That was evidently the end of the call. Sam heard what sounded like Price rummaging through his desk, then she heard the creak of an old chair, followed a few moments later by the sound of the door opening and closing. She heard nothing but static after that.
She stopped the playback and pursed her lips. Price’s words echoed: Stop her. Perhaps her visit hadn’t been such a success after all. Perhaps it had been a serious miscalculation. Perhaps she had blundered right into the waiting arms of the people she’d been running from all along.
But perhaps not. She knew more now than she did before her conversation with Price. Avery Martinson, that fat, sweaty dog of a man who’d ambushed her in the coffee shop hours earlier, was evidently not operating rogue and was in fact still entangled with the CIA in some capacity.
Useful information? Time would tell. At least she knew what she was up against. The Agency’s pockets ran deep, and they had plenty of resources.
A chilling thought struck: Was Doberman an Agency operation? They’d been roundly criticized in the past for their entrepreneurial efforts, which had included more than peripheral participation in the drug trade, as well as other criminal enterprises deemed “operationally necessary” in the pursuit of Liberty and Justice for All. But on US turf? That would mark a new low, Sam thought.
And it would pose several practical difficulties. The American security apparatus was unique in human history for its reach and penetration. It would simply be impractical to hide criminal activity indefinitely. Someone would figure it out. Probably the Bureau. And the ensuing turd-flinging would be epic.
So maybe the Agency was working the other angle. Maybe they were penetrating the Doberman ring and they followed their noses until the investigation landed them inside the US, which was definitely within the domain of the FBI and Homeland Security, and definitely not within the Agency’s domain.
If that was the case and CIA had followed protocol, Sam would have received their information for use in her own Doberman investigation. But the Agency certainly hadn’t followed protocol—if, in fact, they were somehow involved in the Doberman investigation. It was possible that some of the Doberman suspects had gained the Agency’s attention for other reasons.
What a mess, Sam thought.
She glanced over at the amorous couple in the café across the street. The man’s gaze swept nonchalantly across her position. Still keeping tabs, Sam noted. That had implications for her exit strategy.
But first, she needed to take further advantage of the Internet connection. She typed an IP address into the search bar on her browser. It took her to the electronic file system of a secure server. She typed a fourteen-digit access code and was rewarded with a list of folders. She double-clicked on the one labeled “Server logs.”
She opened the most recent text document in the folder. It was filled with computer gibberish that she didn’t understand. She’d never had much interest, even though she knew that computers were the final frontier of crime in general and espionage in particular.
Sam scrolled through the file until she found what she was looking for:
A series of numbers followed. Sam opened a spreadsheet, copied the digits into a column on the spreadsheet, and typed in a math function to add twelve to each of the numbers. Then she typed the alphabet next to the adjusted column, which served as the Rosetta Stone to decrypt Dan’s encoded message:
World’s best deputy sends: button bug mfg by Elbit Systems HQ Haifa, Israel. Also Kocaoglu 25 Feb email topic: replacing Ezzat. Candidate: Natan El Anwar, Tripoli.
Sam didn’t know what to make of the Israeli origin of the bug planted in her coat pocket. On one hand—and this was a frightening prospect—the Mossad might be involved. On the other, the Israelis did espionage just about as well as anyone, and everyone knew it, which had spawned a cottage industry for Israeli surveillance equipment.
She re-read Dan’s message, focusing this time on the February 25 information. The flurry of email traffic in the Doberman network on the day of the Ezzat incident had indeed been about Tariq Ezzat, who had committed suicide by pointing his gun at a gaggle of federal agents.
Something struck Sam as odd. The Ezzat incident had occurred around five-thirty in the evening in Washington, DC. Mehmet Kocaoglu’s computer was in Izmir, Turkey, which was seven hours ahead. Ezzat died at roughly twelve thirty a.m. Izmir time—on the twenty-sixth. The flurry of emails had all showed up on Kocaoglu’s computer in Izmir on the twenty-fifth.
Sam’s mind whirred. Had the Doberman gang somehow known that Ezzat was blown? If so, how? Where was the leak?
A knot grew in her stomach. The more she learned, the less she understood.
Ezzat was evidently important enough in the Doberman organization to warrant replacement, and if Dan’s analysis of the group’s cryptic messages was correct, it looked like they had identified their man: Natan El Anwar.
Sam sighed. It had already been a long day, and it was about to get a lot longer. She eyed the surveillance team; they were still watching her. She grabbed her purse and iPad, but left her jacket draped over the café chair as evidence of her intent to return.
She headed to the ladies’ room, where she climbed out the window and walked quickly down the alley.
14
Hayward awoke with a start. His mouth was dry and chalky and his broken arm hurt like hell. His left foot was asleep, wedged awkwardly beneath his other leg in the aircraft seat. A drink or twelve would be damn nice, he thought. A vestige of his old self, his pickled self, the one who had gotten him into this mess, but not the one who would be able to get him out of it.
He’d gone to great lengths in the past to escape the Agency’s notice, disappear from their radar, but always with the same result. At each turn, he had found himself ensnared more thoroughly than ever, less able to control his own destiny, even to choose how he spent his days.
And now the worst had happened. Artemis Grange had kidnapped Katrin and her family.
He looked out the window at the ocean beneath him. They were approaching the coast of Spain, a little over an hour from touchdown. He had flown halfway around the globe on a hunch. It was a long shot, but perhaps the Agency team was holding Katrin and her family hostage inside the family estate. Joao Ferdinand-Xavier, Katrin’s father, had built an isolated enclave in a forest atop a hill, and it seemed like a perfect place to hide hostages. And if they’d been taken elsewhere, maybe Hayward would find a clue to Katrin’s whereabouts left behind by the Agency muscle. It was a terrible strategy, but he had nothing to work with, no obvious place to start his search.
Hayward shook his head, recalling the way it had all begun four years ago in Caracas, Venezuela. He’d descended into something of an alcoholic trance, liquid dinners creeping into breakfast and lunch, smiling on the inside at his well-disguised inebriation while he went about his drab day as an embassy drone, not realizing he was quietly desperate for a reason—any reason, even an incredibly bad reason—to get out of bed in the morning.
When that incredibly bad reason had presented itself—an intriguing opportunity that required him to make copies of a few harmless little embassy documents and drop them off in a bus station locker in return for a few bars of silver—he’d jumped at the chance.
Excitement. Danger. Subterfuge. Trade craft. He had felt alive, vital, virile.
And then he’d felt a great deal of pain. Someone at CIA had grown wise and had taken it upon themselves to extract from him the details of his misdeeds through innovative use of a power tool and some cooking salt. There were still scars on his body, but the pain had scarred his memory far more thoroughly. It was ungodly, otherworldly, enough to make a man sign a deal with the devil and feel happy about doing it.
He had indeed signed a deal with the devil. In exchange for not turning him over to be prosecuted for espionage, the Agency owned him lock, stock, and barrel. He had subsequently been forced to do what a despicable CIA man named Bill Fredericks and his goon
partner, known to Hayward only as Quinn, had told him to do. As a result, people had died. Good people who didn’t deserve what the Agency did to them. Would they have met the same fate if he hadn’t gotten involved? Impossible to say. What Hayward knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, was that he bore a great deal of the responsibility for their suffering.
In the aftermath of the Venezuela episode, Hayward had longed to gain distance from the ugliness of himself. Vodka was the obvious the answer, and in a severely altered state, it had entered his mind to pull a geographic. Escaping the immediate sphere of influence of his new masters seemed to be the ticket to reclaiming some control over his life.
Hence, Europe. Cologne, Germany, for no good reason he could recall. Bedlam ensued, the kind of hedonic excess made famous by Hollywood and rock-and-roll, which, in a turn of events he still struggled to fully comprehend, had ended when he found himself sitting next to Bill Fredericks in a German cab driven by Quinn, making his way to the airport to fly back to the States, where his comeuppance would be shoved up his ass one sideways nickel at a time.
Hayward shook his head. Being shipped off back to the Farm, the CIA’s training grounds, had felt like the end. In many ways it was, but it was also a beginning. Sobriety. Training. Skill. Fitness. Sharpness of mind and body.
Indoctrination.
He’d become a bona fide asset. An agent of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, ready to deceive and disable and decapitate in service of those lofty absolutes. The means meant nothing; it was all about the ends.
But in a bitter twist, the means and the ends had both interfered with his re-integration as a person. He was sober and sharp and capable, but he was again a man divided. He never really stopped being the Agency’s prisoner, even as they had molded him into their likeness.
You could monopolize a man’s time, dictate his activities, take away his choices, even turn him into something altogether new, but you couldn’t change his mind. And that was the problem. They—the CIA and their famous spook-assassin emeritus, Artemis Grange—eventually turned him loose to do their bidding, but he had never drunk the Kool-Aid. He had his own agenda. It coincided only loosely with theirs. He was a credible agent but not spectacular. He achieved passable results. He wasn’t setting the Agency on fire with his zeal and productivity, but he was doing enough to keep his handlers at a distance.
Then Katrin Ferdinand-Xavier had showed up in his life. The instant he met Katrin, with those delicate features and that long blonde hair and those deep, intelligent, infinitely blue eyes, she became his only agenda.
Joao Ferdinand-Xavier ran a company called ChemEspaña. Joao and his team had developed a chemical formula for a paint that, in addition to a few other useful properties, happened to absorb neutrons. A neutron-absorbing paint made it virtually impossible to detect weapons-grade uranium and plutonium with any of the detection technologies governments and watchdog agencies had developed at great expense and trouble. The political, military, and economic impacts were staggering, and the CIA badly wanted the formula.
Hayward’s job had been to insinuate himself into the Ferdinand-Xaviers’ lives, gain their trust, and use his access to steal the ChemEspaña technology. His Agency handlers had installed him in the Ferdinand-Xaviers’ town in Spain, and Hayward had slowly worked his way into their world.
He had been conflicted about his assignment from the outset, but his growing regard for Katrin as the months went by had brought with it a growing disdain for the way he was being forced to manipulate the Ferdinand-Xavier family. He had fallen more thoroughly in love with Katrin by the day, and her affection for him had certainly seemed earnest and genuine. As their relationship progressed, Hayward had become more and more determined to bring the whole CIA mess to a conclusion without any of the Ferdinand-Xaviers being the wiser.
But Joao was no idiot. He knew the value of what he and his team had developed. And he knew its volatility. What could possibly be more destabilizing than some fringe group—or even a major international power—acquiring the ability to transport weapons-grade nuclear material anywhere in the world without being detected? Governments had spent billions on sophisticated neutron detectors, which Joao Ferdinand-Xavier’s invention had rendered useless.
The ChemEspaña formulation was thus a very carefully guarded secret. Hayward’s careful and painstaking overtures with Joao and the Ferdinand-Xavier family had failed to produce results, and his Agency handlers had lost patience with him. They gave him an ultimatum: produce the data or they would take matters into their own hands.
Hayward had instantly known what that meant. He had seen the Agency muscle in action. He had felt them in action. The thought of the Agency’s pipe-swingers cozying up to Katrin and her family was beyond terrifying. Hayward knew it was not something his conscience could live with. He had to warn Katrin and her family.
He had replayed the gut-wrenching conversation with the Ferdinand-Xaviers over and over in his mind since everything had come to a head. They had invited them to their estate to join them for their weekly family dinner. They were a small and close-knit family, and they made it a point to make time for each other. Hayward had worn his finest suit and his most expensive shoes. He wasn’t yet a fixture at their weekly gatherings, but his relationship with Katrin had progressed far enough that he had been invited to half a dozen of them.
The kitchen staff had cleared away the dessert dishes and Joao had just lit one of his trademark cigars. Maria, Karin’s mother, sipped on her coffee. It was a tranquil scene that Hayward hated to shatter. His stomach had tightened and his mouth had gone dry as he thought about what lay before him.
“Mr. and Mrs. Xavier,” he’d begun, hands trembling beneath the table as he spoke. “Would you mind accompanying me to the wine cellar for a moment?”
Their expressions were mildly bemused until they noticed the look on his face. “What is it?” Joao had asked. Hayward had imagined Joao’s thoughts might have turned to Katrin, wondering whether Hayward was about to ask permission for her hand. The thought had certainly occurred to Hayward on more than one occasion, but nothing had been further from his mind at that moment.
“I was thinking of beginning my own collection,” Hayward had lied in his accented Spanish, “and I was hoping you might have some advice for me.”
Hayward remembered the look on Joao’s lined and weathered face. The older man’s brow had furrowed just a bit, and an intensity flashed in his eyes. Joao seemed to have suspected something was amiss.
“Katrin,” Hayward had said. “Would you please join us?”
Hayward would never forget the fragile innocence and amusement on Katrin’s face. It had brought a lump to his throat as he looked across the table at her, and the guilt and anguish had intensified with each recollection.
Hayward had led Joao, Maria, and Katrin to their estate’s wine cellar. There, he’d held his finger to his lips, dropped to his hands and knees, and reached beneath one of the towering wine racks. Then he moved to an adjacent wine rack and repeated the strange motion.
“What the devil?” Joao had asked, but Hayward hadn’t answered. Instead, he had risen to his feet, holding two small devices the size and shape of coat buttons.
Maria’s mouth opened, a question on her lips, but Hayward again made the sign for silence. Then he tapped his ear. Katrin and Maria still looked confused, but Joao had understood immediately. His face hardened and he balled his fists.
Hayward then gripped the devices tightly in his hand, smothering their input. He took a deep breath and began the most difficult conversation of his life.
In hushed tones, he told them everything. The Ferdinand-Xaviers had stared in bewildered silence as he told them of his involvement with the CIA and of the Agency’s lust for Joao’s invention. He had told them in no uncertain terms that their time was running out, that they must flee immediately. They had refused to believe him at first, but the listening devices were compelling proof, and he watched fear replace the disbel
ief on their faces.
The look of pain and anger and devastation that had come over Katrin as he confessed his betrayal was something he would never forget. Hayward wanted desperately to see her again, to make it right, to beg her forgiveness, to tell her that he had done everything in his limited power to spare her and her family from harm.
But he hadn’t spared them from harm. Instead, he had brought it on them with a vengeance.
“You must leave,” Hayward had said after the horrible reality had begun to sink in. “We have no time to waste.”
Without a word, Joao had reared back and struck Hayward’s face with a wild haymaker. Hayward could easily have dodged the blow, but instead he took its full force, allowing Joao this small revenge for the outrage, the violated trust, the existential danger Hayward had brought to his family.
Then Joao had done what any husband and father would have done to protect his family. In terse language with harsh, angry edges, Joao had whispered into Hayward’s ear a location—the ChemEspaña branch in Singapore—and all the codes and passwords Hayward would need to obtain the data from the safe. Joao sent Katrin to fetch her ChemEspaña access badge, and he shoved it angrily into Hayward’s hand.
Then Joao, Maria, and Katrin had packed their bags. Unsure what to say or do to make things better, and not wanting to make things any worse with a clumsy and pathetic apology, Hayward left them without a word and returned to his flat.
Hayward’s CIA handlers were more thorough and competent than he had given them credit for. Hayward had missed a listening device in his sweep of the wine cellar. A few moments after Hayward had arrived back at his apartment, they launched their raid, and he had found himself once again at the mercy of the CIA’s knee-cappers.
His beatings and interrogation sessions were thorough and dehumanizing, but Hayward had paid close attention to their questions. It had become apparent their remaining bug hadn’t picked up Joao’s whispered instructions detailing how and where to find ChemEspaña’s formula. Hayward had seized the opportunity and proposed another deal with the devil. He offered to produce the data drive, and in return, the CIA would let him and the Ferdinand-Xaviers go free.
The Blowback Protocol: A Sam Jameson Thriller Page 8