NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  “Pay attention, Isaak,” he said. “The blindfold is for your protection. Not ours.”

  “Mine?”

  Gaspar nodded. “We can’t afford to take chances,” he said. “If we thought you knew the location of our safehouse, we would have to kill you.”

  Isaak opened his mouth, then shut it. He’d heard all he cared to hear from Gaspar—enough to last him the rest of the drive, thank you very much.

  He sat back, sweating heavily, rocking from side to side in his seat. While he didn’t know exactly where they were, he figured it must be west of the city proper. Whether that also put him north or south of it, he couldn’t tell. But with the intense heat and sun, he’d concluded he had to be driving through the Mojave, which stretched for hundreds of miles in both directions.

  The van rolled on for another fifteen or twenty minutes, creaking and shaking on its rusty suspension. Then, finally, it lurched to an abrupt halt.

  Gaspar got out, his feet crunching on gravel as he came around and swung open the rear doors.

  “We’re here,” he said, taking hold of Isaak’s arm.

  “No shit,” Isaak said. “You got my bag?”

  “Yes,” Gaspar said, handing it to him by the strap.

  He slung the small black satchel over his arm. Its contents were worth twenty large, earning him four thousand in commission, a nice pile of cash considering he was just the middleman. For that kind of haul, he was prepared to do almost anything.

  Isaak let Gaspar help him out of the van and then guide him up the path to the safehouse, his hand around his elbow.

  He hadn’t walked two or three steps before the screeching birds jolted him up straight. He’d heard their shrill, blood-curdling cries, coupled with the loud flap of their wings overhead, every time he came out here, and they never failed to make his skin crawl.

  “Come on,” Gaspar said, feeling him stiffen. “The door’s straight ahead.”

  Isaak nodded and quickened his pace. Those birds almost sounded prehistoric, conjuring up a mental image of reptilian scales on their bodies instead of feathers. Whatever the hell they were, he was sure there was nothing like them in East Los.

  He walked another few feet, then heard Gaspar hit his fist against a door.

  It opened and they went inside.

  “All right,” Gaspar said behind him. “You can stop now.”

  Isaak stood still as he undid the blindfold. Although there was no air-conditioning in here, and it seemed to him the windows were always shut, he was glad to be out of the burning sun.

  A moment later the cloth came off his face.

  He blinked. Blinked again.

  When his vision cleared he was looking at a tall, dark-skinned man in his late twenties, his shirttails hanging out over his waist, his long, full, shaggy beard resembling the kind worn by every lame-ass hipster Isaak would see hanging around the USC campus at University Park. Pass him on the street, you might think he was a grad student getting a higher education in Chinese pottery, Native American weaving, or some other useless, artsy shit.

  Though, naturally, Isaak knew better.

  “Matous, dude,” he said. “Whassup?”

  The bearded man looked at him.

  “We’re not friends,” he said, in his faintly accented English. “Don’t pretend we are. For your own good.”

  Isaak didn’t answer. To hear these people talk, you’d think they were more concerned about his welfare than his own mother.

  Which really wasn’t saying much, since she’d dumped him off at an orphanage when he was still a punk.

  “Friend?” he said at last. “What friend? Who mentioned friends?” He cleared his throat. “Mister Business, that’s me.”

  Matous just stared at him coldly. Then gestured at the satchel with his chin.

  “You brought the items?”

  Isaak nodded, blinking more fuzziness from his eyes. This was the only room here he’d ever been allowed in. It contained no furniture except for some scattered chairs and a large wooden dining table. Besides Gaspar and Matous, there were five other people present—two of Matous’s usual bookends standing nearby looking watchful, a woman and two men seated at the table.

  He’d never seen those three in the flesh before, but recognized them at once. Their faces were on the forged IDs in his bag.

  He unzipped it and produced a large brown clasp envelope.

  “Here,” he said, handing the envelope to Matous. “These are top flight.”

  Matous opened it and took out one of the driver’s licenses.

  “They’ve got the new security features down to the last detail,” Isaak said. “Put them under ultraviolet light, you’ll see a smaller photo of the driver.”

  Matous carefully examined the license, ran his thumb over the signature, and nodded in silent approval as he felt its raised laser engraving. Then he reached into his pocket for his smartphone and thumbed on its flashlight.

  Isaak watched him bring the flash up to the back of the license while looking at the front for the outline of the California bear. After a moment he nodded again.

  “They got that grizzly down perfect,” Isaak said, noting his obvious satisfaction. “I told you. These cards are the best.”

  Matous studied the license another minute, then put away the phone and looked up at him.

  “What about the hard drive?” he said. “When can we expect the files?”

  Isaak could hardly believe his ears. It was, what, eighteen hours since he’d pulled the drive from Sutton’s computer? Eighteen, tops. Did it look like he was wearing a secret decoder ring or something? Plus, why ask him about this shit? Erasmo was supposed to have sent Matous’s boss a message last night.

  “That’ll take a little longer,” he said, staying cool. “The old man knew how to hide things. You can’t do stuff like that overnight.”

  Matous kept looking at him.

  “When?” he repeated.

  “A couple of days—at least a couple,” Isaak said, thinking again that he was the wrong person to ask. “That’s my best guess.”

  Matous’s eyes continued to rest on his face. “It can’t take any longer,” he said, and smiled. “You’ll see for us that it doesn’t.”

  Isaak was quiet. The meaning of that smile was unmistakable. Matous hadn’t been making a request.

  He stood listening to the birds shriek away outside, carrying on like Halloween goblins at the stroke of midnight, thinking he could hardly wait to get paid and split.

  “Look,” he said. “The sooner I get back to town, the easier it is for me to grease the wheels, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  Matous eyed him for what felt like a hundred years. Then he nodded.

  “All right,” he said, and glanced over at one of his bookends. “Vcharel non. Give him his money, Narem.”

  A short, broad-chested man in cargo pants and sneakers, Narem disappeared from sight, returning a minute later with a leather briefcase. He gave it to Isaak without a word, then returned to where he’d stood across the room.

  “You’ll get ten thousand now,” Matous said. “The other half along with our payment for the data.”

  Isaak’s eyes widened. “Wait,” he said. “This was a rush job. My guys were expecting the full twenty thou.”

  “They were wrong,” Matous said. “We’re paying for a total package. The IDs are worthless to us without the information.”

  “But the people who knocked out the cards… I’m telling you… they don’t even know about the hard drive. They’re going to want their—”

  Matous looked at him sharply.

  “What they want doesn’t concern me,” he interrupted. “Take the money, Isaak. And call me tonight. I need to know when I’ll see the contents of the drive.”

  Isaak stared at him. He was thinking the Russians that made up the cards would be beyond furious when they learned they’d been shortchanged. And they were not the sort of people anybody would choose to mess with.

  On the othe
r hand, he thought, the same could be said for his present company. He glanced at the three sitting around the table, saw them watching him closely, and felt the tiny hairs at the back of his neck prickle. Something about their expressions—about the stone-cold look in their eyes—almost made him freak. He didn’t need a stronger hint that it was not in his best interest to put up an argument.

  “Okay,” he said, suddenly wishing he could leap into a time machine and give his ignoramus self of three or four months ago some choice words of advice about ever becoming involved with these crazies. “I hear you. I’ll deliver the message. Messages, I mean. Hey, like my mama used to say… what’s a lousy ten thousand bucks give or take?”

  Matous gave him another telling smile.

  “It depends what else is given to you, Isaak,” he said. “Or taken.”

  * * *

  Although diminutive in physical stature, Henrietta Lange encompassed worlds.

  According to her NCIS biography and background check forms, she had lived several epic lifetimes in her six plus decades on earth. Reading her personnel file, one might have concluded that her arrival from the womb on February 29, 1949—a leap day, exceptional by definition—made the very firmament tremble, setting off cosmological upheavals and auroral displays. Surely a virtuoso artist must have painted his masterpiece on that same date, an author penned his greatest literary work, a composer his magnum opus. Oceans doubtless swelled as architectural wonders rose and fell. An enduring mystery of mankind must have unraveled, and another come into being.

  Worlds.

  Once upon a time, before her entry into the intersecting fields of covert intelligence and law enforcement, Hetty had enjoyed stellar careers in motion picture and stage costuming, celebrity realty, and boutique stock brokerage. Rumor had it that she shared more than wine with Sinatra, enjoyed a private weekend audience with Elvis at Graceland, and whirled through an intimate starlit pavane with George Hamilton on his lavish motor yacht.

  It was said that the immortal Luciano Pavarotti dedicated his most tortured, impassioned performance of “Nessun Dorma,” from the romantic opera Turandot, to Hetty while she watched contemplatively from his personal box seat in Milan’s Teatro Alla Scala.

  “Ed el mio bacio scogliera il silenzio, che ti fa mia!” he’d intoned as he’d sunk to one knee, his hands grasping out in her direction.

  “And my kiss will break the silence that makes you mine.”

  Those in the first rows of the orchestra would later agree his cheeks were glistening with tears.

  Worlds.

  At various points along the line, Hetty earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Sorbonne, studied high fashion at the esteemed Ecole de Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, and honed her linguistic abilities at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, gaining fluency in Russian, German, Mandarin, Spanish, Czech, Romanian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Magyar, and Pashtun. She became adept at the circular Korean martial art of Hapkido, the combined sportfighting techniques of Chinese Wushu, and the Filipino stick sword and knife combat discipline known as Eskrima. Always good with firearms, she would be the only woman ever to earn the bronze in the smallbore rifle category of the 1964 Olympics.

  Many years later, Hetty would break the senior women’s record for the ascent of K2, the second highest mountain in the world. She earned a commercial instructor rating for multiengine jet aircraft, and wrote three published novels of some critical and popular acclaim. She accumulated several decorations with the Defense Intelligence Agency, won the CIA’s Intelligence Star for courage under conditions of grave risk, and was admitted into the chivalric Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau.

  Worlds… and colossal worlds at that.

  And Hetty was not yet finished setting high water marks. Since becoming an Operations Manager with NCIS in 2009, her clearance rate—the percentage of cases her office solved—was consistently ranked among the highest of anyone who’d ever held the position.

  Yet in spite of it all, she was an unassuming woman. Accustomed to keeping a stoic façade, sworn to the highest levels of government secrecy, Hetty possessed a quiet reserve that was deeply encoded in her makeup, making it no likelier she would parade out her accomplishments than her emotions.

  Unless that accomplishment was brewing a perfect cup of tea. Then, and only then, would her features betray a flash of overt pride.

  The gratified look on her face right now being an example. Standing at the entrance to Ops, she looked immodest indeed sipping her morning Zhen Mei, or Precious Eyebrows, the splendid green leaf variety prized by connoisseurs.

  “I’m glad we’re all finally together,” she said as her agents entered from the stairs. Detective Deeks led the way, followed by Blye, Hanna, and Callen.

  She eyed Deeks as he passed through the door.

  “I will remind you to stay back from me.”

  He paused in front of her and started to say something, but she motioned him off.

  “Back,” she ordered.

  He frowned, took a step in reverse. “This okay?”

  “One more,” she said.

  He obliged.

  “Thank you, Detective,” she said, gesturing for him to halt. “I’ll ask you to be mindful of keeping the proper distance next time.”

  He looked at her. “You told me you were into my animal aromatherapy.”

  “I told you I was willing to let you explore its benefits,” she said. “Personally, I find the idea repugnant.”

  Deeks frowned.

  “Wow,” he said. “That stopped me cold.”

  “I take it that means you’ll stay where you are?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Then it’s a good thing.” Hetty dipped the mesh tea temple in her cup, then looked around the room at her assembled team. “All right, let’s get this briefing underway.”

  They waited silently, bathed in the room’s low-glare cobalt light. With its state-of-the-art computer consoles, LCD interactive conference table, enormous touchscreen plasma display, and sound-baffling wall, ceiling and floor tiles, the Operations Center looked vastly different from the downstairs common area and bullpen. There were no decorative touches, no personal articles and ornaments… everything was clean and functional. Ops was the Office of Special Projects’ digital eyes, ears, and brain center—and its technology rivaled or exceeded that of any other intelligence and surveillance facility on earth.

  On the big screen now were four images. Its upper half showed a recent color portrait photograph of Elias Sutton on the left, juxtaposed with a black-and-white official U.S. Navy photo of a much younger, uniformed Sutton on the right. Beneath those shots were similar old-young images of another man—but while he was elderly and white-haired in the latter day photo, and looked like he’d been in his mid twenties when the black-and-white photo was snapped, both showed him to be impeccably dressed in a tailored sportcoat and wide-brimmed fedora.

  “I know the man on top,” Sam said, studying the screen. “But who’s the dude in Brioni and Borsellino?”

  Hetty glanced at him. “You have an eye for good clothes,” she said.

  He motioned toward the newer photograph. “Those threads leave good in the dust,” he said. “That jacket must’ve cost four, five grand. The hat’s a center pinch Como… I’m guessing it set him back a paltry four hundred bucks by comparison.”

  Hetty continued to regard him.

  “I am duly impressed, Mr. Hanna,” she said, dipping her teabag. “But a careful look tells me the sportcoat would sell for upwards of ten thousand dollars. It’s su misura, as the Italians say. We call it bespoke in this country…”

  “Custom made by a master tailor,” Sam said. “That’s style.”

  “And money,” Callen said. “Why does he look familiar to me?”

  Hetty turned to him. “His name is Holloway,” she said. “Theodore ‘Tip’ Holloway.”

  “The CIA man?”

  “Yes,” Hetty said. “And before that
CIG and OSS.”

  He met her gaze. In sorting through the tangled threads of his past, Grisha Aleksandrovich Nikolaev Callen, as he was named at birth, had learned his grandfather was an Office of Strategic Services operative stationed in Eastern Europe, and that his mother was brought up there and recruited by the CIA after moving to the United States. Callen had also discovered that his mother’s handler—the person who sent her back overseas on the undercover assignment that led to her death—was Hetty Lange herself.

  He knew all about the OSS, and how it was established to conduct espionage activities behind German lines during World War Two. Holloway had been one of the early intelligence officers with ties to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, a legendary figure who headed the organization through the nineteen-forties, and guided its transformation into the Cold War spy agency that would later become the CIA.

  “Tip Holloway was a shadow’s shadow,” he said now. “From what I heard, he floated around some of the early special access programs, the kind with waived status.”

  “Whoa,” Deeks said. “I’m pressing One on my touchtone keypad for English.”

  Callen looked at him. “Special access programs are highly classified. But a waived SAP is even more sensitive,” he said. “It isn’t listed in official breakdowns of government expenses. Oversight is limited to a handful of people in the Defense Department, and the funding’s all black budget. The designation wasn’t around when the OSS was in business, but off-budget projects were—and so was Holloway.”

  “If nobody minds my asking,” Sam said, and motioned toward the upper half of the screen. “What’s this got to do with Admiral Sutton? Or his murder?”

  Hetty gingerly sampled her tea, let its flavor settle on her tongue a moment, then went back to dipping the bag in the cup.

  “Patience, Mr. Hanna,” she said. “I called everyone in here for a reason.” She glanced over at the slight, spike-haired redhead standing behind one of the consoles, a tablet computer in her hands. “Nell, do you have the Deep Dive file ready?”

  The analyst gave a pert nod. “I’m tossing it up on the big screen now,” she said.