by Brad Taylor
Yasir said, “Switzerland?”
“Yes. Don’t question. Just follow the instructions. We’ll leave here first. Remain in place for thirty minutes.”
Yasir nodded, and Song stood, saying, “I believe you are what they said you’d be, but don’t mess this up. The men in Switzerland are under deep cover. You compromise them, and we’ll come find you like we did Kim Jong- nam. The only difference will be they won’t have to decontaminate your death location.”
Yasir set the phone on the table and smiled. “Stop with the threats. You aren’t the only ones who know how to operate. I’ve lived in a cauldron for seven years with people trying to kill me. All you’ve done is eat potatoes trying to stave off a famine.”
Song scowled at the slight, whirling around and leaving. The two men with him glared, and Yasir gave it right back.
Chapter 5
Jennifer came out of the bathroom dressed to the nines, and, man alive, she was a heartbreaker. Wearing a slinky black dress, a string of pearls, her blond hair somehow magically being up but still spilling around her neck, she looked like she did this for a living on the pages of a fashion magazine.
She bent over, putting on her heels and giving me a shot of her cleavage. I wasn’t sure if that was intended, but I certainly appreciated it. It had taken me about half as long to get ready, because all I had to do was put on a black suit with a black tie. No bow tie. I’m not that damn pathetic.
She stood back up, looked at me, and said, “You sure we shouldn’t repeat the Caymans? No offense, but you don’t look like a debonair guy.”
I glanced in the mirror of our room, wanting to see Daniel Craig or Sean Connery. While there were some hints of that, it remained only a hint. With my close-cropped brown hair and a jagged scar from a childhood accident threading its way across my brow and into my cheek, I looked more like a Serbian Mafia man. Or a pirate, which is what I preferred to think.
I said, “No way am I missing out on the casino. It’s the heart of this whole city. No, it’s me. Not lover boy. He’s got his own mission tonight.”
She was referring to Knuckles and a mission similar to this we’d once done in the Cayman Islands, when he’d been the one wearing the suit. Knuckles was a SEAL, with all that entailed, but he was one handsome man, standing at six foot two, with his shoulders stretching out about a foot on each side over his waist, a face that looked like some cologne model’s, and a head of black hair like a hipster guitarist.
Then Jennifer got to the heart of it, because that was her specialty. “Is it because Carly is working with Johnny’s team?”
Carly was a CIA case officer who Knuckles had once dated, which wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but he’d gotten her a shot at selection—with my endorsement—is only the second woman to do so, Jennifer being the first. They were no longer dating, and she’d pulled out of selection. Her choice.
As much as I wanted to see the casino, Jennifer was correct on why I’d decided to take the role instead of giving it to Knuckles. I didn’t want any old- flame crap to squirrel up our mission. Better to give Knuckles the breaking-and-entering portion, even if I had a scar on my face.
Even so, I fibbed a little. I said, “Johnny’s team has a completely different cover than ours. We don’t know each other. Carly working with them is irrelevant.”
Jennifer said, “Why is she even here?”
I looked at her, wondering if she wasn’t pissed that Carly had quit. Jennifer had put a lot of time into preparing Carly as the only female to pass Taskforce Assessment and Selection, but she had to know that selection was what it was. A cut line.
I said, “She’s still an operations officer of the CIA Clandestine Service, assigned to the Taskforce. A case officer. She’s the liaison for that CIA guy we have to meet after tonight. The one who said he’d only talk to one of his tribe. And anyway, this mission is right up her alley.”
Jennifer said nothing, going back to the mirror. I said, “What’s up?”
She fiddled with her earrings and said, “I can’t believe she didn’t pass. I just wonder.”
“Wonder if the heman woman- haters flushed her out?”
She turned around and said, “Yes. They tried to do it to me. I just wonder if she got on the Volkswagen bus because she wanted to.”
Leaving selection of your own volition was called Voluntary Withdrawal, or VW. Which had been turned into slang as the Volkswagen bus. I said, “Don’t turn this into a conspiracy. Don’t put this on the guys. You didn’t quit. Selection is there for a reason, and she saw she wasn’t a good fit. She loves being a case officer, so let her do that.”
She said, “This is going to be awkward.”
Meaning, she’d spent so much time getting Carly ready that she was afraid to actually see her now. None of us had since she’d quit.
I said, “No it won’t. We don’t know them. You aren’t even going to talk to her. They’re on a separate cover, with a separate mission. Full stop. Just focus on our task. The end state is recovering the data from the breach.”
In 2014, China had penetrated the United States Office of Personnel Management, stealing the records of upward of four million government workers. In that breach were the security check documents for our most sensitive members of the US government. Called the SF86 background check, each one was a detailed dossier of anyone who had achieved a security clearance, to include everything up to top secret, sensitive compartmented information. With that data, China could penetrate a host of agents operating in cover—literally just about anyone who had been given a clearance to work clandestinely. It was a disaster of epic proportions that had barely made the news. Since then, the Taskforce had started doing their own background checks, not trusting our very own government, but the damage was done.
What we’d been told by the Taskforce was that a North Korean posing as a South Korean businessman was attempting to sell the data to a Syrian. Which was the fire we’d been sent to put out. We had sensitive assets operating in Syria, and there was no way we could allow the breach to spread.
They’d determined that the transfer was going to happen in Monaco, which left the usual assets of the US government in a quandary. Monaco had no CIA station to speak of, and the timeline was short. The director of the CIA—a member of the Oversight Council who controlled Taskforce activity—had actually punted, saying he couldn’t get the mission done. And so we’d been called in.
My mission was to make contact with the Korean tonight and then follow him until he met the Syrian. Johnny’s team would focus on the Syrian once we identified him. The end state was the prevention of the passing of the information. It could be a dark web address, a thumb drive, or hell, with North Korea, a five-andaquarter-inch floppy disk. Either way, we were going to stop it.
Knuckles and Veep were going to break into the Korean’s room the minute we had eyes on him, ripping through whatever electronics he had and putting surveillance devices in place. Brett was a floater for whatever I decided. Jennifer and I were the primary surveillance of the target.
Jennifer adjusted her dress, dropping the conversation about Carly. She said, “You know that guy’s been here for two days. Don’t you wonder if we’ve already missed the contact?”
I said, “We can only do what we can do. We have the anchor tonight. I’m not going crazy because the Taskforce decided this was an emergency.”
She said, “Your name is on that list, isn’t it?”
I fingered the Glock on the inside of my belt and said, “Yeah, it is. From my time in the Special Mission Unit. Makes it a little personal.”
She smiled and said, “Then I guess I have to be on my best behavior.”
I grinned at her all dolled up and looking like something out of a Playboy photo shoot before the clothes came off, and said, “There’s no reason to get stupid.”
She laughed and said, “Seriously, did you think
about what I just said? We don’t even know where this guy is, and he’s been here for two days.”
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