by Eason, Mary
If this meant what none of wanted to believe it meant, then the implication was clear. Someone had gotten access to top-level secure documents. Information that put us all in jeopardy. We were spooked. Everyone in the group was looking at the others and wondering if there was a mole amongst the five.
Unfortunately, that was just another risk in the type of work that we did. Not only do you have to worry about being found out by the enemy, there are times when you really don’t know who to trust within your own group.
That’s why most members of such specialized security teams as ours burn out quickly--within a few years. So, it doesn’t really pay to get too close to anyone because you never know when they might slip up and end up dead.
Our team was probably one of the closes, but still there was a certain amount of rivalry, even between the five of us. We were co-workers, united by a common cause, and for the most part, we trusted each other. That didn’t necessarily mean that we were friends. Noah and I are probably one of only a handful of exceptions to that rule. Noah was the closest thing I’d ever known to a true blue friend in years. We loved each other, but lately that love was being shoved to the back burner more and more. And I think that was the real reason behind my frustrated state of late. Noah and I were married. We were supposed to mean everything to one other. Instead we’d become sometimes lovers and friends. I wanted more. No--I needed more. I needed what every other married couple in the world had except for us. I needed a future.
The second my eyes met his, I found myself remembering all over again why I’d fallen in love with Noah. He was after all the best-looking man I’d ever met, in that tall, dark, handsome and definitely dangerous kind of way. Even though Noah was almost ten years my senior, he was still gorgeous to me.
“Hi, I’m sorry, I know. I’m terribly late, but I got held up at work and then...traffic.” I shrugged as if to say, ‘you know,’ not bothering to tell him I’d walked.
“Next time, would you at least call someone, Cameron? You know how dangerous things are right now. If you’re caught, alone who knows what might happen. Or what they might be able to get out of you?”
That was Shane. Good old Shane. But it wasn’t as if he and I didn’t get along, because we do. At least as best as anyone could get along with Shane. It was just that well, in his opinion, I was the boss’s girlfriend, and I’m sure that Shane thought I was getting special treatment because of it.
“I’m sorry, Shane.”
“Okay let’s get started. We have a lot to get through tonight,” Noah told the group while his eyes met mine again for the moment. I knew that look. I loved that look. I knew exactly what it meant, even if he couldn’t say the words at that moment. Noah had missed me.
“Sorry, Noah,” I told him while hoping that the sound of my voice wasn’t betraying just how much that look got to me.
Noah knew exactly what I was feeling. It was all there in that little smile of his.
“Let’s get started, shall we? Matt has informed me that he’s received some very disturbing intelligence that indicates Elijah Jacobs is in D.C. Right now. What I want to know is how this happened, right under our noses and in our own backyard? Why didn’t any of us had any inkling that this was about to happen, until now?” Noah gave me a look that told me how much he wished that we were alone right now, while his shocking announcement was met with a flurry of astonished remarks, excuses, and questions directed at Noah who answered as many as he could before turning the floor over to Matt.
“When did he arrive, Noah? Excuse me for being the one to point this out, but isn’t that intelligence’s job? To find out these things before they happen?” Matt threw Shane a look that made his reaction to those words clear.
“Shane, this is all our responsibility. Not just Matt. One of us should have picked up on this before now,” Noah told him.
“Well, how do we know this isn’t just one of Matt’s snitches trying to steer us off course of what’s really going on.” Shane added hoping to get a rise out of Matt. As second in command, Matt was in charge when Noah was away on assignment. Shane had always resented this, because he believed Matt lacked the proper leadership qualities that Noah possessed.
“Like it or not Shane, it’s real alright. Every one of us has dropped the ball on this. There will be hell to pay with the big guy for that,” Matt said looking directly at Noah who only shook his head. What else could he say? He knew Adam as well as the rest of us. Adam hated looking bad in front of his superiors. This was certainly not going to be a shining moment for Adam or The Organization.
“It’s been confirmed. This isn’t a mistake.” Matt added for Shane’s benefit. “And, we’ve had surveillance on him for quite some time. He managed to give them the slip somehow. We picked him up again, right here in D.C. It’s definitely Elijah Jacobs. Somehow, he managed to penetrate what was supposed to be an unbreechable line of defense. Anyone want to venture a guess as to how that happened?”
“He had to have help getting in, Matt. We know most of his commanders come from former military trained specialists.” I said while trying not to show the team how the mention of Elijah Jacobs’ name rattled me. I was now terrified for my brother.
“Someone who knows all the tricks of the trade, I’d say. Someone who knew exactly what we’d be looking for. Someone who knew how to get beyond our security, and get him into the city undetected by our radars. Probably the same person that infiltrated our security and now knows we exist.”
“That’s what we’re starting to believe, Cameron. We believe it’s someone on the job. Someone high up in the ranks,” Noah said while his eyes held mine for just a moment longer and I tried to determine what he suspected.
“Matt, you and Gina get to work on figuring out what he’s up to here and Shane, see what the other agencies have on this. Maybe someone knows something that they’re not talking about.” I tried not to let my reaction to Noah’s new orders show.
Ordinarily Noah would never take Shane off his weapon’s hunt for this type of work. That always came to me. So why wasn’t it now? I tried to read some vibe into Noah’s glance but he wasn’t giving anything away. If anyone else thought it strange that Noah went to Shane instead of me, they didn’t indicate it. So maybe I was just being paranoid again. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
It could just be a thoughtless choice on Noah’s part, or it could mean that he knew all about my connection to Elijah and he didn’t trust me to do the job.
“You want me to have him picked up? A few hours of intense interrogation might rattle him into talking. At least make him aware that we’re watching him.”
“He knows that already, Shane. Don’t sell this guy short. He’s known all along that we’d pick him up eventually. Clearly, he’s not worried. Why should he? We haven’t been able to make a single charge stick to this guy in the past. He’s good at covering his tracks.”
“More like killing off all the witnesses. I say let’s shake him up just a little, Noah. I mean, we are the frigging FBI.”
“Not yet, Shane. I’ll have someone keep an eye on him. See what he’s really up to here in D.C.” Noah added to Shane’s immense disappointment.
“Anyone got anything new to report on? Gina, weren’t you going to run a check on that report you were tracing? The one on the funds that were being transferred from a known terrorist-friendly bank in the Caymans to a local institute here in D.C.”
“Right, Noah. As it turns out, this wasn’t the first time. It’s happened a couple of other times in the past, but the amounts were small enough not to attract attention.” Gina continued with her report, but I confess, I stopped listening.
I was frightened for my brother. For what would happen to him and to me if our connection were ever discovered. How could I tell my co-workers that the man they knew as one of the government’s most wanted was actually my brother?
I still couldn’t believe that Judah or Elijah was the cold-blooded killer that all those reports claimed
. Somehow, I knew that I had to find out the truth, whatever it was, before it was too late.
I was so deep into my thoughts that I wasn’t aware of the lull in conversation, or the fact that it was my turn to update the group on my latest assignment. The one that I wasn’t ready to discuss with anyone just yet.
I’d received a document from Matt that had been intercepted sometime last week. He believed it had Elijah’s MO written all over it. After a quick pass through it, I was inclined to agree with him.
The man was a mastermind when it came to using obscure languages to communicate with his commanders. Usually they were only mildly challenging at best, but this one, well I’d been struggling with it for days and finally determined it was a form of ancient Aramaic. A language that my father had taught to me as a child. I wondered if my father had done the same for Judah.
I’d only just begun unraveling the document, but already I understood its importance. Something bad was about to happen. I could feel it in the tone of the document. Unfortunately, I was just rusty enough at the language that it was taking me longer than usual to transcribe it. I didn’t know its full content just yet, or how bad the things I’d find in there would turn out to be. And until I understood the full impact of that document, I couldn’t risk letting anyone, including Noah know what I suspected. Instead, I tried to shift the focus in another direction, by asking the group if anyone had ever ran across my mysterious terrorist before.
The silence around me was deafening, and should have been my first clue not to go any further with this had I not actually chosen to ignore all those things.
“Cameron, please tell me you didn’t just walk into a potentially life threatening situation alone, without so much as calling for backup?”
Too late, I realized I’d said the wrong thing again. “Well...no. Not intentionally.”
“Not intentionally? Cameron, you of all people know that you never, never let yourself be caught up in a situation like that without backup. Why didn’t you call one of us when you first suspected the guy was following you?”
As my eyes scanned the group for someone how might actually be considered as being ‘on my side’, I saw nothing so reassuring. Matt was the only one who appeared even slightly less hostile, and that, I decided after a second look was due mostly because something in my story had sparked an interest in him.
You see, for months now, Matt has been expecting something big to break. It was all there. All the signs. That is, if his sources were to be trusted. He’d been predicting this for several months, due to an increase in interesting ‘chatter’ amongst the terrorist cells he monitored. Matt was constantly going over every little tidbit of information he received with a fine toothcomb.
Matt had his secrets, but for the most part, his techniques were not all that high tech. Oh sure he had his contacts through the Internet. And then, of course, there was a wealth of other information available out there if you knew where to look. But Matt’s most valuable source of information gathering came from reading the papers and news reports available from all over the country as well as the world.
That was it. That was Matt’s secret. He subscribed to just about every single Podunk newspaper around the country and even a few in other parts of the world. Matt was always on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, whether it be an article in a local paper or more importantly what wasn’t being reported there. Through the years, Matt had learned to read between the printed lines quite well.
There was another, less talked but highly useful form of intelligence gathering. One that Matt rarely talked about in front of us, because he knew Noah’s opinion on it. Matt had cultivated quite a few snitches amongst the terrorist groups in the US over the years. Apparently, there was little loyalty amongst the cells. Matt told me once that there was nothing more accommodating than a terrorist down on his luck.
Of course, Noah knew that Matt used these guys. We all knew. Noah just didn’t like it much. But in our line of work, the end usually justified the means.
I could see that my little inquiry had sparked Matt’s interest more than I’d expected and thankfully gotten me out of hot water, at least for the moment.
“Cameron, you don’t think this guy was one of our homegrown bad boys, do you? He certainly doesn’t sound familiar to me.”
“No, definitely not. I detected an accent that I would say places him somewhere in the area of the Middle East.”
“You spoke to him?” Those shocked words came from Noah. When our eyes collided, I realized he was even angrier than I’d believed. I tried to focus on Matt’s questions while sending Noah a look that was meant to say, ‘what is up with you?’
You see we didn’t have that kind of a relationship. We were good together, as lovers and as friends, but we held no illusions about our future together and we both could take care of ourselves. We were dedicated to the task at hand. Everything else took second, third, and sometimes no place at all in our lives.
Just part of the hazards of the job, I’d tried to convince myself. Love and any other weak emotion didn’t fit into this world. It was sort of an unspoken vow when you joined the team. No romantic attachments could ever get in the way of the work we did for our country.
“Cameron, are you sure about the accent?” Matt asked ignoring the obvious tension between Noah and me.
“Yes, I’m positive about that. This guy was classy. Not like the usual ones we run into. There was something about his whole behavior that was odd. He wasn’t afraid of me, or I’m willing to bet anything else for that matter.”
“Okay, tell me exactly what he said to you.” Matt was busy taking notes, while the rest of the team pretty much watched us with only a slight interest.
Except for Noah. Noah looked uneasy. On occasion, he and Matt exchanged looks that meant something, but I couldn’t even begin to understand what. I wasn’t sure whether it was just his concern for me or if something deeper was troubling him.
As I recounted most of the details of my little encounter tonight for everyone, I could see Matt growing even more uncomfortable.
“Wait, you say you ran into him the first time last week? Why didn’t you mention this before now?”
Once again I wasn’t thinking. I’d opened my mouth and got myself into deeper trouble. The truth was I’d been in a different part of the city that night when I’d first discovered someone was following me.
It was one of those long, hot, sultry summer nights where the moon was so full and bright that it was like daylight outside. I couldn’t sleep that night at all. So, me, being the ever-cautious agent that I was, decided to take a walk alone.
Normally, I would have been with Noah, but on this particular night, we’d had a little disagreement, which was probably more to the point of why I couldn’t sleep.
I’d walked the streets of my neighborhood until early morning when I’d realized how far away from my apartment I’d strayed.
It was then that I’d spotted the man that reminded me of my brother but as always, before I could get close enough to speak to him he disappeared. Then I’d run into my mystery man. At the time, I hadn’t really thought much of it. Until tonight.
“Dammit, Cameron.” The words slipped from Noah, but thankfully, he didn’t say anything else for the moment.
“I wasn’t sure at the time, Matt. Not until I saw him again tonight.”
“And you’re positive he’s not just some guy trying to hit on you?” Matt asked me as his glance slid uncomfortably back to Noah’s.
“Of course I’m positive, Matt. I’ve been doing this for three years now. I know when I guy is hitting on me and when he’s trouble.”
“Okay, I’m only checking Cameron. You don’t have to get defensive.” I glanced up, spotted Noah’s warning, telling me to watch what I said.
Matt and Noah were friends but they disagreed about many things. One was allowing women to be a part of The Organization in the first place. You see, Matt was very old fashioned. I think he
still saw a woman’s role in the Bureau as strictly administrative. Unfortunately, the most significant thing that Matt and Noah argued about was Noah’s and my relationship. Matt didn’t believe in mixing business with pleasure. He was probably right about that. I mean, look what a mess we’d made of our marriage.
“I’m sorry, Matt. It’s just that, well, this whole thing has got me spooked.”
“Yeah, I can only imagine.” With that, Matt was ready to dismiss me and my fears entirely and go directly to the boss.
“Noah, you know I’ve been talking about this for months now. Something is about to break here in D.C. I’m not sure this guy is involved in it, are you? Obviously, from Cameron’s description of the man, he isn’t part of any of the local cells, and we all know they’d never look for help from outside. Certainly not outside of the US. I think we need to keep our focus on Elijah Jacobs and what he’s doing here in D.C. Let’s just see what develops with this guy.”
“Wait--you’re kidding right?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Matt had been looking to connect Elijah to something bigger for a long time now. And now that I had practically delivered the proof right into his hands, he was backing away from it?
“I have to agree with Matt. Sure, it’s…odd that Elijah is in town at the same time this new player comes onto the scene, but it could just be a coincidence, so let’s don’t jump to any unwarranted conclusions until we have more evidence. As Matt said, we’ve been expecting something big for a long time. So far, we don’t know what. The only thing we know for certain is that they would never use an outsider to do the job. What are your snitches telling you, Matt?”
Matt refused to take Noah’s bait. “I’ve heard some...things, but I’d rather not say anything until I get confirmation. I’ll get on this right away, but I suggest that we get back together at the end of the week to discuss this further, Noah.”