The Patriot Paradox

by William Esmont

  Kurt went to the study and opened the door, stepping into his brother’s inner sanctum. The feeling of being in Mike’s personal space triggered a strong sense of déjà vu. It reminded him of an incident in junior high in which he had raided Mike’s bedroom in search of his pot stash. He and a friend, eager to experiment, had concocted a theory in which Mike had a bag of weed hidden somewhere in his room. They had snuck in while Mike was at lacrosse practice and turned the room upside down. It all came to a disastrous ending, however, when Mike came home early and caught them. He could laugh about it now, but at the time, he had feared for his life. The feeling was the same now. He expected Mike to walk in behind him at any second and demand to know what he was doing.

  The room was masculine, yet intimate, with a large mahogany desk stationed in front of a window overlooking the swimming pool. Bookshelves lined the rest of the walls. Titles ranged from cheap pulp paperbacks to elaborate treatises on global political systems. A fireplace covered part of the western wall, flanked by two leather wing chairs and a plush ottoman. Papers covered every available surface.

  Kurt searched the desk first, and when he didn’t find anything, he moved on to the rest of the room. A collection of framed photographs on one of the bookshelves drew his attention. They were a mix of family shots and pictures of people he didn’t recognize. One picture in particular drew him in. It was his brother and two other people, a man and a woman. The picture was on a boat somewhere tropical. The subjects all wore wet suits, and a beaming Mike held a large fish in his arms. The picture was at least five or six years old judging by the lack of gray at Mike’s temples. The woman in the picture was striking, he noted. She had dark, shoulder-length hair, piercing violet eyes and a long, slender neck. He picked up the frame and slid the picture out, searching for a date. Finding none, he replaced the picture, but not before mentally recording the image of the woman. Something about her intrigued him.

  He spent the next ten minutes searching the rest of the office, flipping through books, soaking up what little he could discern of his brother’s personal life. After two passes, he was satisfied he had seen all there was to see and let himself out of the office.

  As soon as he reached the main gathering, he decided it was time to leave. The memory card was burning a hole in his pocket. He couldn’t focus, and he wasn’t ready to grieve. He made his rounds, saying his goodbyes. His mother made him promise to stop by the next day, and he reluctantly agreed.

  As he approached the door, his mind a jumble of conflicting emotions, Kurt heard an unfamiliar voice call his name. He stopped and turned.

  An older man was striding toward him with a serious line drawn on his mouth. The man was dressed in a charcoal suit, crisp white shirt, and a red tie with faint charcoal accents. He screamed Agency. He moved with an easy grace, the body language of a man who was very comfortable with himself and the world around him. He behaved almost aristocratically, looking around as if he was a lord surveying his subjects.

  They shook hands, and the man introduced himself. “Jack Carson. Your brother worked in my division.”

  Kurt’s heart skipped a beat. “Uh…nice to meet you,” he replied with as much indifference as he could muster.

  “I wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss,” Jack continued. “Mike was an outstanding member of the agency family. We’re scrambling without him.”

  “Thank you.” Kurt wanted to get away. He felt cornered, on the defensive.

  Jack moved in closer, so close Kurt could smell his aftershave and the faintest trace of pipe tobacco on his breath. “It’s tragic the way Mike died,” Jack continued. “Were the two of you close?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Kurt glanced at the door.

  “I don’t mean to sound insensitive,” Jack said, “but had you been in contact with him recently?”

  Before the words were out, Kurt knew exactly where Jack was going with his line of questions. He took a step back, injecting some much-needed space between himself and the old spy. “No. We hadn’t spoken in months. I was out of the country.”

  “Ah. That’s right. It’s been a bad year for you as well, hasn’t it? I’m sorry for the loss of your family. Positively tragic.”

  All of Kurt’s instincts were screaming for him to get away as fast as possible. It took every bit of self-control he possessed to smile. “Thank you.”

  Jack’s expression seemed to soften. “Thank you for speaking with me, Kurt.” He fished in his pocket and extracted a card, which he pressed into Kurt’s palm. “Please call me if you think of anything, night or day.”

  Kurt slid the card into his pocket. He did not intend to call this man, at least not until he figured out how he was connected to Mike’s death. “Thanks.”

  “Any time. I mean it,” Jack repeated.

  Kurt gave a quick nod and slipped out the front door. He was parked a block down the street, and a minute later he was behind the wheel, accelerating away from his brother’s house. He had a decision to make, and he had to make it fast. Jack Carson was not at Mike’s house out of the kindness of his heart.

  He was looking for information, and Kurt had a bad feeling he had provided it.

  Eight

  On the way back to his office, Jack Carson picked up his phone and dialed Helen’s secure line. She picked up on the first ring. “Helen here.”

  “It’s Jack. I think I found out where our data went.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Vetter’s brother, Kurt. I just got back from the wake. You should have seen the look on his face when I introduced myself. Like a deer in the headlights!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No doubt. I had the idea this morning while I was getting ready to come over here. Did you know his brother was an analyst at the agency?”

  “Really? No, I didn’t know that.” Helen’s keyboard clattered in the background as she checked Kurt’s records. “Hmmm.”

  Jack gave her a moment to peruse the file, packing and lighting his pipe to fill the void. He cracked a window to allow the smoke to escape.

  “It says here he’s somewhere in South America.”

  “The file is wrong. He’s here, in Fairfax.”

  Jack came to a line of traffic stopped at a light and drifted into the right lane for his turn. “I want surveillance on the brother,” he ordered. “Set up a ‘sneak and peak’ on his house, get his phone records, the works.”

  “I’m on it,” Helen responded. “I’ll have Mason hit his house as soon as possible.”

  The act of performing a ‘sneak and peek’ on a citizen was technically illegal, but the agency did it all the time. The ongoing surveillance, on the other hand, was a little trickier. Jack had the authority to order surveillance on anyone for up to twenty-four hours, as long as he was able to justify the target was a national security threat. After that, he had to petition a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance judge for a warrant.

  “Good. I’ll be there in about…” he checked his watch, “fifteen minutes.” He flipped his phone shut and dropped it in the tray between the seats. The most important thing now was to verify that Kurt Vetter had the stolen information, and if he did, eliminate him and all traces of the files. That could only happen, Jack knew, if his team acted fast. He frowned, anger surging through his body, as he recalled Mike’s betrayal. He had wasted two years grooming Mike to succeed him, two years of his life he would never get back. He scowled. Ungrateful prick.

  A few miles down the road, Jack saw the top floors of the CIA complex poking through the trees. He smiled. Soon he would be moving to a much larger office, in downtown Washington. The country would see him as a hero, a man who had the courage and fortitude to eliminate a grave existential threat. He had no doubt of this, and the knowledge bolstered his confidence in his decisions. Despite appearances, he wasn’t doing this for himself. No, this was for the country, for all of the people who had fought and suffered during the Cold War. Jack believed, and he had seen no evidence to the contrary, that
he was the last true patriot.

  He slowed at the entrance to the facility and retrieved his badge from his breast pocket. As his window came down, the air conditioning of his Lexus kicked in harder as it fought the sweltering humidity.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Carson,” the guard said. Jack had been coming to this facility for so long the guards knew him by face alone. Still, they had to do their jobs.

  “Afternoon, Rich,” Jack replied with a grin. He handed over his badge.

  The guard, a trim Hispanic man in his early forties, took Jack’s badge and compared it to his face. At the same time, sensors probed his car from beneath, analyzing it for explosive residues, radiation sources, and a host of other contraband deemed detrimental to the agency. Rich swiped Jack’s badge through a portable card reader and the light turned green, indicating the badge was authentic.

  “Have a nice afternoon, sir.” Rich returned the badge.

  “You too, Rich,” he responded. He pushed the button controlling the driver’s side window, sealing out the heat and restoring his climate-controlled bubble.

  Nine

  Kurt pulled into his driveway and came to a stop a few inches from the garage door. He killed the engine, but remained in the driver’s seat, lost in thought. All thoughts of the funeral were gone as he pondered the strange discussion with Mike’s boss. Kurt had a gnawing feeling about the man. Something about him screamed danger. Something he couldn’t quite identify.

  “Screw it.” He got out of the car and went into the gloomy house, heading straight for his computer. This time, instead of picking through files at random, Kurt typed in Jack Carson’s name along with Mike’s. Right away, he got three hundred results, ranked according to the frequency of the words within the documents. Fifteen documents contained both names. Kurt chose this subset and started reading.

  An hour later, he sat back and took what felt like his first breath in days. This was bigger than he could handle alone. Despite his reservations, his only option was to trust his brother. He had to see Amanda Carter.

  Kurt switched over to a web browser. He opened up Orbitz and initiated a search for an open-ended ticket from DC to Heathrow Airport, leaving as soon as possible. Three seats were available. He chose the one leaving at nine o’clock.

  It was only six. That meant he had an hour and a half to get to the airport, maybe two if he got lucky with security and traffic. Dulles was only a half-hour away, but Northern Virginia traffic was notoriously unpredictable. He dashed upstairs and pulled his old travel bag from the master closet. He unzipped it and threw it on the bed. With practiced efficiency, he gathered two shirts, two pairs of pants, several pairs of underwear, a light jacket, and his shaving gear. Discarding all pretense of efficient packing, he dumped everything into the bag and zipped it shut

  He grabbed the bag and raced back downstairs, killing the lights on the way. After a quick check of the locks, he took off.

  ~~~

  Helen Bartholomew yawned. She had been working since six o’clock in the morning and was sick and tired of staring at her computer screen. She rubbed the bridge of her aquiline nose, pushing her glasses up high on her forehead. A nasty migraine was begging to brew somewhere between her temples.

  Her computer beeped and a message flashed on the screen. “Hmm… what’s this?” She opened the message.

  Vetter, J. London Heathrow. 0200Z. Read More?

  She clicked on the ‘Read More’ link, and the message expanded, listing the details of Kurt Vetter’s ticket purchase.

  She grinned. Now this is more like it. One of the wonderful benefits of working inside Langley was the direct tie-in with the real-time data collection efforts run by the NSA and the FBI. Helen had free rein to conduct analysis against this endless stream of data as it coursed through the arteries of the various intelligence networks, picking and choosing items of interest. Technically, she was unable to monitor traffic originating from within the United States, but since Kurt’s flight terminated in the United Kingdom, she had full access.

  She dialed Jack’s number.

  “This is Jack,” she heard, in stereo. She swiveled around. Jack was standing right behind her, coat in hand.

  She dropped her phone back into the cradle. “You were right. It looks like our boy is taking a trip. No return date.” Helen rolled to the side and Jack leaned in to read the message.

  After reading, he straightened to his full height and smiled. “I knew it. I want Mason on that flight.”

  “No problem.” Helen’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and a moment later, she looked up. “Done.” She had placed Mason three seats behind Kurt.

  “Good,” Jack said. He took a seat on the edge of Helen’s desk. “We need to find out where he’s going. He must be meeting someone.”

  Helen shrugged. “It must be someone he trusts. Someone both he and Mike know.”

  “Yeah, but London? Can you run a search to cross-index all current and former agency employees connected to Mike who may be stationed over there?”

  Helen bit her lip as she pondered the most effective search criteria. “Sure,” she said, turning to the keyboard and entering the first query that came to mind. Zero results.

  Jack got up and paced around the room. “Okay. That rules out someone on our side. It’s got to be someone else then, another agency maybe?”

  “Maybe it’s the British?” Helen suggested.

  Jack stopped pacing. “Interesting idea. The British.” He drew the word out.

  Helen’s phone rang. “Mason,” she said, indicating the caller ID. She picked it up.

  “Hey, Mason.”

  “What’s this about London?” Mason asked.

  “Vetter is moving. You’re on the nine o’clock flight.”

  Mason groaned. “Damn it! Let me talk to Jack.”

  “Sure. He’s right here.” She handed the phone to Jack. “He wants to speak with you.”

  Jack put the phone up to his ear. She watched his eyes narrow as he listened. Mason was probably complaining about the last minute posting.

  He let him bitch for a good ten seconds before cutting him off, “Mason! Stop! Get your ass on that plane and take care of this guy. We’ll cover things here.”

  After hanging up, Jack turned back to Helen. “I’ve got to make some calls. Let’s talk again in an hour.”

  Helen acknowledged him with a grunt. She had already shifted her focus back to the national databases and was busy searching for the London connection.

  Ten

  As usual, the short-term parking at Dulles was filled to capacity. Mason put his car in the blue long-term lot, and climbed onto the bus for the long ride to the British Airways terminal. He barely recalled the drive to the airport, having kept one eye on his phone and one eye on the road the entire time. Helen had been busy transmitting a wealth of information to him, including multiple pictures of Kurt Vetter as well as lists of his known contacts in London along with hotels and restaurants he had frequented in the past, all based upon information gleaned from his credit card records.

  The bus slowed to a stop at the main terminal. Mason hefted his bag onto his shoulder and climbed out to the curb. Since he only had one piece of carry-on luggage, he proceeded straight to the security line, which wound through the main terminal like a coiled snake.

  Much to his surprise, he spotted Kurt Vetter right away; twenty feet ahead, Vetter stood patiently, waiting to go through the security checkpoint. Mason sent a quick message to Helen informing her he had acquired his target. The line surged forward. Mason dug his passport out of his breast pocket. His boarding pass was stored in his phone. He was traveling as Max Pearson, a name close enough to his own that it wouldn’t be difficult to remember if pressed.

  The line shuffled forward again. In front of him, a young girl, maybe three or four, smiled up at him. Mason gave her a covert wave, sending her squealing for cover behind her mother’s long legs. The girl tugged on her mother’s hand and pointed at Mason. Although Mason knew he wa
sn’t attractive by conventional standards, he felt he had a way with women of all ages with his quick sense of humor and easy smile that made them melt.

  The girl’s mother finally turned toward him to appease her daughter. Mason noted she wasn’t wearing a ring on her left hand.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said with a mischievous smile. “My daughter says you look like a man on TV.”

  Mason grinned and gave a hearty chuckle. “Don’t I wish!” He held out his hand. “I’m Max.”

  The woman blushed. “I’m Carol. Where are you traveling today?” she asked.

  “London. And you?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  Mason knelt down. “And who, may I ask, are you?” he said to the little girl.

  When the child didn’t answer, her mother said, “Ruthie,” making the little girl shriek in delight.

  The line lurched forward again. They were almost at the point where they would separate into individual security lanes, and for a moment, Mason thought he had lost his target. He found him a second later, on the other side of the security checkpoint. He had bent to tie his shoes.

  “Have a good trip,” he told Carol and Ruthie. On any other day, he would have played the situation out, seeing where it would lead, but not this time.

  “You too, Max. It was nice meeting you.” Carol gave him a look as if she was about to say something, but then seemed to change her mind.

  “Likewise.” Traveling to the United Kingdom with weapons was dicey on a good day, so Mason had arranged to meet with an agency contact on the other side to retrieve a new side arm. It wasn’t worth the trouble to try to carry one through security, despite what the movies showed, and he didn’t want to travel under diplomatic cover either. This trip was strictly off the books.

  On the other side of the checkpoint, he stopped to put his shoes back on. He glanced to his right and caught Carol’s eye again. He gave her a quick wink, and then turned his attention back to Kurt, following him to the AeroTrain platform.