Talion Justice

by Rick Bosworth

  So I had gone straight at Doug Mitchell. He’d confirmed that Prisha Baari was in the middle of all this, but not much else. I figured he’d told me all he knew about Prisha, but that he’d held out on that secret project we had all been working on. ODYSSEUS. However, I now had a name. My next plan was to follow Baari from work, catch her at home, and get the truth out of her. Maybe I’d try to reason with her, find some common ground and make my appeal. If that didn’t work, I was afraid of how far I might go to get the truth out of her. In the back of my mind I knew this approach would likely fail. If it came down to it, I knew I would not be able to hurt a woman, even one like Prisha Baari. Maybe I needed a new plan.

  After dinner that night, I cleared the dinner dishes and Doyle joined me in the kitchen, where we made short work of the cleanup. He poured us each two fingers of Irish whiskey, neat, and we went back to the table by the big windows. The skies had cleared just enough to bleed pink and orange over the Atlantic as the sun set. We both held our words until the show was over and twilight brought its darkness.

  “You’re right,” I said, rolling that amber elixir around in my rocks glass. “I can’t keep charging the hill alone and expect to get what I want.” I took a sip and felt the Irish whiskey bite. “I need a new plan.”

  “You need a good team,” Doyle said. “And you need to trust this team.” He flicked a finger at me. “No more of this solo shit, Frankie.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Will you help me, Quinn?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Is your head right, Frankie? Are you back—for good? No more bullshit?”

  I told him I was.

  Doyle raised his glass. “Do you promise me this, Frankie?”

  I knew what this meant. Making a promise over Irish whiskey to a man like Doyle was taking a blood oath. Better than an ironclad signed contract. And more enforceable.

  I raised my glass to his. “I promise, Quinn.”

  With that, we clinked glasses and emptied them in one hard gulp. Our glasses hit the table with a thud. My thoughts went to church bells pealing, birds taking wing.

  And just like that, all was forgiven. But not forgotten. Never. Not with a man like Doyle. There would be no second chance with him. All this was unspoken, but known, between us. Such was our bond.

  Doyle picked up our glasses and went to pour us another round. I watched his back and tried to steady myself. He returned with a bounce in his step. He had just shed the weight he had carried for the past five years. The load I had put on his shoulders. Doyle placed the two refilled glasses on the table. I immediately grabbed mine and took a deep pull. Doyle observed this with amusement.

  “Okay, tell me what’s going on.”

  I fidgeted with my glass. He waited.

  I couldn’t tell Doyle the truth about Teddy. Not yet, anyway. He and I had just reunited, and I was not sure how he would respond to such news. I had not abandoned my son intentionally, and never would have left had I known. But this fact had been of no use to Teddy, who thought his father dead. For a boy that age, the why didn’t matter; it was the what that counted. And what had happened was that I had not been there to raise my son. End of story.

  It was best that I leave Teddy out of this for now. I knew it was wrong not telling Doyle the whole truth, but I tried to find some solace in the fact that an omission is not exactly a lie. It sure felt like one, though.

  “I have to find out why I got fired from the CIA. Get my pension and reputation restored. Give the money to Nicole and her boy when I die. Put things back together again.”

  “What happened at the CIA?”

  “As best I can tell, I got on the shit list of the deputy director. She’s a… piece of work. And she blow-torched me. Fired me. Erased me. Stripped my bones clean.”

  “Why would she do that, Frankie?”

  I told Doyle of that late Friday night on Prisha’s office sofa, and what Doug Mitchell had told me at gunpoint.

  “And let me guess,” Doyle said. “You were going to just bum-rush this Prisha woman and shake the truth right out of her, right?”

  “The thought did cross my mind.”

  Doyle squinted. “How much money we talking about, Frankie? Because I got some money here and there, and I could—”

  “No!” I said, too loudly. “I mean, that’s very kind of you, Quinn, but no. I need to do this thing right, clear my name and reputation. Make her pay.”

  “Okay, okay,” Doyle responded, hands raised. He rubbed his chin. “So this thing is going to revolve around this Prisha woman. You said she’s a deputy director? How high up is that?”

  “She’s the number two at CIA.”

  “Fuck,” Doyle whispered. “Well, we can’t go straight at her, then. That’s clearly not going to work.” Doyle tilted his head back in thought, eyes on the ceiling. His lips moved in silence, then stopped. His head dropped, a smile on his face.

  “We could kidnap her,” Doyle offered. “You know—just for a little while.”

  I shook my head. We both searched for another plan.

  I spoke first. “How about we climb the ladder? Map her network, start low and work our way up. People who have placement and access to her and this secret project of hers. People who can get us close to her. We gather evidence, undeniable facts, and then expose her. Or maybe threaten to expose her. Whatever will get me my money the fastest.”

  “Why would these people, these ladder steps, help us?” Doyle said, thinking out loud. “I know some persuasive people. Maybe I could call them.”

  “No, Quinn. I don’t want to do it like that. Nobody gets hurt. We make it so these people want to help. I’m thinking maybe we could help them out with something, and then they’ll owe us a favor. Then we just approach them and call in that favor. Win-win.”

  “Just like that, huh? They’re gonna help us out of the goodness of their hearts?”

  “Well, like you said, Quinn, you know some very persuasive people. I figure we could get next to her in three, four moves tops. What do you think?”

  “What happens when we get close to this woman?” Doyle asked. “What then?”

  “Then the gloves come off. We either get what we want or we fucking ruin her. Eye for an eye.”

  “Ah—talion justice.”

  I had no idea what Doyle was talking about. The look on my face must have told him as much.

  “Lex talionis,” Doyle responded. “The Law of Retaliation. The punishment should be equivalent to the offense committed. The principle goes back to the early Romans. We knew a thing or two about this on the streets of South Boston, too, I’ll tell you that.”

  Doyle pondered the proposition for a moment as he sipped his whiskey.

  “Okay, Frankie. I’m in.”

  Loyalty. After all I’d put this man through. I vowed to never disappoint him again.

  I leaned in. “You sure, Quinn? I know you’re retired. I would hate for any of this to blow back on you. I don’t want the feds to come after you because of me.”

  Quinn Doyle smiled his big Irish smile. “Those bastards haven’t got me yet. Let them come.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  September 20, 2016

  Prisha’s Townhouse

  Georgetown, WDC

  Prisha lay silent and still in her bed. She was stretched out on her back, wearing a black silk teddy, and an Egyptian cotton sheet covered her up to the waist. The room was dark. She was alone and had been staring up at her bedroom ceiling, thinking. She rolled to her side and tapped her personal iPhone to check the time. She grabbed the encrypted satellite telephone next to it and hit the button.

  “Hello, Prisha,” Karlsson said in a gravelly voice.

  “Did I wake you?”

  Karlsson paused, exhaled into the telephone. “What time is it?”

  “One thirty or so.”

  “What do you want, Prisha?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what Douglas Mitchell said today. I don’t l
ike it. I think we should start a package on Frank Luce.”

  Silence.

  “We already agreed on this,” Karlsson responded, the annoyance rising in his voice. “It was just a simple tripwire report. We’ve got hundreds of tripwires in place for all of the past and present ODYSSEUS employees. Mitchell called in and reported a contact, just like we pay him to do. Nothing to worry about.”

  “You yourself said you thought Mitchell sounded nervous… that he didn’t tell you everything.”

  “Prisha,” Karlsson responded coolly. “Mitchell’s a nervous guy. Don’t read too much into this.”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “Who is this Luce guy to you, anyway? He’s just another notch on your bedpost. And you wiped him. He disappeared for five years and now he’s back. So what? He’s just a homeless guy. Why should we give a shit?”

  Prisha got out of bed and began to pace the floor.

  “I don’t know, Henrik. I’ve been thinking about this all day. This guy is different.”

  “Different to you. Not to me.”

  Prisha bristled at Karlsson’s rebuke. She stopped pacing and took a wide stance near her window, fingered the curtain open and looked out onto the deserted street.

  “I want you to start a package on Luce,” she repeated. “Put a couple of your best men on him. His return might just be a coincidence, but we’ve had an uptick in tripwire reports over the past sixty days. Something doesn’t feel right. And my gut doesn’t lie.”

  Karlsson again sighed into the phone, which irritated Prisha all the more.

  “Luce has nothing to do with the tripwire reports. And I really don’t have the men to be chasing him around right now. We’ve got a lot going on, Prisha. I’ve got most of my guys working on that other thing. And that thing could become a problem. Another Boone problem.”

  Prisha paused. Karlsson was right. But she trusted her gut.

  “Okay, Henrik, you’ve been heard. But I’m the boss, and I say we start working on Luce.”

  “Prisha—”

  “Henrik, I’m telling you to start a package on Luce. Now. Do you understand?”

  Prisha knew it grated on Karlsson to be spoken to in this manner, so she saved it for special occasions such as this. Every time she had ignored her gut in the past, she had paid the price.

  “You’re the boss, Prisha.” Karlsson hung up.

  Satisfied, Prisha went back to bed. Pulled the sheet up to just below her breasts. She replayed the telephone call with Karlsson in her head. Big, strong, Viking Karlsson. She slipped her right hand below the sheet and between her legs.

  It was good to be the boss.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  September 21, 2016

  Edward R. Murrow Park

  Washington, DC

  I shifted my weight, trying to get comfortable on a wood slat bench in the southwest section of Edward R. Murrow Park, a neighborhood pocket park just south of the Farragut West Metro Station and a half mile from the White House. I suspected President Mo Udell did not visit this place much, despite its proximity. Most of the neighborhood parks in the District, like this one, had become de facto homeless shelters.

  And today did not disappoint. I was downwind from the gentleman with whom I shared this bench. His full essence assaulted me with every breeze, making me wince. I wondered if I had ever gotten that bad. I didn’t think so, but at the end I suspected the truth was something different.

  I sat facing Pennsylvania Avenue, which bisected the park into two equal sections. It was a busy section of road, with two lanes of traffic speeding in each direction amid a jumble of intersections. Large shade trees loomed over the sidewalk and the line of cars parked bumper-to-bumper, tight to the curb.

  The homeless man slouched on the bench next to me cackled. “Here we go!” he said.

  I turned to look at him. Big gap-toothed smile. He rolled his fat tongue around in his mouth, then smacked his lips shut. He pointed at a dark-skinned Latino man perched in the tight gap between two parked cars. His dark clothing kept him in shadow.

  “Time for the show!” said the homeless guy with enough enthusiasm to bring on a coughing fit. A deep, rumbling cough. I remembered that cough.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “Staging,” he said. “You know, accidents.” The guy slammed his two hands together in pantomime.

  “Car accidents?”

  The guy looked at me as if I was half stupid. “Yeah—car accidents. Dummy.”

  The guy took a couple of sips from his bag, not offering me any. The thought of sharing spit with this guy now made me retch. Six months ago it would have given me no pause.

  “See, he waits for the right one, then just walks into it.”

  I made the sour milk face. “Doesn’t he get hurt?”

  The guy gives me another look. “No—he don’t get hurt! He dodges that car, never hits him square. Nope.”

  The man shook his head, his hair and long beard a wild mess of snarls. Me six weeks ago.

  “The guy just bangs down on the hood and side panel—pow!” He smacked his fist into his palm. “It’s like… um… bullfighting.”

  I started to respond, but he cut me off.

  “… but the car is the bull.”

  Yeah, thanks. I got that part.

  I’d been back in DC less than a week. Took the Amtrak Acela back. Doyle and I had spent much of that last night talking about how we would put our plan into action. We’d agreed on the stair-step strategy, climbing the ladder until we got to someone close enough to Prisha to make her squeal. Our problem, one of many, was that we didn’t have any good intelligence to work with. I’d been out of the CIA for five years. I had pushed Doug Mitchell as far as he would go. We needed someone on the inside, with broad access to data. We needed ground truth.

  We’d strategized until we settled on network administrators. Who better to gain illicit access to data than the gatekeepers of that data? Edward Snowden had been a contract network administrator when he leaked his classified information. And although that had occurred only three years ago, we were relying on the fact that whatever additional security measures were put in place could be circumvented by a skilled individual with proper placement and access.

  Against my better judgment, we had agreed to bring Sarah into our little plan.

  We called her late at night from Scituate. She heard us out and said she was in. No hesitation. The three of us had spoken a few more times on secure conference calls, and our plan had begun to come together. Sarah said that her company, White Rogers Young, colloquially known as WRY, had network admins placed all over the intelligence community, but had none at CIA. She thought and pulled up an executive colleague at another firm that did have several network admins placed at CIA. Sarah asked her friend if she could treat one of her admins to lunch, under the guise of gathering lead information.

  The friend took the bait, and Sarah had taken the CIA contract network administrator to lunch at one of the best places in town. She’d warmed the guy up with a little flattery (it didn’t take much for a woman who looked like Sarah), then deftly pivoted to a discussion of current on-board admins at CIA. She’d hoped for a few names of admins who were failing and could be easily replaced, but no such luck. All were top notch.

  Sarah then looked for any of the admins that might have any vulnerabilities we could exploit. Her lunch date had shared some office gossip about a network admin named Chang Li who was going through a hell of a time with a neighbor. It had started as a simple boundary dispute, his neighbor complaining that the canopy of Li’s tree had grown into his yard. Li had politely ignored the man’s taunts until the lawsuit came. Then another, followed by another. All nuisance lawsuits, all requiring time and money that Li, a young father of two, did not have. Li was terrified that he would have to declare bankruptcy. Lose his house. His CIA security clearance. His wife and family.

  It wasn’t much, but Li was all we had. He would be the first ladder step o
n the way to Prisha. Li would have to leave his job, so Sarah and WRY could come in with a low-ball bid to replace him with a hand-picked person who would do their bidding. A trusted person who could map and exploit the CIA computer network for us. Be our inside man.

  We disagreed on how to get Li out of CIA. Doyle advocated the simplest way. What Li needed most was money. Simply give him a loan at a usurious rate and turn the screws when he can’t pay it back. Sarah didn’t come up with anything better and sided with Doyle.

  I didn’t like it. Li seemed like a nice enough guy. He was early in his marriage with two little kids. He hadn’t been at the CIA long but, by all accounts, was doing excellent work. Li hadn’t done anything wrong, unlike his asshole neighbor. I knew what injustice felt like. More than most. I just couldn’t do it to him. This eye-for-an-eye thing was supposed to be for people who earned it, not innocents like Li. There had to be another way.

  And so we were at a stalemate with Li. Both Doyle and Sarah wanted to move on it. I was stalling for more time.

  It took forty-five minutes for our Latino street performer to select his victim: a white woman, mid-fifties, approaching in a shiny green Mercedes SUV. He crouched lower, braced his hands on the parked cars on either side of him. He was in the starting blocks. The homeless guy elbowed me, gesticulating at the Latino guy and laughing like an imbecile.

  The Latino made his move. Timed it perfectly, with the grace of a ballet dancer. He stepped from behind the parked cars and into the street. I heard the crash and the squeal of the Mercedes’ disc brakes. Saw the Latino spin around violently and fall back towards the curb. Away from the other incoming cars. The SUV jerked to a stop. The woman screamed, then panicked, wrestling with her seat belt before she fell out of the vehicle onto the road. She was a short, plump woman, well dressed and made up. Her heels clicked like castanets as she ran to the poor man she had just hit.