“And no lies?” Stone sober now.
“No lies,” Clark said. “We’re in this together.”
She sighed and lay back down. “The Bingtuan have eyes everywhere. How will we get away?”
“Truthfully,” Clark said, “I’m not sure. But we’ll meet my friend tomorrow. We can decide what to do then. You should get some rest if you can.”
“Okay,” she said in the darkness. He could tell she was sucking on her shirt collar again. Poor kid.
Clark pulled the blanket up over his shoulder. He was so exhausted he figured he might even get two or three hours’ sleep on the uneven dirt floor before he woke up with his old bones half crippled.
Somewhere in the darkness, the tiny claws of a rat clicked across the dusty floor. The room smelled of a thousand years of camel dung and far more recent rodent urine, leaving Clark to wonder what kind of biblical plagues he might breathe in while he slept. He shrugged away the thought and rested his head on his outstretched arm. It didn’t matter. Considering the present situation, a plague wasn’t what would kill him.
25
CIA case officer Leigh Murphy ended the call from Adam Yao and leaned back in her chair to work out a plan for her getaway. Dunny blond hair hung just above smallish shoulders. There was some curl to it, but not enough to get her noticed. Now, throw on an LBD—little black dress—instead of her usual faded jeans and loose hooded sweatshirt, dab a little makeup around her green eyes, and she could get herself noticed, all right. She’d learned early in life how to, as her mother put it, “turn her wiggle off and on.” A good skill to have as an intelligence officer.
Fredrick Rask, the station chief, slouched in his office. The mini-blinds were up on his window, and he watched the bullpen intently, homing in on her. Rask must have sensed she was up to something. He licked his chops like a male lion waiting for the lioness to go out and hunt because he was too lazy to get off his own fat ass and kill something. That was Fredrick Rask’s specialty—benefitting through the efforts of others.
Murphy scribbled the address Adam Yao had given her on a piece of scratch paper and stuffed it into her pocket while she thought through a couple of possible approaches. It was going to be touchy, talking to this particular guy—but that was her strength. Besides, Albania had been on her dream sheet of posts from the beginning, and Adam Yao had helped her get here. She owed him. A lot.
She’d known Adam since Kenya, her first foreign posting after graduating from CIA’s Career Training Program and Camp Peary, or The Farm—the facility officially referred to as an Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity. Yao had come up with a lead on a Chinese businessman smuggling a shipment of tramadol from Guangzhou to Mombasa via private charter. Dope smugglers, as deplorable as they were, didn’t exactly fall into a CIA case officer’s wheelhouse—except this particular load of dope was being smuggled by the son of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army general in Guangzhou. The PLA, or at least high-ranking members of it, appeared to be behind the operation—and that information could fill in some big puzzle pieces for the analysts at Langley and Liberty Crossing.
Murphy was fresh to the field then, but she’d been identified by her station chief as a rising star—able to read and recruit assets, from the Chinese ambassador’s Kenyan housekeeper to a major in the National Police Service. With the help of Murphy’s contacts, Yao tipped the correct dominos to get them all falling in just the right order. In the end, they seized over a hundred pounds of a fentanyl analogue known as China White—worth almost two million dollars—and five peach crates containing seven hundred and fifty thousand tablets of the synthetic opiate tramadol. The fentanyl would have ended up in relatively affluent cities like Nairobi or Johannesburg, where at least some of the population could afford heroin. Slums along the East Africa coast provided outlets for the tramadol. No one involved was under the mistaken impression that they’d suddenly won a drug war—but they’d won this battle, and maybe, just maybe, the tide was held back for a week or two before some other group filled the void in the marketplace. At the very least, they took several million dollars out of the pockets of evil men—while gaining useful intelligence about the PLA’s activities in East Africa.
The Guangzhou general’s son went to prison, and, thanks to Leigh Murphy’s stable of assets in-country, so did a sizable criminal outfit whose operation spanned from Nairobi to Mauritius to Cape Town. Yao added the information he gleaned from the general’s son to his intelligence file, but the CIA didn’t take credit for busting a narcotics ring, even one that large. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had a robust presence during the operation from the beginning, and they, along with the National Police Service, got the headlines.
Leigh Murphy and Yao had slipped away from the limelight—like good intelligence officers do—and celebrated over a plate of nyama choma—in this case, traditional grilled goat—at a quiet bar in the upscale Nairobi neighborhood of Kilimani. The light was low, the afterglow mixed with the slight buzz from her third Tusker lager. Stupidly, like some giddy schoolgirl with a crush, she’d looked into his eyes across the table and tapped the neck of her beer to his.
“Bia yangu, nchi yangu.”
He was impressed that she spoke Kiswahili, but she admitted that it was written on the Tusker bottle—My beer, my country.
It just sounded cool.
They spent two days together, debriefing … and whatnot. The romantic part of the equation never seemed to work out. Both were still working on their careers. Prohibitions against dipping your pen in company ink weren’t the problem. Agency relationships made for a tighter circle of trust. Long-distance relationships sucked, though, and could take an operative’s mind off the game. Neither of them wanted that. So Adam Yao had slipped back into his secret life of a NOC—no official cover—operative somewhere in Asia—he’d never even told her exactly what his cover was. It was safer that way for both of them. They kept in touch, and Yao had become her behind-the-scenes unofficial mentor and confidant. When it was time for Murphy to have a new posting, he put in a good word with his boss, who talked to her boss, who got her posted to Tirana.
She’d do anything for him, even this. She just needed to figure out how to do it without pissing off her chief—or, worse, doing something to cause an incident and making the papers by pulling back the sugar coating of the Albania she loved.
On the outside, the country was a wonderland, gorgeous mountains, delicious food, friendly people, not to mention the Adriatic, but there was a hidden underbelly—a bad spot on the melon—that required a delicate touch.
Albania—Shqiperia, to the locals—was an incredible place to be a young intelligence officer. Korrieri, one of the country’s now defunct newspapers, had once run the headline during an American state visit—PLEASE OCCUPY US! Americans might have a difficult time finding Albania on a map, but people from the Land of the Eagles loved all things red, white, and blue—and made no bones about telling the world how they felt. The Albanian ambassador to the United States had once written an opinion piece in The Washington Times that said, among other things, “If you believe in freedom, you believe in fighting for it, and if you believe in fighting for freedom, you believe in the United States.”
But Langley didn’t send her here for the love and good feeling. She was interested in seedier stuff. If she was going to play patty-cake with America-lovers, they had to know something important about people who didn’t feel the same way.
Some experts denied the existence of a true Albanian Mafia, but those paying for protection, or being trafficked by one of the Fifteen Families, likely thought otherwise. These families controlled organized and unorganized crime all over the country. Drugs, human trafficking, and, of particular interest to Leigh Murphy, military arms sales simply did not happen in Albania without at least one of the Fifteen having a hand in the pot.
And then there was gjakmarrja. Albanians had made the blood feud an art form. The philosophy of a head for a head was part of the
social code or canon of twelve books known as the Kanun. Revenge was deeply ingrained in Albanian society, with gjakmarrja vendettas passing from generation to generation.
Still, even an asshole station chief, blood feuds, and Fifteen Family hit men who were often more disciplined and brutal than the Russian Mob—the good outweighed the bad. For Leigh Murphy, it was more of a calling than a job post.
Chief Rask made it out of his office on his gouty legs about the time she stood up.
“You know how I feel about lone meetings,” he said. “Grab Joey or Vlora to go with you.”
Two other case officers looked up from their respective desks in the bullpen, deadpan, clearly not wanting to get involved with more of Rask’s BS. Joey was a kiss-ass, but he was almost as lazy as Rask and didn’t feel the need to overwork himself tagging along on some meeting that was probably bullshit—like ninety percent of them were.
Murphy remained stone-faced. “Who said I was going on a meeting?”
“We read people,” Rask said. “It’s literally part of the job description.”
“Well, Chief, you misread. Just going to get a haircut.”
There was no set of circumstances where she wanted the station chief sticking his nose in this interview before she was done. She told Adam as much and he’d agreed. Besides, Rask would break into a wicked-gross mental fit if he got wind that she’d just been on the phone with a well-respected senior intelligence officer in the Agency—one who cared about the people he worked with and didn’t use their backs as rungs on his career ladder. Rask didn’t like other lions sniffing around his pride.
He sneered, licking his lips. Maybe he didn’t believe her, or maybe he felt deprived of the meat he’d expected when he saw her on the phone. Langley wanted frequent results. How was he supposed to kick intel up the line to make himself look good if his chief hunting lioness worried more about her personal grooming than making a kill?
He screwed up his face like he was about to sneeze. Murphy wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it. The man wore his emotions like a neon sign. The polygraphers surely had a good old time with him.
“You sure you’re just getting a haircut?”
The rusty adage of not being able to kid a kidder applied doubly to a liar. But then, lying to a liar was CIA tradecraft 101.
She thought of popping off to him, something like “You can try and follow me if you want … oh, I forgot, you haven’t run a surveillance op in ten years …” but a smartass attitude would only give him some juice to write her up on come performance evaluation time. It was her job to work people. Might as well start with her boss.
She gave him her most benign smile. “Yep, just a haircut, Chief.” He relished it when subordinates called him that. She looked at her watch, then grabbed a tweed sport jacket from the back of her chair and put it on over the sweatshirt, adjusting the hood so it draped over her collar in back. Her mom back in Boston would have called the outfit a Fall River Tuxedo. “I came in early, and I’ve got scads of comp time.”
Rask waved a hand in the air over his shoulder, already shuffling back to his office. “Better be logged.”
Murphy took the Glock 43 and inside-the-pants holster from her lap drawer and shoved it down the waistband of her jeans, over the small of her back. Her dad, a Boston PD detective, had always said that God made that little hollow in a person’s back just the right size to carry a .45. He was a big guy, and could get away with carrying a big gun. Just under five-five, she stuck with the baby Glock nine-millimeter. Single-stack, the pistol carried only six in the mag and one in the pipe, but she was a case officer, not some ground branch operator. If she had to resort to her sidearm, things had gone terribly wrong.
She paused, turning to grab a spare magazine from her desk before Rask made it to his desk and turned around again. Wouldn’t hurt to go in prepared.
Adam Yao had asked her to interview Urkesh Beg, a Uyghur man who until recently had been held as an enemy combatant at a CIA black site—off the grid and away from the rules of the U.S. justice system. He was released when a military tribunal determined that although he was likely in Afghanistan, training with known terrorists, he was no longer an enemy combatant against the United States. Due to the rules of engagement, Beg’s association, and proximity to, known terrorists meant that U.S. forces could have put a warhead on his forehead if they’d hit the terrorist training camp with a couple of Hellfire missiles, but after holding him for four and a half years, decided they were not inclined to keep him in custody indefinitely.
Albania had offered Beg refugee status as a favor to the United States. As far as Yao knew, he’d kept his affiliation with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, technically still on the terrorism watch list. There was a good chance that if he smelled anything remotely CIA or U.S. government about Murphy, he might not be all that pleased to see her.
Joey Shoop got the summoning whistle from Rask the moment the door swung shut behind Murphy. Shoop stood quickly—that’s what you did when the boss called—and tucked the errant tail of his peach oxford button-down into his pants. As much of a slob as the chief was, he liked his troops to look tidy. Vlora cocked her head to one side and looked down her nose at him. She spoke fluent Albanian and lorded it over everyone in the office. She touched her finger to her nose.
“Got a little hanger-on there, Joey.”
Shoop knew she was just messing with him, but he wiped his nose just in case on the way to Rask’s office.
The chief was staring at his computer screen, working on some memo. “Go after her,” he said.
“To her haircut?”
“She’s not getting a haircut,” Rask said. “Go.”
“Right,” Shoop said. “I’ll have her back.”
Now Rask looked up. “I want you to follow her. In your car. Let me know where she goes.”
“You got it,” Shoop said.
Rask raised both hands, palms up. “Unless you got a tracker on her car, you’d better get on after it.”
Shoop grabbed his jacket and left at a trot, hitting the door at the same time Rask called Vlora into his office—probably to keep her from ratting them out.
Murphy turned north out of embassy parking, heading for downtown. It seemed like every other car on the road in Tirana was gray or white, and many of those were Mercedes sedans. Murphy’s little Ford Fiesta melted into the background.
She crossed the Lana like she might be going to the city center, but then turned left, paralleling the river. Maybe she was just running a surveillance-detection route, crossing the river before she worked her way back to Blloku, just ahead on her right. It made sense. There were lots of high-end boutiques and shops there. Under Soviet rule, only Party elite were even allowed in “the Block.” Now it was the place to go to watch the upper crust of Tirana do their thing. The grim influence of the less-than-halcyon days of Soviet rule had long since been painted over with a riot of reds and yellows and blues. The architecture still resembled large boxes that more attractive buildings must have come in, but now, instead of dull gray cubes, multicolored blocks in the shadow of Mount Dajti lined streets named after U.S. presidents and packed with Mercedes-Benz sedans.
But Murphy didn’t turn until she reached the middle ring road, cutting north now, passing the embassies of Greece and Great Britain as she skirted downtown. She arced to her right, continuing east until she reached the Mother Teresa, at which point she turned right again on Rruga Bardhyl, generally going back toward the office.
Shoop pounded the steering wheel of his Taurus. Did she know he was following her? She was stopping at all the lights, wasn’t doubling back on herself, getting on and off a highway, or any of the usual countersurveillance-run maneuvers. She was barely even maintaining the speed limit. Shoop had to ride the brakes to keep from overtaking her. They were doing the same damn route again. When was she going to turn?
He stayed in the shadow of three other cars and a large delivery van with a picture on the side of what looked l
ike the Albanian version of the Three Stooges.
They’d just taken the roundabout past the British consulate, heading east—again—when a silver Mercedes S 500 pulled alongside the Taurus at the same time the delivery van slowed. Boxed in, Shoop tapped his brake. He lost sight of Leigh Murphy for a grand total of six seconds—but when the van pulled forward and gave him enough room to squirt around in front of the Mercedes, the little gray Ford was nowhere to be seen.
Shoop’s stomach fell. He smacked the steering wheel again, cursing, craning his head back and forth, searching a sea of gray sedans for the gray sedan he was after. He thought he saw it, a gray Ford beneath a scraggly elm tree, pocked with early spring buds—but a fat man got out.
“Think!” Shoop chided himself.
A concrete median divided the boulevard, so she must have taken one of the two streets to the right. No way she had enough time to make it to the next cross street. Had she?
Shoop would have seen her if she’d taken the first right, so he turned down the second right, trying to put himself in Murphy’s shoes.
He didn’t know where she was going, but it sure as hell wasn’t to get a haircut.
26
Leigh Murphy took the first left after the roundabout, working her way through the narrow streets and double-parked cars in front of a mix of boxy apartment buildings and back-street shops that sold everything from pastries to truck tires. Zoning appeared to be an afterthought here. Sides of beef or mutton might hang in a butcher’s window next to an engine repair shop. Mehmet Akif High School for Boys was just over a block from Prison 313, a windowless fortress of brick, chipped concrete, and concertina wire.
Urkesh Beg lived between the school and the prison, in a tired-looking concrete six-story apartment building surrounded by a mote of gravelly alleys and a spooky overgrown lot that had once been paved but was probably rubble when the Russkies ruled Albania. An overpowering smell of garbage hung in the chilly air. The little ditch next to where Murphy parked gurgled merrily along with what she felt reasonably sure was sewage. A tumbledown brick wall—the kind where gobs of mortar look mashed from between each brick like the layer cake of an overzealous baker—ran along the street. In the shadow of the wall, an eight-by-eight block shed with a rusted tin roof sat tucked into the scrub brush. Murphy found herself wishing she’d parked farther away—or even on the other side of the apartment building. This place looked like a private stockade, or the cottage belonging to a resident witch. Either way, it creeped her out and she sped up, ready to deal with a disgruntled Uyghur.
Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon Page 19