by James Phelan
“Agreed. Keep it in the mix,” McCorkell said, checking his watch and turning from the report to Hutchinson. “You’d better get your flight; we’ve got this. When you get to Washington, get everything you can on Walker and get it back to me.”
“Sure thing,” Hutchinson said, still lingering.
“What is it?” asked McCorkell.
“We’re not the only ones interested in him.”
“That figures. Who else, pre the safe house?”
“Fiona Somerville.” Hutchinson pointed to an analyst, who brought up Somerville’s personnel file on the screen. “She’s FBI, a counter-terrorism specialist out of the Med, Athens posting.”
“She’s working in criminal finance?” McCorkell asked. He looked at the photo of a no-nonsense woman in her forties with a short bob of blonde hair and intense eyes.
“That and some.”
“Do you know her?”
“Only by rep, and it’s good. She’s a pit bull, supernova bright.”
“Where is she now?” asked McCorkell.
“Rome,” an analyst said. “Closing, no doubt.”
“What does she want with Walker?”
Hutchinson smiled. “I haven’t exactly asked her, but given her muster’s technically counter-terrorism and counter-intel, I’d say she’s looking at Walker as a double, at best.”
“At worst?”
“Take your pick,” Hutchinson said. “Either a guy who wants revenge on those who listed him KIA . . .”
An analyst added, “A terrorist.”
Another chimed in, “Or he’s a paramilitary officer who’s always been bent.”
McCorkell nodded slowly. “Whatever the case, she sees Walker as a threat to national security.”
“Yep.”
“What’s his grab status with the Bureau? Do they want him dead or alive?”
“Alive, so far,” Hutchinson said. “That could change real quick with a request from the Agency over the next twenty-four hours, if it’s confirmed that he killed any of their agents at the safe house.”
“I hear you. Get on that flight to Washington, break down some walls at State and get everything you can on Walker.”
“You really think this guy’s an in to Bellamy?”
“Right now he’s the most interesting lead we’ve got.”
“I’m on it,” Hutchinson said and left the room.
McCorkell sipped his Irish Breakfast tea. A thought that had bugged him for hours started to play louder. If a guy like Walker’s been out in the wilderness all this time, how am I going to get to him before the rest of the world does?
•
Walker sat at the computer terminal and inserted the USB stick. The encryption key it contained, along with knowledge of where to look on the internet, enabled remote access from any computer to Intellipedia.
He started with the head-case courier, Felix Lassiter. Basically the role of couriers such as Lassiter was to sit in a bar or cafe or other seemingly innocuous location for a pre-designated period, during which information would be wirelessly transferred to the chip embedded in his head. It was lucrative, and straightforward, the ultimate job for a cutout agent: simply turn up for a while and then leave. It was the twenty-first century’s version of physically passing over microfilm or printouts.
The identities of head-case couriers were protected in the Intellipedia system as deeply as any other agent run by one of the US’s sixteen intelligence agencies. Walker had the benefit of knowing Lassiter’s case number, something that had taken him two months to obtain and had led him from Istanbul to Riyadh and then, a few days ago, to Athens.
Walker knew from the prefix that it was the same booking officer that had been used then; he figured that Lassiter had taken over the runs that the courier from Yemen, Louis Assif, used to make. So, killing Assif in Yemen had not cut that money and communications line. It had been taken over. By someone inside the Agency. The same someone who’d issued the drone strike and listed Walker KIA because he’d got too close.
Walker checked over his shoulder and saw Clara standing outside, holding two espressos. With the sunlight behind her he could see the shape of her body through her thin summer dress, and in a glance he traced her legs from her ankles up to the top of her thighs.
He refocused on the screen in front of him, typing an access code into the protected-field-officer area. The case files loaded within seconds. As with all head-case couriers, Lassiter’s file went only one rung deep, showing the last locations of his service.
The pick-up was at a cafe in Greece, yesterday.
The delivery was two nights from now, in a public space in Hong Kong, the exact location TBA an hour out, to be instructed at a hotel where Lassiter was booked.
Walker looked up the officer running the courier: CIA Deputy Director Jack Heller.
Now, why would a guy like you be using an Agency head case . . .
Walker logged out of the ops center, then went to the Intellipedia message boards. They were hundreds-deep in topic, and he searched through for the one he had not looked at in six months, hoping that his contact would be as diligent as ever.
He left an anonymous post: OMEGA DOWN.
Two words that would mean nothing to anyone other than the intended recipient.
Now, Walker had to wait.
Seventy-five hours to deadline.
19
Dan Bellamy was in an off-site PR meeting when the next call came. This time it came not from the field but from his DC office. He listened and was updated on everything the CIA knew about Rome.
Another cluster fuck. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes. He had no doubt that The Scalpel would succeed, but he didn’t have time to wait for another chance.
Bellamy replied with just a few words. “Get Durant back stateside before we proceed with Zodiac.”
Seventy-five hours to deadline.
•
Walker sat on the edge of the bed while Clara showered. He hadn’t expected her to come back to the apartment. They had lingered on the street outside; he apologized for getting her involved, and she said she needed the bathroom. When they had made their way back into the apartment, she had said she felt like she had death on her skin from all that she had seen, and she needed to wash it off, to think, to take it all in. Walker had been so caught up in the business of day-to-day survival that he hadn’t reflected on how she was coping. Now that he thought about it, he was a little surprised that she hadn’t fallen apart.
Yet.
He knew from a lifetime of experience that it would catch up with her. Best case: she would crash and want to sleep. Worst case: she would be traumatized, shut down, become a liability.
Walker knew that whoever was hunting him was USA all the way. His pursuers wouldn’t call the local cops, nor Europol or Interpol. Cops of any sort have questions, and his answers could not be heard outside the intelligence community. That was good and bad, but it was what it was.
Right now, he needed to use this window to get Clara out of here.
The water was turned off. Clara came out wearing a towel.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Well, you need to talk.”
“Okay.” Walker could sense that the cleansing shower had steeled her resolve and cleared her thoughts. He regretted letting her back up here.
“I mean it,” Clara said, “or I call the police.”
“Fair enough.”
Clara sat on the edge of the bed next to Walker and waited.
“So . . .” Walker said.
“Felix.”
“Right. Well, like I said, I was visiting him—”
“How do you know him?”
“We worked together.”
“What kind of work?”
“International relations.”
“Felix does not work in international relations. Did not. He was in finance.”
“I know. I dealt with him on a business deal once, about a year ago. He told
me to look him up if I was ever in the neighborhood.”
“And there you were, in the neighborhood at the time of his murder.”
“It wasn’t exactly the house call I wanted to make.”
Clara paused, then said, “Why did you not call the police?”
“The phone line was down.”
“Why did you not use your cell phone?”
“I didn’t have one on me.”
“You could have gone for help.”
“I only got there about two minutes before you.”
Clara nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. I believe you. About Felix.”
“Thanks.”
“Now tell me: who were those men who took us from the street before, took us to that house?”
“Americans.”
“I know that much. Were they in ‘international relations’ as well?”
Walker smiled at the way she said that. “No, no they weren’t.”
“You are American. They were American. A coincidence?”
Walker stood and walked to the bedroom’s balcony window. He spoke over his shoulder. “You should probably go.”
“No. I want to know.”
“It’s better you don’t.”
Silence.
Here it comes . . .
“Who were they? You must tell me this. You must. Who takes people from the street and locks them in a house like that? I want to know what is happening.”
Walker said, “Those guys worked for the CIA.”
Clara laughed.
He turned back to her. “I’m serious.”
“Okay,” she said. “And why did they do that? Take you, take me, from a street in Rome?”
“Because they want something I have.”
“You stole something?”
“No.”
“That,” she said, pointing at the USB around his neck. “They wanted that.”
“No,” Walker said. “Not this. This is what I went to the house for.”
“Went? They abducted you.”
“I needed this,” Walker said, tapping the USB. “So I let them take me.”
Clara’s expression changed, and she said, “When you looked up at that camera, outside the embassy, you wanted them to pick you up, to take you there?”
Walker nodded. “I needed to go to that safe house.”
“You call that a safe house?”
Walker smiled. “They are usually a lot safer.”
“Then what is it you have that they want?”
“Information.”
“Information?”
Walker nodded.
“About international relations?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. I’m still figuring it out.”
“They want to kidnap you—and me—for some information that you do not even have yet?”
“They don’t know what I know and what I don’t, so that makes me dangerous to them.”
Clara seemed to be taking it all in. Adding it all up. Weighing it. Testing it. She looked him directly in the eye for a long moment, then asked, “Are you a spy?”
“No. I’m just a guy.”
“A guy who works in international relations.”
“More or less.”
Clara nodded, stood. “Okay. I should go.”
•
Andrew Hutchinson sat in business class on the BA flight to Washington DC, working through his notes. He highlighted an interesting little fact: Jed Walker had been in Iraq the same time as Dan Bellamy. But then so were a couple hundred-thousand other Americans. Hutchinson’s gut told him that Walker wasn’t the type to sell out . . .
He switched to the personal information. The data on Walker’s family, namely his father, was substantial. Walker senior had been a foreign-policy specialist and senior advisor to several administrations, right up to his death. The guy was a legend, surpassed in his field perhaps only by Kissinger, a man he’d had a lifetime of run-ins with.
Hutchinson moved on to Walker’s wife, Eve. The little he’d found on her raised more questions than answers. He made a note: talk to the wife.
•
Walker moved to the tiny kitchen to give Clara privacy while she dressed. She left the door open, dropped the towel and slipped into her dress, nothing underneath. Damn. Walker went to the apartment door and opened it. No sign of the little old lady. He checked the cut on his side while he waited for Clara. The bleeding had mostly stopped, but the walk before had opened the wound and a slight ooze of bright-red liquid trickled.
“Why don’t we get you a dressing for that?” Clara said, her handbag over her shoulder.
“I’ll be okay.”
“And something to eat.”
“I thought you were leaving.”
“I will. After. I . . . I cannot think. I have nowhere to be. I was headed to the countryside with Felix today . . . now this.” Clara looked at Walker, her gaze steady. “What will you do now?”
“Not much. Rest, then leave.”
“You need taking care of.”
“I’m fine on my own.”
“You’re still bleeding.”
“A scratch. I can manage.”
“Yes. But everybody needs looking after sometimes.”
Walker laughed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” Walker said, then pulled down his T-shirt. “Okay, let’s eat.”
Seventy-four hours to deadline.
20
Walker scanned faces as they walked. The Beretta was tucked into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back beneath his T-shirt.
After finding a pharmacy and some adhesive bandage and pain-killers, Clara made Walker stop to buy a new shirt. He chose a black one: cotton, long sleeves, slim fit but enough room across the shoulders to allow a full range of motion. He rolled up the sleeves and binned his torn T-shirt on the way down the ancient cobbled street. A police car flashed by, its siren wailing.
“You are not afraid of being arrested?” Clara asked.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Walker replied.
They walked in silence. Summer in Rome. Even on this tiny out-of-the-way street it was impossible to escape the tourists. Walker scrutinized faces as they moved, wary, assessing the physical capability of each person they passed. It was tiring work, and he had been doing it for years. Always ready. Fight or flight.
“Here,” Clara said. “This looks good.”
They entered a restaurant with pale yellow flaking plaster, buckets of flowers rowed against the front window and wooden tables that had seen a century’s worth of patrons dining upon them, red-shirted waiting staff floating about the twenty or so diners.
Walker sat with his back to the wall, the front door to his right, the kitchen to his left, the bar ahead. Clara sat opposite, the waiter pushing in her chair.
She ordered Campari and soda, he a double of Scotch, neat.
She smiled, settling herself in her chair while Walker took note of each of their fellow diners.
“Excuse me,” he said as he stood and left the table. Beyond the kitchen was an outdoor paved area, the single toilet a brick lean-to that was occupied. Walker didn’t need the bathroom. He checked the back alley through a rickety wooden door set into the brick fence. A dark, cobbled space, too narrow for cars. To his right the next street was ten meters away. To his left was sixty meters of uneven ground, winding around out of sight as it followed the curve of the road. Behind him a toilet flushed.
A man came out: late sixties, thin white hair, could handle himself once, maybe former Navy, face cragged with sun damage, now a happy tourist.
Walker went into the tiny bathroom and washed his hands. The mirror was rusted around the edges, the surface dulled and pocked with age. He didn’t need to see his reflection to know that he looked tired. He did not need to pause and question why he was staying with this woman longer than he needed to. They both knew what was happening. An early night. An early morning, leave
before she wakes. Check the message board. Head to Hong Kong.
Walker returned to find bread and oil and their drinks on the table.
Clara had applied more lipstick, a deep red painted on the full contours of her pout. Extra eye shadow too, blue-green highlights above those dark eyes. Framed by thick eyelashes. Detailed by perfectly shaped eyebrows. Poised. Expectant. Seductive.
Walker sipped Scotch. It tasted like home. He relaxed.
“You are interesting, Jed Walker . . .” Clara said.
“I bet you say that to all the guys you stitch back together.”
She smiled as she watched him. “I have never met an interesting American before.”
Walker smiled through his Scotch glass. “An endangered species, but we do exist.”
“So I see.” Clara turned to the waiter and ordered for them.
“What am I getting?” Walker asked.
“A surprise,” Clara replied.
•
“Agent Somerville,” Captain Spiteri said. Middle-aged with tanned skin and a big smile, he exuded success and confidence.
“Captain,” Somerville said, shaking his hand. They stood outside Rome’s police headquarters in the warm afternoon sun, the traffic sounds humming a background soundtrack.
“You’ve come to see your Trapwire system in action,” Spiteri said. He led them inside, through a warren of corridors to a large open-plan room full of LCD screens. The room was vast, and loud. No fewer than fifty police were at workstations, watching and collating data as it was being mined. Every camera in the city that was accessible via the internet was linked to this room.
“It’s impressive,” Somerville said.
Spiteri nodded. “You have the picture file?”
“Yes, here.” She passed over her cell phone, and the captain passed it to a subordinate who uploaded the image of Walker onto a computer.
“The facial recognition will run until you tell me otherwise,” Captain Spiteri explained. “But I’m sure we’ll find your man before then.”
“You’re very helpful.”
“It is the least I can do,” he replied. “Are you able to enlighten me as to why you want this man?”
Somerville looked at the photo of Walker and replied, “He’s a person of interest.”
“Ah, one of those.”
