CHAPTER 29
“Damn it, Peter, I need to know,” said Morgan. “How the hell did you escape Afghanistan? And whose body did they find at your apartment?”
Morgan, Jenny, and Conley were sitting at a booth in an old and dingy roadside diner. They were sharing the cramped eatery with only Alex, at the counter, and two solitary truckers who wore blank stares of exhaustion and listlessly shoveled food from heaping plates into their mouths. A corpulent woman with a wrinkled face and a dirty apron filled their coffee mugs and tossed three peeling menus onto the table. Morgan picked one up and found that it was crusted with mustard.
“I tried to transfer the photographs electronically,” said Conley. “They never went through. Acevedo controls key Internet infrastructure in the Kandahar region, and my guess is, they were watching Internet traffic very closely. That, I think, is how they found me out.”
“The body,” he continued, “belonged to a man who tried to ambush me in my apartment. But I was ready for him.” He took a sip of his coffee. Jenny watched him intently as he spoke, hanging on every word, her soft, intelligent eyes slightly widened in interest. “When I went out that morning, I had left two hairs stuck between the door and the jamb. It’s an old trick, but it works. When I came back, they were gone. In this line of business,” he added, “it pays to be paranoid.”
Morgan looked outside to the far corner of the parking lot, where the GTO and Conley’s car were parked in the dark under a dead lamppost. They had driven separately, Morgan with his family and Conley on his own. When they were three hours into New York State, far enough to elude any possible search perimeter, they had stopped for the night. They had paid cash for two motel rooms—which would be easier to defend than the more comfortable three—and they had the management unlock the adjoining door, opening it wide. Morgan and Conley bunked together in a double room to avoid any awkward pairings.
Alex was still having trouble dealing with what she had witnessed at the cabin and had perched on a stool across the diner from them, her elbow on the bar, nursing a glass of Coke, looking distraught and making a point of keeping her back to them. She had wanted to stay behind in the motel room, but Morgan refused to let her out of his sight.
“So then, I had a choice to make,” continued Conley. “I had no gun on me, only a knife, and I had the money and the papers to walk away and get out of the country. But I had left the memory card—that memory card”—he pointed to Morgan, who was absentmindedly fiddling with the little plastic chip as he listened—“hidden inside the apartment. So I decided to go in. I took off my shoes, walked right past my door, down the hall, and came back as quietly as I could. Then I crouched next to the door, and I listened hard until I heard the bastard inside cough. He was standing close, waiting for me right behind the door.
“It wasn’t really much of a contest,” Conley bragged. “I unlocked the door like I was coming home, and once it was open, I slammed it hard against him. He stumbled back just long enough for me to disarm him and slash his throat.
“He was smart enough not to have any ID on him, but I knew he was from Acevedo. I got the memory card from right where I’d left it behind a loose brick hidden behind the bed. I put my watch on him, I messed up his face, and then I torched the apartment. Then I raised the alarm and got the hell out of there. After that, I went straight to Zalmay’s, and once I sent him on his way to Kabul with the memory card. I couldn’t trust the CIA with it, not after seeing T there. I didn’t know who else might be compromised. I couldn’t contact you electronically, for fear that the message might never make it to you. So I left the letter at the dead drop, addressed to you, and trusted that, even if the chain of communications had been compromised, they would want to know what the letter said, hoping it might lead them to Zalmay.”
The waitress came over to take their orders, which they gave her in turn.
“The young lady at the counter over there is with us, too,” said Morgan. “Be sure to let her know you serve twenty-four-hour breakfast when you take her order. She’ll be happy to hear that.”
The waitress left, and Conley continued. “Once Zalmay was on his way, I had to finish what I started. That night, I snuck into Marwat’s house and eliminated him. After that, I hid out for a couple of days before I skipped the country as a stowaway in one of Acevedo’s own planes.” “Well done!” said Morgan, chuckling.
“I ended up in Frankfurt, where I finally called in that favor from George Koch. Remember him, Morgan? Well, he got me a fresh EU passport and a ticket back here.
“I tried to contact Plante. That’s when I found out he was dead, that it appeared you were the one who killed him, and that now no one could find you. I didn’t believe for a second that you were the killer. So I went to your father’s old cabin, where I thought I’d be most likely to find you. I knew there was more to this than met the eye.”
“There always is,” said Morgan. He went on to relate everything that had happened to him since Plante showed up on his doorstep. At this point, Conley had already been told about Zalmay. It had been the first thing he’d asked about after making sure that Morgan and his family were all right. He listened to the story keenly, deep in thought and never interrupting, as if trying to make everything fit together in his mind. Morgan had just finished telling him about evading the sniper at Plante’s house when he spotted the server walking toward them, balancing three plates of food.
She dropped a plate holding a soggy-looking burger onto the table in front of him, buns open steakhouse-style and topped with a wilted leaf of lettuce. But he hadn’t eaten more than the odd snack picked up at a gas station convenience store for the last few days. To him, this was a feast. He could tell that Peter and Jenny were both also ravenous, and for a few minutes, they ate in silence. Then Morgan broke it, asking Conley, “Do you know about Plante’s investigation of Acevedo?”
“Know about it? I was helping him. What, you think he did all that on his own? We had a couple of contacts in the company who sneaked out some of their financial files, whatever they could get their hands on. Apparently, some people still have consciences, even people who work for soulless traitors. Plante and I compiled that information, looking for the identity of the person responsible for running the drug trade and the traitor in the CIA who was helping them.” He took a pregnant pause.
“But there’s more to it, isn’t there?” asked Morgan.
Conley frowned, thinking, and then said, “Jenny, would you excuse us for a moment? I think it’s best that you don’t hear any of what I’m about to say.”
Jenny, who had been absorbed in the story, looked somewhat deflated by the request, but she acquiesced. “I’ll go check on Alex,” she said, getting up and bringing her coffee and food with her.
Conley lowered his voice. “Look, Dan, I’m telling you this in the strictest confidence. I’m telling you because I trust you, and there’s no one else who can help me with this.”
“You don’t have to worry about me, Peter. I have your back come hell or high water.”
Conley took a deep breath and bit his lip. “This investigation into Acevedo that Plante and I were running was entirely . . . extracurricular. The CIA knew nothing about it. And we had good reason to keep it that way. Our driving suspicion was that Acevedo had someone in the CIA who was leaking information and doing their best to disrupt any investigation or operation against Acevedo.”
“Plante told me that much,” said Morgan.
“Here’s the part I’m certain he didn’t tell you,” said Conley, looking furtively around them and then leaning in closer, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper. “During the course of our investigation, I was approached by a man I didn’t know. Called himself Smith. I had him pegged right away for an intelligence type, careful, measured, and deliberately vague. He accosted me in the street and asked me about the Acevedo investigation. I told him I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but I could tell he knew that I did. He said he was a representati
ve from some supersecret worldwide security organization of some kind. He said they were impressed with me and were interested in recruiting me to do some work for them.”
“That’s a likely story,” scoffed Morgan.
“I didn’t believe it myself, at first. Had ‘trap’ written all over it. Of course, we’ve all heard the rumors about such a thing existing, operating on a level that’s even more secret than Clandestine Services, some kind of shadow organization. But I’ve always thought it was a sort of tinfoil-hat fantasy, the CIA bogeyman. Plus, even if I did think such a thing existed, no way in hell did I believe that this guy was associated with it.”
“But you changed your mind?” said Morgan.
“I did. Not that I got a good feeling about this guy, but then again, I’m not one to go by my gut on this kind of thing. What changed my mind was that he was handing me intel. It was real, solid stuff. Checked out. And it pointed to the existence of a mole within the CIA. Someone high-level.”
“Did you think it might be a smokescreen of some kind? To get you to give up what you had?” interjected Morgan.
“Yeah, I thought it might be, but it checked out, Morgan. Everything checked out. And meanwhile, they didn’t ask for anything in return. And then they made their proposition—the mission in Afghanistan. Plante would help arrange for me to go undercover. The mission, as far as the CIA knew, would be to terminate a local drug lord. But I was also there to look into Acevedo. A deception within a deception. I got a tip about a plane that was going to be loaded with opium. I took the chance, recruited Zalmay to help me get in, and took those pictures in the memory card.”
Morgan nodded. “Do you think this organization of yours will be able to help us?”
“I do, if I knew how to contact them!” said Conley. “But I have no idea who they are, much less where I might find them. They came to me. That’s how it always worked.”
Morgan nodded and said, after a pause, “But there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why did you reach out to me, of all people, to come and make the meet with Zalmay?”
“That was never part of the plan. I wasn’t going to turn him over to CIA custody, where I was sure he’d turn up dead, a ‘suicide’ or the victim of an unfortunate accident. I didn’t know how deep the rot in the Agency might be. So I was going to bring him over myself and defend him with my life if I had to.” His tone was suffused with bitter sadness.
“What happened?”
“I guess I got spotted doing recon with Zalmay. I was ambushed. They knew where to find me—someone in the CIA had ratted me out. But it got worse. I was making contact with this shadow group by handing off written notes to a runner who was on Flower Street at 2:00 P.M. every day. Never talked, never made eye contact, just passed the note. The day after Zalmay and I managed to take those photographs, the runner never showed up. The next day, he didn’t, either, and I was attacked.
“I would have trusted Plante to retrieve Zalmay, but we couldn’t communicate privately between ourselves or in a way that others in the Agency wouldn’t understand, too. There was just one person I trusted completely and to whom I could communicate a message without the possibility of anyone else understanding it.”
Morgan nodded. “Any idea who the traitor is?”
“I don’t have any evidence that points strongly to anyone in particular. I just know it’s got to be someone with a pretty high security clearance. But . . .”
“But?”
“I have a hunch,” said Conley, lowering his voice. “Kline. He’s an outsider, the bureaucratic type, and a micromanager. He’s into everything in the NCS, and he has top-level security access.”
Morgan stirred his coffee. “I never liked that asshole,” he said. “And I believe he’s capable of it. But he hasn’t got the brains or the guts to mastermind an operation like this. If he’s in it, he’s got a boss.” He paused, then asked, “What about this Hodges guy, from Plante’s file?”
“He’s definitely in elbow deep,” said Conley.
“Do you think he might be the guy behind it all?” Morgan asked.
“I think it goes farther up than that,” said Conley. “No way he’s doing all this without the higher-ups taking notice. But he’s a solid lead.”
“Good,” said Morgan. “So we go after him. We get Jenny and Alex someplace safe, and we go after him hard. Then we find out who he’s working for, and we go after him. We get to the bottom of this, no matter what it costs, Peter. Because we can’t back out now. This is the only way we’ll ever get out of this alive.”
Morgan looked over his shoulder at his wife and daughter, who were talking quietly but intensely at the counter. Alex was sniffing and blowing her nose, her eyes red. “I need to do this, Peter. For them. Jenny and Alex. I couldn’t stand the thought of them getting hurt because of this. We already came too close.”
Morgan looked at his friend, who was gazing back at him sympathetically. But Morgan thought he saw something else there, a sad sort of relief. And he understood. Conley had never had a family of his own. He had never had a lack of lovers; Morgan used to joke that Conley had a woman in every city in the world. But he had not gotten married and settled down, and did not have any plans to. It made him a great spook. He had nothing holding him back and tying him down. Morgan imagined that it would be a lot easier, not having to worry about what might happen to his family. But at the same time, it was a sadder, emptier existence. As he looked at Jenny and Alex at the counter, he was filled with love. More than anything, they gave his life meaning, they gave his actions weight. He could not imagine giving that up for anything.
“There’s one more thing,” said Morgan. He took the memory card out of his pocket and laid it on the table in between himself and Conley. “I believe this is yours.”
Conley picked it up and examined it as if it were a precious jewel. “This has traveled a hell of a long way to make it back into my hands.”
“And now what are you going to do about it?” said Morgan.
“Nothing yet,” said Conley, as he stowed the plastic chip in a jacket pocket. “It’s not enough anymore. Especially now that we know for certain that we can’t trust the Agency. We have to sit on this until we know the whole picture, along with the things you took from Plante.”
Morgan nodded. “Then we know what the mission is.”
“Cougar and Cobra, together again, huh?” Conley was smiling wearily, despite himself.
“Cougar and Cobra,” said Morgan. He grinned, then looked over at Alex, sitting at the counter with her mother. “I need to go over there. I need to explain this to my daughter. About what happened. And about why we have to go.”
“Good luck,” said Conley sincerely.
Morgan walked slowly toward the counter, making sure that his daughter saw him approach. He stood with Jenny in between him and Alex. “Hi, I . . .” he said, trailing off, without knowing what to say.
Alex looked up, her moist, puffy, bloodshot eyes expressing both devastation and defiance.
Jenny tenderly kissed her daughter’s head and got up. “I’ll let you two talk,” she said, excusing herself.
Morgan sat down on the stool beside Alex. She looked down at her plate, pushing a soggy fry around with a toothpick. He didn’t know what to say. Morgan could go into a war zone and face off against the deadliest men on the planet without a second thought. He had undertaken missions that endangered his life again and again. By the odds, he should have died five times over by now. He had come out of all that alive, and on all those assignments, fear had never hampered him. And yet, here she was, a still-impressionable teenage girl, and he was terrified to speak to her.
She sure wasn’t giving him an opening. Well, he thought, taking a deep breath, I just have to go for it. “Look, kiddo,” he started, “there are lots of things I wish I had done differently. One is that I should have trusted you with my secret. I should have told you years ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t.” He paused for breath. Her eyes, still looking the ot
her way, showed the slightest signs of softening.
“Back at the cabin . . . you saw a side of me that I hoped you would never know, and I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “But I have never been sorry about anything I did to protect this country and my family. And in the end, it’s really about you, because you’re the most important person in the world to me. You and your mother. Did you know that?”
She didn’t look up, but a tear rolled from her eye and dropped from her cheek to the counter, her aloofness melting. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hands were no longer playing with the plate but were in her lap. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she said bitterly. “That you did all those horrible things for my sake?” She looked away, sniffling.
Morgan took a deep breath. “I’ve got to go away tomorrow, early in the morning. It will be hard for me, because all I want is to stay with you and watch over you. But I have to go to protect you, and I might not make it back. That’s something I was always aware of, on every mission I went on. After I met your mother, I had to tell her, every time I left on a mission, everything I wanted to say to her, because I knew I might not get another chance. So I’ll say this to you, Alex. If I never talk to you again, if you never forgive me or understand me, just know that I love you, more than anything, and that everything I did, I did it thinking about what was best for you.”
She didn’t respond, didn’t look up, just sat there, choking on her sobs. He sighed, got up, and before he walked away, heard her say, quietly, “I love you, too, Dad. I just don’t like you anymore.”
He sighed. It would have to do.
CHAPTER 30
Lester Hodges checked his watch, but it was more a gesture of irritation than anything else. He had been sitting at his table for two at La Martine for over half an hour, and that was forty-five minutes longer than he was willing to wait for anyone, especially a punk junior senator from Pennsylvania. A waiter silently refilled his water glass. Hodges tapped the empty glass that had contained his gin and tonic. “Another one,” he grunted. “And don’t be stingy with the booze this time.”
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