“Because I didn’t want you to be angry with me,” he said. “Because I didn’t want to stop. I still don’t want to stop. And I was afraid that I might not have a choice if you knew.”
Jenny sighed, disappointed, and it pierced him more deeply than any needle could. “You can’t tell me what you’re doing, fine,” she said. “At least tell me this: what kind of danger are you in?”
He looked down and didn’t answer, which itself was enough of an answer.
“Ah,” she said resentfully. “I see. And what were you planning on doing if you were killed in a foreign country? Was someone going to let me know, or was I supposed to wonder forever why my husband simply didn’t come home one day?”
Morgan wrung his hands and looked down. He knew she was venting now, and of course he knew she deserved to.
“And have you even thought about Alex through all this? How devastated she would be if you were gone?”
Alex was almost all he thought about, and he had always felt justified by telling himself that by doing what he did, he was making the world a better place for Alex. This was absolutely true, and he felt it deeply, as far as it went—and given that the world seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket, this seemed perfectly justified. Still, he felt that it was the wrong thing to say right now. It rang hollow against Jenny’s anger. “I’m sorry,” he said, simply. “I love you and Alex more than anything, and I would never do anything to hurt either of you.”
“You lied, Dan. And you put yourself in danger again. Have you ever thought about what the hell I’m going to do if you die?” Tears ran down her face, and her hands formed fists at her side. “Because now I have to think about that every day.”
“I’m sorry, Jenny,” he said, and meant it. But she just shook her head and turned around. “One day, you’re going to have to decide what’s really important in your life.” She walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
He thought about calling out after her, about saying something, anything, that would make it better, but he decided to respect her anger instead. She needed this time to think about things, and he would let her. Also, her words had stung. They had hit uncomfortably close to home about his own doubts. The truth was that he loved being a spy, and sometimes it was hard to tell whether he did it for the right reasons. He suspected this might turn out to be a night of sleepless tossing and turning. There was, at least, some relief in the truth finally coming out.
“Come on, Neika,” he sighed. “I guess we’re keeping each other company tonight.”
As he walked toward the living room couch, just for a split second he wished that he had lied and made everything okay. He instantly felt guilty about wishing it. She needed time to cool off, he thought to himself as he lay in the dark. He’d be going to D.C. the next day, and so she’d have the opportunity. In the meantime, Morgan would try to find some answers regarding the mysterious organization he was now working for.
CHAPTER 9
Washington, D.C., December 29
“I don’t have much that I can tell you, my friend. You are chasing a ghost.”
The man sitting across from Dan Morgan was Kadir Fastia, a former lieutenant colonel in the Libyan Air Force, former asset and old friend. He looked at Morgan with perfectly serene dark brown eyes, stroking his close-cropped white beard. They were in his study, where every piece of furniture was made of dark, heavy wood, with bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and were lined with beautifully bound books in both Arabic and English.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” said Morgan.
“I think that in fact you knew that I would say that. There is not much that gets past you, Cobra, not if you want to find out. If you are coming to me, it is because you have exhausted your own resources.”
They had first met on a mission together years before. Fastia had been a CIA asset in Libya who had been lying in wait for a very long time. Morgan and Conley had run the mission that Fastia had been preparing for the past many years.
“You are one of my resources,” said Morgan.
“Certainly not the first you have come to,” said Fastia. “Not even close, I believe. As always, Cobra plays his cards close to the chest.”
Kadir Fastia was a powerful man. While he had no official title, Fastia had a finger in every pie. He acted as a consultant on Middle Eastern and North African affairs for various government agencies, think tanks and other private and nonprofit entities, and this alone gave him an in with a lot of movers and shakers. Morgan knew, however, there was more to it than that, that the money that paid for his house and car came from elsewhere. Government agencies frequently needed to act under plausible deniability in delicate situations. To do so, they needed intermediaries to act on their behalf and do things the government couldn’t. And the Libyan fulfilled that precise role.
“How can there be nothing, Kadir? Zeta Division’s headquarters alone must have cost millions on millions, and that’s without even considering the secrecy aspect. Then we have the equipment, human assets, bribes. That’s not even touching on our compensation, which, let me tell you, is not exactly a tiny sum.”
“Money can buy silence as well,” said Fastia.
“Not half as well as a bullet can,” said Morgan.
“That it does. And still you dig for answers, Cobra.”
“I guess not knowing just rubs me the wrong way.”
“So you simply follow the trail?” asked Fastia. “Wherever it leads?”
“That’s the basic idea of it, yeah,” said Morgan. He frowned. “What are you not telling me, Fastia?”
“Some are better than others at hiding their existence,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I have heard of your Zeta Division. Your activities have been hard to miss.”
“What do you know?”
“The fact that it exists,” Fastia said. “That it is a serious player in intelligence and security. Not the government, as far as I know. And not much else. Specifically, I do not know who is financing the operation.”
“There has to be some kind of paper trail,” said Morgan.
“None that has come to my attention yet,” said Fastia.
“There has to be a weak link. No conspiracy is perfect.”
“We don’t know of a perfect conspiracy,” said Fastia.
“But then again, you would not expect to ever find out about one, now would you?” The Libyan grinned an easy grin.
Morgan snorted. “I guess you’re right.”
“But I would not bet on this one being so,” he said. “This organization involves too many people to be perfectly concealed. You simply must do what you always do when you wish to find the force behind the act.”
“Follow the money,” said Morgan.
“Precisely,” said Fastia, his hands together, touching by the fingertips. “You have said it yourself. Division Zeta has a headquarters that cost millions upon millions. Who paid for it, Morgan? There is your link.”
“Sure,” said Morgan. “Now it’s just a matter of finding the right people and asking the right questions.”
“And isn’t it always the way?” Fastia smiled. “There is one more thing. A far-fetched possibility.”
“What?”
“A name. Tell me, Cobra. Do the words ‘Aegis Initiative’ mean anything to you?”
Buck Chapman looked at the delicate face of baby Ella, wrinkly, looking like a little monkey cradled in his arms. It had been barely five months since this baby had changed his life. So young, and born into such a dangerous world. The fact that she coexisted in the world with the terrorists, with so much death and suffering and evil, didn’t fit into Chapman’s mind. It kept him up at night, prompting him to get up to look at her in her crib as his wife snored quietly in their bed, and just watch her, despairing for her innocence and fragility.
“The babysitter’s coming in half an hour,” said Rose, picking up her gym bag. “And then you can go. Think you can manage without me for that time?”
&nb
sp; “Are you kidding me? I’ve got this like a leopard’s got spots.”
“You’re such a dork,” she said affectionately. “Thanks, honey. I know you’ve been so busy these days. I really need this time, and I so appreciate this. See you tonight?”
“See you tonight.” He pecked her on the lips and watched as she walked out the door. He felt Ella stir in his arms. Probably woken up from the banging door.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” he said softly, rocking her gently from side to side. Ella cooed. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a cruel world out there. Lots of bad men out to get us. But don’t worry. The good guys are going to win in the end.” He sighed. “That’s how it’s supposed to go.”
The babysitter arrived twenty minutes later. He gave her instructions and left her with baby Ella. Then he got into his car and made the twenty-minute drive down to the National Mall. He parked at the far end of the Museum of Natural History, then walked around the block along the tree-lined sidewalk.
Chapman knew how to act natural when he had to. He’d been in intelligence long enough that he was always wearing the mask when he was out in public. And so, it was with a semblance of perfect calm and collection that he crossed the three lanes of Madison Drive to the Mall, where he was about to commit treason.
As he walked past the tourists looking at their maps and pointing at landmarks, the word was swimming in his mind. Aegis. It had been lurking in his head for months now. But once he’d resolved to do this, it had started to insinuate itself into his conscious thoughts. He heard it reverberate in his head as he was falling asleep, or after long stretches of silence, cryptic, its significance escaping him. Aegis. In ancient Greece, it had been the name of the shield of the gods, and their insignia, conferring authority and knowledge along with protection on its wearer.
But from what he had been told, Aegis meant something else too. Something that, like the word in his head, was also mysterious, also hidden, and also a constant presence. He dreaded what he was about to do. It was, he kept telling himself, for the good of his country. Of the world. It might help him stop this ongoing slaughter, and that was worth it. But he could never forget that, like in any deal with the devil, he did not truly comprehend the full potential consequences of what he was about to undertake.
He shook these thoughts from his head and looked for the man he’d come to meet here, near the oaks across the street from the Smithsonian columns. The man, however, found him first.
“Mr. Chapman,” came the greeting. Chapman turned around to see the person he was there to meet. The man himself was unremarkable. He looked like he might be a lobbyist or political advisor. Nothing about him would lead anyone to give him a second look. Except that, even with his glasses, Chapman could see that his face was devoid of any kind of expression. A cipher. You wouldn’t know by looking at him that this might be one of the most powerful men in Washington. Maybe one of the most powerful in the entire world.
“My name,” the man said, “is Mr. Smith.”
“So, you got something for me?” Morgan asked.
Grant Lowry stepped aside to admit him into his home, a dark and unkempt apartment boasting stains on dirty carpets and an empty pizza box on the coffee table.
“No, ‘hello, nice to see you, old friend’?” Lowry asked.
“Hello, nice to see you, old friend,” said Morgan obligingly. “How’ve you been?”
Grant Lowry was a computer programmer who’d been a friend of Morgan’s back when he worked for the CIA. They had struck up an unlikely friendship during Morgan’s service, and they had come through for each other enough times before so that Morgan trusted him implicitly.
“Same old, except for all this shit that’s going on,” he said, walking through his apartment, and into the kitchen. “The Agency’s abuzz day and night, and Carr’s been on the warpath. Plus, we’ve got this special presidential task force breathing down our necks.” He opened the refrigerator. “Beer?”
“It’s ten a.m.,” said Morgan. He looked at the pile of dishes and pots in the sink and grimaced.
“It’s my day off, and it’s bad enough I’m stuck running errands for your sorry ass.” He twisted the cap off the beer bottle and took a swig.
“So, you have something for me?”
Lowry nodded, then swallowed a mouthful of beer. “Over this way.”
For all the mess in his apartment, he had an impressive setup for his computer—four monitors, dual keyboard, and a couple of gadgets Morgan didn’t recognize, all on some kind of specialized piece of furniture that kept everything cool and adjustable. Lowry brought up an image on one of the monitors, which was upright. It showed a wire-frame rendering of the building that housed Zeta Division headquarters.
“These are the final blueprints for the building,” he said. “Exactly what the developers used to actually build the thing, including whatever changes were made while the project was underway.”
“And this is from the developer’s actual servers?” Morgan asked.
“Blue Sky Corporation, yeah,” said Lowry.
“Show me the underground,” said Morgan. Lowry zoomed in to the garage. Everything looked perfectly innocent—no sign of a multilevel secret base anywhere. The entrance to Zeta Division was, in this blueprint, nothing more than an innocent utility closet. “Is there anything else there?” Morgan asked.
“What do you mean?” asked Lowry. “That’s it. That’s the blueprint.”
“Does anything seem odd to you?” Morgan asked.
“Beats me,” said Lowry. “I’m not an architect.”
“All right. That’s all I need to know. I owe you one, bud.”
“You owe me a hell of a lot more than one,” said Lowry. “Grab a beer sometime?”
“Don’t drink,” said Morgan, on his way out. “You never saw me.”
“I never do.”
CHAPTER 10
Boston, December 30
Bloch looked down on Morgan with her steely eyes. She looked especially stiff and detached, like she always did when she was angry, her chin upturned to signal the unquestionable superiority of her position. She was acting like a high school principal, standing over him as he sat in his chair as if she were intimidating a student who had been caught red-handed stealing a test. However, it took more than dirty looks to intimidate Morgan. “Do I even have to tell you, Cobra?”
She didn’t, and Morgan wished to hell she wouldn’t. “No. But I guess you’re going to anyway.”
They were in Bloch’s office in Zeta Division head quarters. The spacious room was more like a glass box that overlooked the elaborate Zeta war room, with its long oak table and enormous screens. Bloch kept her office colder than most would while there was still snow on the ground outside. Her workspace itself was modern, sleek, all done in glass and metal, with no personal touches at all—no photographs, no decorations, no trinkets. Only a computer and a pen occupied the glass surface of the desk. It was almost as if she left no personal mark on anything she touched, which made the question of what existed underneath all the more intriguing. The only scrap of personality that existed in that room was Bloch’s own chair, a fancy ergonomic articulated leather office chair. Even the light was sterile and impersonal. The glass that made up the outer walls of her office would turn opaque on command, as it was now, frosted so that it was impossible to see through, giving them privacy as she chewed him out.
“Damned right I’m going to tell you,” said Bloch. “This was our lead—our one lead—in this whole series of incidents.” Her face was stonily stern as she spoke. “Novokoff could have led us to the people behind this. We could have stopped these events, if only we had captured him. Instead, we’re left to look for breadcrumbs again.”
“Damn it, Bloch, I know that,” he said. “I nearly died out there to get him.”
“But you didn’t get him. You let a dangerous arms dealer with ties to a global, sustained terror campaign slip through our fingers—”
“Remind me again who got
us that meeting with Novokoff ? That’s right, it was me. And just the fact that I survived that disaster should get me a goddamn employee-of-the-month plaque on your wall!”
Bloch’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits, and she said, coolly, “You want a medal for not dying, Cobra? I like to think we hold ourselves to a higher standard than that. You know, being that we are an elite, super-secret intelligence outfit. And as the head of this division, I am not in the habit of rewarding incompetence.”
Morgan scoffed incredulously. “You think I blew this op?”
He’d already been debriefed about the failed mission as soon as he had been physically able. He’d never seen the face of the man who had asked him the questions. It had gone down in one of the interrogation rooms in the deep recesses of Zeta headquarters, in front of a camera and a two-way mirror. The interrogator had been just a disembodied voice, asking questions as Morgan spoke into the camera. He must have been one of the mysterious higher-ups, the ones neither he nor anyone else ever saw. And Morgan knew that Bloch had had her own session with the interrogator, a grilling of her own. He knew it couldn’t have been fun for her.
And now it was her turn to pass it on to him.
“You can make a long, long list of people who you can blame for the way things turned out,” she said, “and so completely disregard any part that you had in this fiasco.”
“Any part I had?” he snorted incredulously.
“So are you going to tell me it wasn’t your fault?” she said, in a cruelly mocking voice. “Am I the night manager at a 7-Eleven? Because I thought we were supposed to be the elite of the elite. Best of the best. I thought we were the ones who did what needed to be done, and offered no excuses.”
Morgan grinded his teeth, but he said nothing. Even if there was nothing he could have done differently, the shame of failure still itched and stung. But she was right. If he was good, it was because he never pushed off responsibility for anything onto anyone else. It was because he did what he had to do to get the job done.
Silent Assassin Page 6