by D S Kane
He also found multiple thefts of single-use cell phones reported in Manhattan, missing blank US passports, and blank New York State driver’s license paper stock. All done in New York City. Ainsley searched the database of assets the agency used for this.
Within the Federal Reserve Bank in lower Manhattan he found the man she’d turned. Norman Cisco’s office was at one of the Federal Reserve’s annex buildings across the street at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets. It would be easy to find her other helpers at the embassy for passports, and in Albany for the driver’s licenses. He wondered what names she would choose for herself.
How would she manufacture the new identities she needed? This was the most difficult part. It took him several hours to find one clumsy slip up she’d made, purchases made at a mall in northern New Jersey. Special dot matrix and laser printers and ink, which could be used together to print the counterfeit cash, driver’s licenses, and passports. All purchased at the same identical moment. Yes, cash and identities. Now, she had all the raw materials. And he knew one of her manufactured identities.
He coveted the gleaming amber liquid in the glass. Not yet.
From all this, he could guess the rest. She’d made one more stop, the next day, to steal a 9mm Beretta from a pawn shop in Spanish Harlem. The police report was there, giving. her height and build.
He swirled and then swallowed a taste of the Scotch. The rest of his work would be simple. Find the numbers of the throwaway cells and track them to find out who she called. He could triangulate the cell tower reports to determine where she was located when she made the calls.
He was certain now that he could find Cassandra.
Should he tell McDougal? It might be worth a promotion. Or should he call her himself, and help her save her life?
Tariq read Pesi’s coded email and smiled. His brother had performed well. If the company he was using to produce the “test” units was competent, Pesi could send him two hundred Bug-Lok units within a month. He plucked his cell phone from his pocket and opened his digital journal. He selected world leaders he wanted dead. Leaders whose knowledge would serve him well before he terminated them at the push of a button.
Of course, the President of the United States would be the most important leader he executed. And the most difficult to target. He’d start with someone whose loss wouldn’t signal caution to the others. Whose secrets did he most want to know? Who did he want most to kill?
It took him just a few minutes to decide his first target: Charles Crane of MI-6. Sir Charles had ordered Houmaz burned and targeted for assassination, but Bob Gault had saved him from that fate. His former handler’s termination would be a pure pleasure. Revenge always was.
The man who stood by the fruits and vegetables looked like everyone else. Not much different in any way. In fact, he was forgettable, except for his British accent. He didn’t speak tonight, and as Lev Robinson approached, the handler turned away, patting one of the grapefruits.
The handler watched Lev examine the oranges in the adjacent bin. Lev then caressed a grapefruit and dropped the thumb-drive in the bin. Lev moved on to the lemons where he picked up the thumb-drive his handler had left in exchange for him, completing the trade. Then he continued down the next isle, shopping. The handler watched him pick up other items, probably from a list his wife had given him. He waited for Robinson to pay.
The handler palmed the thumb-drive Robinson left him. All he bought tonight was a pack of gum.
He knew what Lev was thinking. Who was his handler and what purpose was it Lev served? What country was he really serving?
The handler suppressed a smile as he watched Robinson leave with a bag of groceries.
William reread the email he’d received from the Butterfly. Sashakovich was on the west side of midtown Manhattan. He called Jon, sure that Jon would call Mother. What would Mother do to the little thief? Would Mother find a use for the female hacker or send her to “a better place?”
Chapter Eighteen
Corner of L Street near First Street, Washington, DC
July 5, 1:42 p.m.
It was a hot summer day, steamy and smoggy; its colors bright, contrasts stark. Cassandra Sashakovich waited in a commonplace rental car for the approach of her prey. Parked on L Street near First Street, the car was one block from the Washington, DC, bus station where she’d arrived that morning from Manhattan. She examined her surroundings looking for telltale signs of trouble. No one seemed interested in her or aroused her suspicions.
She’d cracked the window open and turned off the air conditioner to listen to the street noise, the first indicator of danger. She could see garbage in the street and the smell of it flowed freely into the car. The neighborhood buildings were old and not well maintained. Some were ruins. Beads of nervous perspiration dotted her forehead.
When Lee Ainsley called her at one of her throwaway cells, she couldn’t imagine how he’d found her. He was the agency’s head of security, but she still felt disappointment at her inability to cover her tracks, and, what’s more, her now-shattered belief that she had been successful in eluding detection. She thought how much her life had changed since Riyadh. Every day she felt more and more like a fanatic. Behaving like a terrorist was turning her into the very hand of evil. She’d sneak about, without a home to call her own, no way to recover what had once been her life. She couldn’t even enjoy the money she’d counterfeited without the risk of drawing attention to herself, and attention might bring her death.
Ainsley promised to help her, but she had no idea how anyone could. Worse, she had no reason to trust him.
She’d left nothing to chance when she traveled. Between the time she left the Milbourne Hotel in Manhattan and when she entered the Times Square bus terminal she’d bought numerous tiny pieces of technology, a hunting knife, and another change of clothing, all of which barely squeezed into her attaché case. At the bus terminal, she’d visited her locker and taken a few of her spare identities. And the Beretta. Just in case.
She sent Ainsley an email at his Hushmail account to tell him when, where, and how she’d make contact.
She’d been taught to do surveillance detection runs at The Farm, but she’d never used that training to run another operative in the field. And the operative she ran today wasn’t a real operative, since he’d never worked even one day outside the agency’s offices. Ainsley was just agency management. The hacker boss.
To pass the time before he’d arrived, she’d counted the things she feared. There were so many.
She feared traveling. It took forever for her to reach a destination, given the safer but tiresomely slower choices of bus, train, and freighter.
She feared the empty hours when she pretended to be someone else, disguised sometimes as an angry dyke, ancient prostitute, or smiling grandmother. Each time, she lost more of the person she used to be.
And she feared the additional risks of travel she had to mitigate, such as living in hotels, so close to others she feared.
Cassie feared exposure. It was little consolation that every operative felt this dread. Some grew accustomed to it. A rare few become addicted to their terror. She thought them crazy. She’d already been exposed once.
She feared Washington. Her escape from this city so many months ago left her with nightmares. The city itself was an odd mix of tenement slums and bureaucratic buildings, with many hiding places for violence, which occurred with regularity.
Women outnumbered men in this competitive city. She’d been dismissed as a servant, inferior to the men who ran almost everything. She wasn’t permitted to compete with males at the agency.
Among the females, she’d struggled for scraps left over by those who were more attractive, even if less intelligent. She knew she was brighter than her peers, but men never chose plain-faced, flat-chested women for anything, from choice operative assignments to relationships.
Before her boyfriend Evan had fought and died in the Middle East, she’d been lucky; she had a relat
ionship and a social life. He was her first but his body had been blown into a smudge by an armor-piercing, focused-blast IED. And since the day he’d left her to fight in Afghanistan, her love life had been nonexistent.
Worst of all, she hated herself for being afraid.
She moved around inside the car, oblivious to the few people passing by on the street as she changed outfits from her “simple poverty” traveling outfit to something simply outrageous. Donning a bright red-leather raincoat and pink spiked shellac wig, she chewed a large wad of chewing gum, put on a gold-beaded emerald green blouse, black leather miniskirt, black fishnet stockings, and applied makeup with a putty knife.
Cassie hid the Beretta in the back of the broad, green leather belt she wore around her waist.
She was now dressed in role, a perfect fit for this poverty-stricken, crime-ridden neighborhood.
Almost ready for show time. The man she sought had rounded the corner, walking away from her location. Good. Let him sweat a bit more. Cassie exited the car, visiting a tavern across the street she thought might serve her purposes. She entered its front door and checked it out. Almost empty, dark, old, and quiet. Besides the faint smells of beer and cigarettes, there were no discernible odors from where she stood. Booths were dimly lit by sunlight from the soot-covered window near the rear exit. She found one where the light was blinding from a mirror reflection for anyone who sat facing the street. It would be perfect.
She approached the balding, fat bartender. “I’ll need privacy here in about a half hour.” She pointed toward the rear. “That booth in the back. Keep it empty.” She passed him a twenty-dollar counterfeit bill and smiled.
The old man smiled back, showing yellow teeth. “Sure. No problem. You can hook him, but no sex in here.”
She nodded, and returned to the car.
Seven minutes later, Cassie held a cell phone in one hand and field glasses in the other, and waited for Ainsley, who must by now be soaked with sweat, to round the corner three hundred feet away.
She saw the perspiration streaming down his face. Cassie toyed with the thought of having him do a few more short trips around the area. But an hour and three miles of trotting in the hot sun would have left him in no shape to attempt anything physical, if this was his intention. And an hour was long enough for her to know he wasn’t being followed.
Could she do this? She wondered why she didn’t feel fear. The voice in her head remained silent.
Cassie grinned, seeing his defeated and exhausted expression. She hit her cell phone’s Redial button. “Ainsley, proceed now to the tavern directly across the street from you and sit in the booth closest to the rest rooms, on the side facing the street side window. Take everything in your pockets—everything—and place it all on the table in the booth. I’ll be with you directly.”
She waited until he entered by the front door, examined herself in the rearview mirror to ensure she looked within the role. Still no noise from the voice in her head, so it must be safe to do this. She could feel her heartbeat accelerate as she was hit hard with an adrenaline surge.
Take a deep breath to reassert focus. She exited the car and walked into the alleyway, then entered the bar through its rear exit. As she passed the rest room, she noticed odors she’d missed before. The tavern’s rear smelled of equal parts urine and beer, but there were other odors, some more terrible—she could smell fear and blood from a fight—and others savory, like shepherd’s pie. She saw the back of Ainsley’s head as she closed on the booth. He sat facing the light, rubbing his eyes, blinded by the sunshine flowing through the dark bar’s only window. She removed the chewing gum and dropped it into a tissue in the pocket of the raincoat.
Standing right behind him, less than one foot away, she quietly removed her Beretta pistol from her belt, and unlocked the safety. Pulled to load a shell. Ready to fire. Cassie shoved the pistol into the back of his neck and whispered, “Slowly rise and place both your hands on the table.”
He did, saying, “Sheesh, very touchy, aren’t you, Cassie?”
“I expect you’d be if people were hunting you.” She patted him down and found the workout—running all over the city—seemed to have left him with an unexpected erection. She sighed, wondering how he’d managed this. Maybe he found danger arousing? She found nothing else of consequence and nothing dangerous.
Cassie sniffed the air. His perspiration smelled sweet, but with no trace of aftershave or cologne. And no scent of fear on him. How can he be so comfortable? Is this a set-up?
She steeled herself to his lack of emotion, moved to face him, and sat. “Wow, Ainsley, I guess you’re really glad to see me.” She pointed to his crotch and although he didn’t reply, his face got red and looked cross.
Cassie examined the contents of his pockets on the table. Once again, there was nothing dangerous. She handed back his wallet, keys, a scrap of paper with a shopping list from the supermarket, and a black plastic comb. He put everything into his pockets.
He passed her the cell phone she’d left for him in a wastebasket outside the agency’s office building. She removed its battery and exchanged this for a sealed zip-lock envelope she’d lifted from the same wastebasket. It contained his cell phone with its own battery removed. She checked the cell phone she’d loaned him, to ensure he hadn’t used it to make any outgoing calls, and dropped it into her gaudy purse. No outgoing calls meant it would be safe here for at least a while.
She sat and tried to keep from grinning at him, filled with the thought of how good it finally felt to be in control. She forced her face into a serious expression. She wanted to smile so much, her face hurt. “Sit, please, Lee. Can I buy you a drink?”
He sat and nodded. “Lagavulin, straight up.”
“Yum. Strong and smoky single malt. If I’d known you were a man of taste when we worked together, maybe I’d have responded differently to your clumsy passes.” She pointed to the bartender and held up two fingers. “Lagavulin straight up.”
The bartender lifted the bottle from the shelf to show her he had the correct brand. She nodded, sure it was filled with a less-expensive brand.
Cassie made an attempt to sound casual, her voice even and quiet as she asked, “Did you know you’re the one person I never expected or wanted to hear from?”
The bartender brought their drinks and Cassie handed the old man two counterfeit twenties. She told him to keep the change, and he vanished.
She frowned. “You’ve no tradecraft, no experience in operations, no idea what “covert” even means. Not in the least interesting to me. So tell me why we’re finally in a bar on a date, Lee.”
Ainsley took a sip of the single malt. From his expression she could tell he savored it. “By the way, this is Laphroaig, not Lagavulin.” Then, for the first time, he looked at her. “Cassie, you look great, even in costume.” He must have realized she was about to dismiss him, and held up his hand to stop her. “Well, see, I found traces on our server. Traces of traffic no one was ever supposed to see. Found ’em by accident.”
He drew his hand through his long blond hair. “Someone used one of the secure workstations in the basement to send and receive email, and this wasn’t agency business. I don’t know who it was, but the message scraps I found led me to believe the message sender was being threatened by a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot. They claimed they were owed a life and threatened to take out their mole’s entire family unless they were offered a substitute. The agency mole begged for the lives of his or her family and claimed he’d already offered you up. The mole claimed he or she could deliver one more if you weren’t enough or if you evaded them.”
He paused. “I can’t tell you much more, except if I’m right, then I’d be the most likely substitute, since I know more about how to track and trace messages moving through the agency’s computers than anyone else. I’m a big threat to our mole.”
He looked squarely into her eyes, his grin sheepish. “I guess no one expected you to survive this long.” He wiped sweat fr
om his brow with the paper napkin from the table setting.
She thought about the facts and opinions he’d had offered up. “I already knew there was a mole, Lee. How do I know it isn’t you?” She purposely showed teeth through her smile, not feeling at all friendly.
His brow furrowed. “You can’t, and the only reason I’m begging your help is I’m convinced I’m your substitute. My only hope for survival is for you to find this person who has a ‘family’ he or she loves and fears will be slaughtered if they can’t kill you, before he or she can offer up me. And know this: I could have given them—whoever they are— your location by backtracing your cell phone, but instead I chose to be here with you. So isn’t that proof I’m not the mole?”
She remembered the men who showed up carrying weapons at her hotel before she left for Hong Kong. She wasn’t convinced of his innocence. Cassie let the silence hang between them like a shroud.
His face showed panic, and even in the air-conditioned bar perspiration flowed down his face. Cassie sniffed the air, smelling the close-by, hard odor that was a confession of his terror. She felt an unanticipated sexual thrill run through her all the way to her core. It felt like an electric current turned on inside her crotch.
She ignored her arousal and considered his story with care, looking for logic flaws. She found none. The big question was, did she believe him. And if she did, what should she do? What could she do?
“Most everyone working at the agency is married, with few exceptions, and most have families,” she mused. “Greenfield and McDougal, plus at least four project managers on the analysis side, more than eighty country managers, both contracts administrators, and all six covert operatives who aren’t NOCs. They all have families. It’s a long list of suspects.”
At this, Lee seemed to relax as he smiled back. “Not so. I tried to find a way to narrow down the list and changed the security on the basement terminals so only director-level employees can log into them. No one below director-level complained and asked to use the terminals. And there was more email traffic, both incoming and outgoing over the next few days. So it’s either Greenfield or one of his three assistant directors. Each is married and has children. You reported to McDougal, didn’t you? He’s an Ass Dire.” He hid his nose in the tumbler sniffing the smoky Scotch.