by HN Wake
Odom didn’t have to look at the paper. “It appears to be mine, sir.”
“It is yours.” He glared at Odom. “So in addition to Mac, out in the field—and this is the only conclusion that makes sense—is that someone inside these four walls also has it out for you.”
Odom swallowed.
“Someone here in Langley has set you up. You are now a serious liability to the Agency.”
“Sir—“
“Because you are a liability, I am putting you on leave. If you return, I will reprimand you publicly to smooth over the feathers you have so obviously ruffled by your incompetence.” He breathed in deeply through his nose. “Did you hear me that time, Odom?”
“Yes.”
“And the Malaysian witnesses I asked you to clean?”
“The order has been sent to Shipman.”
“Good. Then shut down your office and get out until I call you back in.”
54
Sumbawa, Indonesia
Mac had found Maluk Beach. It was a town on an island in an Indonesian province called West Nusa Tengarra, along a stretch of incredible beach below a craggy mountain peak. The town was made up of small beach restaurants, beach bars, and dirt roads. There were surfers, lots of surfers. The smell of suntan oil and coconut hovered in the air.
At a small table near the rail of a beach bar, she had kept her position, waiting for him to pass. She read from a Kindle, drank coffee and lime sodas, and nibbled on omelets.
She made a call to Johnson.
He picked up his cell quickly. His voice sounded nervous. “Mac, are you okay? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to be in touch.”
“You’re right. This is a quick call.”
“What’s up?”
“You know the onslaught model? Worldwide Green keeping an eye on the banks?”
“Of course.”
“Keep an eye on the Chinese banks too.”
“What?”
“Palm oil is a global business. It’s not just the Americans that have to be kept in line.”
There was a long pause as her message sank in. “Got it. Thanks, Mac. We need to watch, maybe target the Chinese banks too. Understood.”
“See you round, Johnson.”
Late in the second day, Josh Halloway appeared in the distance. He walked leisurely along the water’s edge, holding the hand of a beautiful Asian woman as a young girl skipped in and out of the soft waves.
Her heart clenched. She wasn’t sure if it was the first sight of Josh, the woman, or the girl—maybe all three—that took her breath away.
Emotions commingled as she watched them pass. Relief that Josh had successfully, safely escaped the game. He had gotten out. Admiration for the long term planning it must have required to disappear to the most secluded beach in the world. Melancholy as he smiled with his lover at their child. Distaste over his corruption. Indignation that he had used her.
She dropped money on the table, gathered her things, and stepped onto the hot sand. From a distance, she followed them.
At the water’s edge, small waves lapped and receded in a constant ebb and flow: a natural order of gaining ground then retreating. As she followed the figures along the beach, she wondered if the forest would be able to salvage what it had lost. Johnson had warned her that it could not, that climate change and human destruction had tipped the needle too far. The forest was unrecoverable.
Josh and his lover laughed often, once in a while they swung their clasped hands together. Their footprints stretched out before Mac.
A mile later, they dropped hands, called to the girl, and ambled off the beach up a small path into a garden. They tread the path like they had a million times before; it was clearly home. A sign on the beach read Escape Resort.
He came down to the water line in front of Escape Resort and sat down next to her. The surf was mild, there was no wind.
“I knew you’d find me,” he said.
The deep and slightly scratchy voice made her heart flip. It made her angry, that after all this time, his voice still affected her. It took her a long moment to respond. “Did you leave clues for me?”
He eyed the water. “Yes,” he said.
“The receipts in the glove compartment?”
“Yes.”
“The brochure for Monkey Divers?”
“Yes.”
“But you left behind your emergency pack in the backpack in Miri Beach Resort. That’s when I got scared. Why did you leave that?”
“I needed you to report in to Langley that something had happened to me. I needed to give you a reason to think that. Before you figured it all out.”
Neither looked at the other. Their eyes were on the horizon line.
She asked, “So you wanted me to show up here?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
The sun beat down on the soft waves.
She asked, “Was it hard?”
“Which part?”
“Hiking up to the gash. With Dominick?”
“Yes. And yes.”
“Did you know Alghaba was going to kill him?”
“We suspected it, yes.”
“Why didn’t you save him?”
“I wasn’t there when it happened.”
The waves lapped softly against the white beach.
She asked, “Who’s plan was it?”
“Someone senior. In the Agency. They had Odom rig it all up. Banks and the Agency have a lot of overlapping business and national interests. Palm oil as a critical node, yada yada. The Chinese threat.” He picked up a shell, threw it toward an incoming wave. “Crazy. The CIA getting that heavily into economic activities is like chasing a white rabbit down a hole. No end in sight and Wonderland at the bottom.”
“Whose idea was it to have Stuart pay you out?”
“Odom negotiated it. But I’m sure it wasn’t his brain child. Odom isn’t clever enough for that. Odom’s the fall guy if this shit ever comes to light.”
“The Agency wanted to keep you sweet?”
He nodded. “They thought some extra cash would keep me in line.”
“Instead you took it and disappeared.”
He nodded, his eyes staring at the horizon. “I lost my mojo after they killed Dominick. It was the final straw.”
It was a relief—however minor—to know Josh wasn’t the sociopath she had imagined.
He glanced at her and asked softly, “You thought the worst of me, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“So why are you here? Just to close the story for your own sanity?”
“It’s the least I should do as the—“ she eyed him “—fail-safe.” The sound of the words were like a punch in her stomach.
This gave him pause. “You found out about that?”
“That I was the fail-safe?” She nodded, willing the pain to subside.
“Sorry.” His face was sad. “I’m sorry you found out about that.”
She stared out over the ocean. She didn’t want to know if he had ever had feelings for her. She didn’t want to know if their time together had all been part of his job for the Agency. She didn’t want to know if their sex had been compulsory. Because no matter what, her mother had been right: Mac had been too slow to see that they were playing her. All of them.
Finally she said, “That’s not why I’m here. I need something on Odom.”
“Why?”
“They’ve taken out a kill-order on someone I need to protect.”
“Is this person in Malaysia?”
She nodded; he had always been smart.
“Then you don’t need something on Odom,” he replied.
She shot him a curious look.
“You need something on Shipman. Odom will send the kill order down to Shipman to carry out the task. Shipman will report back when it’s done. You need Shipman to report the deed is done—even if it wasn’t--and everyone goes on ab
out their lives.”
Yes, this made sense. Shipman was enough of a “cover-your-ass” guy that if she pushed him into a corner, he’d look out for his own interests. She asked, “What do you have on Shipman?”
“Plenty.”
“Here?”
“Sure. You don’t leave your blackmail material behind when you disappear.” He stood. “Let me go get it.”
While he was gone, she stared out over the ocean. In the last few days, everything she had known about the Agency had been recast with a malignant shadow. She was slowly, methodically processing this new reality.
He returned thirty minutes later with a USB thumb drive and handed it to her. He reached down to help her up and she brushed the sand off her shorts.
“So that’s it, we’re square?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s us. Square,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Mac. I do like you. You’re one of the good ones.”
She looked at him with a detached gaze. There was no more to say.
“Well, I guess that’s it.” He winked at her. “Keep an eye on Odom. And make sure to line up that escape plan with a golden parachute. Cause one of these days it will be you they ask to do the unthinkable.”
She watched him walk back over the sandy rise to the resort path.
His footprints in the dry sand filled quickly behind him.
55
Sumbawa, Indonesia
A small wooden fishing boat rode a swell far out in the ocean. The scuba tanks clanked lightly against the hull’s rail. From the stern, the captain made a small cry, veered port, and pointed to something just off the side of the boat.
Mac leaned out over the wake. Just below the surface, a large dolphin raced alongside the boat. She reached far out over the water and the dolphin swerved up, his dorsal fin cutting cleanly through the wake just below her hand. Then he was gone.
She looked back at the captain with a huge smile and gave him a thumbs up.
He set them back on course. A few minutes later, he searched down into the aquamarine water for a reef below. He slowed the engine. When he saw what he wanted, he turned off the engine, and lit a cigarette.
She looked across to the dive master, a similarly small man. He nodded and smiled. They both pulled up their BCDs and tanks. In unison, they reached through and swung the contraptions on their backs, tightened the waist belts and shoulder straps. They each pressed their masks to their foreheads and their regulators in their mouths.
He gave her a thumbs up and she responded in kind. They fell back over the railing and into the cold water, their fins slapping the water’s cusp.
She righted herself gently and took note of her surroundings. She took the first long breathe off the BCD, filling her lungs with compressed air, and cleared her mask. Then she exhaled deeply, dropping down into the darker water.
They descended quickly through a school of long, needle-nosed fish, and to the top of a colorful reef. She stretched her legs, kicked her fins, and took off across the reef in an easy stroke.
In her mind, she replayed Odom’s denial. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about that Josh is bent.’ She remembered reading the State Department cable and the pain of their betrayal. She wondered for the hundredth time since Maluk Beach whether she would stay with the Agency.
Up ahead, the dive master pointed a small spear gun at a deadly poisonous lion fish. She swam closer. The bright orange fish floated on the current, its spiked fin rays swaying softly. The diver master looked at her with a warning not to get near. She nodded—understood the danger.
They drifted along the top of a reef wall. Below, the deeper ocean was dark and mysterious.
She thought about Azly and the Penan. She imagined the gash and the soulful carrion bird’s cry. She pictured the sorrowful, intelligent eyes of an orangutan looking down from the jungle’s canopy.
If she hadn’t been Agency, she would never have been able to call off Alghaba’s destruction. It was something. It was enough of a reason to stay in. For now.
Floating in the expanse of the vast ocean, she was cradled in silence, alone.
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Table of Contents
Untitled
The Mac Ambrose Starter Set
Table of Contents
Untitled
A Spy Came Home
Prologue
PROLOGUE
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2
3
4
5
6
7
Three Weeks Before the Senate Vote
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9
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Two Weeks Before the Senate Vote
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One Week Before the Senate Vote
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Four Days Before the Senate Vote
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Resolution
54
Cal at 30th St locker
Untitled
Ghosts in Macau
Intro
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Untitled
Deceits of Borneo
Part One: Backlighting
Bar HK
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The boat rode a swell then the captain killed the engine
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