Targets of Deception

by Jeffrey Stephens[epub]

“No. Whoever he was, he got away.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Guy in forensics says his IV might’ve been injected with something. We should have an answer by tomorrow morning. Maybe even tonight.”

  “Look. I can’t come up now. I was going to but the feds are here to take me in.”

  “You’ll be better off,” Reynolds said. “They’re all over us too.”

  “Why? What are they telling you makes this federal?”

  “Off the record?”

  “As agreed. You’re telling me my friend is dead. I need to know.”

  “Maybe two friends, right?”

  “No,” Jordan said. “I told you the truth about Ryan or McHugh or whoever he was. I never met him.”

  “Right. Well, all they’ll say is that it has something to do with national security. That’s the way they’re playing it, anyway.”

  Sandor nodded to himself, but did not respond.

  “They told me I’m not supposed to discuss the case with you. Not even about Peters.”

  “Perfect. And I bet you just love being pushed aside by a lot of DC suits.”

  “My poker face is probably off a little. One of my boys gets shot in the neck, a local guy is murdered and now they say another has a suspicious heart attack.”

  “Suspicious? You’re kidding, right?’

  “I don’t need you rubbing my nose in it too.”

  Jordan gave no answer, which was apology enough for Reynolds.

  “They threw us aside like we’re the Hardy Boys, just a bunch of hicks getting in their way.”

  “And now they’re here for me.”

  “I’m not surprised. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “You and your friend, you were on your way to see McHugh, am I right?”

  “That’s what they said?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Okay, off the record, as you like to say. We were.”

  “And whoever these people are, they took out Peters, then came after you in New York.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Why? Not because you and Peters were witnesses. Collins was a witness too.”

  “Collins is under guard.”

  “Peters would have been under guard too, if you had leveled with me.”

  Sandor felt the slap of his accusation. “That’s unless you believe Danny had a heart attack.”

  “Crap,” Reynolds said.

  “That airline ticket you told me about. It was round trip, right?”

  “It was.”

  “In the name of McHugh?”

  “Right.”

  “What airline?”

  “Air France. They confiscated it along with everything else we had on the case.”

  FBI Agent Springs cleared his throat. Jordan turned to him and held up his forefinger. “I better go,” he told Reynolds.

  “I’ve got one tidbit might interest you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Did you know McHugh had a sister?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Just asking. She arrived this morning, after we talked. Drove up to the house, met two of my men protecting the crime scene. Got here before the FBI took over.”

  “A visit from his sister a day after he’s shot?”

  “That’s all I know. Feds took her away for questioning as soon as they got into town.”

  Jordan nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Remember, Sandor, you didn’t hear any of this from me.”

  “You and I are fine, Captain, believe me.”

  “Good, cause now I gotta advise you to go with them.”

  “Trust me, at the moment I don’t have any choice.”

  “And we didn’t have a conversation about any of this, just so we’re clear.”

  “Crystal.” Jordan thought about the leather bag he was carrying, with the automatic zipped into the inside pocket, together with his cash and passports. He wondered how long it would be before the FBI searched him and everything he had with him. “What about Danny’s autopsy?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “You’re a good man, Captain.”

  “I think you are too. Hope I’m not wrong.”

  “That’s it then?”

  “That’s all I got. Maybe the boys in the button-down shirts can tell you more.”

  Jordan signed off, then made a show of dropping his cell phone so he could bend over and take the Walther automatic from his belt and slide it inside the bag.

  Dan Peters was dead, he told himself, barely able to believe it. Probably took him out the same time they came for me.

  He did the best he could to collect himself, then turned and walked back to the waiting car. “So,” he said to Agent Springs, “want me to drive?”

  THIRTEEN

  Mahmoud Rahmad was seated behind a large, polished rosewood desk in the opulent Park Avenue office he used while in New York. He was glaring at his two aides.

  “Perhaps you are correct, sir,” said his younger associate, “but Tafallai believes it is only a temporary delay.”

  Rahmad shook his head. “There are no delays in such matters. There is only failure.” His ebony eyes flashed with anger. “I want to know who has taken Sandor into custody. And where they are holding him.”

  “Yes sir.”

  After a moment of silence, Rahmad asked, “Why are you still here?”

  The aides exchange a glance and the younger of the two says, “Tafallai believes we will be able to find him.”

  Rahmad responded with a bitter smile, his young aide reacting by shifting uneasily in his seat. “And how can that be, my friend? Tafallai has twice failed at his assignment, and now what? He wants to conduct a personal manhunt, is that it? I assure you it will be at his expense, in every sense.”

  The older assistant, who was leaning on a credenza off to the side, spoke up now. “Tafallai has a lead.”

  “Ah. Through what divine intervention?”

  “Sandor met with a woman, sir. Tafallai saw them together. He is following her now.”

  “Tafallai should have acted when he saw them together.”

  “Perhaps so, Rahmad, but the risks were great, and the opportunity did not present itself.”

  “The opportunity did not present itself,” Rahmad mocked him. “Opportunities are created, they do not come gift-wrapped my dear man.” He stood and turned away from them, looking out his window to Park Avenue below. “Risks,” he said, still not facing them. “Risks to whom? To our friend Tafallai?” He turned back to them. “Proceed. By all means proceed. Traiman has a schedule to keep, and I will not be the one to hold it up.”

  Vincent Traiman was the man to whom Rahmad reported, a former American agent who was now working for al-Qaeda, and who was presently hiding in North Africa. In his final assignment for the Agency, before his defection, he had served as Jordan Sandor’s field supervisor.

  During his tenure with Central Intelligence, Traiman was known to be both resourceful and ruthless, a determined man who inspired apprehension from subordinates and superiors alike. Those fears were vindicated more than four years before when he betrayed the Agency and his country, turned rogue, and disappeared into Libya. He took with him a briefcase filled with non-sequential hundred dollar bills, a series of numbered Swiss accounts and a folder full of illegal arms deals. He also had a notebook containing the names and address of American contacts and undercover agents throughout the Middle East, just for insurance. His intention to turn traitor was some time in the making.

  Traiman was a man with a pragmatic sense of history. He understood that the promise of socialism around the world had been revealed as another Big Lie, not even lasting a century. He had witnessed the triumph of capitalism up close as the Soviet Union fell, the Iron Curtain was torn away and the bloc of repressed, satellite nations disintegrated, leaving each to regain its autonomy. But then Arafat, Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the leaders of al-Qaeda preached a community of Arab brotherhood, and
Traiman saw the coming of a new world order.

  He realized that only the naïve and uninformed could possibly believe the concentration of wealth enjoyed by the oil-rich Middle Eastern nations would be shared in a Pan-Arab vision. Dictatorships, monarchies and elite oligarchies ruled the region. There was no real hope for the struggling, suffering masses while oppression, starvation and tyranny, all wrapped in the name of Allah, suffocated them in the narcotic of religious and ethnic fervor.

  Traiman saw all of this as an opportunity, and he sold out his own country to reap the benefits of the myth being perpetrated by Islamic extremism. Up to recent times, these Arab nations were bit players on the global economic stage. However, as the need for oil expanded exponentially, their influence grew and they began to promote their own twenty-first century version of world domination. Power through the control of energy, through the intimidation of their own people and through the exportation of terror abroad. None of the princes, generals and statesmen from these countries, or the mercenaries they hired, suffered the deprivation or self-sacrifice they advocated for their zealous constituents. The ideology they espoused was nothing more than a device to satisfy their own greed. It was not a new theme, but there were far-reaching implications in a world that had been rapidly contracting in size through technology, communications, advanced arms and nuclear proliferation.

  Traiman recognized his chance during a tour of duty in Saudi Arabia, where he made contacts that sustained him in his efforts to build a force of professional assassins.

  As part of his departure strategy, Traiman arranged for the assassination of his top agent, Jordan Sandor, knowing that once his defection was confirmed, Jordan would be the first to come after him. Rather than risk becoming the target of the most talented operative in the CIA’s counter-terrorism unit, he made a pre-emptive strike. His plot failed, but by then Traiman had already vanished behind a wall of Wahhabi protection.

  A couple of years later, Traiman engineered an incursion in Bahrain that, as a bonus, once again drew the involvement of Sandor. However, as before, his former charge escaped unharmed. Now, after having coordinated a number of small attacks in Israel and Western Europe, he was preparing a major assault for which he was to be handsomely compensated, and only a few of his closest associates had any idea of the magnitude of the personal rewards he would receive.

  He was a man who gave new meaning to words like mercenary and traitor. He was also a man whose existence the Agency could not afford to publicly acknowledge. Nevertheless, he occupied one of the top spots on the secret list of most-wanted terrorists compiled by the CIA, MI6 and the Mossad. He was wanted, as they say, dead or alive.

  FOURTEEN

  The two FBI agents drove Jordan to an office building on West 48th Street, not far from the building where Beth Sharrow and her fellow CIA analysts worked. A whole team of security guards met him in the lobby. They checked his ID, asked him to remove his shoes, and instructed him to place his bag in a gray plastic tray at the end of a conveyor belt leading into an x-ray machine. “Is all this necessary?” he asked, thinking of the Walther, the .45, the spare clips and cash he had stowed inside.

  “Please place the bag in the tray, sir.” The guard’s tone of voice made it clear that compliance was nonnegotiable.

  Sandor did as he was told and was guided through the upright metal detector as his bag moved slowly along. As it disappeared into the x-ray machine, Jordan watched the guard seated before the visual display raise his eyebrows as the image must have come to a halt in the center of the monitor. The guard standing behind him placed his hand on his sidearm and, stepping around the console, extended his other hand toward Sandor and said, “Please step aside, sir.”

  “I don’t understand—” Jordan began, stalling for time.

  “Step aside,” the guard repeated, unsnapping his holster, “and place your hands behind your head.” The rest of the security team followed suit, assuming defensive postures, hands on their weapons. The guard in charge touched his earpiece and spoke quietly but firmly, and waited.

  Jordan was playing out a variety of possible scenarios and none of them were good.

  “Stand down,” the security chief suddenly ordered his detail. “All clear.” And handing Sandor’s bag to Agent Springs he said to Jordan, “I apologize for the inconvenience, sir. You may proceed.

  Of all the scenarios Jordan had envisioned, this was not one of them.

  Special Agent Springs escorted him upstairs in the elevator and down a corridor to a small conference room on the seventeenth floor. There was only one person in the room when they entered, and he did not bother to look up when Jordan was ushered in. “Have a seat,” he said as he continued making notes in a file.

  “Sure,” Sandor said. “Don’t rush yourself on my account.”

  Sandor’s tone caused the man to glance up at him now. “I’m Special Agent Prescott, and I’m in charge here,” he said. “I know who you are, and I’m not in the mood for any of your bullshit. I said have a seat, so have a seat.”

  Jordan grinned, then made his way to a chair against the wall and sat down.

  Agent Springs was standing in the doorway, about to leave. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “That’ll be all,” Prescott said.

  As Springs turned, Jordan called after him. “How do I get my bag back? Government going to give me a voucher for it?”

  Springs looked from Sandor to his boss but said nothing. His expression made it clear what he’d like to do to Sandor with a voucher.

  “Springs will hold onto your belongings,” Prescott said.

  “Oh good,” Jordan said. “I feel so much better now.”

  Springs hesitated. Then he left the room.

  Jordan watched as Prescott returned his attention to his file. The conference room was rigged with an array of government equipment. By the look of things, the set-up was pulled together in a hurry. Two telephones were on the table where Prescott was working; a computer station was positioned to the side, the screen flashing code numbers, skittishly awaiting further input; a fax machine was perched on a box against the wall; a recording machine was in place; three or four devices Jordan did not recognize were lined up off to the side; and a series of cables ran from all this electronic paraphernalia, under the tables, into a strip of surge protectors.

  He figured Prescott was with the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. It was obvious that whatever the feds were doing here, they had only recently set up shop. But they obviously meant business.

  Jordan knew that Prescott’s peremptory affect was intended to reinforce the fact that he had all the power, Jordan had none, and on a whim he could toss him in a hole so deep he’d need a steam shovel to dig himself out. He was a typical field office chief, and his attitude, as Jordan knew, was standard federal issue. Sandor had been through it all before, on both sides of the charade, and had developed an unwavering dislike for the Prescotts of the world. The entire act was the work of small, unquestioning minds, the consequence of an inability to articulate reason, leaving no choice but to resort to the “because I said so” justification for their actions. As far as Jordan was concerned, no desk jockey had ever won a race.

  Everything about Prescott was predictable, even his clothing. His suit was medium gray, his shirt was white with a button-down collar, his tie was red with little blue dots. He looked middle-aged, assuming people live to be a hundred and ten. His nose was wide, his complexion sallow and marred, his eyes pale and hard and cold.

  “So you’re Jordan Sandor.” Prescott put down his pen and removed his reading glasses.

  Jordan saw no need to respond.

  “We appreciate your cooperation.”

  “My cooperation?” Jordan smiled. “Your appreciation is evident from the greeting I got downstairs.” He did not mention his surprise at the fact that Agent Springs had held onto his leather bag after it was passed through the metal detector without removing either automatic. “Now that I’ve reached th
e inner sanctum, you might want to search me again. I may have a stick of dynamite somewhere your boys didn’t look.”

  “Standard procedure. You know that. The important thing is that you’re here.”

  “Well, just in case this interview is being recorded for posterity, I wasn’t given much of a choice.”

  “You want us to get a subpoena, I’ll have one in five minutes.”

  “I believe you. So as long as I’m here, let’s talk about Danny Peters.”

  “We’re sorry about your friend—”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But I’ll set the agenda for this discussion.”

  “Look, I’ve had a rough couple of days, so let’s get down to it. Why is the FBI investigating a roadside shooting?”

  Prescott leaned forward, which was an empty sort of gesture at intimacy, since Jordan was seated ten feet away. “Mr. Sandor, I realize what you’ve been through, but I’m going to be the one conducting this investigation, not you. Your questions will have to wait.”

  “I can ask, right? It’s still a free country, as they say, isn’t it Mr. Prescott?”

  Prescott responded with an undisguised look of contempt. “I already know all about you, my friend.” He tilted his head towards the computer station. “Your recklessness. Your insubordination. Some of it is fairly intriguing, I must say.”

  Even in the new order, where intelligence agencies were supposed to work together through the recently created Terrorist Threat Integration Center, Sandor realized that whatever information came up on the federal database would still be laundered to wash out the details of any of the classified work he did for the CIA’s Joint Counterterrorism Center. It was actually somewhat amusing that these subjective assessments would have survived the cleansing process.

  “Let’s get this clear from the get-go, Mr. Prescott. I’m not here to intrigue you, and I’m not your friend. My friend was Dan Peters. He was shot in the chest for no reason at all yesterday morning and turned up dead this morning in a local hospital, with a stated cause of death that a first-year intern wouldn’t believe. So you tell me what’s going on or you can go back to your Big Brother data bank and I’ll find my own way out of here.”