.G.
First he bent down and doused the rag again, holding it over Francine’s terrified face until her body went limp. Then he looked at the assistant manager and said, “Now you.”
“Wait, what are you . . . ?”
“Look, it’s only ether. It will put you to sleep while we leave, then you’ll wake up and you can call the cops or your mother or your fucking wife. Just go sit behind your desk and breathe in, or I’ll shoot you.”
The rifle poking his chest made the point as Jacques sat at his desk.
“Just take a deep breath; you won’t get a headache later if you do.”
The other gunman had Patrice sit at her desk and repeated the same instructions. Then he turned to the last employee. “Over by the coffee machine . . .”
“Why? I sit over there . . .”
“Shut up or I’ll kill you and everyone else.”
Reluctantly, he walked over to the espresso machine and when he inhaled the fumes from the ether-soaked rag he collapsed right there, in front of it. His hand knocked the coffee tin, and it spilled the grounds to the floor.
Fareed looked at his partner.
“That’s fine. I don’t think it will matter . . .” Paul said.
Fareed shrugged and put on a gas mask he pulled from his gas company serviceman’s bag then slid his rifle into it. He returned to the back room and, with his fingers, just barely screwed the gas line onto the fitting at the back of the heater. It was still leaking gas like a sieve, but looked like it was still hooked up.
When he returned to the gallery, his counterpart had his mask on, as the gas was now thick and choking. They grabbed Francine and propped her up at the little closing table.
They exited through the rear door of the gallery, the way they had come in. Once the door was shut, they proceeded to reconnect the old electric doorbell button.
That had been the key to the whole plan.
In the alley, they simply walked away. They were just two gas company service guys heading out to wherever, blending in with the rest of the early morning pedestrians and tourists in picturesque Old Montreal.
.G.
“Yes, and two orders of eggs with ham. No, no coffee, we have an espresso machine. And please, again, come around to the back door and just ring the rear bell. Oh, how much will that be? Could you bring change for twenty?” Fareed ended the call and, from the front seat of their car parked down the block from the gallery, they sat and waited for their order to arrive.
Chapter 5
The Englishman
14 days until the attack
Her phone rang at 6:45; she rolled over and patted down the bed with closed eyes, feeling for the vibrating, ringing annoyance. She opened her eyes just enough to orient the phone so she was speaking into the right end. “Burrell.”
“Director Burrell-Morton, my name is Smith. I am with the NSA. My challenge code is ‘Gladiator.’”
Brooke opened both eyes and said, “Transistor,” then she heard some gurgling sounds and Smith’s voice now had a slight twangy echo to it. Brooke knew it was something called “phase shift,” an artifact from the super encryption coding and decoding that the call was now being routed through.
“Hold for the director.”
“Burrell, Walsh,” the voice over the phone said.
That was a surprise. Brooke expected Barnes, the director of the FinCEN to be on the line, not Walsh, the director of the CIA. She swung off the bed, planted her feet on the ground, and put some strength in her voice, “Yes, sir.”
“Our Middle Eastern desk has confirmed some big movements of funds in the last twelve hours. The fingerprints point to your op in New York. Be at 26 Federal Plaza at eight a.m. for a full briefing.”
“Is this SWIFT intel?”
“In large part, but we also got a little lucky; you’ll be filled in at eight.”
Brooke killed the call. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication had been secretly cooperating with the US government since 9/11 when a few of their key stakeholders died in the World Trade Center—although that was not for publication.
Brooke cut her morning exercise routine down to only ten minutes, then jumped in the shower and was dressed and out the door by 7:20.
.G.
At 26 Federal Plaza, she entered through the government employees’ entrance and asked the uniformed FBI policeman at the desk to notify Mr. Yost. “Mr. Yost” was a code name used to call extension 7789. Every day there was a different name that would be directed to that number.
Even though the cop didn’t recognized her at first, her tone, bearing, and demeanor told him she was a fed. It caused him to soften his request, which was usually more authoritarian. “Nothing personal, but I have to challenge you.”
“Of course,” Brooke said as she handed him her creds.
The guard saw the FBI retired banner on her badge and it immediately clicked. “Special Agent Burrell, sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“It’s okay. I’ve been gone awhile.”
The professional courtesy continued. “Please wait for just a minute. Someone will be here shortly to escort you . . . Director.” He smiled when he realized she’d been promoted.
Within one minute, a young man in a blue suit and yellow tie introduced himself by saying, “Gladiator.”
Brooke responded, “Transistor.” And he escorted her to the special elevators in the back. He flashed his ID to another guard and they got in. He slid his swipe card through a reader next to the button panel that included every floor. The doors closed and the elevator went down. The floor indicator atop the doors showed it was going up. Brooke figured that was for the benefit of everyone else in the building that wasn’t cleared for Gladiator. The doors finally opened, and before them was a uniformed FBI officer wearing a sidearm seated behind a guard desk with an AR-15 assault rifle held in a locked bracket device by the edge of his desk. He scrutinized Brooke’s creds and scanned the holographic imprint in the upper left corner.
Satisfied that he didn’t have to kill her, he handed her ID wallet back and said, as if he were checking her into a Hilton, “Have a nice day, Madam Director.”
They entered SEC CONF 2. Brooke mused to herself, We are at least a hundred feet below Manhattan, carved into bedrock, with a single access point and machine guns at the door, and yet this twenty-by-thirty-foot conference room in the subterranean facility was where it was really, really secure?
.G.
Four men were already seated as the digital clock on the flat screen at the end of the room flipped to 07:59:00.
CIA Director Walsh lifted his head and greeted Brooke. “Miss Burrell, thanks for coming in on such short notice. Or do you prefer, Mrs. Morton?”
“Mrs. Morton is a happy housewife and devoted high school soccer coach who lives in Hawaii and is madly in love with her husband. However, she does not hold a simulated rank in the Senior Executive Service of an SES-6.
“Director Burrell it is, then. Now I assume you know everyone here?”
“All but you, sir.” Brooke addressed a white-haired fellow in a tan suit.
“I’m Otterson. I am Special Operations Directorate for MI6 in the Middle East.”
“Director Burrell, Otterson is the stroke of luck I mentioned.”
“Brooke, please,” she said as she extended her hand.
Walsh started. “Otterson, or should I say, Nigel.” Walsh nodded in deference to Brooke’s call for informality at this level. “Please tell us what got you on the earliest plane out from London seven hours ago.”
“It seems one of our analysts stumbled on a major art purchase through brokers operating out of Stockholm, Prague, and Denver.”
“Which one of these three doesn’t belong?” Brooke said out loud, then caught herself.
“Exactly, Brooke. That�
�s why we dug deeper. Through cutouts and registered agents, we tracked the money to Shipsen-Deloitte, LLC, an art appraisal firm with offices in Stockholm and Grand Cayman, West Indies,” Nigel said.
“Moving money around by buying and selling art to avoid international banking regulations?” she said.
“Yes, very astute of you,” the Englishman said.
“I busted a ring out of SoHo when I was running the New York office.”
“That would be FBI?”
“Yes it would, Nigel,” she said.
“I knew your name was familiar.”
“Caymans? They are still a British dependency, are they not?” Brooke said.
“Why yes. That is what piqued MI6’s interest in these matters,” Nigel said.
“Brooke, what are you thinking?” Director Walsh asked.
“Prescott’s company has its second biggest office in London, and numerous accounts in the Caymans; and because activity between those offices would be Brit to Brit, so to speak, they are relatively ‘under our radar.’ Otterson . . . Nigel here, may have found a link that we could only surmised existed.”
“Well, that’s why you are at the table, Brooke. I have already talked to the head of MI6 and he’s agreed to temporarily attach Nigel to us and, by extension, you. He is to be read in on all things Prescott.”
“What is the command structure, sir?”
“Excuse me?”
“Does Nigel report to me?”
“Let’s say you are co-equal.”
“No can do, sir.”
“What?”
“I run the show, or at nine tomorrow, Oahu time, I am on the field teaching control dribbling, and how to chip the ball, sir.”
“Is that an ultimatum, Ms. Burrell?”
“That’s the deal I have with US Treasury and approved by the president with his signature on my contract, sir. It’s my investigation, and there has already been one death; things could get a lot more violent, sir, and with all due respect, I got the service stars and scars to prevail in that theater of operations . . . Sir.”
Walsh was enough of a bureaucrat to recognize juice when he saw it. His male instinct was to dress Brooke down for speaking so brazenly to a superior officer, he being an SES-6 . . . Oh, wait. He hated the fact that the president had bestowed a rank equal to that of an agency director on Brooke. But the president’s intent was clear: she got to do it her way. Even he at his grade wasn’t cleared for all of her ops, leaving him to only imagine the kinds of things Brooke had done in service to her country that would be rewarded with that kind of confidence.
“Okay, it’s your op . . . Director Burrell,” the director of the CIA relented, and turned to Nigel. “Commander Otterson, thanks for making the trip over and for your report. Can I ask you to act as liaison between your agency in London and our Middle East desk? We’ll forward any pertinent intelligence to Burrell’s point person.”
“Yes, sir. I shall.”
“Good. Good. Well, I guess that concludes our business here this morning.”
Everyone got up and collected their things. Walsh watched as Brooke reached across the table and shook Otterson’s hand.
“You understand, it’s no reflection on you, Nigel. I just had to be clear on who’s running this op. It makes things less fuzzy when the bullets fly, you know.”
“Quite,” Nigel said.
Walsh stayed behind and was checking his secure Blackberry as Burrell and Otterson walked out together.
.G.
In the elevator, Otterson broke the silence as he and Brooke watched the numbers descending as the elevator car was ascending. “One would almost expect to get the bends coming up like this.”
“Do you dive much?”
“I used too, back in the day.”
“So in which branch did you serve, Commander?”
“Royal Navy. Submarines.”
“Ah, Silent Service. Good training for a spy.”
“Actually, SAS was more germane.”
Brooke broke out a smile and turned to him. “So you started as a Billy Badass?”
“Then the Royal Marines, but a .306 round shattered my tibia and that was my ticket to Vauxhall Cross.”
“How long have you been with MI6?” Brooke knew the public location of the super-secret spy branch of the British government.
“Too long. I miss the life.”
That thought resonated with Brooke. “It’s crazy, right? How can we miss being all in, surfing the edge between life and death every second, while the only thing we fear more than death is failing at our mission? Yet, we can’t stay away.”
“That’s because we are born warriors, which makes our sworn enemies the calm and quiet.”
Brooke nodded, intrigued that she had never thought about it that way. “Submarines?”
“Oh, of course, your husband. He’s a Morton!”
“I married a legacy.”
“I don’t know you well enough to ask this, but I’ll risk the bullet: Any regrets?”
“No, no. Quite the contrary, I am in awe. He too was born a warrior. A loyal, committed, and brave person, almost right from the womb.”
“So then, based on what little I know of your exploits, you are both soul mates,” Nigel observed as the doors opened and he exited the “lift.”
That made Brooke smile. This man that she’d known for less than twenty minutes nailed it. He answered a question that was always in the background chatter of her thoughts. A nagging inquiry buried deeper than the obvious “because I love him” mantra that occupied the front of her brain, but one which delved into the, “Why . . . why do you love him?”
It was a reflective mental exercise she performed from time to time to ensure there was more to her and Mush than the physical or the gratifying social benefits. The doors had almost closed when she realized she was still standing there motionless.
From outside the elevator, Nigel waved his hand in front of the sensor and the doors stopped closing and reopened.
“Thanks,” Brooke said.
“Good luck with your investigation. I’ll make sure any intel gets to the CIA in fast order. Pleasure to meet you. You are quite well known at Vauxhall . . . Ta-ta.”
Brooke, who prided herself on situational awareness and clarity under fire, was lost in her thoughts. Even though it was a short, casual conversation, Nigel had drilled deep into her psyche, putting her off her game and into a mode of personal reflection. The last time she’d felt that way was when her dad had sat her down on the porch swing one warm summer evening and had the father-daughter talk that let her know it was okay that she was joining the Navy. That he was okay with her not following the path that the other girls in town were on. He’d wait for grandchildren; her sense of duty and desire to serve her country would certainly fill his heart with the same kind of pride as it would if she had given him a grandson to take hunting . . . adding, “for a few years . . . I think I’d like to take a kid out to the duck blind before I’m too feeble.” Then he kissed her on the forehead. It was the last time she’d had a moment like that with him. That hug. Her reaching around him, his strong arms holding her close as she buried her cheek in his flannel shirt and sighed, “I love you, Dad.”
Brooke suddenly snapped out of it and called out to this unexpected father figure, “Nigel, how long are you in town for?”
“Open ticket. I was expecting to be temporarily stationed here.”
“My car’s out front, and I have eggs and pretty decent coffee waiting for me uptown.”
“Sounds delightful.”
.G.
In the back of the inter-agency executive sedan, the privacy screen was up.
“What makes a man want to risk his life under the ocean, at crush depth for long, boring periods of time?” Brooke said in a tone of wonderment that was in marked cont
rast to the bold, professional demeanor she’d left outside the limo.
“Ah, you want to try and understand your husband. Well, all I can say is, there is a cocoon-like comfort, a warmness if you will. And it’s exactly that contradiction to logic that makes the submariner a breed unto himself. There is no difference between an infantry officer, air force pilot, or surface skimmer when it comes to serving, but for the submariner, in my opinion, it’s that camaraderie, that closeness as a well-trained, finely tuned team. All of us, the entire crew, operate like the arms of an octopus, doing multiple things in split-second timing to operate even the simplest maneuver aboard a sub. At its best it’s like American jazz musicians, I suspect, all of one mind, performing a coherent piece of complicated music by each doing their job so well. It’s an extra-sensory feeling when that connection happens—the rhythm and harmony of the crew is beyond most human experiences.”
“Thank you. From what I know of my husband that fits better than anything I have ever heard.”
“Your dossier mentions your own submarine adventure.”
“I guess your agency MI6 would keep track of something like that.”
“I know you are bound by secrecy, but from the tea leaves it seems you outsmarted the Russians and won the battle beneath the Indian Ocean.”
“That’s a pretty good analysis, considering the source is tea leaves.”
“You know, British . . . tea . . . it all goes together . . .”
Brooke smiled again; Nigel seemed to bring that out in her. “So you think you have the money trail nailed through the art company?”
“Shipsen-Deloitte, yes. They have much activity that’s far below the radar.”
“More tea leaves?”
Give Us This Day Page 4
