by Andrew Watts
A million questions collided in Renee’s mind, but only one mattered right now.
Was Max hurt?
She hurried down the paved pathway into an unlit park near the side of the road. Into the woods from which the mysterious man had just emerged.
“Max!” she screamed. Breathing fast, she took her cell phone out and turned the flashlight on to see better. Her eyes played tricks on her with every shadow. Lightning bugs blinking in the humid night air. On either side of the woods, outdoor lights were coming on, illuminating the back porches of suburban homes. She called Max’s name again. In the distance, a police siren began to wail.
“Psst. Renee, over here, quick.”
Max’s voice. Thank God.
“Shine the light over here,” he said.
Renee headed towards the sound of his voice and the blue-white glow of a cell phone on the ground.
“Max, I saw someone,” she whispered. “He was running out of the forest after the gunshot.”
Max turned to look up at her. “Did he see you?”
“I think so. Maybe. He got on a bike and rode away from me when he got to the street.”
Max turned back to the ground. He was hunched over, working on something.
“I heard him run away,” he said. “I think he was hiding in the woods, waiting. I must have walked right past him. Good thinking with the horn. I think that spooked him. He took off after you did that.”
“Max, I thought…did he shoot at you? Are you alright?” As Renee got closer, she realized that Max was hunched over a man’s body. “Oh my God…” She covered her mouth and fought the urge to retch. Half the man’s head was missing—a mass of dark red and gray mush in its place.
“You’re moving the light. Keep it over here, please.” Max’s voice was that of a surgeon at work. His hands glided into the dead man’s pockets and shoes, searching for anything he could find. Then he scanned the area surrounding the body. He grabbed the glowing phone off the ground and pocketed it.
The blue light of the first cop car flashed in between the homes up to their right.
“Let’s go. If the cops see us, we stay. But I’d like to try and make it to our car before we’re seen. If we can do that, we’ll leave.”
“Leave?” Renee didn’t like the sound of that but trusted that Max knew best in this type of situation.
Less than a minute later, they were driving away, Max in the driver’s seat, his eyes scanning the rearview mirror for any sign of trouble. Then they were driving north on the Beltway, crossing the Potomac into Maryland.
“Why didn’t you want to stay until the police arrived?”
Max said, “Caleb wouldn’t want anyone to know we were there, if we could help it.”
“Caleb Wilkes? Who were we following, Max?”
“Wilkes asked me to keep an eye on someone at the concert.”
Renee had her arms folded across her chest and was shaking. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes, composing herself. “Who was the man in the park?”
He glanced at her and then back towards the traffic. “The man Wilkes asked me to watch at the concert was a foreign intelligence operative. He placed a signal on the side of a bench outside the concert gate. The second man—the one we followed here in the silver sedan—was the one who picked up the signal.”
“How do you know?”
“I could tell.”
“And he was the one who was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Max’s phone began buzzing.
“Fend. Yes, Renee and I are fine. She was there too, yes. We left before they arrived. Yes, I am aware. That’s right. You’ll take care of it? Thank you. When? Okay, we’ll see you then.”
Renee folded her arms. “Was that who I think it was?”
“Yes. Caleb’s going to stop by and debrief us tomorrow. I assume you’re staying with me tonight?”
Renee was a mess of emotions. She took a deep breath and let out a defeated, “Yes.”
Max placed his right hand on her neck, massaging it. “Are you alright?”
She took his hand, clasping it in her own. She let out a soft breath. “I will be.”
Chapter 4
Max awoke early the next morning to the sound of gulls and a diesel motor. He climbed up the ladder to the aft deck of his forty-foot sailboat, where he had taken to staying during the warmer weather. Sunlight reflected off the still water of Annapolis harbor. A clean white fishing boat motored out of its slip and out towards the bay. Max waved to the captain, who waved back while navigating through the channel markers.
Memories of last night ran though his head. Max had spent almost an hour on the phone with Wilkes once they’d gotten to Annapolis, recounting each detail.
Renee was still in bed. Max wanted to let her sleep in. She was understandably upset. After Wilkes’s call, Renee and Max had stayed up talking in bed. The conversation veered from the murder they had just witnessed to a deep discussion around trust and relationships. After not being told the real reason they had gone to Wolf Trap, she was worried that Max was reverting back to keeping secrets like he had as a DIA operative.
Renee argued that things had changed.
“Like what?”
“Us,” she had said.
If he was going to be with her, he needed to tell her everything. Max knew she was right. She was always right. It just wasn’t easy for him.
Max slipped on his flip-flops and hopped over to the pier. He walked through the nearly empty cobblestone streets of Annapolis until he reached a local bagel shop, ordering a half dozen everything bagels and a tub of cream cheese. Then he walked back to his boat and sat back down at the aft deck table. A canvas tarp provided shade from the rising sun and protection from seagulls engaged in target practice.
Max smeared gobs of cream cheese onto his steaming bagel. In the distance he could hear the echoes of Naval Academy midshipmen jogging to a military cadence. Plebe Summer, the boot camp that indoctrinated Academy freshmen into the school, was in full swing.
He ate his breakfast in peace, gazing out over Annapolis Harbor and towards the distant Chesapeake Bay. A cabin cruiser motored by, its modest waves rippling slowly towards the shore. On each sailboat in the harbor, metal clips swayed on their lines, clanging against the masts in a gentle rhythm. The seafarer’s song, the marina’s orchestra.
Caleb Wilkes approached Max’s boat, the wooden boards creaking beneath his feet.
“Mind if I join you?” Wilkes said.
“Be my guest.”
Wilkes gripped the metal rail and stepped over to the sailboat, balancing a cardboard drink holder filled with clear plastic cups. Iced coffees swirling with white milk, dark coffee and caramel browns, beads of condensation on the outside of the cups.
“I come bearing gifts.” Wilkes placed the drinks on the table.
Max smiled. “Why, thank you.” He heard Renee stirring below.
“You mind?” Wilkes pointed at the bag of bagels.
“Be my guest.”
Renee came up the ladder wearing a long tee shirt that stopped midthigh. Her hair was disheveled. But even when she was just rising, she was beautiful to Max. Red lips and alluring eyes. Seeing Wilkes, she glanced at Max, failing to hide her disapproval. Women were excellent visual communicators.
“He’s here early.”
Wilkes said, “Good morning, Miss LaFrancois. I apologize for my intrusion. Would you care for a drink? I brought iced lattes.”
Max gave a sheepish grin. “He brought us iced lattes.”
She took one of the drinks and sat down on the bench next to Max, crossing her legs. She plunged a straw into the center of her drink and snatched a bagel from the bag.
She began, “Mr. Wilkes…”
“Please, call me Caleb.”
“Caleb, then. I was under the impression, until last night, that is
, that Max would only be working for you as an advisor.”
“That’s right.”
“So, you can imagine my surprise when I found him standing over a dead body in the middle of a neighborhood park in Virginia.”
“Renee…,” Max said, embarrassed.
Wilkes rose from his seat, examining the transparent plastic weather wall that was wrapped into a roll and tied up along the rim of the hard-shell cover overhead. He then looked around at the streets surrounding the harbor.
Max knew what he was thinking. Saturday-morning tourists had begun to walk the brick sidewalks of Old Town Annapolis. Colorful shops, restaurants, and quaint little homes lined the streets. Here in the harbor, the trio was visible from hundreds of windows that overlooked the marina. Anyone with a directional microphone would be able to listen in.
“It unwraps.”
“Do you mind?”
Max got up. “Not at all. Let me help.”
The men untied the plastic wall and rolled it down so that the three of them were enclosed in a ten-by-ten-foot transparent shell. Max doubted its effectiveness against a professional surveillance team with high-tech equipment, but he was also skeptical that anyone would eavesdrop on them here, unless Wilkes had suddenly become careless and been compromised. The men sat down again.
Renee sipped through her straw, then said, “If Max is going to be working for you and putting his life in danger, I want to know about it. I won’t have any more surprises like last night.” She turned to Max. “If you want me in your life, you need to be honest with me about these things. You both know that I’ve worked in the intelligence field before. My IT security contracts require me to hold a current TS/SCI. I’m trustworthy, and I’ve got the clearances, so stop keeping me out of the loop. Especially if I’m going to end up doing the work anyway.” Her chest heaved, and her face was flushed as she eyed both of the men.
Based on Renee’s tone and body language, Max didn’t think that now was a good time to point out that her work in the CSE, and as a cyber operations contractor in the US, was very different from operational work in the field.
Max looked at Wilkes. “She’s right. I should have told her before we went to the concert. And Renee and I have worked well together in the past. Caleb, I would like you to consider us a team from now on.” Max hoped he wasn’t overplaying his hand…with either of them. How badly did Wilkes want him as a CIA asset? Badly enough to take on the risk of having another set of eyes and ears on Max’s work, trustworthy or not? And how willing was Renee to go along with Max’s desire to play part-time spy?
Wilkes looked back and forth between them, working something out behind his unreadable mask. His decision took about three seconds. “Very well.”
Max could feel Renee straighten up in her seat a bit. A welcome victory.
Wilkes said, “First things first. I’ve spoken to my contact at the FBI. He’ll be by this morning to ask you both some questions about what you saw last night. Your statement will be kept confidential. Officially, neither of you were at the crime scene. We want to keep both of your names out of the papers.”
“Understood.”
“The deceased was a man named Joseph Dahlman. He worked as a lobbyist at a boutique shop on K Street that does a lot of work on behalf of Middle Eastern and Central Asian interests.”
“What makes a lobbying firm boutique?” Renee asked.
Max whispered, “I think it’s a fancy way of saying small.” He turned to Wilkes. “What’s up with Dahlman?”
Wilkes said, “I’ve recently begun working on a new project with our counterintelligence division. An investigation that involves one of the Mexican drug cartels.”
“Why would you be working on something involving the cartels? Isn’t that the DEA’s responsibility?” Renee asked.
Max said, “The CIA oftentimes gets involved in counternarcotics operations around the world. Criminal enterprises as big as the Mexican cartels influence national security. They control people, cash, and weapons. The Mexican cartels have their own private armies, often poached from Mexican special forces, some who were trained in the US.”
“Why would someone in Mexican special forces go over to the cartels?”
Wilkes said, “It’s not like it is here in the US. The cartels control huge swaths of territory in Mexico. Many Mexican institutions, like the police and military, aren’t as well respected or well run as their American counterparts. Imagine you’re a twenty-something Mexican kid who’s been in the military for a few years, getting low pay and being treated like shit, and then you get approached by an old soldier buddy who’ll give you a huge salary increase, women, respect. The Zetas, one of Mexico’s most notorious cartels, started off as a group of bodyguards for another cartel’s leader. Then they were used as a death squad—assassins who killed off rival gang leaders and middlemen, law enforcement or reporters. They began recruiting more and more former military. They had their own training centers and ran the outfit like a professional fighting force. Except for the drugs, booze, and prostitutes, of course.”
Renee’s eyes widened.
Max looked at Wilkes. “I’ve heard that some of the cartels are upgrading their intelligence operations as well.”
Wilkes nodded. “You heard correctly. About a year ago, we began getting intel reports that the Sinaloa cartel had hired a foreign national to run their security and intelligence operations. That’s unheard of among the cartels. Loyalty being at such a premium in that line of business, they like to keep the important jobs to a few key families within each organization.”
“Let me guess, they hired someone from Pakistani ISI?”
“Not exactly. But we think the ISI may be in touch with the person they hired.”
Wilkes took out his phone and tapped the screen a few times, then held it out. Max could see a tall Caucasian man sitting by a pool. The resolution was poor, and it was hard to make out facial features.
“You’re right. He doesn’t look Pakistani.”
Wilkes said, “The name we’ve heard the Sinaloa cartel calling him is Juan Blanco.”
“Blanco?”
Wilkes nodded. “We assume it’s an alias. This is the only photo we have, taken from a satellite while he was at a cartel mansion in Durango. We’ve been unable to intercept any communications with his voice in them. Although we suspect he’s using an echo talker.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where you have someone else standing next to you by the phone while you write out messages for them to read. As long as you keep changing hardware and locations, it makes it pretty tough for the NSA to find you—no voice ID to run analysis on. An effective technique, if done properly. Some of our analysts peg him as Russian, based on his contacts overseas—the contractors he uses are some of the same ones the Russian mafia uses. But we’ve yet to have one of our agents see him in person.” He shrugged. “It’s only a matter of time. We’ll get better information eventually, but right now he’s a mystery.”
“What makes this mystery man so special, aside from being foreign?”
“In short, he’s good. Hence why we think he’s got experience from a top-level intel organization. He travels almost exclusively in the Durango region, where we don’t have a big footprint. He only deals with the cartel bosses, a few lieutenants, and his own trusted team of sicarios.
“Señor Blanco has professionalized the Sinaloa cartel’s security and countersurveillance operations to a level normally seen only in well-funded national intelligence agencies. The Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis. Within weeks of his arrival, DEA and Mexican counternarcotics programs months in the planning were quickly discovered and rendered useless.
“He’s got them outsourcing cyber help now. The cartel’s communications procedures and cyber-security became much better, making it brutally difficult for law enforcement to eavesdrop and track them. And he’s taken a page out of Los Zetas’ playbook—hiring away Mexican special forces soldiers and professionalizing
their hit teams.”
Max said, “So how does this relate to Syed and the dead man…what’s his name?”
“Dahlman.”
“Yes, him.” Max slurped through his straw as he ran out of iced coffee. Renee shot him a look.
Wilkes said, “The man who placed the signal on the bench at Wolf Trap last night was Abdul Syed, a Pakistani intelligence officer. He works out of the embassy in D.C., and the FBI has been surveilling him as long as he’s been in the US.”
Renee said, “Well, then, why did we have to—”
“And he’s been trying to lose the FBI every night for the past several weeks,” Wilkes finished. “Sometimes he succeeded in that endeavor. Other times we only let him think he did. But last night was different. I knew he was going to meet with someone.”
“How did you know?” Renee asked.
“Miss LaFrancois, as much as I am grateful for your participation, there are some things that I do not wish to share. That is one of them.”
Renee folded her arms.
Max said, “So you called the FBI off because…you didn’t want to spook him?”
“Precisely. It was my hope that you, with your exceptional skills, would know what to look for. And unlike the federal agents whose faces Mr. Syed probably knows by heart now, he does not know your handsome mug.”
“You really think I’m handsome? Why, thank you, Caleb.”
Renee rolled her eyes.
“And the FBI counterintelligence guys were okay with this?”
Wilkes didn’t answer the question, which was an answer in itself. Instead, he said, “In using Max, I was able to lull Syed into a false sense of security. I was not aware, however, that Mr. Syed intended to cause harm to his own agent. If I had known that, I would have done things differently. Please accept my sincere apology, both of you, for putting you at risk. I assure you it was not my intention. I only wished to ascertain the identity of Mr. Syed’s agent. Your following him and seeing where he went after receiving his signal was an added bonus.”
