The Watchman of Ephraim (Book Club Edition)

by Gerard de Marigny

  Chapter 18

  The Watchman Agency

  Office of the President

  Arlington, Virginia

  3:00p.m., Thursday, July 14, 2011

  Michelle Wang was getting nervous and that wasn’t something she was accustomed to feeling. Throughout her years in the CIA, she was known for her coolness in tense situations. She always attributed that to a manic work ethic and attention to detail, so when she moved forward, she did so with total confidence.

  She also always felt she erred to the side of caution when it came to sending people into the field. She used a very simple rule, one she knew she had in common with Christians … she did unto others as she would have them do unto her – in other words, she never sent an agent into a situation that she wouldn’t enter into herself. That included the intelligence-gathering missions on which she just sent Agents Majed Ahmed Aziz al Saud and Jesus Garcia. She did the diligence, chose the right individuals for the job and weighed the risks. In the end though, she knew there was always an element of time and chance. In all her years of sending agents into the field, she had never lost one. She was wondering now, sitting in Captain Ricci’s office, if that perfect record made her careless. Ricci watched her for a few moments, staring at her laptop screen with blood-shot eyes.

  “Garcia’s last communication was a log entry Tuesday night. He reported that he was following up on a lead he received, from a driver who delivered to the warehouse in Monterrey. He thought he might get a chance to peek at the driver’s freight. His last log entry was time-stamped just before midnight on Tuesday. He should have followed up yesterday! Captain, I’m sorry, I should have brought this to your attention sooner … I just don’t know what could have happened. I mean, I’ve worked with Jesus many times in the past. He was always so careful and he always let me know when he thought the situation was risky. In this case, he just didn’t give me any indication—“

  “Michelle, you’re not to blame. When did you sleep last?” Ricci interrupted her as he hit the intercom button on his phone.

  “Debbie, I want to see all executive staff in conference room alpha in five.”

  Ricci got up from his desk, but Wang remained seated, deep in thought. Ricci put his hand to her shoulder.

  “Listen to me. We both know stuff happens out there. Our job now is to find out what happened. This isn’t about blame. There is no blame. To me there is only success or failure and reasons for both. Now we have an agent out there that hasn’t reported in … we need to find him and that’s all there is to it! And Michelle, you have to get some sleep. I know how it is. You want to sit by your phone and laptop all night, but that doesn’t help Garcia or anyone else. Find a way to sleep and that’s an order!”

  Wang nodded then followed her boss out the door.

  By the time Ricci and Wang walked into the Executive Conference Room – Alpha, most of The Watchman staff were already seated. Ricci took his seat at the head of the table and jumped right into it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a situation. One of our agents, Agent Jesus Garcia has not reported in, since late Tuesday night. If you haven’t already done so, please sign in to Big Brother and access Operation India-Golf 070510. It’s been declassified for everyone in this room.”

  Ricci paused to allow everyone time to access the operation files while Debbie Lynch was already projecting images of Agent Garcia and overhead photos of the warehouse in Monterrey, onto a large screen.

  “As you can see, a week ago, two agents were dispatched on intel-gathering missions in connection with a lead generated by Big Brother. Double-B alerted us to a $25 million payment from a middle-eastern investment firm into a logistics warehouse operation purported to be owned and controlled by the Pacifico drug cartel. The missions were deemed low to moderate risk fact-finding and up until Tuesday evening, there was nothing to indicate otherwise.”

  Charley Santappia was first to ask a question.

  “Missions in Qatar and Mexico and they were deemed low to moderate risk?”

  Wang answered with an air of defensiveness in her tone.

  “I deemed them low risk, Charley. The agents I sent in were highly experienced, spoke the language and in the case of Agent Garcia, he was native to Mexico. He reported no problems with his cover or blending in. He wasn’t even poking around as much as he was listening … that’s how all of my people are trained, so there shouldn’t have been a problem with his cover.”

  “I still think we could have sent each of them in with a couple of my men, for security.”

  “This isn’t one of your sniper operations, Charley! My people know how to hide in plain sight. There’s no need for them to have anyone babysitting them. In fact, my agents would cry bloody murder if we tried to send them in with bodyguards!”

  Santappia didn’t reply, realizing that Wang’s nerves were getting the best of her. He could sympathize. He knew how it was to feel responsible for sending people into harm’s way.

  Ricci also gave Wang slack, he’d been there too. There was another reason. To put it in old nautical terms, he liked the cut of her jib, not to mention she was a beautiful woman to boot. Instead he started addressing the others.

  “Okay, first, let’s see where we’re at. Michelle, what were the results of trying to contact Agent Garcia?”

  Wang took a deep breath and composed herself.

  “Beginning at 08:00 hours yesterday and repeated every hour since then, I’ve attempted to contact Jesus by email, and text message, via double-B. I’ve also attempted to call his cell every hour on the hour with no results.”

  “What about his location via GPS?”

  “He squawked his location at the warehouse in Monterrey when he last logged in. That was the last time he reported his location.”

  “John, can you locate him via Big Brother.”

  ”I’ve been attempting to, since I sat down,” Johnny-F replied as he typed furiously into his laptop. “We’re not receiving a return signal.”

  “What could be causing that?”

  Francis stopped typing and sat back in his chair. “If his phone was damaged, if the signal was being jammed or if his phone were somehow shielded, all could prevent our tracking him.”

  “Shielded in what way?”

  “Wrapping the phone in a metal sleeve like brass mesh or a lead camera film protector is one way.”

  Ricci thought out loud, “There’s no way to know if he broke his phone or not—“

  Wang jumped in, “Captain, Jesus would have found another way to contact me if he broke his phone.”

  Ricci nodded, “That may be true, but John, I want your people to keep trying. At least, keep someone on duty around the clock until further notice, monitoring for his signal.”

  “Understood,” Francis replied as he sent a message to his team from his laptop.

  Ricci turned to his VP of Government Relations next, “Karla, see if you can dig up some more information on the Pacifico cartel from your government sources.”

  “Our government or theirs?” asked Matthews.

  “For now, only contact the people you know over at Homeland Security and Karla don’t let them know about our missing agent. Just see if you can find out about any other holdings or locations that the cartel has in Mexico. There’s a chance something went wrong and he was discovered. In that case they might be holding Garcia hostage at another location. I want to be prepared if they are. If you do dig up any other locations, coordinate with Charley so he can work on possible rescue scenarios.”

  Matthews nodded, writing something onto a pad, while Santappia replied out of habit, “Aye sir.”

  Santappia spoke up again, “Have we heard from the other agent in Qatar … al Saud?”

  “Majed has reported in at regular intervals,” Wang replied. “As you can see from the ops file, he hasn’t turned up anything of significance yet.”

  “Well, at least that may indicate that this is more of an isolated incident, as opposed to a blown operation,
” Santappia postulated.

  “I never thought of that. I never looked at the two operations as one, really. Both agents could be working two sides of the same snake,” Wang replied.

  “Yeah and Garcia might have drawn the side with the fangs,” Santappia added.

  “Still, there’s no indication that Garcia’s disappearance has anything to do with what he was sent to investigate,” replied Ricci. “Just like every city in Mexico, Monterrey is experiencing unparalleled volumes of drug-cartel related violence, not to mention the usual violent criminals in any big city. He could just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Ricci let that sink in a moment then continued.

  “In any case, notify me immediately the next time Majed reports in.”

  “Will do,” replied Wang.

  “Debbie, contact Cris and tell him I need to speak with him within the hour.”

  Ricci stood up.

  “Is there anything else? Does anyone have any other questions?”

  No one replied. Everyone filed out of the room, except for one person who remained seated. Les Pastak sat staring at his laptop screen, acting like he was working on something until everyone left the conference room. When he was alone, he closed his laptop, with a knot in his stomach. What the hell happened to Garcia? Fard and his people better not have had anything to do with it! Should I call Fard? Pastak closed his eyes and massaged his temples. I better just sit tight for now, maybe this’ll pass. Maybe Garcia will just turn up… I hope!

  Chapter 19

  The Watchman Agency

  Executive Conference Room – Alpha

  Arlington, Virginia

  2:05p.m., Friday, July 15, 2011

  Mugsy Ricci walked into the conference room with his cell phone to his ear. He disconnected the call then whispered something to Debbie Lynch. A few moments later, Lynch had Cris De Niro’s image on the large conference screen. Ricci addressed the assembled staff as soon as he saw De Niro on the screen.

  “Okay people, as you see, Cris will be joining us, for this status meeting. Let’s get to it, John, no ping from Garcia via GPS yet?”

  Francis looked over at the big screen first.

  “What’s up Cris, good to see you buddy!”

  De Niro smiled warmly at his old friend.

  “Good to see you too, John.”

  “We haven’t received a return signal from Agent Garcia’s transponder yet, but I’ve been working another angle. My guys were able to hack into the warehouse’s security system—“

  Ricci interrupted him, “John, you didn’t tell me you were doing that! That is definitely something you should have run by me!”

  “I’m sorry Mugs but I was always taught that it was better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. I was only acting on a hunch and I wasn’t too sure about how you’d react.”

  Ricci knew going in that Johnny-F went way back with his brother-in-law, was a multi-millionaire and considered an eccentric über-geek, so he’d have to cut him slack, but this crossed the line. He knew better than to reprimand him though, in front of the rest of the staff, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  “Continue what you were saying but let’s talk after this meeting.”

  Francis smiled but was contrite, “Not a problem Mugs. Anyway, like I said, we hacked into their system. It was a cinch, no risk—“

  Ricci couldn’t help himself, “How do you know that?! Did you ever consider the ramifications if you were caught hacking into a computer system of a company suspected of being owned by one of the most violent drug cartels in the world?! Not to mention the international ramifications of an American private intelligence agency hacking into the system of a company located IN ANOTHER COUNTRY!!”

  The room went dead silent. Mugsy and Johnny-F’s eyes were locked. Ricci used more self-control as he continued.

  “John, if Garcia is alive, you could have possibly put him in even more danger!”

  Francis raised his brow. It reminded Ricci of Spock in Star Trek.

  “Mugs, I thought you wanted to discuss this with me after this meeting. If you want to get into it now, fine. First, those things did cross my mind and at 3a.m. when I gathered my guys, that was the first thing we discussed. I’m talking about not wanting to put Garcia in more danger, but we were also concerned with how much time we might or might not have. Some security systems are only set to record and maintain 48 hours of camera feeds. By that time of night, I thought we might only have minutes to go or that we might have been too late. We quickly considered the other risks and after taking a look at their system with some soft probing, we were confident that we could get past their firewalls and security measures. As it turned out their system was set to record and maintain a full week’s worth of feeds.”

  Ricci shot a quick look at De Niro, on the screen then replied.

  “We’ll discuss the proper procedure that you WILL follow, when it comes to that type of situation later. For the record though, John, if you would have filled me in on those circumstances, I would have agreed with you. I’m available to you 24/7/365. Next time contact me. Now, tell us what you turned up.”

  Francis typed something into his laptop and a moment later, the conference room’s monitor turned split screen, with De Niro on the left and what looked like grainy photos of a truck on the right.

  “This is what we turned up …”

  “Cris can you see the photos?” asked Ricci.

  “Yes, John, what are we looking at?”

  “Well, when I walked out of here last night, I was thinking about Agent Garcia’s last log entry. He spoke about making contact with some truck driver and about how he might have gotten the opportunity to take a peek at the driver’s load that night. Well it got me to thinking, what if he did take a look at the load and something went wrong? I started to think, what if instead of looking for Garcia, we should be looking for the truck? All this came to me as I was walking to my car outside in the parking lot. It was well after midnight and there wasn’t a soul around. That made me think about how it might have been Tuesday night in Monterrey.”

  No one spoke up so it was obvious to Francis that he needed to explain further.

  “Don’t you see where I’m going with this? There wouldn’t have been much traffic down there, just like it was here! That made me think that, maybe, just maybe, if we could hack into the security system of the warehouse facility, we might be blessed with a look at the truck! As you can see, we were so blessed!”

  Ricci stepped up close to the monitor, “So, you think that’s the truck Garcia checked out?”

  “Mugs, look at the date and time stamp on the bottom of the first four photos. Those photos were taken from the digital backup of the security cameras located at the entrance and parking lot of the warehouse.”

  Ricci read it out loud, “Tuesday night 11:50 hours …”

  Francis jumped in, “That’s when the truck arrived at the guard shack, at the entrance. That would have been just minutes after Garcia entered his last log entry. The second photo, time stamped just a minute later, we’ve identified from the rental records as Garcia’s rental car.”

  Ricci read from the bottom of the third photo, “Wednesday morning 0:25 hours …”

  Francis got up and walked over to the screen, “That’s the same truck leaving.”

  “How can you tell it’s the same truck,” asked Santappia. “These photos are so grainy.”

  Francis traced a square around a portion of the conference room’s big screen with his index finger and instantly the area inside the square was magnified and smoothed.

  “We analyzed this area of both photos of the truck. It’s an area in front of the trailer. Can everyone see the unit I’m pointing to? It’s a refrigeration unit. This truck is what is known as a “reefer,” a refrigerated trailer used to haul freight needing temperature control, like perishable goods.”

  Francis returned to his seat. No one spoke, he had everyone’s attention.

  �
�That unit combined with the lack of traffic, at that time of night gave us the ability to track the truck …at least until it got onto the Nacional, the National Highway.”

  Francis saw the curious looks on everyone’s face and decided to answer their question before they asked it.

  “Let’s just say that if someone like me, who does so much covert, highly-technical work for the U.S. government asked for a favor from an old friend of mine, who I did MANY FAVORS FOR, over at Langley—“

  Ricci held up his hand, “John, don’t say another thing about it … please … before men in black burst through the conference door and haul us all away!”

  Everyone laughed which lightened the mood a little and eased some of the tension between Ricci and Francis.

  “Okay, so anyway, using satellite stills, my people were able to verify with above 90% accuracy that this truck did, in fact get on the Federal Highway 52 heading south out of Monterrey. We lost coverage on it then.”

  “What about Garcia’s car,” De Niro asked. “Did it leave when the truck left?”

  “The car left right after the truck did, but I’m not convinced Garcia was driving it.”

  Everyone focused on the overhead photo of the car passing the guard shack leaving the warehouse facility. Ricci asked the question for everyone, “What makes you think he wasn’t driving it? We can’t see the driver from this photo.”

  Francis smiled a bit smugly.

  “Not from the photo, but I have a hunch and it makes sense. Remember I told you that one way to block GPS transmission is by shielding the transponder? Well, I was hired awhile back by a local law enforcement agency to help them figure out how a number of Cadillac Escalades were being stolen. The SUV’s all had GPS transponders in them, yet all of the transponders appeared to stop working just after they were stolen. Well, I was stumped too, so I called a friend of mine from the old neighborhood, Cris, you remember Fat Freddy?”