Black List sh-11

by Brad Thor

  Harvath wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

  “He told me that you’re a good man,” she continued. “He said that you have spent most of your life in the service of others. That was all I needed to know. That’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m taking you to the plane in a few hours.”

  “And when I land in McAllen?”

  Sister Marta removed a piece of paper from her pocket and showed it to him. “He said you’re supposed to look for this.”

  CHAPTER 29

  VIRGINIA

  Reed Carlton wanted to avoid the D.C. area at all costs, and that included Georgetown. There were just too many cameras. He had risked it once to load Tommy’s dead drop and set up their first meeting, but that was enough. Banks agreed with him.

  Banks suggested that they communicate via the classified section of the Washington Post until they could develop drops outside the city. It was an old espionage tactic that would allow them to fly beneath the radar. All they would need was a debit card purchased with cash at any drugstore, grocery, or Walmart. The only drawback was the lag time from when the ad was placed to when it actually showed up online.

  Carlton explained to Banks how classifieds worked on the Internet. Thankfully, the older man was well versed enough in the Web that they were able to set up a system quickly.

  The best way to hide their communications was to go to Craigslist where they selected two crowded but not obvious source cities. Outgoing messages were disguised as ads on the Oakland list and responses were posted on Tampa’s. This way, there was no billing trail. And while their communication wasn’t exactly instantaneous, it was about as close to real time as they could get in exchange for such a low-level risk of being intercepted.

  Twenty-four hours after setting everything up, Banks placed a coded ad on the Oakland Craigslist, requesting a meeting as soon as possible. Carlton responded through an ad of his own on the Tampa list, and a few hours later, they were seated at a late-night restaurant outside Fredericksburg.

  “You’ve got big troubles, my boy,” Tommy said after the waitress had poured their coffees and walked away. “Your office has been locked up tighter than a bank vault.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s been sealed and they have guards on it.”

  “Who does?” said Carlton.

  Banks raised his coffee cup and took a sip. “FBI, but it feels like CIA.”

  “So this is payback from them.”

  “It’s suspicious, I’ll give you that. I reached out to a whole bunch of my Agency contacts and not a single one of them would talk to me. Not one.”

  “So what does that tell you?”

  “It tells me,” replied Banks, “that something pretty serious is afoot.”

  “Yup.”

  “But just because nobody wanted to talk to me didn’t mean I rolled over and gave up. Somebody, somewhere in the chain, scared the hell out of everyone and ordered them to play dumb. That’s some pretty serious pressure, so I decided to apply a little pressure of my own.”

  Carlton studied the man sitting across from him. “I love you, Tommy. You Hoover’d somebody, didn’t you?” Much like storied FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, Thomas Banks had been rumored to have developed dossiers over the years on Agency higher-ups he didn’t care for. He wasn’t a blackmailer per se. The files in his mind were only for insurance, to be played like cards if and when he ever needed to accomplish an honest objective while a dishonest obstacle sat in his path.

  “It’s probably better you don’t know the details, but yeah, I pulled a file I have on somebody there and I played it. It’s some pretty bad stuff from the 1970s. I don’t know what the statute of limitations is, but it’s enough to cause him a whole mess of problems and hold up his pension, not to mention the PR nightmare it’d be for the seventh floor.”

  “I appreciate your doing this for me.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Banks replied. “The guy’s a weasel. He deserves it. The problem is that he didn’t give me very much.”

  “One step at a time. I’m all ears. What’d you get?”

  “The Agency can’t go after American citizens on American soil. That’s why the domestic legwork has fallen to the FBI. The real momentum behind this thing, though, seems to be coming from somewhere else. Someplace pretty clandestine with a lot of power.”

  “More clandestine than the Agency? What are we talking about? The Director of National Intelligence?”

  “Whoever it is, they’re the ones who appear to have built the case against you.”

  “Me?” replied Carlton. “What are you talking about?”

  “Actually, it’s not just you. It’s multiple players in your organization.”

  “My ops division, you mean?”

  “My guy wouldn’t say.”

  “What’s their case? What do they think they have?”

  Banks again raised his coffee cup for a sip, but this time stopped partway. “Treason,” he replied, half whispering the word.

  Carlton was stunned. “Treason? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s insane.”

  “I agree, and I could tell just by the look on my guy’s face that he didn’t believe it either.”

  “Is he someone I know?”

  Banks set his coffee cup on the Formica table. “Like I said, it’s better if you don’t know the details.”

  Carlton understood and, leaning back in the booth, pulled his cup and saucer toward him. “So, what specifically is the charge? What is it we’ve allegedly done?”

  “That’s what I’m still trying to find out. The minute anyone hears the word treason, it’s like a toxic chemical spill just happened. Everyone takes a giant step back. Nobody wants to go anywhere near it. Get too close and it could affect you too.”

  “There’s more to this. Somebody can’t just accuse us of treason and put a hit on all of us. There has to be due process.”

  “You and I both know we’ve been carrying out extrajudicial activities since the birth of this nation.”

  “Against foreign enemies of the state,” said Carlton, “not American citizens.”

  Banks shrugged. “A few Americans have also been helped on to their just rewards over the years.”

  “True, but very, very few, and there’s always been a review process.”

  “How do we know there wasn’t one this time?”

  Carlton looked at him. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Not at all. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

  “But there’s no way any panel could come to the conclusion that I, or any of the people that work for me, could even be capable of treason.”

  Banks shook his head. “You really do need to be retrained. Take your emotion out of this.”

  “Do you know how many of my people, exceptional people, exceptional patriots, were murdered?”

  “Yes, I do, and I’d be angry as hell too, but I’d lock it away somewhere and save it until I figured out what the hell was going on. Because if I didn’t, it’d probably get me killed.”

  The older man let his words hang in the air for a moment as he took another sip of coffee. “You’re smart, Peaches,” he finally said. “Smarter than I ever was, but you’re going to need every last ounce of cunning you can muster to get yourself out of this.

  “You’ve been labeled a traitor by your own government, and based on whatever evidence they have, they found the threat so compelling that it called for your immediate termination. I don’t see how anything could ever get more serious than that. So you can be pissed off all you want after this thing has been laid to rest and we’ve found a way out to the other side of it.”

  Slowly, Reed Carlton nodded.

  “Now that we seem to know who is out to get you, we need to winnow down the how and the why,” said Banks. “If we can reverse-engineer this thing, we may be able to get you your life back.”

  “It won’t bring my operators back,” Carlton replied. Tho
ugh he kept checking the Net for messages on the dating sites they used for emergency messages, there hadn’t been one. He knew they were dead.

  “No, it won’t bring your men back. But once we have this thing figured out, that’s when I’m going to stand back and let you take your anger out of that box. That’s when you make sure that every last person involved in this pays. I don’t care who it is, even if this goes all the way to the Oval Office itself.”

  CHAPTER 30

  MEXICO

  Harvath grabbed a couple hours of sleep on the couch in the staff room. At 7 a.m., Sister Marta, wearing her full habit, knocked and invited him to the cafeteria for breakfast.

  “I thought you said you were informal around here?” he said as they walked.

  “We are. Normally I wear a skirt and jacket of some sort. What you saw last night was Sister Marta off-duty, casual. I’m still a human being, especially after the children have gone to bed and I have things to do.”

  “And now, the habit?”

  “I’m driving you to the airport and then I have some other errands to run outside the city. There’ll be cartels. They’re filled with bad men, but they’re not all irreligious. Being easily recognized as a nun can be a plus, especially when on the road.”

  She was indeed a smart lady.

  The cafeteria, which looked like it also doubled as a classroom, was painted in bright colors. Along the walls were the letters of the alphabet with corresponding pictures—A for ardilla (squirrel), R for ratón (mouse), J for jirafa (giraffe).

  “You’re lucky,” said Sister Marta as she picked up a tray and handed it to Harvath. “Today we have eggs.”

  He accepted the tray and got in line behind her. The sounds of the children filled the room. Most smiled and laughed. Occasionally one or two of the younger children argued or pushed. Harvath expected a stern reprimand from Sister Marta, but none was ever needed, as invariably an older child would step in and patiently handle the situation.

  “What I have found,” the nun said, “is that all children, no matter what their situation, look for love, they look for family, and they look for understanding. When they act out, they do so because they want to know that there are rules that apply to them. They understand that the rules exist because we love them.”

  Their breakfast consisted of small portions of rice and beans, along with a little bit of scrambled eggs. One of the staff members offered him coffee and Harvath gladly accepted.

  He and Sister Marta sat at a table of boisterous children ranging from five to eleven years old. Several were siblings, and the nun explained that it was their policy never to split children up unless they absolutely had to. When everyone was seated, they said the blessing and then began to eat. Harvath watched as one little boy monitored his younger sister, making sure she got enough to eat and even giving her some of the food from his own plate.

  The children were thrilled to have an American visiting, and those who had been studying with Sister Marta tried out their English on him. Their innocent mistakes and Harvath’s attempts to reply to them in Spanish created much laughter around the table.

  “You were a hit,” said Marta as they slid into her aging Volkswagen for the drive to the airport. “I guarantee you it’s all they’ll be talking about for the rest of the weekend.”

  Harvath smiled thinking about the kids. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed himself like that.

  “Do you have children?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re good with them. You should think about it.”

  He did think about it, or at least he used to.

  “Are you married?” she continued.

  “No. I’m not married.”

  “Why not?”

  Harvath looked at her. She reminded him of Peio. He had taken an interest in his personal life right after meeting him as well. Harvath didn’t like talking about himself. It made him uncomfortable. When the subject came up, he either ignored it, changed it, or made fun of it. All three forms of diversion had failed with Peio, and he suspected they’d have just about as much chance of succeeding with Sister Marta. “I’m not very good when it comes to relationships, Sister.”

  “I find that hard to believe. You are a nice man. You’re handsome, you like children. What’s the problem?” she said, pausing. “Do you not like women?”

  He laughed. “No, Sister. That’s not the problem. I like women, believe me.”

  “So what is it?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Well, I do mind,” said the nun. “And if you had seen yourself with those children the way I did, you’d mind too. Is it that you have trouble establishing relationships? Is that it?”

  He was convinced that somewhere in the Vatican someone was running a sales contest to get single people married. He didn’t disagree with the concept, he was just getting tired of having to defend himself. “Starting relationships isn’t my problem.”

  “But finishing them is.”

  Harvath nodded. “It takes a special type of woman to put up with my career.”

  “What is it exactly that you do?”

  “Let’s just say I travel a lot.”

  “And the woman in your life couldn’t accompany you on these trips?”

  An image of Riley Turner flashed into his mind, and he kept it there as he spoke. “That would take a very special woman.”

  “Have you ever met such a woman?” Sister Marta asked.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “What happened?”

  “She was killed,” he replied as the image of Riley disappeared from the forefront of his mind.

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “So am I,” he replied.

  “At least she knew that you cared for her.”

  “Actually, Sister, I’m not sure she had any idea.”

  The nun turned onto a busier street, and there was a sign for the airport up ahead. “She knew, trust me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It is very difficult to hide when something or someone makes us happy. Even if you had wanted to, you couldn’t have hidden how the children made you feel at breakfast.”

  She was wrong, but simply by virtue of the fact that she had no idea who the man sitting in her passenger seat was. He had been trained to hide everything and to lie as if he was telling the most honest truth held in the deepest part of his soul. Had he wanted to, he could have convinced everyone, even Sister Marta herself, that he didn’t care the least bit for children.

  That of course wasn’t the truth. She had caught him in a rare, unguarded moment—something he didn’t normally allow strangers to see.

  “I’m not only a nun,” she continued. “I’m also a woman. Women can see many things in men that they themselves may not see or choose not to see.”

  A faint smile creased his face. She was relentless. “What do you see in me then, Sister? What is it that I don’t see or don’t want to see?”

  “I think you are quite complicated, but as for most men, what you want, what you truly desire, is quite simple.”

  “Which is?”

  “I think that—like the children God has entrusted to our orphanage—you want what all of us want. You want to be understood. You want someone to care for you and you want to have your own family.”

  “I’d also like to win the lottery,” he remarked.

  “Is humor something you use to avoid problems?” she asked.

  It was a reflex. He didn’t even realize that he’d made the joke until the words were already out of his mouth.

  “You may think it takes those kinds of odds, but it doesn’t,” Sister Marta continued. “All it takes is faith. And the best part is that when God does bring the right person into your life, it really will feel like you’ve won the lottery.”

  Harvath didn’t want to argue with her. She was a wonderful, well-intentioned woman. “I’ll tell you what, Sister. If you promise to keep praying for me,
I’ll keep looking. Deal?”

  “I will pray for you either way,” she stated as they arrived at the private aviation section of the airport.

  The nun parked her Volkswagen and led Harvath to the terminal, where she introduced him without giving his name. The pilot didn’t seem to mind and only asked if Harvath had a passport, upon which Harvath patted his backpack and nodded. He had left the wheelie bag at the orphanage and told Sister Marta to do whatever she wanted with it. He was supposed to look like a tourist who had flown up to Texas for a day of shopping, not someone who was staying overnight.

  As the pilot did his preflight check and the other passengers, most of whom seemed to be acquainted, mingled, Harvath thanked Sister Marta and told her to be careful. When he asked where he should pay for his ticket, she told him not to worry, that it had already been taken care of. He wasn’t sure if Nicholas was behind it or if the nun had paid directly out of her pocket, but either way, it was money that she could have used at the orphanage.

  He tried to argue with her, but she wouldn’t have it. “Keep your heart open,” she said with a smile, changing the subject on him. “When God brings someone special into your life again, grab on with both hands and don’t let go.”

  Harvath laughed. He didn’t mean to, he just did. “Thank you, Sister,” he said. “Your faith in my capabilities in that area may be a bit misplaced, but I appreciate it all the same.”

  “I’m in the business of faith,” she replied as the pilot signaled that the passengers could begin boarding. “I’m blessed with a never-ending supply.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The flight was a bit choppy on the climb out of Monterrey, but once the plane had leveled off, it was smooth sailing all the way to Texas.

  The Cessna Caravan aircraft landed at McAllen-Miller International in McAllen, Texas, and taxied to the immigration terminal. The pilot chatted amiably with the personnel in the small processing area as his passengers’ passports were scanned and stamped. Once his own passport had been scanned and stamped, he led his customers back outside to the plane for the short taxi over to the general aviation area.