The Blowback Protocol

by Lars Emmerich

  “You’re a player,” Sam replied, turning away. “Pretty, but not terribly interesting.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder and spoke into her ear. “Pretty, terrible, and interesting,” Kocaoglu said with a self-assured wink.

  Sam feigned a yawn. “You and every other teenager here tonight.”

  “But still you’re interested,” Kocaoglu said. He was clearly used to having whomever he wanted.

  “You’re right,” Sam said. “I’m interested to hear why you’re still talking to me.”

  He smiled. “Who else should I be talking to?”

  “Aren’t you here with a couple of German schoolgirls?”

  His eyebrows arched and a victorious smile crossed his lips. “So you noticed?”

  Sam feigned a coy smile. “Maybe,” she said. She pulled her hair back behind her ear, revealing a long, sensuous neck and strong shoulders. She watched Kocaoglu admire her lines. “Are you going to stand there all night or buy me a drink?” she said.

  As it turned out, Mehmet Kocaoglu was witty, handsome, and intelligent. Confident approach notwithstanding, he wasn’t arrogant or egotistical. He was educated and sophisticated yet remarkably down-to-earth. And he smelled good. Sam was surprised to discover she enjoyed his company.

  They talked about sports, politics, jobs, and in due course, aided by his casual but increasingly intimate touches, the conversation turned to sex. They covered likes and dislikes, an obvious but unacknowledged prelude to a pleasurable liaison.

  She wasn’t sure how long they’d talked before he kissed her. He pulled her body closer and she felt heat and hardness. Against her will, she felt excitement in her body, then admonished herself. Only business. But staying on task was going to take more willpower than she anticipated.

  Kocaoglu teased her thighs with his fingers during the short taxi ride to his flat. He nibbled playfully at her neck and ears. His touch was light and sensuous, then playfully demanding and extremely practiced. His fingers tried to find their way inside her skirt, but she pulled them to her mouth and caressed them seductively with her tongue. “Not in the cab,” she whispered. “But don’t worry. It will be more than worth the wait.”

  In the elevator his hands found her backside, his touch gentle but masculine and insistent, and she heard his breath in her ear as he kissed her neck. She pressed against him, feeling his growing need, and pulled away as the elevator dinged to a stop at his floor.

  His expert hands liberated her body from the cocktail dress in the entryway to his flat, leaving her wearing only her new lingerie, and he flitted his tongue between her breasts. She heaved with pleasure that wasn’t entirely contrived, thinking how much she needed a man, but more than that, how much she needed her man.

  Kocaoglu led her to his bedroom. She pushed him onto the bed, climbed on top of him, and moved her hips into him, hearing the air escape his lungs in a low moan.

  I’ve already crossed the line, she thought, but it had to be a believable encounter. In the morning, Kocaoglu couldn’t suspect that he’d been duped. There had to be something for him to recollect fondly.

  “I have something for you,” she said, her voice low and sultry. She slipped her fingers into her bra, pulled out a small red capsule, and placed it into her mouth. She kissed him long and hard, passing the pill into his mouth as she moved her hips. Her body caressed his as she felt him swallow the pill. She felt her own arousal build, hating herself for wanting to abandon restraint and take her fill.

  Too late now, she thought with a relieved smile as his body slackened and the urgency left his loins. A snore confirmed the drug’s lightning-quick effect, and Sam took a minute to catch her breath and gather herself as Kocaoglu fell into a stupor. She removed his clothes and left them in a heap at the foot of the bed, then tossed the blanket over his naked body.

  The business took less than a minute. She retrieved a thumb drive from her purse, snapped it into the receptacle on his laptop, waited for the light to turn green, and tossed it back into her purse.

  She removed her panties and tossed them onto his bed. Then she retrieved her dress from the entryway and slipped it over her still-glistening body. On her way out the door, she penned a note to her would-be paramour: “You were wonderful. I can’t wait to see you again.”

  11

  Sam didn’t go back to her hotel room. Instead, she went to the bus station, found locker number seventeen, and retrieved the overnight bag she’d stashed after her shopping spree the day before. She changed clothes and wigs in a bathroom stall, opting for more conservative dress and a brunette-with-highlights look.

  She spent several hours walking around the city, making sure she wasn’t being tailed. Day broke and Sam stopped at a café for breakfast. Then she found an Apple store in a trendy shopping mall. She paid cash for an iPad, then chose a seat in the corner booth of an outdoor coffee shop that advertised free Wi-Fi.

  As her new iPad connected to the Internet, Sam recalled the previous evening’s events. Men regretted the sex they didn’t have, and women regretted the sex they indulged in. What happened the previous night was somewhere in between, she decided. She played Kocaoglu to gain access to his computer system, and there was no real physical contact between them, but the emotional aftereffects weren’t pleasant. It would make for an uncomfortable conversation with Brock, but one she decided she must have.

  She typed an IP address into the browser on the iPad. The address was a string of numbers and decimals corresponding to a certain computer in a particular server farm. The function of the computer in question was to serve as a single-use information broker from a handful of other servers, which, Sam knew, had been busy copying the contents of every computer that had connected to Mehmet Kocaoglu’s wireless router since Sam delivered the Homeland virus several hours earlier.

  She sifted through Kocaoglu’s files. It became obvious that Kocaoglu enjoyed Internet porn of all varieties. Nothing too aberrant or deviant, Sam noted. No goats or midgets or children. He seemed to favor brunettes, which might account for the eager attention she earned from him the previous night.

  Kocaoglu received tons of email. He didn’t appear to have a spam filter on any of his computers, and his inboxes were filled almost exclusively with what looked like junk mail. It wasn’t difficult for Sam to guess why. Kocaoglu managed crime cells that communicated via encoded messages meant to look like ordinary spam. She was clearly going to need the help of an expert to find salient links to further the case.

  Sam idly scrolled through Kocaoglu’s email inbox, not certain what she was searching for, but unwilling to stop looking. The messages were organized by date. As she scrolled down the screen, she searched back in time through Kocaoglu’s email history.

  She stopped on February 25. It was the day that Tariq Ezzat’s bullet killed Sarah Beth McCulley in the park. Sam felt a wave of loneliness and sadness come over her. That date would haunt her forever.

  She noticed that Mehmet Kocaoglu had received an inordinately large number of emails on that date, but only to one of his four accounts. The other three online personas received the usual number of junk messages. Sam pursed her lips. Was there a connection? She’d need Dan’s help to figure it out.

  She navigated to a wedding blog, found a post about how not to turn into bridezilla on the big day, established a new profile on the blog under the name “Red Rover,” and posted a comment: “I’m so thankful everything came together for the big day. I’m happy that so many people sent their greetings on the twenty-fifth! Thanks to all!”

  Dan would receive an email notification of her comment. The text of the message wasn’t supposed to matter—the mere fact that Red Rover left a comment on the bridezilla blog post was all the code Dan needed to start his analysis of Kocaoglu’s digital files—but Sam hoped Dan would read between the lines and investigate all the emails that Kocaoglu received on the day Sarah Beth was killed. Sam had the feeling she was probably grasping at straws, but maybe there was a correlation. />
  She sipped her coffee and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes unfocused. Her mind wandered. She could feel it starting again, but was powerless to stop it. The memory of that day nipped at her heels and attacked whenever she let her guard down. Her body shook as she thought again of the words she had spoken into the transmitter, the words that had ultimately cost a little girl’s life. Take him.

  She closed her eyes and rubbed them with the heels of her hands, trying to exorcise the memories that haunted her like demons. When she opened her eyes, she found a man sitting across the table from her. The shock must have registered on her face, because the man laughed, high and barking and derisive.

  Her hand flew to her bag and found the gun. She clicked off the safety as her eyes settled on his, but she left the gun concealed as she took stock of him. Mid-fifties, fat, balding, with a gravity-defying comb-over, a shiny veneer of sweat on his forehead and upper lip, his face settling into what looked to be a permanent sneer. He placed his hands on the table, fingers plump like sausages.

  I know you, she thought.

  She couldn’t recall his name, but she remembered the context. How long ago had it been? Three years? Four? He used to be a CIA case officer. She had interrogated him during her frantic search for Brock, in the frenzied hours after he had been kidnapped from their home by a wolf-like giant of an agent.

  Martinson, she remembered. Avery Martinson. The Agency man had a wife and a pretty young daughter who had just started college. Journalism major, if memory served. Martinson also had a nasty predilection for under-aged prostitutes, a fact Sam had used as leverage to gain information on the animal who had taken Brock hostage. Then she’d done the nation a favor by ending Avery Martinson’s CIA career.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked.

  “I saw you last night,” he said, a sneer on his lips. “You make a good whore.”

  Sam bristled. “You ought to know,” she said. “Although if I remember right, I wouldn’t be your type. I’m old enough to vote.”

  He laughed, and it seemed genuine, though it completely lacked any evidence of the embarrassment that should have been brought on by Sam’s barb. “Touché,” he said.

  Then the sneer returned. “I have something for you.” He opened his jacket, moving slowly and deliberately to avoid spooking her, and retrieved a photo. His fat hand extended across the table. Sam took the photo from him.

  Her heart skipped a beat. The photo was of Brock. He was wearing his tan desert flight suit, subdued colonel’s rank sewn onto his shoulders. He wore a holstered sidearm on his hip and he appeared to be gesticulating with his hands, engrossed in conversation. It was a very recent photo. The implication was clear: someone had access to Brock, even at the remote Air Force base in the middle of the desert.

  She swallowed, composing herself, and forced her worry and heartache into the background. “Where did you get this?”

  “I think you’d rather know from whom,” Martinson said.

  “I’m listening,” Sam said.

  “At every American air base in the Middle East, they employ locals to work in the chow halls.”

  “Locals?”

  “Well, not really local. Most of the countries we give a shit about have oil coming out every orifice imaginable, and so none of those people do their own cooking and cleaning. They barely even wipe their own asses. They hire Indians and Bangladeshis and whatnot. Mexicans of the Middle East, they call them. Our boys in blue hire them to slop their shit chow.”

  “Who’s having him watched?”

  “Guess.”

  “CIA?”

  Martinson snorted. “Jesus. Twenty-five years, and it all came to an end because of a half-witted Homeland bimbo. Of course the CIA isn’t watching your boyfriend.”

  “Actually, Avery, your CIA career came to an end because you were stupid and sloppy. But you’re allowed to tell the story however you want. I really don’t care. But you are going to tell me who the hell is having Brock watched.”

  Martinson smiled. She saw satisfaction and smugness on his face. “Ask yourself: what’s a guy like me doing in Izmir, anyway?”

  Sam shook her head, looked at her watch, and stood up. “Go play patty-cake with someone else. I have a plane to catch.”

  Martinson lunged forward and grabbed her arm in a flash. “Sit down,” he said.

  Sam studied him. She saw a look in his eye that she remembered. It was the look that came over his face years ago during his interrogation, at the moment when she put those photos of him with the young Russian girls in front of him, the moment when he realized his world was about to come crashing down. For all his bluster, Sam realized, Martinson was running scared.

  Curiosity got the better of her and she sat down. “What have you gotten yourself into?” she asked.

  He shook his head, his face relaxing visibly. “Just a bit of freelance work,” he said.

  “No such thing,” Sam replied. “You’re always someone’s bitch.”

  “Truer words,” Martinson said. “Which brings me to the crux. You need to walk away from this. Right now.”

  “Walk away from what?”

  “From whatever it is you’re doing. You’re pissing people off.”

  Sam snorted. “Really? You think maybe that’s why they broke into my house?”

  Martinson chuckled. “Maybe that Israeli security system of yours isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  It was an offhanded remark, but there was meaning in Martinson’s eyes. Only a handful of people in Sam’s inner sanctum were supposed to know where she had procured her security setup. Avery Martinson certainly wasn’t one of them. “I’m listening,” she said. “But you need to stop making noise and start saying something.”

  Martinson leaned in conspiratorially. “This isn’t what you think it is.”

  “What isn’t what I think it is?”

  “Don’t play dumb. It isn’t becoming, and it’s a little insulting.”

  Sam shook her head and raised her hands in exasperation. “I’m not on a case. I’m not even an active Homeland agent at the moment. I’m suspended. But you knew that already.”

  Martinson’s gaze hardened. “Mehmet Kocaoglu. The whole thing. You need to back away.”

  “And wait for someone to slit my throat?”

  “If you back off, they won’t slit your throat.”

  Sam thought for a moment. Then she stood up. “Nice try, asshole.” She turned to leave.

  “It would be tragic if anything happened to your boy toy,” Martinson called after her, voice raised.

  Sam turned. “You’re not in any position to threaten me, Avery,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Martinson said. “It wouldn’t be the first time you let your work get in the way of the good colonel’s wellbeing.”

  Sam’s jaw clenched. Martinson was right, of course. Her work had put Brock in harm’s way on more occasions than she could count. In fact, his kidnapping happened only because someone wanted to get to her.

  But she wasn’t taking the bait. “I’m one hundred percent confident in your personal guarantee of his safety,” she said. “Because somewhere in my files, I still have your daughter’s email address. I’d be happy to send her a photo. Maybe one with a catchy title, like, ‘Daddy screws a teenage sex slave.’”

  She turned on her heel and walked out of the café.

  “Why did you walk out on him?” Dan asked. His voice crackled over the transcontinental cell phone link. “Maybe you could have learned something from him.”

  “Because he was full of shit,” Sam said. She sat in the airline hospitality suite, talking on a burner, wearing a pink wig and sweat pants. “He tried to relay an offer that nobody had really made.”

  Dan was silent for a moment. “You weren’t barking up anybody’s tree when they broke into your house,” he said.

  “Exactly,” Sam said. “I was licking my wounds and going to a little girl’s funeral. There was nothing for me to ba
ck off from, because I had already been removed from the Doberman investigation.”

  “Puzzling,” Dan said. “Why would an ex-CIA guy be tailing you in Izmir?”

  “Martinson was as crooked as they come. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s somehow part of the Doberman thing.”

  “You were sure nobody followed you on your flights over there?”

  “As sure as you can ever be, I guess. I wasn’t at my absolute best, but I took all the precautions. I didn’t see anyone, and it would have been difficult for someone to chase me around all day without me spotting them.”

  Dan thought for a moment. “Then maybe that’s the key,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Nobody was following you . . . until you met with Kocaoglu.”

  “Hmm,” Sam said. “Good point. That might suggest they were following Kocaoglu and found me in the process.”

  “That brings up a new question,” Dan said. “Why would an ex-CIA guy be sniffing around a lowbrow jihadi funding scheme?”

  “Maybe it’s a bit more evidence that this thing isn’t as small-time as we originally thought.”

  “You want me to alert the Air Force about someone following Brock around at his deployed location?”

  Sam shook her head. “They get a thousand tips a day about that kind of thing. Our alert would die a lonely death in some nineteen-year-old clerk’s inbox.”

  Dan grunted in reply.

  “Have you learned anything more about that bug someone dropped in my pocket?” she asked.

  “Not a thing,” Dan said. “Aside from it being a brazenly bad play. I mean, who tries to bug a Homeland employee on the day the new scanners go up? But aside from that, they were really clean about it. No prints, no real digital signature. It was pretty professional.”

  Sam thought for a moment. Her brow furrowed and she tapped her teeth with a chipped fingernail. “Maybe it wasn’t a setup,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Sam pursed her lips, still mulling. “Maybe it was a message.”