The Shield of Darius

by Allen Kent

  The call came to his Crystal City apartment at quarter to seven on a Sunday evening. The blond secretary from the OSI office down the hall in the Pentagon pushed Eddie off at the sound of the jangling phone and looked at it expectantly.

  “Well, aren’t you going to answer?”

  “Let it ring. If it’s important they’ll call back. Some things can’t wait.”

  “It makes me nervous.” She pulled the sheet up over her ample breasts. “Maybe it’s important.”

  Eddie sighed and rolled to the edge of the bed, snatching the receiver from its cradle.

  “Yeah,” he snapped.

  “Lieutenant Warren?” The voice at the other end was a soft baritone with a gravely trace of age and smoke. “I understand you’re a man who enjoys doing things your own way.”

  “I’ve been accused of that. Who is this?”

  “Someone who likes that kind of spirit, and may have an opportunity for you. If you’re interested in an offer you can easily refuse, get rid of your friend and go down to the phone booth at the park and I’ll call you there. It will be in exactly thirty minutes. That will give you time to send the girl home.”

  “What is this sh….” The line clicked dead.

  “Who was it?” The blond reached for a shirt that lay on the floor beside the bed and draped it over her shoulders. He ignored her and dropped back heavily against the headboard, glancing at the clock radio on his night stand. The call would come at seven fifteen.

  “Wrong number?”

  “Listen, ah…Sandy. I need to go out for awhile. How about picking this up tomorrow night after work?”

  She twisted out of bed and quickly buttoned the shirt, bending to flash her round naked bottom at him as she retrieved her panties and tight red shorts from the carpet.

  “What’s the matter, Lieutenant? Get your dates mixed up?” The iciness in her voice ruined Eddie’s view.

  He pulled on his own shorts and searched for his socks. “Look, I’m sorry. But this was a business call and you know how that goes. Got to get back over to the office tonight.”

  She looked at him skeptically while she tied her tennis shoes and seemed to decide he was telling the truth.

  “I’m busy tomorrow night. Call me Tuesday and we’ll see about later this week.” She picked up her purse and left him looking for his second sock.

  In ten of the remaining twenty minutes, Eddie Warren systematically sorted through the possibilities. He had decided immediately not to ignore the call. In fact, it had given him his first real rush since he had last seen movement ahead on the trail, banked hard right to get up over the trees and out of sight, and heard rifle fire rattle up from below. The blond secretary turned him on. But the call moved him back out onto the edge. It also reeked of setup.

  Internal security? Hell, he’d been behaving himself like a priest since getting back from Nam…. Well, not exactly like a priest, but he’d kept his mouth shut about the screwed-up war, even as the pull-out shifted into full gear. Maybe that made them nervous. Since he hadn’t been a pain in the ass, they probably thought he was up to something. But who else would know he was humping the blond tonight…unless she was part of this somehow. She sure as hell wasn’t wearing a wire. And she knew which branch he was with and hadn’t asked a thing about what he was doing.

  The communists? Were the commies trying to enlist Eddie Warren? “Remember,” the WAF with the bad complexion and stork legs who delivered the security briefings always said, “they don’t try to get it all at once. Piece by piece. One little bit of information at a time. Some from this source, some from that. Don’t be one of those pieces.”

  Eddie glanced at his clock and reached for the phone. Five till. If this was a security check or an enemy contact, he might save his ass by calling in and reporting it. Then if something was haywire, his neck wouldn’t be in a noose. Still, he couldn’t imagine why the commies would try something this obvious. It was more their style to get to him through some long-legged comrade with a huge set of knockers who just happened to pick a stool next to him at Fleener’s. She’d play hard to get until she had him aching to get into her pants, then reluctantly agree to come over for a nightcap. Eddie knew his weaknesses. He also knew what he thrived on, and dropped the receiver back onto its cradle.

  He regulated his pace to reach the small corner park by seven fifteen, but not walking so briskly as to appear anxious. The sons-a-bitches were probably watching. He was a step away when the phone in the corner booth rang and he looked up expectantly at the shadowy apartment windows that ringed the park, watching for the flick of a shade.

  “I’m glad you decided not to call anyone before you came. It shows you have the kind of independent spirit we’re counting on.”

  “You’re tapping my phone, you sonuvabitch!”

  “We have to be very careful. We’ve been watching you for several months.”

  “Who the hell is we?”

  “You don’t need to know that now, and probably never will – even if you are interested in our proposal.”

  Eddie waited, but the voice at the other end was also silent, expecting the next move to be his.

  “I’m listening. But I’m telling you now that if this thing sounds fishy, I’ll have the whole damned FBI after you. And by the way, I’m pretty small potatoes. I can’t be worth much to you.”

  “Two reasons we like you. You’re not particularly important, and you have a unique kind of patriotism.”

  “What the hell does that mean? If you know me that well, you know I’ve been in trouble since I got into this war, thinking it’s been run like shit.” He listened carefully, dangling a piece of bait to see if it would snag a telling response.

  “We know that, Lieutenant. But it isn’t the war you have trouble with. It’s the approach. You just feel like some principles are more important than others. That winning is more important than some artificial idea of fairness. Am I right?”

  Eddie picked back and forth through the statement, looking for the catch, and came up empty.

  “I think there are things that need to be done without worrying about how the damned public’s going to react, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think the public and the media need to know everything. But I’ve never kept that a secret.”

  “No you haven’t. And that’s why I’m interested in you. Plus, you’re essentially without family. Your parents aren’t living. No siblings. One first cousin who you haven’t seen in nearly ten years and don’t really like. And no wife, children or serious girl friends. No ties.”

  “I’m not sure I like where this is going.” Eddie glanced up again at the blank windows across the street. “Let’s get to the point.”

  “Fine,” the voice said. “I coordinate a small group of individuals who take on special assignments for the country. You’ll notice I didn’t say ‘government,’ so don’t assume there’s a connection. We do, however, have sufficient support to get things done when we need to. In some cases, I give specific assignments. In others, you watch and listen and decide on your own what needs to be done – with my clearance, of course. The pay’s excellent, and you have carte blanche on expenses. Think of it as sort of a ‘Mission Impossible’ team, but without the team. You all work independently and don’t even know the others on the team. One thing is the same though. If anything goes wrong, no one’s ever heard of you.”

  Eddie was silent for what must have seemed minutes to the caller. Shit! This was crazy! Unreal! And it grabbed at him and tugged in all the right places.

  “How do I know I’m working for the right side, if I’m on this team?”

  “Only by the assignments.”

  Another long pause.

  “And what makes you think I’m your kind of man – aside from being a loner and hating the military bureaucracy? Like I say, I’m a pretty ordinary guy.”

  “Hardly ordinary, Warren. You’re not nearly as uncouth as you like to appear – you were an exceptional Russian language student at Washin
gton University before enlisting in the service, and graduated fifth in your pilot training class – first in academics. Then you picked an 0-2 to fly, rather than a fighter. That’s hardly ordinary.”

  This time the pause was Eddie’s.

  “Suppose I say I’m interested. Then what?”

  “Call in sick tomorrow.”

  “They’ll check me out. You must know that.”

  “No they won’t. And if it will make you feel better, stay home and be sick.”

  “Then what?”

  “Go in Tuesday, and you’ll find you’ve been transferred.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Where to?”

  “Nowhere. They’ll have what look like legitimate orders but they won’t be to any real unit. Just take them, clear out your desk and go home. We’ll get back to you with more information. By the end of the week, you won’t have any service record. In fact, you won’t have any record at all. I’ll contact you.”

  “Give me some idea what we’re talking about here – by way of assignments.”

  “First a new name, new face, and new identity. Eddie Warren disappears. If that’s not acceptable, go to work tomorrow and you won’t hear from us again. If you join, nothing is off limits. You’ll always be working as an American. No undercover stuff. And usually from the Washington area. Think of this as ‘shadow government.’ We do what can’t be done officially – what restrictions on the system or political expediency don’t allow through normal channels.”

  “Why don’t you leave that shit to the CIA? I thought that’s what they were for – or maybe you are CIA.”

  “You know the system, Warren. Even the CIA can’t touch some things anymore. Too many watchdogs.”

  Eddie chuckled skeptically. “I know I don’t know everything that goes on, but I can’t believe that in this day and age there’s an apparatus so deep that I… that nobody – even the damn news snoops – have never heard of it!”

  “If you’d heard of us, we couldn’t exist,” the voice said. “And we’re very small.”

  Eddie leaned against the side of the booth and studied the windows across the darkening street. “What if I need a few days to think about this?”

  “Then you aren’t one of our people. We’re looking for those who’ve been looking for us. You’re either ready, or you aren’t.”

  Falen had been ready. As he punched the new data into his spread sheet, he thought again that he was doing exactly what he enjoyed most. He was doing it as Christopher Falen, and those who had known Eddie Warren would not recognize him. The bridge of his nose was narrower, his hazel eyes larger, ears pulled back closer to his head, and jaw squarer and accentuated with a small cleft on the chin. He no longer lived in Crystal City but in a brownstone inside the Beltway, north on 21st Street just off New Hampshire. He liked Falen. Eddie Warren had allowed himself in Vietnam to become crude and ordinary. Something of a stud, in his own judgment, but a crude and ordinary stud. Falen gave him reason to become smooth and self-assured, schooled in speech and protocol. Before changing his appearance, they had run him through special forces training, then through an intensive language program to sharpen his Russian skills. He now moved with a freedom and confidence Eddie Warren had never imagined possible. Starting over had given him a chance to do what other mortals only dream about – money, travel, women. He was now in his early sixties but looked ten years younger. Christopher Falen enjoyed who he was and what he could do.

  He was particularly turned on by this new project. It wasn’t an assignment, and that made it all the more satisfying. His Control, Fisher, remained a quiet voice on the phone and Falen made no attempt to find out who or where he was, or who the man worked for. When Fisher initiated a call, he left only one of two messages. One was to confirm that Falen had ordered a medium sausage and onion pizza, which meant that Falen was to call in. The other invited him to have a demonstration for new double-paned, Dura-frame windows: he would find information in his post office box or downloaded directly to his computer by the following day. The technology had become more sophisticated with each year, but the two messages remained the same and Falen still preferred printouts. When they came to his post office box, they were never postmarked. Just there. Most of his work came from Fisher as assignments, but occasionally he initiated a project himself, with Fisher’s approval. His handler, whoever he was, could find out anything and get anything done. In most cases, overnight. He never asked for details when Falen said he needed special time to ‘follow up on something.’ Just granted the time, and gave him whatever support he needed. If an assignment required special action, Falen called Fisher on an encoded cell phone he had been given with an assurance that it was always secure. He never identified himself, but started every conversation with “I need some information,” or “I have something for you.” He then explained what was needed and occasionally answered a few questions. His recommendations were rarely turned down, and as his credibility grew, so did his ability to move unencumbered through the tangle of Washington red tape. He had been Christopher Falen now for half of his life, and he enjoyed it very much.

  The DWAT thing had come to his attention by accident – a series of casual mentions that seemed to click together somewhere in the back of his brain. First the Washington party for Foreign Service officers where Falen was wandering from one self-absorbed group of aspiring diplomats to another, being conveniently ignored. Two mid-level embassy types from southern Europe in identical charcoal pinstriped suits had parked along one of the bars, swapping tales of abuses suffered at the hands of American tourists. Falen’s leaning on the bar beside them didn’t seem to bother them in the least.

  “We’ve had two guys disappear on us in Spain in the last year and a half and you’d think from the way their wives reacted, I’d taken them myself,” one said. “These women just lost it – and frankly, I could see why the guys took off. They got a look at some of the Spanish chiquitas and thought ‘why am I living on meat loaf with all this steak on the hoof!’”

  “Same thing happened in Turkey about six months ago,” the other said. “Must be a rash of them. But this guy wasn’t chasing Turkish skirt. Not much there to chase, and you risk getting your balls cut off if you do. Plus, this guy had a helluva wife. Tall model type with legs that could wrap around you three times. Took me days of personal attention to console her. The guy never showed up, but I couldn’t get her to stay.” They laughed and moved on to lost passports, but Falen had filed the disappearances. “Must be a rash of them.”

  The second mention was a four inch column in the Financial section of the Post.

  Prominent Louisiana industrialist, David Haile, disappeared yesterday afternoon from a beachside resort in southern Italy. Haile and his family were vacationing in Capri and had planned to return to the United States today. Italian officials speculate that Haile’s disappearance was prompted by financial problems that have recently plagued Haile Enterprises, the family’s New Orleans based company, and do not suspect foul play. A spokesman for the Italian police said that although the incident was unusual, it was not unprecedented.

  “We have had several Americans disappear like this,” the spokesman said. “They come here to get away from some business trouble, and then find that things at home have gotten worse. Rather than go back, they just disappear without a trace.

  Disappear without a trace. DWAT, Falen thought, and placed a call to Fisher to ask for a list of all Americans traveling abroad who had disappeared without a trace over the last five years. At 7:30 that evening, a woman with an Hispanic accent called and in an uninspired monotone, read Falen the beginning of a sales pitch about Dura-frame windows.

  “I rent,” he interrupted, and hung up.

  His box was in Washington’s main post office across from Union Station, a hollow stone cube of a building with marble floors that echoed under his leather heels. The sharp click, click had a certain drama about it that Falen enjoyed. His
box held only a thick manila envelope. Inside was a quarter inch ream of spread sheets that gave every piece of information on DWATs for a five year period; name, address, date of birth, date of disappearance, countries visited, previous travel history – the works. The top sheets summarized the data, giving only names, dates and location of disappearances. Falen scanned the list quickly and smiled. He liked being right.

  As the Italian officer had said, disappearances such as David Haile’s were not unprecedented. But until almost two years earlier, they had been rare. Three one year. Two the next. Then suddenly they increased five-fold. Fifteen last year, and another twelve to date this year. He walked back out into the din of Massachusetts Avenue and called Fisher on his cell phone.

  “I need some information. Notify me immediately if other Americans disappear while traveling overseas.”

  “You on to something?”

  “Can’t be sure. But there appears to be a marked upward trend.”

  “Should we notify the State Department first?”

  “Let’s see what’s happening. Maybe then.”

  “Stay with it and let me know what comes up.”

  Falen took the Metro Red Line to Dupont Circle, walked the two blocks to his apartment, and sat down at his computer, plugging in the past two year’s data under the file name ‘DWAT.’ As the Toshiba laptop in the corner of his bedroom office massaged the information for the first time, Falen felt again the adrenaline rush of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Something was moving beyond the trees. A subtle change in the patterns of greens and browns. That ever so slight flicker of camouflaged motion that caught his eye and sent an almost giddy excitement rushing through his body – the first gut-gripping signal that something was about to break.

  He sat at the terminal until 3:00 a.m., sorting and re-sorting, urging one pattern after another from the facts and figures until he’d developed three factor groups that seemed significant beyond coincidence.

  Elements in Group Three didn’t apply universally to all DWATs, but occurred often enough to raise questions. Most of the group of twenty-seven were vacationing. Only three had been abroad on business. Twenty-two disappeared from locations within 60 miles of a coast, though the countries from which they disappeared were scattered. It still seemed curious that no one at State had become concerned about the rash of disappearances. As far as Falen could tell, embassies didn’t communicate much with each other.