Tom removed the razor and plugged it into the wall socket, then picked up the vest and examined it.
There was no way of knowing whether the integrity of the densely woven material had been compromised by the two rounds it had already been required to stop. But Tom figured that limited protection would be better than none at all, so he pulled on his T-shirt and got into the vest, put the flannel shirt over it, and then pulled on the canvas jacket.
The cap went into one of the jacket’s front pouch pockets.
Once he was dressed and geared up—the Colt tucked in at his right hip, the two spare mags in the carrier on his left with the third in his hip pocket—Tom found the stairs and headed down.
The room he’d spent the day in was on the top floor of a four-story building. Tom looked out the first window he came to and attempted to discern his location from the view, but he didn’t see anything distinctive.
All he knew was that he was somewhere in one of the five boroughs of New York.
The next floor down had no back room, just several bunk beds along the wall.
The floor below that was a supply room, and the ground floor had a kitchen and dining area and second bathroom.
Tom came finally to the basement stairs and descended them. Hammerton was standing at a card table, a stack of folders in front of him and a cell phone to his ear.
He was sorting through the contents of one folder as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the call.
Nodding, he said, “Cheers,” then ended the call and placed the phone on the table. He continued sorting through the contents of that same folder as Tom approached him.
Behind Hammerton was a large safe, its door opened. Inside was a mix of rifles and carbines standing side by side in a rack, as well as a half dozen pistols hanging on hooks mounted to the safe’s wall.
Hammerton closed the file in his hand and laid it down on the table.
“We’ll start with this one,” Hammerton said.
Tom asked, “What is it?”
“Everything I could find on a man named Jack Emery.”
“Who’s Jack Emery?”
Hammerton looked up from his file. “That, Tom, is the Colonel.”
Thirty-Five
Standing across the table from Hammerton, Tom opened the file and skimmed through the pages as his friend spoke.
“Emery was Tier 1 all the way. West Point, top of his class. Ranger School in ’71, top of his class. Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment in Vietnam, running long-range patrols deep behind enemy lines. Three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star. He was eventually awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his defense of a downed Huey toward the end of the war. He single-handedly fought off an NVA patrol for more than eight hours, saving the badly injured crew and the passengers, all fellow Rangers. He was wounded three times during the night but kept fighting, which required constant repositioning on and around the copter so the enemy would think there was more than one shooter. He used every weapon on board—M16s, M14s, sidearms—and was down to his last few rounds when gunships finally swept in after dawn, followed by the evac team. In ’77, with terrorism on the rise around the world, the Pentagon selected a Green Beret colonel named Beckwith to form the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment, also known as Delta Force. Beckwith and another colonel named Henry chose Emery, then a major, as the unit’s first commander. It took two years of training to get Delta fully operational. Emery didn’t just oversee the training of his men; he went through it with them, every step. Four years later Emery, by then a colonel, left Delta for the CIA, where he was put in charge of the Special Activities Division. It was during his stint at the Agency that he met an ambitious young officer named Sam Raveis.”
Hammerton laid another file next to the first one.
Tom opened the second folder, keeping it side by side with the first.
“Raveis was a first-class spook. He’d never held any other job in his life, didn’t even flip burgers for a summer or mow lawns for cash as a teenager. Born into a wealthy family, he was a Yale man, like you. Tapped for Skull and Bones his first year, approached by the CIA during his third, graduated summa cum laude in ’82 and went straight to the Farm, spent the usual eighteen months there, then served as a case officer in Lebanon, Somalia after that, and Iraq after that. Name a shitty part of the world, and Raveis was there when things were at their shittiest. Eventually, he became the station chief in Beirut, at which point he abruptly resigned to join the Colonel in the private sector. Every merit that the Agency gives out, Raveis earned it.”
Tom alternated between the two files, flipping pages and stopping on photos of both men when they were younger.
He had often wondered about the man he knew only as the Colonel. There was no mistaking that the man had been a combat veteran—hardened, confident, fair-minded, but also no-nonsense.
And clearly intelligent.
Tom recalled the first time he had met the Colonel at the Cahill estate on Shelter Island.
Barrel-chested, bull-shouldered, six feet tall, salt-and-pepper hair buzzed close to the scalp.
Powerful and commanding, despite the fact that he was in his sixties.
Do you know who I am? the man had said.
Tom had replied that he didn’t.
Good, let’s keep it that way for now, okay? But you’ll need to call me something, so why don’t you call me what most people call me.
Tom had asked what that was.
Colonel.
After Tom’s first assignment was completed, he had been allowed to leave, and that had been the Colonel’s doing.
The act of letting Tom go—allowing Tom to wander with Stella, beholden to no one but himself and her—was the first indication that Tom had met a man he could trust.
A man as solid as James Carrington and Charlie Cahill and John Hammerton.
Tom’s first encounter with Sam Raveis, on the other hand, had had the opposite effect on him.
Through an NSA analyst named Alexa Savelle, Raveis had intercepted multiple text exchanges between Tom and Stella, one of which had included a naked selfie that Stella had sent to Tom.
It was just one of many violations of Tom’s privacy committed by Raveis that had led to conflict between the two.
As much as he sometimes disliked Raveis, however, Tom knew not to underestimate him.
Even when Tom had been informed that his father and Raveis had once been associates—close friends, even—he still couldn’t shake that instinctive reflex of general opposition married with a wary respect.
If not for the Colonel, Tom would have never answered Carrington’s second call—the call that had led to the violent end of the quiet life in Vermont that Tom and Stella had made together.
And that had led Tom to the truth about his father.
If not for the Colonel, Tom would have done whatever was necessary to avoid crossing paths with Raveis ever again.
Everything Tom saw in these two files, and everything Hammerton had stated, served only to cement Tom’s already entrenched feelings about both men.
And yet, it didn’t escape Tom’s notice that Raveis had given him the Kevlar vest that had saved his life, not once but twice.
Nor did Tom fail to recognize the fact that the team sent to bring him back to New York had been comprised of Raveis’s best.
Hammerton tossed another file onto the tabletop. Setting aside the first two, Tom opened the third, which contained copies of newspaper clippings.
Tom flipped through the clippings and noticed that the farther down the pile he went, the more aged the paper was.
This was a collection that spanned years.
Skipping to the last of the clippings, Tom saw a newspaper article dated nearly twenty years ago.
“What I’m about to tell you is classified,” Hammerton said. “Some of it I’m not even supposed to know. But I think we’re past that point now. We’re through the looking glass, as they say.”
Tom looked
up from the pages before him, waiting.
“The organization Emery and Raveis founded was your standard private-military contractor at first,” Hammerton explained. “Initial clients were corporations that wanted security for CEOs traveling overseas—Middle East, Africa, Central and South America—the usual close-protection gigs. But Raveis and Emery had a lot more than that in mind. That’s when they brought on board a man named Smith, whom you know as the Engineer.”
A fourth file landed on the tabletop. Tom opened that one as well.
It was, Tom noted, the thinnest of the folders he’d seen so far.
“As you can see, there isn’t a lot of info about Smith, which makes sense, since that’s not his real name. Everything I could get on him—everything you see there—dates from after his signing on with Emery and Raveis.”
The files contained several surveillance-quality photos of the man Tom had spoken with in the subway car.
The differences between the man Tom had met and the younger—healthier—man in these few photos were significant.
As a young man in his twenties and early thirties, Smith had been muscular in that specific way of men who lift weights with the goal of building raw power: wide lats, rounded traps, delts like bowling balls, and thick limbs.
One of the photos showed Smith in black operator gear, leading a squad of similarly clad men down the street of a ruined city.
In another photo, Smith, dressed in a T-shirt and tactical pants, was seated at a table in a sidewalk café with another man and a woman.
Tom picked up that photo. In the background were two soldiers standing ready. Tom recognized them by their uniforms as members of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Another thing he recognized was the look that Smith and the woman in the photo were exchanging.
Tom asked when the photo had been taken.
“Nineteen ninety-nine,” Hammerton answered. “That was in Jerusalem.”
“So Smith has been in business with the Colonel and Raveis for thirty years?”
“Yes.”
“The woman he’s looking at, any idea who she is?”
“A Mossad agent named Yael Levy.”
“They were involved,” Tom observed.
Hammerton nodded. “Yes. She was killed in Iran five years later.”
“How did you get this photo?”
“MI6, via an SAS brother of mine.”
“Why was British Intelligence interested in an American?”
“They weren’t. Beckwith, the founder of Delta, had served as an exchange officer with the SAS after Vietnam. So had Emery. The other man in that photo was the former commander of my regiment. Emery recruited him, and at first he was partnered with Smith. At the time this was taken, MI6 had the commander under surveillance.”
“Why?”
“The SAS is the premier counterterrorism force in the world, with closely held techniques and tactics that our enemies would be interested in learning. Former commanders are often tailed after retirement, particularly when it’s an early retirement.”
“Where is your former commander now?”
“Dead. Killed in a late-night car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike.”
Tom looked at Hammerton. “An accident?”
“That’s how it looked.”
“You don’t buy that.”
“He didn’t drink. Ever. But there was alcohol in his blood. Three times the legal limit. Interestingly enough, he was killed a year after your father, and we all know that was no accident.”
“You signed on with the Colonel to find out what happened,” Tom said.
Hammerton nodded. “It was easy enough to get in. Back then, they were dying for someone with my credentials. I kept my head down, did my work, and collected every piece of information I could along the way. None of it has helped me, at least not yet, but maybe it can help you.”
Tom thought about what it would take to maintain a deep cover for close to two decades.
He thought, too, of the secret the man he called a friend had been keeping.
“What was your commander’s name?”
“Tuoghy.”
Tom waited a moment out of reverence for the fallen, then said, “Smith said the organization was the Colonel’s great experiment. What did he mean by that?”
“How the business looks from the outside—a private security firm led by former intelligence officers and staffed by former military and ex–law enforcement, engaged in bodyguard work, surveillance, and occasional corporate espionage, just like dozens of other companies like it—that’s just the shell. The other work they’re involved in is the work you and Cahill do. That was the brainchild of Emery and Raveis—a private-sector intelligence organization that certain agencies within the US government can turn to for off-the-books domestic ops.”
Hammerton paused. “But there is a third level of operations, and it’s at the secret heart of the organization. It involves work that’s done by operators you and Cahill don’t even know about. We’re talking the blackest of black ops. Rendition, assassinations, cyber warfare. International operations that violate the sovereignty of enemy and ally nations alike. Someone high up at Langley or the Pentagon wants something done, or sees that something needs to be done, something the CIA or DIA can’t touch, something maybe even the White House doesn’t need to know about, so they send a communication down the line. Someone has lunch with someone who later that day has a drink with someone else who goes jogging that night and happens to run into someone walking his dog in the park. Multiple degrees of separation, many of them through attorneys, with the first person in the chain having no idea who anyone further down the chain is. All information and commands are relayed verbally and in person, so no paper trail. Within hours of that final meeting, the planning is underway. Before he disappeared, Smith worked on the operational details, side by side with Raveis, who reported everything to Emery. That was the fail-safe—they each had to agree to an op. Was it truly for the good of the country? Was the target a genuine clear and present danger? That way the organization couldn’t be politicized. CIA directors, DNI directors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—they are often career military people or career intelligence officers, but each one of them was put into their position by elected officials, whom Emery and Raveis had grown to distrust during their years of service, and for good reason. But my theory is that about a year or so ago, Smith learned that Raveis had been taking on operations in secret, giving them the go-ahead without doing his due diligence or putting them to a vote. I don’t know if Smith brought this to Emery’s attention. My guess is he didn’t. My guess is he realized that he had to go dark immediately, so he disappeared—just like the man he’d been before he became Smith had disappeared. When a man like him goes into hiding, there’s no finding him.”
“Carrington did.”
“All due respect to your former commander, Tom, but if Carrington found Smith, then Smith wanted Carrington to find him.”
“To get to me without Raveis finding out.”
Hammerton nodded. “To give you the surveillance video of Raveis and your father. Show you the truth that’d been hidden from you.”
“Smith said my father’s death put them on the map. Any idea what that means?”
“No. But what I do know is that it was shortly after your father was killed that the organization went from being just another private security firm to what it is now. That’s when the third level of operations came into being.”
“You know this for certain?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because I was one of those secret operators, Tom. For twenty years I was one of the men you and Cahill and everyone like you knew nothing about. I’ve been on rendition teams and kill squads. I’ve done the dirty work of unelected officials, men who had no right to give the orders they gave. And I followed every one of those orders to the letter.”
Tom thought about that, the things that Hammerton had been required to do in the n
ame of maintaining his cover.
It was the work they had been trained for—Tom, Stella, Cahill, Grunn, Torres, everyone.
Krista MacManus had maintained her deep cover as Tom and Stella’s line cook for more than a year.
But Hammerton had continued his mission—his personal mission—for decades, hiding his true intention from everyone, including Tom.
All in the name of determining the real fate of his former commander.
These thoughts of loyalty and sacrifice and cunning brought to Tom’s mind a question—the one question that mattered more than any of the others.
“When Raveis sent my father to that hotel room to meet the Algerian and his men,” he said, “was he acting alone or on orders?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
“I’m guessing you don’t know the answer.”
“That was before my time, Tom. All I know is that Smith knew about it. He knew it was an op. He had gone in beforehand and set up the surveillance, then sat in the next room and let what happened happen. But that doesn’t really tell us anything, does it?”
Tom said nothing.
Hammerton, it seemed, understood what Tom was thinking.
“It is likely Emery didn’t know. That’s my guess. Raveis has a history of overstepping his bounds. And of the two of them, who’s the one you can imagine doing that? Who’s the one who would sacrifice a close friend for gain?”
Again, Tom didn’t reply.
Hammerton gave him a moment, then said, “If you want, you and I can leave here right now. What’s left of my old unit is currently en route; the first of them should be here in six hours. We can get you anywhere you want to go. And we can escort Cahill and Stella there, too. We can disappear the both of you, keep you safe.”
Tom shook his head. “I can’t run without knowing what I’m running from.”
“We’ll bring Stella here, then. You’re welcome to stay for as long as you want. It’s not much, but it’s secure.”
“Hiding blind is no better than running blind.”
“So what do you have in mind?”
“We need to find Grunn.”
“I’ll reach out to my contact. He has a back channel to someone in the NSA who can track her phone. It might take a few hours because of the time difference between here and the UK.”
The Shadow Agent Page 21