The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

“Oh, wow.” Jack frowned. “Well, I can’t test against their top-secret detection protocols. I wrote the app for a French intel agency and their protocols didn’t find it on the sweep. Do you want to tell me why you’re spying on Special Projects?”

  “Because they are helping me, but I need to know it’s for the right reasons.”

  Jack considered. “I assume if you need to spy on them you may need to steal from them.”

  “That sounds so wrong.”

  He pulled a pair of car keys from his bag, with an Audi logo. “Not actual keys.” He pressed the end of one and a flash drive emerged from the key’s thick housing. “It will copy data at a much higher rate than a conventional flash drive. It also includes a program to crack passwords.” Another flick and the key resumed its normal appearance.

  “Thanks.”

  Jack nodded. “You’re welcome. I’ll find out what I can on this woman.”

  “Give my best to Ricki,” Sam said. “I’m so happy for the two of you.”

  On his cab ride back to Charles de Gaulle Airport Sam thought of calling home to hear Daniel’s voice, but he decided instead to activate the app he’d placed on Bob Seaforth’s phone during the helicopter flight back to Bagram. He felt guilty…Seaforth had helped him. But no one helped in intelligence work without expecting a payback. Always there was a trade, an exchange, an agenda.

  Seaforth’s phone was turned on, and the eavesdropping app activated. Sam slipped earbuds into place. He could hear Seaforth’s voice. He was with a group; Sam heard three voices other than Seaforth’s, chatting, all younger-sounding. A nasal-sounding man, a woman with a slight Southern accent, another man with a raspy hoarseness to his tone. They chatted about weather, the coffee, asking Bob why there were only six doughnuts instead of a dozen in the box on the conference table.

  A meeting, Sam thought. If there were more people in the room, they were being silent.

  Sam closed his eyes in the back of the cab, listening through his earbuds.

  Seaforth’s voice, quiet and commanding: “Let’s begin. You three read the file on Sam Capra.”

  Sam sat up suddenly, then eased himself back down.

  Young man, nasal voice, New England accent: “Yes. What a mess he is. I’m not clear on what we’re supposed to do about him.”

  Seaforth: “I want to know what he knows. We’ve dangled a trail for him to follow and I want to see what he does.”

  Woman: “Why waste our time with someone radioactive?”

  Seaforth: “Because he’s going to take us to someone interesting, Romy. Right now I just want digital eyes on Sam. I want to know where he goes. I want to know where he stays. I want to know who he contacts.”

  Romy: “Julian scooped up his data.”

  Nasal voice, again…Julian: “He flew from Budapest to Paris; today he’s booked on a flight to Atlanta, then on to New Orleans. His parents and his child are there. We have a trace on his parents’ home and cell phones. He has not called them.”

  Romy: “Psychologically, that’s interesting. He has news on his brother and yet he says nothing.”

  Julian: “It’s not news you tell over the phone.”

  Raspy-voiced man: “I would.”

  Julian: “We looked at his parents’ phone patterns. There’s not a lot of contact between Sam and the parents. Not even once a week. Not e-mail. The mother is on social media and primarily posts about relief work. Do you know the effort it takes on Facebook not to talk about your kids?”

  Seaforth: “Would you say they’re estranged?”

  Julian: “At least a tension. Probably related to the brother’s disappearance. Some families get closer in tragedy, others splinter.”

  Raspy-voiced man: “He owns a house in New Orleans, bought in his own name.” Sam heard a noise that sounded like paper being shuffled and rearranged. “A woman lives there, as caretaker to his son. Her name is Leonie Jones. She has a CIA file. She was a forger, an information broker, a specialist in creating identities for people who needed to vanish. She was forced into working for a criminal syndicate called Nine Suns, which is currently dormant and presumed broken up—Sam Capra dealt them a fatal blow after they kidnapped his son, and they’ve not found value in reassembling. She was given the Capra baby for safekeeping. Safe to say she grew very attached to him. Sam didn’t show her the curb when he got his son back; she’s the only mother figure his son has ever known.”

  Romy: “They should have a reality show.”

  Seaforth: “Are they intimate? Do their e-mails, texts, et cetera, suggest it’s a romantic relationship?”

  We were together twice, Sam thought, while chasing Daniel’s kidnappers, and we decided it was a bad idea. But sometimes he thought of those moments with Leonie with a confused longing. They hadn’t really tried for a real relationship. They had put each other into a limbo.

  Julian: “No. It’s friendly but it’s mostly about the baby. Textual analysis indicates she is devoted to the Capra child.”

  Romy: “He also got a live-in babysitter who knows he’s ex-CIA, that he has a particular skill set that he is willing to sell and use. If he’s Batman, she’s Alfred. Keeper not only of the child, but of his secrets. She could be forging identities for him to use right now.”

  Seaforth: “Prakash, you said his parents are in New Orleans as well?”

  The paper shuffling sound again. Prakash, the raspy-voiced man: “Alexander Capra and Dr. Simone Perrault Capra. Former bigwigs with an Episcopal relief agency. He’s a financial guru, she’s a surgeon. Very dedicated to their work. In fact, their e-mails to Sam are always about work, rarely about him or his life. They’ve retired but they serve as consultants to global charities. Speaking engagements, pro bono work. Simone Capra comes from serious family money due to timber and oil in Louisiana and east Texas. That was the explanation given when Sam bought the bars, that this was family money. If he doesn’t tell them about his brother on this visit, I assume he won’t until he has proof.”

  Seaforth: “What might Sam do if he finds his brother alive? Let’s figure him out, misfits.”

  Misfits? Sam thought. What an odd term to use in an agency meeting. He heard papers shuffling, the squeak of a pen on a dryboard.

  Romy: “Do we have DNA results yet on the bodies in the grave?”

  Seaforth: “Not yet. I have a government lab extracting DNA from the teeth we brought back. I should have results tomorrow.”

  Government lab? Not a CIA Special Projects lab? It was an odd choice of words, Sam thought.

  Seaforth: “Back to Sam. We have his psych profile from when he was hired by Special Projects. His emotional anchor was more his brother than his parents. The Capra boys were dragged all over creation, from one disaster or poor country to another. Odd that the parents didn’t leave them behind, but they thought the world was a classroom. Sam’s world centered on his brother.”

  Seaforth: “If Danny’s alive, he might have spent his time with the extremist movements for the past six years. Maybe he was recruited, brainwashed, deployed.”

  Romy: “But these guys were heroin smugglers, not terrorists.”

  Seaforth: “Or they were both. We don’t know what happened in that village. Not yet.”

  Romy: “You want us to watch Sam in New York? It’s only the three of us.”

  Only three of them? Sam thought. Weren’t these people part of Special Projects? Along with the comment about using the government lab…

  Seaforth: “No.”

  Julian: “What if we do need to run an operation against him? As teams go, we are small and the plates are large. We’ve got the summit with the Russian leadership, the situation in Syria, the Estonia problem…”

  Seaforth: “And every other intel agency will be focused on those. The Church is different. We’re old-school. We’re in the people business. Sam Capra and whoever he’s been working with matter,” Seaforth said. “We stick on him for now.”

  The Church? Sam thought, sitting upright. What the hell was this?
Seaforth had gotten CIA resources to help him…but didn’t work for the CIA?

  What was the Church?

  Julian: “Speaking of the Russians…what says our source there?”

  Seaforth: “Nothing new to report.”

  Romy: “Where’s Sam going when he comes to New York? We need an address.”

  Seaforth: “He’s going to see the Magpie.”

  Romy: “Crazy old woman. She gets people killed.”

  Another awkward silence.

  Seaforth: “Danny Capra is our priority. Run your work and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

  Sam shut off the app as the taxi pulled up to Terminal Two at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Seaforth wasn’t CIA, but he was still government. So what was he? A secret group, a task force, a new department in a back corner of an agency? And clearly, he was going to interfere in Sam’s search for Danny.

  Sam went through customs as if in a dream, dazed. The only person in this world you can still trust is Mila. He didn’t remember he wanted to call Daniel until the plane was taking off into the bright afternoon.

  11

  New Orleans

  LANDING IN NEW ORLEANS in the evening, Sam felt exhausted. His mind spun with thoughts of Danny, like a ghost in his brain. Until he saw his son, Daniel. Leonie met him outside Louis Armstrong Airport, Daniel strapped into the toddler seat, laughing and calling for his daddy.

  At least he remembers your name, Sam thought. He got into the backseat instead of the front, and he could sense the resentment rise from Leonie, in the driver’s seat. Because he could have sat next to her after kissing Daniel hello, and now she was just the person driving him and his kid. From nanny to chauffeur.

  She deserves better than this limbo we’re in, Sam thought. Fix this. He didn’t know how. So he began to tickle Daniel’s toes and fingers and in the rearview he saw Leonie smile.

  “By the way,” she said, “your parents are waiting for us at the house.”

  “Oh,” he said. He loved his parents but he had not wanted to see them while trying to prove that his brother was still alive. It would feel horrifically awkward, face-to-face, him suspecting that their greatest wish was true and not being able to share it with them. What would you say? Hey, y’all, Danny might be alive. He just never called us in six years or let us know. He could tell them nothing until he knew the truth.

  He wished, for one moment, that he hadn’t come here. But Daniel smiled at him, and that made his reservations melt away.

  “I didn’t ask them. They called me this morning and I said you were coming home and they said they had to see you. I couldn’t say no.”

  “OK. I know it’s a hard situation for you.”

  She didn’t answer and she drove them to the house he’d bought, off St. Charles Avenue.

  “How many days are you home for?” she asked as he pulled Daniel from the car, the child giggling. He nestled the boy against his shoulder.

  “I go to New York tomorrow.”

  “Don’t blink, Daniel,” she said. “You’ll miss Daddy.”

  Sam’s mother, Dr. Simone Capra, opened the front door, an uncertain smile on her face. His father, Alexander Capra, stood behind her, his hair now silvery with gray, but still a tall, wiry man.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” his mother said. Sam kissed her cheek and let her kiss his. He shook his father’s hand and was a little surprised to get a strong hug from him. He loved his parents and he knew they loved him, but since Danny’s death there had been a distance. His parents were reminders of loss, and he was one to them. They were caught in the nightmare together.

  His mother scooped up Daniel from him. “Your dad made cocktails, if you want one. Old-fashioneds.”

  He went and got his bag and Leonie had vanished—or retreated—into the kitchen, which smelled of roasting chicken. His father handed him a drink. He thought: This is cozy. Something’s wrong.

  “Sit,” his father said.

  So he did, all of them with a cocktail in hand, and his mother said, with Daniel on her knee, “Why were you in Afghanistan?”

  He had started a fortifying gulp of the old-fashioned and he nearly choked. “What?”

  “Why. Were. You. In. Afghanistan?” she said, enunciating carefully.

  “What…why do you think I was there?” He’d told no one, not even Leonie, that he had gone to Kabul.

  “A friend of ours from United Global Relief saw you in the Kabul airport.”

  His heart shifted in his chest. “Did your friend come up and say hi to me?” he said mildly.

  “No, he saw you at a distance; you were boarding a flight at the last minute one gate over. But he was sure it was you. You ran past him.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “He took a picture, Sam, and texted it to us,” Simone Capra said.

  You could have told me that before, he thought bitterly, but he kept the bemused smile in place. “Let’s see this picture.”

  His father showed him the phone screen and, yeah, it was Sam, at a distance but standing in profile, about to board a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul, with continuing service to Budapest. It was him. The text read:

  I saw Sam in Kabul airport—is he finally going into relief work like the rest of the family?

  “It’s not me,” Sam said, handing his father back the phone.

  His father shook his head. “Sam, look at the photo; that is you.”

  He couldn’t tell them—that there was a chance Danny was alive. That there was a sliver of hope. It would be too cruel. He would have to carry this burden alone. He looked at his parents. He loved them so much but he could not, in that moment, have told them so.

  Daniel got down from his grandmother’s lap onto the floor, suddenly fascinated with a toy train.

  “Is it Danny?” his mother asked. He noticed how tightly she was gripping her untasted drink. “Did they find his body and call you?”

  “Mom, if his body was found they’d call you, not me.” They didn’t know he was CIA. They had never known.

  “Well, maybe,” she said.

  “Sam,” his father said in a gentle tone. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s not me and I have zero intention of continuing to argue about it,” he said. He tasted his drink again. “What else is up with y’all?”

  “You are lying to us,” his father said, a surprise, because his father was the quieter one; it was his mom who loved to argue. Steel in his tone. “That is you in the picture. You were in one of the most dangerous places in the world, where we lost your brother, and you don’t get to shrug this off. Not when we have lost him and not when you have a child to answer for.”

  “At least I didn’t drag my child there with me,” Sam said, before he thought. He couldn’t look at them for a moment and he stared into his drink.

  “Sam,” his father said, quiet again.

  “OK. That’s fair,” Simone said. “Maybe let’s all take a deep breath, OK? Alex? Sam?”

  Sam did as his mother suggested and took a deep breath. His father kept his gaze steady on Sam.

  Simone said, “But please don’t lie to us. Why were you there?”

  This was going to be a dividing line. A before and after, in his life. “I used…I used to work for the CIA. It was classified. I stopped working for them after Lucy…after Lucy got shot.”

  He only heard the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway. Lucy was shot at the so-called Yankee Stadium incident. A helpless victim, they thought, their lovely, quiet daughter-in-law who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was what the world was told, and there was no reason to disbelieve it.

  “It wasn’t random. Someone tried to shoot me and Lucy was hit.”

  His parents stared at him. The ice in his father’s drink rattled. Daniel jumped up onto Sam’s knees, wanting attention. Sam touched his son’s hair and stared at the top of his head.

  “Lucy and I both worked for the CIA,” he added. “That was where we met. Not at church.”

&nb
sp; Simone took Sam’s hand. “Baby, why didn’t you tell us?”

  It was so hard to say. “Because of Danny. I joined the CIA because of Danny.”

  “Oh, Sam,” his father said. He reached out and touched his son’s shoulder. Sam saw tears in his mother’s eyes. He had not seen her react with such emotion since Danny was taken.

  “I left the CIA after Lucy got hurt. A few weeks ago the CIA got new information on a village where Danny and Zalmay were taken after they were captured. In the Hindu Kush mountains. A CIA contact took me there. We found a grave.”

  They hardly dared to breathe. Leonie stood in the doorway to the kitchen. Sam could see tears in her eyes, her hand pressed to her mouth.

  The only sound in the house was Daniel singing a Wiggles rhyme to himself and the ticking of the clock in the hallway. “We think we found Zalmay’s body. His parents don’t know anything about this yet. The identification tests aren’t finished; probably we’ll know tomorrow.” It was all he could bear to say. “But not Danny’s body. It wasn’t there.”

  “Well, what does that mean?” Simone whispered.

  “I don’t know. I guess they took his body somewhere else.”

  Simone paled.

  “Why would they do that? What reason could they have?” Alex asked. “No body. No body could mean…”

  “I don’t know, Dad.”

  Alexander Capra put an arm around his wife. She set down her drink on the coffee table. Her surgeon’s hand, normally steely and controlled, quivered. Daniel toddled toward Leonie and she scooped him up, saying, “Come help me, sweet boy, OK, you sit with me and make me laugh.” They vanished into the kitchen.

  “Are…are they going to keep looking for Danny?” Alexander asked.

  Well, I am, Sam thought. He wondered what his parents would think of him, if they’d known he’d snapped the neck of one man and shot another one in the head to escape with the location of the village. That he’d threatened the Hungarian guard’s family, even when he didn’t mean it. Would they turn away in surprise or shock? They were devout Episcopalians who had devoted their lives to healing and helping and he…hadn’t. They were good and he was…not.