Sanders smiled inside. There was a reason he’d reached out to Porter first. The man was solid. They all were, in their own ways. Sato had made his name as a State Department diplomat. A career diplomat who’d served the nation during his time there, not just the political establishment in power at the moment. Harrison had spent thirty of her fifty years on earth working for the Department of Defense. Twenty years in the infantry, and the remaining ten as a civilian contractor who’d worked hotspots across the globe. The truth was, Sanders knew, she could kill any of the four standing with her using nothing more than the annoying scarf flapping about. Or her bare hands. Then there was Lane, a lawyer who spent his time behind the scenes crafting indictment documents for the Department of Justice. He like to complain that he worked in a cave constructed with legal texts, and his almost ghostly complexion seemed to support that claim.
“What is it, then?” Harrison asked. “Why are we here?”
“An extreme innocent,” Sanders told them. “One we’ve intervened on behalf of before.”
“Who?” Sato pressed.
“Simon Lynch,” Sanders answered.
Looks volleyed between those who had come, confusion in the exchanges.
“Who is he?” Lane asked.
Sanders took a few minutes to share the particulars, three of the four he’d summoned having no idea who Simon Lynch was. He explained how Simon had cracked an NSA supercode wide open with his damaged mind, and how forces from within and outside the government had set their sights on him. Only through Jefferson’s bravery, he explained, combined with Pritchard’s covert intercedence, had the young man survived.
“So he’s under care and protection,” Lane said. “We put him there.”
“Mr. Pritchard put him there,” Sanders corrected. “He arranged for Simon to have the best life possible.”
Harrison half chuckled with disgust. “But someone saw an opportunity.”
“Yes,” Sanders confirmed. “An effort was undertaken to find a way into Simon’s mind. To free it.”
“How the hell do you do that?” Lane asked.
Porter put his hand out and rubbed thumb and fingers together. “Money.”
“A lot of money,” Sanders said. “Our side has too much invested to consider failure an option.”
“He’s being damaged?” Sato asked.
“Jefferson was worried,” Sanders said.
“Jefferson ate his gun,” Lane reminded them.
Porter shifted his attention fully to the younger man. “You were the last to sign on with us. You’ve never even participated in this level of decision or action. So maybe listen before adding useless information to the discussion.”
Lane, though, was not backing down. “I saw the report. It went all the way up to the AG. The man wasn’t stable.”
Sanders puzzled on that for a moment. That Lane had been privy to the FBI report on Art Jefferson’s suicide didn’t surprise him. The beauty of what Mr. Pritchard had conceived was its reach. A loose group of individuals, with fingers in all aspects of government, who could be called upon to sanction and carry out actions for the greater good. But what Lane had said about the Attorney General being in the direct loop of the reporting on Jefferson was, at the very least, curious.
That curiosity, though, would have to wait to be satisfied.
“I tend to think our young associate has raised a valid point,” Sato said. “Are we basing any of this potential involvement on what a disturbed man has indicated?”
“There’s more,” Sanders said.
The group quieted, some gravity in the way the man who’d brought them together had spoken those two words.
“Outsiders are making moves,” Sanders told them. “Operators have been taken off the market for actions inside our borders. Surveillance. Possibly more.”
“Are there specific targets?” Harrison asked.
“People associated with Jefferson,” Sanders said. “His replacement, in particular. An agent named Emily LaGrange.”
Harrison looked to Porter. “They’re trying to locate Simon Lynch through her.”
The CIA field officer nodded.
“Who’s contracting the operators?” Lane asked.
“Unknown,” Sanders said. “European, almost certainly.”
There were indicators that had shown up on Ezekiel Sanders’ radar after he’d become aware of Simon Lynch again. Jefferson’s actions leading up to his suicide, including a memo he’d drafted which had been buried by the Bureau, were enough to cause his interest in the savant to rise. Money transfers from ‘ghost’ accounts to those who could rightly be termed mercenaries only added to his concern. Still, though, there was more. More that was troubling. Even terrifying.
“The ghost accounts paying for these operators have also made payments to someone else,” Sanders added. “Someone named Stanislaw Venn.”
“Jesus,” Sato said. He looked to the others, his expression visibly grave. “The Russian who leveled an entire research facility.”
“Yes,” Sanders said. Information on what government entities had labeled ‘The Novosibirsk Event’ was restricted. False information on the incident had been fed to news organizations. A gas explosion cover story had seemed to satisfy the brief interest which had been generated. But, behind the scenes, both the American and Russian governments were more than a little concerned. Panicked wasn’t the correct term. Not yet.
“You’re saying someone who paid Venn is also paying operators to find Simon Lynch,” Porter said.
“I’m saying we can’t risk that being a fact we discover too late,” Sanders told him.
“That is a risk,” Harrison said. “But the greater risk is to us. To what we might do someday in the future.”
“You’re right,” Sanders said, allowing her concern, if not embracing it altogether. “Mr. Pritchard preached that up and down. Exposure would destroy what we can accomplish.”
Lane nodded, thinking before looking to Sanders. “This risk is worth it.”
“This is more than an extreme innocent,” Sato said. “The fear I’ve heard at State is that Venn conceived some new sort of weapon. That fear is shared by the Russians, and they have a greater chance of knowing his capabilities than we do.”
“How the hell can he be connected to Simon Lynch?” Harrison wondered.
Sanders didn’t answer. He looked to Porter. The man had shared something with him some time back, in a social setting. That was primarily how the group exchanged information. At gatherings. Conferences. Cocktail parties. The lifeblood of Washington D.C. was relationships, and those in the group often found themselves innocently together at such events.
“Tell them,” Sanders said.
Porter had shared what he’d heard within the Agency as he and Sanders strolled by a backyard pond at an estate in Maryland, drinks in hand, koi swimming in the waters at their feet. Doing so had been a violation of every security protocol he’d agreed to uphold when joining the home of the nation’s spooks. But he’d soon come to realize that, like any government entity, what was good was often counterbalanced by what was bad. Accepting that dynamic was one way to deal with that reality. Pledging to do more, to do right, was another, and that path had led him to Pritchard, and, ultimately, to the conversation with Sanders almost a year ago.
“I’m revealing an NSA operation here,” Porter said, hesitating for a moment.
“We’re not fools,” Sato reminded him.
No cell phones. No electronics of any kind could be within earshot when they were meeting in person. Sanders had instituted that security protocol after Pritchard’s death, understanding more than his late mentor just how invasive the seemingly innocuous devices could be. And how dangerous.
“Mine’s at the hotel,” Harrison assured Porter.
“No one has their phone,” Sato said. “Get on with it.”
Porter nodded, taking everyone at their word.
“While they’ve been working to unlock Lynch’s brain, the NS
A has been providing access to him through a black program,” Porter said.
“Come again?” Sato prodded.
“They sell time with him like he’s some supercomputer,” Sanders explained. “To scientists.”
“There’s a tightly controlled vetting process for applications,” Porter went on. “You have to be approved, and then your problems, your formulas, whatever, they’re submitted to Lynch through a secure communications link.”
“Scientists,” Harrison said, parroting something Sanders had said. “Was Venn given access to Simon Lynch?”
Porter hesitated, then nodded. “Over CIA objections.”
“There’s the link,” Harrison said. “Paymaster to Venn, Venn to Lynch, paymaster to operators looking for Lynch.”
“The implication is that Simon Lynch gave Venn something to advance whatever weapon he was working on,” Sato suggested.
“A strong implication,” Porter said.
“Venn is dead,” Sanders said. “Maybe because his weapon worked too well.”
“Thanks to Simon Lynch,” Sato added.
“So Lynch holds the key to this weapon?” Lane asked. “That’s what we’re concluding?”
“That is what the available information seems to show,” Sanders said.
“Seems,” Lane repeated, still uncomfortable with the hint of uncertainty. “Seems.”
“I think we’re past ‘seems’,” Sato told both Sanders and his doubter. “If this is all accurate, someone wants Lynch so they can recreate what Venn was doing.”
“What kind of weapon are we talking about?” Harrison asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sato said. “Making certain that it stays buried with Venn is what we’re here to do.”
“You accomplish that by putting a bullet in Simon Lynch’s head,” Harrison said with cold surety. “And we’re not going to do that.”
“No,” Sanders agreed. “We’re not. We’re here to agree to do one simple thing—save Simon Lynch so that he never needs saving again.”
The others considered what the man, who was their de facto leader, was proposing. Together, as five individuals, they were no match for the forces gathering to both exploit Simon Lynch, and to take him. But they could decide to take action. To send their own forces into the battle.
“It’s been a long time,” Porter reminded the group. “How many operators will still come if we call?”
Operators…
It was a term that Sanders despised. Some special ops type had concocted it at some point in time to give what unconventional warriors did a sense of technical flair. But at the end of the day they were still warriors.
We all are, Sanders thought.
The operators, the warriors, whom they could call upon were not those who wore any uniform, though many had. They were, by necessity, ordinary men and women. College students. Grandmothers. The invisible everyday person who drew little notice when walking their dog past a suspected enemy’s vehicle. Or when feigning a seizure to distract an adversary. Or, when necessary, putting a fusillade of bullets into someone who was threatening an extreme innocent.
“They’ll come,” Sanders said, confident in that aspect of the equation. The other part, though, was still an open question. “If we call. So, do we do this?”
There was silence for a moment, each member of the group considering whether to move forward and intervene, once again, to save Simon Lynch.
“You have a plan formed?” Sato asked.
Sanders drew a breath, the icy Atlantic air filling his lungs. He nodded.
“I’ve had a plan for twenty years,” he told them.
They all seemed puzzled by his reply, and uncertain as to what it meant in full. But they were not here to debate or critique an action. What to do was up to Sanders. They were required only to give him a green light and support the actions to bring the operation to a successful conclusion.
“Yes,” Harrison said, the first to add her stamp of approval.
“I say we go,” Porter agreed.
Sato waited, looking to the youngest of their group. Lane shifted his gaze amongst those who’d done more, and seen more, than he likely ever would. That was one of the reasons he’d aligned himself with the group when approached by Sanders a decade earlier—to learn. To grow. To understand why, and how, the world had so many dark places that so few people like those he stood with were willing to confront. Good people. Doing right.
“Go,” Lane said.
Sato turned to Sanders. “Yes.”
The breath Sanders had taken slipped slowly past his lips, fogging in the cold, damp air for an instant until a gust dragged it away. He was relieved. But only for a moment. There was danger in not acting, but there was greater danger in acting. And the first steps of their action had to be taken soon.
“Ready those people you can call on,” Sanders told the others. After that more general statement, he fixed his gaze on Lane. “You need to get moving as quickly as you can.”
Lane knew what was coming. “The paymaster.”
Sanders nodded and handed the younger man a slip of paper. “I want to know who we’re up against here.”
“You mean other than our own people?” Harrison asked.
The other side is us…
Lane opened the folded note and scanned the contents before tucking it in his pocket. “I’ll have something in two days.”
“Good,” Sanders said.
There was no more to decide, or to discuss. Each of them had aligned themselves with an action that was illegal in the eyes of the government they served. But necessary when considered against the ideals upon which the nation had been founded.
“Good luck,” Porter said, then walked past Sanders and headed for his car. Harrison followed, then Lane.
Sato did not leave with the others. He stood for a moment with Sanders, each of them looking out at the churning Atlantic.
“Pritchard would have never done this,” Sato said.
“I know,” Sanders told him. “One intervention was a risk. A second could be suicide.”
Sato nodded at that observation. “Simon Lynch better be worth the risk. Otherwise, someone might see what Harrison said as a viable option.”
Sanders nodded at the roaring surf. A bullet in the head would certainly keep an adversary from securing what Simon Lynch was capable of. It would also deny his brilliance to those who were exploiting him now. If the decision ever had to be made, kill him or let him go, what would the powers that held sway over him choose? Expedience or mercy?
“Many might see that as the best possible outcome,” Sato said. Sanders looked to the man from State. “The playing field is level again. No super mind to give an advantage.”
“And you?”
Sato thought for a moment. “I’d rather take that bullet for him than be an accessory to letting it happen.”
The man looked to Sanders and gave a small nod and a smile, then patted the group’s leader on the shoulder as he walked past. A moment later he, too, was gone, his car pulling away from the lighthouse complex.
Sanders stood alone for a moment and looked to the lighthouse. Its beacon rotated automatically, even in daylight, warning those at sea who might venture to close to the rocky shore. There were few equivalents of that in daily life, he thought. A car could hit you as you stepped off a curb. Spilled water could lead to a crippling slip. Genetics might trigger a cancer which had already plagued previous generations of a single family, like it had his grandfather, and his father.
And now him.
He had no intention of sharing such personal information with the group. If he had, they might have thought he’d decided to intervene as some last hurrah before the disease already ravaging his insides took him out. A personal swan song. Some Quixotic exit from life’s stage.
It was none of that, he knew. Simon Lynch needed them. Saving him was the right thing to do. Such a concept was, at one time, simple to understand, and to accept. Now it was considered little
more than a quaint adventure. The world was too complicated, many said. Issues were hued in shades of grey, not stark black and white.
“Bullshit,” Sanders said toward the howling Atlantic.
He was in the right. They were in the right. That knowledge, that belief, was going to power them forward this time. Maybe his last time.
Spray from the waves misted up from the rocks, rolling toward Sanders. But he was gone, walking back to his car. There would be no long drive this time. Portland International Jetport was a five-mile drive inland. He’d drop his car and purchase a ticket once there. A one-way to Minneapolis. That was where the woman who was unwittingly at the center of all to come lived, and where she would return after meeting Simon Lynch for the first time.
That was where Sanders would play his part. Just as Pritchard had with Jefferson, he would share the reality of what lay ahead for her, and for Simon. It was likely that she would resist his overture, and any offer of help. He expected as much. After studying her Bureau files, it had become clear to him that, despite the misgivings many held about her, she was cut from the same cloth as the man she was replacing. Hard headed. Tenacious. Abrasive when pushed.
She also was like him. Like those in the group he headed. She’d done the right thing when a terrible choice had been presented to her. And she was paying dearly for that.
No matter what, though, she would have to come to realize that Simon Lynch needed saving. That he deserved it. And that she could either play a part in the man’s salvation, or in his demise.
* * *
Four hours sleep.
That was what Emily LaGrange was working on. Throw in the two glasses of soda she’d nearly inhaled since taking a seat in the diner across from her motel and she was able to function. Mostly.
“You sure you don’t want coffee?” the waitress asked, approaching the booth where Emily sat alone for the third time in ten minutes. “It’s better than that sugar crap.”
“Coffee’s never been my thing,” Emily told the woman who seemed thirty but looked forty. Maybe forty-five. This was likely a second job for her. Maybe a third. No ring on her finger. Bags under here eyes. Two children, Emily guessed, in school or child care while their mama tried to make ends meet.
Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5) Page 8
