by David Perry
Chrissie looked over the half-eaten dessert they had shared, pressing her lips into a thin line. Jason had scarfed down most of it. Chrissie had only tried a small forkful, maybe two.
“Yeah, I am,” she replied in a lifeless tone.
“Chrissie, something’s been bothering you all night. I can tell. You should be excited. You finally got the partnership you’ve been shooting for. The firm is exploding with business. The Colonial ownership has transferred back to you. That process is finally over with. And we are filling more prescriptions than we did last year. This year is going to be a very lucrative one. And I’m talking about more than just dollars.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Jason turned to look for their waitress. She was standing off to the side, waiting for his signal. He made eye contact with her and winked so Chrissie couldn’t see it.
“I said,” Chrissie asked again, “what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll see.”
The waitress appeared, pushing a narrow cart on which sat a large bottle of champagne and two flutes. She showed the bottle to Jason and began uncorking it.
“Jason, I’ve already had three glasses of wine. I don’t need any more.”
“Just a small taste,” he replied. “Just take a sip.”
The waitress poured a small sample into Jason’s glass. He placed his nose over the glass and inhaled, pretending he knew something about champagne. He sipped it and nodded his approval. Then the server poured two glasses and placed before both of them.
“A toast,” Jason said, lifting his glass. “I love you, Chrissie. To you and me, we are a great team.”
The waitress had turned her back to them. Just as Jason finished making his toast, she turned around to face them. She placed a round white bread plate on the table between them.
On it rested a small velvet box.
“You’ve been acting like an ass all day, Michael,” Jenny told her son. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She was sitting on the edge of Michael’s bed. Michael was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. His face was a palate of frustration and worry.
“My life sucks,” he hissed.
“I know it seems that way,” Jenny counseled. “But your father getting remarried isn’t the end of the world.”
Michael rolled on his side and propped himself up on an elbow. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m your mother, Michael. Your father told me that he was going to tell you yesterday. It was the proper thing to do. You should feel good that he gave you a head’s up that he was going to propose.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t my place.”
“I don’t like her.”
“Chrissie? I’ve met her several times. She seems like a nice person. Why do you say you don’t like her?”
“Because she’s making him move. When they get married they’re going to live at her house.”
“I know your father. She’s not making him do anything. If he’s moving, it’s because he thinks that’s what’s best for them.”
“I didn’t like it when you and Mark moved us out here to the Salt Ponds. What was wrong with the house in York County?”
“There was nothing wrong with it.”
“Then why did we move?”
“It was just time,” Jenny replied, looking away.
“Bullshit!”
“Watch your mouth!” Jenny slapped his leg as he lay there. “I don’t want to hear language like that again.”
“You and Mark put the house up for sale a week after whatever happened to dad. What happened that night?”
Jenny sighed.
“I know it was something bad. And don’t tell me it was a car accident. Because I know you’re lying.”
Jenny looked out the window into the darkness shrouding their oceanfront home.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“I’m not having this conversation now,” Jenny declared. “Your father loves you very much. You’re still going to see him, Michael. He has a right to live his life. These are the types of issues we all deal with as adults.”
Michael got up from the bed and walked to the window. It looked out on the waves of Chesapeake Bay crashing in the dim wash of light. He studied the line of rotting pilings disappearing into the water.
“I still don’t like it!”
“You can visit Pity City, Michael. But you can’t live there. You will have to get past this.”
Michael’s response was a frustrated grunt. Jenny continued speaking without acknowledging Michael.
“Your father told me that you really haven’t given Christine a chance. You’ve been distant since the first day you’ve met her. Has she treated you badly?”
Michael stared into the darkness as his mind wafted back to that night. He’d heard her voice before he’d met her, and the words he’d heard spoken that night between his father and that woman had stung him to his core.
Chapter 2
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Brad Lane, the FBI deputy director began. He was standing behind a podium emblazoned with the Bureau’s seal—a red and white shield centered under a white streamer that read Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. “We have been tasked with analyzing this information. This analysis and our recommendations will be presented to the National Security Council and the president a few hours from now at the White House. We haven’t much time.”
The briefing room occupied by the nine men and two women sat deep inside the forty-thousand-square-foot Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC) complex of FBI headquarters, overlooking a large, theater-like command center housing banks of computer and television screens fronted by workstations, each with three monitors, manned by analysts and agents who were typing and talking on phones. Equipped with legions of printers, fax machines, shredders, secure telephones, satellite phones, and high-frequency radios with state-of-the-art secure bandwidth, the SIOC could monitor and direct actions simultaneously for up to eight crises around the country and world. The normal contingent of three dozen staffers had swelled to the hundreds in response to the perceived crisis developing along the East Coast.
“What the latest, Brad?” the director of the National Security Council, Elizabeth Rankin, asked. “I understand we’ve determined she’s alive, is that correct?”
Lane nodded the slow, emphatic nod of a man delivering necessary but unpleasant news.
“How the hell could this have escaped detection?” Rankin demanded, looking every bit a septuagenarian, with graying blonde hair and a wizened and wrinkled face. Lane had had many dealings with this witch. She played by her own set of rules. Get in her way and you ran the risk of being steamrolled. Her actual age, fifty-five, was masked by her puckered visage and the effects of a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. “This woman and her team nearly killed two chief executives in Newport News. What was missed? The president wants answers.”
“I’ll take that,” CIA director of operations John Beck, intoned. He cleared his throat, loosened his tie, and sipped from the water glass before him. The poise of his well-coiffed dark hair was offset by the three days of razor stubble coating his face and the swollen, dark bags beneath his eyes.
Brad Lane knew the director of operations well. Beck would endure an incredible amount of scrutiny and stress in the coming weeks and months. The discovery that Delilah Hussein was alive would continue to bring a shit storm of pressure on his department. Beck’s office, also known as Clandestine Operations, would bear the brunt of the blame for this oversight. But Lane also understood that, if word leaked, the media would find a way to blame every government agency.
“Madam Director,” the CIA man began, “Hussein created a credible ploy to make us believe she was dead. The bodies on the yacht in the James River were exact matches to Hussein and her henchman, Oliver. Right down to the dental records. We had no DNA samples to compare. We believed the bodies belonged to them. T
he daughter, Jazan Hussein, aka Jasmine Kader, was dead, killed by the pharmacist with a sniper shot in the rain at the James River Bridge. We had and continue to have Sharif al-Faisal, aka Sam Fairing, the son, in custody. Everything was covered. There was no reason to look for her. The threat, we believed, had been neutralized.”
The NSC director leaned forward. Her jowly face hung over the burnished conference table, the skin waggling with each syllable. To be on the receiving end of the piercing gaze of the penetrating gray eyes was almost painful.
“Obviously, it wasn’t, was it? The bodies were not an exact match, sir. She’s alive, and it escaped the notice of our FBI technicians and analysts.” She waved her hand as if pushing away the past. “We are not done visiting this issue. There will be a reckoning about how the ball was dropped here. But I guess that point is moot now. How did we discover the news?”
“Madam Director,” interrupted CIA deputy director Alvin Senski, Beck’s direct supervisor, “let’s leave the grandstanding for the Senate hearings, please. A lot of people missed the boat on this one, just like with 9/11. Let’s talk about the issue at hand, dealing with finding her!”
“Then shed some light for me.”
The deputy director continued. “SIGINT in the NSA intercepted an electronic communication two weeks ago. It appeared benign, at first. But as we continued to track it, more ominous information became clear. The communication was between two parties, one codenamed The Watcher, and the other unnamed, an unsub. In a series of texts and emails, The Watcher used some key words that drew the attention of the NSA. They tracked the source and location of the electronic intel and discovered that The Watcher is in the United States.”
“Where?”
“In southeastern Virginia. Newport News to be exact.”
“What key words did they lock onto?” The question came from the far end of the table and the deputy director of the Secret Service, Vince Gagliano.
“Excuse me, Mr. Gagliano, what is the Secret Service doing at this meeting?” Rankin demanded.
“Well, Madam Director, the Secret Service is responsible for the safety and protection of the president. Any operation or threat which impacts him or his safety, is the Service’s concern. And I believe that the assassination attempts in Newport News were facilitated by an unseen mole somewhere in our government. The secretary of the Treasury instructed my boss, the director of the Secret Service, to be a part of this meeting. I can assure you, the director will be present at the NSC meeting in a few hours. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stop fucking around, and get some answers.”
Madam Director shrunk at the rebuke. Her face flushed at having been dressed down by someone lower on the food chain. Rankin’s lip curled into a frustrated snarl.
“Proceed,” she instructed the deputy director of the CIA.
“The keywords were Simoon, Hammon, and Jason Rodgers. The Watcher was reprimanded for using these words in a subsequent communication by the unnamed individual on the other end. They occurred three times. It was enough to trigger our surveillance protocols. The NSA and FBI working together using satellite communications surveillance and cell-site simulators were able to determine that The Watcher is in the Newport News area. He has been tracking the pharmacist Jason Rodgers.”
“Cell-site simulators?” Rankin inquired.
“You probably know them as stingrays. The IMSI-catcher, known by various trade names, mimics cell phone towers and routes nearby cell phone signals through the device, allowing us to track suspects and persons of interest.”
“I am aware of the technology. Why is this Watcher following Jason Rodgers?”
“We have not as yet determined that.”
“I don’t see how this leads us to the fact that Hussein is alive,” the NSC director added.
Brad Lane spoke up. “As soon as we heard the keyword between this Watcher and his associate, we reopened the case. The FBI began re-examining every piece of evidence and intelligence. We looked into the information about the bodies found aboard the yacht, Vengeance. One of our analysts discovered an anomaly.”
“An anomaly?”
Lane motioned to the only other woman sitting at the table, a twenty-something cutie wearing large, round-rimmed, black eyeglasses. If she weren’t an agent for the FBI, she could easily have been on the cover of Vogue. Her blonde hair had been pulled tight into a ponytail. She wore a button-down, stiffly starched white shirt revealing a pearl choker around the alabaster skin of her throat.
“Yes, ma’am,” the analyst began. “It came to our attention after interviewing the witnesses in Newport News after the assassination attempts, especially the pharmacist Rodgers, that Delilah Hussein—and all her team—had the same tattoo inked on their inner forearms. It looks like this …”
The woman pressed a button on a remote in her hand. The flat television monitor at one end of the room flared to life, showing a photograph of a person’s arm. The arm, delicate yet muscular, tapered to a portion of a hand revealing a thumb. The nail was long and painted. The swarthy skin held the bluish-gray pallor of death.
“That’s a woman’s arm. Obviously not Delilah Hussein’s,” Rankin observed.
“Correct, Ma’am. This arm belonged to the daughter, Jasmine Kader. Searches of the Iraqi records show that Hussein gave birth to a daughter. At the time of her death, Kader, whose real name is Jazan Hussein, was twenty-nine years old. Jason Rodgers confirmed that every member of her team possessed one of these tattoos. Agents from the CIA interviewed Hussein’s son, Sharif al-Faisal, aka Sam Fairing, who’s being held at a black site—”
“Where is he being held?” the director asked.
“Sorry, ma’am. I’m not privy to that information.”
Rankin looked to the two CIA men in the room. “Where?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” the deputy director of the CIA replied. “That’s highly classified. Not even the president knows.”
“But you do.”
“No, Ma’am, I don’t. Only my, boss, the director of the CIA and a handful of high-level White House staff know.”
Rankin bristled at the second snub.
“To continue,” the female analyst said, “the CIA agents confirmed during an interview that the son, al-Faisal, does in fact have a marking on his right inner forearm that matches this design. We then went back and looked at the photos of the bodies on the yacht—”
“Let me guess,” the director interrupted once more. “The bodies do not have tattoos on them.”
“Well, ma’am, one of the bodies was so badly burned there was no way to confirm. But on the female’s body, the skin of the right arm must have been protected from the blast because it was mashed against the torso. The skin was relatively undamaged. And you are correct, ma’am, there was no tattoo.”
Homeland Security’s Director of National Protection Kyle Gill interjected. “With the knowledge that Hussein was probably still alive, we activated our emergency national security protocol, Operation Brick Wall. Every governmental agency with security jurisdiction is currently on alert and has been for the last few weeks. Additionally, we have instituted Operation Dust Storm, in keeping with the simoon terminology. A simoon is—“
“I’m well aware of what a simoon is, Brad,” Rankin advised. “I’ve read all the briefs.”
“Operation Dust Storm is looking for Delilah Hussein and any accomplices.”
“And so far?”
“Communications to The Watcher occur approximately every six to eight hours in Newport News. We are trying to triangulate the origins of the texts to the unsub with little luck so far.”
“We have the most sophisticated electronic surveillance technology in the history of man. We should have been able to locate the source by now.”
The second FBI analyst, a middle-aged man wearing a bow tie and a scowl, chimed in. “Ma’am.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m an analyst with the FBI on loan from the DIA with a specialty in SIGINT.”
<
br /> “Continue.”
“The burst communications that The Watcher is receiving from and sending to come from a generalized location on the planet. The Caribbean. The source of the transmissions varies with each dispatch.”
“So they are moving around?”
“It would appear so. But there’s one problem.”
“Which is?”
“The transmissions always occur over water, never on land. And they occur within a 1000-mile radius. The bursts occur, then the signal disappears. Kind of like when you turn off your cell phone.”
“So they are on a boat or plane. But, they must have a base of operations. Can’t you use some kind of algorithm to find a common spot somewhere within that radius where they could house a base of operations?”
“Very good, ma’am. We tried that. There are several intersecting points in the defined area. Bring up the next picture, please,” the male analyst instructed his young female counterpart.
The massive television monitor flashed again. A flat map of the world appeared. On it, a red line had been overlaid on an area extending from the tip of Florida to the eastern Caribbean Islands, creating an irregular trapezoid. The picture zoomed in, filling the screen with the search area. Yellow lines appeared inside the trapezoid radiating three hundred and sixty degrees from various points. The lines intersected at multiple spots.
The male analyst continued. “These highlighted intersection points show the likely areas to search. Each one is over water and miles from any land mass. Surveillance satellites have captured hundreds of images over these sites. Nothing has been found.”
“We’re talking about the Caribbean, not the Middle East. It’s not like it’s a hotbed of terrorism. Are we searching over land with the satellites?” Rankin spat.
“Madam Director,” Claude Feasal offered, “the Caribbean covers five hundred thousand square miles.” Feasal, sitting closest to the podium, was director of the National Security Branch of the FBI.