Dark Waters: A gripping political thriller with a killer twist (Deborah Jones Crime Thriller Series Book 2)

by J. B. Turner

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying, this is dangerous territory you’re straying into. Al-Qaeda is not an international alliance of Islamic terrorism groups. For example, that terrorist attack in Indonesia, which the authorities claimed was the work of Al-Qaeda, was no such thing.’

  ‘A convenient bogeyman.’

  ‘Tell me this: why the hell did it take so long to track down bin Laden and kill the son of a bitch? I’ll tell you why. He was being protected. He comes from a super-wealthy Saudi family, whose tentacles reach to the highest echelons of the Saudi elite, and into Big Oil, and into the pockets of American politicians. But most important, he was doing our dirty work in the 1980s. The CIA was giving military assistance to other guys like him in Afghanistan. He was on the database. It was a crazy decision which we’ll rue for decades. All because of the imagined threat of the Russians and Communism.’

  Deborah nodded.

  ‘I’ve been saying this for years. But for some reason it didn’t occur to anyone that these Islamic fascists would turn the Afghanistan thing into a jihad against the West, in particular against America. These same guys, backed by the CIA, then headed into Kosovo and Bosnia in the 1990s to take on the Serbs. We were happy. The Serbs were allies of the Russians, and we wanted, in geopolitical terms, to destroy Yugoslavia. Then there was Chechnya, a proxy war that we were running, against the old enemy‌—‌the Evil Empire.’ Sommers laughed bitterly.

  ‘I believe you also used to run the Counter-terroist Center’s Islamic Extremist Branch, is that right? And set up the bin Laden issue station in 1996.’

  Sommers shifted in his seat. ‘Listen, if you’re right, and the CIA is drawing up plans to talk to Al-Qaeda, then it’s not only dumb‌—‌how can you reason with such people?‌—‌but also a monumental strategic blunder. The whole thing is a myth perpetrated by the West. What we’re facing, in reality, is a patchwork of regional Islamic terrorist groups. But, having said that, there’s no denying the civilized world is now in a fight to the death with these medieval crazies.’

  ‘Who would have drawn up such a protocol?’

  ‘It would have had to come from the top. The director. Michael Cunningham.’

  ‘Do you still have contacts within the agency?’

  Sommers drank some wine. ‘A few’

  And you haven’t heard anything about this protocol.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Does it seem credible?’

  ‘Nothing would surprise me anymore. Tell you what, I can make a few calls and see what I come up with.’

  ‘That would be terrific.’

  Sommers laughed. ‘Most of them think I’m nuts. The unit was known as the Manson Family, you know We set off alarm bells everywhere. But what puzzles me is that I know most of the major players within the agency‌—‌and I haven’t heard a whiff of this.’

  ‘A young man drowned in the Everglades. We think he had hacked into some computer or smartphone. And he unearthed not only the protocol, but the missing twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 Report. The publisher of the Miami Herald also received a call from a member of the intelligence community, asking him to drop the story. Because of the threat to national security.’

  Sommers whistled softly. ‘Tell me, does the name John Deutch mean anything to you, Miss Jones?’

  Deborah shook her head.

  ‘He was the director of the CIA in the mid-1990s. He was found to have classified material on unclassified laptops. There was a huge shitstorm. Now, all these years later, some senior CIA guy’s smartphone is hacked‌—‌and here we go again. You’d have thought they would’ve learned their lesson.’

  37

  The gentle breeze coming off Biscayne was welcome to Harry Donovan as he stood on a packed terrace at Vizcaya while sipping a glass of Cristal. In the background a quartet was playing Bartok. It was the annual $500-a-head Miami AIDS fundraiser at the huge mansion overlooking the bay. The coolest ticket in town. But only the smartest, wealthiest and most vulgar were invited.

  It was excruciatingly fashionable. But it was one of the most important dates on his wife’s social calendar, and he had to go. No ifs or buts.

  Jacqueline sidled up to him, seeing he was bored.

  ‘Why don’t you mingle, Harry?’

  ‘I don’t want to mingle. I’m not in the mood. Thanks.’

  ‘You seem distracted tonight, honey. Are you okay?’

  Harry gazed off at the twinkling lights in the distance.

  ‘Thinking of Sam, I guess.’

  ‘What’s the latest?’

  ‘As of fifteen minutes ago? No damage, apart from recurring headaches and slight dizziness.’

  Jacqueline clutched her chest rather theatrically. ‘Poor Sam.’

  ‘Sam’s an old warhorse. He’ll be fine.’

  Harry had kept her in the dark about the associated threats made against him. He was glad to see the back of his wife, who soon decided it was time to do a bit more mingling. Then he found himself stuck with a sanctimonious tax expert who was based mostly in the Caymans and who wanted to discuss write-offs available to those who gave to certain good causes.

  Harry’s cellphone ringing saved him from more torture.

  ‘Donovan,’ he said, taking a sip of the champagne as he edged away from the throng.

  ‘This won’t take long.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘That’s not your concern. But you are my concern.’

  Harry felt his stomach knot. It was a different voice than before. Smarter. Educated.

  ‘I want to level with you. I’d like to apologize for what happened to your managing editor. That wasn’t planned, I can assure you.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’ll do the talking if you don’t mind. I work for the government. Our contractor felt he had no choice when he was disturbed by Mr Goldberg. But I’m genuinely glad to hear he is on the mend.’

  Harry said nothing as the laughter and music filtered down to him.

  ‘Moreover, we are greatly encouraged by your move to stop Miss Jones entering the Herald’s offices. A masterstroke, if I may say so.’

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘We know a lot of things. But, I’m sorry to say, we are concerned that Miss Jones isn’t letting up with her obsession. Now, we have tried to be reasonable—’

  ‘You have to be kidding!’

  ‘Please don’t interrupt, Mr Donovan. I have nothing but admiration for you. The way you have worked so hard at climbing the newspaper ladder as well as the social ladder. Black tie suits you.’

  Harry looked around, wondering how the hell the unseen man knew.

  ‘High-definition images, if you want to know. And I’ve read your file.’

  ‘What file?’

  The man laughed. ‘What file? Everyone has a file. I have yours on my desk as we speak.’

  Harry stayed quiet.

  ‘You’ve got some secrets, that’s for sure, Harry’ There was an icy edge to the man’s voice now ‘But who hasn’t?’

  ‘What exactly do you want?’

  ‘You have the final say if a story ends up in the Herald. And that’s why we were so delighted to find out about your dalliance with the awfully attractive Ms Sinez. And the son? That was a rare bonus, ensuring you stay compliant. But what concerns me is your approach to Michael Cunningham. That was just plain dumb.’

  ‘I was told not to contact the cops.’

  ‘You don’t contact anyone. Do you understand me?’

  Harry didn’t reply.

  ‘And those documents sent to you by Deborah Jones, purporting to show some Saudi links and a CIA protocol. We have already taken the precaution of removing them from your office safe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So just forget all about it, okay?’

  ‘Is it genuine?’

  ‘It’s bullshit. But that’s none of your concern. Appear
ances are everything. In the wrong hands, naive hands… we do not need a diplomatic incident.’

  ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘Not quite. There’s something else. We didn’t realize until we examined your file that you had a special arrangement, way back, with Michael Cunningham. A deal brokered by your wife.’

  Harry signaled to Jacqueline on the terrace that he’d be right with her.

  ‘You thought that, when you met up, it was simply a verbal arrangement. He put a scenario to you, and you accepted. No one knew apart from you two–and Jacqueline. That is, until now. You might’ve been contemplating leaving your wife and having the humiliation of your affair splashed across the press. But this is something else altogether, isn’t it?’

  Harry wondered if the man was bluffing. ‘Look, this is all very interesting, but—’

  ‘Harry, you’re a man who obviously thinks of number one, and I respect that. I admire that. It’s the American way. But, unfortunately, Cunningham has shafted you. The whole conversation at that stunning house of yours on Key Biscayne was bugged, from beginning to end. You want me to play you the tape?’

  ‘What in God’s name are you going on about?’

  ‘He virtually guaranteed you the job. It was a shoo-in, he said. But I believe it was your wife’s family who made the first move, arranging the whole meet. Mutual interest, so to speak.’

  Harry said nothing.

  ‘Don’t make me use this. That’s all I’m saying.’

  38

  Unable to sleep, Nathan Stone was staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, shadows under his sunken blue eyes. He focused on the huge curved scar on the right side of his shoulder. A street-gang fight back in New York, after school. Whites and spics. He had stood his ground as they’d swarmed all over him. He’d fought back, in spite of having his arm slashed to the bone. It was stupid, looking back. But he had managed to stab one little fucker in the side of the neck.

  No one fucked with him after that day. They could see he didn’t care. He had no fear. And he found out that was what really scared people.

  He splashed cold water on his face, trying to wake himself up after sleeping for most of the day. Drying his face, he wondered how long the surveillance would continue.

  Taking her out with a bullet in the head on 1-75 as he passed in his car would have been the best bet. It would have looked like just another senseless murder on the Florida freeway. But his handler didn’t want it done that way, fearing eyewitnesses.

  His instructions were simply to follow her, and report back.

  Nathan went through to his bedroom and shut the blinds before switching on his laptop. Then he began to watch the footage of Deborah Jones that he’d filmed secretly from behind the privacy windows of his SUV as she’d worked out with her soccer team in Palmer Park a few days earlier.

  He noticed that she pushed her body harder than any of the other girls. Sweat stains made a pattern on the back of her T-shirt.

  His cellphone rang.

  ‘Things are moving quite quickly now We’ve switched to twenty-four/seven. Any back-up‌—‌listening devices, electronic tracking‌—‌you name it, you’ve got it.’

  • • •

  The following morning, Nathan Stone stood on the first-floor balcony of his no-star, men-only motel‌—‌the Sunshine Hotel‌—‌in Surfside, a small community ten minutes north of South Beach. He dragged on his cigarette as he watched an elderly gray-haired man in the pool below him swim a slow but powerful breaststroke as the sun rose in a burnt orange sky.

  It was the crummiest motel in the area, and Nathan felt perfectly at home. No crying babies, no women to give him grief, just guys who couldn’t afford to live or stay anywhere else. There was the usual collection of gays, but that didn’t bother him like it used to.

  They kept themselves to themselves, and that was just fine. And he didn’t pay any bills. Nothing. No rent, no bar tab, no food bills: nothing. Everything was picked up by the man. If they needed to contact him, it was always through the cellphone or a message at the front desk, asking him to ‘call head office’, code for his handler at Langley.

  The trip to Dunedin had taken a lot out of him. So too had New York. Bad memories resurfaced as soon as he set foot in the Lower East Side.

  The thought of what he’d endured overwhelmed him occasionally, and he’d slug down bourbon until his father’s face was blotted from his mind. But the next morning he’d always see his father’s bloodshot eyes staring back at him out of the mirror as he shaved.

  After Helen had been taken from him in the dead of night, all that was left was the army. He loved the harsh training, being screamed at. He crawled through mud and ran until he was sick. He learned how to fight. Pain didn’t mean a thing to him.

  They were assessing him the whole time. Aged twenty-two, Nathan Stone fit the psychological profile for a covert military unit. Was he interested?

  Within the year, he was training Colombian troops in torture techniques, choke holds, professional interrogation methods including ‘water boarding’‌—‌where a victim has water poured over their face to simulate drowning‌—‌and other specialties, including electric-shock treatment. But since 9/11 he’d been deployed at ‘black sites’ in Eastern Europe‌—‌classified, secret interrogation facilities, primarily in Poland and Romania‌—‌where high-value Al-Qaeda operatives were kept. Mock killings, actual killings, surveillance operations and assassinations. He worked wherever he was sent. He didn’t care. And he didn’t ask questions.

  Even when people were pleading for their lives, Nathan Stone could blot it out. He saw the desperate look in their eyes, which he himself must’ve had as a child when his father was about to take his thick leather belt to him. But he just smiled back. Their screams were like background music.

  He didn’t care if they answered the question or not. Nathan Stone began to need the buzz that came from the fear he instilled in men, women and children.

  His most recent jaunt abroad had been to the grimy basement of the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, where a Shia police unit, instructed by the Americans, was torturing Sunni prisoners. Sometimes he was driven in a blacked-out SUV around the worst slums to pick up suspects at random and take them back for interrogation. It was part of a strategy to entrench fear in the psyche of the Iraqi people. It was nothing to do with liberation or democracy.

  At Abu Ghraib, Stone was part of ‘Copper Green’, the code name given to a black-op program designed to physically harm and sexually humiliate Arab men. The object was to break their will, to make them more malleable.

  Stone showed the Shia cops how to sodomize Arab boys with batons in front of their friends while photographing and videoing the whole thing. How to break a prisoner’s leg by stamping repeatedly on it. He instructed military police and private contractors on techniques of pouring acid into the eyes of detainees. But the interrogators needed no advice on the technique of rape.

  They were all only following orders.

  Nathan Stone loved the freedom. He received a call; he did a job.

  Back in his bleak room, he opened up his laptop and gazed at the infra-red pictures he’d taken of the young Miami Herald journalist‌—‌Deborah Jones‌—‌running screaming out of the warehouse in Brooklyn. And he smiled.

  39

  The cloying voice of Diane Sawyer as she interviewed Henry Kissinger on Good Morning America about the internecine war in Iraq roused Deborah from a deep sleep. She lay in bed for a few moments as the egregious questioning of Kissinger continued apace. Sawyer was treating the elder statesman with kid gloves. The man who escalated the Vietnam war. The man responsible for the illegal carpet-bombing of Laos and Cambodia. The man who advised President George W. Bush against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops in Iraq. Now he had the audacity to declare that American military intervention, despite the massive death toll and rising instability in the region, had been the right thing to do.

&nbs
p; It was breathtaking. How could he be taken seriously? Why wasn’t he behind bars?

  Deborah heard Jamille talking on her cellphone in the living room. She showered and went through to the kitchen where a fresh pot of coffee, orange juice and a plate of croissants awaited.

  ‘You sleep well?’ Jamille asked, ending her call.

  ‘Not too bad.’

  ‘Heard you talking in your sleep. Shouting as well. Scared the shit out of me.’

  ‘You mind turning that woman down? She’s giving me a headache.’

  Jamille reached for the remote control. ‘Sorry’ Then she opened the blinds. ‘Man, you never told me what the views were like up here.’

  Deborah drank some juice and then took a large chunk out of a croissant. She noticed a plain white envelope, her name on it, lying on the sofa. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I found it this morning. Must’ve been pushed through the door last night.’

  Deborah examined the elegant old-style handwriting. A fountain pen had been used. She opened up the seal and pulled out a small note. It was from Robert Sommers. Her heart began to pound hard.

  It read:

  I want to try and help you. We need to talk face to face. But I can’t risk calling you or texting you. They’re monitoring everything. Calls and e-mails. Maybe even close surveillance. Here’s what I propose:

  After you visit Sam at the hospital this morning, hop on the Metro at Civic Center at 10 a.m. precisely and head north. Bring copies of the protocol and missing pages with you. I’ll be wearing a red Buccaneers hat. Don’t be afraid.

  Robert S.

  She handed the letter to Jamille.

  ‘What do you think?’ Deborah asked.

  ‘Could be a set-up.’

  Deborah reflected for a few moments. ‘I need to do this. But I’ll understand if you don’t want to come along with me…Honestly, it’s not a problem.’

  ‘You’re crazy, girl, you know that?’ Jamille shook her head. ‘You never give up, do you?’