Drummond pushed a stapled brief to his left. “Why now? I want to know if there’s any connection here to eastern Ukraine. Ramzan Kadyrov’s got fighters on the ground there now. Were these guys taking part?”
“We don’t see any sign of that, sir. These men have no love for Kadyrov.”
“Who the hell does, Suzanne?” Drummond grinned, and the tension in the room eased a bit. “But these guys are trotting around with some unknown Russian guy in a major act. It’s a funny place. Loyalties shift. I want to know if they were making a play on Ukraine.”
“Of course, sir. We will look into that immediately,” Suzanne said, nodding.
“It’s the bigger picture we need here, Suzanne. I don’t need to remind you.”
“Absolutely.”
Drummond again grabbed the brief and flipped to a page near the end. “What about this Georgian agent?” he said, his pudgy finger stabbing at a photo on the board behind Harley.
“Right,” Suzanne answered. “This is Rezo Kaladze. He was in the Georgian military, then transferred to GIS in 2008. He has family in Ossetia, and we think he’s retaliating.”
Harley Gilchrist spoke up from the back of the room where he stood with his hands on his hips, back stretched upright. “Been a long time coming for that, don’t you think?” He spoke with a muted Southern drawl, his words drawn out and slow.
“I guess he knows how to hold a grudge,” Suzanne replied.
Harley snorted, amused. Drummond paused and looked at her intently.
“I don’t want guesses. I want actionable intel,” Drummond said. “You’re saying he was working alone. That’s not my read of the situation.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I did not intend to convey that. Our current thinking is that he’s working with someone in his family or friends from South Ossetia. Not with others within GIS.”
“But you don’t know that for sure.”
“No. We’re trying to verify with assets in the region currently,” Suzanne said.
Drummond smacked the table with his palm. “That’s not an answer. That’s not what I want to hear. We’ve got scraps, people. Gaps and more gaps. For all you know there are ten more just like him working right alongside our people.”
His voice bellowed in the packed room. Paul watched from across the table as Suzanne’s lips tightened.
“Sir, if I may. Suzanne?” Paul said.
Suzanne’s expression eased slightly, and she nodded for him to proceed.
“The brief mentions Seda Alaskhanova. She was at the house where our targeting officer located a cell phone from a possible staging house on the coast.”
“She’s the one who sent your guys on this god damn goose chase. And now she’s with GIS, as I instructed?”
“Yes, sir. She provided the first hijacker names to our targeting officer, not GIS. And those turned out to be genuine. At this house, she was hysterical. She went there looking for someone. My officer thinks she was looking for someone related to the hijacking.”
“You’re talking about Pierce? The one in the shooting?” Drummond asked.
“Yes, sir. Ethan Pierce. He believes this woman can identify our sixth hijacker. The mystery man.”
“Where is she now?”
“In Tbilisi. Alan Sanger escorted GIS to the house in Batumi after Pierce and that operations officer he was with called it in. They’ve got her in a holding facility. I believe you’re familiar with that site from previous operations.”
“Do we have access?”
Suzanne interrupted. “Absolutely. GIS has coordinated with Sanger, and they will cooperate to provide access directly.”
“But we’re not interrogating her currently? It’s what? Late afternoon over there?”
Without thinking, Paul corrected him. “1831 hours, sir.”
“So, nothing’s happening?”
“GIS will provide access,” Suzanne repeated.
Drummond sighed. “See that they do. And, Suzanne? Watch this one. We can’t afford another surprise like yesterday.”
“I’ll remind Sanger of that myself.”
Drummond collected his paper and pushed his chair from the table. “Anything else?”
The room went quiet as nervous faces glanced at one another. Paul looked to his left at Kay. She had remained still throughout the meeting. With the pause, her pen again wagged in anticipation.
“Yes, sir, there is,” he said. He patted Kay’s chair armrest. “Sir, this is Kay Linh, the Staff Operations Officer. She’s been coordinating with Pierce and our other teams.”
Drummond shrugged. The bags under his eyes sagged, and he checked the time.
“Yes, hello, sir.” Her timid voice faltered, then picked up strength. “I have been working with the technical collections team to source calls made from the cell phone that Ethan Pierce found. There were several calls made from this phone to numbers and towers in Chechnya and in northern Georgia.”
“Yes, and I suppose it’s too good to be true that these phones identify anyone?” Drummond asked.
“No, sir. I’m afraid they are disposable phones. NSA might be able to assist.”
“I see. Harley, let’s connect with the Director of National Intelligence on that. Thank you, Ms. Linh.” Drummond rose and gathered up his briefing papers.
“Excuse me, sir, I wasn’t finished,” Kay said.
Paul smothered a grin in his hand. Drummond raised his eyebrows.
“As I said, the phone made several calls to phones in the region. However, it only received calls from two numbers. One call was local. A restaurant in a nearby hotel. But there were six other calls from the same number, each time from a tower in Constanța, Romania.”
“Romania?” He looked around the room. “Who the hell do we have in Romania right now?”
Chatter filled the room as the directors and analysts talked among themselves.
“Walt Russell’s there,” Paul said over the noise.
“Good. Ms. Linh, none of this intel about the phones is in the brief,” Drummond said.
“No sir, I just verified the data prior to the meeting.”
“I see.” Drummond left the table and crossed the room. “Right, keep at it. I want more on this Romania connection, but I can’t take that to DNI. I need more, people. And I need it yesterday.”
Drummond left as he had entered, where the door set seamlessly into the wall.
Paul leaned over to and whispered to Kay. “Nice work.”
She gripped her pen tightly and let out a tiny breath as the group filed into the hallway.
Paul wound his way through his coworkers who lingered in the hall in whispering conversations. Before he reached the stairway door Suzanne called from behind.
“Paul, a moment please.”
He waved Kay away. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Suzanne crossed the wide hallway and stood near the door with her memo book clasped between her thin hands.
"You weren’t kidding about her," Suzanne said. She nodded toward Kay as she walked down the hall.
“God knows she'll be telling us what to do in a few years. Is this about her?”
“No, she’s clearly capable of handling herself.”
Suzanne glanced over her shoulder as the impromptu whispering continued. Intense faces closed in to one another, and a trio of hallway discussions hissed on. She tugged at the hem of her jacket, forming tidy lines from her shoulders to her waist. Age had been kinder to her than to him. The skin on her hands wound tight around the knuckles, and there were tiny wrinkles at her neck and the corners of her eyes. She had a runner’s shape and a warm glow to her skin. She achieved her appearance through deliberate effort, he had learned over the last few years. Every fold of her charcoal pantsuit was calculation. Her bronze lips had hardened purpose. Everything down to her expressions were a crafted front for command.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
Paul motioned for her to lead on. Suzanne didn't normally discuss anything
with him outside a closed room. He had developed a dislike for her office. She often summoned him with brief and cryptic emails, and he marched to her door and the pallor awaiting within. She liked familiar ground. Going for a walk was new territory.
She made small talk as they headed outside to the back courtyard. She mentioned the warming weather and going for early jogs in the morning. But she avoided anything personal. He couldn’t recall her ever asking about Janey or his weekend plans, and he had learned not to ask the same of her outside the Agency.
They stepped out onto a vacant concrete patio encircled by the newer building. The late morning sun peeked over the roof to the east, but the courtyard was still cool and shaded.
“You heard Drummond’s concerns in there. Clearly, our assessment of this situation has changed. We need to ensure that there aren’t more complications.”
“Suzanne, just two days ago you told me to hand everything over to GIS. At his insistence, as I recall.”
“And we can see how well you and your team accomplished that,” she said with a scowl. “But I see no reason to believe GIS can protect the asset after what’s happened since then. We need solid intel from her if we’re going to get anywhere with this.”
“There isn’t anywhere to go yet. Not that I can see. This one’s different somehow. I can’t explain it. It’s like something stuck in my teeth, and I can’t quite get at it. Whatever it is, whoever it is, they’re way ahead of us.”
“Then you need to get ahead of them.”
“What happened to we?” Paul said. He regretted it almost before he had said it.
Suzanne stared at him with her arms crossed. Paul sensed that tension taking over again. Her forehead creased, and her stance stiffened. As ever, her voice stayed calm, but her jawline fixed tight and her voice with it.
“To be quite frank with you, Alan Sanger isn’t the best individual for this current situation. In my estimation, he’s too close to GIS. I know Alan. He couldn’t see this coming any better than they could.”
At least she was making some sense for once, but he didn’t like where the conversation headed.
“Alan Sanger doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. I’m with you there. He’s going to play the diplomat the whole way along. And if they are as far ahead of us as we think, we may as well forget about any good intel.” Paul’s voice rose loud enough to bounce around the courtyard.
“That’s not acceptable. You need to find another option.”
Paul ran both hands through his hair and sighed. She needed this at arm’s length, and this was her way of informing him. She must be getting more pressure than he thought. He had to do the same trick occasionally with his own officers, and they knew how to read him. Pierce knew better than any of them. That was how the game worked, and these were the moves. Pierce knew that game’s score, even five thousand miles away. The thought left him uneasy. One mistake, one surprise and the broken pieces would tumble down hill, not up. Not this time, he promised himself.
“You talk to Sanger. I’ll figure out something else,” he said.
“Soon. Whoever is behind this won’t wait for you.”
He wanted to yell, but it wouldn’t matter. He shook his head instead and stared at a seam in the sidewalk.
“You know, for someone not giving any orders, you sure are demanding a lot,” he said. “If we don’t have any air cover, you know we won’t bother to ask for it.”
“I expect you not to.”
She uncrossed her arms and walked back indoors. Paul put his hands in his pockets and wandered around the courtyard, his mind in motion to formulate some plan.
◆◆◆
Paul returned from the cafeteria with poached salmon sitting uneasy in his gut. In the walkway outside the cafeteria he passed an old colleague. Years ago they had shared a flat in Colombia for five months. The man helped him master his Spanish vernacular. Paul gave him a nod and a steady-handed wave. He smiled in return and on they walked, the silent reunion over as quickly as it began.
At midday, the operation center desks filled as the last few analysts and officers returned from lunch. Paul found the lone empty chair and wheeled it over to Kay’s desk where she stared at a jumble of text and numbers on her screen.
“I thought I told you to head home after the briefing,” he said.
“So you can call me at home in an hour? No thanks,” Kay said, her eyes still fixed on the screen.
“What’s this?” He pointed at the screen.
“A long shot.” She stopped and twisted her chair toward Paul. “We know there is some kind of connection between our hijackers and someone in Romania, right? I’ve been working on the Romanian number, and there is literally no activity from that number outside of our Georgian cell. But I noticed something else. Almost every time those calls happen, they bounce off the same carrier tower in Constanța. One or two other times, it’s somewhere else in the country. Now, there are always a lot of calls going on. So, I ran a correlation to see if there were any patterns. I think I found one.”
“You did that since the briefing?” Paul said.
“I’ve been working on it since … what time is it now?” She glanced at her screen again. “Sometime overnight.”
Paul leaned forward in his chair. “What’s the pattern?”
“Almost every time one of the calls between Romania and Georgia ends, a different cell number calls out from the same tower within a few minutes. It calls a few different numbers, mostly in Romania. More pre-paid numbers. But there are two calls to different numbers in Georgia. And one in Cyprus.”
“Cyprus?”
“Yes. A posh hotel. It’s some beach resort.”
“What day is it?”
“Friday,” she said, annoyed. “And I’m the one who needs a break?”
“No, Kay. I mean what day is the Cyprus call?”
“Oh.” She checked her screen. “May fourth. Around 1900 hours.”
“The day of the hijacking. You may not think you need a break, but I think you just earned one. That was the green light. Now, what about the Georgian numbers. Same day?”
“One of them is, yes. Earlier in the day. I’ve actually got a record on that one. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. The number’s account lists M. Teklashvili.”
The name hung in Paul’s ear, familiar but far off. He stared off at the wall and reviewed the week’s events. Alone, the pieces made little sense. Each defied the Agency’s assumptions about the familiar belligerents in the Caucasus. This was far outside their usual concerns. But, as a whole, something took shape that he couldn’t quite see. His assumptions got in the way, and he knew he had to abandon them to see the divergent motives in play. What in the hell could they be up to?
“It’s Seda Alaskhanova,” Kay said. “Remember? It’s one of the aliases Ethan found on her. Malika Teklashvili. It’s her. She knows what’s in Romania. She has to know.”
Suzanne was tossing his team to the wolves on a hunch. Now Paul knew her hunch about the woman was right, though he hated to admit it. Whatever this shadowy group’s aims, they would make sure that Seda didn’t talk. Maybe they already had.
“Get ahold of Pierce right now. Tell him that our asset is at urgent risk, and that he is to secure any critical intelligence from that asset without assistance. From anyone. Tell him to play it close to the vest and not let Sanger know what he’s up to. On my direction. And tell him he’s got to move fast.”
Kay listened intently as he relayed the order. She looked pained as the realization of what he was asking of them set in.
“I still think you need a break,” she murmured.
“Just get it done,” he said. “Then get some rest while they prep.”
Chapter 7: Outside Involvement
Batumi, Georgia
5:42 p.m., Thursday, May 9
Ethan held a rag filled with ice to his head. He sat on a threadbare couch in the front room of the little cottage. Seda sat beside him, sullen and de
spondent. Maria watched over them both as they waited for the Georgians to take custody of Seda and investigate the identity of the old man responsible for the lump on the right side of his head and the ache in his gut.
When the Georgian intelligence officers arrived, Ethan watched from the porch steps as they escorted Seda into an unmarked Toyota Landcruiser. She passed the front fence and turned to look at him wide eyed and desperate, arrested by her fear. Ethan doubted he would see her again. They would truck her back to Tbilisi, where Maria said they had a building near the airport. She knew the facility from prior cooperation with the Georgians. She didn’t say more, but he knew she meant rendition.
Despite everything Seda had done, he admired her. If nothing else, she had tenacity in a place where women had nothing. Still, she had much to answer for. She had to know what the Chechens would do. A vivid vision of Marcus Eldridge coughing up blood entered his mind’s eye, and he looked away as they pressed her into the vehicle and drove away. He did what was necessary. There was more to this thing than her. More to it than him. Now others would do their part.
He couldn’t follow them back to Tbilisi. His head buzzed from exhaustion like he’d been drugged. His body fared no better, and the ache in his limbs weighed him down. He needed rest. He and Maria drove back along the sea road downtown and checked into the Sheraton Batumi. He declined her invitation for a late supper. She smiled, but he wanted to drown out everything in solitude and a hard drink. He left her standing in the hotel lobby, her face a worried puzzle.
In his room, he lay awake listening to the low stir of the seaside from the open window. In the quiet, he thought about Sarah. She would like this place and the view of the dwindling sun on the water. She loved new places or any break at all from her routine in Washington.
He had wanted her to keep that routine. He had wanted—still wanted—to come home to her from days like this so they could pretend to be normal for a weekend watching year old shows and eating pizza. Making love. She couldn’t be that for him. She never could, but he realized it months after she left.
He stood in the dark of his hotel room and looked out the window at the water. On the promenade below, the stone path glistened from the light rain that had just passed. A couple walked along the shoreline, leaning into one another under the warm glow of the streetlamps. He needed a drink.
The Hidden Vector: A Spy Thriller Page 8