Misled

by Anderson Harp

  Normally, Virginia Peoples arrived earliest to work and was the one who turned on the lights to her office. Not this time. She was a multitasker and had several computer terminals and monitors arrayed around her desk that looked almost like the walls protecting a city under siege. She had no chairs for visitors; even if someone had sat across from her at her desk, they wouldn’t have been able to see her past the shield of flat-screen monitors. And she came to work every day to blank screens that had to be turned on after the lights.

  This morning, however, her boss was sitting in her chair, with all the terminals all on; standing next to him was a man she didn’t recognize.

  “Hey, Virginia.” Byrd looked up from the terminals. He didn’t seem disturbed about the circumstances. In fact, he was acting as if this were normal office procedure. “This is Mr. Smith. He’s from another government agency.”

  Virginia had had enough exposure to government-speak to know how to translate what she’d heard. The man’s name was not Smith, and there was only one agency that described itself as just “another government agency.”

  She wanted to shout, “What is Langley’s problem?” but knew better.

  “We need to shut down the project you’ve been working on with the Caymans bank and the one in the UAE.” Her boss wasn’t asking. He was directing. “Can you do me a favor and delete what you have?’

  “Sure.” Virginia was stunned.

  He stood and let her take her seat.

  It took Virginia about five minutes to delete the last two years of work from her computers. It didn’t require her Wharton MBA to read between the lines.

  “Is that it?”

  “Okay, Mr. Smith?” Byrd asked the stranger.

  “Thank you.” The stranger didn’t seem to need more than her verbal confirmation that their efforts on the Exchange Bank of the Caymans had stopped. He wore a button-down white shirt, dark sports jacket, brown pants, with contrasting light brown shoes and a slim dark tie. If she had to guess, she would have thought the man was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania like herself. He was, however, only the messenger.

  “Virginia, I could use your help on being in charge of our new exchange program.” Her boss was throwing her a bone. The FinCEN exchange was no demotion. It was the new brainchild of the director and would link a cross section of agencies to monitor the movement of money. The message sent was that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but needed to move on to this next project.

  “Thanks,” she said as graciously as she could manage, given the circumstances.

  Byrd and Mr. Smith left her to tend to her computer. All her work on the Exchange Bank was gone, as well as the flow of money and the list of the IP addresses that were found. The only thing left was her suspicions. It was clear who owned the Exchange Bank. She opened the lower drawer, opened a book with the interior center cut in a small square, and pulled out of the space a flash drive marked with a strip of labeling tape. It said only Dups.

  It made her both nervous and excited holding it in her hand. The book’s title was Six Days of the Condor.

  Chapter 25

  The Anchorage Airport

  Karen Stewart’s traps and cages filled the Bell 212 helicopter, along with her supplies that were intended to last several days in the Yukon. The chopper had been dispatched from Merrill Field and traveled over to Stevens International Airport to pick up the load.

  This time, the flight to Snag took several hours to cover the nearly six hundred miles. The refuel stops burned up some time as well.

  “You got everything?”

  The crew chief had helped her unload and carry most of the gear up to the shack near the end of the runway. It was humble, one room, with a potbelly stove, left over from the days when the airfield was used by the Royal Canadian Air Force to train pilots for the war in Europe. During the war, the field had been home to Avro 621 biplanes used to teach cadets the basics of flying. Now, Snag displayed none of its glorious past; since the war, it had largely been overgrown by spruce and pines.

  “Yeah, thanks.” She slung her Winchester .30-30 over her shoulder. Once the helicopter left, the Yukon would take over. Except for the call of the wolves, Snag would return to its blanket of silence.

  The helicopter’s blades spun up and with it, the dusting of flying ice particles stung her face. She pulled the hood down and felt the tickle of the fur on her face. The chopper quickly disappeared over the tree line.

  “I’ve got at least two hours of daylight,” she told herself as she checked the time. “I can still get some of these cages set up.”

  After two winters in Snag, Karen had a good idea of the path that the animals took. She set out two cages on the other side of the airfield and then worked her way back to the cabin. The snow had drifted in some areas, but her Atlas snowshoes helped her cross the drifts. The snow was a light powder created by the extreme temperature. It flew up like powdered sugar with each step.

  She stopped near the end of the airfield. A path of tracks, some zigzagging, led into the woods. Yellow mucus stained the snow in spots. Karen took the rifle off of her shoulder and chambered a round with the lever action.

  God, that mucus does not look good. In fact, the yellow snow was a veritable factory for the neurotropic virus. It did not live long, however, outside of the body.

  “Where are you?” She knelt and waited for a sound. Only heard silence. A wind kicked up out of the north and started to blow a dusting of snow. Karen kept her hood pulled back so that she could hear any sound. The chill seemed to burn the tips of her ears, but it was just as important that every sound could be heard. There was a killer in the wilderness.

  The sun was setting already.

  Better get out of these woods before darkness settles in.

  Slowly, Karen backed up until she was clear of the tree line. If the animal attacked, she wanted to have the chance of seeing it before it was on top of her. She held the Winchester .30-30 with one arm. She pulled off one of her gloves in case she needed to get a quickly aimed bullet downrange. The wood stock was cold on her fingers, but not nearly as bad as the metal. Bare skin could stick to the cold steel. Karen made sure to touch the wooden stock only. The gun was beaten up by years of use—she’d borrowed it from another scientist at the CDC office—but had proved itself reliable. The action never failed and the bullet hit its target with enough force that it would knock the animal down even if the bullet only struck a leg. The blunt force of the bullet was what was needed to slow down the deranged creature.

  “One well-aimed shot is better than a magazine emptied,” Will had often said. He had shared his Marine marksmanship-training pearls of wisdom. In the spring, he’d taken her to a target range he’d set up near his cabin. There, she’d become comfortable with the lever action and learned to shoot more by instinct than using a scope, or glass, as he would call it. Karen wouldn’t have time to focus through a scope if a rabid animal was making its charge. Better to concentrate on the target and not the sights. Karen heard Will’s familiar voice, telling her to “put the rifle in the same spot.” She knew he meant holding the weapon consistently: butt pressed to shoulder, face alongside the stock. Only then could you concentrate on the target. “Don’t shoot the quarter, shoot Washington’s nose,” was another of Will’s gems, meaning: Concentrate on your target as you never have before. The brain would do the rest.

  The thing was, it all worked. So well, in fact, that she had been shooting plastic balls he had hung on strings from a tree limb. The ball would flip over the tree limb when she hit the target perfectly in the center of mass. Before the first snow came, she had been flipping the balls regularly.

  “Breathe,” he told her again and again. “You’ll always have time to take a breath before anything gets too close.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “You never need more than two w
ell-aimed shots.”

  Karen moved backward slowly until she had gained enough space between herself and the woods. She got onto the runway and walked down its center. It gave her excellent footing, even with the snowshoes. After hiking the airstrip for more than half of its 3000-foot length, her heart rate started to slow.

  “I need to mark that spot.” She turned and looked at her tracks, seeing where they went into the wood line. She noted a particularly tall pine tree that stood out from the rest. Her tracks had passed just below it.

  As she looked back at her tracks, she followed the trail of yellow mucus with her eyes.

  He’s not long for this world.

  Unfortunately, the demise of the animal would mean danger for others. As its carcass became food for other wildlife, the rabies virus would spread. Karen hadn’t seen any scavenging birds, but they too could contract the disease. Like dominoes, the chain of animals could topple under the spread of the virus.

  Karen made the short trek back to the cabin. It had a tin roof and had been built out of sawed timber by the Royal Air Force back during the war. The timber had come from trees in the nearby forest. A single, old-growth giant could have supplied all that was needed to create the cabin, plus provide years’ worth of firewood in addition. Even now, several of the trees near the cabin had large girths, some wider than a large dining-room table. Karen imagined what such giants had seen during their lifetime: Native Americans passing by, Royal Canadian aircraft flying over. And now, a rabies epidemic.

  Despite the quality construction, the old cabin had gaps in its walls, most likely from the structure settling over time. Some prior occupant had stuffed the holes with rags. They gave the cabin a stale smell that could only be overcome by the fire in the small stove. She was not the first scientist from the CDC to stay there. It had been used for more than a decade as a remote location to gather observations on the wildlife. But the room was small, extremely close quarters, and the potbelly stove heated it up quickly.

  A sleeping bag was made more comfortable by a cot that she had left in the cabin during a previous trip. She knew that the first few nights would use up the fresh food supplies. She’d brought a well-used iron skillet. The eggs warmed her so much so that she had to crack a window, which was placed above the cabin’s only door. The glass to the window was still intact after almost three-quarters of a century’s use. It had a thick green tint and was in a frame that would fold in. The frigid incoming air quickly reached a balance between the heat of the stove and the outside subzero temperature.

  Karen had brought an Iridium satellite phone along with her on this trip, the crash having convinced her superior at the CDC office that it was a necessary precaution. “You need to check in once a day,” her boss in Anchorage had told her. In fact, he had made it a condition of her return to Snag alone. “I’m not too crazy about this,” he’d said before granting her request, “but keep in mind we don’t have anyone who can go out after you in the next several weeks.”

  She’d simply shrugged, saying, “I need to capture this data now.” Karen could be a strong advocate of her own work when necessary. “I know these animals and their patterns. I can handle this.”

  She still felt confident and secure, but it did feel a little riskier, now that she was out in the bush.

  As she started to drift off to sleep, the wolves called out of the darkness.

  Chapter 26

  Paul’s Corporate Headquarters

  “We may have a problem.” Caldwell had asked for the meeting with Alexander Paul.

  “What?” Paul looked up from his computer on the mahogany table that served as his desk. It was an antique that his secretary said he had carried with him since his days as a general.

  The sun was setting on Washington and Caldwell could see the jets, well off in the distance, lining up for a landing at Dulles. Their lights were arrayed in a nearly perfect row, like a string of Christmas lights ready to decorate a home in December. A.P.’s office had glass windows from the floor to ceiling. But for the furniture in the space, one might have felt like they were falling off the twenty-sixth story of the building.

  “There’s been an inquiry made at Pendleton. In addition to ours,” said Caldwell, watching for his boss’s reaction.

  “Well, given the interest of their family members, that shouldn’t be unexpected.” Despite his calm, relaxed demeanor, Paul’s face showed strain.

  It wasn’t lost on Caldwell that his boss hadn’t asked him to sit while briefing him.

  “Well,” Caldwell said, “this may be different. A fellow named Parker, William Parker, was asking NCIS at Pendleton about the lance corporal.”

  “And?”

  “He has some background.”

  Paul simply stared, waiting.

  Caldwell shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he continued. “He served in the Marines but has done work for the Agency.” Caldwell watched his boss’s eyes wander back to the PC on his desk. He seemed unable to keep Paul’s attention.

  “How do you know this?” Paul asked while still looking at his monitor.

  “I spoke with someone in the Agency who’s been there a while.” Caldwell had worked with the CIA on more than one Ranger mission in Afghanistan. He had made it a point to keep in touch with the Agency operators after leaving the Army. He even visited Langley every now and then.

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  Paul looked at Caldwell as if he were some kind of fool.

  “What?”

  “He said Parker was known to the Agency.”

  “And?”

  “Well,” Caldwell said, in case it wasn’t self-evident, “that says a lot.”

  “Thanks, Frank,” said Paul, sounding less grateful than inconvenienced. “I’ll look into this. Tell me if you find out anything else.”

  His boss didn’t have to say the word for Caldwell to know that he’d been dismissed.

  * * * *

  After Caldwell left, Alexander Paul turned back to his computer and went to his deep web account. He still had plenty of contacts at DIA who would tell him everything he needed to know. Several held their current positions because of Alexander Paul. They weren’t going to let their old boss down on something so simple as giving the background of a once-served Marine, even if he had worked with the Agency.

  He got only so far.

  It was no problem, especially given his contacts, to access Parker’s military records. The OQR, or officer qualification record, was thick despite some pages marked Removed for Security Reasons—Top Secret/Need to Know Clearance Required to Access. The man had served with distinction and also gotten into a fight with a general over the lack of artillery support in a combat operation that had cost the lives of several Marines. The Army one-star had made an apparent error in judgment: He’d wanted confirmation that no civilians were in the area before ordering in the supporting fire. As it turned out, a band of well-armed Taliban terrorists had been there, not civilians. Pleas were made over the radio and Parker’s team on the other end of the valley could only watch as their fellow Marines pleaded for their lives. The delay ended up sending six Marines to Arlington National Cemetery.

  Parker’s record showed an unusual, resourceful, and dangerous warrior. He was also fluent in multiple languages and had been involved in three other classified operations. Paul couldn’t get any details on two of them, but was able to open the file regarding Somalia. There, Parker had saved the life of a Dr. Karen Stewart, who worked with Doctors Without Borders. After that, Parker had essentially disappeared. DIA’s last report had Parker flying as a bush pilot in Alaska.

  Paul did a quick cross-check and found Dr. Stewart researching in the Yukon.

  Right.

  He sat back in his chair, stretched expansively, and cracked his knuckles one by one. He had it. He had found Parker’s weak s
pot.

  Paul returned to the deep web and opened his Tor server to access the dark web. There, he pulled up a familiar address.

  He typed: What is the status of our guest?

  He knew the reply wouldn’t come for a day or two.

  Closing that tab, Paul opened another in the deep web. The Exchequer Bank of the Caymans had a board of directors that was not publicly listed. As a member of the board, he was accorded complete access to the flow of money coming through the bank.

  Paul went back to the open internet and checked on the price of the stock of ITD and Baker Alexander. ITD was trading well over ninety a share. He felt a sense of inordinate power while looking at the number.

  “If they knew what I knew, it would drop to the floor,” he spoke to the computer screen. He could short the stock and make millions in a matter of a day. However, the transaction needed to be handled carefully. It might require the order being placed by the connected bank in the UAE. He called an international number and placed the order.

  He scanned down to his other stock of interest. Baker was trading just below its fifty-two-week high. If he were admitted to the Baker board, he’d receive stock options that would immediately turn a profit.

  “We’re going to need someone to go to Alaska,” he told the empty office.

  He also realized that he needed to talk to William Parker.

  He picked up his cell phone and selected the number from his contacts.

  “Caldwell?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Paul had no doubt caught him on the way to another soccer game.

  “I need something.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That agent with NCIS. Did he get Parker’s number?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but I can easily find out.”

  Chapter 27

  Memphis

  The HondaJet started its descent into the landing pattern at KMEM, Memphis International Airport. The HA-420 twin-engine light aircraft flew like the sports car it was meant to be. Will was the sole occupant of the airplane. With a tailwind, it had crossed the United States from San Diego to Memphis with a ground speed of more than 650 miles per hour.