by Joseph Nagle
“Yes, sir, the source just came through.”
“An asset of ours?”
“No, sir. An unknown.”
Jorge bent over and stroked a few commands into the CIA database. A face, along with a name, address, and phone number, flashed across the large screen at the front of the room.
The section chief stared blankly at the image of the young man on the screen. It was a driver’s license photo. “Who is that, Mr. Garrido?”
“Hard to say, sir. Local asset of the Doc’s, perhaps, but he could also just be collateral damage—in the wrong place at the wrong time. His name is Alberto Blanco: twenty-three years old, no known aliases, no record of arrest or military service; he is listed as a student at the nearby university—no major declared. He was born and raised in Lisbon. He appears clean, sir.”
“No one’s clean, Mr. Garrido,” stated the chief almost passively. “Who do we have in Lisbon?” He scratched at his chin as if in deep contemplation, calculating the events that had just transpired. “I believe we have two teams there?” The question was rhetorical; he didn’t want nor expect an answer.
Jorge had anticipated the forthcoming command, and thanks to Ms. Samantha, he already had a list of the two sleeper teams in Lisbon. A few more strokes of the keys, and the members of both teams were on the screen.
The section chief thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you have Mr. Blanco’s location?”
“Yes, sir, I do. He made a call to the local police about three minutes ago. He claimed that he was attacked in a bathroom, and his laptop was stolen.”
The section chief smiled slightly and whispered, “Some things will never change, will they, Michael?”
“Sir?” asked Jorge.
“Nothing, Mr. Garrido—activate team one; bring Mr. Blanco in; have him interrogated. Get the team in there now; I don’t want any interaction with the local PSP.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But instruct the team to go soft on Mr. Blanco—he may just be a casualty of all this. We need to know what he knows, what he saw and heard. Everyone knows something, Mr. Garrido; sometimes they just don’t know it. Soft techniques only—understood?”
“Understood, sir,” answered Jorge.
Jorge activated the team in Lisbon; the section chief just stood over his shoulder without saying another word. Moments ago, the room had been awash energy and adrenaline; now it was empty—quiet and almost cavernous. Jorge was eager to know what was going on, and his actions were starting to show it.
The section chief needed to get back to his office. He turned to walk away, but Jorge shouted out to him in the same manner that an annoyed wife barks at her husband. “Are we going to talk about it?” Shit, thought Jorge, that certainly didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.
His boss stopped in his tracks, frozen by the question. Jorge was on his feet and had a growing face of toddler-type fear with each step that his boss took. Instantly he was sorry for his presumptuous interrogative.
“Sir,” he stammered, “I, I didn’t mean to…I mean,” he worked to gather his demeanor and took a breath. “I was out of line and overreaching my pay grade.”
The two men were now face-to-face; Jorge could feel the chief’s hot breath bathing his own newly flushed face.
Damn, thought Jorge, but he stood his ground, albeit uncomfortably.
The section chief eyed the young man and thought of his options. But first he needed to know what his underling did. “Mr. Garrido, what exactly would you like to talk about?”
“Sir, I know what that was—what the Doc was showing us.”
“Showing us, Mr. Garrido? What makes you think that Dr. Sterling was showing us anything?”
Jorge pushed back. “Come on, sir, you and I both know what he was doing. There’s no way he would hack into our systems like that; he, of all people, would know that he couldn’t do it without sounding more sirens than a five-alarm fire. He knew we would find him. He knew that we would see everything he was seeing. He’s trying to tell us something.”
Jorge watched as his chief’s face became tauter; he saw his jawline becoming more pronounced. There couldn’t be any greater of a signal that he was wading through dangerous waters than in the form of the pulsating vein on the side of his chief’s temple.
But on he pressed. He couldn’t control himself. “The Doc jumped back on the grid because he knew we would find him; he wanted us to,” he repeated; this time with even more confidence and vigor. “He wanted us to see what he was seeing—he was showing it to us, sir!” Jorge blurted out the last bit, making sure he threw in a title of respect.
The section chief’s voice was low and his tone serious. “Then tell me, Mr. Garrido,” he said, lowering his voice even more. “What was he showing us?”
Jorge swallowed slightly but knew that he was what poker players called “pot-committed.” He replied, “The purchase, payment, and manifest for the delivery of uranium-enriching centrifuges from Russia to Afghanistan. The files also contained the blueprint for a TBA-480 firing block. Sir, he was showing us that an al-Qaeda cell has bought a nuclear weapon along with the instructions on how to build it—”
Jorge paused, not sure if he had just made a mistake.
“—and, sir, it was labeled Merlin—Operation Merlin, EO/L9-TSC. Sir, that’s Eyes Only/Level Nine-Top Secret Compartmentalized. That’s our classification, sir, for black ops. That was our intelligence.”
“So it was, Mr. Garrido. So it was.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
COPS & COFFEE
LISBON, PORTUGAL
The white and blue Volkswagen pulled to the front of Café A Brasileira; the two officers sitting in the police cruiser eyed the crowd before exiting. The bistro tables were full, and as many patrons were standing about as were sitting; they appeared animated and concerned—excited, even, by the day’s events. A large number of the coffee-goers clumped around a life-size bronze statue of Fernando Pessoa. The statue was of the man sitting, legs crossed, at a coffee table. The sculpture even included an empty seat at the table and was usually well sought after by patrons. In it sat a young, slumped, and clearly upset man.
The arrival of the PSP was met with little pomp but drew the attention of some of the crowd.
Two olive-skinned officers exited the vehicle and were pointed toward the young victim by a few of those in the crowd. One PSP officer nodded at the other and said, “Wait here.”
“Okay, but make it quick.”
The officer strode with authority to where the victim sat. He eyed the boy as if sizing him up. He was small, nearly diminutive, and pale-skinned; he appeared distant—as if shell-shocked.
“Mr. Blanco?” asked the officer.
“Yes, that’s me,” he replied. His eyes were red and swollen, reflecting the amount of crying he had done. Around his neck were the deep, purple striations that came from being choked.
The PSP officer mentally noted the injury.
“Mr. Blanco, I am Officer Rodero with the PSP. Please, come with me to my car. I need to ask a few questions.”
Alberto Blanco responded with a slight nod and rose obligingly from the small bronze bistro chair.
Together they walked to the car; the second officer held open the car’s back door for the young man. Once inside, the officer shut the door and climbed into the front seat. The second officer followed and climbed into the front on the other side.
Alberto looked around the back of the car; the seats were dirtied and worn. It smelled dank and musty. He imagined the types of people thrown into the back: used prostitutes, sweaty sailors, and filthy street vagabonds. Alberto instantly felt queasy and contracted his arms and legs closer to his torso as if this might help him touch less of the vehicle’s interior.
The two police officers drove away from the coffee shop with Alberto, but said nothing to him. After nearly five minutes of silence, Alberto was becoming uncomfortable from more than just the filth of his confines. He asked, “Where is the pol
ice station; how far away is it?”
Neither officer spoke.
This annoyed the young man, and he banged on the protective divider and repeated the question. “Hey! Where are you guys taking me?”
Again, nothing.
Alberto’s instincts fired up; he was becoming quite scared. He sensed something was wrong. His suspicions became even more confirmed when the squad turned onto a road that led straight to one of the city’s many seaside loading docks. His suspicions then turned into outright fear when the car was driven into a dark, empty warehouse.
The two officers ignored the incessant and loud banging by Alberto Blanco from the backseat.
They parked the car and exited the vehicle.
Both men reached to their holsters and removed their guns—at least, that’s the way it appeared to Alberto Blanco.
With a nod, both men opened both back doors. A wash of salted air, along with a dust-filled swirl, was sucked into the backseat like a vacuum. Alberto was frozen. He didn’t know which way to move or what word to utter. Instead he just stared straight ahead. His mind was blank with fear.
The officer to his left fired. A thin wire, unseen by the boy, shot out from the Taser and attached to his ribcage just above his waistline. His body went rigid, and his eyes bulged forcibly from their orbits. He bit down hard on his tongue. It was only a moment, but when the surge of electricity was finished, Alberto Blanco was unconscious.
“He said soft techniques.”
Smiling wickedly, the firing sleeper agent easily replied, “That was. Now grab him; let’s get this over with.”
The asset did as he was told, and soon the unconscious boy was being dragged to a chair in the middle of the warehouse. Roughly, the man sat him in the chair. One lone light hung from a long cable and shined down on the three men from directly above.
Cuffs were slapped onto his wrists and ankles. The moment they were tightened, Alberto groaned.
The agent who had fired the Taser slapped his captive hard. It had almost no effect. He slapped him again; this time Alberto jerked awake as the back of the sleeper agent’s hand smashed firmly across his face. A small trickle of blood dripped from Alberto’s nostrils.
Alberto Blanco let out an odd whimper.
And then for a moment there was silence—a silence that continued until it was broken by the slight sound of dripping water. Both agents eyed Alberto Blanco’s feet and then looked at one another.
A small pool of urine collected at the boy’s ankles, trickling out from his right pant leg.
“Good god, man,” said the Tasering sleeper agent, “get a hold of yourself.”
The other looked at his partner and said, “Shall we begin?”
Alberto heard this, and his eyes grew even wider. He lost control of more than just his bladder.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
IN CONTROL
CIA HQ
Stanford was sitting in his small office staring at his computer screen. He too was working late.
Across his forehead, his skin wrinkled tightly from the stress as he rubbed both temples; a bit of perspiration lined the back of his neck. “That was close,” he said out loud although his office, and most likely the entire floor, was empty.
He reached over to his computer and removed a flash drive from its USB port. Pocketing the small memory stick, he returned his attention to the computer’s LCD screen and tapped a few more commands.
“This will keep you busy for at least a few hours.”
Stanford had hacked into the Missiles & Space Command’s central control network; he installed and ran a diagnostic program for the AEHF-3 satellite that ran as a shadow and used his untraceable computer language. Automatically, the avionics and communications panels of the satellite went offline and would be that way until the program was complete. He designed his commands to make it look like a pre-planned, scheduled system shutdown. The team searching for Dr. Sterling would consider it just a stroke of bad luck that the satellite had been needed at the same time it had gone offline for diagnostics.
Stanford picked up his cell phone from the top of his desk and dialed a number he had only recently committed to memory. In Paris, Senator Faust was still sleeping on high-count, expensive Egyptian cotton sheets when the phone rang. On his nightstand was an empty bottle of twenty-year-old scotch and two glasses. Startled by an unexpected, shrill ring, he involuntarily swung out and knocked over the empty bottle, sending it sprawling across the king bedroom of the Presidential Suite and into the separate dining room.
Since 1809, le hôtel Westminster has sat on the prestigious Rue de la Paix; its Hausmannian façade has impressed all strata of society from the moment it was completed. Reserved for those who can afford only the finest, for over two hundred years, its rich and vibrant colored French art de vivre walls, complete with hangings in toile de Jouy, have kept the secrets of men greater and more accomplished than Senator Faust.
The lights of the crystal chandelier above the four-poster bed were on but had been turned low, sending dull shards of slivered light across the milky-white, round frame of his assistant. Still asleep, her long red hair cascaded over her naked back and lay neatly across her frame. Another ring of the phone caused her to stir slightly—she was still half-drunk from the night’s shared bottle of Scotch.
The phone rang again.
“Do you want me to get it?” she mumbled sleepily to the senator.
“No, it’s quite all right; just rest,” he replied and then leaned his naked body across her own.
Justine purred a bit at the connection of his skin on hers as he reached for the phone. Rolling over, she easily pinned the senator to the bed and straddled him. He was twenty years her senior, but his libido didn’t show it. Justine’s eyes lit up in delight as she felt his growing arousal between her thighs.
Senator Faust almost ignored the phone but instead playfully tossed her to the side and said gruffly, “This had better be damn good!”
Justine pouted and traced her fingers up his thigh as he cradled the phone against his ear. “This is Faust,” he answered.
“Senator, Sterling’s back on the grid.”
“What, where?” he spat out and slapped away Justine’s hand.
Instantly she was shamed. In a brief moment, she was reminded of her place and just how far she really was from his.
“Do you have his location?” the senator repeated.
“Yes, Senator. He’s in Lisbon; the thief is keeping tabs on him. But, senator…” Stanford paused.
“Well, what is it? Spit it out!”
“He has the files; I don’t know how, but he does. He sent them to one of the section chiefs here.”
Senator Faust nearly fell out of bed. Bolting upright, he had to catch himself. He growled angrily and deliberately. “I’ll tell you how he got those files, you idiot! He’s with that fucking Green Beret—your man in India was supposed to get that flash drive!”
Faust was on his feet and pacing erratically. “I don’t care what you do or how you do it, but no one, and I mean not one single soul beyond those on this line can know what’s in those files. Not yet. We are not ready. I can be, and you can still be”—he made sure to say—“connected directly to what’s on them. You take care of that chief and anyone else who has seen them; wipe clean any evidence, and you get those goddamn files! Do you hear me, Stanford? Are you clear? Take care of him now!” The senator’s growl had grown into near screams.
“But, Senator, the chief is…”
Faust cut him off. “I don’t care what or who he is: just get rid of him! Fix this, Stanford! Now, are you clear?”
Justine watched from the corner as the senator’s face took on a look of pure evil.
Stanford had to hold the phone slightly from his ear, but he answered anyway. “Clear, Senator. I am clear.” You should have let me have that Green Beret killed along with his captain.
The senator hung up and, annoyed, immediately searched for his woman scorned.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Faust shouted at her.
Justine wanted to scream at him, but even more so, she wanted to cry. She wouldn’t let him see her like this. She jumped to her feet and stomped to the bathroom. Once inside, she slammed the door emphatically shut. The bathroom’s nearly all-marble interior echoed greater inside than it did throughout the suite.
“Fucking women,” Faust quietly snarled as he searched the room for the clothes he had so eagerly tossed aside the night before.
In his office, Stanford tapped into the closed-circuit camera system. He was soon staring into a room where he saw the section chief and Jorge Juan Garrido standing over a computer screen. Stanford manually maneuvered the camera’s aperture, panning the room. It was empty. He powered down his terminal and rose from his seat. Collecting himself, his next steps would require a bit more precision than running a satellite diagnostics program.
He was about to do what had never before been done.
And he had only a few minutes to put the plan into action.
He walked over to his wall safe and spun its lock. With the combination entered, he opened the safe and pulled out his CIA-issued Colt 9mm handgun. Reaching into the safe once more, he pulled out a silencer and slowly attached it to the handgun’s bore.
Once it was secure, he slipped it into his front suit coat pocket and walked to the elevator. Inside, he lightly touched the button for floor number B3.
The elevator ride was smooth and quiet. It was uninterrupted by any of the four floors that it passed. Stanford had closed his eyes in conjunction with the elevator’s door. He concentrated on his breathing and slowed his heart rate. He visualized the next few minutes; he saw each action that was about to take place. He replayed them over and over, preparing himself for what was next.
He emptied himself of all emotion.
