Somehow it felt like they’d both lost sight of that.
2. Mitch Filner. April 30. 9:15 am
Mitch Filner said into the phone. “Just in case you forgot, we lost one of our guys last night because of your stupid orders.”
As he said the words, Mitch scanned the balcony of the high-rise directly across the street through his binoculars. The former soldier—Dylan Paris—was pacing on the balcony, smoking a cigarette. Mitch would have loved to have put a bullet right between his fucking eyes for interfering the night before. Now, Joe Paretski was in the custody of federal agents, and if they didn’t find him soon, this whole operation could come crashing down.
Not that it wasn’t all bullshit to begin with. Leslie Collins thought he could drop a few hundred thousand here and a few hundred thousand there and contain a major disaster, but it didn’t work that way. Mitch knew that much, and he was working as fast as he could to make his own insurance, even as he followed Collins’ orders.
Kidnapping a teenager? Seriously? That was bullshit. They weren’t in some Third World shithole, nor was Andrea Thompson some anonymous girl who could be snatched off the street without anyone noticing. She was the daughter of the fucking Secretary of Defense. Yeah, asshole hadn’t bothered to tell him that until after it was international headlines.
That was okay. Mitch had been recording his conversations with Collins. Because one thing was for sure, Leslie Collins wasn’t acting within the bounds of any approved intelligence op. No matter how much he thought he was in charge, no matter how often he had fucking cocktails at the White House, there was no way in hell the President had authorized the kidnapping of the daughter of a cabinet member. Collins was playing his own fucking game. Mitch didn’t know what it was, but he was putting away plenty of information to put Leslie Collins away in prison forever.
Right now the family was split all over the place. Mitch had agents tailing the oldest daughter, Julia Wilson, spoiled rich girl husband of a fucking rock star, out in Los Angeles. He had two more tracking Carrie Thompson, the next oldest sister, currently en route to the Pentagon to have lunch with her father. That ought to be a barrel of fucking laughs. The two youngest, including the bitch who had killed two of his contractors, were at Children’s Hospital. Getting blood tests, which Collins had ordered him to procure and destroy.
He ought to just put a bullet through her head rather than steal her blood tests.
Collins spoke, his voice a slow clip. “I didn’t ask your opinion, Filner. I gave you instructions.”
“Collins, you’re losing your grip.”
“Just get the blood tests and do it quietly. Switch them out with somebody’s. I don’t care what you do.”
Filner rolled his eyes. Fine. He’d follow instructions. But it was a waste of time. They’d just get another blood test.
He eyed the former soldier on the balcony again.
Earlier that morning he’d run into a familiar face. Jackie Prince. Or at least that was the name she’d gone by when they met four years ago. Jackie had been lounging with a paperback at the Starbucks, a hundred yards away from the condo.
Filner had slipped into the seat across from her.
“Well, hullo there, Mitch,” Jackie said. Her clipped London accent was as annoying as always.
“Jackie,” Filner had responded. He raised an eyebrow. “Doing a little vacation reading? A little tourism here?”
“Well, of course,” Jackie replied. “What else would I be doing in the United States?”
“Not a little bit of spying? Interesting place you chose here.”
Jackie had smiled and leaned close to him, her nose inches from his. “I’m no more involved in intelligence operations than you are, Mitch.”
Filner wiggled his eyebrows up and down; an expression he’d come to believe was somehow seductive. “You should come join me, then,” he said.
She smiled. “Perhaps you should come join me,” she had replied. “I’ve got a friend, his name’s George? He’s looking for some American employees.”
Mitch snorted. “It’s hard to beat self-employment.”
She smiled and leaned close. Then she whispered, “Security’s worth a lot, Mitch. Think about it. It would be a shame if you got involved in something that was going to be trouble. And just between you and me? There’s trouble coming. Big trouble.”
She slid a card across the table at him. He stared at the card in surprise. It listed the name and address of a comic book shop in London.
“Comics?” he had asked.
“I’ve got a weakness for superheroes,” she had replied.
Mitch memorized the number. Then he had gotten up and walked away, leaving the card behind.
Now, with Leslie Collins droning on in his ear over the phone, all Mitch could think about was the relative security if he took her up on her offer. He knew SIS would be good for it: he had enough information to bring down Richard Thompson and Leslie Collins.
“Filner? Did you fucking hear me?”
Filner sighed. He thought about the operations of the last five days. Installing bombs in houses. Kidnapping teenagers. He didn’t want to do this crap any more. He wanted to sit in a lounge chair on the beach in France or Spain or some place and fucking retire from this crap.
“I heard you, Collins. Let me make sure I’m hearing you. You want me to steal her blood tests.”
“Yes!”
“And then?”
“We’re going to contain this thing, Filner. I want contingency plans. To wipe out all of them. Am I clear?”
That was it.
“You’re perfectly clear.” He hung up the phone. Then he checked to make sure it had been recorded properly. Yes.
He stood up. He was done. Done with this bullshit. Done. Done. Done. He dialed Jackie’s comic book shop from memory.
“James Street Comics,” said a male voice.
“I’d like to speak with Jackie. My name’s Filner.”
A pause. Then a voice said, “Jackie’s not in. But I’m authorized to speak on her behalf. She told me that you might be calling. Is this about the job opening?”
“Yeah. Um… you guys offering any relocation assistance?”
His phone started beeping. An incoming call. Probably Collins.
“That’s doable provided we get the right employee. With the right… skills.”
“All right… see, the thing is, I don’t feel really secure in my current job.”
“Security, we can offer, sir. But it’s not a one-way street.”
“I need to move right away.”
A pause. Mitch felt his heart beating faster. He waited for almost three full minutes. Then someone came back on the line. “Sir? One of our recruiters would like to meet you. I understand you’re in Bethesda right now? Can you get to the metro and meet our man at DuPont Circle?”
“Yeah. How will I know him?”
“He’ll know you.”
Mitch nodded, then hung up the phone, just in time for it to ring again. Leslie Collins. He ignored the call and quickly tossed a few things in his pockets, then walked to the door and yanked it open.
Then he stepped back in shock, a hand at his midsection, covering the sudden sharp pain. He felt hot liquid begin to pour out onto his hand and he gasped.
Danny McMillan was standing in the doorway. “Sorry, Mitch. It’s not personal. Collins heard you were looking for another job.”
“Fuck, Danny.” What the fuck? Was Danny here as a backup all along?
“Yeah… that’s the breaks, man.” Then he reached out and with a swift jab, stabbed Mitch again, this time between ribs. Mitch gasped and fell to his knees, his vision wavering.
“I’ll take that,” Danny said the words as he pulled Mitch’s phone out of his hands.
Mitch fell to the floor.
Danny said, “Sorry about this, buddy.”
Then Mitch felt a cold line against his throat. A second later, everything went black.
1. Bear. April 30.
9:45 am
BY THE TIME Bear made it to the Russell Senate Office Building on Wednesday morning, he was exhausted. And with good reason. Following the shooting in Bethesda, a jurisdictional battle took place between the Montgomery County Police, Diplomatic Security, and the FBI.
Montgomery County had a good case. The shooter had no identification and was refusing to talk. From their perspective, he’d shot a British citizen who was in town on a tourist visa and had no diplomatic connections. But when the shooter was booked, his fingerprints hit on the National Crime Information System database. Ronald Sanderson. 32 years old. Army veteran, former Airborne, former Special Forces. He’d been thrown out of the Army with a medical discharge for a personality disorder. In Bear’s experience, that usually meant improperly diagnosed post traumatic stress. Sanderson had disappeared for three years after his discharge, but attracted the FBI’s attention in a bank fraud investigation. No one, however, could find him. Until yesterday.
Diplomatic Security wanted him, of course, because of the connection to the Andrea Thompson kidnapping. Unfortunately, for now at least, Sanderson was in the Montgomery County jail while the different jurisdictional arguments got worked out.
It was well after midnight before Bear had dealt with the custody issue, then beefed up security assignments for the Thompson family. At 1:30 in the morning he’d stumbled back into his studio apartment near DuPont Circle and crawled into the bed.
He was up early, and at 5:30 walked into the Starbucks around the corner from his apartment to sit, read the rest of the Thompson file, and wake up.
Bear was intrigued still by the complete lack of information in the file about Thompson’s postings to Spain and Pakistan in the early 80s. No performance evaluations, no official reports, no photographs. Nothing. It was as if the assignments simply hadn’t existed. In January 1984 Thompson was reassigned to the State Department in Washington, DC for what appeared to be a normal three-year assignment. The next three years in his file were perfectly normal. Official reports. Commendations letters, including one signed by Ronald Reagan.
The commendations were very vague, however. For exemplary service during the period of June 1985 to July 1985. With no specifics or description of what the assignment was.
Again… everything in his file was slightly off.
A photograph from early 1984. Bear recognized the condo currently occupied by Carrie Thompson-Sherman. In the photo, Richard Thompson sat at the large dining table with his wife Adelina and several other people. A quasi-official dinner party. On the back of the photo, someone had labeled the names in now faded, uneven type.
Richard and Adelina Thompson
Prince Roshan and Myriam al-Saud
Leslie Collins
Prince George-Phillip, Duke of Kent
LTC Chuck Rainsley and Brianna Rainsley
Bear stared at the photograph in shock. Then he took a sip of his coffee, wishing he had some whiskey to top it off.
Roshan al Saud, a member of the royal house of Saudi Arabia, was now the director general of al Mukhabarat Al A’amah… the Saudi Arabian intelligence agency.
Leslie Collins was the Director of Operations—the second-highest level executive—of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the photograph, he sat with his arm on Richard Thompson’s shoulder, a sly grin on his face as he stared at the camera.
George-Phillip Windsor was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth and currently the head of the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom. He looked no older than twenty in the photo, but was clearly recognizable with his dark features and long aquiline nose.
Chuck Rainsley—then a Marine Lieutenant Colonel—was now the senior senator from Texas and head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He wore his uniform in the photo, medals looking resplendent as he stood behind the others at the table. Bear remembered that Rainsley, an exceptionally tall man, had been one of the commanders of the Marine task force that had been so devastated by the truck bomb in Beirut that killed more than two hundred Marines.
Bear didn’t understand what this was all about. But he knew that something was seriously wrong. In this photograph, they looked young, Thompson and Collins and Prince Roshan all in their early thirties, Prince George-Phillip not even twenty-five. But now, these men were some of the most powerful in the world.
And now he was on his way to face one of them. After looking at the photo, Bear had returned to his apartment, where he’d reviewed all the biographical information he could find on Senator Chuck Rainsley.
Rainsley was a conservative and one of the most powerful men in the Senate. Bear’s recollection had been correct. A Vietnam veteran, Rainsley was a senior commander of the peacekeeping force deployed by President Reagan to Lebanon. In October 1983 suicide bombers attacked the Marine barracks with truck bombs, killing 241 US service members. Bear reviewed the reports—they were brutal. Unusually restrictive rules of engagement prevented sentries from responding effectively to the attack, and a political and intelligence rift in the White House and between the Pentagon and State Department prevented an effective response. In the photograph, early in 1984, Rainsley was still in uniform. But Bear knew that by March 1984, Rainsley had resigned his commission and announced he was running for Congress.
Bear felt a little better prepared, then, as he walked into the Russell Building. He didn’t know the connection between Senator Rainsley and Richard Thompson, but he knew that at least as far back as 1984, the two men knew each other. He knew that on at least one occasion, Senator Rainsley sat in the same room as Thompson and the future heads or deputy heads of intelligence of three different nations.
There was no longer any question in Bear’s mind that Richard Thompson had been CIA.
What did the new Secretary of State, Perry, have to do with all of this? He’d also been on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees in the Senate, and was known to be a good friend of Rainsley’s, despite the fact they sat on opposite sides of the political aisle. Perry was a Democrat and had served in the Senate from Massachusetts for twenty years. Rainsley was a Republican from Texas. But the two of them had worked together for decades. So what would Rainsley have to say that Perry couldn’t tell him?
Bear was annoyed he had to turn in his weapons at the entrance to the building. But he needed to get upstairs. He made his way down the gleaming white hallway toward the stairs, watching as men and women, legislators, aides, lobbyists, and tourists wandered the halls.
It was quieter on the third floor—only those people who had actual business came here. His shoes echoed off the marble floor as he walked down the hall, and he felt an urge to whisper.
Halfway down the quarter mile long hallway, he found the seal of the state of Texas: a lone star, circled by olive and oak branches. The door itself was thick polished wood and had gleaming brass handles. Bear reached out and opened the door.
Inside, it took his eyes a moment to adjust from the bright white marble hallway to the dark wood paneling inside the office. A receptionist sat at a desk—young, pretty and earnest. She smiled at him and said, “May I help you?”
“Jim Wyden, Diplomatic Security. I have an appointment with Senator Rainsley.”
“Yes, sir. If you can wait right here, Senator Rainsley will be right with you.”
It wasn’t a long wait. Less than a minute later, Senator Chuck Rainsley appeared in the doorway of the anteroom. Bear’s first impression: Rainsley would make a good candidate for the father of Carrie and Andrea Thompson. At six foot six, he towered over Bear. A good looking affable man with an easy smile and a broad hand, he clasped Bear’s hand and said, “Mr. Wyden, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Secretary Perry told me to expect you. Please come in.”
Bear followed Rainsley into the office, his thoughts racing. Could Rainsley be the father? He’d have to look at dates. He muttered a curse at himself. He should have checked their birth dates. But it didn’t make any sense, really. It didn’t explain why Andrea Thompson was kidnapped. It didn
’t explain anything really.
“Have a seat,” Rainsley said, gesturing toward a leather chair in front of a huge, highly polished desk. Bear’s shoes sank into the thick carpeting of the office as he walked to the chair and sat down.
Rainsley’s office was spacious. Memorabilia and photographs covered the walls. Rainsley in his Marine Corps uniform, as a young Lieutenant in Vietnam, on an aircraft carrier, at an Embassy, in Lebanon. Later photos of him in the Washington uniform, a dark suit and tie, or on the campaign trail in Texas. On the wall, a mix of items. A Bronze Star medal. A plaque from the city of Dallas. A photograph, black and white, of a twenty-year-old Chuck Rainsley in a basketball uniform with the letters USNA. Naval Academy.
Rainsley slid into the seat across from Bear. Even seated he was an imposing, impressive man.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Wyden?”
“Bear, sir.”
“Right. Bear. What can I do for you?”
“Sir, you’re probably aware that the night before last, the daughter of the Secretary of Defense was kidnapped at BWI airport. A foreign national with known intelligence ties was involved in the kidnapping.”
Rainsley nodded. “I’ve been following the story. Please don’t take this as nitpicking, but just a reminder, Thompson’s confirmation hearings aren’t until next week. He isn’t the Secretary of Defense yet.”
Bear nodded. “I stand corrected, Senator. I’m running the investigation into Andrea Thompson’s kidnapping. And—to put it bluntly—I’ve got some unanswered questions that don’t make sense, and Secretary Thompson is being less than cooperative.”
Rainsley grimaced. “That’s no surprise.”
“Sir, what can you tell me about Richard Thompson?”
Rainsley grimaced. “First of all, I want to make it clear, this is not on the record.”
“Fine, Senator.”
“All right, then. Richard Thompson is a snake and a liar. He’s one of the most dangerous men in government, and if the President thinks Thompson’s nomination as Secretary of Defense is going to fly he is out of his mind.”
Girl of Lies (Rachel's Peril) Page 15
