“I am. When?”
“When I tell you.” A chill went through Harper. He felt the time would be soon.
And that was the end of the discussion.
Angie Peterson, the young waitress on the graveyard shift, came by the two tables and offered coffee. Harper nodded politely. The other customer waved his hand over his cup indicating no.
Peterson remembered him and how uncomfortable he made her feel, then and now. Not because he looked like a foreigner of some sort or that he was a terrible tipper. It was his manner: cold, calculating, dangerous. He always took the seat that backed up to her regular. And they seemed to trade conversation in whispers. What was that all about?
Peterson had another passing thought. Not so strange considering she lived in the land of conspiracy theories. All around were people caught up in UFO intrigue, mind-altering government microwave blasts, black helicopters, spy satellites, and ghosts. But she let the idea fade away. No one needed another wild idea.
She smiled at egg white man and put the check down, expecting little back.
TICONDEROGA, NEW YORK
THE SAME TIME
Some fifty-two hundred people lived in the small town in the Adirondack Mountains, where Lake George and Lake Champlain converge. Citizens welcomed the 100,000-plus tourists during the warm weather months and mostly kept to themselves as the thermometer dipped down in winter.
The historic importance of Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolution was not lost on the community. It had been strategically built between the Hudson River, controlled by the British, and the French-controlled St. Lawrence River. At times it was under the French rule, then British. The patriotic Green Mountain Boys took it back, then sent fort cannons to Boston to help repel a British attack, but in June 1777 it fell into British hands again. In 1781, the British abandoned Fort Ticonderoga; thereafter it lay unused until bought by a family, and ultimately restored and turned into a tourist attraction.
Today the fort represents the indefatigable American spirit. Individualism and patriotism. Politics in the area have been traditionally bluer than red, but the voices are a blend, colored by the rich history of the area. The region was home to people plugged into the news and others who lived off the grid. Ticonderoga was also home to Franklin W. Wrightman, a national talk-radio host who broadcast out of his home, yet influenced the narrative across the nation.
“Frank Talk Today, America. The country is under attack. And left or right, center or fringe, this is time to test our mettle. Our infrastructure has been hit. What are we to do? Our citizens killed. What are we to do? Our nerves frayed. What are we to do?”
Wrightman loved stirring the pot. His listeners counted on it.
“It’s been days since Washington. Days since New York. Days since St. Louis. And so far, we’ve heard nothing but platitudes from the president. I ask you, is this the president we want at a time of crisis? Is silence the response we deserve? I don’t see the skies filled with military jets. Do you? I don’t hear our phones beeping with national alerts. Do you? I can’t feel the ground shaking with our boys’ boots on the ground. Can you? We might as well just say it. Killers, welcome to America. Take what you want, roam the country, because we’re not going to do a damned thing to stop you!”
Frank Wrightman was like so many others on the radio: a rabble-rouser and an entertainer. Far more noisy than newsy. He hadn’t voted in years but complained about the electorate. He spoke for the everybodys and the nobodys, but lived the life of a phenomenally wealthy somebody.
He claimed he used the airwaves to responsibly inform. Incite was more accurate. And the news of the past few days gave him enough to fuel the fire for weeks, maybe longer. He went after President Crowe, stoking fear and anxiety. He also made it very clear this was not the time to get into any problems in nations we couldn’t spell, couldn’t point to on a map, and had no real use for.
“I’ve got frank talk. But I’ll tell you one person who probably won’t listen. The man in the White House. He’s got nothing and he’s running on empty. Now, let’s take some calls.”
“Hello, Franklin. First time caller, long time listener.”
Wrightman rang a bell.
“Go ahead, newbie.”
“I live up north in Maine. Should have brought this up at the time. Kind of figured it wasn’t anything, but now—”
“Uh huh, uh huh,” Wrightman said, seemingly either not interested or otherwise distracted.
“Well, I’m a trucker for…” he paused. “I don’t think I should say the company.”
“Okay. Where are you going with this?”
“Right, right. I’m sorry. Little nervous. But Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont’s my territory. Nighttime hauls for morning deliveries. And a few months ago, I was driving along Maine State Highway 1 in Aroostook County and I could’ve sworn I saw something.”
“This isn’t a UFO show, caller. I can recommend—”
“I’m not talking about that. And it’s only because of the news that’s out. I just don’t know what to do.”
Wrightman was getting impatient.
“You’ve got a minute before I have to go for a commercial.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. I was driving along Maine State Highway 1.”
“We have that.”
“It was dark, but against some northern lights, damned if there weren’t black parachutes floating down.”
“Hold on,” the talk show host said. “Parachuting into…?”
“Not into, but near Limestone. Limestone, Maine. I’m just sayin’—” Franklin Wrightman seized on the declaration.
“Let me get this straight. You think—”
“Not think, I saw parachutes,” the caller demanded. “Now who parachutes in the dark near the border with Canada? I mean if Limestone was still an Air Force base, I’d get it. But they shut that down years ago. Never should have, but they did. You know what I think, Franklin?”
“Say it.”
“Maybe they were some of those terrorists who attacked us. That’s what I think. They had to infiltrate somehow.”
“Stay on the line. We need to talk more.”
26
LONDON
THE NEXT MORNING
Marnie Babbitt rose and showered before Reilly. Reilly sat up in bed admiring the beautiful woman who came out of the bathroom naked, but fully made up. Now, for his pleasure, she sensually slipped on a green high-neck ribbed midi dress that she’d stashed in her Coach tote bag. It accentuated her curves perfectly.
“Sure you don’t want to take a later train to Paris?” she asked demurely.
“Can’t.” Reilly’s legs were stretched out—the sheets covered him, but didn’t hide his interest. “I wish. But can’t.”
“Too bad.”
Babbitt folded her previous day’s dress in her bag and came to the side of the bed.
“Bye, sweetheart,” she said. She lingered over him for a moment, inhaled the scents from the night before and kissed him. It was a nice kiss, but hardly the kind of kiss that really reinforced ‘too bad.’ Reilly sensed something was wrong.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Everything,” she said. “It just gets harder leaving you.”
“Me too, you.”
“I worry. And I wish… I wish you would let me into your world more.”
He closed his eyes and smiled, but didn’t answer. Marnie brought her fingers to her lips, kissed them and placed them on Reilly’s. Then she left his hotel room.
Thirty minutes later, Reilly was also downstairs and in the lobby checking out.
“I hope we’ll see you again soon, Mr. Reilly,” said the young man on the desk who completed the process. Reilly recalled meeting him but had to look at his nametag.
“Jonathan. Of course, I’ll be back. Thank you. In the meantime, keep our guests happy.”
With exciting memories top of mind, Jonathan smiled. “Yes, sir. The most important part of the job.”
Reilly smiled inward. A striking woman in a hotel. Things happen. He’d been there, too. In fact, that’s how he met Marnie Babbitt—in a hotel in Tehran. Yup, things happen.
Reilly took a cab to London’s St. Pancras railway station. He arrived with forty minutes to spare before his scheduled 10:24 a.m. Eurostar train. The two-hour-and-twenty-three-minute ride through the Chunnel was due to put him in Paris’s Gare du Nord station at 1347, or 1:47 p.m. After that, a quick €15 cab to the hotel.
Reilly grabbed a coffee from a kiosk just as he heard the first call to board. Halfway to the Business Class car his phone rang. He rested his paper coffee cup on his suitcase and read the display identifying the incoming call. A 202 area code with a prefix he recognized: the FBI.
“Let me guess,” Reilly began. “Agent Moore.”
“Expecting my call?”
“Disappointed if you hadn’t. What’s up?”
Moore avoided the question. Instead he asked, “Where are you?”
“On the way to Paris. About to get on the train.”
“Got ten minutes?”
“Sure. Talk while I walk.” He chucked the nearly full coffee cup in a nearby trashcan, pulled his suitcase and listened.
“No, find a place that’s quiet,” Moore said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Dan Reilly left the station altogether, certain he’d miss his scheduled train to Paris. He settled on a park bench at neighboring St. Pancras Gardens.
“Okay, Moore. Thanks for making me miss my train.”
“Don’t worry. There’s another in, what, an hour or so?”
“You know, you suck.”
“Been told. But enough about me. I need your advice on a couple of things.”
Reilly was actually surprised. He leaned back, watched children running with unbounded energy, pigeons pecking for whatever crumbs they could find, and squirrels chasing each other through the grass.
“Go,” he said.
“What’s your experience tell you about how the perps entered the U.S.?”
Between Heath and Moore, he was beginning to feel like the man who memorized all the secrets in Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Nine Steps.
“Probably more your strong suit, Moore,” Reilly said. “And DHS.”
“Just give me your top-line thinking. You’re a bad guy and want to come into the US. How would you do it?”
Reilly audibly exhaled.
“Multiple ways. Land, sea, and air. On land, I guess I’d be a sleeper, hiding in plain sight and waiting. Maybe legitimately moving up through the system; better jobs, more responsibility. Classic Cold War stuff. Probably with a seemingly legitimate reason for being here. By sea, possibly at night on fast cigarette boats from Cuba or Haiti or…” he thought for a moment, “Daytime. Connect with a fishing boat. Meet in international waters. Bribe someone. A lobster catch off New England. A blue marlin craft along the Southeast. Not so difficult. Or small subs in areas not patrolled by the Coast Guard. That’s pretty much thousands of miles of shore. They might come in on a tanker, lowered at night, approach submerged, drop off operatives, and return to the mother ship. Completely possible.”
“And air?” the FBI agent asked.
“It’s fairly easy to come in on commercial flights under real or stolen passports. But why take the chance of ICE taking me out of the game with false papers? So, I’d pose as a student or a foreign businessman.”
“Okay, think more out of the box now. Movie shit. How would you sneak in?”
“Come on, Moore, you’ve got better minds than me to work this out.”
“I’ve got you.”
“Movie shit?”
“Right.”
“Okay. Large stretches are unpatrolled even though we have a radar bubble that covers almost everywhere. The Mexican border is blanketed with commercial and military radar. Canada, too, but—”
“But what, Reilly?”
“Denser woods, ways to drop in.”
“Meaning?”
“Low flying planes under the radar, rising quickly, for a short, fast parachute jump, then out of there.”
“Bingo.”
“Bingo?”
Moore read from a transcript of a caller on an overnight radio show. “We’re questioning the guy today.”
“So why did you even need me to go through all this?” Reilly asked.
“Affirmation. Because you think like them.”
“Which doesn’t mean I’m one of them.”
“You’re off my list.”
“Well I can sleep easier.”
“That’s one thing I bet you don’t do. But there’s something else.”
“Oh?”
“We got a call from a woman who lives about an hour south of D.C. Chester, Virginia. She was passed from one agent to another, right up the ladder. Ultimately to me. Smart. Hard working. Apparently juggling a few jobs to pay for school. One of them is at a motel where she’s a housekeeper. Following me so far, Reilly?”
“Completely, and you’re about to tell me she found something.”
“Yes I am, and yes, she did. Wanna take a guess?”
“Hotel room. Housekeeping. Something in the room trash. Packaging, wire shavings. No, probably batteries.”
“Jesus,” the FBI agent declared. “Close.”
“Battery packaging.”
“Damn right.”
27
KIEV, UKRAINE
THE SAME TIME
Three thousand of Kiev’s citizens crammed into Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square. They stood on the six fountains dedicated to legendary brothers Schek, Horiv, Kie, and sister Libed, who, according to Ukrainian legend, chose the location for the town’s foundation and named it in honor of Kie. Others hung onto Independence Column, adorned with a statue of Archangel Mikhail, viewed as the patron saint of Kiev.
Under Soviet control, protests were not permitted in what was then called October Revolution Square. It was expanded after World War II with ample room for Ukrainian troops under Russian rule to parade and display their military hardware—purposefully staged to keep people mindful of the authoritarian rule.
That changed with the overthrow of Communist leader Mykola Plaviuk in 1992. But even since then, independence has meant different things to different people. There were handmade posters warning of the proximity of Russian troops, fascist banners with varying versions of a “Ukraine for Ukrainians” slogan. College-aged activists from the left called for the president to resign, while the right-wing working class demonstrated for lower gas prices. Gay and lesbian protesters had their chants. Women’s groups, theirs. Everyone was nervous.
More people poured into the square by the hour. Speakers shouted through bullhorns in different quadrants. On the fringes, jeers turned into shouting, and innocent scuffling devolved into shoving. Still, things might have remained calm had it not been for the pro-Russian protestors that entered the square from three different directions.
Bottles and rocks flew. Molotov cocktails exploded. Protesters scattered as best they could, but there was little room to run. Some made it to the Trade Union Association Office, others flooded into the square’s cafes and shops. Those who could stormed into the hotels along the square, including the Kensington Kiev International.
No one knew where the first bullets came from, but they came, and people fell. A student with no real political position who went just to be part of the protest with her boyfriend. An Uber driver who advocated for lower gas prices, a liberal priest, a pregnant teen, a German newspaper reporter. All dead within the first minute. The police moved in, but not soon enough, and withou
t enough firepower.
The screams fanned through the buildings and shops. Cries for help in multiple languages were drowned out by helicopters, sirens, explosions, and gunshots.
People around the world watched amateur livestreaming footage on YouTube, Instagram and other portals. International news organizations picked up a feed from 24 TV, a Ukrainian news channel. Telecasts from Europe to the United States ran title cards reading “Breaking News,” “Riot in Ukraine,” and “Independence Square War Zone,” as anchors waited for facts to follow. Russian TV added another: “Russian Loyalists Killed in Kiev.”
Dan Reilly returned to St. Pancras. He bought a sandwich, a new cup of black coffee and a copy of the Guardian. For thirty minutes he bided his time in the waiting room, looking up from the paper to a TV monitor. Considering the number of times a day CNN ran “Breaking News” title cards, the words had relatively little meaning. Reilly, like most people, was desensitized. But when he saw video of rioting in what he recognized was Kiev’s Independence Square, and then read the lower third descriptions confirming the fact, he tossed out his sandwich and his second untouched coffee and walked closer to the monitor while pulling his overnighter.
One camera panned the square. Reilly saw his company’s hotel in the background, the Kiev International, undamaged but clearly in the danger zone.
He pulled out his phone, found a number in his contacts and dialed. His call to Stephan Lazlo at the hotel went to voicemail. Reilly left a message and followed it with a text. That’s when the boarding announcement came for his second train to Paris. He began walking toward the platform when his phone rang. It was a specific ringtone that only sounded when Edward Jefferson Shaw called: the first eight bars of the Grateful Dead’s classic Truckin’. He’d chosen it because Shaw often called with an urgent change of plans.
PART TWO
TRIP WIRE
28
KENSINGTON RÊVE HOTEL
PARIS, FRANCE
1915 HOURS
Red Deception Page 12