Black List sh-11

by Brad Thor

  Soon enough, his talents came to the attention of the powers that be at ATS. They could have offered him a token salary of a dollar a year and he would have jumped at it. He could see the organization’s potential. He could also see that their approach hadn’t been an accident.

  Toward the end of the vetting process, one of the board members asked him about his work on the Nazi program that had gotten him fired from IBM. However they got their information, they were incredibly well informed.

  As Middleton answered their questions, he hedged his information; at least, until he realized that they were not unsympathetic to what he’d been doing. At that moment he realized how well suited they were for each other.

  ATS needed a man like him to run their operations, and he was bright enough to recognize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when it was offered. Up to that point, he had had no idea ATS even existed, but once he grasped the breadth and scope of what they had created, he realized that it was the very platform he had dreamed of.

  The education IBM had put him through was nothing compared to what he received the moment he began working with ATS. It was like having the doors of the Vatican’s secret archives thrown open wide. There wasn’t a single prominent American that ATS didn’t have a dossier on. The amount of information the organization had access to was stunning.

  When he asked why they had files only on prominent Americans and not on everyone, his initiation into the deepest, darkest circle of ATS began.

  In fact, ATS had every intention of building files on every single American. That was a large part of why he had been brought on board. They liked the work he had done, including the research that had gotten him fired from IBM.

  They believed the concept of the nation-state was destined for collapse, and they had every intention of helping it along. They believed that data was power. The more they collected, the more powerful they would become. Eventually, their goal was to assemble files not only for every American but for every single human being on the planet.

  At the moment, their focus was on the United States, and there wasn’t a single sphere of influence within it that ATS didn’t control. Who got elected, what laws were passed, what judgments came out of the courts, stock market performance, the price of commodities, who the U.S. went to war with and why, the rise and fall of outspoken voices across the political spectrum, reshaping what was taught in schools to American children… ATS had even successfully inserted themselves into theology and was influencing what was being preached in many churches. They had a honed, singular vision of the world upon which they were focused with absolute precision, and the greater their advancements in technology, the more able they were to reshape the country, and soon thereafter the world, exactly as they wanted it to be.

  It was like walking through your house in pitch darkness, confident you knew where all the furniture was, only to have someone flip on the lights and show you that everything, every single thing, was not at all where you had thought. Middleton had been sleepwalking his entire adult life. Only now had his eyes been opened. The depth of the deception was so amazing, so total, so complete that it was beyond even a man like Craig Middleton’s ability to describe. Everything he wanted, everything he had ever envisioned, was within his grasp. He was home.

  Though he was already out front on the power curve of leveraging data, his ATS mentors helped refine his skills and taught him many things he had never even considered possible, particularly when it came to influence operations. They demonstrated how to bring powerful figures to heel and keep them there.

  One of Middleton’s earliest and most ingenious contributions to ATS was the development of a software program to help screen for individuals ripe for leveraging. Similar to the program they would sell to tax assessors, which constantly monitored satellite imagery for unpermitted home improvements, Middleton had built a similar overlay program for government, intelligence, and military data. It searched for inconsistencies, contradictions, or holes in personnel files, briefings, and reporting. When it found any, a digital flag was raised as the system then attempted to decipher and address the problem.

  It was this very system that had helped Middleton identify the man he was about to call.

  Picking up the handset of his STE, Middleton inserted a Crypto Card into the slot and dialed.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” said the man who answered on the other end.

  “We’ve located your lost dog,” Middleton replied. Taking one more look at the Harvath information on his screen, he then e-mailed the file. He didn’t care how secure the telephone system was. He always spoke in code unless he was in a completely secure situation and the person was sitting right in front of him. “I just sent you the file.”

  “I’ll look at it in the morning.”

  “It’s morning now. Look at it.”

  “I’m putting you on hold,” the other man said as he got up and walked downstairs to his study. There he turned on his computer and waited for it to boot up. When it did, he opened the e-mail, read the pertinent details, then picked up the phone again. “All this information has been confirmed?”

  “I wouldn’t have called if it hadn’t. Let’s get coffee.” It was their code for a face-to-face.

  “It’ll have to wait,” the voice replied. “I’ve got a lot on my plate today.”

  “Let me guess. Double-booked the wife and the mistress for lunch?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’ll see you in an hour,” Middleton said, hanging up.

  CHAPTER 16

  When Middleton arrived at the Pentagon, Colonel Charles “Chuck” Bremmer was waiting for him.

  Bremmer was in his late fifties, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He stood a foot taller than Middleton and projected an aura of prowess and integrity. That aura, though, much like the aura that surrounded his career, was false.

  Jowly and out of shape, Chuck Bremmer had been a mediocre soldier of above average intellect who had risen to the rank of colonel without ever having served in actual combat. He was what was known in military parlance as a Chairborne Ranger. He was a man who had succeeded in the Army by kissing ass, not necessarily kicking it. The most dangerous assignment the man had ever seen was more than twenty years ago in Kuwait City; a full month after the U.S. had driven Iraqi forces out of the country.

  While chauffeuring then-Lieutenant Bremmer to a meeting, his driver had suffered a heart attack. He had lost control of their SUV, and it barreled into a Kuwaiti shisha café and pinned two men underneath. It was a terrible accident, made worse by Bremmer’s reaction. With the fuel tank ruptured and fearing it would detonate, he had bailed out and retreated across the street, leaving his driver behind to die.

  Though he would later claim he was in shock from the accident, it had been nothing more than cowardice. Somehow, though, Bremmer’s reptilian brain was overruled by another part—his ego. He realized what a fool he was being. This was the perfect opportunity to prove himself a hero.

  Rushing back to the café, he struggled to pull his driver from the vehicle. Sadly, the man had already expired. It was at this point that Bremmer took a bad situation and made it worse.

  Unaccustomed to the capacity of Middle Eastern men for histrionics and lacking any Arabic skills whatsoever, Bremmer completely misread the screeching and wailing of the Kuwaitis struggling to extricate the two café patrons trapped beneath the SUV. Because of his military uniform and air of authority, they were beseeching him to help them. That wasn’t how Bremmer saw it. To his inept mind, they were blaming him; and the men off the street who were now flooding into the café to help weren’t good Samaritans, they were the beginning of a mob that very well might have torn him apart had he not acted. And act he did.

  As the crowd swelled and the men tugged on his sleeves, trying to get him to do something, anything, Bremmer drew his sidearm and fired not one but four “warning shots” through the ceiling of the café and into the dwelling above.

  Ter
rified, all of the locals, including those trying to lift the vehicle and pull the seriously injured men from underneath, backed off. But it was only temporary.

  Like a nuclear reaction, white-hot rage instantly infused the crowd. While Bremmer had misread the group as a burgeoning mob, there was no mistaking it now. They were out for blood—his—and they were bound and determined to get it.

  When one of the men turned on him with a broken chair leg, the lieutenant, who was not the best of shooters, punched two 9mm rounds directly through the man’s heart, killing him instantly.

  Bremmer didn’t bother waiting for the man’s lifeless body to hit the floor; he turned and took off running.

  Within a block, his chest was heaving and his lungs felt like they were on fire. After another block, he felt like he was going to vomit. Three blocks later, he did.

  As the first wave of nausea subsided, Bremmer looked at his surroundings and something else took hold of him—panic. He had no idea at all where he was. He hadn’t paid any attention while he was being driven to his meeting and had taken limited interest in the layout of the city. Now he was completely lost.

  He needed to get off the streets. He needed to get someplace safe where he could think. He chose the first apartment building he saw and, after multiple attempts, succeeded in kicking in the lobby door.

  It was a small building with two apartments per floor, and Bremmer trudged up the stairs toward the roof. He had to figure out where the hell he was.

  The top floor consisted of a single unit, a modest penthouse with a small rooftop garden. Using his shoulder, Bremmer charged the door and knocked it wide open, startling a woman and two small children inside.

  Before the woman could scream, Bremmer pointed his weapon at her face and placed his index finger against his lips. His message couldn’t have been any clearer. Pulling her children to her, tears rolled from her eyes, but she never made a sound.

  Pointing at the food the children had been eating, Bremmer gestured for the woman to pick it all up and then he confined the three of them in the bathroom.

  A cabinet in the living room hid a small bar filled with cheap knock-offs of American brands. At this point, Lieutenant Bremmer wasn’t picky. To steady his nerves he helped himself to what vaguely resembled a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  Unscrewing the cap, he tossed it on the floor and stepped out onto the roof. Immediately, his heart dropped through his boots. He couldn’t make out a single landmark. Placing the bottle against his lips, he turned it upside-down and took a long swallow.

  The substandard booze tasted like shit, but instantly its heat began to radiate throughout his body. He followed his first swig with two more and then tossed the bottle into a planter. He could get bombed later. At the moment, he needed to get his story straight.

  Bremmer ran everything that had happened through his mind multiple times. With his driver dead, there wasn’t another American to contradict his story. The locals could say anything they wanted, and he expected them to, but he knew whose side the military would want to come down on. The key to making everything work was to tell as much of the truth as possible. If he did that, the locals would actually end up unwittingly supporting the tale he would weave. And what a tale it was.

  By the time the extraction team arrived to pull him out, Bremmer’s story was airtight. It was so simple, so ingenious, that he surprised even himself.

  The military not only bought it, their investigation actually supported it. Bremmer even received a commendation. Everything would have worked out perfectly, except for one thing. One of the men crushed by the SUV was the brother of a local CIA asset, who raised so much hell with his handler that the CIA’s Kuwait City station chief launched his own, quiet investigation of what had happened. If ever the word clusterfuck deserved to be applied to an event, this was it.

  When the station chief tried to share his findings with U.S. military command, he was told in no uncertain terms where to file his report. They had conducted their own investigation and stood by the findings. The station chief had stepped outside his authority and was threatened with all sorts of recriminations.

  Bremmer was damned if he was going to have his career dragged through the mud and possibly even destroyed over a few dead Kuwaitis. The station chief filed his report back to Langley, along with a recommendation that no further action be taken. As a result, no further action was taken. Chuck Bremmer had slipped the noose and in the process had crafted an action-guy history for himself, which invariably grew a little bit larger each time it was told.

  Basking in the glow of a lie that had helped boost him up the ladder of success, he had never harbored any concern that one day all of his accomplishments might be undone. All of that changed the day Craig Middleton had stepped into his life, armed with much more than just the truth of what had happened in Kuwait City. Middleton had come loaded for bear.

  Colonel Bremmer had allowed himself to become the biggest believer of his own bullshit and enabler of the misplaced confidence his superiors had in his abilities. As his ego exploded, he had engaged in all sorts of indulgences he felt he was entitled to, including extramarital affairs and influence peddling in the realm of military contracts in order to line his own pockets.

  When Middleton showed up and dropped it all on him like an atomic bomb, Bremmer knew he only had two choices—cooperate or lose everything. He might have been sorely lacking in character, but he certainly wasn’t lacking in self-preservation skills. He knuckled under, and Middleton had owned him from that point forward.

  When Middleton stepped into Bremmer’s office, the Colonel, who never knew when he might be summoned to the White House, was wearing his blue service uniform.

  Pointing at the door for Bremmer’s SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, Middleton said, “Shall we?”

  No good morning, no nothing, the Colonel thought to himself as he picked up his mug and stood. What an asshole.

  Walking over to the SCIF, he punched his code into a small keypad. When the locks released, he pulled the door open and waved Middleton into the secure conference room.

  Once the door was closed, they picked their conversation up where they had left off. “So you’re sure this information on his location is good?”

  Middleton pulled out one of the leather chairs and sat down as if he owned the place. “I already told you it was good.”

  “Fine. The team will need access to some sort of surveillance.”

  “You’ll have everything I can give you. How quickly can you get them there?”

  “I’ve already got a team in Lyon. Harvath bought a ticket on the high-speed train from Paris the night before last.”

  “Why wasn’t I told?” asked Middleton.

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Well, that’s pretty stupid considering the resources I have.”

  “They’re professionals,” said Bremmer, ignoring the man’s condescension. “They know what they’re doing.”

  “That’s why they’re in France looking for a guy who’s in Spain?”

  “They’ll be retasked. Is there anything else?”

  “Yeah, there is. Why haven’t I heard anything back from you on Kurt Schroeder?”

  “Schroeder? You mean the kid in your office?”

  “No, the kid from the Peanuts cartoon. Of course the kid from my office.”

  A twitch rippled across Bremmer’s jowls. Middleton was an insufferable prick. “I assume you haven’t heard anything because the men following him haven’t found anything.”

  “Bullshit. There’s something there. I know it.”

  “If you’re so sure,” said Bremmer, “then you should yank his access before we have another Caroline Romero on our hands.”

  Middleton thought about Caroline Romero for a moment before his thoughts shifted back to Schroeder. “He knows too much to simply yank his access.”

  “Then we’ll add his name to the list. Just make up your mind.”

 
; Middleton didn’t like the man’s tone. “Is that an order, Colonel?”

  “Take it however you want. I’ve got enough of my own problems without dealing with yours.”

  “Listen to me, Chuck. My problems are your problems and don’t you forget it. This is a national security issue. The names on that list represent the most pressing threat to this nation. If this is not handled properly, people will burn, including you.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Me? Threaten a full-bird colonel? A special adviser to the National Security Council? Of course not. Let’s just call it a friendly piece of career advice.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement. Anything else?”

  “We don’t have closure on the concierge yet.” Concierge was their code name for Reed Carlton.

  “You’re paranoid,” Bremmer replied. “You saw the pictures from that fire. He got burned to a crisp. No one could have survived that. He’s dead. Trust me.”

  “Oh, I trust you,” said Middleton. “It’s your men I’m having trouble with. We should have used real operators.”

  “For all intents and purposes, these guys are real operators.”

  “Like hell they are. They’re fucking criminals, and on paper it might have seemed like a great idea to secretly arrange commutations and spring them from the stockade to join your wet work team, but they’re a disaster.”

  Bremmer didn’t care for having his judgment called into question. “I told you, the Spec Ops community is too small. We couldn’t send true operators after operators. There was too much of a risk they’d know one of the targets and not do the job. I don’t care what we told them they were accused of….