by D S Kane
The screen turned back to the commentator, who closed the report with the following comment: “The attorney for Lee Ainsley is Israel’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yigdal Ben-Levy. Mr. Ben-Levy is a graduate of New York University’s School of Law and a member of the bar in over ten states, including New York, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and California.”
McDougal’s jaw dropped. It stayed open while he considered his shrinking options. How much did they know about the funds-transfer network the West Wing had created under his guidance? What evidence did they have? What if Israel decided to publicize their evidence on Israeli television? Did they know the President of the United States told the agency’s Director-in-Chief, Gilbert Greenfield, to create it? Shit.
He suddenly made the connection. Mr. Ben-Levy of the Israeli Embassy was formerly the Assistant Director of the Mossad. Now he knew how Ainsley had gotten an attorney so fast. Mossad would know the instant Ainsley was picked up by the FBI. The global war on terrorism worked that way.
Sashakovich must have been working with Israeli intelligence. If so, surely they now knew everything. He imagined his career disappearing. He sat there for hours, once again with his head in his hands. Shit! This day has definitely taken a bad turn.
As they left Ben-Levy’s office, Cassie faced Shimmel. “I’m going to walk back to the hotel. I know it’s a long walk but I need to think about Lee’s arrest.” She thought, I also need to decide what to do about McDougal.
Sensing she was troubled, Avram Shimmel asked her, “Please, Cassie, may I walk with you?”
Shimmel led the way from the embassy, claiming he knew a shortcut to the Ritz-Carlton. They walked several blocks in the evening chill, toward a magnificent orange and purple sunset.
When they were stopped at a corner, waiting for a traffic light to change, Cassie’s expression changed from rage to sadness. “Tomorrow, I intend to visit the agency and have an unscheduled meeting with McDougal. I don’t need my identification card to get in. I can make one with the equipment available at any FedEx Office, and I know several agents who are out on assignment most of the time. I can manufacture one with their identity.”
As she spoke, Cassie’s voice grew very quiet. Shimmel had to strain to hear her next words. “I intend to kill McDougal tomorrow, even though I’ll probably end up dead.”
“Sashakovich, no.” His expression showed a father’s concern. He looked at his watch and used his arm to stop her. “There are much better uses for your enemies than fertilizer. If you hold what you know about them as a shield and a weapon, you can have them perform tasks you want done but can’t risk doing yourself. Including retrieving Lieutenant Ainsley from prison.” He looked into her face but she didn’t acknowledge his advice.
Her expression remained flat.
He knew she harbored a thirst for revenge. Shimmel shook his head. Barely above a whisper, he said, “Listen, Sashakovich, I have a personal request for you. Please. Tonight is the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, and there is a synagogue nearby. It is not very far out of our way. I ask you to visit with me. I need to pray for forgiveness along with every God-fearing Jew in this world, and it would give me great comfort if I have you with me. You see, some of the terrible things I’ve done, I did for you, and I fear you feel the guilt we both bear. Would you do me a great favor? Please come with me. This is important.”
She wanted to protest, to be left alone with her anguish, but as she looked into Shimmel’s eyes she could see his agony mirroring her own.
Cassie nodded and followed him several blocks to a large, old white-stone building on N Street. Shimmel found the security officers checking passes the congregation held and displayed his old Mossad identification card. He pointed Cassie out to the guard. “She’s with me.
”
Cassie entered the chapel behind him, and they made their way to the back of the congregation. As they walked they could hear an organ playing the ancient Kol Nidre, an enchanted and soulful tune. Shimmel donned a prayer shawl—the tallit—and a yarmulke, and took the prayer book one of the congregants handed him. From the back of the large room they could both see the old rabbi at its front and thousands of people around them.
The rabbi intoned a prayer, its words ancient magic: “We have sinned, our Lord. We have been arrogant, brutal, cynical, deceitful, egocentric, false, greedy, heartless, insolent, joyless, lustful, malicious, narrow-minded, obstinate, possessive, quarrelsome, rancorous, selfish, subject to temptation, unrepentant, violent, weak of will, xenophobic, and we have shown zeal for bad causes.”
In response, the congregation intoned, “Our sins are an alphabet of woe.” Cassie felt as if she’d been hit between her eyes with a brick. Remembering how innocent she’d felt the day she joined the agency, the blood drained from her face. Her knees buckled. She held on to the back of the seat in front of her and steadied herself, thinking how her behavior fit so well into all these labels. Tears dripped down her cheeks.
And then the rabbi said, “Rabbi Tarfon once said, ‘The day is short and the task is great, the workers are sluggish and the wages are high, and the Master of the house is pressing.’ For us all, life is a vain attempt, a struggle to press our insignificant deeds into this world.”
Unable to stop herself, Cassie thought about everything she’d done from the moment she entered McDougal’s office three years ago, when he’d told her what her role would be. She thought about all she’d done to help her government attain its desires through subterfuge and deceit. Rage, grief, and guilt all warred within her.
Every inch of her skin crawled with her desire to turn back the clock. But as she tried to bolt, her knees locked in place, trapping her. She was forced to listen.
The rabbi and the congregation continued to pray, and she was caught by another round of responsive reading: The rabbi said, “Let your judgment, oh Lord, fall on tyrants and those who wage war.” She thought about her own government’s heavy-handed dealings with less powerful nations, and how so often she was the willing tool used by them. She remembered every second of torture she’d had inflicted on the Houmaz brothers just a few days ago.
Cassie thought about what she intended to do to Mark McDougal, and how it would only push her further in a direction from which there was no return, no repentance, no forgiveness possible.
Thoughts twisted inside her like a car tumbling off a cliff. She heard that voice in her head telling her what she should do. All her plans reformed clearly. Cassie knew. Tears stopped falling from her eyes. She faced Shimmel, her expression resolute.“Avram, thank you for saving me from myself.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
Shimmel nodded and smiled back at her. He turned toward the front of the chapel where the rabbi led his congregation in another prayer asking God’s forgiveness.
Cassie walked up the aisle and out of the synagogue. Still an atheist, she departed, paying close attention to something newly discovered deep within. The prayers she heard as she left soothed her sense of guilt.
When she reached the street corner, she looked once more at Ann’s picture.
Each step she took moved her further from the living nightmare she had suffered for so long.
Nine hours after the FBI apprehended him, Lee Ainsley walked down the stairs of a military transport that landed at the American Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. He was immediately trucked to the basement of the Milli Istihbarat Teskilati headquarters, near Istanbul. It was the Turkish secret police headquarters. He wore an orange jumpsuit and leg-to-hand cuff-chains. He dripped perspiration in the heat and humidity of the Middle Eastern evening.
A soldier held an automatic weapon against his spine, pushing him toward the prison entrance. Lee saw the broken attitudes of the prisoners, mostly Muslims, on their prayer mats beseeching Allah for forgiveness. They seemed like livestock in a slaughterhouse. His life had definitely taken a bad turn.
Mark McDougal left his office and drove home just before midnight. He walked through the hallway,
looking for his wife and son, but didn’t find them. He guessed they’d given up on seeing him and gone to sleep. His wife shifted away from him in the bed as he entered the bedroom but she didn’t say anything. He figured she was still in shock and probably also angry over the kidnapping. He couldn’t blame her.
Without raising her head, she said, “Look, Mark, I know you saved our lives, but I can’t live with someone who lies so much. I’ve placed a pillow and blanket on the sleeper couch in the family room, and that’s where you can spend tonight. Or, if you prefer, you can have the bedroom and I’ll sleep there.”
Hey wanted to protest. Would that change anything? “Honey—”
“No, Mark. Before I spend any time close to you, I want to think about my life.”
McDougal walked in sullen silence down the stairs. He suspected she knew more than he’d ever told her. And he couldn’t blame her. This is what I get for playing to keep my family safe and never telling them they were chips in a game. When he turned off the light to sleep, he couldn’t. Once again he was unable to escape thinking about trouble of his own making.
He rose off the couch before 5 a.m. He dressed and drove to the office. It just didn’t pay to stay in bed when all he could think of was how his family hated him and he’d be off to prison as soon as Ben-Levy released the information he possessed.
Cassie walked down K Street toward the apartment she’d lived in until the day the agency issued a “burn notice” on her. She entered the lobby and scanned her mailbox. The name on it was no longer hers. “I. J. Ibrihim”
She sighed at the transition. Washington was that way. She picked the lock into the lobby and took the stairs to the basement. Near the furnace, in a space hollowed out between its bricks, she retrieved a small ziplock bag and pulled a plastic ID badge from within. It was a copy of her old badge. She’d need to change the bar code and name, but leave the photo as her own.
Off to the local FedEx Office.
Chapter Forty-Four
September 15, 1:46 p.m.
Headquarters of Gilbert Greenfield’s unnamed intelligence agency, K Street, Washington, DC
No one came to his office and the hours passed. McDougal thought the people around him knew he’d become a pariah. He read and reread reports on all the staff ops and the analyses his people sent him. Nothing stayed with him. He couldn’t concentrate worth a damn. Just before noon, he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his chair toward his office door.
Cassandra Sashakovich stood just in front of his desk. She wore a festive-looking Hawaiian shirt, picturing a black man waving his hands over a burning guitar. Her expression seemed strained—full of hatred and irony covered by a loose yet grim smile—and she held her body in a tense state of alertness, as if she’d prepared for their encounter without any idea of her adversary’s intentions.
McDougal took her in, her expression, her informal dress, and wondered how she managed to get past security. He stared at her, unsure of what to do.
After a few seconds he forced an ironic expression and a weary smile for a shield. “I suspect you’re behind all this. Placement of the corpses facing east, Ainsley’s attorney, the intel he and the Israelis hold, all of it. You know, of course, I can have you arrested right here and now. Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
Cassie seemed to restrain the urge to jump over the desk and kill him with her bare hands. She smiled at him again, a cold and ruthless grin. “It’s been a long time, McDougal.” She turned and closed the door to his office, making her visit a private event. “You know, I was going to kill you today. But a friend convinced me there were better uses for you than fertilizer.”
McDougal scowled. He tried thinking of something effective to parry her unexpected comment. “Don’t be silly, Sashakovich. I weigh sixty pounds more than you and I’m six inches taller. You don’t even have a gun.” He pushed his chair back just in case she had thought about launching herself at him. He showed her his gun from under the desk so she could see it pointed at her.
Cassie laughed. “You’re such a stupid man, McDougal. After all I’ve been through—all because of you, I might add—you can imagine I’ve made it impossible for you to kill me without serious consequences to you and your family. I have a great life insurance policy. Should I die, you’ll be arrested within forty-eight hours on a list of charges that will keep you behind bars, or get you executed.”
Cassie brushed the hair from her eyes and stared at McDougal, waiting for a reaction. But he just stared back. She suppressed a bitter smile and kept her face blank. “And that’s only a fail-safe. See, I’ve hacked together a few redundant programs that are primed to execute unless I intervene to prevent them. Which I have to do frequently. I told Ambassador Wagner about them and by now he’s told Greenfield. And my guess is the idiot that runs this God-forsaken country knows too. At minimum, when I am dead, within days a contract for your death will be issued and sent out to eleven hit men I’ve met during my time away from the agency. It’ll be a contest to see who gets to kill you first and collect the reward. But the contracts won’t get paid unless they do your wife and son first. If you like, I can tell you exactly how they’ll die. Interested?”
She saw defeat in his eyes, but then all expression faded from him.
She tilted her head and smirked at him. “Even if you don’t try having me killed, I can still make your life a mess. There’s the evidence this President’s West Wing is responsible for funding terrorism so we can all live in a constant state of fear. In addition, evidence of your dealings with Houmaz, the delivery of the nuclear warheads, and least of all, your sale of my cover to Houmaz. A long laundry list of the dirty things you’ve done! You’d be able to watch it all on the evening news. Your wife and son will live in shame as long as they reside in the United States—if they’re still alive, that is. And don’t disregard the possibility some extremist group might take their revenge for the Houmaz brothers by killing you, your wife, and your son.”
Cassie clenched her lips. “You just won’t pull the trigger. We’d both end up with appropriate legacies. Mine is vengeance and yours is shame.”
She thought, just pull the trigger, motherfucker. If it isn’t a headshot, I’ll be on you in a second.
Cassie watched perspiration drip down his forehead into his eyes. So he knew she wasn’t bluffing. She watched him gulp. He must be trying to figure a way out of all this.
“Listen, Cassie, it doesn’t have to be this way. How about coming back to work for the agency? I could hire you back in as a director.”
She saw desperation in his eyes and almost felt sorry for him. She couldn’t contain her laughter any longer and it burst forth, cracking her composure. “I think not.” She drew herself together as her amusement turned into a few short snorts. “I don’t need a job, especially one working for you. Now I don’t have to appear to be anything I’m not.”
Cassie pointed at him. “I know why you blew my cover. But your reasons don’t matter. You offered me to the Muslim extremists. Do you know what they intended to do with me before they murdered me? The torture they intended for me would by far exceed anything I can do to you. In comparison, I’m here to offer you kindness.”
Convinced now he wouldn’t shoot her, she sat in one of the overstuffed chairs facing his desk. “What amazes me is we’re so alike. Greenfield screwed you and you screwed me. We both started out as patriots and now we’re rogues. So, no. I’ll not work where you work. I have other uses for you. I won’t release the remaining intel if you follow my demands. For starters, Lee Ainsley. I want him back and home in less than the three days it normally takes to get a prisoner back from whichever country you’ve had him renditioned to. Charges dropped immediately and an official apology issued by Greenfield in front of the media on television.”
She paused until she was sure he understood the demand. “If not, you, Greenfield, and the President will spend the remainder of your lives in prison for treason, and your wife and son will liv
e their lives in shame. Offer Ainsley his job back with a substantial pay raise and grade promotion. I want him to be your superior. He’ll run you for me. I don’t care how difficult this is for you to accomplish. If you can’t, I’ll make your life a short, miserable one. I think you can do it and I have faith you will. And if you do, then I won’t blow your cover like you blew mine. If you can demonstrate your usefulness, that is.”
Cassie took stock of McDougal’s posture and expression. He looked defeated. “Do you understand me?”
He nodded. But she wasn’t sure he agreed yet. She’d negotiated well, but now it was time to seal the deal.
She took a deep breath and steeled herself to the next step in her plan. “Okay, then. Know that I can always hack Lee free and clear even if you won’t do it for me. And I’d really rather have him work for me, but I know his preference is to return to the agency, the silly boy. So you’ll take him back since it’ll make him happy. In effect, you will also work directly for me, covertly, just as I worked for you when I was under NOC with Brewster Jennings and Associates. I will tell you what you will do and you’ll follow my orders just as you did for Houmaz. Won’t that leave you with wicked nightmares?”
She saw her reflection on his office window. A rock-hard look shaped her face. “After I have Lee returned to me, you will arrange to have Swiftshadow Consulting Group approved as a preferred contractor for federal services, with cover under other company names to be selected by me. We’ll run some of your NOCs. Also, I want…”
She gave him a laundry list of things to do if he wished to survive. When she finished dictating terms to McDougal, Cassie told him, “Finally, you will not retire unless I give you permission. If you do retire without my permission, I’ll release all my evidence. Now, do you understand what will happen to you, to Greenfield, and the President if you fail to agree?”