Passenger 19

by Ward Larsen

  He returned to the chair, earbuds still in place, and tapped his fingers along with the percussion. Davis closed his eyes and imagined Jen doing the same. He had seen it before, his daughter sprawled on the couch with her eyes shut, drumming to a beat. Then the vision dimmed and his fingers went still.

  Try as he might, the approach that had comforted him last night was hopeless. Tonight Davis was beyond rescue. The melodies seemed broken, the warm images of Jen interrupted. Instead he found himself logging his paternal shortcomings, which wasn’t hard to do. Not involved enough when she was young. Overbearing after Diane’s death. If they’d only talked more. Just talked.

  What anchored in his mind at the end was not a list of his failings, or even the issue of Jen’s fate, which was a cyclone all to itself. Nor was it the burdens of a schizophrenic investigation. The menace that overshadowed everything lay farther afield. Farther to the north.

  He felt as if he’d been standing at the edge of a cliff for two days, but was only now opening his eyes. He considered the executive jet he’d taken from Andrews. A State Department flight making a scheduled run to Bogotá. That’s what Larry Green had said, and probably what he’d been told. Davis knew otherwise. The pilots were on-call contractors, and there had been no one else on board. Nothing else on board. No passengers or cargo or secure diplomatic pouches for delivery to the embassy. Someone had chartered a G-III, a very expensive bird, for no other reason than to launch him toward Colombia like some kind of guided missile. Next had come the satellite data to pinpoint the crash site. How many times before had Davis asked for such information through NTSB channels? It usually took weeks of infighting and interdepartmental memos just to get a request approved. The result this time—he and Marquez were buried in hard data in less than an hour.

  Finally there was his conversation this morning with Larry Green, when his boss mentioned he’d been getting heat for information on the crash. It had been a trigger, causing Davis to do something he’d never done before—hold back the truth from a friend.

  He removed the earbuds and walked to the bedside. Setting down Jen’s iPod, he picked up the other device on the night-stand—the phone that had been waiting for him when he arrived in Colombia. His own mobile would never have worked here, but without so much as filling out a standard government request form, he’d been issued a replacement. A woman from the embassy stopped by and left it for you this afternoon.

  Now there was some efficiency.

  Jammer Davis had spent a career in the military, followed by an afterlife with the NTSB. By virtue of that background, he was a bona fide expert on labyrinthine bureaucracy and administrative ineptitude. He had taken part in dozens of investigations, and in every case made requests for information and equipment. Any fulfillment at all—set aside timeliness and accuracy—was cause for celebration.

  And today?

  Today he seemingly had the entire United States government at his disposal. A request for a pencil would get him a pallet-load within hours. Ask for a little flight support for aerial photos, and he’d probably get a carrier battle group. He was the beneficiary of a stacked deck, only the cards were being dealt by some unseen hand.

  What the hell is going on?

  He sat on the side of the bed, and for a long time stared at the room’s deepening shadows. Like any detective, his goal was to shine light on things, to peel away layers of confusion and obfuscation until the truth became clear. Yet every time he made headway here, the world got darker. He sensed a greater cataclysm, something bigger than one airplane hitting a jungle. He wondered if Marquez or Echevarria knew anything about it.

  Right then Davis reached a decision. He put on his boots and stood, then ordered his phone to check for e-mail. He didn’t wait for the results. Leaving the phone on the nightstand, he pocketed his room key and closed the curtains. Davis slipped outside, closing the door softly and leaving the room light on.

  * * *

  It was seven that evening when Davis bypassed the restaurant across the street, postponing an urgent request from the well of his stomach. He took a cab downtown, asking the driver to drop him in an area where retail stores remained open late. Twenty minutes later he was delivered to someplace called Centro Comercial Andino. It was on the east side of town near the base of the mountains, a three-story mall whose directory boasted the likes of Pandora and Swatch, a place that would have looked right at home in Indianapolis or Atlanta. Davis settled with the driver in dollars and walked west along a wide boulevard, a four-lane affair that was busy in the early evening.

  His countersurveillance tactics were rudimentary at best. Davis was not a trained spy, but he doubled back twice and watched for anyone who mirrored his movements. He drifted with the flows on the sidewalk, kept an eye out for recurring faces, and, perhaps in an ode to paranoia, even went to the trouble of stepping on and then off a municipal bus. Satisfied he was alone, he turned away from the mall, passing a busy faux British pub, and rounding a cemetery where every mildewed grave marker seemed to be topped with fresh-bundled flowers. After fifteen minutes of maneuvering he found what he wanted, a second-tier commercial strip. He steered into a family-operated convenience store that sold a little bit of everything, and emerged, one hundred and fifty U.S. dollars later, with two prepaid burner phones.

  Walking back toward the mall, Davis activated the first phone. He boarded a busy escalator, and as he rose dialed one of the few phone numbers in the world etched into his private cloud memory.

  On the third ring Anna Sorensen answered.

  FIFTEEN

  Anna Sorensen was blond, attractive, and had been immovably lodged in Davis’ head for the better part of three years. They’d met while investigating a crash in France, Davis assigned to the inquiry by Larry Green, and Sorensen by her own government handlers. The truth behind that air accident had been both spectacular and combustible, as was the on-again off-again relationship the two of them had managed ever since. Their union was a tectonic thing—stable and hopeful for periods, but fracturing regularly along the fault lines of their professional lives. Davis was often on the road, and recently had been sidetracked by getting Jen out of the house and settled in college. Sorensen kept an equally unstable existence, one that had recently seen her move to the Far East, then back to Virginia in a matter of months.

  For all their disconnects, however, the connects were worth it. Intimate highs outweighed crashing lows. Davis had not heard her voice in two months, after an awkward chapter in which he’d floated the idea of them sharing his suddenly too-large house. Sorensen had nearly accepted, but wavered over a possible reassignment to Europe. Three awkward dinner dates later, the new rift finalized.

  Two months was their customary interval of separation—the point at which one of them generally found an excuse to call the other. Setting aside the sine wave of their romantic mingling, Davis felt he and Anna were increasingly close friends. Which was what he needed tonight. Someone he could trust, someone he could talk to.

  And, if he were completely honest, someone who worked for the CIA.

  Sorensen picked up. “Hello?”

  “The caller ID must have shown an unknown caller.”

  A pause. “Hey, Jammer. How are you?”

  Davis pulled a deep breath. It was nice to have somebody ask that. Somebody who cared about the answer. “I’m not good.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He thought he might have heard music in the background, something soft and melodic. He told himself it wasn’t any of his business.

  “It’s about Jen.” He covered the purgatory that was the last three days of his life, and Sorensen listened in silence. At one point, he was sure he heard a male voice in the background.

  When he finished, she said, “Dear God, I’m so sorry, Jammer. I know how close the two of you are.”

  An awkward silence fell, and he said, “Did I call at a bad time?”

  “Oh, no. My sister and brother-in-law are staying the week.” Davis fel
t a curiously strong wave of relief. Had it been more than two months since they’d talked? Whatever the interval, it was too long.

  “So you’re in Colombia looking for her?” she asked.

  “The Hotel de Aeropuerto in Bogotá. Larry managed to assign me to the investigation.”

  “Any luck yet?”

  “Yes and no. When I first got here … Christ, Anna, I thought she was dead. Now I don’t know what to think. Twenty-one passengers and three crewmembers got on that airplane, but two are missing from the wreckage, Jen and another girl.”

  “So you don’t even know if she’s alive? That’s got to be tearing you apart, Jammer. Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “What can I do to help?” Her sincerity was absolute, and Davis was glad he’d called. It felt good to have backup.

  “I was hoping you’d ask that. First I should warn you that I’m not talking on the phone I was issued. I bought a couple of burners.”

  “Do you think someone is listening? The Colombians?”

  “Somebody is very interested in what I’m doing here. Unfortunately, I think whoever it is lives closer to you.” He told her about the first-class service he’d been getting.

  “That doesn’t sound like any government I know,” she agreed. “I can’t get a box of copier paper without the written approval of two supervisors.”

  “Tell me about it—I spent a career in the military.”

  “But how is that a problem? If you’re getting too much cooperation, just run with it.”

  “Nothing comes without a price, Anna. I want to know who I’m running up a tab with, and for what reason.”

  “Maybe you could find out by putting it to a test. Call their bluff.”

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “Ask for a bigger Gulfstream. If that shows up, go for a million in uncut diamonds. Sooner or later somebody’s going to say no.”

  Davis came the closest to laughing he’d been in fifty-five hours. “That’s not a bad idea—maybe I’ll try it. But finding Jen is my priority, and that’s going to take a little more subtlety.”

  “You? You’re about as subtle as a concrete—”

  “Please, Anna. I don’t have much time. I need to find out who’s so interested in this investigation. It’s got to be somebody with a stake in the outcome, which should narrow things down. I need a name, an organization—something.”

  “And you want me to get it.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. Knocking on doors in D.C. when we don’t know what we’re up against … it has the potential to stir up a lot of trouble. Maybe if you could make it look like a standard dig. I don’t want you putting your career on the line over this.”

  “I would, Jammer. I’d do that for Jen.”

  This caught him by surprise. “I know you would, Anna. And that means a lot. For now, I’d like you to concentrate on one thing—find out whatever you can on a guy named Thomas Mulligan.” Davis spelled the last name.

  “There’s probably only about a thousand of those in the world.”

  “Five hundred if you don’t count Ireland. He was on the flight with Jen, TAC-Air Flight 223. That should narrow things down. Only this guy didn’t die in the crash—somebody shot him at point-blank range during the flight.”

  “Shot him?”

  “Twice through the heart, nice and clean.”

  “That sounds like an execution.”

  “Could be. The investigator-in-charge down here is pushing the idea that this whole crash is a hijacking gone bad.”

  “If that’s true, then the FBI would be all over it and I’d have seen something in the message traffic. Why haven’t I heard about this already?”

  “Because it’s still only a theory, there are a lot of loose ends.” Davis left it at that. “Mulligan—can you find out who he is by tomorrow?”

  “If it can be done, I’ll do it.”

  “Is there a different number where I can call you, one nobody would expect you to use?”

  “Do you think that’s necessary?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Sorensen thought about it and gave a different number. She didn’t say whose phone it was, and Davis didn’t ask. He wrote the number with a pen and stationary he’d taken from the hotel.

  “Is there a time I should call?” he asked.

  “I’ve been working a pretty regular nine-to-five lately. Give me until lunchtime to work this.”

  “Right. Thanks, Anna, I owe you one.”

  “One what?”

  “We’ll figure that out when Jen and I get home. And like I said, be careful.”

  “I will, Jammer. You too.”

  * * *

  The next morning Sorensen dumped her nine-to-five schedule, arriving at CIA Headquarters, formally the George Bush Center for Intelligence, a full one hour before most of her coworkers. On reaching her cluttered desk she undertook some basic housekeeping, deleting e-mails and scanning a few innocuous sit-reps, before launching her quest for Thomas Mulligan.

  By virtue of her employment, she had access to a wide array of government databases. Unfortunately, even the CIA hit information roadblocks. The most sensitive material from other agencies required special authorization. Fortunately, the sources she started with did not exceed the classification of “confidential,” and as such were there for the taking. She first screened Department of Homeland Security files, going through a list of U.S. travelers who’d flown to Colombia on the day in question, including those passing through on connections. There was no Thomas Mulligan.

  Sorensen performed a secondary search by airline and flight number, and these results clarified why her original search had come up blank. Not a single traveler was listed that day from TAC-Air Flight 223. All information on the flight had been completely scrubbed. Sorensen wasn’t sure how Homeland handled air crashes. Did they immediately sequester passenger lists after an accident? It seemed a reasonable explanation.

  She tapped a fingernail on her desk and pondered how else to approach the problem. Customs and Border Protection was encompassed by Homeland Security, as was TSA, so either would likely have the same result. On a whim she accessed the National Joint Terrorism Task Force interagency server. She typed in “TAC-Air 223” and waited for the results. It didn’t take long.

  What appeared on her screen was a short event brief, one paragraph carrying a relatively low priority. This meant, as Davis suggested, that the prospect of a hijacking had not yet been officially raised. There was one attachment, and Sorensen called it up to find a passenger list. Or at least a partial one. Davis told her there had been twenty-one passengers on board, yet the NJTTF list fell one name short. Jen Davis was there as clear as day. Thomas Mulligan was not. At the bottom, however, was a note related to the omission.

  Passenger 21: DHS, USSS.

  Sorensen pushed back ever so slightly from her desk.

  Now she understood. Passenger 21 was an internal. DHS stood for the Department of Homeland Security. USSS was a well-known subsidiary of that agency, formerly administered by the Department of Treasury. Thomas Mulligan, in some capacity, was an employee of the United States Secret Service.

  Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, Sorensen quickly cut the link by calling up an innocuous e-mail on her computer. Her screen filled with an interoffice memo heralding the new cafeteria menu. She stared with unfocused eyes at the price of chicken soup and beef brisket sandwiches, and thought, What have you lumbered into this time, Jammer?

  To this point, her unsanctioned search had been superficial. If Sorensen went further she would have to tread carefully. From the main office you could find out pretty much anything about anybody. But to do so without raising flags or leaving a trail—that was more of an art. The United States Secret Service, she surmised, would not take kindly to intrusion.

  There was likely a simple explanation regarding the mystery of Thomas Mulligan. He could be a Secret Service employee on vacation. If so, his identity might have been filtered f
rom the report by some automated process. If he’d been in Colombia on assignment, there were any number of possibilities. Sorensen knew that most Secret Service employees served in the Financial Crimes Unit, combating money laundering, illegal funds transfers, and the counterfeiting of U.S. currency. Of course, there was also the Secret Service’s other mission, but that was a fence over which Sorensen had no desire to climb.

  She left her desk, shouldered her purse, and headed for the door. There was one way around official channels. Her former college roommate worked in the Secret Service’s Chicago office, on the Electronic Crimes Task Force. She was an expert in cyber-security, in particular the detection and countering of network intrusions.

  Best of all, three years ago Sorensen had introduced Melanie Schwartz to a really nice guy. Now Melanie Brown owed her a favor.

  SIXTEEN

  Davis was up with the sun, and his first stop that morning was at the restaurant where he was fast becoming a regular. He ordered a large coffee to fuel his walk to headquarters and to fight the fatigue he felt setting in. Davis paid with his diminishing wad of dollars, and he’d just stepped back into the blinding morning sun when his embassy-issued phone chimed with a message. Marquez was requesting his presence at an eight o’clock meeting that would include Echevarria. Having only a ten-minute walk ahead of him, Davis responded that he would arrive an hour early.

  The building was quiet and his cup empty when he arrived and passed the bleary-eyed night duty officer who was just on his way out. Davis saw a new face by the main desk, and he walked over and held out a hand.

  “Jammer Davis.”

  The man turned, and replied, “Pascal Delacorte.” His accent could only be Parisian—Davis knew because he’d been there many times and spoke the language fluently. Delacorte was a big man, slightly taller than Davis, if not as wide in the shoulders. It took less than a minute to confirm that Delacorte was indeed French, and two more to discover that he also played rugby, which Davis took as a clear sign of a sound mind and virtuous character.