Chapter
six
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
TALIA MADE TWO STOPS on her way to the Directorate of Operations, deep in the bowels of the New Headquarters Building at Langley. The first was not by choice. A set of turnstiles straight out of a New York subway barred her entry. She scanned a temporary ID card across a black panel on the center turnstile. It answered with a sharp buzz and a red octagon.
Before Talia could try the turnstile next door, a contract guard in a black uniform pushed out through a panel in the wall, one hand on the 9mm at his side. The safety was off. “Good morning, Miss Inger. I’ll take that temp from you. Turn and face the camera, please.”
She handed over her badge, looking in the direction he indicated. “What cam—”
A bulb flashed.
“That’ll do. Wait here.”
The security protective officer, known as a SPO, vanished into the wall and returned moments later with a new badge. He also brought out a stack of forms big enough to put all other stacks of forms everywhere to shame. “First-day paperwork. Tax forms, emergency contact, living will.”
“I don’t want a living will.”
“Take it up with legal.” The SPO swiped the new badge on the turnstile, slapped it down on top of the forms, and waved her through. “Ops. Sublevel 3.”
The conversation was over.
She walked on, reading the top form through the curled purple ribbon of the lanyard. The second line listed her supervisor.
FRANK BRENNAN, DIRECTORATE OF OPERATIONS, RUSSIAN EASTERN EUROPEAN DIVISION.
Talia’s second stop fulfilled a minor fantasy. Farm students, with their futures still in question, had no access to the New Headquarters Building. They could only gaze up at its impenetrable green glass walls from the garden of the Old Headquarters Building, wondering what treasures lay inside. Talia had seen evidence of one such treasure in the hands of officers and analysts wandering the grounds. Now, having entered Aladdin’s Cave, she could smell it.
Passing beneath a model of the A-12 OXCART, the forerunner to the SR-71 Blackbird, she followed the scent of roasted coffee beans to a sun-filled atrium. There, surrounded by storefront café tables, she found the CIA compound’s most infamous and alluring feature—its very own top-secret Starbucks.
“One venti white chocolate mocha, please.”
“Skinny?” The barista, a black woman with the name LUANNE printed on an extra-large green apron, looked Talia up and down and added just enough inflection to the word to leave Talia wondering whether it was a question or an indictment.
Talia took it as a challenge. She dropped her stack of forms on the counter with a heavy thwap. “No.” She checked herself a moment later. “But no whip.”
Luanne turned her body toward the coffeemakers, letting her head follow half a second later. “Your funeral. First day, honey?”
“Come again?”
“Those forms you so loudly dropped on my counter. I seen ’em a thousand times if I seen ’em once, along with that deer-in-the-headlights look in your badge photo.” She placed a hand on her hip, glancing over her shoulder. “You have any idea where you’re goin’, rookie?”
Agency employees were never supposed to talk about their positions, even on campus, unless the other party had a need to know. Exactly what sort of background check did a CIA barista get? “I can figure it out.”
Luanne returned to her work, lowering a steamer into a steel cup. “A’right.”
The coffee took far longer in coming than Talia anticipated, and by the time she had paid for and accepted the overlarge cup, she felt the morning closing in on her. She swept up her stack and walked off.
Luanne whistled. “Nope.” She pointed the opposite direction, toward a passage intersecting the main hallway.
“How do you—”
“Your badge. That purple outline around your photo tells me you belong to Ops.”
Talia nodded and reversed course.
“And you’ll want a lid for that coffee.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
Luanne did her little turn—body first, then head, raising a hand. “Like I said, rookie. Your funeral.”
The doors in the hallway to which Luanne directed Talia had numbers but no labels, and each was painted a solid color. Most were single or double doors, but in one alcove was a set of elevator doors—painted purple, the color Luanne had noted on Talia’s badge.
The elevator, of course, required a swipe of her card for access, and two failed attempts loosened her tenuous hold on her forms. The third swipe succeeded, and in her hurry to step inside, Talia caught the corner of her stack on an opening door, ripping the whole mess from her arms.
Papers flew.
Hot, sugary mocha splashed on her wrist, soaking her cuff.
Somehow this was all Luanne’s doing.
Half of the forms fell inside the elevator and half out. Talia knelt and gathered what she could, but a small platoon of drenched papers clung to the floor. The elevator let out a ding. It wanted to leave, with or without her. She stood and stomped on the stragglers, dragging them across the threshold as the doors slid closed. Another patron with a purple lanyard hurried toward her, hand outstretched, but she gave him a helpless shrug. “Sorry!”
Could her first day get any worse?
Dumb question.
Sublevel 3, that’s what the guard had said. She hit the button, and thankfully the elevator did not stop at any other levels on the way down. She passed six in total. Thanks to the varied terrain of the hilltop compound, the main entrance was on Level 4. The long descent allowed Talia to regain some dignity. By the time the doors opened, she had picked up the rest of her papers and assembled them into a semi-chaotic pile.
She ventured out into an incongruous blend of black marble columns and acrylic offices. A sign hanging from the ceiling read RUSSIAN EASTERN EUROPEAN DIVISION. “Frank Brennan?” Talia directed her gaze at a passerby wearing a black far-too-tight-for-arms-like-that golf shirt. “I’m looking for Frank Brennan.”
Tight-Shirt Guy looked sidelong at her coffee-stained forms and walked on.
Talia tried again, calling after him and reaching out with the now half-empty coffee cup. “Excuse me. Where can I fi—”
He disappeared behind a marble wall.
She lowered the cup. “Never mind.”
Brass plates identified the first few acrylic-walled branches as BALTIC STATES, FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, UKRAINE, and RUSSIA. Each plate also identified the branch chief—none of whom were Frank Brennan.
The denizens of Sublevel 3 drew diagrams on their clear walls, tapped at computer keyboards, and argued across conference tables. Not one soul made eye contact with Talia, and she wasn’t about to go around reading ID badges to find her boss. She took a deep breath, marched to what she decided was the intersection of the two main aisles, and raised her voice. “Does anyone know where I can find Frank Brennan?”
The buzz of conversation slackened. A few dozen eyes turned her way. Then they all went back to work.
“Talia?” Eddie Gupta popped his head out from behind a column. “Together again, huh? I’ve been waiting for you. Our section is this way.”
He walked past her, heading the way she’d come, and Talia assumed she’d simply missed the correct office. She was wrong. The buzz of activity fell behind. The two walked past the elevator and down a dimly lit hallway to a dented gray door.
Eddie bowed, gesturing with both hands. “After you, m’lady.”
“Here?” She couldn’t keep her expression from falling. “This looks like a utility closet.” The door had its own brass plate, like the acrylic partitions. But while those plates were bolted in place, this one was pasted on, one corner a nanometer south of level, and it listed no region name or branch chief.
The brass plate simply read OTHER.
Chapter
seven
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
OTHER
BRANCH’S UTILITY-CLOSET feel did not improve when Talia opened the door. She had suspected it wouldn’t. Walking down the dark hallway, the same pit had opened in her stomach she’d often felt as a foster child arriving at a new home. Plastic furniture on the lawn, a garden with more weeds than flowers, siding hanging loose between the windows—the inside of a house like that was never going to look like a palace. Its occupants would never be royalty ready to adopt her as a princess.
The sole occupant of Other was no exception.
“Good. You’re here. It’s about time.” Frank Brennan swiveled to face them in his desk chair, but did not bother getting up.
Talia was not entirely certain he could get up. Like his tiny section, with its water-stained walls and chipped Formica workstations, Frank Brennan had seen better days.
A corded phone rested on his shoulder, mercilessly trapped between the lower of his two chins and a plaid button-down marred by pit stains. “Good start, by the way.” With a shrug, Brennan dropped the phone into his hand and hung it up. “That was my esteemed colleague from Ukraine Branch, filing the first of what I can only imagine will be many complaints.” The chair squeaked forward. He rested his elbows on the table. “For future reference, Miss Inger, please refrain from shouting my name in these hallowed halls. It won’t win you any friends.”
“The shouting?” Talia set her forms and coffee down on a rare patch of uncluttered Formica. “Or your name?”
“Both.” Brennan lifted one elbow to point at a red-and-white box teetering atop a stack of three-ring binders. “Donuts are over there.”
“Nobody eats donuts anymore.”
“More for me then.” For emphasis, he sat back and peeled a white-powdered blob off a napkin. He took a gratuitous bite, leaving a good bit of it on his mustache.
Eddie raised a hesitant finger, circling near his own lip. “You’ve got something—”
“Got what?” Brennan asked, pressing bushy eyebrows together.
“Nothing.”
“Relax, kid. I’m just messing with ya.” Brennan wiped the powder away, transferring it from his mustache to the hair of his arm. He caught Talia’s disapproving scowl and nodded at the coffee-stained cuff peeking out from her cardigan sleeve. “Oh, like you’re the Queen of Clean?”
Talia pulled the sleeve down to cover it and, remembering the lanyard she had hastily thrown over her head, she untucked her hair from its hold and smoothed out the strays.
Brennan looked bemused by her discomfort. “Welcome to Other, children. You now have the privilege of working for this sublevel’s longest continuous resident. Read into that what you will.”
Talia would. She already had, and it was nothing good. “I’m . . . happy to be here.” Her eyes dropped to a file on the edge of Brennan’s desk. The sooner she got to work, the sooner she could claw her way out to a real branch. “So what does Other have in the way of current ops?” she asked, reaching for the file.
The donut fell to its napkin, sending up a cloud of white as Brennan slapped down a paw and dragged the file from under her hand. “We should establish some rules. Rule One: files on my desk are for my eyes only. You don’t mess with need-to-know around here. Got it?”
Talia took a step back. “Okay . . . what’s Rule Two?”
“I’ll let you know when I think of it.”
The new tension in the room triggered Eddie’s shy-geek defenses. Talia heard the familiar whir of a five-bladed fidget spinner. Eddie had made it while they were at Georgetown together, out of copper and cobalt. He claimed the toy was so perfectly balanced it would spin forever, but his fingers worked the blades with steady rhythm when he was nervous. She cringed at the look on Brennan’s face.
“What is he doing?”
“It helps me focus,” Eddie said, answering for himself between spins.
Talia reached back and covered the thing with her hand, pressing it down toward Eddie’s pocket. “No, it doesn’t. Put it away.”
Whatever she thought of the habit, Eddie’s spinner tamed the bear she had drawn out of Brennan by going for the file. Brennan tucked the file into a locking drawer and thrust the upper of his two chins at some dusty three-ring binders piled on a workstation. “We’ll make this Rule Two. Before you even think about current ops, commit every detail of the illustrious territories of Other to memory.”
It was a dumb rule, but Talia did not argue. She picked up a binder marked ABKHAZIA, pretending to read but wondering about the mystery file. Brennan had gone from eccentric uncle to raging überboss in less than a heartbeat. Could mere concern for need-to-know cause such a reaction? What was he hiding?
Chapter
eight
MERIDIAN HILL PARK
WASHINGTON, DC
FRANK BRENNAN LEFT HIS CAR in the visitors’ lot of his DC apartment complex and walked through the adjacent park on the way to his condo. He had a garage. He was paying for a garage. But an Agency doctor had ordered him to walk the half mile between the open lot and his front door twice a day. All that exercise had not made a dent in his weight. A daily mile was no match for equally frequent helpings of steak and jelly-filled pastries.
The unfairness of it disrupted his thoughts so much he almost missed the signal beside the path. Not that it was easy to see in the first place. The rock, set at the eight o’clock position in the shadow of an oversize flowerpot, was nearly invisible to his aging, borderline-diabetic eyes.
Brennan kicked the rock into the foliage and checked his watch as he turned back toward the car, doubling his pace. Eight o’clock. He had less than thirty minutes to cover the distance. What were they trying to do? Kill him?
Frank’s collar was still wet with sweat when he pulled up to the little Armenian restaurant off Route 1. The location had been his choice when these meetings started, close enough to drive from the condo, far enough from the city centers around DC that he wasn’t likely to run into anyone he knew. The two-star Yelp rating didn’t hurt either.
He found his contact seated in a corner booth with his face shrouded in shadow. Frank slid in across from him, squeezing his gut past the table. “You know how I hate being summoned.”
The gentleman, overdressed, twisted a silver cuff link at his wrist and folded his hands. “Do not think of it as a summons. Think of it as a request for an audience—a meeting between colleagues.”
“I said the same thing to an agent I was cultivating in Belarus once.” Frank drew a laminated menu from its holder. “The GRU shot him a week later. Don’t manage me. Just get to the point.”
“As you wish.” The contact lifted the menu from his fingers. “And you won’t be needing that. I’ve already taken the liberty.”
“Of course you have.”
A waiter brought the overdressed gentleman a plate of lamb kebabs and slid a hollowed-out pumpkin in front of Frank, sides blackened and curling. Frank poked at the stringy orange noodles inside. “I suppose you think this is funny?”
“Not at all.” The gentleman dragged a cube of lamb off a skewer with the tines of his fork. “My employer has legitimate concerns about your”—he cleared his throat—“lifestyle. He wants to ensure you live to see this effort through.”
Frank shoved a forkful of the concoction into his mouth and snorted. “He’ll have to do better than this.” He swallowed the pumpkin-noodle-whatever, blanched, and pushed the rest away.
“How is our subject?”
“Feisty. Her ego’s too big for her size 2 britches. You should have seen the death stare I got when she saw the office for the first time.”
“My employer advised you to clean up before her arrival.” The gentleman arranged his lamb cubes into a row on his plate. He hadn’t yet taken a bite.
“And, if you remember, I told you exactly what he could do with his advice. Doesn’t matter. She’s in my branch whether she likes it or not.”
“True. When will she be ready? We are on a strict timetable.”
“That’s not my problem.” The noodles had le
ft an unpleasant aftertaste. Brennan took a swig of gritty water from a plastic tumbler and wiped his mustache. “New ops officers have a strict adjustment period. If I send her out too soon, red flags will go up.” He pushed the cup over beside the pumpkin bowl. “Tell your boss I like my condo—and my pension. The girl heads out when I say so. Not a moment before.”
“As you wish. I am only the messenger.” The gentleman signaled for the check.
Chapter
nine
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
“DONE,” TALIA SAID, first thing on Monday.
Brennan pushed past her and sat at his desk, rooting through the remains of Friday’s donuts. “Context, please.”
“The binders.” Talia drew the donut box out from under her boss’s face to get his full attention. She should have thrown it away when she had come in alone on Saturday. “Every country report, every ops cable, every archived intelligence update—I read them all.”
Twice, she didn’t say.
In the space of four days, Talia had been through every document Other Branch had to offer. Brennan had made her take Sunday off, but a ten-kilometer row on the Potomac had barely put a dent in her morning, so she had signed the binders out and read through them all again. Her phone had rung all afternoon—about once an hour. Each time she had let it ring out and kept on reading. Talia knew who was calling. She didn’t want to talk.
She had finished that night, and after staring at the empty walls of her apartment until morning, she had hurried in to ambush her boss.
“How is that possible?” Brennan pulled the donuts back to his side of the desk. “No one’s that fast.”
“You said if I read them all, I could start working on current ops. Remember?”
“I say a lot of things.” He stood and ambled out from behind the desk, pushing past her. “I’m heading across the river. I’ll be out for most of the day.”
“But you promised. You said if I—”
With a click of the office door, Brennan was gone.
“TRANSNISTRIA,” TALIA GRUMBLED several hours later, having been reduced to re-covering what was now very old ground. “What possible interest could the Agency have in Transnistria?”
The Gryphon Heist Page 3
