by J. B. Turner
“And it’s not connected to Mahoney?” Nathan said, putting the guy’s cell phone in his back pocket.
The guy shook his head.
“What’s the rationale for getting him out of the way?”
“He knows too much.”
“So do you. So do I.”
“Nathan, gimme a break.”
“Where is this place?”
“It’s a huge private island in the middle of a lake in Northern Ontario. Got a landing strip. The works.” Nathan figured this was the place he had been taken to blindfolded.
“Hands on your head and get to your feet. And nothing stupid.”
The guy complied.
“I’m going to give you one choice.”
“Don’t kill me, bro. I’ve got a kid, just a girl. She needs me.”
“Here’s the deal: you walk out of here right now and you disappear. If you do that, you can live.”
The guy nodded. “I can disappear. I can do that.”
“That’s good. You and your daughter move away, someplace far. Get a new ID. Shouldn’t be too difficult. What do you say?”
The guy nodded.
“But you need to leave right now.”
The guy stared at him. “You want me out now?”
“Right now, no turning back.” Nathan cocked his head to the door. “And don’t try and alert them. First thing they’ll do if you turn up at the facility unannounced is kill you.”
“Understood.”
“Go!”
The guy brushed past Nathan and was out the door in a second.
Nathan’s plan was under way.
Twenty-Eight
Nathan made his way out of the office building, mingling with scores of other workers as the fire alarms continued to ring out. They were evacuated down a stairwell and escorted to the rear parking lot. Dozens of office workers were hanging around as fire trucks pulled up.
Nathan ignored it all and made his way by a circuitous route back to his apartment. He gathered his things—9mm Glock, ammo, cell phones—and put them in the false bottom of his backpack. He got outside before he used the new iPhone to communicate with Mahoney.
“How are you?” Nathan asked.
Mahoney sighed. “I can’t do this.”
“Then you leave me no choice.”
“I think I’d rather take my chances with the cops.”
“Good luck with that.”
Mahoney groaned. “Listen, I’m serious. I think the cops are my best bet.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
A long silence. “Nathan, you scare me. I’m losing my mind. Please . . . I’m begging you.”
“Mark, do you think the people that sent me won’t be able to get to you? Trust me, they can get to everyone. And I mean everyone. Anyone can be neutralized.”
Mahoney was quiet.
“I could make one call,” Nathan continued, “and those photos would be released to your wife, Twitter, Instagram, the Associated Press, National Enquirer—you name it, they’d get it. And of course your bosses at the New York Times.”
“This is fucking outrageous.”
“Of course it is. That’s why it works.”
Mahoney said nothing.
“I need to find my sister. I don’t believe they’ll return her.”
“So why did you agree to this operation?”
“I had no choice in the matter. I had to agree to it or they would’ve killed her, then me, when the time came, and they would have gotten someone else to kill you. Capito?”
“I’m fucked whatever I do.”
Nathan sighed. “Same as me.” He realized he had crossed a line. It had been a hasty decision. He knew it would be only a matter of time before news of the handler’s absence was uncovered. But he knew how it worked. He couldn’t just sit and wait and rely on them to make good on their promises.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized the facility could be sending someone to downtown Toronto to find and kill him at that very moment. Maybe a team.
He knew it must be a similar facility to the one he’d been kept in in Scotland. A black site to hide those about to embark on covert operations. Operations that weren’t authorized by anyone. At least officially. It was the deep state.
Nathan had been hearing that phrase more and more lately. Some thought the very notion of the deep state was just a conspiracy theorist’s projection of what, in their eyes, the shadow government was capable of. Pulling the strings, manipulating policy and policy makers: a covert alliance between the military-industrial complex, the Pentagon, and Wall Street. He was but a very small cog in the machine. They used phrases like special operations. But he could see how people thought the deep state was penetrating and influencing their country through corrupt politicians, an all-powerful collection of intelligence agencies who worked in secrecy with, by and large, a malleable media, and organizations like the NSA, able to extend their tentacles to all corners of the web, monitoring and manipulating the virtual as well as the real world.
Mahoney spoke, disturbing Nathan’s train of thought. “Why do you need me?”
“I want to keep an eye on you.”
“So you can kill me when this is over?”
“You know more about what happened than just about anyone alive. The information you have could help me. And maybe . . . maybe even save my sister.”
“You’re throwing that guilt trip on me?”
“It is what it is, man.”
“If I go to the cops and let them know what I know, I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not thinking this through, Mark. I thought you were a smart guy. Listen to me. You might be fine in police custody, maybe even an FBI safe house, but they’ll sure as hell get to your family.”
“What if they’re taken to a safe house too?”
“Do you know how long it takes to organize that stuff? A long time. Weeks if you’re lucky.”
“I’m fucking scared. This is not the world I live in.”
“It is now. So you need to make a decision.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You’re publicly destroyed by these photos, your family life blown to hell, and your career ruined. There will also be charges. Drug dealing to minors, anyone? You’d never work again. And I’m talking instant—it would take seconds. Bang! You’re dead, metaphorically speaking.”
“I could write a book.”
“Good luck finding a publisher if you’re drugging children.”
Mahoney was quiet for a few moments, as if reflecting on his predicament.
“Are you really going to walk away from this story? There’s a Pulitzer in it, no question.”
“My family comes first. My career a distant second.”
Nathan was doubtful. He’d known only one journalist. Her name was Deborah Jones, an investigative journalist with the Miami Herald. She’d uncovered the missing twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 report that a computer hacker had tried to leak to her. But as Nathan kidnapped her, planning to kill her, she had driven her car straight into the Florida Everglades, fighting Nathan until he passed out. He was dragged unconscious from the water. But she had battled to the bitter end, not only for her right to live but for the story she’d fought so hard for.
He sensed Mahoney was the same: an obsessive journalist who wouldn’t give up on the story. But Nathan had no way of knowing for sure.
“This is seriously crazy, you know that, right?” Mahoney said.
Nathan thought the journalist’s tone had softened. “Maybe.”
“So why do you need me?”
“You’re good cover. If I get stopped with a New York Times journalist beside me, I’m less likely to be detained by cops.”
“I wouldn’t guarantee that. Cops hate journalists.”
“How much cash have you got?”
“What, right now?”
“At your apartment here in Toronto. That you could access immediately.”
Mahoney sighed. “W
hy do you want to know that?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m a journalist. It’s what we do.”
“We’ll need to rent cars, take buses, trains, planes, whatever, to get where we need to go.”
“Shit, you’re serious.”
“Mark, I’m running out of patience. Trust me, if I have to get the photos released, so be it. So stop fucking around. I’m asking you a question. How much money can you get your hands on?”
“We have a checking account.”
“How much is in it?”
“About sixty thousand dollars I think.”
“Would you be able to withdraw ten thousand dollars?”
“What? My wife would know immediately.”
“Make up some story. That’s what you do, right, stories? So make up a goddamn story.”
“So you want me to come with you. And you’re going to kill people.”
“Honestly? I don’t know yet.”
“So I’d be an accomplice.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Mark. Besides, you could write a book about it. Blackmailed, threatened at gunpoint, blah, blah, blah.”
“Now you are fucking with me.”
“OK, time’s up. I need an answer. Either you come with me—and no, you don’t have to kill anyone, but you do have to do this—or your life won’t be worth shit.”
“What if I said I’ll do it? What guarantee have I got?”
“I don’t do guarantees.”
“I need to make sure my family is safe. Maybe I should warn them.”
“The best way to protect them is to listen to me. Do as I say. Get some sleep tonight. And tomorrow we go with the flow.”
Twenty-Nine
Just after eight the following morning, Nathan arrived at Toronto’s Union Station. He was dressed to impress. He wore a navy blazer, black polo shirt, nice jeans, and brown leather brogues. A short while later, he saw Mahoney.
“I must’ve lost my fucking mind,” the journalist said.
“Get over it.”
They boarded the Amtrak Maple Leaf train bound for New York Penn Station.
Nathan picked a table with no one near them ahead of the twelve-hour journey.
As the train pulled away, Nathan looked across at the journalist, who was scanning his iPad. He was checking his emails and reading articles from the Times.
Nathan sent a message from the handler’s phone to Wilson with a false update saying the neutralization was “imminent.” He wondered how it would all end. He had put in progress a series of events, and he didn’t know how they would unfold. He wondered if maybe he should have just continued with the mission. That thought was eating away at him from the inside.
Would he be signing his sister’s death warrant? Would he be signing his own?
The more he thought about it, off and on, as the hours passed, the more Nathan began to realize he might be in the final hours of his life. The decision to allow the handler to escape was high risk. It was just a matter of time before they realized the handler had gone, if they hadn’t already.
Then again, maybe his luck would hold. Nathan didn’t think the handler’s office would be cleaned. It would be accessible only to him and him alone. Secure.
Police stopped the train at the border and all the passengers’ passports and IDs, including Nathan’s fake one, were checked with their tickets.
Eventually, nearly an hour later, the train continued its journey to New York.
Mahoney looked up from his iPad. “This is never-ending. Ten hours to go. There’s got to be a better way of traveling.”
“There is. But the beauty of this, and bus and car, is that it’s a lot less intrusive than air travel. Fewer cameras. Less focus on bags. Stuff like that.”
Mahoney closed his eyes for a moment before he looked out of the window.
“Relax. You worry too much.”
“I have a family.”
“So do I. And she’s mentally ill, a sister who needs around-the-clock care in a specialist hospital.”
Mahoney nodded. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
“Don’t sweat it. Tell me, the Commission members in New York. What are their exact locations? I know New York better than anyone.”
“Trust me, I know New York too.”
Mahoney stared at him. “Where are you from?”
“The Bowery. Lower East Side.”
“It’s changed. And I mean changed.”
“I know.”
“Still has its moments. But now it’s all ethnic restaurants, college bars, that kind of thing.”
Nathan was quiet as his mind flashed back to his days in his shithole of a room with his sister. His memories of New York were always dominated by the pervasive smell of piss, mostly his own, wetting the bed as a boy, afraid of his father. But also the stinking garbage on the streets, the smell wafting through the vents in the wall and cracks in the windows.
The crazy wild-eyed heroin addicts roaming the streets. Looking to score. Some carried knives for protection. Some carried knives to get money. Mostly they just lay around, out of their fucking minds, as the city carried on around them. Walking over them. Walking around them. Trying not to make eye contact.
Nathan pushed those thoughts and memories to one side. “OK, let’s focus on the names on your list.”
Mahoney was ghostly white.
“I said let’s focus on the names on your list.”
“I heard.”
“So we have five current members of this Commission. The man that chairs it is . . .”
“Clayton Wilson, ex-director of the CIA.”
Nathan made a mental note. “And he lives where?”
“He lives in McLean, Virginia.”
“Handy for Langley.”
Mahoney didn’t smile.
“Who else?”
“Richard Stanton. He’s also CIA. Retired general Adam C. Johnson, retired admiral Charles Coleridge, and another former director of the CIA, Crawford McGovern.”
Mahoney nodded.
“And they get paid for this, or do they just volunteer their services for the good of the country?”
“Clayton Wilson is mentioned in the Panama Papers.”
“What’s that?”
“It was a massive leak that showed thousands of names of wealthy individuals, like Clayton Wilson, using shell companies for tax evasion.”
“And the rest of the Commission?”
“Cayman Islands companies. Shell companies. Set up for zero tax.”
“Nice. Interesting that these superpatriots make sure Uncle Sam doesn’t get their money, huh?” Nathan checked the special GPS tracking app he had installed on the handler’s cell phone. It showed them each at different locations at that moment, all on the East Coast.
Mahoney shook his head, holding it in his hands. “This is insane.”
“It could be worse.”
“How on God’s earth could it be worse?”
“Just shut up and stop bitching.”
“Yes.”
Nathan contemplated the scenario he was mulling in his brain. He checked the cell phone identity for Clayton Wilson and it showed his location in McLean. “What do you know about Wilson?”
Mahoney closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’re taking the fight to them. This is insanity.”
“I used to be in the army. And you learn to fight. And scrap. Do whatever you have to do to survive. Your deepest, darkest instincts kick in when you’re in the middle of hell.”
Mahoney said nothing.
“One of the first things I learned was not only how to kill but how to get your retaliation in first. Don’t wait for people to come to you. Go after them. Make them scared. Make them less powerful.”
“So what are you planning to do?”
“You don’t need to worry about that. Is Clayton Wilson married?”
Mahoney sighed and nodded. “Yes.”
“Family.”
> “He’s got a son.”
“Just one?”
“Why are you asking about his family?”
“Just curious. Tell me, you’re the journalist. How do you go about finding out who has family and who doesn’t? How do you do that?”
Mahoney cleared his throat. “I usually draw on different source material. It could be an official CIA press release from years ago, giving some details about the person. Also newspaper articles about him. And then pull together any number of magazine articles. If they’re a director of a company or an adviser, which they all are, that company might release details. Nonexecutive director, that kind of thing.”
Nathan contemplated this information for a few moments.
“What are you thinking?” Mahoney asked.
Nathan pulled out his cell phone and searched for “Clayton Wilson.” It showed hundreds of articles, including the transcript of a speech Wilson had given at the Global Security Forum, held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies a few years back. Wilson mentioned how his work had affected his family over the years. Namely, his wife and his son. Nathan then looked up Clayton Wilson on Wikipedia. He scrolled through the page, reading about Wilson’s elite background, his fast-track progress through the CIA, postings in shithole bureaus around the world, etc., etc. It said his son, Marshall Wilson, was president of Wilson Equity, a bespoke equity derivatives company with handpicked, high-net-worth private clients looking for spectacular returns. The company’s main office was located in Midtown Manhattan, close to Columbus Circle.
He reflected on this as the train cut through the lush countryside.
The journey dragged as passengers got on, lugging huge suitcases, backpacks, bags, and God knew what else.
Nathan liked to carry the absolute minimum with him. A backpack had to have everything in it.
His mind was racing as he thought ahead. He was already figuring it out. He began to imagine a scenario. A playbook. He knew it was nuts. He knew these were powerful people. And he knew their tentacles would extend beyond the Commission.
He began to think of their privileged lives. They had directorships. They were individually wealthy. Advising hedge funds and banks on geopolitical strategies. He’d read all about how generals hooked up with Wall Street. Everyone was in it. Lining their pockets. No questions asked.
