by Gregg Loomis
Jason smiled, remembering the old Arab proverb about revenge being a dish best served cold. Jason’s had been given over a decade to cool.
4
National Security Agency
Fort Meade, Maryland
11:02 a.m. Local Time the Same Day
John Odet was certain that either his eyes were playing tricks or fate was. He shuffled the stack of photographs, wiped the magnifying glass off with a handkerchief, and started over again.
Same result.
John glanced around his diminutive office. Room enough for a nice, if small, faux wood desk, two modern club chairs, and a credenza with pictures of his family. At least his mother, father, and a couple of nieces and nephews. The director was big believer in family. Probably wouldn’t be a great idea to include pictures of John and Benny, though. Although the federal government prohibited discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, it wasn’t smart to flaunt such things.
Pictures notwithstanding, John liked his office, a real step up from the cubicles he had occupied as he worked his way up the GS ladder. One of the nicest things was the new furniture he got every two years whether he needed it or not. Just before October first when the new fiscal year began for the federal government, there was a rush among all bureaus, agencies, and departments to make sure every last penny in the old year’s budget was spent. Otherwise, there was the risk of some hawkeyed congressperson cutting the budget of the offending bureaucracy by the amount of unspent funds. New furniture, new computers, new everything that would ensure the budget was completely gone.
New furniture, though, wasn’t what had John’s attention this morning.
It was those mystifying pictures.
John picked up the phone and punched in a four-digit number.
“Director’s office,” a female voice announced.
“Is he in, Penny?” John asked.
“Who may I say is calling?”
John suppressed a sigh. Penny had been hearing his voice daily for two years now. He wondered if the director’s straight callers got the same treatment.
“It’s me, John.”
“Oh!” A pretense of surprise. “Let me see if he’s available.”
If not, he had jumped out of a window. John had greeted the director this morning in the hall, and the only way to the elevators was past John’s office.
“Mr. Odet!” The director’s voice boomed with the false bonhomie he used with all subordinates. “What might I do for you?”
The question, John thought, was largely rhetorical. “I’d like a few minutes of your time, sir.”
“Now?”
John’s could imagine the man, checking his gold Rolex as he calculated whether or not the lunch plans John was sure he had might be jeopardized, plans with someone from one of the larger and better-known intelligence organizations. The director never missed a chance at upward mobility. “If possible, yes sir.”
“OK, but come on right now.”
The director’s office might have been mistaken for the bar of an exclusive men’s country club. But then, that was where the director had spent most of his time before an enormous campaign contribution had purchased his appointment. Dark paneling with trophy cases of loving cups, bowls, plates indirectly lit. John occasionally wondered if Penny’s duties included keeping them polished.
In his silk shirtsleeves, the director came around an aircraft carrier–sized desk to take John’s hand in both of his own. It was though the man were running for office.
He dropped John’s hand and pointed to a conference table that formed the base of a T with the desk. “Have a seat.”
When the men were seated across from each other, the director clasped his hands and, elbows on the table, leaned forward. “So, John, what do you have that is so urgent?”
John produced a manila folder and a magnifying glass. “Pictures. Take a look.”
The director gave John a questioning glance before he pulled the photographs to his side of the table.
His face wrinkled in what John would have described as disgust. “Are those bodies wrapped in sheets in the background?”
“Yes, sir. September 15, 2011, Gleison Colliery Mine, Wales. The mine flooded. British Coal Authority never found the true cause because the source of the leak was underwater, but they speculated simultaneous failure of the pumping system and backup. The odds of that happening were estimated at over a thousand to one.”
The director lifted his head from the pictures. “And just what does that have to do with us?”
John indicated the remaining stack of photos. “If you will indulge me, sir …”
With a frown, the director held up another photo. “And this is … ?”
“The Alaska Navigator in dry dock. January 2012. Note the crack in the tanker’s side? Far too even to be accidental, according to the Coast Guard. Lucky it was discovered before the ship took on several hundred thousand gallons of crude. Would have made the Exxon Valdez look like puppy poop on a rug in comparison to the damage done to the Alaskan environment.”
“Good for the Coast Guard. I’m sure. But I don’t see—”
John got up and walked around the table. Reaching an arm over the director’s shoulder, he pointed. “See that man there, just in front of the bodies recovered from the mine disaster? Looks like one of the rescue people. Kind of blurred, but you can see his face.”
John moved the photo aside, pointing to another. “Now look at this man in what looks like a Coast Guard uniform standing with the group looking up at the tanker. Same guy, right?”
The director squinted, “Maybe. But I still don’t see—”
John hurriedly pulled another black-and-white out of the folder and poised the magnifying glass above the lower-left corner. “Anglo-American Platinum mine, South Africa, one of the deepest mines in the world. A collapse. The Mining Qualification Authority’s findings were that somebody accidentally rammed a piece of motorized equipment against not one, not two, but three major support columns. Three columns? An accident? C’mon! And look here, right under the magnifying glass. Looks like our boy, right?”
Before the director could answer, John had whipped out a final picture. “US Gulf Coast. April 11, 2010, the day after the BP Deepwater Horizon blew up. This is a shot of some of the civilian craft assisting the Coast Guard in searching for survivors. Recognize the guy in the poncho?”
The director pursed his lips, momentarily swayed by his subordinate’s enthusiasm. Then, “Too blurred to be sure.”
John shook his head. “Take a closer look. Same broad forehead, same smashed nose.”
“A lot of people have noses that look like that. Particularly ex-fighters.” The director pushed his chair back from the table, fingers interlocked across his belly. “Exactly what are you saying here, that this guy is some sort of disaster tourist?”
Again, the head shake. “Not possible. Every one of those photographs was taken within hours of the accident except the one from the Gulf, and that was less than twenty-four hours later. No, our friend in the pictures had to know.”
The director was looking at John as though he had begun speaking in tongues. “Know? But how could he … ?”
“The only person or persons with that knowledge would be those who caused the disasters.”
The director consulted his watch, a viable alternative to talking with a madman. “Ah, yes.” He stood, apparently no longer willing to have his back to someone who, quite possibly, might become violent any moment. “By the way, how did you come by those photographs? Industrial accidents aren’t exactly in the scope of our mission statement.”
John returned to his side of the table. “Purely by accident. One of the news services complained that they thought someone, possibly outside the United States, had hacked their network. That is within our mission, is it not, protecting the communication system?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.”
“Well, turns out they have had the problem before. Like when they were covering indust
rial disasters.”
“Who would hack a news service? Be easier to buy a paper or turn on the TV.”
“Unless you wanted the physical photos.”
The director’s answer to that was “Look, John, you do good work. Don’t make me include in your next evaluation that you went off the reservation, wasting Agency time on matters that don’t concern us. Oil spills, mine collapses aren’t in our brief. Now, why don’t you go back to your office and continue the good work?”
The tone was that of a parent convincing a small child that there really wasn’t a monster under the bed.
John knew the director would rather color within the lines than paint a Mona Lisa. He thought inside the box because God only knew what might be lurking outside. As long as set procedures were scrupulously followed, failure would bring no censure. Besides, no bureaucrat ever won praise for solving another bureaucrat’s problem. Originality of thought was a troublesome trait in government.
John and his photographs had been dismissed.
Oh well, John thought. He had tried. The folder with the photographs went into the first trash receptacle he passed.
5
Iceland
Langjökull Glacier
Three Weeks Later
The little man parked his rented Land Rover and stared at the mass of ice in front of him. Not far north of the edge, the ice cap towered 1,200 to 1,300 meters. The woman at the car rental place had told him the scenery at the top was spectacular, but he was not visiting one of Iceland’s largest glaciers as a tourist, not in the normal sense.
He looked back up the gravel road he had just traveled and saw nothing but the rocky volcanic hills that had been sculpted by millennia of ice. Nothing moved. He turned his attention to the black boulders, some bigger than houses, dotting the landscape and shook his head. Too many places from which he could be observed by unseen eyes. He sighed. Too late to worry about that now. The people he worked for wanted answers and they wanted them in a hurry.
Still, caution was called for. Taking a pair of binoculars from the seat beside him, he swept a wide arc.
Nothing.
Replacing the glasses with a cell phone, one with photographic capabilities, he stepped out onto the near-frozen ground. Even though it was summer, he was glad of the heavy sweater he had brought. These days, he was subject to chills.
No wonder. He was too old for this sort of work. But he knew no other.
He took a final look around and started walking toward a series of metal stakes near the first patch of ice. If what he had read was correct, they were markers placed by one of Iceland’s glacier societies to indicate the annual summer shrinkage of the ice cap, a foot or so of tundra that had been under tons of ice since last fall.
He stopped as he spied something protruding from the white in front of him. A stick? Some sort of growth. Could that be … ? He snapped two pictures, checked the phone to make sure he had photographed exactly what he was looking at, and stepped closer.
He squatted and reached for what was sticking out of the ice. He gave it a tug. Frozen fast. Shoving the phone into a pocket, he reached into another and produced the bone-handled jackknife he had purchased just yesterday. In less than a minute he had an inch-or-so section of a woody, sticklike object in his hand.
This was the sort of thing his employers wanted. They should be pleased. He stuffed it and the knife into a pants pocket.
He began a slow walk along the edge of the glacier, his boots squishing in the sodden moss that, along with shards of stone, were the only ground cover. He had taken just a few steps when he stopped to examine the rocks at his feet. Something had caught a ray of the sun, drawing his attention. Natural gneiss or … ?
He squatted again, using his hands to brush aside pebbles polished smooth as marbles. There it was. Bronze? Copper? Maybe simply iron burnished by ice scraping across rocks. No larger than a quarter, it had been sheared from something larger but the curved, sharpened edge was quite visible. He took another couple of pictures before picking it up and putting that in his pocket too.
He was searching the surrounding area when he heard the sound of stones being displaced as if … as if someone were walking none too carefully on them. He fought the impulse to flee, instead pretending he had not heard. He was trying to determine the direction from which the sound had come, how far away it might be.
Not that either bit of information would be of any great help, not without a weapon.
Slowly, he stood with as much nonchalance as he could muster. He took one step and then a second before he bolted.
He was not surprised at the shot that sent something buzzing past him, but his short legs churned faster. If he could reach that clump of boulders, the one resembling a church complete with square tower, he might somehow escape. He ducked as though he might somehow dodge the second bullet that sang its evil song overhead.
The rocks ahead seemed impossibly distant; they seemed to recede with every step he took.
He pivoted on one foot, swinging to his left, then back to his right. There in the open, a zigzag was his only defense.
There was no third shot.
Not yet.
The thought was more frightening than the gunfire. The shooter must be confident he was going to get close enough to make the next try successful. The theory was accurate: he could hear the footsteps behind him getting closer. There was no need to look over his shoulder. He knew who his pursuer was. Or who had sent him.
He felt the knife in his pocket. A jackknife against a gun? Absurd. But the only thing he had. If he could just reach that pile of stones, he might find a place to hide, perhaps even ambush …
The ragged sound of his own breath and the ache in his lungs required him to devote full attention to simply inhaling and exhaling. A stitch slashed at his side as painfully as any blade.
He was surprised when his hand touched rock. He climbed onto the massive formation.
He slipped behind the first boulder and squeezed through a crevice he hoped was only wide enough to accommodate his small body. Looking around for a possible hiding place, he spied a crack in the rock level with his chin. About a foot long, but deep. He couldn’t secret himself there, but the fissure would hold his discoveries. In an instant he had slid the cell phone, the stick, and the piece of metal into the crack.
Then he had an idea.
If he could scramble down the other side of the formation, maybe, just maybe, he could creep away while the other man searched for him here. No chance. Other than a scattering of boulders, the landscape was as naked as a newborn baby.
“Boris, why do you flee an old friend?” The words were in Russian.
The little man spun about to see a man holding a GSh-18 9 mm automatic pistol. The distinctly mid-Asian flat face with the flat nose, broken multiple times, was all too familiar. “Old friends do not shoot at each other, Patrivitch.”
Patrivitch glanced at the weapon in his hand. “It is my job just as it is yours to be here. Sad but true. You have been hired to find certain information; I have been paid to make sure you do not.” He extended the hand that did not hold the gun. “The cell phone. Place it at your feet.”
The man had been watching him take pictures.
Boris shrugged. “I dropped it during the chase.”
“Empty your pockets.”
Boris did so, the jackknife clattering to the stone along with a wad of Icelandic króna and the keys to the Land Rover.
Patrivitch tsk-tsked. “I would have seen the phone had you dropped it.”
“If you were looking for me to drop something, no wonder your first two shots missed.”
“I can search for it after I kill you.”
Boris shrugged. “What happens after that is of no concern to me.”
There was no warmth in Patrivitch’s smile. “You always had a smart mouth.”
He pulled the trigger.
Boris spun from the impact, a kick as though a horse’s hoof had struck his chest.
His face hit the solid rock upon which they were standing, sending a jolt of pain through his entire body. Broken nose, he thought sleepily. Odd, no pain in my chest, just my nose.
Though Boris’s vision was quickly becoming dark, he recognized his assailant’s shoes level with his eyes. He sensed the man leaning over him.
The coup de grâce.
He was too drowsy to care.
Patrivitch straightened up, turning his head as though scenting the air. He had heard something… .
There it was, the bleating of a sheep.
Cautiously, he peered around the edge of a boulder facing Boris’s car. A shepherd with a dozen or so sheep. Too close not to hear the shot that would finish his victim. He mentally wavered. He could fire the fatal shot and then flee. Or he could take out the shepherd, too.
No, too risky. There might be others around. Better to report back that Boris was no longer a threat. Besides, if anyone found the phone, small chance they would look for any photographs or, if they did, have any idea as to the significance of the images they might find.
Shoving the gun into his belt, he left by the opposite side of the rock formation, keeping it between him and the shepherd. When he reached the base, he broke into a jog.
6
Isola d’Ischia
Italy
Later the Same Day
Jason didn’t hear Maria step onto the loggia, the adoring Pangloss padding at her heels. She watched Jason concentrating on the canvas on the easel before turning down the sound system, reducing the joyous can-can of Offenbach’s Orpheus in Hades to little more than a tinkle.
He turned, his puzzlement turning into pleasure. “Well, hello there! I thought you were still sleeping, fighting jet lag.”
“Sleep? With the whole chorus line of Moulin Rouge prancing through the house?”
He gave her an admiring look. Maria Bergenghetti. Dark skin, sun-streaked hair so black it had blue highlights like a crow’s wing. When she smiled, as she was doing now, she displayed a Chaucerian Wife of Bath gap between her front teeth that, if not saying she’d had it in her time, said she could have the world if she so desired. The shift she wore almost concealed a figure that women half her age would envy.