The Black List

by Robin Burcell

  He stilled.

  The door opened just enough to let someone slide in, then shut with a soft click. One person. That made it easy.

  He waited . . . waited . . . and then he flicked on the light.

  Eve stood not ten feet away, frozen against the wall, dressed all in black, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  “If you’re looking for your phone,” he said, his weapon pointed at her, “you left it in the taxi.”

  “How careless of me.”

  Her gaze flicked around the room, looking for an escape. She took one step toward the door.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “Since when do reporters carry guns? Who are you?”

  “Better question. Who are you?”

  She didn’t answer, but he could see the sheen of sweat on her upper lip.

  Donovan walked in the front door after her, locking it behind him, this time throwing the dead bolt. “She came alone.”

  “You were waiting for me?”

  “Welcoming committee,” Tex said. “Polite thing to do.”

  He holstered his weapon, then pulled a plastic tie from his pocket. She swallowed, tried to pull away as Tex cuffed her hands behind her back. “Why?”

  “Precautions,” he said, then gave her a thorough search before sitting her in a wooden chair facing them.

  Her brow glistened and he saw her carotid beating fast. She was scared.

  Good.

  “Time to come clean, Miss Sanders. If that’s your real name?”

  She said nothing.

  “Donnie?”

  Donovan opened a drawer in the side table and pulled out a book, its paper cover showing it to be Kipling’s selected works. A decoy. They had yet to find the real book, and this was the only plan they could come up with on such short notice. Her gaze locked onto it, a good sign, Tex thought, and he leaned toward her, so close he could smell the remnants of the perfume she’d been wearing earlier, her fear reviving it on her skin. A hint of jasmine filled his nostrils. “The book,” Tex said. “You told me it could be lucrative?”

  She looked at him and then Donovan. “So you are in it for the money? I told you, I have a buyer.”

  “What if we don’t want to sell?”

  “Then— Why not?”

  “You said yourself it was too dangerous. I’m thinking we destroy it. Save a life.”

  Donovan pulled a lighter from his pocket, held it to the book.

  She tried to stand, but Tex pushed her back into her seat.

  She swallowed past a lump in her throat. “I’ll do anything. Just let me have it.”

  “Tell us what it’s for. Why is it so important?”

  She took a deep breath, glanced at the book, licking her suddenly dry lips. “I don’t exactly know.”

  “But people are dying?”

  “Please . . .”

  Tex took the book from Donovan. Held it in front of her. “Tell us or we burn it.”

  And Donovan flicked his thumb on the lighter, holding the flame so she could see it.

  She eyed Donovan, then Tex, as though weighing her decision. It wasn’t until Tex dropped the book into the wastebasket and Donovan rolled a piece of paper, then actually lit it, that she said, “Fine. I’ll tell you.”

  A knock at the door caused her to jump. She looked in that direction, then screamed. Tex clamped his hand over her mouth. She twisted her head, bit him.

  “Damn it,” he said, pulling his hand away from her teeth, only to have her try to scream again. “You gonna get that?” he asked Donovan.

  “If you manage to keep her quiet, yes.” Donovan dropped the burning paper into the trash, and she struggled even more. Her eyes, wide with fright, locked on the book and the burning paper atop it as Donovan walked across the room, put his eye to the peephole.

  “Finally,” he said, unlocking and opening the door. “You were supposed to be here four hours ago.”

  “Sorry. Cornwall isn’t exactly a Tube stop away, is it? And for your information, we found them. They’re safe.” Lisette Perrault, their Paris-based agent, entered, then stopped short at the sight of Tex struggling with Eve.

  “Not quite the welcome I was expecting,” Lisette said to Tex, an amused expression on her face as she glanced at the woman, then did a double take. Her amusement turned to confusion. “Why do you have a CIA agent in custody?”

  “CIA?” Tex said. “You’re sure?”

  “Very.”

  A whoosh from the trash caught everyone’s attention as the flames engulfed the book.

  Donovan grabbed a bottled water from the table, then dumped it on the trash can, dousing the flames. Tex was still trying to wrap his mind around Lisette’s news, and Eve slumped back in her chair as though weak with relief.

  “You know her?” Donovan asked Lisette.

  “We worked an op in Berlin about eight months ago. Don’t think she’s changed that much. Genevieve Sanderson. CIA.”

  Tex stared at the woman, going over every contact with her, feeling as though now, finally, things were starting to make sense. She, however, was more concerned with the book. “Are you sure it’s out?” she asked.

  He kicked the trash can. “It was never in there.”

  She leaned forward, staring at the charred cover. “Then what’s that?”

  “Something we picked up at the bookstore,” Tex said. “We never had it.”

  “What do you mean you never had it? Then who does?”

  “How the hell should we know?” Tex said. “We’re not the ones who stole the briefcase, are we?”

  “Who are these people?” she asked Lisette.

  “It’s . . . complicated,” Lisette told her. “For God’s sake, Tex. Cut her loose and tell her what’s going on.”

  Tex dug a knife from his pocket, flipped it open, and sliced the plastic tie, saying, “We belong to a covert agency called ATLAS.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It wouldn’t be very covert if you had, would it?”

  Eve glared at him, then turned to Donovan, asking, “Assuming you’re for real, ATLAS stands for what?”

  “Alliance for Threat Level Assessment and Security.”

  “So you’re in more than one country,” she said, rubbing the circulation back into her wrists.

  “Sorry about that,” Tex said. “Precautions.”

  “So you said,” Eve replied. “About the book . . .”

  Donovan countered, “Why don’t you start with you and your mission.”

  “You think I’m just going to sit down and talk because you throw some fancy acronym at me? I don’t even know you.”

  Lisette drew a chair over and sat down next to her. “You can trust them.”

  “Sorry, Lisette,” Eve said. “As much as I respect your word, until I get clearance, I can’t talk.”

  “You want clearance?” Donovan said, taking out his phone. “Who would you like to receive that clearance from?”

  “My handler, Lou. He’s here in London.”

  “And his number would be . . . ?”

  “If whoever you have on that end is anyone with connections, they shouldn’t have a problem discovering his number. Have him call my cell phone.”

  “The cell phone you left in the taxi?” Tex said.

  “They were kind enough to return it to me when I called and told them I accidentally left it in the cab.”

  Donovan explained the situation to McNiel, saying, “We’ve run into a slight . . . road bump. Micah’s assistant is, according to Lisette, a CIA agent named Genevieve Sanderson, who refuses to talk until she receives clearance. She’d like her handler, Lou, to call her cell.”

  Lisette picked up her overnight bag, telling Tex, “As much as I’d love to be a part of this, I’m beat.”

  Tex stood. “I’ll take you up.”

  Lisette started for the stairs. “I know the way. It looks like you’ll be busy for a while sorting this out.” She glanced at Eve. “Good to see you . . .�
��

  “You, too, Lisette.”

  Tex returned to his seat, hoping it wouldn’t take McNiel too long to get in touch with someone.

  Apparently he needn’t have worried, as Eve’s phone rang about two minutes later. She answered it, listened, said, “Talk to you in the morning,” then disconnected. She gave them a bland smile. “I guess you pull some pretty powerful strings in your organization.”

  They waited for her to explain.

  “That was Lou. Apparently my clearance to talk to you comes straight from the director.”

  Tex asked, “Anything else you need before you tell us what’s going on?”

  “A tall beer might do it.”

  “About a year ago,” Eve began, “a cache of weapons and U.S. currency was found in a remote village in Africa by some CIA agents who were following up on some intel about gun runners,” which explained the photo of her and the gun dealers, Tex thought. “The money was being used to pay bribes to various officials to move certain individuals to the front of the refugee resettlement line. Because of the large amount of currency involved, they brought in the Secret Service to assist in the operation and to help with the documenting of serial numbers from the currency, which is when they found a couple bills with a ‘Where’s George?’ stamp. Out of curiosity, they checked.”

  “ ‘Where’s George?’ ” Tex asked.

  “It’s an educational Web site someone built that allows you to track the travels of paper money, as long as people are willing to enter the serial number and the location, then stamp it with the Where’s George? Web site address. From there it’s hit and miss that a bill will get located and tracked, more novelty than accurate reflection. Unless you get lucky. And in this case, we did. The bills in question came from an elementary school class that had collected pennies, converted it to paper currency, stamped it with Where’s George? as part of their school project, then proudly donated the money to the different charities they’d picked at random from various Web sites. Two of those bills ended up in that weapons cache in Africa.”

  Tex thought about the odds. “Unusual, sure, but it could happen they’d end up together if donated together.”

  “You’re right. Except that these kids only had one hundred dollars, and their donation consisted of a single ten-dollar bill to each separate charity. Ten charities. Ten bills. And two of them end up together in another country? That raises the odds considerably, don’t you think?”

  “I see your point,” Donovan said. “So how did you make the connection to the charities?”

  “Both charities are involved in the refugee resettlement program in some way. We couldn’t find anything on the other eight.”

  “Are the charities real?” Tex asked.

  “I think that depends on what you would consider an overhead cost,” Eve told them. “When all is said and done, they’re not charities, they’re contractors. The U.S. essentially pays them an exorbitant fee to bring the refugees in, with what seems like little regard for what is actually being done with the money. If we’re counting that they’re supposed to be nonprofit but making an exorbitant profit, then no, they’re not real charities. If you factor in that they’re doing what we pay them to do, bring in refugees, then yes, they’re real. We—or rather, the CIA and Secret Service—were less concerned with their overhead and more concerned with the how and why of the weapons and U.S. currency being found together, and what it was being used for. In other words, what was the end game?”

  “And did you find that out?”

  “We’re talking a mixed bag. The Do Gooders, who believe wholeheartedly in the refugee program, and the piranhas and scavengers who have discovered exactly how profitable it really is. And since many of the refugees come from one of the black-list countries, which have no agreements to turn over bank records to ensure the money isn’t being used for terrorism or criminal enterprises, where better to launder your ill-gotten funds?”

  “A win-win for A.D.E.,” Tex said.

  “The thing is, we believe Vince—”

  “Vince?” Donovan asked.

  “An A.D.E. employee who recently was killed in a car accident, coincidentally or not, right after this book of his and Marty’s came to light. He allegedly knew some of their funds were being diverted and were directly used to allow war criminals in through the refugee program. If that information got out, A.D.E. would be finished. No more Micah, no more profit.”

  Tex could well imagine. “Hence the hunt for the book.”

  “Exactly. But if the CIA found it first, we could find the link to at least one conduit that’s allowing the criminals into the country. There’s a list in there showing where they’re coming from. At least we think so.”

  “So the CIA sent you after Micah and his Sticks to Bricks campaign?”

  “Yes. We’d been tailing someone associated with the weapons cache and noticed his appearance at two of Micah’s documentary showings. A couple of eavesdropped phone conversations confirmed they were trying to negotiate an offer for their accounting firm to assist him with his charity. So we came up with the cover of my being a college student looking to volunteer to be Micah’s assistant free of charge as part of my marketing thesis, and began fielding the calls between him and A.D.E. in short order. It worked, since the A.D.E. contact—a man named Willis—was trying to convince Micah to work with them, and took me—the alleged college student—as an easier, more naive mark.”

  “A mark for what?” Donovan inquired.

  “To not see how they were manipulating Micah and funneling the money he brought in.”

  “So how,” Tex asked, “did you get in bed with A.D.E.?”

  She narrowed her eyes at his choice of words. “Maybe because they discovered that my Eve Sanders identity has some relatives back in the U.S. who have less than stellar reputations, which they tried to hold over my head as a way of controlling me and thereby controlling Micah. I’m sure they never expected an impromptu visit from a couple of my uncles, who told them exactly what would happen if they harmed a hair on my head, but it had the desired effect and then some. They let me handle all matters with Micah, then started to include me in the business end.”

  “So you’re in the perfect position.”

  “Too perfect. Micah’s documentary film took off and they’re raking in millions. My job now has become almost laughable, since my main goal in A.D.E.’s eyes as well as the CIA’s eyes is to keep Micah happy and producing, while A.D.E. rakes it in and CIA follows the money. I am, for all intents and purposes, an executive assistant.”

  “Where would they be without you?”

  “I’m not sure, but I have to wonder how many people have actually died because of me. And I’m helpless to stop it.”

  “It can’t be your fault.”

  She gave a cynical laugh. “You’ve never been so wrong. I have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life, knowing that if I hadn’t infiltrated A.D.E., found someone who was willing to look into a few things and document it for me, he’d still be alive.”

  “Dorian?”

  “Vince. Here in London. A solo car accident that I’m sure was staged. He’s the one who told me he was certain it was going on with a multitude of other charities, not only in the London office but the U.S. office where the charities are based. But he also said there was no way anyone at A.D.E. would ever be able to get out with the information. They’re very strict. Women carry clear plastic purses, and the few men who do have briefcases have to submit to having them searched. They deal in a lot of cash, so they justify the over-the-top security to make sure cash isn’t being smuggled out. If he was to document it, he’d have to find a way to do it so that he could smuggle it in and out without anyone knowing.”

  “The book?” Tex asked.

  “The book. Vince managed to put the evidence in a book. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, is why I was so frantic when I thought you were burning it.”

  “And you don’t know what it says?”

&nb
sp; “Only the vague bits I’ve told you, and I don’t even know that for certain. The morning Marty was killed, the way he held on to the briefcase, I would have sworn the book was in there. It wasn’t.”

  “He mentioned something about a Kipling novel right before he died. He did not, however, say where it was.”

  She eyed the charred remains of the book in the trash can. “We need to find it before Trip does. It’s bad enough that he’ll probably resort to his old ways and try to extort money from Barclay. But it may very well tell us the route used to smuggle Yusuf out of Africa and into the U.S.”

  36

  “How’s Sheila?” Sydney asked when Carillo called her at Griffin’s office that afternoon.

  “Buying a guide book as we speak. I can’t believe I let her talk me into staying.”

  “Maybe it’ll be good for you. Relax a few days.”

  “I did mention that Sheila’s with me, right?”

  “Oh for God’s sake. Play tourist for a couple days. When’s the last time you’ve done that?”

  “Never. How’s it going there?”

  Sydney informed him about the command from the top to stop the investigation into the Redfern Group’s involvement with the refugees.

  “If nothing else, it tells me you’re on the right track.”

  “It’d be nice if I knew which direction that track was going.”

  “Ask Scotty.”

  “There’s got to be an easier way.”

  “Hate to break it to you, kid, but your ex isn’t known as Mr. Fast-track-to-the-top for nothing.”

  She sighed.

  Carillo laughed. “What you need to do is find him another girl.”

  “You know any?”

  “I’ll check my little black book. Oh. Wait. Sheila burned it when we got married.”

  “Like you ever had one.”

  “Call him. If he doesn’t have the answer, he’ll know someone who does.”

  Even Griffin thought the idea held merit when she ran it by him.

  Telephoning her ex-fiancé was not something she looked forward to. Scott Ryan was a nice enough guy who, unfortunately, seemed to think that any call from her was a sign that there was a chance for them to repair their relationship. He didn’t seem to understand that they had grown worlds apart since those academy days when they first met. Whereas Sydney had no problem working out of the basement of Quantico, or even in some small field office away from the pomp and circumstance of the capital, Scotty thrived on it. He kept abreast of the political scene, knew every major politician on sight, whether he’d met the person or not, and if there was a function that could be attended involving said politicians, and a need for the FBI to be there, Scotty cleared his calendar.