by Scott McEwen
In that same instant, the frontal lobe of Jarvis’s brain exploded, a .45 caliber slug blasting through it from right to left, causing his own shot to miss Blickensderfer’s head by a foot and shatter the glass shower stall.
“Mein Gott!” Blickensderfer blurted in horror, dropping the razor to the tile floor and taking a step back. The razor broke apart but continued to buzz.
Jarvis’s body lay on the bedroom carpet with what was left of his frontal lobe oozing onto the white shag.
Blickensderfer stood with pebbles of shattered glass beneath his feet, too petrified to move, as a man he had never seen before stepped into the bathroom doorway and crouched to pick up Jarvis’s pistol.
The man wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a Carhartt jacket. He stood up and tucked the second pistol into the small of his back, keeping his own .45 gripped in his right hand. “Know who I am?” he asked quietly.
Blickensderfer shook his head.
“I’m Gil Shannon. Know who I am now?”
Blickensderfer swallowed, croaking out “Yes.”
“Good.” Gil stepped into the bathroom and picked up the noisy razor, switching it off and setting it on the edge of the sink. “I was sent by the CIA to kill you.” He gestured over his shoulder at the body. “So was he. Lena gave me the code to your door. I’ve been in the guest room all night, waiting for him to make his move.”
Blickensderfer had never been more frightened or confused in his life. “What—why?”
“Why what?” Gil said.
“Why—why did you stop him?”
Gil shrugged. “I took your woman. I figured I owed you. This makes us even. Now you’re on your own. I suggest you hire some very competent bodyguards. Bob Pope wants you dead, and he’s never failed yet.”
Blickensderfer grew suddenly self-conscious, reaching for a towel to wrap around his waist. “But I sent—I sent word to him that I won’t—”
“This isn’t about you. Pope doesn’t give a shit about you. It’s about the message he’s sending to everyone else who does business with terrorists. You could take out a full-page ad in the New York Times, promising to be a nice guy. It wouldn’t matter. You’re on the list.”
“Forever?”
Gil shrugged again. “That or until he feels like he’s wasted enough time on you. The trick is staying alive long enough for him to get bored.”
Blickensderfer felt his legs begin to weaken. He wanted to sit down. The CIA he’d done business with in the past had definitely changed. “Can you—will you help me? I’ll pay you.”
These were the very words Gil had come to hear. “I don’t want your money. I want you to help me with my Russian problem.”
Blickensderfer glanced around, dropping the lid to the commode and taking a seat. “I honestly don’t know if I can—but I will try.”
“Then we’ll both try,” Gil said, satisfied. “One very important thing: Pope cannot know that I was here—that we had this conversation. No one can. Understood?”
Blickensderfer nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
Gil gestured back at the body once more. “Can you arrange for that clown to disappear?”
Blickensderfer glanced uncomfortably at the bloody mess in his bedroom. “Yes.” He looked up at Gil. “What about Lena?”
“She’s with me now—and that’s just the way it is. Can you live with that?”
The banker let out a sigh, hardly able to believe he was still alive. “Yes,” he said finally. “I can live with it. But why doesn’t Pope protect you from the Russians?”
“Pope isn’t a protector. He’s an asset manager, and I’m an asset.”
Blickensderfer got to his feet, being careful of the pebbled glass. “How does this work?” he asked timidly. “Do we shake hands now?”
Gil chuckled, switching the pistol to his left hand. “It couldn’t hurt.”
30
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
13:10 HOURS
Fascinated by all types of world matters, from international trade agreements, to corporate espionage, to the extramarital affairs of the rich and powerful, Bob Pope was the quintessential spy. He spied on all governments, all leaders, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. He was addicted to the intelligence he gathered and possessed the photographic memory to store almost all of it. His recall capacity was outstanding, and though he had begun to catch himself overlooking minor details in recent months, he was still near the top of his game, close to realizing his vision for the CIA.
Within the next two years, Islamic terrorism would be financially isolated, cut off from the double-dealing tycoons willing to do business with anyone if it meant an extra million or two at the end of the quarter. Already Pope’s new CIA was making significant inroads into the Saudi government. Soon even members of the royal family, secretly aiding their Wahhabi friends in Iraq and Pakistan, would begin turning up just as dead as their European counterparts, causing terrorist funding to dry up still faster.
Pope had even found a way to strong-arm the National Security Agency into supplying him with intelligence, taking evidence before Congress to demonstrate that too much of the NSA’s time and resources were being wasted in the act of spying on Americans, stressing that the atomic threat, along with 99 percent of all other threats to national security, lie outside the United States, not within.
He was not a politician by any means. He was not delicate in his approach. He was a mathematician, and he knew that wars were won mathematically, believing strongly that the time to worry about politics would come after the defeat of fundamentalist Islam.
“Bob,” the president of the United States had said to him in private the week before, “I worry it’s beginning to get out of hand.”
Pope had put on his most innocent face while making his reply. “What is getting out of hand, Mr. President?”
The president looked at him. “This private war of yours.”
“Sir, our enemies are finally beginning to run scared. And there’s been zero proof of CIA or ATRU involvement in any of our operations.”
“Operations?” the president said. “They’re assassinations, Bob! The world is beginning to see the CIA in the same light it saw the KGB!”
Pope responded in a slightly elevated tone: “Mr. President, with respect, this country was attacked with a pair of atomic bombs—a pair, sir. Now is not the time for us to worry about the world’s perception of the CIA. Our enemies fear the CIA again for the first time since the Cold War—as they should—and it’s because I’ve taken the focus off our own people and put it back where it’s supposed to be: on the enemy.”
“You stop right there!” the president said, rocking forward in his chair, his finger pointed across the desk. “I’m the one who reigned in the NSA.”
Pope was undaunted. “And who’s keeping them in check, Mr. President? You? Congress? I’m the man keeping an eye on them; monitoring their activities. I’m the one they fear, sir. Not you—with all respect.”
At that, the president sat back, recognizing the truth in what Pope had said. The NSA had long grown out of control, all attempts by Congress to reign it in having failed. “Well, Bob, to be honest, I’m beginning to fear you a little bit myself—and you know I can’t allow that paradigm to continue indefinitely.”
“You won’t need to, Mr. President. You’re halfway through your second term. You only need to allow it for two more years. By then, my job will be finished, and we’ll leave the next administration a much safer nation to look after than we have right now.”
The president doubted it could be that simple, but he paused to allow the tension of the moment to pass.
“The Senate Oversight Committee is asking to see your books. Are they going to find any misappropriated funds?”
“Are they unhappy with our results?” Pope asked, knowing that the Senate loved him.
&nbs
p; The president darkened slightly. “Don’t answer my questions with questions of your own.”
“I apologize,” Pope said, adequately chastened. “The Senate Oversight Committee won’t find so much as a nickel out of place.”
“Which means you’ve found alternative funding . . . somewhere.”
“Are you asking me a direct question, Mr. President?”
The president brought up his pointing finger again. “One slipup, Bob. One shred of credible evidence connecting the CIA to one of your assassins, and I’m pulling the plug. The purpose of the ATRU was to target terrorists, for Christ sake, not shady businessmen.”
Pope remained unapologetic, knowing the president still needed him. “I see very little daylight between the two, Mr. President.”
“Have I made myself clear, or not?” the president wanted to know.
“You have, sir.”
THAT AFTERNOON, POPE punched the security code into the keypad outside one of his private intelligence gathering rooms and entered to find his protégé, Midori Kagawa, sitting at a console with two other young Japanese American women whom he’d hired the year before to help with his ATRU operations. Ever since his time in Southeast Asia during the latter part of the Vietnam War, he’d had a certain affinity for Asian women.
“How are things in Switzerland, ladies?”
“Not good,” Midori said.
Pope stopped midstride, his good humor vanishing. “What’s happened?”
Midori looked up from the console. “Blickensderfer is still alive, and Jarvis Adler doesn’t respond to my communications.”
Pope set down his coffee cup. “Ladies, please give us a moment.”
The other two young woman got up from their chairs and left the room.
The door closed behind them, and Pope turned to Midori. “Are we exposed?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so, but it’s definitely an anomaly. I’m hacked into local traffic surveillance in Bern. Adler’s car is parked on the street across from Blickensderfer’s house, but Blickensderfer is still alive. I’ve just confirmed that he’s present at a fund-raising dinner where he’s scheduled to speak this evening. So either he got lucky and killed Adler himself, or we didn’t check back far enough, and he had private security inside the house. Either way, confidence is pretty high that Adler is dead.”
Pope pulled on his chin. “And Blickensderfer is acting as though nothing happened?”
“It appears so, yes.”
“Interesting. By now he must know that his back-channel message to me has fallen upon deaf ears.”
“I’d say that’s a safe assumption, but it’s only an assumption.”
Pope sucked his teeth. “Any word from Gil?”
She hesitated a fraction of a second. “No.”
“Then he must still be chasing around with Lena Deiss,” he remarked absentmindedly.
“What about Blickensderfer?”
“We’ll back off for a moment—give ourselves time to sort out what’s happened before risking another attempt. For now, get a message to Gil. Have him contact me direct.”
“Priority level?”
“Low.”
“So you’re not sending him back after Blickensderfer?”
Pope shook his head. “No. Gil has too many principles. In hindsight, it might have been a mistake to send him after Blickensderfer in the first place.”
Midori smiled. “You know what they say about the right tool for the right job.”
“Well . . .” Pope hesitated a moment. “Adler was the right tool for this job, and look how it’s apparently turned out.” He picked up his coffee and turned for the door. “Make sure you get that message to Gil.”
31
PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO
13:05 HOURS
Crosswhite sat beside Mariana on a white leather sofa in the home of Antonio Castañeda, the head of all narcotics trafficking in northern Mexico. His cooperation the year before had been instrumental in preventing Chechen terrorists from using a stolen Russian suitcase nuke to destroy the city of San Diego. In exchange for his cooperation, both the Mexican and US governments had offered Castañeda an informal truce in the “war on drugs.” The terms of the truce had been simple: Castañeda agreed to cease all violence against civilians on both sides of the border, and both federal governments agreed to stop hunting him.
Since the truce, violence against civilians in the North had dropped off to almost nil, and Castañeda had consolidated all narcotics power north of Jalisco State. This meant that not a single kilo of drugs crossed the US border without his say-so. The American DEA continued to interdict his drug shipments at will, but Castañeda was no longer targeted for capture or prosecution.
A former GAFE (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales) operator for Mexican Special Forces, Castañeda was a bug-eyed man in his late thirties with dark hair and a dark complexion. Enjoying tequila probably far too much for the good of his health, he was a legendary womanizer and took a particular enjoyment in torturing those who betrayed him.
He sat in a white leather chair, smiling at Mariana across the black lacquer coffee table, a glass of straight tequila in his hand. “To what do I owe the pleasure of such an unexpected visit?” he asked her in Spanish.
Mariana had been the CIA’s contact and intermediary with Castañeda since the inception of their business dealings, and Castañeda made no secret of the fact that he desired her. Secretly, Mariana feared him a great deal, but she was always careful to keep her fears hidden.
“I’m afraid we have some disturbing news for you,” she replied.
He sipped his tequila. “I am listening.”
“By all indications,” she continued, “Lazaro Serrano will be elected president of Mexico this coming July, and we have good reason to believe that he will not honor the truce after he takes office.”
Castañeda continued to smile at her, his eyes almost perpetually glassed over from the tequila. “I understand why Serrano might pose political problems for the gringo government, but I have nothing to fear from him. Serrano is corrupt, yes, but all politicians are corrupt. The truce is good business for everyone. He will respect it.”
She girded herself. “Would you feel that way if I told you Lazaro Serrano is the real power behind the Ruvalcaba cartel?”
His smile vanished. “What are you talking about?”
As planned, Crosswhite edged forward on the sofa. “Hector Ruvalcaba doesn’t run the Ruvalcabas—Lazaro Serrano does. He organizes their protection and allows them an almost free hand in Mexico City. We also have confirmation that he was behind the assassination of Alice Downly a few days ago. Serrano hates the US. He wants another outbreak of violence on the border so he can eliminate you and consolidate all Mexican drug trafficking under his own tent. That will give him unprecedented power, putting him on par here in Mexico with Carlos Slim.” Carlos Slim Helú, a Mexican telecom mogul, was the wealthiest man in the world.
Castañeda sat pondering this alarming revelation. He had long known that the Ruvalcabas enjoyed protection from within the federal government, but there had never been any trouble between the Ruvalcabas and the Castañedas. “How sure is the CIA of this intelligence?”
“Ninety-nine percent,” Mariana answered without hesitation.
Castañeda sipped his tequila, displaying a calm he did not feel. “And the CIA has sent you to see me for what reason?”
Crosswhite sat back. “To ask your help in removing Serrano.”
The former GAFE operator glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Do you think I am crazy? Assassinating a Mexican president would guarantee my destruction.”
“Yes, but Serrano isn’t president yet,” Crosswhite said carefully. “We’ve got four months before that happens, so we need to eliminate him soon—before he becomes the de facto president.”
“No, we don’t,” Mariana said.
“If we do it right,” Crosswhite pressed, “your name will never be mentioned. And I can guarantee it will be done right—personally guarantee it.”
“Oh? How can you make such a ‘personal’ guarantee?”
Crosswhite stared him in the eye. “Because I’m the guy who’s gonna pull the trigger.” He postured up on the sofa. “Look, the quake down in Mexico City has wiped out the CIA intelligence network for the foreseeable future. Tens of thousands are dead—maybe more—and that mounting body count will hold the world’s attention for the next ten days or so. All I need from you is—”
“This is Pope’s idea?”
Crosswhite shook his head, knowing that lying to Castañeda could prove deadly. “Pope has me working with the PFM to bring Serrano down legally, but I think it’s better to take advantage of the quake: to use the chaos as cover. Serrano is still an unknown politico in the eyes of the outside world. Why not kill an ugly baby in the crib before it starts walking and talking and making a name for itself?”
Castañeda switched his gaze to Mariana. “Why are you willing to act without first getting Pope’s consent?”
She saw clearly that Castañeda had grown suspicious. If he realized that she and Crosswhite had gone completely off the CIA reservation, he might have Crosswhite killed and take her for himself. Mariana and Crosswhite had discussed this forbidding possibility ahead of time and decided that, in the event the meeting took a bad turn, Crosswhite would kill her instantly and try to kill Castañeda before his guards could enter the room and shoot him dead.
Dominating the fear rising up in her gut, she gazed calmly back at the man she knew to be a butcher. “Because Pope is hedging his bets,” Mariana said easily. “He wants to be in position to call the shots along the border no matter who controls the North. And while I would never say that I completely trust you, Antonio, I do believe you’re much more reliable than either Lazaro Serrano or Hector Ruvalcaba.”