Daughter of War

by Brad Taylor

  Yasir said, “Hello? Is this worth something? Or do you want to keep striking empty buildings in a pathetic attempt to show strength?”

  Periwinkle said, “How did you come across this?”

  “I am a general in Air Force intelligence. How do you think I came up with this?”

  “From some whore in a Lebanese flophouse. That’s what I think.”

  Yasir laughed and said, “Maybe. But maybe not. Is this something you want?”

  Periwinkle couldn’t reflect it on the phone, but of course it was something he urgently desired. It was the very reason he’d decided to alert Yasir ahead of that stupid assault against him by the Neanderthal SOCOM direct-action team. He’d used his instincts, and he’d been proven right.

  He said, “Yes, of course we want it.”

  “It will cost you. This is it for me. I’m taking your payment as retirement, and you’ll never hear from me again.”

  The comment gave Periwinkle pause. He said, “You’re going cold?”

  “I am. I know I shouldn’t say that, but I want to show you my honesty.”

  Periwinkle said, “I understand. If it’s what you say it is, money is no object. How will you pass?”

  “I have a trip out of Damascus to Istanbul in seven days. I’ll meet you at the usual location? Back when we were friends?”

  Periwinkle looked at his calendar and said, “That would work for me. I’m not in Turkey now, but I’ll be back by then. I’ll call with details.”

  “Sounds good, my friend. You did the right thing in your call to me earlier. I wouldn’t have this information without it. I expect the same loyalty, because I’m taking significant risk.”

  “You’ll have it. Don’t do anything else inside the regime. Just get out.”

  “See you soon, inshallah.”

  The phone disconnected, and Periwinkle placed it back in the drawer. Five seconds later, the door opened and the young ginger entered, his face grim.

  Periwinkle said, “What?”

  “He’s not in Damascus. He’s in Geneva, Switzerland.”

  Switzerland? What the hell?

  David Periwinkle felt the first tendrils of fear that maybe he wasn’t the player, but was being played.

  The thought made his gut clench. If he was being played, he’d made a significant mistake warning Yasir about the SOCOM hit. He would need to mitigate the damage that could cause. Maybe he should tell those men where Yasir was. Let them roll him up, then use his information as leverage for his release.

  No, that wouldn’t work. If they interdicted him, Periwinkle wouldn’t be able to explain how he knew who Yasir was after being shown a photograph of his face and claiming he didn’t recognize him.

  He took a couple of breaths and began to calm down. Just because Yasir wasn’t in Damascus didn’t mean he wasn’t telling the truth. He’d claimed to have incredibly important intelligence—and that was something worth the expense of preventing that asshole Pike from taking him down.

  He nodded, convincing himself he was correct. The best course of action was to conduct the linkup with Yasir. The man wanted to get paid—and had said so explicitly. He wouldn’t be calling a CIA case officer if he were doing something heinous.

  Don’t read into the NSA trace of the phone. Don’t get paranoid.

  But he would need to let HQ know that Yasir was active again. Along with the nugget of intelligence he was willing to provide that would make Periwinkle a legend in the CIA.

  He began shacking up a cable, parsing his words and leaving out selected tidbits such as locations and timing, directing it to the chief of station in Turkey. He would need to get authority for the funding, but with as much as the CIA had bled into Syria for everything from TOW missiles to twelve-year-old sources, he knew that wouldn’t be an issue. The intelligence community would definitely want what he was buying.

  He just had to protect how he’d received it.

  24

  President Hannister leaned back behind the Resolute desk and said, “So you didn’t get any of the OPM data breach? We risked that entry into the data storage facility in a sovereign country for nothing?”

  Kurt Hale could tell the president was aggravated. As an extrajudicial force, he didn’t take employing the Taskforce lightly—especially when it failed.

  Or ostensibly failed.

  Kurt said, “No, sir, it wasn’t for nothing. It’s true we found no evidence of the Chinese hack of our OPM databases, but we did find something else. I believe we were misreading what was actually happening. I looked through the transcripts, and when I was done, I came to the conclusion it was much worse. They might actually be selling WMD.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Two words: Red Mercury.”

  Amanda Croft said, “What is that?”

  Kurt turned to the director of the CIA and said, “Kerry? You want to explain? You guys did the translation of what Pike retrieved from the server.”

  Kerry rose slowly from the couch, turning to the four members in the Oval Office, taking the time to frame his words carefully. Because it was a joint CIA/Taskforce operation, Kurt and Kerry had coordinated in advance, debating on how to proceed. They’d agreed to alert what was colloquially called the “principals” of the Oversight Council, letting them hear the evidence before bringing in the rest of the members. The secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the director of the CIA, the national security advisor, and the president. It was a group that held the outcome of Council votes, and a way to float their trial balloon—although Kurt knew this was a decision brief. What they were doing would never make it to the full Council. He’d seen that play out in the past. It was a subterfuge, and a risk, but working within an organization that had no statutory requirements had its benefits.

  Kerry said, “Red Mercury is a myth. It first appeared in intelligence data at the end of the Cold War, when everyone was worried about losing Soviet nukes. According to the legend, it was a Soviet chemical agent that would have the effects of a nuclear strike without the blowback of fallout.”

  Amanda said, “If it’s a myth, why do we care?”

  “Because the North Koreans used that term. It’s a myth to us, but not to terrorists. Since 1991, terrorists have been fanatical about obtaining Red Mercury, so much so that we’ve captured a few just by dangling that term in the wind. They fully believe it’s real, and the quest to find it has taken ludicrous turns. At one point, when we were in Iraq early on and the insurgency was heating up, the bad guys determined that Singer sewing machines were hiding the substance, with a subsequent drop in tailor-shop productivity when every machine was stolen and stripped looking for it. It’s a myth, but also a real thing to unsophisticated psychopaths who want to kill. And the North Koreans have used that term in an official communiqué.”

  Alexander Palmer said, “So you think that they’ve developed this Red Mercury?”

  Kerry laughed and said, “No way. There are a thousand scientists both on our side of the Atlantic and the other who have shown conclusively that it’s just a legend. Red Mercury doesn’t exist.”

  “Why does this matter, then?”

  Kurt spoke up, saying, “Two reasons. One, it means whatever they’re selling, they know it’s deadly. It’s something new and unique. It’s a killer, which should be enough to cause us concern, but two, as Kerry said, they used that term. They know it’s like catnip to terrorist groups, which means they aren’t selling it to a state. No state would buy it because they know Red Mercury is a myth. North Korea would have called it what it was, like Hwasong-17, or something else official. But they didn’t, which leads me to believe North Korea is selling a WMD to a terrorist group.”

  President Hannister said, “But I thought we were tracking a Syrian? A member of the Syrian state? Not a terrorist group.”

  Kurt said, “That’s true, sir,
but let’s face some facts: The Syrian regime is rife with the same mentality of the terrorists they’re fighting.”

  Palmer said, “I don’t know. There’s not a lot here. Just a translation from Korean with the words ‘Red Mercury.’ Why would North Korea do such a thing?”

  Kerry chuckled and said, “Because they need money. Because you’re crushing their nuts with sanctions. The correct question is why wouldn’t they do it. They helped build the Syrian nuclear reactor that the Israelis destroyed in 2007. Kim Jong-un himself ordered the killing of his half brother in Malaysia with nerve agent. They aren’t exactly hewing to societal norms.”

  “Yeah, but even given they’re bad actors, aren’t you guys stretching things?”

  Kerry said, “As much as I hate to admit it, being a CIA man, the Taskforce has found something else in the data dump. Kurt?”

  Kurt grinned at the good-natured jab and said, “Along with the Red Mercury description were two separate cell phone numbers. We believe that those numbers are connected to the sale. We don’t know who they are, or even if it’s two separate people, but they are real. We believe it’s the Syrian.”

  Amanda Croft said, “Why?”

  “Because we’ve geolocated both numbers, and both of them are in Geneva, Switzerland.”

  The room became quiet. After a moment, President Hannister said, “Okay, let me get this straight. You penetrated a data center, found information leading to the sale of a WMD called Red Mercury, and in that same extraction you collated two cell numbers that were associated with the sale, and both of those numbers are within spitting distance of the data center?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Amanda Croft said, “And why are the numbers being in the same country relevant?”

  Kurt looked at Kerry, surprised at the question coming from the secretary of state. Kerry said, “Ma’am, Switzerland is a neutral country, and because of it, the North Koreans travel freely. It’s one of the few places in the Western world where they can. The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, went to boarding school there. Shit, the Swiss population just had an outcry about the Swiss military conducting target practice with North Korean officers.”

  Kurt said, “In addition to that, Switzerland has a history of secrecy. In the old days, a Swiss bank account guaranteed monetary discretion, but not anymore. They recently softened their banking laws, but have also started renting out their bunkers for safe storage. Nobody checks what’s stored, because the bunkers are outside the purview of banking regulations. It’s a way to avoid scrutiny, and the perfect place to transfer the weapon.”

  President Hannister fiddled with a pen on his desk and said, “That’s what you have? That’s the evidence? Swiss banking laws and a phone number?”

  Exasperated, Kurt stood up and said, “Sir, we’re not asking to invade Switzerland. All we’re asking is for Alpha authority to explore. Before this becomes something we can’t control. Before there are a lot of dead bodies.”

  Hannister tapped his pen, looking at Kurt. Finally, he said, “And how would you do that?”

  “Pike’s team is in Switzerland. We can track the phones. Let him investigate. Let him interdict, if necessary.”

  President Hannister scoffed and said, “Pike Logan. Every time I get him involved somewhere, things seem to go to shit.”

  Kurt smiled and said, “No, sir. That’s not correct. Things go to shit all on their own. All Pike does is prevent the splatter.”

  The room collectively winced at the analogy, but Hannister chuckled. He said, “So how would this work?”

  “We’ll pick one number and track it. If it doesn’t pan out, we’ll pick the other. No high adventure here. Just investigate. As you say, it might be nothing. But it might not.”

  Hannister nodded, tapped his pen again in thought, then said, “All right. Let’s vote. I’m okay with it.”

  Palmer said, “Sir, we need to think about operating in Switzerland with so little information. We should develop the intelligence more fully before we—”

  Hannister cut him off, “That’s exactly what Kurt is asking to do. I understand the implications. I’m sure it would be better for our relations with Switzerland to do nothing, but they don’t care about American deaths. I do.”

  Kurt was shocked at the rare rebuke of the national security advisor, but it solidified his trust in the president.

  Palmer backed down, chagrined, crossing his arms and looking petulant. Kurt knew he was a no-vote and hated the politics of the entire debate.

  Why can’t we just make a decision based on the risk to lives instead of our egos?

  He glanced at Amanda Croft and saw a small grin on her face. She was all in.

  Well, there’s that. Knuckles is paying off in more ways than one.

  Hannister asked for those in favor, and all agreed but Alexander Palmer. The hands dropped, and Hannister said, “You have the authority, but only Alpha. Only to explore what those phones are doing. Is that understood?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Yeah, I get you understand. What I mean is, does Pike understand?”

  “Sir, he will.”

  Hannister stood up, indicating the meeting was over, and the people began to file out of the Oval Office. Kurt went to follow and Hannister said, “Kurt.”

  Kurt turned to him. Hannister said, “I mean it. This is very weak. Pike explores, and that’s it. I can’t afford a diplomatic row with Switzerland because Pike went nuts. And I certainly can’t afford looking like the bad guy in a dispute with North Korea. Pike can’t make them the aggrieved party at the end of any action. You understand that, right?”

  Kurt said, “Sir, I understand the risks. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t think they were worth it.”

  Hannister chuckled and said, “It’s not you I’m worried about. Make sure Pike knows. He has a habit of getting into trouble.”

  Kurt shuffled his feet, wondering if the president was asking him to back off, even after the vote. He said, “He does, sir, but it’s never of his making. Pike solves problems, period.”

  Hannister walked to the door, saying, “I know. Just tell me he isn’t going to do something stupid.”

  25

  Brett said he had a weak signal, but that wasn’t good enough to pinpoint anything. I saw the size of the crowd and thought about doing something stupid just to make our target show his hand. Something to get the crowd to break up so I could locate the phone.

  I looked over at Jennifer, who was giddy over the history surrounding her. I leaned into her ear, whispering, “I’m thinking of calling in a bomb threat. Just to separate our phone.”

  She whipped her head to me and said, “Don’t you dare. No reason to rush things. We’ll find him sooner or later.”

  “Meaning we have to tour this entire place, right?”

  She raised an eyebrow and said, “Well, if it comes to that, what’s the big deal?”

  We were inside a castle from the twelfth century called Chillon. On the shores of Lake Geneva, near the town of Montreaux, it was a forbidding fortress exactly like one would expect from a King Arthur movie. Because of that, Jennifer was hell-bent on exploring every inch of its history. I have to admit, it was pretty cool, but we also had a mission to accomplish.

  Kurt had contacted us in Zurich, and I anticipated he would tell us to get our ass back to Eze, because we were still under contract for the work at the church and we’d left pretty abruptly. We had a convincing story about a death in the family, and had left on good terms, but still, I expected Kurt to tell us to return. After all, a funeral only takes so long.

  He hadn’t. Apparently, our little B and E of the bunker had gotten the Oversight Council’s panties in a knot, and we’d stumbled on something more than just a theft of data. It wasn’t a possible exposure of US covert intelligence personnel; it was something called Red Mercury. Just
like Kurt, I knew no such material existed, but—like him—the fact that the North Koreans had used the term was a flashing red light.

  He’d given us two numbers to explore, both in Geneva, telling me it was a shooter’s choice. Meaning me, as the gunner, could pick. I chose one and immediately got the team moving to Geneva while Kurt got the massive architecture of the NSA to geolocate the number beyond just a city. By the time we’d arrived, the number had left Geneva and traveled about an hour north, along the lakeshore, to a tourist destination called Chillon Castle. And now we were trying to identify the man who held the phone.

  We had an iPad-looking device called a Growler that could pinpoint the phone’s signal—basically tricking it into thinking we were a cell tower—but that was only good enough to say you were close to the target. It couldn’t pinpoint a person in a crowd, and this castle was crawling with tourists. Which is why I was considering the bomb threat. We could survey who was near us, call the threat, make everyone scatter, then locate the phone again. Once we surveyed that crowd, we’d be able to identify who was in the original location. Maybe we’d have to wait until the phone jumped one more time, but eventually, we’d correlate the person with the handset.

  Right now, in the courtyard of the castle, I had no signal on the Growler, but Brett and Knuckles had one on the second floor. It was weak, but they were closing in.

  The phone was here. We just needed to find the owner.

  * * *

  —

  Amena studied the tourists, looking for an easy mark. There was one fat man with two kids who were constantly distracting him, along with a wife who clutched her purse a little too loose, but Amena held back. She no longer had her brother to help, and she needed to get out clean. Within this castle there would be no running to safety if she was caught, but she most definitely needed money. Outside of some stale bread she’d found in a trash bin behind a Nice train station bakery, she hadn’t eaten in a day and a half.