Chasing the Son

by Bob Mayer

  “For Cardena,” Riley said.

  “For him, but really we all work for Hannah. She’s hands-on control for every op.” She paused, to see if they had any question, and Riley did.

  “How does Sarah Briggs come into this?”

  “Sarah Briggs,” Westland said, as if tasting the name. “That’s the alias she’s used for this. She’s had a lot of names over the years. It doesn’t even matter what her real name is any more. She might not even remember it.”

  “But you know it,” Riley didn’t make it a question.

  Westland nodded. “I said I had a stake in this. It’s her. She worked for me a long time ago. Twelve years ago.”

  “CIA?” Chase asked.

  Westland shook her head. “No. The unit that has no name. Sarah, let’s stick with that name, was my protégé.” She shrugged. “You’ve got an idea how sharp she is. I saw that potential early on.”

  “When did she go bad?” Riley asked.

  “’When did she go bad’?” Westland repeated. “I remember it quite clearly.”

  “Okay,” Riley said. “This is important, but let’s get back to Brams Point first. Kono and Gator should be meeting us there. We need to see if Gator has come up with anything.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “A sniper?” Sarah Briggs didn’t seem surprised as Preston relayed what had happened on Daufuskie.

  It was dark outside his suite at the Sea Pines Resort, but the lighthouse and the shops and restaurants around it were brightly lit, the glow reflecting in the large sliding doors through a partial screening by trees. One of the doors was partially open and the sound of drunken reverie was in the distance. They were on the second floor, the maximum height allowed to any building in Sea Pines, part of the island’s strict building codes.

  “Shot my bloody case,” Preston groused. He was seated at the desk, papers piled high on top of it.

  “But the Mongins made the deal.” Sarah stood near the door, away from the window, a position that Preston had noticed.

  Preston held up the leather case. “I have the easement.”

  “Who did the shooting?” Sarah asked. “Riley and Chase were in front of you, right? So it must have been that big Ranger they hang with. Lucky he didn’t blow your brains out.”

  Preston shrugged. “Some woman was giving the orders to the sniper via her phone.”

  “A woman?” Sarah went very still. “Describe her.”

  “Older woman. Grey hair with a black streak in it. Tall.”

  Sarah closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. “I’d like payment now, please. Ten million for Bloody Point.”

  “What’s the rush?” Preston asked.

  “I’m done here. Time for me to move on.”

  Preston stared at her. “You’re not done here. You’re not done until I tell you that you are done. You will not be paid until I have decided I am done with you. I do want you to sign over Bloody Point to me now. So I can focus on Mrs. Jenrette tomorrow.”

  “If I sign over now,” Sarah said, “then you pay me now. Transfer the money and I’ll sign.”

  Preston pulled his phone out and typed a short message into it. Then he leaned back in the chair. “You found Harry Brannigan, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Preston smiled. “I’ve always enjoyed your directness even though you are quite the deceiver at times. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “How did you find out?” Sarah asked.

  “I had your phone reprogrammed. We’ve listened to every conversation. And intercepted the proof of life photo. And you’ve tried negotiating directly with Mrs. Jenrette, bypassing me.”

  The double doors to the suite swung open and the three men who’d accompanied him to Daufuskie came in. They didn’t have their coats on but each sported a pistol in a holster on their belt. They fanned out behind Preston.

  Sarah barely acknowledged their presence. “You can have Harry Brannigan right now too. Along with Bloody Point. Give me my money and you’ll never see me again.”

  Preston laughed. “I’ve already got Harry and Doc Cleary. My men got them earlier today. Your men, unfortunately, are no longer with us.”

  “Fine,” Sarah said. “You want Bloody Point from me, then pay me.”

  “Such loyalty to the help.”

  “Risks of the business.”

  “Yes,” Preston said. “We all face that. But we had an agreement and you violated that by offering to make a deal directly with Mrs. Jenrette.”

  “Not really,” Sarah said. “I believe the way your plan works, if I can guess the script correctly based on what you’ve done so far that wasn’t in our agreement, is that you’ll end up with all of Sea Drift anyway. In fact, it would have saved you ten million by having her pay me, rather than coming out of your share.”

  “So thoughtful,” Preston said. “And Rigney?”

  Sarah said nothing.

  “I assume you used your feminine wiles on him,” Preston said. “But that only goes so far, you know.”

  Sarah remained silent.

  “So what aren’t you telling me?” Preston asked. “Who is the woman? Do you know her?”

  “Let’s just say she’s an old acquaintance.”

  “And she frightens you,” Preston said. “So much so that you want to run immediately.”

  “She doesn’t frighten me,” Sarah said. “But the organization she works for does.”

  “’Organization’?” Preston repeated. “What organization?”

  Sarah shook her head. “You don’t know of it, so it’s pointless to discuss it.”

  “If a new player has entered the game,” Preston said, “then I need to be brought up to speed.”

  Sarah indicated the three guards. “If you didn’t feel safe going up against her and her sniper with them today, why do you think it will be any different tomorrow?”

  “Because I’ll be prepared,” Preston said. “Now tell me about this organization? Is it governmental? That can handled quite easily by my father.”

  Sarah laughed. “I’d like to see that happen. It’s called the Cellar. Run by a woman named Hannah.”

  “Hannah who?”

  “Just Hannah. I’d say it’s likely your father has heard of her given he chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence.”

  Preston steepled his fingers, deep in thought. “My dear woman, why would the government be getting involved in our little adventure here? Certainly not because of me. That leaves two possibilities. Misters Chase and Riley still have contacts. But I doubt they would be able to draw in an official agency, no matter how clandestine. They simply don’t seem that important.”

  “They did against Karralkov,” Sarah said. “A Hellfire missile from a Predator drone took his boat out. That’s pretty official.”

  “Perhaps,” Preston said. “But it’s rather amazing that you know this woman. Makes it sound rather personal. I lean toward this being about you. Why is the government interested in you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Ah. That’s how you learned things like the poison you gave me to kill Merchant Fabrou. You worked for the government once upon a time, didn’t you? Were you a spy?”

  “I’m not allowed to speak of it,” Sarah said.

  Preston was astounded. “You’re playing that card? You do understand you are on the wrong side of the law, correct?”

  “I was an assassin,” Sarah said.

  Preston smiled. “Ah! That makes sense. And I assume the gray-haired woman is of the same ilk?”

  “Fine,” Sarah said. “She’s here for me. So give me my money and I’ll be gone and she’ll be gone.”

  Preston shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you understand who you’re talking to. The power of my family. My father will bring this Hannah woman to heel and send your old acquaintance packing. Because even if you leave, we still have to deal with Riley and Chase. And even with Harry Brannigan as my ace in the hole, so to speak, I still think they have the potential to cause troub
le. And, my dear woman, you also have skills we will possibly need tomorrow. I suggest you catch a good night’s rest. Tomorrow promises to be most interesting.”

  Sarah didn’t leave. “You don’t understand—“

  Preston slapped his palm on the desk, rattling the papers. “No. You do not understand even though I have been most patient. My father will deal with this Hannah and her minion. And that will be enough of that.” Preston took a deep breath. “You’ve been in contact with Chase, correct? Leveraging him and Riley and their group?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “How do you contact them?” he asked.

  Sarah pulled out her burner. “They’ve called twice. I’ve got the number on the burner they have on speed dial one.”

  “Give me that.”

  “If you want to run everything,” Sarah said, “then you really have no need for me any more.”

  Preston nodded. “You’re right.” His hand came up with a gun in it.

  Sarah threw the phone at Preston as she whirled, sensing the presence behind her. With her forearm she blocked the arm with the stiletto that was aimed toward the base of her skull. She followed through the block with her other fist, hitting the assailant in the side of the head, stunning him momentarily. She kept moving, dashing past him, through the open sliding door to the balcony. She vaulted over the railing, rotating her arms and elbows in front of her face as she’d been taught in jump school to prepare for a tree landing.

  A tree jump wasn’t much different as she hit one of the pines next to the building. She crashed into the branches, breaking the smaller ones, then hitting a thicker one that bounced her off it, into another one, slowing her, then she free fell, bending her legs and hitting the grass with her feet. She went with the impact from balls of her feet, shin, side of her buttocks and then the upper side of her back.

  All well and good but the pain of broken ribs from one of the branches took her breath away during the last slam into the ground. She lay there, stunned.

  The sound of a suppressed gun firing motivated her to get moving. One of the guards was on the balcony, peering into the darkness below, trying to spot her. Meanwhile he was firing blindly in her general direction.

  Sarah rolled to her knees, gasping in pain, but moving, scurrying, getting away as fast as she could move. She sensed a bullet whiz close by and then she was on the path, running, putting the pain at a distance in her mind focusing only on survival.

  She was very good at that. An expert.

  * * *

  The guard came back in, silenced pistol in hand. The man Sarah had hit was on his feet, shaking his head.

  “She got away,” the guy with the pistol reported.

  A spasm of irritation crossed Preston’s face. “Is it so hard to get effective help these days? Is it that hard to kill someone? I haven’t had a problem with it.”

  The guards had no response to that.

  Preston picked up the phone Sarah had thrown, looked at it, then stuck it in his pocket. Another piece to be played as needed.

  Then he pulled out his own phone and made a call to his father in Washington.

  * * *

  It was late and Hannah’s secretary had departed hours ago. That did not mean Hannah had stopped working. She liked the evenings and the long nights alone. It gave her time to peruse the data stream filtering down from the NSA above her head. She was tapped into everything, but could only absorb a fraction of it.

  It was like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. But years of experience had taught her how to scan; and which of the analysts were the most perceptive. On top of that, was the Ultra Loop. The most highly classified intelligence loop in the world. Ever since Turing had made the first computer to break the German Enigma way back in World War II, true power had devolved into those who could read, and listen, to the messages of others.

  If it was electronic, it could be intercepted and deciphered.

  The number of people with access to the Ultra Loop, which still bore the same designation from the early days of World War II, was less than a dozen on both sides of the Atlantic. What was critical, and had been from the very start, wasn’t the information. It was making the decision about which information to act on. The danger of knowing everyone’s information was that one couldn’t let others know you knew; too many actions would tip them off and they’d either go dark and silent or switch their encryption. The latter was a pain because it meant the source ‘went dark’ during the time it took to break their new system.

  Bad things happened in the dark.

  Thus it required very judicious use of the pearls that were uncovered.

  Nero had liked to tell Hannah, as he trained her, that the decision was based on being a very specific judge of the quality and the long-range importance of each potential decision. They were all pearls, but only the rare, ‘black pearls’, should be acted on. Often, it was as important what wasn’t acted on as what was. The events that were allowed to happen in order to keep up the mirage that networks and messages of foreign governments, corporations, organizations, etc. were secure.

  Sometimes those events were horrible, but it was all for the greater good. A philosopher might argue the finer points of that, but Hannah and the handful like her in the world, lived in reality. And that ‘justice’ had a way of eventually catching up to evil and making it pay.

  It also required a massive cover-up. Disinformation is as important as information. Documentaries are still being made and aired discussing the ‘code-breakers’ at Bletchley as if they’d really done an original thing, and not been handed a message that had already been decoded by Turing’s machine, the very first computer, and then recoded in an easier manner, one which could be broken by the human minds there.

  Games within games.

  Sometimes the blatant logic that people ignored surprised Hannah, who was very difficult to surprise. But it was simple: If the Turing machine had broken Enigma, then it broke every message, not just a magical handful. The magical handful were the ones the powers-that-be, Hannah’s predecessors wanted to be known.

  The chilling fact that Nero had known, and Hannah now did, was that once Turing and the British broke the German Enigma and then the Americans broke the Japanese Purple, was that those at the very, very highest level, had known every single major operation planned by the other side.

  Coventry was the rule, rather than the exception.

  The secret had to be kept and wielded only on the very rarest of occasions.

  Still, there were exceptions. Which was why Hannah looked beyond the Ultra Loop and checked the analysts’ reports. In this new world of the War on Terrorism, many enemies were not states but small groups; much more difficult to keep track of. And, of course, Hannah’s primary tasking was to watch over the United States own group of covert organizations, the number of which seemed to constantly be growing.

  She had a lot going on besides Cardena’s problem in South Carolina. The covert world contained many strange and diverse units; all of which required some sort of policing. She had to put those out of her mind for the moment.

  She accessed the keyboard on a shelf underneath her desktop. The computer screens were set in the desk, visible only to her via reflecting off of mirrors through the clear surface. To those on the other side it looked like nothing was on her desk. She constantly had data streaming on those screens. Nero had his folders, but she’d accepted she had to go digital. The key was that it was all one way. Data came into her office, but never out. And she stored no information, instead tapping into the NSA’s mainframe with unlimited access.

  She also didn’t like to do email.

  A buzzing noise interrupted her reading. She pulled open a drawer and stared at the phone inside with distaste. She hated talking on the phone as much as she disliked email, but there were some calls she had to take. If a person had this number, then it was such.

  Hannah picked up the receiver. “Hannah.”

  “Ms. Hannah.” The voice drooled s
outhern charm so fake it grated on Hannah’s nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  “Senator. What a surprise to hear from you. Especially at this late hour.”

  “We who serve our country,” Senator Gregory said, “are always on duty.”

  There was a pause, into which Hannah suspected she was supposed to say something as pithy.

  She didn’t.

  “Now, Ms. Hannah,” Gregory began, “I understand you have an operative working down in my neck of the woods.”

  “Which neck is that?” Hannah asked, having a fleeting vision of strangling the Senator’s scrawny neck.

  “Down around Hilton Head,” Gregory said. “You have a woman yonder who is causing a bit of a ruckus. Seems she took a shot at my son. Makes it kind of personal, don’t ya think?”

  “I doubt she shot at your son,” Hannah said.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because he’d be dead if she did and he is not, am I correct?”

  “You are correct,” Gregory admitted. “But still. The propriety of it all. Really. There is nothing in that area that need concern you.”

  Another pause, which Hannah once more refused to fill. She marveled at the simplicity of unraveling a lie: by calling her so late and telling her there was nothing, he was telling her there was indeed something.

  Gregory’s voice lost a little bit of its charm. “Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Hannah said.

  “Very good.”

  The phone went dead.

  * * *

  They could see the Fina tied up to Chase’s floating (sort of) dock. It was dark and the lights along the 240-foot walkway were on, a single bulb every twenty feet or so giving out a feeble glow. Once more the difference between Chase’s abode and the houses on either side was apparent as the neighbors were brightly lit.