A Conspiracy of Ravens

by Terrence McCauley

  Hicks watched Demerest mull it over. He was like the dozens of other community men he’d worked with and against in his time at the University. Demerest was a career company man who had spent his life in clandestine services. Experience like that was worth its weight in gold in the private sector. The fact that he was still the lead choice for the Director of National Intelligence spot even after the black site scandal proved he was well respected and capable in the community.

  Hicks imagined Demerest had been offered several chances at the brass ring over the years, a cushy private sector consulting gig with a salary nestled deeply within the six-figure range, with an annual bonus that might push it into the seven-figure range. All he would have needed to do was write a couple of white papers a year that told trade organizations a region was stable enough for investment. Tell the shareholders what they wanted to hear. Shake hands and close deals. Paper cuts and carpal tunnel syndrome would have been the biggest threats he faced each day.

  But Demerest hadn’t jumped ship and Hicks knew why. It wasn’t out of love for God, country, and the CIA, though that was part of it. It wasn’t fear of failure in the private sector, either.

  People like Demerest stayed because nothing else could compare to The Life. He wasn’t just a spectator in the stands, or worse, a talking head the news networks brought in when some asshole blew up a bus or hijacked a plane or shot up a nightclub somewhere in Europe. Charles Demerest was still in the field and in the game, making plays and making a difference, no matter how small that difference might be. The Life was the only life he knew or had ever wanted to know.

  Hicks knew the feeling well. He felt the same way.

  And it was why he knew this company man would take the offer Sarah and he had given him.

  Demerest surprised them by suddenly standing up as he put the thumb drive in the pocket of his windbreaker. “You two are free to go for now. I’ll review what’s on the thumb drive, but if I like what I see, I’ll want my people digging into Jabbar’s laptop as soon as possible. And don’t tell me you don’t have it because I know damned well you do.”

  Hicks showed him the handheld again. “All I need is an e-mail address and you’ll have the contents of the hard drive in seconds. We can send the laptop to you for verification whenever you’re ready.”

  Demerest finally looked impressed. “I assume you’ll be sending it from a secure server, so tracing it will be pointless.”

  “The server will go off-line as soon as it sends the information, and will never be used again,” Hicks said.

  Sarah stood next to her friend. “You’ve made a wise decision, Carl. Really.”

  Demerest pulled his windbreaker over his belly. “If this evidence is as good as you claim it is, we’ll have a deal. If I get the DNI spot, I’ll give you your autonomy and our cooperation in working against the Vanguard.”

  His fleshy face reddened again. “But if either of you ever lie to me or try to use me or hold anything back in any way, you’re both dead. No meetings in the park, no disagreements, no renegotiation of terms, and no warning. Just a single bullet in the brain for each of you before I pull your organization apart like warm bread and bring it under my control.”

  Sarah took a step back. “Carl, I—”

  Demerest looked down at Hicks. “You were right, son. The University has only lasted this long because no one has ever taken the time to connect the dots to see exactly what you are. But now we know and that changes everything. You play games with us this time, the Vanguard will be the least of your concerns. A couple of DIA hotheads tried to kill you with our equipment, son. If I do it, we won’t miss.”

  He handed Hicks a plain business card with an abnormally long IP address on it. “Upload everything you have to that server. If I don’t have everything by the time I get back to my desk, the deal is off and you’re back in the crosshairs.” He looked at Sarah. “Both of you.”

  Demerest turned and headed back the way he’d come in, leaving Sarah standing alone to watch her old friend walk away.

  “Poor thing,” she said. “His ego is bruised worse than I had expected. But don’t worry, James. He’ll come around when he sees the kind of evidence we’re giving him.”

  “Who’s worrying?” Hicks was already typing the server address Demerest had just given him into his handheld. “If he agrees to work with us, great. If not, we’ll keep doing our thing like we always have. Our way.”

  “And if he lives up to his threats?”

  “Then we start making some of our own.”

  After entering the lengthy address, Hicks hit the upload button, sending the hundreds of encrypted ZIP files Jabbar had given him to the secure Langley server. Bank records, surveillance footage, technical information on the contagion Bajjah had paid to have engineered, and the like. All of it proving Bajjah had been financed by members of the Vanguard to carry out biological attacks against the United States.

  Once OMNI confirmed the files had been uploaded, Hicks ordered OMNI to erase the hard drive of the server and deactivate it. The Langley systems were probably already running an automatic trace, but all they’d find was a dead spot somewhere in cyberspace.

  Hicks looked up and saw Sarah was still looking in the direction where Demerest had headed.

  Hicks normally didn’t give in to sentiment, but he did now. “We just handed him the case of his career. Look on the bright side…at least now I know your first name.”

  If Sarah heard him, she didn’t show it. “I hope he doesn’t allow his pride to foul this up. For his sake, as much as our own. He’s a very dangerous man, James, and doesn’t make idle threats.”

  Hicks put his handheld back into his sweatshirt pouch as he stood to leave. He readjusted the Ruger so it didn’t bulge in his pocket. “Neither do I.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s what worries me.”

  Hicks quickly walked eastward, out of the park. Too many people could have noticed them talking, especially after one of Demerest’s outbursts. No sense in making more of a spectacle by saying goodbye. Besides, Sarah looked too lost in her concern for her old friend to notice.

  He took out his handheld as he walked and tapped the same icon as before, opening a line to Stephens. “Have everyone stand down, Cosmo. Field trip is over. Get everyone back to New York and get plenty of rest tonight. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  AS PER his agreement with Sarah, Charles Demerest exited the park the same way he had entered. He reached the corner of Sixteenth Street and Florida Avenue NW, where a black Ford Expedition was waiting for him, engine running. The windows of the SUV were tinted darker than the legal limit, but the official federal plates kept curious police at bay.

  After climbing into the backseat and pulling the door closed, Demerest yanked the windbreaker over his head. “Goddamned thing made me sweat like a pig, Williamson. Remind me to fire the idiot who told me to wear it.”

  “It was your idea, sir,” Williamson said from behind the wheel. “You didn’t want to wear a vest, so the windbreaker was as bulletproof as we could make you. The Kevlar lining made it warmer than it should’ve been.”

  “Never let the facts get in the way of a good complaint.” Demerest threw the sopping windbreaker aside and took the thumb drive out of the pocket. “I left my phone on the entire time. Tell me you were able to record everything.”

  “Unfortunately not, sir.” Williamson pulled the Expedition out into southbound traffic. “The snipers had a visual on you on the whole time, but no audio. I think Hicks was blocking the signal somehow, though we don’t know that for sure. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t apologize for something that’s not your fault. Did our people find out if Hicks had anyone else in the park?”

  “We pegged twelve possible targets, but none confirmed. If they were working with Hicks, they were both subtle and good. Facial recognition scans on each of them came up blank, leading us to suspect they were working for Hicks. The Go Team leader wanted to grab them when yo
ur audio went dead. I kept them at bay because you didn’t give us the signal to move in.”

  “You made the right call,” Demerest said. “I got more out of the son of a bitch on a park bench than I would have in a cell at Fort Meade, anyway.”

  When they stopped at a red light, Demerest handed the thumb drive to his aide. “I want this analyzed on a secure machine in case he put a virus or a tracker on it. No internet or network connections, understand?”

  “Consider it done, sir.” Williamson slipped the thumb drive into his jacket pocket, flush against the nine millimeter holstered on his left shoulder. He glanced at his boss in the rearview mirror. “May I ask what’s on it?”

  “An executive summary of a much bigger package. I gave Hicks an old server where he could upload additional information. I want every byte of every file scanned and rescanned before anyone clicks on anything. I wouldn’t put it past the son of a bitch to hide a Trojan horse to try to access our systems. He told me he’d kill the server after he sent it, but have our people run a trace on it anyway.”

  “I’ll make sure your orders are followed to the letter, sir.” Williams hesitated a moment before asking, “May I ask your impression of the man, sir? Hicks, I mean. I know you had reservations about meeting him in a public place.”

  Demerest considered his answer as he watched people flow past on the crosswalk. Williamson was a good aide, capable with a quick mind, but he was still only an aide. He was neither a confidant nor a peer. Shutting him out too much might crush his spirit and render him useless. But too much familiarity often bred contempt. In their business, contempt often led to disaster.

  “He’s smart,” Demerest allowed. “A lot smarter than Sarah led me to believe. Cocky, too. Normally I’d see that as a flaw we could exploit, but I get the feeling that son of a bitch is every bit as good as he thinks he is.”

  “He looked like a bum to me, sir.” The light changed and Williamson let the Expedition move with traffic. “If he was that good, he’d be working for us, or would have at one point.”

  Demerest looked out the window. “If there’s one thing I learned a long time ago, Williamson, it’s that appearances don’t mean much. That’s certainly the case with James Hicks.”

  If it was a lesson he had forgotten, Sarah had reminded him of it during their phone call the night before. He knew she had worked for the University in the past, but had no idea the organization was anything more than a think tank. He certainly never knew she had once been its Dean. That revelation alone had caused him a sleepless night, wondering what else he may have missed over the years. I was married to the woman for three years, he thought, and I had no idea. Was that why the marriage failed? Were we both too good at keeping secrets?

  He had also had no idea about the extent of the University’s activities. That troubled him even more, especially with his appointment as Director of National Intelligence about to be announced within the next few days. He had heard whispers about the University over the years, rumors and stories of assets around the world claiming to be part of the CIA or NSA or an independent contractor, only to find out later that they didn’t exist.

  But now that he knew about the University, he would have his people start connecting some dots. James Hicks was the first dot on the sheet.

  Until his conversation with Sarah, all Demerest had on Hicks was a screen shot from the security camera in Philly and a few ATM photos snapped in Manhattan before someone spiked their surveillance.

  Once she’d given him Hicks’s name, Demerest ran it through every system at his disposal, including military personnel records of all NATO countries. The search hadn’t yielded much more than photos. A few references in dozens of debriefings from overseas case officers and agents offered a general description of a man who could have been Hicks. Blurred images taken by field operatives working in Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and half a dozen African countries had tagged a man fitting Hicks’s description as James Hilts, John Hicks, John Hilts, Jeff Hayes, and other derivations of his name.

  Demerest was sure James Hicks was an alias, too, but a good one. Facial recognition comparisons of every picture from the motel security camera and the ATM shots from the DIA fiasco came up as possible matches at best. He was confident Hicks had received some level of military training at some point, but had covered his tracks well. That meant he was careful and technologically proficient.

  Tracking down two of the most wanted terrorists in the world and leaking information that led to a congressional hearing of the Agency also made him very dangerous.

  But if the Jabbar information Hicks was providing him turned out to be solid, Hicks might prove useful in the near future.

  But that was a huge if. The Vanguard? He absently rubbed his finger along his chin as he stared out the window. Gunrunners going political? It was certainly possible. But was it probable?

  Demerest decided all he could do was speculate until his people had a chance to review the information. He chose to give his busy mind a rest and look out the window at the passing city. Washington, D.C. His city. The capital of the greatest nation the world had ever known. Unlike most people who worked in Washington, he was a true native in every sense of the word. He had been born there, raised there, and had even gone to school there.

  Yet, even after a life spent there, the beauty of the place still never failed to reach him. He often wondered how a city so beautiful, built on the promise of the best of human endeavors, could be so comfortable with its own darkness. Dichotomy had always intrigued Charles Demerest. Dichotomy was what troubled him now.

  James Hicks and the University could either be the greatest weapon in his arsenal or the greatest danger to his career. And only time would tell him which it would be.

  Williamson brought him out of his thoughts by clearing his throat before asking, “What are the next steps concerning this Hicks and Mrs. Demerest, sir?”

  “That depends on the validity of the information he sent us.” There was no reason to tell Williamson more than that. He’d know about it soon enough.

  “And if the information proves to be correct?”

  “Then James Hicks just got a whole lot of new friends.”

  “And if it proves to be a ruse?”

  He caught a glimpse of the National Mall in the near distance. The cherry blossoms were about to bloom. Beautiful. “Then we take Hicks down.”

  BEFORE DRIVING back to Manhattan, Hicks had OMNI’s scanning parameters broadened to include anything that might be a government signal. Demerest hadn’t risen to consideration for Director of National Intelligence by being careless, so he expected some surveillance. Even though he’d just been handed a treasure trove of information, people like Demerest always wanted to know more.

  But OMNI hadn’t detected any significant anomalies during the entire drive home. Nothing from a federal agency. Nothing from anyone tailing him, either. Hicks was relieved to make it back to his 23rd Street facility without incident.

  He had never thought of the facility as home, but it was the closest thing to a home he had.

  Just after becoming head of the University’s New York office several years before, Hicks had blackmailed a young real estate developer into allowing him to build a large concrete bunker beneath the foundation of three townhouses he was rehabilitating on West 23rd Street.

  The University had arranged for secure contractors to work quietly and quickly. Some creative manipulation of the city’s building department’s records had allowed the extra construction to occur without government interference or knowledge.

  The garden apartment on street level looked convincingly cozy to any of the thousands of people who walked or drove past the townhouses each day. There were curtains on the windows, furniture in the living room, and a bookcase crammed with books. Renters on the upper floors paid market rates for rent, which brought in a nice sum each month to fund the University’s Bursar’s Office.

  Once inside the garden apartment, Hicks took the stairs down to
the basement, where a working boiler served the two apartments above. But the basement’s real function was to serve as a stopgap space for Hicks’s sub-basement facility.

  The facility was secured by a plain wooden door with an ordinary-looking doorknob and lock. But there was no key to the lock and the knob didn’t turn. The door could only be opened when a scanner in the knob read the biometrics of his left hand while a hidden camera scanned his facial features. When the two results matched, a section of the wall hissed and the steel-reinforced hatch opened inward like an airplane hatch.

  The sub-basement facility was a large, steel-reinforced concrete vault that slowly bled power off the city’s grid, storing it in its three massive batteries. An independent HVAC unit had filters and radiation sensors to detect any poisonous emissions from the outside world. Three gas-fueled generators could be used in an emergency if the power grid went down for good.

  The facility had been designed to withstand a nuclear blast. Even if the three buildings above him were obliterated, Hicks would still be able to operate for weeks on generator and auxiliary power before he would need to venture outside. He made sure the facility was always stocked with enough food, gas, weapons, and equipment for that eventuality.

  The previous Dean had originally called the facility overkill. But in a post-9/11 world, Hicks saw it as a wise investment. Semper Paratus had been his motto earlier in life. It still was. Always Prepared.

  Hicks knew a fixed location could never be fully secure, but the 23rd Street facility was as close to secure as anyone could hope to get.

  When he reached his desktop computer, Hicks checked OMNI to see what he had missed during his journey to Washington.

  As Dean of the University, Hicks was now responsible for reviewing and approving all activities of dozens of University offices throughout the world every day. The University had Department Heads in every major city in the world where Professors engaged in Field Work and ran Assets who fed them information. Every day, his inbox was full of reports from various operations looking for his review and approval. That afternoon was no different.