially segregated—not especially nice, but a functioning colony. Zimbabwe became independent in 1980. After a sham of an election, Robert Mugabe came to power; Rhodesia-Zimbabwe became Zimbabwe, and Salisbury became Harare. Mugabe, the then and current president, proceeded to mismanage the country on a grand scale. He and his cronies have run the nation into the ground, looted the treasury, and wired fortunes in cash to Zurich. To stay in power, Mugabe distributed all the land held by the white farmers, essentially driving them from the country. The rural provinces are now mostly run by tribal warlords, and the nation is a basket case. The country now has the highest incidence of disease and AIDS on the continent. The new African nations have had their share of despots, but few are in Robert Mugabe’s league when it comes to lining his pockets. There’s genocide, perhaps not on Rwandan scale, but he’s killing his own citizens. He’s firmly in control of the capital, but his influence really doesn’t extend much past the city limits of Harare.” She took a breath and another bite of her half-eaten bagel. “The country used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. But now people are starving. The international community and any number of NGOs have tried to help, but it just isn’t working. Zimbabwe is the classic failed African state. In late 2003, the British Commonwealth voted to expel Zimbabwe based on human rights abuses. It takes a lot to get kicked out of the Commonwealth, but Mugabe managed it.”
