by Trevor Scott
“And then?”
Jake shook his head. He hadn’t planned that far ahead. He still had his apartment in Innsbruck, Austria. But in January it was too cold there. It made his synthetic left knee ache. He wasn’t planning to return to Austria until April or May. The same was true of his ancestral home in Montana. He couldn’t go there until June. He was considering someplace warm for a few months. Perhaps the West Indies or Costa Rica.
Jake looked at the letter again. “Two days? How am I supposed to get there by Friday?”
The state department man smiled. “We have that covered, sir. It’s an hour drive to San Martin. A two-hour flight to Buenos Aires, and then a ten-hour flight to D.C.”
“I am not flying coach,” Jake said vehemently. He still had the second half of his first class ticket from Argentina to Houston, from where he could fly almost anywhere.
“In the envelope, sir,” the man said with a smile.
Jake found a second piece of paper, folded in half against the side of the envelope. It contained his flight information and a hotel in Washington. Regardless, he still wasn’t sure he wanted to comply with this order. He had followed orders all his adult life. But now he only followed his own path.
“I am to accompany you to Washington.”
“No way. I don’t need a baby sitter. And I won’t ride in that death taxi,” Jake said, pointing at the decrepit car.
“Fine. We’ll take the vehicle you rented at the San Martin airport.”
Of course they would know about that, Jake thought. He had done nothing to cover his tracks on this trip. At the time he didn’t suspect he needed to hide from his own government. But they could track any Visa he used. Well, not any Visa. Only those with his real name. Without saying another word to the state department man, Jake got into his guide’s SUV. He guessed the stag roast would be dried out by now. Damn. That would have tasted great.
2
Corvallis, Oregon
A steady rain pounded the roof of Professor James Tramil’s Toyota Camry as he drove slowly down 39th Avenue a few blocks from Oregon State University. Tramil had worked late in his lab until he had gotten a call from his colleague, Professor Stephan Zursk, asking him to stop by his home as soon as possible, which was out of the ordinary. The two of them had worked together all day in the nanotech lab, and Stephan had left at eight p.m. Now, after midnight, they would both normally be well asleep, ready to get back at their work by six a.m. But this current project was right on the cusp of a major breakthrough. They both knew it. In fact, Tramil had e-mailed his friend just a few hours ago, saying he thought he had broken their little stalemate. Maybe that’s why Stephan had called him to come to his place in the hills northwest of town.
Tramil hated this rain. The only good thing about the rain from November to March in western Oregon was it was much easier to focus in the lab, under the stark florescent lights. There was nothing distracting him outside. He didn’t ski. Hiked in the mountains only during the summer months. And only went to Portland to fly out of PDX to some conference. His only vice, if one could call it that, was his long runs every other day. He had gotten used to running in the rain, and even preferred it to bright sunny days. He also rarely got back to the home of his youth in Marquette, Michigan. He smiled thinking about checking the weather in the U.P. on his phone that evening. They had just gotten a foot of lake-effect snow off of Lake Superior and were expecting to get a new front push in from the south off of Lake Michigan—a double shot of the white stuff. Yeah, things could have been worse than this rain.
He slowed the car and turned up a lane that would bring him up into the hills, where the houses were a bit newer and larger, with half-acre lots. Stephan’s house sat on a hill with a view of the coast range mountains.
That was strange. Stephan’s house came up on the left, but there were no lights on. He pulled up on the street out front and considered what to do. Checking his phone, he saw that Stephan had called him only thirty minutes ago. Perhaps he’d gone to sleep. He had sounded somewhat distracted. Maybe even a little reticent. This was not normal for him. In his late fifties now, Stephan always said that time was running out on him. He had to make a major contribution to his field now, or he might as well retire. He was usually the most straightforward person Tramil knew. “Get to the point,” he would always say. But during this last call, he had not followed his own mantra.
Tramil considered just putting the car in drive, making a U-turn, and heading to his small house near the campus. Maybe he’d get a good microbrew before McMenamins closed.
Suddenly a light came on somewhere in the house. Okay, Stephan was awake.
He shut down the car, got out into the heavy rain, and started for the front door. Just as he passed the living room picture window, Tramil heard a scream, followed by two flashes of light. He stopped in his tracks. Was that what he thought it was?
Silence. Only his heart pounding loudly, trying to escape through his throat.
He stood at the door now unsure what to do. Just as he touched the door knob, the door swung in and Tramil saw the long pistol before looking up to a tall man dressed in dark clothing, a mask over his face.
Tramil ran, vectoring away toward the driveway. He heard a number of coughs through the rain. Then he reached the corner of the garage, heard a couple more silenced shots, and felt a pain in his posterior. He knew this area, having been to Stephan’s house many times. But what if there was another shooter around back? Instead, he turned left and ran into the woods, the wet tree limbs slapping his face and making him trip a few times.
When he got to the hill, he fell and rolled downward until he hit a small patch of sagebrush. Getting up swiftly, only looking behind him for a second and seeing nothing, he continued running.
Tramil didn’t stop running until he had gone more than a mile. His heart was racing more than on his normal runs, but then he wasn’t being shot at during those. He leaned against a tall cedar to catch his breath.
He felt a buzz in his pants, followed by U2’s In God’s Country. Grasping it quickly and seeing the number came from Stephan, he answered swiftly.
“Stephan? Are you all right?”
Nothing on the other end.
Think, Tramil.
“You are shot,” said a voice on the phone. Stephan’s phone. “You will die soon.”
He almost forgot the pain in his backside. Reaching his hand around his right side, he finally felt pain in his right buttocks cheek.
“I don’t think so,” Tramil responded, and then stopped the call. Then he quickly called 911 and said what had happened at Stephan’s house. Done with that call, he turned off his phone and removed the battery.
Slowly now, more cautiously, he moved through the woods toward the OSU campus. The pain in his buttocks now started to throb with each step he took. His judgment was clouded. His adrenalin was quickly turning to shock, as the cold dampness plastered his clothes to his skin. The scientist in him knew that shock would quickly turn to hypothermia if he didn’t get somewhere warm and out of these clothes in a hurry.
But where?
Was his colleague dead? If so, why? And why were they trying to kill him as well? All of these questions rattled through his brain as his teeth started to chatter from the cold, wet air.
3
Washington, D.C.
When Jake Adams was finally called before the House subcommittee on intelligence, he was nearly dead on his feet. Although he was used to traveling long distances on flights, trains and cars, it had gotten a lot harder as his age passed through the mid-forties. First class had helped, a new deal for Jake, and he had even gotten a decent five hours in the D.C. hotel the night before. Yet he still yawned as he took a seat in the hard oak chair in front of the microphones, multiple cameras pointing at him, and the half-moon table with members from both parties looming over him like dozens of St. Peters ready to judge him. From the cryptic letter summoning Jake to this fiasco, and from what he had heard so far from a wait
ing room before being called in, he had a small understanding of what they wanted from him.
His state department escort Devan Stormont had been a bit spastic during the long trip, had stayed in the room next to his in D.C., and even accompanied Jake to the waiting room. But that was where they had parted ways.
Jake was sworn in and the questions started. Well, he thought they were going to ask questions. But most of the members on the left simply used their time to talk to the cameras and excoriate Jake on his actions during that whole Berlin affair. Members on the right used their time to put words in his mouth and explain to anyone who cared to listen that Jake’s actions had been honorable and just.
For his part, Jake tried to keep his head from exploding, giving simple yes and no answers.
Finally, a congressman from the great state of California was up for questions and shuffled through his prepared speech asking pointed questions, one after the next, without allowing Jake a chance to respond to each. Ten in all. What the congressman didn’t know was that Jake had a near perfect memory and would have no problem answering each and every one of his attacks on Jake’s character.
“Sir, is it my turn?” Jake finally said into the microphone.
“Yes, but please call me congressman,” the rotund man said behind his high perch. “I worked hard for that title.”
“Sir,” Jake repeated with defiance, “you were a car salesman where you got your law degree online with money your father, the owner of the dealership, gave you, while you sold less cars than a dyslexic stutterer with tourettes syndrome. Then your father set you up with a law practice, where you lost every case, until he also paid to get you into your current position. So don’t talk to me about hard work. While you were building your excellent political career, I was getting my ass shot at in countries you’ve probably never heard of.” He paused for a second, took a drink of water and watched to see if the congressman’s face would turn a darker shade of red.
Then Jake went on to explain every question in detail, his attitude swiftly moving from defiantly indignant to royally pissed off.
The last person to question Jake was the junior member of the committee, a woman from his home state of Montana. He had heard of her, but she had never really represented him, since he had not actually lived in Montana for years and she had only recently been reelected into her second term. Congresswoman Lori Freeman had one other feature that had caught Jake’s eye as the members entered the room—she was not only a natural beauty with her long blonde hair pulled back into a braid, she proudly wore cowboy boots below her frilly dress.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,” Congresswoman Freeman said.
“Not that I had much choice, ma’am,” Jake said. “You don’t mind my calling you ma’am do you?”
“I would expect nothing less from a fellow Montanan, Sir.” Her eyes shifted slightly toward her colleague from California. “Now, what is your current position?”
“Upright and reasonably oriented,” Jake quipped.
She blushed.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Sometimes I can’t help myself.” He cleared his throat, smiled and continued, “I’m retired.”
“You’re very young to be retired.”
“Well, once in a while I consult on security matters.”
She lifted a piece of paper slightly and said, “In fact, you have become quite wealthy since leaving the Agency.”
Jake shook his head and smiled. “Ma’am you aren’t trying to hit me up for back taxes are you?”
Subdued laughter echoed through the chamber.
“No, Sir,” she said. “I understand that money was made while you worked overseas, and, although I don’t understand the entire seventy-two thousand pages of our tax code, I know that you paid taxes in the country in which you were currently living. I was simply setting the stage for my next question.”
He was starting to like this junior congresswoman from his home state. “Well then,” Jake said, nodding his head to her. “Please ask away.”
“How many people did you kill during that whole Berlin affair?”
Wow. She had cut through all the crap and asked what all the others really wanted to know.
“Ma’am, I only killed those who tried to kill me. I didn’t take a head count.” But he did have the faces of each etched in his brain. And not only from the Berlin affair. He was haunted specifically by some more than others.
“Understand,” she said and paused to consider her words. “Do you consider your actions successful?”
“Yes, ma’am. I had a one million Euro bounty on my head, as did many other former intelligence officers. I was lucky enough to not get killed. So, at least for me, I consider that a success.” He smiled broadly at her.
She returned his smile and said, “That’s all I have for this witness.”
And that was the end of the inquiry. It was political theater at its worst. Congressmen and congresswomen from both sides of the aisle had asked the same questions over and over in obvious partisan fashion and slightly different tone, playing it up for the cameras, to get their point of view into the congressional record.
Jake walked back to his hotel room along the snowy roads of the capitol. He had considered taking a cab, but he needed to clear his mind after that attempted grilling. Hell, he needed a shower.
When he sensed the presence of a car behind him, moving far too slow, even for the snowy conditions, he thought about the gun that was not comfortably under his left arm. Then he simply stopped suddenly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket, and stared at the car, which stopped alongside him, the window in the back lowering.
Jake almost didn’t recognize the woman in the leather seats of the Lincoln Town Car. She had pulled her hair out of the braids and it now flowed down over her shoulders.
“Mister Jake Adams,” said Congresswoman Lori Freeman. “You look like you could use a ride on this cold January day.” She gave him a bright smile.
Returning her smile, Jake said, “Is that an order?”
“No, Sir. I just thought you could use a friend after that entire affair.”
A friend? Although they had been cordial in the chambers, she had still asked him some of the most direct questions during the session. Somewhat reluctantly, he got in as she slid to the other side of the car and nodded her head to the driver to continue driving.
“What can I do for you?” Jake asked her.
“That’s what I like about your family,” she said. “You shoot from the hip and tell it like it is.”
He was confused. “What do you know about my family?”
“You don’t know?” She smiled. “I guess I just assumed you were playing with me at the hearing because of my relationship with your family. They wanted me to recuse myself, but I thought you might need a friend.”
Jake simply hunched his shoulders.
“I worked at the same law firm as your brother Victor in Missoula.”
That made sense. He knew that the congresswoman had gone to the University of Montana and was a local girl. But he was so far from that past he had pushed that life to the far reaches of his mind. When he entered the Agency, he was encouraged to forget about his family—pretend as if they didn’t exist, or had never existed. Open knowledge could get family members killed or used as leverage.
“How is my brother?”
“He probably wishes his older brother would stop by the homestead once in a while,” she said.
“Listen Congresswoman Freeman, we are away from the hearing, and I don’t think I need any more lectures today.”
“Please, call me Lori.”
“Did you work hard for that name?”
She put her hand to her mouth and smiled. “I thought I was going to break out into a complete little girl laugh when you chewed out that blow-hard from California.”
“It wasn’t planned.”
“No, but it’s already a huge hit on the internet,” she said. “On its way to a m
illion hits. Wait for Fox News to play it up, along with talk radio, over the next few days. They’ll all be calling you for interviews.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a book to sell.”
“You should write one in a hurry.” She laughed with a cute, endearing chortle.
They sat for a moment in silence as the car cruised along the Potomac River near the National Mall.
“Lori?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you need from me?”
She looked out her window at the swirling snow coming down and said, “Our committee was briefed on something last week that was very disturbing. I can’t tell you the details. You understand.”
Yeah, he understood ‘need to know’ better than most, and usually the members of congress only needed to know the bare minimum. Only enough to pay for the intelligence community’s activities. They had a tendency of leaking more than a toddler’s diaper after drinking a Big Gulp.
“And what can I do for you?” Jake reiterated.
“The Agency isn’t telling us everything,” she said.
He laughed. “For good reason.”
“Hey, I spent four years in the Air Force as a cryptographer,” she said. “I understand classified secrets.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I didn’t mean you.”
She let out a breath of air. “You don’t remember me, do you?” Her expression was one of incredulity. “Hellgate High? Go Knights.”
“You went to Hell Hole?”
Smiling, she said, “I forgot we used to call it that. Yes, but you were a senior when I was a freshman. And my last name wasn’t Freeman. It was Franks.”
“Any relation to Bob Franks. I played football with Bob.”
“My older brother. He died a few years back from cancer.”
“I’m sorry. He was a good friend. Wait, you were that skinny kid cheerleading during our games.”
“I was junior varsity at the time, but they had us help out during the big games. You were good.”
He hunched his shoulders. “That was a lifetime ago. I’m sorry I didn’t remember you. I normally have great recollection.”