On The Black: (A CIA Thriller)

by Theo Cage

  Grace raised her hand. Scott turned to look at her, his brows furrowed.

  “I want to talk to them,” she said. Scott squinted, clearly trying to understand what that could mean down the line. He didn't look like he was willing to take the risk, but in the end he interrupted the conversation.

  “Grace wants to talk to you,” then he handed the phone to her.

  “Is this Kreegar or one of his yes-men?” She studied her fingernails for a few seconds, surprising everyone in the room with her coolness. “Of course, Kreegar never dirties his hands. But he's probably listening in. I hear he likes to watch too.”

  Scott looked to his wife and lifted his shoulders. They exchanged a look. Grace looked out at the pool through the patio doors, the calm azure blue of the water belying the tension clinging to everyone in the room like a bad smell.

  “Here's what you need to tell Kreegar. And you need to do it now. Disturb his golf game or his shiatsu massage or his weekly target practice at National Shooters in Arlington. Just mention Remington. Remington is his son. He's currently at West Point studying to be an officer. Except, right now, Jimmy has him. Yes, Jimmy. If he doesn't suffer cardiac arrest the second you tell him, have him call me at this number.”

  CHAPTER 69

  Washington, D.C.

  WHEN KREEGAR GOT THE MESSAGE from one of Razer's security agents, his face turned crimson and he bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood in his mouth. Jimmy. He always suspected that maggot worked for Rice.

  Jimmy was a military technician. One of the best. Rice had met the young operative during an assignment in Pakistan. The team selected him for tech duty because he was clever with makeshift - he had a knack for building gear out of whatever was handy. He was famous in the service for bread boarding a GPS unit in the field once in thirty minutes from spare Humvee parts. Jimmy could have eyes and ears on anyone. He planted a webcam once on a gerbil that sat in a cage in the bedroom of a Taliban General. He was also an artist with C4, but that’s another story.

  Jimmy was on Rice’s friends list. They had attempted to monitor him for a decade, with almost no success. He knew how to escape surveillance better than anyone they had worked with. He was almost too much trouble.

  And now he was sticking his nose into Kreegar’s personal life. Did he have a death wish?

  Kreegar didn’t call the Scott Rice residence; he called his son's cell. And to his surprise, Remington picked up the call on the first ring.

  “Rem! Are you OK?” asked Kreegar.

  “Not really, sir. Uhhh, I guess I've been kidnapped.”

  “What do you mean guess? Either you're being held against your will or you're not.” And then another voice picked up the call.

  “George. How lovely to speak to you. I've heard so much about you,” said Jimmy.

  “Listen you fuck-tard. You so much as scuff that boys shoes and I will personally hunt you down to the ends of the earth.”

  “George. Calm down, buddy. Sorry to break this to you, but the world has no ends. It's not flat like they taught you in History class in the 1800's.”

  “I will eviscerate you ...”

  “OK. Just email me all of your threats. I don't really have the time for this. Your son is a lovely boy. And I will be especially careful about the shine on his boots, since that seems to matter so much to you. But if you touch Scott Rice or his wife or his children or so much as look askance at Grace, I will shoot your son in the fucking head.”

  “I'm not bargaining with you ...”

  “Right. You're not bargaining. You're listening and complying.” The circuit went quiet for several seconds, Kreegar considering his limited options.

  “I need to talk to Rice,” said Kreegar.

  “I'll tell him you called.”

  “There has to be a way to work this out. Too many people are at risk.”

  “I think you thought that was all fine and dandy until sonny boy here got involved.”

  “Nobody is as young as we used to be - when this whole thing started. We've all changed,” said Kreegar.

  “Well, I know I've changed, Kreegar. I used to be afraid of you. Now I just think you're a pathetic old has-been.”

  . . . . .

  JIMMY WAS HURRIEDLY TEXTING RICE. He had acted cocky on the phone to Kreegar, but now he was facing reality. The guy was a stone cold assassin - ruthlessly clever and unrelenting. Shit - he had kept a hate-on for Rice for over ten years. Did Jimmy really want that kind of high-caliber attention from a legendary maniac? He struggled with the last line of text and then punched the enter key.

  His hostage, Remington, seemed as little like his father as one could possible imagine. For one thing, he wasn't as ugly as a troll, which appeared to be a Kreegar family distinction. Who married men like this - stooped, deformed and full of limitless rage? Apparently the unions didn't last either. Remington told him his mother has lived in Salt Lake City since the mid-nineties.

  The young cadet, still smelling of beer, was duct-taped to a folding chair about three feet from a TV bolted to the wall in a two-star motel in Yonkers. Three ex-marines, who were freelancers, accomplished the task the previous night. Remington was partying with some buddies at a local bar. When he went to the washroom, about midnight, he disappeared. He was now AWOL, which bothered him more than the duct tape pulling the short hairs off his wrist or the PP3 revolver lying beside Jimmy's tablet.

  What worried Jimmy more than anything was Kreegar's power. He had access to the FBI and the CIA's power bases - every kind of bit or byte imaginable - credit card data, phone data, police, traffic, security cameras. Yet here Jimmy sat, by himself, in a motel that smelled of desperation and stale cigarettes, his ass hanging out in the wind. He didn't think this would end well. It was never a good idea to give the finger to the meanest asshole in the tribe. Which is exactly what Kreegar was.

  CHAPTER 70

  Bismarck, ND

  BRITT WAS RELEASED by the Feds exactly twenty-four hours after they picked her up. As a result, she was angry, sleep-deprived, and needed a shower. These men who claimed to be Homeland Security, asked her endless questions convinced that she had heard something from Rice that would provide a clue to his whereabouts. She insisted that he was quite upfront with her. He was on the run. He didn't know where he was going next, and he was protecting her by not saying more than that. But they didn't believe her.

  They would say nothing about him, though she tried her hardest to bargain with them.

  “Give me some background. Maybe it will trigger a memory or a comment I've forgotten,” she said.

  They just stared at her. Then they released her into the night without a word.

  She called a cab in the parking lot of the old car dealership. On the way home she was fairly certain they were following her or keeping her home under surveillance. But what could she do? She was convinced she had nothing that could act as a clue to Rice’s whereabouts. Maybe he'd scrawled his destination in the layer of dust under her bed or ... maybe she was just never going to see him again. She could tell her grandkids stories about the spaceman who came to live with her for a week. That would be all she had from their chance meeting. That, and a hole in her heart.

  When she arrived at home, she inspected every bookshelf and ceiling fan for evidence of hidden cameras. She found layers of dust undisturbed, books unmoved for years. She was almost disappointed. The bedroom was exactly as she had left it, no pinhole cameras installed in the ceiling or wires attached to the bedside phone. And yes, she did check under the bed. No messages anywhere.

  Satisfied she was away from prying eyes, she locked the bathroom door, lowered the blinds and undressed. If Homeland Security had stooped this far, and was monitoring her washroom, well then gentlemen, get your jollies while you can. She turned to remove her underwear. When she turned back, she gasped. Once the steam had risen in the shower, she could see that someone had written a message in soap on the glass door that the mist made visible. The same shower she and the s
paceman had shared the day before.

  A phone number. Rice had left her a phone number.

  . . . . .

  BRITT WAS SMART ENOUGH to know not to use her house phone or her cell. Who knew what capabilities these spooks had today? She needed to use someone else's phone. The obvious solution was to use a phone at the hospital. There was no way someone could monitor the hundreds of lines that came in and out of a modern medical center. In any case, she needed to talk to her floor supervisor who was going to be very upset that Britt had missed her last shift. She could work out the coming week with her and use the phone at the patient intake desk.

  When she arrived at staff parking for St. Alexius, she felt that tiny jolt again. She was certain she was being watched. She hadn't seen a tail, but maybe someone thought meeting Rice at the hospital might be a smart move. Someone might be waiting there for her. Who did they think she was? A temptress working for Jihad! Irresistible to government spies?

  She tried to laugh, but couldn't generate the necessary light heartedness. And she still felt a low-level current of dread flowing through her.

  She turned around and drove out of the parking lot, hoping an idea would come to her. That was when she passed a convenience store. She remembered a movie she had seen once where a cocaine dealer bought a cheap pay-as-you-go phone at a drugstore. She didn’t even know how that worked, but she was willing to test the theory. She pulled into the lot and went in. Unable to find any on display, she asked the young American-Korean girl behind the counter, her hair dyed bleach-blond, if they carried pay-as-you-go cell phones.

  The girl reached under the counter and pulled out a pink phone wrapped in thick clear plastic packaging.

  “Fifty dollars,” she said. “Good for one month. You want more, you recharge.”

  “You've got a deal. But only if you can remove the packaging. Last time I tried, I nearly severed an artery.”

  Five minutes later, Britt was standing in the parking lot, the cheap phone up to her ear. She dialed the number Rice had left her. She had never felt so anxious. Now was the perfect time for the Feds to swoop down on her, the incriminating phone number glowing on the display. But she wasn’t seeing any sinister-looking black SUV's converging on her location. Then someone answered.

  “Rice? Is that you?” she asked, shakily.

  “Britt. I thought you’d never call.”

  Britt felt her heart surge in her chest. She found the spaceman.

  CHAPTER 71

  Interstate 70, Maryland

  MINUTES AFTER HIS MEETING with Trent Razer in Edgewood, Sumner got in his car and headed for Interstate 70. He was now eleven hours away from Chicago, and though he still hadn't had any real sleep for days, he felt he couldn't afford to waste any more time. And he had no official budget or approval to fly.

  As soon as he hit the freeway, he called his contact in Quantico.

  “Have you got anything on a Sergio Falco, a small time hood in Chicago?” He got a call back ten minutes later.

  “Two arrests. One for extortion and another for assault. He's mixed up with the Benno family. Loan sharking and protection.”

  “Anything recent? You know where I can find him?”

  “You think he's part of this Ruffino vendetta?”

  “One of our wiretaps connects him with the reward Ruffino’s offering. Sergio claims to have Blum.”

  “Then you've already got his phone number.”

  “Nobody’s answering.”

  “Give me the number and we'll get you a location.” Sumner provided the co-ordinates the wiretap team had fed him.

  Five minutes later, still anxious and worried, visions of Addie taped up and locked up in some hoods basement, he tried Sergio's number again.

  . . . . .

  RICE, WHO HAD GONE FOR YEARS without a smartphone, now had two. One in each jacket pocket. He had just returned the burner to his right, following his talk with Britt.

  She had questions. The Razers had been blunt. They’d told her he was a criminal, a deluded fanatic. They tried to turn her, appeal to her patriotism. She still wanted to see him again.

  Rice told her she was being followed. You think? she laughed nervously. He explained to her how she could shake the tail. Once she was on the road she should call him and they would make arrangements.

  When he finished the call he felt vaguely guilty. She was free of him and now he was inviting her back in. He looked over and saw Addie watching him. Then he felt the phone he had taken from the gangster vibrating. He handed it to Addie.

  “What's the number?”

  “Not Ruffino, if that's what you're thinking,” said Addie.

  “Somebody doesn't know that Sergio is dead or in the hospital. Probably some gambler looking for a loan.”

  Addie shrugged and answered the call.

  “Hello,” she said.

  There was a pause at the other end, an intake of breath and the sound of a radio tuned to a county station.

  “Addie? Is that you?” said a male voice. She pressed the End Call button. Rice was looking at her.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Wrong number,” said Addie.

  . . . . .

  SUMNER FELT LIKE A JUNKY that just had his first fix after coming out of rehab. His hands were shaking so badly he had a hard-time turning down the radio. Addie had answered the call, he was certain of it. He had listened to her voice on dozens of recordings. She had a distinctive huskiness to her voice that he found riveting. What was she doing answering the loan shark's phone? He replayed the one word of dialogue over and over in his head.

  Hello.

  Bored, not excited.

  Hello.

  Casual, not fearful. She sounded as far from a hostage as a person could sound. Had she stolen Sergio's phone and was on the run? But wouldn't someone be reluctant to answer in those circumstances? But she was alive and she sounded very calm. Sumner was hopeful. She was very resourceful. She may have tricked the thug and was hiding somewhere.

  Sumner tried again. No answer. Pick-up he kept saying to himself. Please pick up.

  He had the right answer now, the response that would start a conversation.

  Then his phone buzzed in his hand. It was Quantico again.

  “We've got a triangulation on Sergio's phone. He's been heading south for the last fifteen minutes, traveling at about seventy miles an hour. He's two hours outside of Chicago on highway 65 South. The next major city is Indianapolis.”

  Addie was in a car, back on the highway, with a mobster's cell phone. Sumner had one of those epiphanies then. Maybe he really knew nothing about her at all. Maybe she was involved with this gangster. Or the mob. Maybe that explained her living this long with such a reward on her head. And who was the older guy she was with? The one who had the ex-military agent following him.

  Sumner's phone buzzed again. Quantico.

  “It's on the news right now. Find a news radio station. Sergio Falco’s dead. Along with three others killers-for-hire.”

  Sumner hung up, pressed the gas pedal down harder. He was about six hours away from Addie. She was up ahead somewhere, on the very same road, looking at the same featureless horizon, her head still full of secrets he needed to understand. One of them being, who killed those four mobsters in Chicago.

  CHAPTER 72

  Cape Cod, Massachusetts

  THE MODERN EQUIVALENT OF THE ROYAL GUARD, a senior security agent working for the ex-President, led Kreegar into a massive study on the main floor of the Wheeler mansion. The room temperature was set to frigid, which was just fine with Kreegar. The weather was unusually hot and dry for this time of year - he had passed a team of firefighters working on a grass fire in the sand hills that looked out of control. He hoped the meeting was brief. He didn’t want to spend the weekend here.

  “How did you get through the barricades?” asked ex-President Wheeler, stepping around the massive desk in his study. “They've been up for a week.”

  “Popped your name,” sai
d Kreegar, shaking his hand.

  “Surprised that works anymore. It's been eight years.”

  “President Carter can still open doors and he's almost a hundred. Don't underestimate the power of the position.”

  Wheeler pointed to a wooden straight-backed chair facing his desk. Kreegar sat stiffly. “Why didn't you tell me about Rice sooner?” asked the ex-President.

  “Rice was not a concern until now,” said Kreegar.

  “The man avoided detection for ten years. He has always been a concern. But now that he's escaped you again, I believe I deserve at least a warning.”

  “That's why I'm here.”

  “You’re here because I ordered you here. Let's not confuse the two. Why is he still alive?”

  Kreegar twisted his mouth sideways, a trait of his. “He was trained by the best the U.S. has to offer.”

  “Very patriotic, Kreegar. But that doesn't help me sleep at night.”

  “I'm as sleep deprived as you are, sir. I have just as much to lose.”

  The ex-President raised both arms. “Last time I looked you didn't have a mortgage on a villa in Cape Cod and four kids in College.”

  “No sir, I don't. But you know what I mean.”

  Wheeler stepped around his desk again and pushed Kreegar off his chair onto the thick carpet. Kreegar couldn't hide a look of surprise. He wasn't a physical man; he only sparred intellectually. He had heard stories about Wheeler though. He used to box while at Harvard as a student. Very competitive. A killer instinct.

  Wheeler cocked his right leg and kicked Kreegar in the head, right in the temple with a very substantial steel-toed Berlutti boot. Kreegar moaned and then abruptly threw up into his hand, afraid to spit anything out and ruin the hand-made carpet.

  Wheeler stood above him. “Sometimes you need to burn your fingers on the stove, George. There is no message so powerful as one accompanied by pain. Here is that message. Kill Rice. I don't need to speak to him any longer or cut off his tongue for entertainment. Just kill the fucker. Is that getting through that industrial-strength mangled skull of yours?”