Time To Hunt

by David Archer

  “There are a few people I trust completely, Camelot,” Monique said. “None of them, however, have any idea who I can get to. I’d prefer you not speculate about it, just in case you were to accidentally let something slip that would complicate things for me.”

  The display lit up. “Deception probable.”

  She’s trying to make me think I hit it on the head, he thought, but I haven’t. It’s not the secretary, so it has to be one of the top staff. Of course, most of them would have been able to tell her that the bomb was removed, but she doesn’t seem to know that.

  “Okay, I’ll let it go. Any idea when I’ll hear from you again?”

  “Oh, it probably won’t be long. I’ve already got things started on your extraction, but that will take some time. I’m guessing a couple of weeks, at least, but probably more like a couple of months. How’s your mission going?”

  Noah shrugged. “I’m just about ready to execute it,” he said. “Unless there’s a reason you’d like me to delay?”

  Monique laughed again. “No, no need for that,” she said. “I’ve actually been quietly doing you favors behind the scenes, hoping you could get this one wrapped up quickly. How do you think you happened to be at just the right place at just the right time to save Morgan’s kid?”

  The dots indicated no deception, but Noah looked at her as if he was confused. “Are you trying to tell me you had something to do with that?”

  “James Cabot has been useful to me in the past,” she said, “but he had outlived that usefulness. I told him to arrange for something to happen to the Morgan kid, but not to allow it until I gave him the word. Once I knew you had arrived on the scene, I had him keep tabs on you. As soon as his people saw you enter the bar where he knew both the Morgans were waiting, he called that boy and gave him his orders.”

  “Wait a minute,” Noah said. “Are you saying that you knew I would stop Benny from killing Ralph Morgan?”

  “Well, I didn’t know if you’d manage to save him or not,” Monique replied, “but I knew you’d be looking for an opening. Considering everything I know about you, I was quite certain you wouldn’t just sit by and let it happen without taking some kind of action. I actually just expected you to take the shooter down after the fact, but you made it work out even better than that.”

  “Why? What got you so interested in this particular mission?”

  Her eyebrows rose once more. “Didn’t you understand what I was telling you earlier? Morgan and his cronies are completely undermining what our society is supposed to be. He rules that whole region like some little tin god, like some sort of self-proclaimed king. Granted, it may be on a much smaller scale than the people I normally deal with, but his activities were brought to my attention several months ago. The reason E & E got this mission is because I pressed my contacts at DOJ to request it.”

  Noah shrugged. “Killing Morgan and his top people might eliminate his criminal organization, but it won’t stop crime in the area.”

  “Noah, Noah,” Monique said. “Crime is nothing. Crime is something that will always be a part of society. Letting Morgan continue to act like he owns that entire region, however, would be far worse than any crimes he might commit. The people in that whole area are scared, and they have every reason to be. The government, whether you’re referring to the federal, the state, or the local, has no power against a man like Morgan. Once you’ve done what you were sent to do, then the parasites that were feeding off him can be rounded up. There won’t be anyone to kill off witnesses or intimidate them into not speaking. The people can start to breathe again, and that’s what counts.”

  “But why do you care? There has to be something in it for you.”

  “Oh, there is,” she said. “Eliminating a hydra like Morgan is the first step toward restoring the values of our society in that area. Granted, it’s not a huge step, but it’s a necessary one. Once he’s gone, the local authorities can sort out the rest of the situation. Corrupt officials can be prosecuted, the people can start to feel like they are more than just subjects, always at the whim of some false king. That’s what I want to see—I want to see people breathing free once more.” She took a deep breath. “Morgan isn’t the only little tin king in America, and I’ve got operations working to shut down several others even now. As soon as I learn about them, I take action. Morgan was just the first one I couldn’t eliminate through normal channels, so your people had to be involved.”

  Noah shook his head. “You are really a strange woman,” he said. “Do you know that?”

  “I’m not that strange,” she said, “I’m just somebody who is willing to act on what I believe. Isn’t that what we should do?”

  “I killed James Cabot,” he said. “When I found out he was the one behind the attempt, Morgan asked me to take him out.”

  “Yes, I read the police report last night, a couple of hours after it happened. Pretty impressive, actually. Don’t worry, Noah—remember Mr. Haggard? I arranged for someone to suggest to him that going to you was his best chance at survival. There was no doubt in my mind Morgan would order the hit, and as I said earlier, James Cabot had outlived his usefulness. Having Haggard come to you so that you could tell Morgan what Cabot had done was a no-brainer. Morgan would want him dead, and would send you to take care of it—that was logical. I knew you’d handle it quickly and efficiently, which only puts you in tighter with Morgan.”

  Noah simply stared at her for a moment. “As I said, you’re a very strange woman.” He grinned suddenly. “On the other hand, you’re not always cautious. Has it occurred to you that, if I were not already under your control, I’d be able to track you down through this airplane? If it belongs to JetBlue, it wouldn’t be a bit difficult to find out where the flight originated and who the customer was.”

  She actually stuck out her tongue at him. “And you think that would do some good? I have a number of identities, Noah, and only one of them deals with this company. If you were to track it down, you would find that it leads to a perfectly complete dead end. On top of that, I employ some of the best computer hackers in the world. Even if you got into the company’s records on this flight, you would be surprised. This airplane was nowhere near Memphis and never went to the Bahamas today. The client who hired it has a special arrangement with the company that requires the flight crew to deny any knowledge of the flight or its passenger. Tracking the flight wouldn’t get you any closer to knowing who I am.”

  Monique leaned her head back and closed her eyes, and Noah sat quietly until they arrived in Memphis. He adjusted his glasses twice more, snapping a couple of extra pictures as he did so.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I think I may have something,” Molly said as she walked into Allison’s office. She was carrying a tablet with her and turned it around to show Allison the screen. “This might be our mole. I set up a program to scan for the general description we had heard, including the small-hands issue. The program found a few references that seemed to fit, all of them on Facebook. When I got to looking at them, I tracked them back to this profile.”

  Allison reached out and took the tablet, staring at the small blonde woman in the photo. Her hands were remarkably tiny compared to the rest of her body, but it wasn’t the hands Allison was looking at. It was the three children in the photo with her. The two girls looked to be in their very early teens, but the boy was probably only nine or ten.

  She looked up at Molly. “Who the hell is this?”

  “Her name is Monica Lord,” Molly said, “and at first glance she appears to be nothing more than your average housewife and mother. It wasn’t until I really got to digging into her background that I found enough evidence to suspect her. Publicly, she seems to be a typical entrepreneur; she owns a company that sells health and beauty products under her own label that are carried in stores all over the world. I think, however, that she only uses that to cover her occasional need to travel. See, most of the time, she’s just your average mom, taking the kids to socc
er practice and things like that, but she takes short jet trips around the country about twice a week and an occasional one to other parts of the world. Go back twenty years, though, and you’ll discover that she used to be an executive assistant to a freshman senator named Charles Wiggins. Some of Wiggins’s people apparently objected to the way she ran his offices, claiming that she was literally forcing them into actions they didn’t want to take, and there were rumors that they were having an affair. As a result, she voluntarily resigned after three years with him, and she was married to Jonathan Lord, a local businessman, a little more than a year after that.”

  Allison’s eyebrows were trying to crawl over the top of her forehead. “As soon as you mentioned Wiggins,” she said, “I was sold. This has to be Monique. I mean, even the name is similar. Add in the description and the fact that she’s connected to Wiggins and I’m convinced. Is she still connected in any way to him now?”

  “Not that I can prove,” Molly said with a grin, “but I can tell you that the two of them have a tendency to turn up in the same city from time to time. That could be coincidental, until you notice that they always stay at the same hotel. I’m pretty sure Mrs. Lord is having an ongoing affair with Senator Wiggins.”

  “Which would give her plenty of access to a lot of things he knows. She could be blackmailing him, or it’s possible he’s just one of those men who talks in bed.”

  “It might also have given her a start in knowing just who to blackmail,” Molly said. “If this is the mole, we know that she’s got tentacles reaching into at least our organization and the CIA, but there’s probably a lot more.”

  Allison’s phone rang, and she held up a hand to tell Molly to wait. “This is Allison,” she said as she answered.

  “Camelot,” Noah said on the other end of the line.

  Allison hurriedly hit the speaker button on the phone and set the receiver back in his cradle. “Camelot, report,” she said. “Molly is here with me, and we may have an identity on Monique.”

  “I just left her,” Noah said. “All she wanted me for was a bodyguard on a trip to Nassau, to a bank. We just flew back in, and I’m driving out of the airport now.”

  “Very good,” Allison said. “Here’s what we’ve got. Monique appears to be Monica Lord, wife of Jonathan Lord, who is a DC-area businessman. She runs a business of her own, selling some kind of beauty products that she came up with, but we think that’s just a front to allow her to travel a lot.”

  “She just told me a while ago that she is a happily married woman,” Noah said, “even though she uses seduction and blackmail regularly to manipulate men. From what she said, she’s very good at pretending to be a young girl and can often get some pretty damning video of her liaisons.”

  “Well, we know she won’t stop at anything to get what she wants,” Allison replied. “I gather you did not feel it was the right time to eliminate her?”

  “To be honest, I don’t think there’s going to be a right time. There’s a lot more to Monique, or Monica, than meets the eye. Yes, she can be ruthless, but I got her to talk to me about her motivation, and I was able to determine that she was telling me the truth. Her purpose in life seems to be to expose the men behind the curtains, the shadow governments that run things while people think their elected officials are actually in charge.”

  Allison and Molly looked at each other, both of them with wide eyes. “And you’re saying she’s telling the truth about that?”

  “Yes,” Noah said. “Considering what she knows and the influence she’s got, I’m beginning to think she could be an asset to national security.”

  “But, Noah,” Molly blurted out, “this is the bitch who sold Sarah to the Chinese. You can’t seriously be saying you’d be willing to work with her?”

  “I’m saying that she could be valuable,” Noah said. “I’ll confess that a part of me wants to put a bullet through her brain, but if that brain can be used to help secure America’s position in the global political quagmire, I have to think that she’s more valuable to us alive than dead.”

  “Well, well,” Allison said. “This is quite a conundrum. How would you propose to bring her in from the cold?”

  “I think the best idea,” Noah said, “would be to start with a supervisory group made up of representatives from all of the relevant agencies. Let her share with them what she knows, and then perhaps we might establish an entirely new agency, one designed to do exactly what she’s been trying to do.”

  “I can’t say I think that’s a bad idea,” Allison said. “The only problem is getting it set up without those very ‘men behind the curtains’ finding out about it. Whoever they are, I’m certain they enjoy the power and anonymity they have, and they’re not going to give it up willingly.”

  “I agree, and that’s why I think it’s important. Hold on a moment. I took a couple of pictures of her, and I’m sending them to Molly right now. Take a look and tell me if it’s the same woman you found.”

  Molly’s phone chimed and she snatched it out of her pocket. She brought up the images Noah had sent, and a smile appeared on her face. She turned it around to show it to Allison, saying, “It’s her.”

  “Definitely the same woman,” Allison said. “Now, what have you got in mind?”

  “Turning the tables on her a bit. She’d have no idea that we have figured out who she is, so she won’t expect me to show up on her doorstep. I think the shock of seeing me appear in her daily life, combined with a logical argument that she would better serve the country and her purposes by coming in with us and serving as an advisor might be enough to do the job.”

  Allison looked up at Molly. “Any sign of serious security around her in her personal life?”

  “She lives in a gated community on the edge of Reston, Virginia, and it’s patrolled by private security guards. There is a standard electronic security system in her home, but she and her husband don’t employ bodyguards, nothing like that.”

  “Noah, how soon could you get to Reston?”

  “If I fly, I could be there in a couple of hours, probably. If I drive, we’re probably looking at twelve hours, maybe a little more.”

  “She might know if you got onto a plane,” Allison said. “I think you should drive, but I don’t know if you should try to get there in one stretch. You can stop and get a room somewhere, get some sleep, and then surprise her tomorrow.”

  “It’s only little after seven, right now,” Noah said, “so that would make it a little after eight in DC. I’m not that tired, and I’m sure I can drive straight through. That would put me close to her by eight, nine in the morning.”

  “It’s your call, of course,” Allison replied. “We’ll send you her address, and I’ll put some very clandestine observers on her place right now, since she’s probably still on the plane, anyway. Incidentally, she apparently has children, two teenage girls and a younger boy. You check with me in the morning before you make contact, and I’ll know who’s in the house with her. That’s an order, by the way.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Noah said. “By the way, is there anyone else in the room with you right now?”

  “No, just me and Molly. Why?”

  “Because Monique says she’s got someone watching you very closely, and she tried to imply that it’s your secretary, but I don’t believe her. I’m pretty sure it’s someone in your inner circle, someone who was subverted by her about eight months ago. Molly’s been with us almost a year, and while I’m personally certain it isn’t her, you can’t afford to take any risks. I would suggest sequestering Molly from this moment until at least after I make contact with Monique tomorrow. I would further suggest that you not reveal any of this conversation to anyone else at this time. Whoever she’s got, she certainly knows a lot about how our organization is run.”

  Allison looked at Molly, who shrugged. “Looks like you got a roommate for the night,” the younger woman said. She handed Allison her cell phone and tablet, then turned out all of her pockets.

&nbs
p; “I don’t believe it’s Molly, either,” Allison said, “but you’re right about not being able to take the risk. She’s going home with me for the night. All anyone else needs to know is that we decided to hang out and watch chick flicks together. No one else will be aware of your current mission, so get to it.”

  “I’m on the way to DC,” Noah said. This time he ended the call before Allison could.

  “I like chick flicks,” Molly said hesitantly.

  “I hate them,” Allison replied. “How would you feel about watching some old Three Stooges? I’ve got some that haven’t been seen in more than sixty years.”

  * * * * *

  Noah stopped for gas and then turned the car east on I-40. He set his cruise control at eighty-five and maneuvered through the traffic carefully, only rarely having to tap the brake pedal. Once he got out of Memphis, he raised the speed up to ninety and let the miles fall away underneath him.

  He took out his phone and called Sarah, and she answered on the first ring.

  “Baby?” Sarah asked, and Noah could hear the tension in her voice.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Allison and Molly have identified Monique, and I’m headed for DC to have a talk with her in the morning. I don’t know how long I’m going to be, but there are some strange things going on.”

  “Strange things? Like what?”

  “I just told Allison that I think Monique could be an asset,” Noah replied. “She isn’t in this just for money; she actually sees herself as fighting for the people. Her goal is to expose the people and organizations who actually run the governments, and she’s apparently amassed a lot of knowledge and information that could be of great benefit to national security. All I have to do is convince her to come in from the cold.”

  “Oh, God, Noah,” Sarah gasped. “Don’t you think this could be a trap?”

  “Actually, I don’t. At the moment, I’m quite certain she has no idea that we’ve identified her, or that we’ve removed her little bomb, so I’m hoping that taking her by surprise will disarm a potentially volatile situation. She flew me down to the Bahamas today to act as her bodyguard, but I think the real reason was just so that she and I could talk. I think she actually wants to get me on her side, but I’m counting on being able to turn it the other way.”