by Dana Haynes
“That’s right.”
They rounded a gaggle of pilots and flight attendants with matching luggage. “Then advise, Agent Calabrese. Please. We’ll use every resource the FBI and the CIA have to find her.”
They walked into the parking garage. They had marched the width of the short-term lot and were as far from the terminal as they could get. “Can you get a hold of her?”
“No,” Ray admitted. “I’ve tried her cell. She has a Web site and I’ve left messages there. Nothing.”
“Any theories about contacting her?”
Ray said. “Yes: hang with me. She’ll get in touch with me. Guaranteed.”
Agent Evans turned left at the last row of cars. “You’re absolutely—I mean, absolutely—sure she’ll get in touch with you?”
“Absolutely.”
They angled toward the last car in the lot. The overhead lights were out back here. Ray said, “This one?” and was half a step ahead of Agent Evans, who had stopped walking. Ray heard the distinctive sound of an auto leaving a leather holster. He tried to react, but searing pain enveloped him. He stumbled forward, bag falling. Ray slid between the last car and a cement retaining wall.
Ray tried to stop his fall but his body refused to react. He knew he’d been shot. Shot in the back. But his brain was refusing the information being sent to it, and Ray struggled to get his feet under him.
The smallish man with the sparse beard knelt. Ray tried to raise his fists and couldn’t tell if he had. He noticed the fake CIA agent had a crescent-shaped scar on his throat. He also looked calm and capable, as if he back-shot federal agents all the time.
He watched the man lower himself to one knee and holster a sound-suppressed auto. The man’s soft brown eyes scanned the parking lot. Ray tried to shout. He tried to fight. He felt his vision blur.
“For what it’s worth, I tried to shoot you four years ago,” the bearded man spoke softly. “Daria stepped in the way. I don’t tell you this to make you feel better. I just thought you should know. I wish other options had presented themselves. Then and now.”
He retrieved Ray’s wallet and shield, plus the gym bag.
Stay awake! Ray screamed inside his head. Hit this bastard!
From his angle, Ray saw the door of another car open three parking spaces away. A man in a crisp airline uniform struggled to undo his seat belt to stand. The stranger shouted, “Hey!”
The false CIA agent with the calm brown eyes stood, drew his gun again. Ray heard the phutt and saw the man in the airline uniform slump back into his sedan. He slumped forward, landing on his car horn, which began blaring.
The false agent gathered Ray’s wallet and bag, and disappeared from sight.
Ray tried to get his hands under him to push up. He tried to remember which pocket had his phone. He thought, Daria. Damn it. Hang on. I’ll be okay. Stay.…
He passed out.
Langley, Virginia
The Next Morning
John Broom got to Langley and went directly to his cubicle, only to find a wicker basket wrapped in green cellophane, with an array of dried meats, cheeses, condiments, and crackers. In it was a card from his soon-to-be-boss, the chief of staff to Senator Singer Cavanaugh, which read:
Welcome to the Jungle
—Axl Rose
John set his leather bag under his desk and booted up his computer. After it ran through its security sweep, he checked his overnights.
Ever since 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community had done a marginally better job of sharing information. Any analyst could use the joint database as a sophisticated search engine. Plug in key words and, overnight, any news flash or intelligence collected on that topic would be downloaded to a buffer.
John had tagged more than three hundred key words.
He synced his computer tablet, then grabbed a cup of coffee and headed to the elevators and the subterranean Ops Room. Head down, scrolling through the overnights on the tablet held in the crook of his forearm, John was within a few steps of the Shark Tank when he noticed the din.
The room had been fifteen people deep the day before, as Pegasus had turned itself into The Muppets Take Manhattan. This morning, the number ranged closer to fifty. People shouted over one another. Everyone wore the CIA’s mandatory photo ID on lanyards. Technicians shoehorned in temporary workstations were ripping up false floors to run high-speed wire. A U.S. Marine guarded the door with a sidearm and a ferocious scowl.
Nanette Sylvestri stepped up next to John, winter coat over her forearm. Standing side by side, she was three inches taller in flat riding boots.
John said, “What the hell?”
“The threat nexus has changed.”
“The aerials of Camp David?”
“This is a huge security breach, and in the worst hands imaginable. Time we sat at the grown-up table.”
John marveled at the chaos. “Are you still running the room?”
Sylvestri said simply, “Sort of.”
John didn’t pry. The older woman pointed to the overnights scrolling across his tablet computer. “Anything of interest?”
“Not much. A high-ranking Saudi royal prince is in D.C. He’s voiced support for Hezbollah, or at least a thawing of relations.”
Sylvestri pondered but only for a half second. “Could be something.”
“Yeah. You know that flood in Colorado yesterday? Secret Service lost a convoy team.”
She shook her head, distracted as she checked e-mails on her BlackBerry. “Doesn’t sound connected to our thing.”
John agreed. He checked his voice mails. They had stacked up, as they do every night he actually went home. One caught his eye.
“Hey! Hold on a sec.”
John pressed the phone to his ear, listened to the message. He began to smile.
Nanette said, “What?”
“Remember the FBI agent from Los Angeles? Daria Gibron’s handler? His name’s Ray Calabrese. He called me. He’s flying in to help.”
Nanette thought about that. “Okay. Soon as he makes contact, you want to be his liaison?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
She lay a hand on his shoulder. “Liaison only, John. You are to help Calabrese help us to reel her in.”
John nodded.
“I know you vetted her. But do you honestly believe that she’s on the side of the angels? That, somehow, single-handedly, she fell into a CIA trap, then outwitted eighteen agents on the ground, and walked away with our command vehicle?”
John had to admit that the scenario was hard to swallow.
“This is much bigger than we thought. She probably has a full team on the ground. She and Belhadj. We thought they were marching into our trap. We marched into theirs.”
“You think?”
Sylvestri nodded, emphatic. “Got to be. Question is: what brings the Mukhabarat to Manhattan?”
John smiled up at her. “What are you, Stephen Sondheim?”
* * *
Six floors straight up, Stanley Cohen stood at the side table in his office and fixed himself an Alka-Seltzer. He hoped the speakerphone didn’t pick up the fizz. He’d been laying the groundwork for Operation Pegasus to move up the food chain. It had been designated as the number one priority operation for the U.S. intelligence community. Cohen also had ironed out the power-sharing agreement with domestic intelligence and law enforcement. Everyone agreed that the CIA should stay in command, although the agency had suffered one of the most blisteringly humiliating losses in memory. Keeping the CIA in command had cost a lot of markers.
Cohen heard a tight, vaguely military rap-rap on his door and knew who it was. “Come!”
Owen Cain Thorson entered and silently slid the door closed behind him. He had doffed his suit coat but his shirt was neatly pressed, tie firmly knotted under his chin, cuffs rolled down and linked. He was holding his emotions as tightly pressed as his trousers.
Stanley Cohen was not a big man, barely coming up to Thorson’s shoulders. But he was a
three-decade vet of the agency and everyone knew that didn’t happen by accident. His finger hovered over the disconnect button on his phone. “Folks? Get back to you.”
He hit the button and gulped the fizzy drink.
Thorson stood at parade rest.
Cohen swiped hands through his thinning ginger hair. “What the hell, Owen? I’m asking, here: what the holy hell happened?”
Thorson, whom no one would call jovial, seethed with anger. His blush reached from his face all the way down and into the collar of his tailored shirt.
“We got ambushed, sir. They saw us coming.”
Cohen dug Tums out of his pocket, feeling pretty confident the seltzer wasn’t going to cut the acid currently gnawing through his stomach. “And by they you mean an ex-spook who doesn’t weigh one-twenty soaking wet, and a Syrian who you had eyes on and was well covered?”
After a beat, Thorson nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Tell me about the command vehicle.”
“One or both of the targets staged a bank robbery. They told the cops about the truck, my spotters, and even the sniper team. They called in police to screw with us, get us out of the command vehicle. Then they called in a bomb scare. I…”
Thorson steeled himself, fists locked behind his back, shoulders straight. The last few hours had been as lousy a time as he had ever experienced since joining the agency.
“I saw the truck, sir. I saw it pulling away, after the NYPD team had cleared us out. I figured one of my men was moving it away from the bomb blast zone.”
Stanley Cohen wanted a smoke so bad. Instead, he chewed another antacid. “Thank you, Agent Thorson. A few minor questions. Was the command vehicle armed?”
The muscles in Thorson’s jaw clenched. “Yes, sir. Small arms and assault weapons.”
“Okay. Good. Thank you. Second question: were you carrying the classified case file of Operation Pegasus?”
Thorson’s nostrils flared. For a second, the deputy director was sure the big man was going to deck him.
“Yes, sir. There was no time to debrief the team here and—”
“I see. So they know everything we know about their operation. We shared every scrap of intel we had. And, as an added bonus, we armed them.”
The glaring, brick-red agent nodded. Behind his back, his knuckles were white. Stanley let the moment linger a couple of seconds.
“Did they swipe your lunch money, Owen?”
Thorson remained frozen at parade rest, almost shaking with barely contained anger.
The ADAT chewed his chalky tablets. Silence reigned for almost a minute. Finally, Cohen crossed to his desk and picked up a remote control. He aimed it at the small television mounted on the wall across from the windows. It popped on. The scroll at the bottom read FOX NEWS. The frozen image showed people milling about on the streets of New York. The image had been shot from a great distance, with impressive depth of field. Four of the clearly identifiable people were CIA agents.
CIA agents who are forbidden to operate on American soil.
Cohen said, “You are relieved of operational command. I am reassigning you to head up a tactical team, to be deployed whenever the targets resurface. That’ll be all. Report to the Ops Room.”
Thorson stood his ground.
“Owen?”
“None of my guys saw this coming. No one—”
“I’ve reviewed the goddamn transcripts. The Shark Tank called it in. John fucking Broom called it in. The only field that man’s ever been in had croquet hoops! But he saw through the con. You ignored your analysts and got your ass handed to you!” Cohen almost never raised his voice. This was the exception. “You didn’t just get a beat-down from a tactical perspective. You got embarrassed. You got embarrassed on television and in three local newspapers! Not to mention The Daily Show and The Colbert Report! And you embarrassed me for assigning you the case. This has political ramifications. Or didn’t you know the CIA is a political entity? Jesus, Owen!”
“Sir, they—”
“Look.” Thorson reached for his desk and whisked up an old-fashioned, square, pink while-you-were-out memo. “I got a call from the office of the legal counsel of the Congressional Joint Intelligence Oversight Committee. This message came, oh, let’s say twenty minutes after The Today Show ran a still photo showing CIA agents standing on the streets of Manhattan with their thumbs up their asses. You tell me, Owen: coincidence? Or does the fucking office of the legal counsel of the fucking congressional Joint Intelligence fucking Oversight Committee want to chat about that?”
Thorson vibrated with anger. He tried to respond but the glint of steel in Cohen’s eyes shut up the younger man.
“Gibron and Belhadj are threats to the president. For that reason we hunt them down. But they fucking embarrassed the Central Intelligence Agency. They made us—not you, Owen, us!—look like baboons. I don’t want them just hunted down. I want them put down. Am I clear, Agent Thorson?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Dismissed. Get your ass down to the Shark Tank.”
* * *
Will Halliday piloted the Cheyenne II as it crossed out of Colorado airspace and into Nebraska. Veigel sat in the right-hand seat. Sacchs sat in back with the titanium canister and cooling unit.
Halliday whistled as he flew. Thanks to everyone’s headsets and microphones, the two Israelis had no choice but to listen to his off-key repertoire of mid-eighties rock classics.
In the left-side rear seat, Sacchs played poker on his cell phone. He wished the big American would stop whistling but he didn’t know how to maintain his Hollywood Action Star Cool while bitching about the tunes.
Sacchs tasted something warm and coppery. He lifted his fingers to his upper lip. He realized he had a small nosebleed. He held a wad of Kleenex under it and, sixty seconds later, it stopped. He didn’t bother to mention it to the others. Being injured in the heat of battle is cool. Nosebleeds are not.
Halliday asked Veigel to take the stick while he reported in to Asher.
Upstate New York
Asher Sahar, Eli Schullman, and their band of soldiers boarded a Hercules at a small airfield. A flight plan had been filed but it was fictitious. Schullman oversaw the loading of the personnel and their gear. Asher took a call and moved away from everyone else for some privacy.
As the men boarded the plane, Asher rejoined them. Schullman nodded him aside.
“You didn’t have to take the FBI bugger yourself,” he grumbled. “Dirty deeds are my job.”
Asher smiled up at his friend. “I needed to hear the man. Since Daria … since the incident, he’s known her better than anyone.”
“And what exactly did you need to hear from this man?”
Asher studied him. “I don’t know. That she is well, I suppose. Or at least well thought of.”
Schullman shook his bullet-shaped head. He thought about pointing out how ludicrous that was, but bit it back. “And Halliday?”
“That was him on the phone, just now. Everything is going according to plan. Sacchs is infected.”
Schullman kept a poker face, but with difficulty. “God in Heaven. Veigel?”
“Not yet. But by the time we land…?” Asher shrugged.
“And Halliday?”
Asher watched the last of the men climb into the bulky cargo plane.
“He’ll be fine.”
“He’s exposed.”
Asher nodded. “Sacchs has contracted it. Veigel will soon. And Halliday is immune.”
Schullman clapped him on the shoulder. The big man sounded even more funereal than usual. “God willing. God, and Hannah Herself.”
Asher winced. “Hannah, yes. But not all of our plans are sanctioned by God.”
Ten
The Middle East
Almost Twenty-four Years Ago
The girl didn’t know where she was.
She knew that the place was big. It smelled like boiled cabbage, which partially hid fetid human smells she didn’t recognize. The walls
had been white once, a long time ago. The children were frightened. The grown-ups were more frightened.
The sound of jet engines made everyone wince. Bombs landed in the neighborhood at all hours. Someone swept the floors, almost daily, but the shelling outside just resettled the dust. The shelling had gone on a long time, the girl thought. But then again, she was about six. And a long time is a relative term.
She knew she was about six because she heard the staff say so.
Each child had an olive-colored canvas cot and a pillow with no pillowcase. There were blankets, but not enough, and every night the older, stronger children took what blankets they wanted.
There were two meals per day and both meals included bread, or oatmeal, or koshary, a combination of lentils, pasta, chickpeas, and a tomato sauce. The food was terrible but would get them through to the next meal.
Every third or fourth day, a Swellat Bedouin from Lebanon would come to the big building with the children. He wore a slick Western suit and a shiny black shirt open to the middle of his chest, and shiny shoes. He wore a ring on his little finger and his hair was long and greased back. He would speak to the administrator, and between them they would pick out one or two of the girls, one or two of the boys. The Swellat would hand the administrator an envelope, then the selected children would leave with him.
After one such visit, the girl climbed onto a radiator, raised up on her toes, and peered out through the iron bars over the window to watch. The chosen children climbed into an aged Volvo with the slick-haired man with the pinky ring.
A few days would pass. And the man would return.
One day, the man saw the girl sitting on her cot. Her legs dangled, her sneakers grimy and dull.
He pointed to her.
The administrator beckoned her over.
The girl climbed down off her cot and walked over. She wore a baby blue smock. She had had a matching barrette but an older girl had taken it the first night.
The man picked two more children. All three were ushered out. The girl and the others climbed into the back of the Volvo. It smelled of sweat and something animalish and mean that the girl remembered and associated with soldiers. And pain.
