Winterlong

by Mason Cross

  Although there was space for more than a dozen staff members at the computers, only three were occupied. Faraday walked past the closest two and approached the farthest station from the entrance.

  “He’s at home?” she said, addressing Williamson.

  Williamson glanced around at her. Her eyes moved from Faraday to Murphy and then back to Faraday. Finally, she nodded. “As of twenty-eight minutes ago.”

  Williamson was in her early twenties. She had shoulder-length dark hair and a doughy, pale look about her that spoke of too many hours indoors staring at screens. Two unopened cans of Red Bull were sitting on her desk, ready for action. She lacked the slightly nervy, eager-to-please demeanor of her coworkers, but in a way that was completely different from Murphy’s wry condescension. She wasn’t attempting to undermine Faraday, or make herself look good; she just had no concept of wanting to impress other people. Faraday liked that about her. That, and the fact that she never failed to deliver, no matter how difficult the task.

  “Stark only checked in at the forward base five minutes ago,” she continued.

  “What kept them?”

  “Pileup on I-4. Bad one, couple of people dead.” Williamson paused, picked up the nearest Red Bull and popped the tab. She took a long gulp and put it down, turning back to the screen. “That meant major slowdowns on the 408. Thanks to that, we’re a half hour behind schedule.”

  “Okay, but aside from that?”

  “Good to go.”

  Faraday turned to Murphy. “This is the best lead we’ve had on Blake in eight months. If this goes wrong, it sets us way back.”

  Murphy wasn’t looking at her. He was staring straight ahead at the big screen on the wall. “It isn’t going to go wrong. He won’t be able to ignore this.”

  Faraday looked back at Williamson.

  “Send the message.”

  FIVE YEARS AGO

  NEW YORK CITY

  Why don’t you tell me about Winterlong?

  In retrospect, the senator’s opening question to me was almost funny. It was a regular laugh riot. Because it turned out that Senator Carlson knew more than I did. A lot more.

  The second manila folder on his desk had contained classified reports. Unedited after-action briefings. Photographs. It was a meticulously compiled history of an entity that was not supposed to have a history. Winterlong had no past; it simply had the here and now, and what had to be done.

  It was a small, elite unit set up for maximum effectiveness with minimum footprint. We carried out the jobs that could not be done on the record. I was familiar with some of the operations recorded in the file. I had taken part in some of them. I knew some rules had been bent and broken from time to time and had broken a few of them myself.

  In the early days, it had been easy to convince myself that those rules were breached advisedly and with necessity. We played a little rough sometimes. We went places where we weren’t supposed to be. Places where there could be no negotiation, no admission of authorization, should we be captured. We specialized in off-the-books work. When going through standard channels wouldn’t get the job done, that’s where we came in. Invisible, unaccountable, deniable. Off the books.

  Except that there was a book, and Carlson had it.

  And it turned out I didn’t know the half of it. Whether by luck or design, I hadn’t been involved in any of the missions that had led to the worst things in that file. And as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I remembered a conversation I’d had with Drakakis a year or so back and knew it was by design.

  We had been alone in his office following an operation in Karachi. I’d raised my concerns about another member of the team: one Dean Crozier. Crozier had an enthusiastic approach to the use of violence. It was more than a tool of the trade for him. It was an end in itself.

  “You’re uncomfortable with him,” Drakakis had said after I described what I’d witnessed in Karachi. Drakakis was in his late fifties, tall with receding gray hair and the beginnings of a paunch. One of that missing generation of soldiers who had been too young for Vietnam and too old for Gulf War 1. Who had completed a long career climb without ever serving in a real war.

  “That’s an understatement. He’s a killer, sir.”

  He’d raised an eyebrow at that and started to make some wry comment, but I continued before he could get it out.

  “He’s dangerous. He’s feeding an addiction out there.”

  Drakakis had nodded. “You’re still fairly new, and perhaps I’ve been remiss in not explaining certain facts of life to you. Well, I’ll make up for that now. You see, this is a team, and a team depends on chemistry. You understand that?”

  I’d said nothing, having a good idea of where he was going.

  “Thing about chemistry, it takes the right mix of elements to get the result you need. Different sorts. Take you, for instance. You’re good at what you do—that goes without saying. If you weren’t good, you wouldn’t be here. But you have something important in your character, too. You’re ...” He stopped and searched for a way to explain it. “You’re one of the white hats, is what I’m trying to say. And Crozier? He’s one of the black hats.” He chuckled. “That boy just might be the blackest of the black, in fact.” He paused and narrowed his eyes. “You know where I’m going with this, son, don’t you?”

  I considered my answer. “You’re saying it takes white hats and black hats, sir.”

  His lips stretched over his nicotine-stained teeth in a wide grin. “That’s exactly right. It takes both kinds. Of course, if I had my druthers, I’d use people like you all the time. Solid. Dependable. Upstanding. But it can’t always be that way. Sometimes you need a black hat. Do you understand that, son?” .

  I had thought about it and nodded, even though I didn’t truly know that I did.

  After seeing Carlson’s file, I knew for sure that I didn’t understand. And Drakakis had known that I wouldn’t, which was why he’d shielded me from it. Carlson’s file confirmed all the worst misgivings and suspicions I’d had and then some.

  Torture, for starters. Not just waterboarding and other examples of so-called enhanced interrogation, but the kind of thing that would have made the more enthusiastic members of the Spanish Inquisition wince. Indiscriminate extrajudicial killings, not just of legitimate or gray-area targets, but anyone who happened to get in the way when no one was looking. The instances of abuse and murder trailed across the globe, to every hot spot in which I’d been deployed, and more besides.

  Worst of all, it wasn’t restricted to confirmed or even suspected bad guys. Civilians were fair game. Not just as collateral damage, but deliberately targeted in order to flush out another target, or worse, simply to send a message.

  As I leafed through the pages in the file, I passed through skepticism to denial to horror. I had been blind. I had accepted that we needed to operate outside the system to get the jobs done that couldn’t be done any other way. I was okay with that. I knew where the line was, and so far I hadn’t had to do anything that crossed that line. But in reaching that accommodation with myself, I had chosen not to think about what that principle could lead to. The way that the lack of rules, the lack of oversight could be abused by the wrong kind of men. Men like Crozier, in particular, but he was only the most extreme example.

  The greater good. An old-fashioned, perhaps naive concept. But it was why I had joined Winterlong. Or perhaps that wasn’t the whole story. I had been attracted by the challenge, by the freedom. That we were stopping supposedly untouchable bad guys and unquestionably saving lives allowed me to overlook some of the compromises. Only now, looking at the seemingly endless array of images in front of me, did I realize that the same setup had been a lightning rod for those with darker motivations.

  I got about two-thirds of the way through the file before I lost my stomach for it entirely. I closed the file and dropped it back on Carlson’s desk.

  “Eye opener, isn’t it?” the senator said. “How does it make you feel, soldie
r? Are you proud of that?”

  I’d been looking down at the floor, almost unaware there was still someone in the room with me, but at the sound of the disgust in Carlson’s voice, I looked up at him, anger burning in my eyes.

  “It makes me feel sick. This isn’t ...” I gestured at the folder, trying to form my feelings into words. I gave up after a minute and sat back in the chair. “How did you get this?”

  Carlson was watching me with interest. “I kind of expected you to deny it all. Tell me these documents are faked.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not fake.”

  “Exaggerated, then.”

  We locked eyes for a long moment. Without breaking the stare, I reached for the folder. I looked down and leafed back through to a particular photograph. A photograph taken in a burnt-out bunker somewhere in Iraq. Crozier’s work, from the look of the knife wounds inflicted on the handcuffed bodies.

  “Senator?” I asked, turning the photograph toward him. “How the fuck do you exaggerate that?”

  His eyes alighted on the photograph and looked away instinctively. He nodded in agreement and took the folder from me, closing it again.

  “There’s a pattern in this file,” he said. “Certain names that come up again and again. Yours is not one of those names.”

  “And that’s why we’re having this conversation?”

  “It’s not the only reason we’re having this conversation,” he said after a moment’s thought. “You asked me how I got this. You seem like a smart guy, so you probably already know the answer. I got this from the only place it could have come from.”

  “Inside.”

  “Exactly. I’m not going to tell you who, naturally, at least not until I know that you’re willing to come on board with this. To be honest, going this far with you is a risk I’d rather not take.”

  A couple of faces flashed in my mind’s eye, but I knew it would be pointless to start playing guessing games. I knew one thing: Whoever had leaked this file to Senator Carlson was the same person who had told him I would be approachable.

  “Then why take the risk?” I asked.

  “Because we need more. The evidence in this file gives us the men on the ground. That’s not good enough for me. We need something on the people in charge, and I think you can help get me it.”

  I didn’t know why I’d be in a better position to do it than Carlson’s other mole, but I put that to one side for the moment, because I had a much more pressing question.

  “What makes you think I’m willing to come on board?”

  Carlson’s lips widened a miniscule amount in an approximation of a smile. “Nothing much, soldier. Only the shade of green you turned when you started looking at those pictures.”

  After leaving the senator’s office, I took the elevator back down to the ground floor and walked across the tiled lobby to the same door I’d used to enter the building.

  I started to walk, not thinking about where I was going, just knowing I needed to walk. I needed fresh air—as fresh as it gets in Manhattan, at any rate—to clear my head, and I needed space to think. The sun was declining in the west, shining into my eyes along West Fortieth, so I turned in the opposite direction and headed east. I passed by Bryant Park and crossed Fifth and Madison and kept going until I was in sight of the East River. I looked across the water. The UN building rose high on my left. The traffic soared past on the FDR Drive.

  The senator’s proposition had been simple. He wanted me to do nothing out of the ordinary. He wanted me to carry on exactly as normal until the next assignment. But when that assignment came, he wanted me to keep my eyes open for an opportunity to get him the evidence he needed. I wasn’t sure exactly what form that evidence might take. The senator had taken a big risk by reaching out to me. Maybe bigger than he knew. But then, he had been right. Because I wasn’t considering whether to do what he wanted. Despite myself, I was already thinking about how.

  The pictures from the files flashed before me. I tried to push them aside, but they kept muscling back in. I tried to focus on the cars passing on the FDR with their oblivious occupants, heading home after what they probably imagined was a hard day at the office.

  I felt detached from the world. Like I had been standing on the deck of a ship on calm seas, and out of nowhere a wave had picked me up and tossed me overboard. I was nothing and nobody. I stood there for an hour, thinking that every certainty I’d thought I could count on had been washed away and now I was standing with no idea who I was or where I was going.

  The shadows were growing longer, trailing the onset of evening. Suddenly, I remembered a voice from a few hours ago, and another lifetime.

  Terradici’s. Tonight. Eight o’clock.

  I looked at my watch and saw that it was a quarter to seven. I may not have known who I was or where I was going anymore. But I knew there was somewhere I was supposed to be at eight o’clock. For now, that would have to do.

  12

  SEATTLE

  It was almost four in the afternoon when I left Jasmine Bryant’s house, which meant the first available flight was an Alaska Airlines service leaving San Francisco International at seven thirty and touching down in the Seattle-Tacoma airport a little more than two hours later. Ever since the Samaritan case, I’d been more hesitant than usual about flying, because it was the one mode of travel where you were forced to leave a trail. But then again, I hadn’t encountered any problems so far, and by paying cash at the terminal and using a driver’s license as ID, there was nothing to make me stand out from the millions of other passengers moving around the United States.

  I climbed onto the plane on a mild, dry evening in San Francisco. A couple of hours later I stepped out into a cold, rainy night in Seattle. The temperature was just above freezing, and the wind chill drew gasps from the departing passengers as they adjusted to a new season in the space of seconds. The contrast felt like we’d jumped forward in time from early fall to winter. Only that wasn’t an ideal comparison, because winter would never really come to California.

  Sea-Tac was located ten miles south of the city proper. I took a taxi into town, looking out of the window for the familiar sights to orient myself: The Space Needle stood out, lit up brightly against the night sky. My first time in the Pacific Northwest, though I’d long enjoyed its influence on wider society in the form of good coffee and rock music from Hendrix to Cobain.

  I knew that Scott Bryant’s meet was set up for eleven in the morning, which gave me just over thirteen hours to work out where the meeting would be. Seattle is the biggest city in the Pacific Northwest. More than three million inhabitants in the metropolitan area, and probably around three million and one places to arrange a quiet meeting. I knew it would be a waste of time focusing on where, when I could get what I wanted by thinking about who instead. Aella had been the major thing that stuck out about Bryant’s background, largely because it had been the one thing he had made the effort to hide from his record. A rival software company he had worked for in secret in a town he’d spent time in a year or so before. A town that was eight hundred miles away: the kind of distance it would take you most of a day to drive. Enough time to check into a hotel, get some rest, and arrive fresh for an eleven a.m. appointment.

  When I had examined Bryant’s documents stored from his time freelancing for Aella, one name came up repeatedly: Eric W. Kelner. It hadn’t taken more than a couple of clicks to ascertain that Kelner was the CEO of Aella.

  EWK. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to lay waste to the best-laid plans. Sometimes it only takes three letters. My research also told me that the company name was taken from Greek mythology, belonging to an Amazon warrior killed by Hercules. Aella meant “whirlwind,” and if Eric W. Kelner didn’t play ball, that was exactly what he was about to reap.

  Finding people who don’t want to be found can be a challenge. The process involves a certain amount of skill, the employment of certain tricks of the trade, and often most important, the ability to exploit the minor m
istakes of your target. This particular job wasn’t over yet, but so far it hadn’t been difficult to pick up Bryant’s trail, thanks to his mistake with the synced calendar.

  The point is, finding someone who doesn’t want to be found almost always involves effort. But finding someone who isn’t expecting anyone to be looking for them? That’s a breeze.

  One of the advantages of living in a democracy is the fact that political donations, in theory at least, have to be transparent. Successful businessmen make political donations, sometimes to more than one candidate or party. They do this for the obvious reasons: They want their business to remain successful and unencumbered by bureaucracy. Federal law requires that they register their donation on a publicly accessible database, providing their name, place of residence, and the amount and party they donated to. It’s a stalker’s dream—in the time it takes to hit a few keys, you can find the home address of any individual with a political consciousness. There are a couple dozen other effective techniques for snagging a home address, but this is one of the easiest, and it doesn’t even require subterfuge.

  Ninety seconds on the portal told me that Kelner had donated the maximum two thousand dollars to the GOP in the run-up to the last election, and that he resided at 1232 Forest Avenue, in the affluent West Mercer Island neighborhood. Twenty minutes and a taxi ride across the Lacey V. Murrow Bridge later, I was standing on the sidewalk outside. I gave the driver twenty bucks and told him to circle the neighborhood for ten minutes. I didn’t think I would need longer than that.