by J. C. Fields
“Beg pardon? I’m sure…” He stopped and folded his arms. “Let’s wait for the paperwork.” At that moment, the door to his office opened and a middle-aged woman entered and handed a file to Rodriquez. He took it and laid it on his desk. After returning the glasses to his nose, he opened the file and started reading. Looking up, he smiled. “Here it is, right on top.” He handed the paper to Wolfe.
Reading the document carefully, Wolfe committed names, times, and reasons, to memory before handing it to Nadia. Returning his attention to Rodriguez, he said, “We’ll need a copy of this before we leave.”
The captain nodded.
“What kind of inmate was Benson?”
“I personally never dealt with him, but I can let you talk to his case manager.”
“That would be helpful, Captain.”
Ten minutes later a tall, slender man with stooped shoulders, a hawk nose and wispy thinning hair entered Rodriguez’s office. Like the captain, Jarod Cronin displayed no enthusiasm at meeting with two deputies from the US Marshal Service. During introductions, Cronin gave each a limp handshake, frowned, and then folded his arms over his sunken chest.
“Thank you for meeting with us, Mr. Cronin.” Wolfe gave the man a smile before moving on to his question. “What kind of inmate was Robert Benson?”
“Complete asshole.”
Wolfe fought to contain his surprise. “Could you be a little more precise in your description?”
“Intolerant, combative, easily irritated, unmanageable, and incorrigible. Is that precise enough for you, Deputy?”
Noticing Rodriquez taking a defensive stance, Wolfe replied, “It’s a start.”
Nadia asked the next question. “How long were you his case manager?”
“Five years.”
“Was he always like that?”
The thin man shook his head. “No, only in the last two.”
Wolfe tilted his head. “What changed?”
Cronin leaned against the captain’s desk. “I don’t know and he never said. But I believe it had to do with a visit from his brother.”
“His brother is an attorney who lives in Albany, New York.”
Rodriquez typed on his keyboard and studied the screen for several moments. “Brother did not identify his residence as Albany, New York. He indicated he lived in West Plains, Missouri. He also did not claim to be an attorney. The form he filled out says he worked at a lumberyard where he lived.”
“What name did he use?”
Referring to the screen again, the captain said, “Martin Benson.”
“Did he show an ID?”
The captain shook his head. “It doesn’t say here. My guess is he would have needed to.”
Wolfe nodded and stood. “Gentlemen, you’ve been helpful. If we can get a copy of the release form from the DOJ, our business here is complete.”
Both Rodriguez and Cronin visibly relaxed.
“So, what now, Michael?”
“Not sure yet.” Wolfe fell into silence as he maneuvered the rental car out of the prison parking lot. He traveled Northeast until they came to the intersection of Gary Hill and Highway 25. Once they were on 25, Wolfe glanced at Nadia. “We’ll find a hotel for the night and head out early in the morning. Daniel Field is only 500 nautical miles from West Plains. We won’t need to break the flight up into two legs. Besides, we need to find Jana. My guess would be she’s with Martin.”
“Where would we start?”
“I believe he’s somewhere on my property. He knows it better than I do.”
“I would think he would be afraid someone might find him there.”
Shaking his head, Wolfe didn’t answer right away. Finally, he glanced at her. “Not necessarily. The property is over three hundred and twenty acres, most of which is rugged rolling wooded land. I know of at least three caves on the property and I haven’t taken the time to explore all of it. My guess would be Martin has.”
Nadia nodded. “I take it you realized who got Bobby out of prison.”
“Yeah. Reid’s assistant.”
“Michael, I do not think Reid believes you are dead.”
The side of Wolfe’s mouth twitched as he glanced at her. “We’ll assume he doesn’t believe you are either.”
“How would he know about Bobby?”
“Easy. He could be checking anyone who served with me. Bobby was my spotter, as was Rick Flores. I haven’t spoken to Rick for almost five years. I don’t believe he could tell Reid where I live. He’s never been to the property, or do I believe Rick would be inclined to help the guy. He doesn’t like the CIA.”
“How would we find out if Reid reached out to him?”
“Joseph.”
FBI Special Agent Rick Flores stood a shade over five-foot-seven and weighed in at one hundred and eighty pounds. Broad shouldered with a thin waist, he was still in prime physical shape even though his fiftieth birthday was several years in the rearview mirror.
As a sniper instructor at the FBI Training Facility, Quantico, Virginia, Flores requested the meeting occur at one of the firing ranges of the facility. As he shook the hand of Joseph Kincaid, he said, “Never met a National Security Advisor before.”
Joseph shrugged. “Nothing special, just a fancy title.”
Flores chuckled. “What can I do for you, Mr. Kincaid?”
“We had a mutual friend.”
“Had?”
Nodding, Joseph continued, “Michael Wolfe.”
“Yeah, I heard. Dammed fine marksman. What about him?”
“Has anyone from the CIA contacted you about him recently?”
With a slight grin, Flores nodded. “I don’t hear anything about Michael Wolfe for a decade and then all of a sudden, people start coming out of the woodwork asking questions about him.”
“How many people?”
“A few.” The sniper trainer cocked his head. “Mr. Kincaid, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. What’s going on?”
“So, someone with the CIA contacted you?”
Flores nodded.
“When?”
“About three months ago.”
“What did he want?”
“He was a she. She wanted to know if I had heard from Michael recently. I laughed and told her not since his death.”
“Her reaction?”
He chuckled “She got all serious with me, claimed there was evidence he wasn’t dead. I laughed again. CIA spooks bother me—they don’t have a sense of humor.”
“Some don’t. Was her name Kendra Burges?’
Flores stopped smiling and looked at Joseph with narrowed eyes. “How’d you know?”
“She impersonated a DOJ attorney and secured the release of Bobby Benson from FCI Edgefield in May of this year.”
“Yeah, I heard Bobby got into trouble. He spotted for Michael…” Flores’ eyes grew wide. “Wait a minute. They really do believe Michael’s alive, don’t they?”
Joseph nodded.
Flores pursed his lips. “So why is the president’s National Security Advisor looking into this?”
“I’m not here in that capacity, Agent. Michael was a friend and I don’t want his name slandered or blamed for some CIA screw up. He’s not in a position to defend himself.”
“I guess not.” He grew quiet as he contemplated the gravel next to his shoes. He returned his attention to Joseph. “What do you need from me?”
“I need to know exactly what she told you.”
Chapter 19
Somewhere in Howell County Missouri
T he following day, after an uneventful flight from Augusta, Georgia’s Daniel Field, Wolfe and Nadia arrived at their Howell County earth sheltered home an hour before sunset. After unpacking, Wolfe used his cell phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot to view Google Earth on his laptop. Using techniques taught to him by Joseph’s computer hacker friend, he searched the satellite image of his property.
Nadia watched over his shoulder. “You suspect something, don’t you, Michael?”<
br />
He looked up and grinned. “You just used a contraction, Nadia.”
“Stop it. I did not.”
“You’re becoming Americanized.”
She frowned, straightened, placed her hands on her hips and in a string of French expletives, told him exactly what she thought of his statement.
As he tried hard to keep a straight face, he failed and laughed. Her frown disappeared and she started laughing too. He said, “To answer your question, yes I do.” He pointed to a section southeast of the barely discernable structure they currently occupied. “I continue to be amazed at how invisible this place is to satellite images. If I didn’t know where to look, I wouldn’t be able to find it. But if you travel east of our cleared land, the trees and undergrowth grow denser. Many of the hills and valleys get steep in several sections of this area. There’s a freshwater creek just outside my property line, here.” He pointed toward a crooked line on the image.
Leaning over, she rested her chin on his shoulder and stared at the laptop. “It does not look like a river.” He could feel her warmth against his back.
“It’s not. It’s fed by an underground stream further to the north. I’ve only been there a couple of times and that was before I built this house. I’ve never been back. I think this area”—he made a circling motion over the image—”is where they might be.”
“Where would they be staying? There are no houses there.”
“No, no houses, but there are numerous caves in the area. I know where a few are, but have never taken the time to explore them.”
She put her arms around his neck and raised her chin to the top of his head. “Should we check them out tomorrow?”
“I think we have to—or at least see if we can find any evidence of recent activity around any of them.”
She slid a hand down and undid the top two buttons on his shirt. Then the same hand slid under the shirt and rubbed his chest. Wolfe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What are you doing?”
“Do I have to tell you?”
“No.”
“Good. I am going to our bedroom.”
“I’m right behind you.”
The time was 9:26 p.m. when his cell phone chirped with an incoming text message. VoIP call ten minutes.
Michael acknowledged the message and opened his laptop again. Exactly ten minutes after the text message arrived, he accepted the call.
“Good evening, Joseph.”
“How was your trip?”
“Interesting. We confirmed Kendra Burges, identifying herself as a DOJ attorney, presented paperwork to the FCI Edgefield Warden authorizing the early release of Bobby Benson. We obtained a copy of the document.”
“Good. Get it to me.”
“There’s more.”
“Oh?”
“When I asked what type of inmate Bobby was, they told me he was uncooperative and violent. I don’t remember him that way.”
“People change, Michael.”
“Yeah, well it gets better. He received a visit from a person identifying himself as a brother two years ago this past May. Their records indicate it was the half-brother, Martin. Up to that time, he was a model prisoner. Afterward, not so much.”
“Huh.”
Wolfe asked, “What did you find out?”
“As you suspected, Kendra also made contact with Rick Flores several weeks before her visit to FCI Edgefield.”
“Did Rick tell her anything?”
“No, I don’t believe he did. He seemed to have a healthy distrust of the Agency.”
“He always has. What about the social security number we gave you?”
“It does belong to a Martin Benson born in Albany, New York. Plus, I found other interesting information about him.”
Wolfe remained quiet, waiting for Joseph to continue.
“While Bobby joined the Marines, Martin joined the Army Engineer Corp. He enlisted when he was eighteen, claiming both parents deceased. He also failed to mention anything on his application about having two brothers.”
“That’s interesting.”
“His career lasted twenty years with two deployments overseas. He missed Desert Storm but spent one tour in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.”
“What did he do?”
“Built bunkers.”
“Makes sense. He designed my house. I wondered where he got the skills and knowledge. He and I never really talked about…” Michael paused.
“What’s the matter?”
“Thinking back about the first time we met, I’m the one who brought up the subject of his spotting for me. He just agreed with me.”
“Did he look that much like Bobby?”
“To me he did. But I was taking into consideration how long it had been since I had seen the man. You have to remember—I was just a kid during Desert Storm. Bobby was a couple of years older. While we were working on the house, we never discussed our time in the service. I figured if he wanted to discuss it, he would. He never did. Now I know why he didn’t know details.” Wolfe paused. “What did his record say about his mental state at the time he mustered out?”
“Clean bill of health, honorable discharge, no PTSD.”
“That really doesn’t tell us much. Some guys hide it for a while.”
“He spent most of his time in Iraq in the Green Zone. The only real combat he saw was in Tora Bora in June of 2007.”
Wolfe was quiet for several moments. “You said Tora Bora?”
“Yes.”
“Does it say what he did there?”
“Studied the cave complex where they thought Bin Laden was hiding.”
Wolfe stared at the call icon displayed on the laptop screen. After several moments of quiet, he said, “We’re not asking the right questions, Joseph.”
“No, we’re not. Was your meeting him random or on purpose?”
“I don’t see how it could be on purpose. No one knew who I was when I settled on my grandfather’s property.”
“How long’s the land been in your family?”
“Since 1865, right after the Civil War. The cabin I helped Bobby—uh, Martin—fix up was part of the original homestead. There’s over three hundred acres here, Joseph.”
“What’s the name on the deed filed with the county assessor?”
“An LLC I set up decades ago when my grandfather died. Michael and Nadia Lyon, signed a long-term lease on the property two years ago.”
Joseph chuckled. “So, your real name is not associated with the property?”
“Only in an obscure document on file with the Missouri Secretary of State. Someone would really have to know where to look and what to look for to find it.”
“Okay, so we will assume, until we have more evidence, the meeting was random.”
“I agree. If Martin is trying to hide from whatever, there are caves all over this part of Missouri. That could be the reason he came here—the caves.”
“That would make sense.”
“It still doesn’t answer why Bobby showed up and ends up in the woods with a bullet in his head.”
“Sure, it does. Think about it for a minute. They told you at FCI Edgefield Benson’s personality changed after the visit from Martin.”
“Yeah.”
“During the visit, Martin probably told his half-brother something really upsetting. Life-changing, so to speak.”
“Yeah.”
“What he told him we can only speculated about. But it was enough to cause Robert to travel to West Plains…” He stopped in mid-sentence.
Wolfe picked up on the train of thought. “There’s a chance Reid knows Nadia and I are alive and where we are.”
Silence was his answer. “They probably have a strong suspicion now. The conversation with Flores was a dead end. But if Martin told his brother about you two years ago, and my guess would be he did, that could be the reason his behavior changed so much in prison. So, when Kendra Burges asks Bobby about you…”
“He tells her he knows whe
re I am but he’ll only tell her if she gets him out of prison first.”
“It’s the only explanation that fits the facts, Michael.”
It was Wolfe’s turn to remain quiet for a few moments. “Joseph, why does Gerald Reid have his hair on fire about Nadia and me?”
“An excellent question, one I don’t have an answer for.”
“Neither do I. I’ve never met the guy. I only worked for you while I was with the CIA.”
“I’ve never met him either, although I was aware of who he was.” He paused briefly. “I think I need to find out a little more about Gerald Reid.”
“I agree. What if he was the one who set up Nadia and me in Barcelona?”
“Why, Michael? Why would he do that?”
“Again, I don’t know. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Can you find out if Reid had a relationship with Geoffrey Canfield or Asa Gerlis?”
“What are you thinking?”
“We know the video of Gerlis was faked. He’s alive and hiding somewhere. Who started giving me assignments after Canfield had the heart attack? Reid, Gerlis, or someone else?”
“Keep talking. You’re asking the right questions.”
“After Gerlis disappeared, who was Nadia’s control? And why were we both sent to Barcelona for assassination? My bet is Reid had a relationship with Gerlis and Canfield. If that’s true, there is something about the relationship they want to keep hidden.”
“Let me see what I can find out.”
Chapter 20
Carmona, Spain
G erald Reid sat at a small table situated near the back wall of the busy café. He sipped on a remarkably good rustic Grenache wine as he waited for an individual to join him. Officially in Paris for a conference, Reid had made the trip to Southern Spain on a private chartered jet. He smiled as he watched his man enter the café.
Asa Gerlis scanned the room, saw Reid and walked straight to the table. Without sitting, he glared at the CIA deputy director. “Why are you here?”
Reid smiled and raised his glass of wine. “Enjoying some of this country’s wonderful wine. Sit, join me, Asa.”