by Jake Devlin
“And then that part mushroomed, too?”
“Yup. And with every install, we also put in our covert audio and video surveillance equipment, primitive though it was back then, but it did what we needed it to do.
“And in May of '76, we recorded one very significant phone call.”
- 48 -
December 23. 2013
3:23 a.m. local time
35 kilometers southeast of Aleppo, Syria
“Either that, or I swear I'll kill her!”
“Oh, c'mon, Dani, she's not that bad.”
“C'mon yourself, Vito; she's getting worse every day.”
“No, she's” –
“And she hates me.”
“No, she doesn't; she just” –
“Yes, she does. She's always thought I wasn't good enough for you.”
“No, no, no. She” –
“C'mon, Vito. Last week she tried to kill me.”
“What? When?”
“That night you were on the stakeout in Palermo. She came into our bedroom with a butcher knife about two a.m. Only thing saved me was the Madonna cage.”
“I don't be-” –
“I'll show you the pics when we get home.”
“You've got” –
“Oh, yeah. Just as she crossed the beam and the cage ran up, five photos, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. If she didn't have the knife and I wasn't her target, they'd be funny. 88-year-old woman skulking in the first one, then deer-in-the-headlights in the second, third and fourth, then her fat ass in the fifth one, heading back out.”
“She wouldn't” –
“Oh, yes, she would, and she did. She – oh, hold on; there's the tent. Focus.”
“Oh, okay. Shit, it's a big one.”
“Well, he's got over ten thousand in his tribe.”
“How many outside guards?”
“Looks like – ah, eight, nine, ten.”
“How many inside?”
“Uh, six, plus him.”
“That's him lying down? There in the center, near the fire?”
“Yup, sleeping like a baby.”
“Even with all that blood on his hands.”
“Yup, those guys have no conscience.”
“Religious fanatics and drug traffickers never do.”
“Y'got that right, Vito. Okay, let's see if we can find an ingress.”
“Ready for the low-light cam?”
“Not yet; I'll stick with the infrared for now, see if I can find a rip or tear.”
“Okay.”
“Think I'll start at the top, right around the center pole; maybe we can see something there.”
“Good idea.”
“Okay, hovering up toward it; at least twenty feet up. See anything?”
“Just the heat from the – is that smoke?”
“Yeah, I think it” –
“Well, duh; there's our ingress.”
“Okay, Vito, switching on the low-light.”
“Wow, look at that hole! Gotta be at least a couple feet across.”
“Wonder if the Bumblebee can make it through that.”
“It's less than four inches long, Dani.”
“I know, Vito. Your mom never taught you about irony?”
“Oh, low blow, Dani. I got it.”
“Sorry. But she does hate me. Okay, focus. Here goes.”
“Woah, what was that?”
“The flare?”
“Yeah.”
“The fire. Even through the smoke. Okay, pushing down, and … and we're in … and out of the smoke. Okay, good. Now down to the target.”
“Wait. Swing around first, make sure none of the BGs see it.”
“Okay. Satisfied?”
“Yeah; looks like we're good. Take her down.”
“Here goes. Okay, five feet, four, three, two, one … and” –
“Oops; back up.”
“Got it. Oh, geez, that was close.”
“He couldn't have heard it; it's damned near silent.”
“Maybe just a spasm.”
“But if he'd hit it” –
“Well, he didn't, Vito; we're good. Okay, he's settled back down. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, heading in, inhale -- oh, geez, look at all those nose hairs; hope the gas gets through – inhale, exhale, inhale, two inches, exhale, and … spray … inhale. And pulling back up.”
“Good shot, Dani.”
“Okay.”
“Ready for egress and exfil.”
“Nope, not yet. I want to see him go.”
“Dani, you oughta” –
“No; I want to watch. And record it; proof of death for Amber.”
“Ah, right; okay.”
“You do want to get paid, dontcha? First hit and all?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then, shut up and click 'Record.'”
“Okay; done. Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
“Okay; waiting. Hmm. Big black flag on the wall.”
“Yeah; Arabic writing. Wonder what – look, Vito; it's starting!”
“Just another spasm.”
“No, that's more'n a spasm. He's convulsing.”
“Oh, geez, Dani! Look at his mouth!”
“I see it. Never seen blood gushing like that. Dribbling, yes; gushing, no. And that foam! Spurting! Geez.”
“That stuff is potent.”
“And quick. And none of his guards have – oops; spoke too soon. One just saw” –
“He's pretty fast … for a fat guy.”
“But he's gonna be too late; he's gone in another five seconds. Just one more convulsion. Wait for it. And … and there it is.”
“Now that's a convulsion, Dani. Wow!”
“Okay; proof of death. Let's get it outa there before one of his bodyguards sees it.”
“Right.”
“Up, up and away! Okay. It's out, bringing it back to the mother ship.”
“Don't you mean 'mother van'?”
“Okay, okay, Vito; mother van. Should be here in a couple of minutes.”
“Okay; recording off.”
“I'll send that off to Amber and we'll get paid.”
“First job done.”
“And I know what I'm gonna do with part of that five mill.”
“What?”
“She's going into a home, one way or another.”
“No, Dani, you can't” –
“One way or another. Or else I'll have to kill her. I've still got an extra canister.”
- 49 -
June 18, 2013
10:23 a.m. local time
St. Tropez, France
“What we got on tape was just a comment between two defense contractor CEO's about how 'The Council' had the fix in on the election so that Ford would win and that that would be good for their business.”
“But Ford lost to Carter in '76, didn't he?”
“Yup.”
“So they were wrong.”
“Yup. But that wasn't the point. It gave us the first evidence that there might be some group called 'The Council' working in secret to corrupt the election process in the US, and now we knew two of the people involved, even if only peripherally.”
“Was that maybe the Council on Foreign Relations?”
“At that point we had no idea, just the phrase 'The Council.'
“Did they talk about how the election was going to be fixed?”
“Nope. Just that passing comment. But it was the first entry in our file. And as our business grew and we installed more and more security and monitoring systems into higher- and higher-end homes and offices, and started working with yacht builders and airplane manufacturers to get our systems into their products, we picked up more bits and pieces from all around the world, and each one of those went into that file.
“The bodyguarding side of the biz grew right along with that, and our teams always had at least one of our undercover operatives in the group, who planted bugs and searched files whenever they had the
opportunity.”
“And kept their eyes and ears open?”
“Of course. And both of those businesses gave us leads for the assassination biz from time to time, which Gordy, Amber and I could handle on our own at first, but it soon reached the point where we had to bring a few others into the fold. But at the same time, we three needed to stay as anonymous as possible, always working through cutouts and blind drops for the assignments and payments.”
“Hard to build a reputation and yet stay under the radar.”
“Got that right, Pam. But my business studies helped me out a lot there. I started creating names for a whole cadre of assassins, most of them illusions at first, and started a stealth marketing campaign, a whispered phone call to a journalist mentioning The Asp, The Cobra, The Andorran or another name from my list, or a” –
“The Andorran? Why that one?”
“I just liked it. I'd been to Andorra a few times when I was with the Agency's security company, did an install for the Prince there, and it was such a peaceful little principality in the Pyrenees, so the name just popped into my head as I was making my first list.
“Sometimes after we heard about an assassination somewhere, one that we didn't do, we'd drop a note to the investigators that might hint at one of the names I had, and gradually the reputations grew to where certain names were connected with certain methods. And if we did do a particular job, we'd use an MO we'd developed for a certain name.
“Like The Stringer in Ballarat?”
“Right, with the garrotte. Or The Asp would tend to use the snake venom we'd developed in our R&D labs, once we got them going on our own, rather than hijacking stuff from DARPA or the CIA or the KGB, or from private labs where we had an operative in place. As time went on, I built up a stable of about fifty illusory names, and along the way, we also took out a few real hitters and took over their names, like The Scarlet Ninja. Set him up on a fake hit and took him out in – ah, I think it was '73 or – no, '74. Got to him through his broker in Kyoto. And then we took out the broker, replaced him with one of our own, so we got his whole stable, and none of them ever noticed.”
“'Cause they'd never met him.”
“Right. One upside of the world of assassins – and a downside, of course. All done through multiple layers of blinds and cutouts when it's done right.
“That also gave us the chance to raise our fees; doubled 'em to a hundred thou per hit.”
“Dollars?”
“Yup, still dollars. And with a 75 percent commission, that gave us a lot of working capital for the other businesses.”
“75 percent?”
“Yup. 75K for us, 25 for the hitter. Remember, though, this was the mid-70s, when 25K was a lot of money. Now they get five million, in euros, so a little over six million bucks.”
“What if one of them got caught?”
“Compartmentalized; they didn't know anything about their broker or us, so it never fed back. And we also had no difficulties, ever, in taking them out if we got worried about them.”
“Even in prison?”
“One of the easiest places to arrange a hit, and cheap, too; often a few cartons of cigarettes would do the trick. Easiest in the US, toughest in the UK, Japan and Germany. And we only had to do ten or eleven of those over the whole – oops; it's Amber, I'd better take this.”
- 50 -
March 9, 2014
1:32 p.m. local time
Bonita Beach, Florida
“No, Mommy, nooooooooooo!”
“Get in there, Britton! Now!!”
“No, Mommy, it's too cold!”
“Now, Britton! Or do you want another spanking?”
“Waaahhhhhhhhhh!”
“Shut up, Britton, and get in there! Now!”
“Waaahhhhhhhhhh!”
“Now, I said, dammit! Now!”
“Waaahhhhhhhhhh!”
“Lewis, get your ass over here and put your son in the water!”
“Oh, ease up, Jolene. That water IS cold.”
“Waaahhhhhhhhhh!”
“Shut up, Britton! Lewis, get him in there, dammit!”
“Waaahhhhhhhhhh!”
“It's too cold for him, Jolene.”
“I don't care. It's time he gets in! He's almost three!”
“Waaahhhhhhhhhh!”
“Oh, shut up, Jolene! He's just a kid, dammit!”
“Waaahhhhhhhhhh!”
“Come to Daddy, Britt. We're going home.”
“Waaahhh – home?”
“Home. Now come on.”
“Don't you dare, Lewis! Don't you fuckin' dare! I'm his mother!”
“And I'm still his dad until a judge says otherwise. C'mon, Britt.”
“Come back here, you sonofabitch! Don't you dare!”
“We're leaving, Jolene! If you want to stay here, fine.”
“Stop, you bastard! You bring him back right now! Lewis” ...
“Wow. Did you hear all that, Gordy?”
“Yeah, Ro. And I think Carie got it on her phone, too. Right?”
“Got it, Gordy. Poor kid. Should I get it to Sgt. Dooley?”
“Not sure there's anything he can do; she didn't actually hit him.”
“Verbal abuse?”
“Not sure on that. But that kid sure is gonna need a whole bunch of therapy later on.”
“Mom's the one that needs it, but she'll never do it.”
“Got that right, Ro. Poor Britt; he's going through that rude awakening that every kid has to go through one way or another.”
“Rude awakening?”
“Yeah, Carie. When a kid finally realizes that he may be the center of his universe, but is not the center of THE universe. And how he deals with that reality will probably become a pattern for the rest of his life.”
“Woah. That's deep, Gordy.”
“Think about it, Carie. And then add to that that some people spend the rest of their lives trying to make themselves the center of THE universe.”
“Woah again.”
“Just a thought, Carie.”
“Wonder how he'll handle it when he finds out there's no Santa Claus.”
“Maybe he never will, Ro; then he'll become a liberal.”
“Oh, Gordy.”
“Sorry, couldn't resist; too easy a setup.
“Or maybe he'll keep believing in the other, bigger Santa, the one with many names, and he'll become a conservative … or reactionary.
“And Dad was right; that water is still cold, maybe 67, 68.”
“Jesus Kee-rist!”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Goddamn! Too cold! Not going in!”
“Jesus Christ!”
“See, Ro, I told you it was holy water.”
“Yup.”
“All those people instantly converted.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“Here comes Fran, and he looks angry.”
“Probably just frustrated; not the sharpest nail in the barrel.”
“Hey, Gordy.”
“What, Fran?”
“I just finished the second book, and what the hell is that with Pam dying and then being alive again?”
“Got you perflutzed, huh?”
“Yeah. What the hell were you trying to do with that?”
“Tell ya what, Fran. Go back and read Chapters 66, 68 and 104 again, and maybe that'll help you figure that out. I don't want to spoil it by just telling you.”
“But” –
“C'mon, Fran; that should set it straight for ya.”
“Can't you just tell me?”
“Nope.”
“Crap. Okay. But now I've got another problem.”
“Yeah?”
“I can't get to that online stuff. I've typed it in exactly, but it's not working.”
“You typed 'JakeDevlin dot com,' then a forward slash, the one under the question mark, then '27X,' right?”
“Yeah, just like you had it in the book. What'd you do wrong?�
�
“Hey, Fran, nobody else has had that troub- – oh, wait. Where did you type it?”
“What d'ya mean, where? On my computer.”
“No, Fran. Where on the screen did you type it?”
“Oh, on the screen? Ah, in my, uh, search engine.”
“Oh, Fran, Fran, Fran, no, no, no. Put it in the location bar.”
“The what?”
“The location bar, in your browser, where it shows you what web site you're on.”
“Where” –
“Look, Fran, when you get home, just ask your wife – or better yet, one of your grandkids. Oh, but don't give 'em the link. They're too young. Just ask 'em where the location bar or address bar – LOOK OUT! Umbrellas loose! Everybody, LOOK OUT! Fran, go get yours!”
“Geez, Gordy, there must be a dozen of 'em flying.”
“Maybe more, Ro, maybe more.”
“That gust came up quick.”
“Yeah, it did. But it's been picking up all day.”
“Look, up by Pop's!”
“Wow, that's a – whatdyacallit? Not a tornado, not a – oh, crap! Damned Quarterheimer's.”
“Waterspout?”
“No, Carie; it's still on the beach.”
“Dust devil?”
“That may be it, Ro; sounds good.”
“Pretty strong. Geez! It's picking up umbrellas, towels, papers, spinning 'em all around. They're what, 20, 30 feet up in the air?”
“About that, Ro, looks like.”
“Wow! Now it's out over the water.”
“So now it is a waterspout, Carie.”
“Any danger?”
“Don't think so; it's heading away from us. And – yup, now it's losing strength. And … gone. I think we're okay.”
“I think I got some good video of it.”
- 51 -
June 18, 2013
10:33 a.m. local time
St. Tropez, France
“Hey, Amber, what's up? You found 'em? Thanks; I'll pull 'em up when we're done here.”
“Are those the files on Nicholas' father?”
“Yup.”
“Great. Thanks, Amber.”
“Did you hear that, Amber? Pam said thanks. Okay. Anything else? Who's the target? And the client? Wow. Larry? No, I know; it's just – who's available? Oh, yeah, they're good. Deadline? Fine; they should be able to get her by then. Where is she now? Hmm. Maybe they can drown her in the Grand Canal. Sorry; I know, I know. Okay; let me catch my breath. Okay. Anything else? What? Thanks, it's a little better; we're in the hot tub. I just gotta take it easier, not so much close-in stuff. Let the kids handle those. Anybody from the last class ready to come into the inner circle? Only six? Damn. Maybe we've gotta get out there and do some more recruiting. Have Stryker get back into the Agency's files, see who they're watching; maybe we can pick some off before they get 'em. And have him look at MI6's files, same thing. Okay, good. Anything else? Okay. Usual hello to Gisele and the girls, okay? Okay. Yeah, I will. Bye.
