Compromised

by Tom Saric

  “That’s not necessary.”

  Paul followed Bailey around the desk to the main elevators. Evans likely had a note next to his file that he was in federal custody and no details on his condition were to be given out. Without question, no visitors would be allowed.

  They stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The elevator labored its way up. Paul looked at Bailey, who ran her hand nervously up and down the metal railing on the elevator wall. Paul winced at the idea that Bailey was having second thoughts. That she would decide this had gone far enough and she wanted no part of it.

  But she didn’t. The elevator stopped and before the door had completely slid open, Bailey had already walked out to the nursing station. She didn’t waste any time showing her identification to the two nurses at the desk. One of them pointed down the end of the long corridor.

  As they walked down the dimly lit corridor, Paul’s thigh throbbed underneath the bandages. He kept moving forward at the expense of letting a grunt out with each step. Most of his mind was preoccupied with hope that Ellen could still be alive and Craig Evans could hold the key to finding her.

  There was thick silence in the hallway, broken only by a beeping heart monitor and the sound of someone vomiting around the corner. To his right, Paul saw a medical cart stocked with intravenous bags and vials of medications parked in front of a room. He stopped and looked both ways and only saw one nurse with her back towards him at the end of the hall, penciling something onto a clipboard. He bent over and quickly rummaged through the cart, his hands moving until he found three vials of the cardiac medication adenosine. He slipped them into his pocket.

  At the end of the hall, they found two uniformed city police officers sitting in front of a closed door, sipping coffee. The two officers kept talking, sharing a good laugh, and didn’t notice Paul and Bailey until they were a few feet from them. When they did see them, the officers stopped talking abruptly and stood on either side of the doorway.

  “I’m Officer Bailey Clarke, from the National Clandestine Service and this is Officer Rice,” she said without pause. “Is this where Craig Evans is? We need to speak with him.”

  “Yes it is. He’s sleeping right now, though,” the officer who was already graying, said. “We need to check identification.”

  Paul exchanged glances with Bailey. If they looked at Paul’s identification, they would instantly know he was an imposter. He looked over the officer’s shoulder at the closed door, with a small PRIVATE sign on the front. A tall, narrow window beside the door had the blinds drawn closed so no one could see inside.

  Paul looked the officer up and down and inched closer to him. “How do you know he’s sleeping?”

  “We check on him every few minutes.”

  “Right. And you’re concerned about identification, because you were told. I’m sure you were also told that high-ranking businessmen who get charged with serious federal crimes are at high risk of suicide and need to be constantly monitored. Or do we pick and choose what we do?”

  The officer looked at the ground and Paul pushed his way between them and pressed on the door. The corners of Bailey’s lips curled up slightly as she too passed.

  Inside, Evans was on the bed with his eyes closed. Paul hardly recognized him. Nasal prongs fed oxygen into his brown-purple-splotched face and his finely styled hair was now matted down on his forehead. Bruises had formed on his neck. Both of his legs were covered in thick layers of bandages. Intravenous fluid dripped into each arm.

  Paul looked at the heart monitor. He pushed the armchair next to Evans’ bed. He quietly turned the deadbolt on the door and then walked beside the bed. Bailey didn’t move from her position next to the door. Paul pressed his thumb into the bandages above Evans’ kneecap.

  Evans shot up and twisted in agony, letting out a weak scream. His eyelids flipped open and when he saw Paul hovering over him, he recoiled like an injured animal.

  “You lied to me, Craig.” Paul smiled.

  “What are you talking about?” Evans crawled up the bed slightly, grasping the handrails.

  “I know about the weapon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The missing weapon, Craig. I know about it and you’re going to tell me who has it.” Paul pressed down on his kneecap again, eliciting another squeal.

  “You monster,” he cried through the pain. “You can’t get blood from a stone.”

  “You’re no stone and you’ve held out on me,” Paul kept his voice steady. “You need to be aware that I will take this as far as is necessary to find out where that weapon is.”

  “What if I don’t know anything?”

  “There are three possible scenarios here, Craig: the first is that you cooperate and tell me who has the weapon and where it is. The second is that you lie and I torture you until you speak. The last is that you don’t know anything and I torture you and you die.” Paul shrugged. “I think all parties will be satisfied with the first scenario.”

  “She’ll never let you torture me the way you did.” Evans let out a nervous chuckle and nodded at Bailey. “These are scare tactics.”

  Paul pretended to consider for a moment. “You’re right in some ways. But we’re not the FBI here, Craig. We’re the National Clandestine Service and there’s a nuclear weapon loose within this country’s borders. So let’s just say she’s willing to break a few international treaties to let this happen. And I won’t be torturing you the way that I did earlier. It will be much quicker.”

  Evans’ breathing became more labored. The heart monitor beeped rapidly. Suddenly, he began to scream, “Help! Help! Officers!”

  Paul smothered Evans’s face with both of his hands and pressed his head down into the mattress. Evans tried to twist free of the muzzle, but Paul only pressed down harder. Paul said to Bailey. “Tell them that everything’s okay.”

  Bailey nodded and opened the door a crack and whispered something to the officers outside. Then she shut the door.

  “Now come over here and twist that blanket up and tie it around his mouth.”

  Bailey hurried over, her shoes clicking along the linoleum floor. She picked up the pile of extra blankets on the chair beside the window. She twisted one up in a roll, shoved into Evans’ mouth and tied it tightly behind his head in a double knot.

  Meanwhile, Paul held Evans’ arms down. Evans flopped on the bed, moving all of his limbs, trying desperately to get out of Paul’s hold. He managed to free his right arm and he swung it wildly, connected squarely with Paul’s jaw, jarring him. Paul tightened his grip on Evans’ other arm and then swung the point of his elbow into Evans’s nose, stunning him for a moment. Paul took the chance and pinned down his other hand.

  “Tie his hands to the bed.”

  Bailey tied a blanket around each of his hands, again in a double knot.

  “I can’t waste any more time.” Paul reached in his pocket and dropped the plastic vials onto the tray table beside him. He picked one up and held it between his fingers. “This is a twelve milligram vial of adenosine. It’s used to slow rapid heart rates. It’s a life-saving medication. I have three vials here. To slow the heart, about one vial is usually needed, at most two. Three vials will stop your heart permanently.”

  Evans’s eyes darted around the room and he made a grunting sound through the blanket stuffed inside his mouth. His chest rose up and down in shallow little breaths. The heart monitor beeped rapidly.

  “I’ll inject the first twelve milligrams.” Paul pressed the syringe into the IV tubing and watched the rhythm strip on the monitor above Evans’s bed steadily decrease. The rapid beeping slowed to a crawl. Evans’s eyes fluttered closed. His chest became motionless.

  Bailey slapped Evans gently on the cheek. His eyes opened. He shot a glance at each of them and began groaning through the cloth in his mouth.

  “Do you have something to say?” Paul pulled the blanket to Evans’s chin.

  “You can’t do this. I have imm
unity.” Evans looked over at Bailey, hoping for protection, but she stared right through him.

  “She might have given you a no-prosecution agreement but you didn’t get one from me. No one will protect you, not even the pretty lady from the NCS.” Paul leaned in, pressing his index finger on Evans’ chest. “Trust me, immunity agreements are void when you’re dead.”

  “You can’t let him do this,” Evans’ voice raised an octave and pointed at Bailey. “It’s your duty to protect me.”

  Bailey nudged Paul out of the way, grasped the handrails tightly, and leaned over Evans. “My duty is to protect the United States. And your agreement was contingent on your full disclosure of the events. So now that we know you withheld crucial information, for the security of this country that agreement is null and void.” She cocked her head sideways and squinted. “So in the interest of the safety of the American people, I’m going to let him do his thing.”

  Evans’ brazenness wilted as Bailey spoke. His shoulders slumped to the side and he folded his hands in front of him.

  “People are going to die if you don’t help us stop this. The man who has the weapon will use it and he will use it to kill thousands of innocent people. For nothing.”

  Paul’s words hung in the air.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be for nothing.” Evans exhaled and looked up at Paul. “You already know about the one guy in the NCS who gave us your information and General Kaczmareck, too. They had planned out the military side of things. You see, they had dealt with the terrorist on the side, keeping their identities secret so they could recover the weapons. But the guy who came up with the whole thing I never met. He’s an arms dealer and he came to me with this offer.”

  “Senechaux,” Bailey said.

  “Yeah. All he wanted was a fee, a big one, too. But we took it too far. We figured: was the government really going to do anything because of a clandestine Special Forces operation? It took Nine-Eleven for the U.S. to finally go into Afghanistan and Iraq even though they knew they were involved in all sorts of crazy smuggling operations for decades. I needed results right away.”

  “So you smuggled the weapon into the United States.”

  “Senechaux wanted a helicopter because we knew of the planned ambush by the military. We tipped Hadad off and he managed to get a suitcase out. We were going to frame him, essentially. Get him to bring in the suitcase and then notify the authorities and media that a nuclear weapon had come onto U.S. soil.”

  “So where is it?”

  “I think it’s too late.” Evans frowned.

  “What are you talking about?” Paul boomed.

  Suddenly there was a bang at the door. Paul turned and the loud knocking at the door continued. “This is the FBI. Open the door immediately.”

  Paul exchanged glances with Bailey. They had come more quickly than they had thought.

  “Why is too late, Craig?” Paul screamed.

  “I lost contact with Senechaux yesterday. He has the weapon. He said he was going to set it off.”

  More banging. “We will break this door open!”

  “Set it off where?”

  “I don’t know.” Evans shook his head. “That wasn’t the deal. We were supposed to just make it look like a threat.

  “Where was he going to set it off?”

  “I don’t know. But he said he had to do it today. He said he was going to take out the people that prevent the military from getting things done.”

  “Which people?” Paul said.

  “I don’t know! He said there were people who screwed him years ago and he was going to get them back. He was ranting, something about how the fallen angels will have their revenge.”

  It felt like a hand reached up inside Paul’s abdomen and twisted his intestines. Something crept between the layers of his skin. He just heard something that his initial, split-second reaction was to dismiss as hallucination.

  His mind was thrown back the inquiry. Lincoln told us to appeal to the better angels of our nature, but there are fallen angels that need to be cast out of our military played on REPEAT.

  “Janet Carter,” Paul blurted out.

  “What?” Bailey looked at him.

  “The target. It’s Janet Carter.”

  “The senator?”

  “Yes, she referred to us as ‘Fallen Angels’ when launching the inquiry.”

  “Her book signing is today,” Bailey said. “She’s expected to announce her candidacy for the presidency.”

  More banging at the door.

  “I have to go there,” Paul said. “He’s expecting me. He might have Ellen.”

  “Who?” Bailey said.

  “Senechaux, Sidwell. I know he’s waiting for me.”

  “You’re never going to get through them.” Bailey pointed at the door, a door that was bending with each body check by the agents on the other side. “We’re going to jail, Paul.”

  “Not yet,” Paul said. “Give me your car keys!” Bailey reached in her pocket and tossed her keys to him. “Bailey, you have to tell them to clear out the book signing. He’s going to set it off there.”

  “I’ll be going to a holding cell when they come in.”

  “Then you’ll have to convince them.”

  Paul picked up the armchair beside the window and raised it high above his head. He launched it at the window, shattering it to pieces. In that instant, the door opened and FBI officers flooded into the room. Paul ran across the room and jumped out of the window, dropping the four stories onto the lawn below. As he landed, his knees buckled and he fell forward, rolling three times. Pain seared from his ankle up to his lower back. He dragged himself along the grass, around the corner of the building, so he was out of sight of the window.

  He got to his feet, his left ankle already swelling. He dragged his ankle along the ground, nearly hopping on one foot to the car. He swung the door open, started the car, and drove to D.C.

  35

  The FBI agent who arrested Bailey had placed the handcuffs on her wrists so tightly her hands were going numb. She looked up at the clock on the bland wall inside a basement office of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and realized she had been sitting alone for over half an hour. The only other item of décor in this room was a framed lithograph of the Counterterrorism Division seal, an eagle in full flight over which the slogan PROTECTING AMERICA was superimposed.

  Bailey scanned the room, looking for any sign of life. The computer monitor on the desk across from her was turned off, and the door was closed. The ceiling was devoid of any surveillance cameras. Why were they leaving her alone? She needed to tell someone there was a nuclear weapon at George Washington University.

  She had tried, but so far, it had fallen on deaf ears. After the FBI agents had piled into Evans’s hospital room, she was promptly read her rights and herded into one of the cruisers parked in front of the hospital. She had pleaded with the agents, begged them to put an alert out that the university was an imminent terrorist target. But the agents responded to her the same way each time you have the right to remain silent… and why shouldn’t they? As far as they were concerned, she had accompanied an in-custody rogue clandestine operative on U.S. soil. She was an accomplice.

  Bailey’s only hope now was that her interrogator would listen, and he would get there soon.

  The door swung open and a thin, middle-aged man in a dark suit with a slicked three-quarter part walked in. The musky scent of his aftershave followed him. He placed a can of 7-Up on the table in front of Bailey and dug into his pockets, removed a set of keys, and unlocked her handcuffs. He sat on the corner of the desk and faced Bailey.

  He pulled out a small digital tape recorder and placed it on the desk beside him. “I’m Special Agent Mike Russo. State your name, please.”

  “Bailey Clarke.”

  “Thirsty, Mizz Clarke?” He pointed at the can of soda.

  Bailey shook her head.

  “Okay, I have a few questions for you. You have been arrested for aiding a su
spected terrorist and are under suspicion of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act against the United States of America. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that, but you have to listen to--”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Clarke, but the only words I need coming out of your mouth are those that directly answer my questions. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, but if you just give me a second--”

  “I’m not sure you do,” he raised his voice and stood up with his arms crossed. “Because what you say here will affect your prosecution. So it’s in your interest to cooperate with what I say because the maximum penalty for the charges you face is death by lethal injection. Do you understand that?”

  Bailey put her hands over her face. She was going to prison, if she was lucky. What else could she have done? She had uncovered a conspiracy and at least two high-ranking NCS and military officials were going to be prosecuted. Then she had learned more. A nuclear bomb was set to explode in the United States. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Paul out of the infirmary. But they wouldn’t have got the information from Evans the way Paul did. Was she supposed to have sat idly by and pretended she knew nothing of the bomb?

  She needed to convince this man. It could still be stopped. But he wouldn’t believe her. So far as he was concerned, she was the problem. He wanted a confession. Tension filled up in her muscles, traveling up through her chest and down her arms.

  “I understand,” Bailey said sheepishly. She put her head down. “This wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

  Russo leaned forward. “What wasn’t?”

  “The operation. Alban. Senechaux.”

  “Listen, Bailey, it’s never too late to do the right thing,” Russo’s voice softened, now using her first name.

  Bailey sat up and wiped her eyes. She could tell that Russo thought he was on the verge of a confession. He sat there pleased with himself.

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m sure that anything you say now can only help your case. Whatever charges may come, judges usually look kindly upon people who come clean.”