Black Ops Bundle: Volume One

by Allan Leverone

  "It's about time," a voice sang from within one of the many stone alcoves.

  Declan turned to see Shane O'Reilly leaning up against the church, wearing a tan overcoat and a brown long island cap, tufts of his curly red hair sticking out above his ears. A broad smile formed on the man's face as he stepped forward.

  "It's good to see ya, ya Fenian bastard," he said.

  Declan felt his own mouth curl into a wide grin. "Aye, good to see ya."

  "I was afraid you wouldn't make it," Shane said, his face turning serious. "They've got you jammed up pretty bad."

  Shane withdrew a copy of the Daily Telegraph from inside his coat and unfolded it, handing it over. Declan took the newspaper and inspected the bottom of the front page, where the headline talked about the nationwide search going on for him in the United States.

  "We've got only one advantage at this point," Shane said, "they don't know you're here, yet."

  "Aye, but it's not going to stay that way for long."

  Shane chuckled. "I don't want to know how you got yourself here, do I?"

  "Are you sure there's no one following you? Nobody from the spook house knows we're connected?"

  Shane shook his head. "Nah, I don't think they know. If they do they're not too fussed about it, because I'm certain I wasn't followed. I've booked myself out for the next two days to meet with informers around the country. To everyone back at Thames House you're simply agent 3210, one of the twenty or so agents I'm in charge of handling."

  Declan nodded. "Aye, sounds like a grand cover, but what're they gonna do once they learn I'm here?"

  Shane grimaced. "Same thing any government does, I suppose. Send alerts out to every police station in the country with a picture and instructions on what to do and who to call if you're spotted."

  "That's not what I mean. I mean what're they going to do about you when they find out I'm here? They may not be worried about our connection now, but if they know about it, I guarantee they will be when that little fact reaches their ears."

  Shane placed his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. "I don't think they know. But that's all the more reason why we need to get moving and make this as short a visit as possible."

  "Aye. Have you had any luck with finding out who we're looking for?"

  Shane shook his head. "I'm afraid all I can tell you is that it came straight from the top through the Deputy Director himself. Very rare for my department these days, so whoever's after you is well-connected."

  "Where does the Deputy Director get his orders from?"

  "From the Director-General and the Joint Intelligence Committee, a weekly meeting of the minds for all the intelligence-related services in Great Britain."

  "Who attends?"

  "I don't know for sure. It's real hush hush kind of stuff and unfortunately I'm just not at that level. I know it's chaired by a permanent chairman from Whitehall and that the committee itself is made up of the heads of the three intelligence agencies; Five, Six and GCHQ, as well as advisors, staffers and representatives from various ministries, all related to defense. Honestly, I really can't tell you any more about it than Wikipedia probably can."

  "Does anyone from foreign governments attend or is this strictly a British affair?"

  "Supposedly the London station chiefs of certain intelligence agencies from around the world attend when matters concerning their nations are being discussed, but I don't have any idea who they are or how often they attend."

  "Well, it would only be nations that are allied with Great Britain, right? That would certainly include the United States. The CIA has a presence in London, don't they?"

  "Aye, it's unofficial, but they have an office at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Five works with them sometimes when interests coincide, but most of that is on Islamic terrorism these days. I haven't seen the CIA in my department in a good while."

  "But there is a CIA boss in London and that could very well be the person we're looking for. Do you have any idea who it is?"

  Shane shook his head. "No. They don't exactly broadcast their people's names. I can't say for sure, but I'd venture a guess that they're all undercover to some degree. Even if you walked down the hallways of Grosvenor Square and read the nameplates on the doors you'd probably only come up with a bunch of fake job titles."

  Declan shook his head.

  "Look," Shane said, as if he was trying to defend himself, "I'm a Grade 5 salaried intelligence officer, Dec. I can't exactly ring the members of the Joint Intelligence Committee for tea."

  "It's okay. It's grand. We just need to think this through. These people are bureaucrats. They're like mating garter snakes, all in a big ball seeing who can screw the one lone female the fastest."

  Shane's face twisted in mock disgust. "Jesus, Dec—"

  "I mean they're all connected in ways that would make the average person's head swim. Now think who and what from the intelligence community has been in the news lately, for any reason."

  Shane thought for a moment and then took back the newspaper he'd handed Declan. Opening it to a page about three quarters of the way through he said, "Here," then handed it back. He stabbed a finger at a lengthy article containing a picture of an older gentleman with graying blonde hair who was standing next to two Irish wolfhounds alongside an aging rock wall. "That's all I can think of."

  "Lord Dennis Allardyce," Declan said aloud, as he scanned the article, the acting director-general of the Security Service. I remember him. He used to be friends with my father."

  Shane looked up suddenly. "He was what?"

  "A friend of my da's."

  "Do you think he remembers you?"

  "I doubt it. That was a long time ago. I wasn't but nine or ten. Why's he the acting director-general?"

  "Because the bleedin' sod that was in charge couldn't keep his willie in his Y-fronts and damn near caused an international incident, bloodied the poor bird up a bit as well. Allardyce has been appointed temporarily, but is expected to be confirmed as the permanent replacement within a matter of weeks. As such, he sits in the weekly meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee."

  "So he was there when the request was made?"

  Shane nodded. "Aye, should've been."

  "Then that's who we need to talk to."

  Shane glared in disbelief. "Dec, we can't just walk up and knock on his door. He's the head of the Security Service. Going to him would be like turning yourself in."

  "He's the only person we know of that was in that room. So unless you have any other ideas, he's all we've got."

  "Alright, alright," Shane said, putting his hands up in submission and looking around the churchyard. "But what if he made the request himself? What if they're all connected, like you said, and whoever's after you put the request directly to Allardyce?"

  "No, I don't think so," Declan said, continuing to scan the article. "If they had access to someone like Allardyce, the orders given to you yesterday probably would have come much earlier. Instead they had to wait until the meeting, which likely means that it was someone not connected to the British Government."

  "Someone like the CIA Station Chief."

  "Exactly."

  "Alright, grand, let's just say you're right and Allardyce can point you in the right direction. What makes you think he will? What makes you think he'll help?"

  "I don't know if you remember or not, but Allardyce once held another position before his rise to the level of the Lords Temporal or whatever he is now. He's been in the British Civil Service a long time; he used to be the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the early 1980s, which is how he knew my father."

  Shane thought for a moment and finally nodded. "Yeah, we were barely old enough to be out of nappies, but I think I remember."

  Declan smiled in amusement. "Well, you might've been late to toilet training, Shane, but in seventy-nine I was campaigning with my da' for parliament and I remember Allardyce. He was the closest thing the IRA had to a friend in the British govern
ment during those years. He honestly thought the Catholic population had been done wrong by and at least tried to be understanding of the IRA's position, a fact that didn't exactly win him a lot of friends after events like the Mountbatten assassination and the Warrenpoint ambush. The bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in eighty-four ended his tenure. By then Da' and Mum had been murdered and I'd been in and out of orphanages and was flirting with the 'Ra. I never saw him again after my parents' funeral."

  "And you're thinking that if we can get to him, talk to him and tell him the truth of your situation, then maybe he can help us find out who made that request and that may lead us to the person who's behind all of this? It's a bit of a long shot, but I suppose it's the best we've got."

  "Aye, it's the best we've got," Declan said, pointing to the picture in the article. "Where is this?"

  "Greumach Manor is in Scotland. About two hours west of Aberdeen in the Cairngorm Mountains."

  "That's a long way, but the article says he's spent every weekend there since he was a boy. Let's hope that's a tradition he's continued now that he's the nation's top spook."

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  9:14 a.m. Eastern Time – Friday

  Constitutional Condominiums

  6th St. & Maryland Avenue – Washington D.C.

  The few hours of rest he'd managed to get hadn't helped his state of mind any. As he poured another cup of coffee from the brewer on his desk, David Kemiss sighed and leaned back in his chair again, sipping from the cup. He'd been up for most of the night again and had been staring for hours at every piece of paper intelligence they'd managed to gather on Declan McIver. He was convinced that somewhere in the documents was a clue to where the man was heading. If they could figure that out and get ahead of him, then it would be game over. Wherever he lived, Colin Bellanger was doing the same thing. Two brains were better than one, Kemiss reasoned, and Bellanger was much more used to paperwork than he was.

  He sat up as his phone rang. "What?"

  "Senator, it's Robert Evers."

  "Oh. Mr. Evers. Good. Thank you for calling. What have you got?"

  "Some good news and some bad news, sir. The good news is that we've had what we're pretty sure is a confirmed sighting."

  "And the bad news?" Kemiss felt his face flush.

  "The news came in the form of a phone call from the Dyfed-Powys police."

  "The what police?"

  "He's in Wales, or at least he was a few hours ago."

  "In Wales? How the hell did he get to Wales?" Kemiss slammed down the coffee mug, slopping hot liquid onto his mahogany desk.

  "I'm not sure, sir. I'm as surprised as anyone."

  "I mean, you've got the airports sealed up, right? His name's on the 'no fly' list. How could he have possibly gotten out of the country and all the way to Wales?"

  "Sir, with the information you've helped to uncover about McIver I really wouldn't be surprised to learn that he has a fake identity, maybe even more than one. Being as he's from the United Kingdom originally, that identity could very well have been that of a British citizen. With a minor change in appearance and what appeared to be legal documents, he could've slipped through the TSA pretty easily."

  "And they're sure it's him?"

  "Apparently he convinced some kind of wildlife worker in a place called Pembrokeshire to take him in. He stayed there the night and took off in their car when they recognized him. That was early this morning. The Chief Constable there called me as a courtesy. He's already notified his superiors and they're preparing a Task Force of some kind to track McIver down and apprehend him. While it's surprising news, it's really good news all around. The Brits have a much tougher system of policing than we do here in the States. With the amount of CCTV in that country I'd lay down a wager that they'll have him by the end of the day. They've been tracking his kind for over forty years."

  Kemiss willed himself to calm down. While he considered the news to be anything but good, he couldn't let Evers know that. "Fine, then, let me know if there's any updates."

  "You'll be my first call, sir."

  Kemiss listened as Evers hung up and then tossed the phone across the desk, where it flew off the other side and pulled the STE's base unit off the desk with it, the two landing on the carpeted floor with a soft thud.

  He took a moment to compose himself. Slowly, he stood and walked around the desk to pick up the phone. Returning it to the desk and straightening some other items, he considered the new development in the situation. He felt like he was losing control. He had lost control. If Declan McIver was in Great Britain then any influence he had over the direction of the manhunt was at an end. Evers would keep him up to date, but he was no longer in charge and the information would be just that; information, not intelligence. Not the kind of thing that Kemiss needed to insure that instead of being arrested, McIver was eliminated.

  Maybe it doesn't matter anymore, he thought, as he ran a hand through his thinning hair and retook his seat behind his desk, closing his eyes. McIver's name had been so bloodied that maybe it didn't matter what he said when he was caught. Nobody would believe a word of it. But then if he was proved eventually to be correct, which Kemiss knew he would, then these things had a way of coming back. There was always some investigative reporter or some lawyer hungry for a book deal that would believe it and try to piece together exactly what had happened. The American public loved a conspiracy theory, and while nothing came of most of them, many of the government's secrets had been outed in just such a way. Whether it was the existence of the Navy SEALs, the lack of WMDs in Iraq, or the blow by blow details of the Osama Bin Laden raid, the media had a way of exposing things that nobody wanted exposed. While he couldn't be sure that an exposé would link back to him, he wasn't willing to risk it either. He had been careful, but the web that had been created was even beginning to confuse him. Had he made a mistake somewhere that might leave him exposed? It was possible and for that reason things would be far better off if Declan McIver were dead.

  He leaned back in his chair and tried, for a moment, to put himself in the shoes of a man fleeing the law, a man fleeing a conspiracy. Where would he go? What would he be trying to accomplish? If McIver had wanted to disappear, then he would have done it. He never would have come back to the security company and put himself in harm's way, nearly getting himself caught. No, everything he had done had either been an overt move to try and expose the forces against him or a reaction to those forces' continued pressure. Now, in a different country, he had to believe that he had more room to breathe, to search for whatever it was that he was looking for. But what or who was he looking for?

  Simard. The name hung on the edge of Kemiss' mind for a moment. He opened his eyes. Lane Simard was in London. But how could McIver know about Simard? He couldn't. The Agency didn't publish the names of its employees, but that was the only connection that he could think of in Great Britain. He shook his head. Maybe McIver was just a desperate man on the run. He had a past in the British Isles. Maybe he was just running hard and fast, hoping that he wouldn't be found. Still, Kemiss had a nagging feeling that that wasn't the case. If McIver had somehow learned of Simard then there was a definite connection back to him. He had met with Simard personally and tasked the man with finding out everything the Brits had. He knew that Simard wouldn't break easily; the man was a trained spy. But that didn't matter. If he broke at all, then Kemiss was finished…but not if Simard was finished first.

  He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and dialed a number.

  "Lukas," he said, as the line was answered. "I have a problem that I need you to help me with."

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  9:26 p.m. Local Time – Friday

  Cairngorms National Park

  Six Miles Northwest of Ballater, Aberdeenshire – Scotland

  "Aye, that's it, the B976." Shane said as he turned on the overhead light in the late '80s model Range Rover and looked at the map he had unfolded in his lap. "Middle of nowhere,
innit?"

  "Aye," Declan said looking at the signs on the side of the three way fork in the road. The SUV's headlights shone over a weathered metal sign with a brown background and white lettering that pointed west and gave directions to Balmoral and Braemar Castles, tourist attractions that wouldn't begin their open seasons for nearly a month. "Are you sure about this?"

  "Aye, that's Gairnshiel Lodge," Shane said pointing to a smallish, Gothic era castle that sat a short distance off the road behind an ancient looking rock wall. "According to my source the drive's just another few miles down this road on the right."

  "According to your source? You mean you've never been here before?"

  "Like I said, Dec, I'm not exactly on the guest list when it comes to your lordships and ladies. I have an informer in Falkirk that's rather decent with a computer. He found the location and provided the directions."

  "Grand. We've hacked our way to the secret location of the MI5 director's weekend home."

  "Looks like a single track road. It's gonna be hard to spot the drive in the dark."

  "Oh, what do ya mean?" Declan said, in a mocking tone. "I'm sure there's a bright neon sign."

  "This was your idea," Shane said, as he shifted the Range Rover back into gear and the engine made a whining sound as he piloted the vehicle down the roughly paved, one lane road. From the passenger side, Declan watched as the ancient rock wall surrounding Gairnshiel Lodge passed by. In the distance he could make out the barren looking peaks of the Cairngorm mountains up ahead. In a matter of minutes they'd not only be in an extremely remote and forbidding wilderness, they'd be there in the pitch black of night.