Noble Intent

by William Miller

  McPherson tipped a nod to Burke.

  Burke returned it. No need for introductions. In McPherson’s world, Burke was only a bit player. An operations officer was simply another cog in the wheel.

  Coughlin was too keyed up to sit. He paced the floor, his facial tick torturing the side of his face. A thick file folder was clutched in one hand. Burke had never seen him so high-strung. His fingers jerked and danced like they were playing an imaginary piano.

  Armstrong started the meeting by saying, “What happened in Vesoul?”

  Coughlin held up the file in his hand. “A former Special Operations officer named Jacob Noble showed up out of nowhere and blew the op.” He slapped the folder down on the coffee table with a sharp thwack! “The guy is a former Green Beret with a history of interfering in operations. Isn’t that right, Burke?”

  Burke fought to control his face. Not that long ago, he had used Noble to rewire a mission in Mexico City. The affair had ended in one of the most sensational shootouts in recent history. When it was over, a drug cartel was in tatters and a major U.S. politician was fending off allegations of illegal campaign funding. Only a handful of people at the CIA knew the whole story, and two of them were in this room. Burke spread his hands. “I had nothing to do with Noble’s sudden appearance in France.”

  “Sure you didn’t.” Coughlin’s face twitched and for a moment Burke could picture him in a straightjacket raving about bats. “Sure. It’s all one big coincidence. Aren’t you the guy that says you don’t believe in coincidence?”

  “Still don’t,” Burke said. “Jake Noble was Sam’s introduction to the Company. He saved her life in Hong Kong. It makes sense she would call Noble when she found herself in a corner.”

  Coughlin said, “The guy’s mother has medical bills that make Melania Trump’s wardrobe look modest! He’s unemployed. He lives hand to mouth. You expect us to believe he hopped aboard his private jet and rushed over to France?”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet,” Burke admitted.

  “You mean you don’t have an excuse handy.”

  Director Armstrong lit one of her thin cigars, leaned back in the sofa, and blew smoke up toward the ceiling. “When?”

  Coughlin turned to her, his brow clouded over. “When what?”

  “When would Burke have had time to read Noble in on the operation?” Armstrong asked. “He’s been in on the search from the word go.”

  Coughlin didn’t have anything to say.

  “That’s only one of the questions I’d like answered,” Armstrong said. She rose up, went to her desk and came back with a glossy black-and-white which she laid on top of Coughlin’s file, like a poker player dropping four aces. It was a surveillance photo of Sam and Duval outside the hotel. She rotated it so the DNI got a good look. “It’s hard to tell with the hat, but my people assure me that’s Sacha Duval.”

  No one spoke for several seconds. DNI McPherson, who until now had followed the debate with polite disinterest, was the first to break the silence. “Duval is in the open?”

  “It would appear so,” Armstrong told him as she retook her place on the sofa.

  “Duval is top priority,” McPherson said. “This Samantha Gunn character needs to be dealt with, but tell your people to bring Duval in alive,”

  “What do you mean dealt with?” Burke asked.

  “I’m not here to parse words,” McPherson said. “You’ve got a rogue agent. That’s the CIA’s problem. Duval is a wanted fugitive. We need to know how this guy gets his information and what else he’s holding before he leaks any more state secrets to the press. Duval is priority one.”

  “They both need to be brought in alive. A CIA officer is dead and Sacha Duval is somehow mixed up in the whole affair. We need answers. We aren’t going to get them if Grey makes the call.”

  “The hell is that supposed to mean?” Coughlin said. His face did a rapid-fire twitch.

  “It means Bonner was up to his eyeballs in a black bag operation and now Grey is trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug.”

  Director Armstrong held up a hand for silence. “Let’s all get on the same page. I brought DNI McPherson here so everything is out in the open. The current administration has enough to worry about. No sense adding fuel to the fire. I have a briefing with the president in a couple of hours. He’s going to want an update. He doesn’t like to hear ‘I don’t know.’ So, I want something to give him. Who knew Duval was leaving the embassy and when? Furthermore, why wasn’t I made aware of it?”

  All eyes turned to Coughlin. As acting head of operations, Duval would have been under Coughlin’s jurisdiction. He said, “If I even suspected, I would have brought it to your attention.”

  “You mean you had no idea?” DNI McPherson said.

  Armstrong didn’t look any happier. She said, “He’s on America’s most wanted list. He’s been under twenty-four-hour surveillance. We’re monitoring all his communications. Now you’re telling me he slipped out of the embassy without raising suspicions? We’re the CIA for cripes’ sake. How did he manage that?”

  Coughlin shook his head. “I don’t know. He must have had help.”

  Armstrong scooted to the edge of her seat and leaned forward. Her skirt hem rode up an inch. She said, “Somebody knew. I don’t believe for a second that Frank Bonner just happened to show up at the dock when Duval was stepping off a boat. There are too many coincidences. Did Bonner indicate he was laying in any operations concerning Duval?”

  Coughlin shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  “You’re sure?” Armstrong said.

  “Bonner was a top-notch field officer with an impeccable record,” Coughlin told her. “And Grey is a hired gun. He only knows what he’s told. If there’s any shady business going on, I’d take a closer look at Gunn and Noble.”

  “That’s one possible scenario,” Burke muttered.

  “Can you think of any others?” Coughlin asked, like he was daring the other man to come up with an answer.

  “I can think of dozens,” Burke said. “We won’t know until we sit Gunn down and have a talk with her.”

  “If that’s even possible,” Coughlin said. “She’s already killed one man. At this point, she might not be taken alive.”

  “Do everything you can to make sure she is,” Armstrong told him. She fixed him with a hard look. “I want both Gunn and Duval taken into custody. Do I make myself clear?”

  Coughlin’s eye twitched. “Fine. Now let’s discuss Jake Noble. The guy is aiding and abetting a murderer and an international fugitive. I’m asking, right out in the open, what means am I authorized to use?”

  Burke’s stomach clenched.

  Director Armstrong leaned back and drummed the arm of the sofa with manicured fingernails. A vein pulsed in her neck. “Samantha Gunn needs to be questioned about her role in the murder of Frank Bonner, and Duval is an information gold mine. Bring them in alive if at all possible.”

  She stopped talking and her silence told Coughlin everything he needed to know. Without coming right out and saying it, Armstrong had given him permission to kill Noble if he got in the way.

  A cruel smile turned up one side of Coughlin’s twitching face. “There’s nothing more to discuss. If anybody needs me, I’ll be in the situation room cleaning up this mess.”

  Armstrong called an end to the meeting and Burke waited until DNI McPherson was gone before saying, “For God’s sake, you just gave him the green light to eliminate Jake.”

  Armstrong puffed on her cigar. “What else could I do? Noble cut me out of the loop. He’s refusing to bring Duval and Gunn in.”

  Burke ran a hand over his face and groaned. “That kid has a stubborn streak a mile wide and his own sense of right and wrong.”

  Armstrong waved away a cloud of smoke. “Duval is a high priority target. If he makes it to a non-extradition country, there’s no telling what sort of bombshells he’s going to drop. You want to be the one to tell the president we let him get away
because we have a soft spot for a burned spy?”

  “Okay.” Burke puffed out his cheeks. “Okay, you’re right. But I still don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to,” Armstrong told him. “I don’t particularly like it, but we both knew the risks when we dropped Noble into the mix. And Noble knew what he was getting into.”

  Much as Burke hated to admit it, Armstrong was right. If she had gone to bat for Jake, it would have blown the lid off their little coup. Burke said, “You think Coughlin is caught up in this whole mess or is he just overzealous?”

  “I think he’s up to his eyeballs in a black bag operation that was supposed to stay off the records.” Armstrong blew smoke. “Let’s just hope Noble can untangle the Gordian knot. Meanwhile, I want you to quietly dig through Coughlin’s ops and see what he’s been up to.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  LeBeau had been transported to Centre Hospitalier de la Haute-Saône. Grey entered through the emergency room doors twenty minutes later. Preston was right behind him. The doors hissed open and sighed shut with a gentle push of warm air. Florescent lights reflected on green and white linoleum streaked by wheelchair tracks. Grey went to the front desk and flashed his fake badge at a heavy-set nurse with gray hair. His French wasn’t as good as LeBeau’s, but it was passable so long as he didn’t get drawn into a long conversation. He said, “A detective was brought in a while ago. I want to know if he’s alright.”

  “He’s still in treatment,” the nurse told them. “I’ll inform the doctor you are here, if you’d like to wait.”

  He and Preston went to the big picture windows looking out at a parking lot full of cars. An ambulance pulled up to the emergency room entrance and paramedics unloaded a man on a stretcher with his neck in a brace. LeBeau hadn’t looked much better. Paramedics had strapped him to a board before Grey could get close enough to ask any questions. He had been in a neck brace and his mouth was a bloody gash in his swollen face.

  Preston kept his back to the front desk and took a bottle of pain killers from his pocket. His hand was blistering where he had grabbed hold of the hot door handle. It made Grey think of the Christmas movie where a pair of bumbling burglars are in a house full of booby traps. Only this wasn’t funny. The skin around the burn was already turning an ugly shade of black with an angry, red eye in the center. He tried to get the cap off the pill bottle one-handed, but Grey had to help him.

  Preston tipped several pain killers into his mouth and swallowed.

  “Go easy on those things,” Grey warned.

  “My hand is killing me,” Preston snarled. “I should have a doctor look at it.”

  “Later,” Grey said.

  “How long before they figure out LeBeau isn’t a real cop?”

  “Not long,” Grey said. “Then they’ll be looking for us.”

  “So what are we doing here?” Preston asked with a glance around the hospital waiting room. “The place is full of cameras.”

  “We have to make sure he doesn’t talk,” Grey said.

  Preston stared at him. He started to open his mouth but was interrupted by a doctor in a green smock with wire-rimmed glasses. He greeted them with a reassuring smile.

  “The detective is your partner?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Grey assured him. “Is he going to make it?”

  “He lost a substantial amount of blood but he’s in stable condition. He’ll need surgery. He’s got a broken leg and a chipped vertebra. I won’t know what else is broken until we’ve had him under the x-ray. For right now, he’s sedated, but you can look in on him if you’d like.”

  “That would be fine,” Grey said. “Thank you.”

  The doctor told them the room number and then went on with his rounds.

  Preston turned to him and dropped his voice to a whisper. “What are you gonna do?”

  Grey felt his pocket vibrate and held up a finger for Preston to wait. He recognized Coughlin’s number and put the phone to his ear. “Any word on Gunn?”

  “Nothing yet,” Coughlin said. “We know what vehicle they’re in and I’ll call you as soon as we have a location.”

  Grey cursed.

  “My thoughts exactly. You really dropped the ball this time.”

  “Jake Noble showed up out of nowhere,” Grey said. His voice had an edge to it and a vein throbbed in his forehead. “He snatched Sam and Duval right out of our hands.”

  “I saw it,” Coughlin reminded him. “So did the rest of Langley. I thought our friends in Le Milieu had picked him up?”

  “They did,” Grey said. “He beat the hell out of one of their people and escaped. He put one of mine in the hospital.”

  “Which one?” Coughlin asked.

  “LeBeau.”

  “How is he?”

  “Not good,” Grey said. “We’re at the hospital now. He’s going to need surgery.”

  “That complicates things,” Coughlin said. “We can’t have him talking to police.”

  “I’m taking care of it. Who is this Noble guy anyway?” Grey asked.

  “He’s former Special Operations Group.”

  “Oh, great. A trigger-happy idiot with a Rambo complex.”

  “It gets worse,” Coughlin said. “Remember the snafu in Mexico City a couple months back?”

  “The Mexican cartel that got wiped out?” Grey asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Grey said, “Same guy?”

  “Same guy,” Coughlin confirmed. “Don’t lock horns with him. He’s not anyone you want to tangle with. The next time you get a chance, put a bullet in him. No messing around. We need to clean this mess up and tie off the loose ends. I just got out of a meeting with the Director. She knows about Duval and she’s starting to ask questions.”

  Grey felt the vicious little rodent gnawing at the lining of his stomach again. He said, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got a pair of hard luck cases working to wipe any evidence from the database,” Coughlin said. “I’ll make sure the computer records match. You find out the name of Duval’s failsafe. Do not screw up again, understand?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Grey said. “Just make sure the computer is taken care of.”

  He dropped the phone into his pocket.

  Preston asked, “What’s Mexico got to do with anything?”

  Grey’s brow wrinkled. “Huh?”

  “You said something about Mexico.”

  Grey scratched behind an ear. “Remember the guy who duked it out with the cartel in Mexico last year?”

  Preston frowned. “I remember hearing about it. We suspected it was one of our guys working off the books.”

  “That’s our freelancer.”

  Preston groaned. “The guy took out an entire cartel.”

  “In as many words,” Grey told him. “Now he’s our problem. You go wait in the car. I’m going to look in on LeBeau.”

  Preston’s mouth formed a strict line. For a moment it looked like he would try to stop Grey. They had worked with LeBeau nearly ten years. Bonds like that run deep, even in the world of counter intelligence where everyone’s allegiance is suspect.

  Grey grabbed Preston’s sleeve and yanked, but kept his voice down. “You want to go to jail for the rest of your life?”

  Preston frowned and shook his head.

  “Go wait in the car,” Grey ordered.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “So I laid in a hasty operation to snatch Duval before Bonner could kill him,” Sam was saying.

  Noble sat across from her on a hard wooden pew. His bottom was numb. Wind moaned around the eaves of the old church and whistled through cracks in the stained-glass windows. Noble had his phone set to record and his elbows propped on his knees for support. Sam sat Indian style. She had spent the last half hour detailing her discovery of Bonner’s plan: how she realized he was laying in an operation behind closed doors, got curious, dug a little deeper, then found out Duval was making a move and Bonner meant to assassinat
e him. She conveniently left out Duval’s destination, but everything else was a blow-by-blow account of the last three days. Noble didn’t need to interrupt her. She had been through the Farm and knew Company protocols for debriefing. She laid it all out, beginning to end.

  Tears welled up in Sam’s eyes as she finished her story and she dashed them away with an angry swipe of her hand. “I didn’t mean for Frank Bonner to get killed. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. My intent was to grab Duval and turn him over to the Company before Bonner could bury him.”

  Noble wanted to stop the video, put his arms around her and tell her everything was going to be alright. But that was a lie. Nothing would ever be the same again. It was unlikely any of them would make it out of this alive and if they did, Sam would spend the rest of her life in prison, or on the run, constantly looking over her shoulder.

  It took everything Noble had to keep the video rolling while tears spilled down her cheeks. Her breath steamed out of her mouth, forming silver clouds. Noble’s heart squeezed inside his chest and for a moment he wondered if it would keep beating or quit altogether. He motioned for her to continue.

  “Official statement of field officer Samantha Gunn, Paris Branch.” She rattled off her security clearance and number. She finished with, “Signing off.”

  Noble stopped the recording.

  Sam sunk her face in her hands. “I really made a mess of things.”

  He scooted across the rickety pew, put an arm around her shoulders and she buried her head in his chest. They had set up in one of the side vestibules off the main sanctuary. The musty smell reminded Noble of an attic. Duval was in the small entryway, called a narthex, keeping a lookout. At least he was supposed to be keeping a lookout. He was probably fast asleep.