by John Sweeney
‘No fruit as yet; not even a seed,’ said Lansing.
‘Intelligence against a SIGINT-aware organisation like ISIS requires time,’ said Zeke. ‘If the Agency runs its operations with the patience of a duck, it will be found quacking.’
Zeke scored high on languages and subjective analysis, but these were Palaeolithic skills in the digital age.
‘The truth is,’ said Lansing, ‘you traded satellite imagery of immense value to this Agency, for a foreign national whose loyalty to the United States is very much an open question.’
‘Immense value? I doubt that.’
‘The charge is that you’re trading Agency gold for a pinch of tobacco and a shard of glass, Mr Chandler.’
Zeke eased back in his chair, almost languidly, and smiled his open-mouthed smile and said, ‘This is all a smokescreen, isn’t it? What you’re really worried about is me stumbling on your black operation in Albania, isn’t it? The secret facility in the mountains near Tropojë, near where I got shot for poking my nose in things which weren’t my business.’
Lansing stared at him, cold-eyed. ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I need a break,’ said Zeke. ‘Please, excuse me.’
Zeke realised the mood music for his future was all wrong. He was heading, fast, out of the door, no question; he would lose all his security clearances; they were not above taking his pension off him. He found the nearest bathroom, finished his business, and was on his way back to the hearing room when he bumped into Mike Rinder, the Agency’s Director.
‘Zeke,’ said Rinder, ‘how’s it going?’
‘Not good, Mike, not good.’
‘I heard that, too. The specifics aren’t great, Zeke. You shouldn’t have traded satellite imagery for that Irishman.’
‘I believe I did have authority to do that.’
‘I can’t stop this process, I’m afraid.’
Zeke said nothing.
‘Why don’t you vanish for six months or so?’ said Rinder. ‘Come back after the election, when things are clearer, when people are less sore at you?’
‘This isn’t about me, is it? It’s about the black facility in Tropojë, isn’t it?’
‘Why don’t you vanish for six months or so?’ repeated Rinder, the expression on his face glacial.
‘Surely, the logical response to my strange question ought to have been: “What black facility is that, Zeke?”’
‘Whatever it was, it no longer exists.’
‘My, my . . . So you’ve closed it down.’
‘I haven’t closed anything down.’
‘But it no longer exists?’
‘You’ve won that battle, Zeke. But don’t let your victory be Pyrrhic. In my judgement, you are a great asset to this Agency. But your enemies here in this very building think that you’re making the war on terror unnecessarily harder. They want your head on a plate, and at this moment in time you’ve given them a nice wooden chopping block and a lovely sharp axe.’
‘I didn’t create a black facility. Why am I in trouble for asking questions about something that should never have existed in the first place?’
‘Good question. But that’s not the question the Inspector General is asking right now. He’s asking why the Agency should spend a trillion dollars on satellite technology so that you can go around handing out its product to dictators in return for favours. So, if I were you, I would lie low right now.’
‘And walk out on an internal affairs investigation?’
‘So you will be a naughty boy, for a while. But it’s better that you go and then we can sort this out when you get back. Deal?’
‘No deal. I did not join this Agency to turn my back on the American constitution. We serve our democracy. We uphold the rule of law, Mike, and the law says no black ops.’
Rinder looked over Zeke’s shoulder, double-checked that the corridor remained empty.
‘Power’s draining from me, Zeke. I haven’t got the juice. The word is soon I’ll be out. I can’t defend you anymore.’
‘If she wins, you’ll get another term in office, surely?’
‘She’s not going to win.’
‘Do we prejudge the American people their right to a fair and free election these days?’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘So who gets your job?’
‘You’re my choice. If she wins, you could take the chair. But she isn’t going to win. If he wins, Crone will be the new Director. He has no time for the human rights stuff that gets you all het up.’
‘The Irishman I got out told me that when he was being tortured, Grozhov was in the room, and then Grozhov’s phone rang and the Irishman heard him say, “Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin.” Grozhov talked about the White House and Kompromat.’
‘Straight up?’
Zeke nodded.
‘The Russians seem to have a skin in our election,’ said Rinder. ‘I’ll talk to the FBI, but they’re only interested in her emails. Meanwhile, I can’t save you, Zeke. Get out of here. They can’t rip you apart if you’re not in the building.’
‘Understood.’
‘Attaboy,’ said Rinder. His smartphone bleeped a message. By the time he’d read it, Zeke was no longer there.
SOUTHERN HUNGARY
It had been all so easy. Having established which registration camp in Hungary Jameela and Ham were housed in by using the drone and the face recognition program on his computer, he’d paid off a guard, established their release date, and then tailed them discreetly to just short of the border, always the place of maximum chaos. The fog had been an unexpected bonus, making everything that bit easier. He’d waited until Ham had run ahead of his mother into the fog where it lay at its thickest, picked him off his feet, knocked him out with a carefully calibrated dose of chloroform and then hurried off – the child, to anyone who might have given them half a glance, asleep in his father’s arms.
Ham’s jaw was still swollen, puffy, but he seemed fine enough. As Joe climbed towards his car, he heard Jameela’s increasingly frantic cries: ‘Ham! Ham!’
Joe felt a stab of remorse and then remembered that she had played with this boy’s life; she had made him join an ISIS suicide cell. Taking a boy from a mother this crazy was, in reality, an act of mercy.
Joe had parked his car half a mile away, on a quiet road at a diagonal to the main refugee track. No one saw him lay the sleeping boy on the back seat; no one saw him drive off. The airport was close by – small, ex-military, boasting a couple of civilian flights a day. At the far end of the single runway, away from the terminal, the G-5 jet sat next to an aircraft hangar, a wide, open door revealing something of the cavern within. Dominic Franklyn was standing at the bottom of the jet’s steps talking to Veronica, the lawyer, who was dressed in a white nurse’s uniform.
Joe parked the car a short distance from the executive jet and opened the rear door. He scooped up Ham, and walked towards the jet. The fog was beginning to burn off. But it was still chilly, and the sudden drop in temperature was enough to stir Ham from his sleep. Joe could feel him wriggle a little and then his eyes opened. He closed them, opened them again, refocused them and spat out, ‘Who are you?’
Joe was within twenty yards of the jet.
‘Mission accomplished,’ said Franklyn, beaming a smile as bright as Pacific Ocean surf. ‘We’ll take him now.’
‘Who are you?’ Ham repeated, no friendlier than before.
‘I’m a friend of your father,’ replied Joe.
And that’s when everything started to go wrong. Joe would never have imagined that a seven-year-old boy could headbutt him that powerfully. Momentarily stunned, his nose bleeding, Joe felt Ham rocket out from his arms and start running, extraordinarily fast, away from the jet, towards the hangar.
‘Ham!’ roared Franklyn. ‘Come here, Ham, come here!’ Franklyn shot past Joe, who was still reeling from the headbutt, and r
an into the hangar. Joe wiped the blood from his nose with his shirt sleeve and trotted on behind.
The hangar housed three small aircraft and the machines to service them: compressors, fuel pumps, baggage-handling trucks, tow trucks. It was big and gloomy and there was no sound nor sign of Ham. Franklyn was walking deep into it, Joe behind him to the right, Veronica to the left. They were a posse hunting down an outlaw; this wasn’t exactly how Joe had imagined the reunion of father and son.
‘Ham, come on out,’ said Franklyn, an edge of desperation creeping into his voice. ‘Game’s over, Ham. It’s been fun, but now it’s time to go.’
Silence, apart from the soft footfalls of the three adults slowly walking forward. The jet pilot, young, fresh-faced, earnest, jogged into the hanger and called out, ‘Dr Franklyn, I’m afraid we need to take off in the next ten minutes. Sir, we’ve got to take off. Please return to your seat, sir. Otherwise I’ll be in breach of my flying-hours limit.’
Franklyn made no reply and continued to walk forward slowly. He was almost at the far end of the hangar. There was still no sign of Ham.
‘Dr Franklyn,’ the pilot followed up, his tone more insistent than before. ‘If we don’t take off in the next few minutes, sir, I can’t fly the jet. You’re going to have to take off now or book another pilot.’
Still there was no reply from Franklyn.
‘Sir, did you hear me? We take off now or you get another pilot. And that might take many hours.’ The pain in his voice was almost comical; he did not want to irritate his boss; he did not want to lose his pilot’s licence.
Franklyn pivoted on a sixpence and walked towards the pilot, who was tall, gangly, pink-faced. It was a long walk. Joe kept an eye open for Ham, but he turned to make sure he did not miss what happened next.
Franklyn got within a foot of the pilot and said quietly, ‘What did you say?’
‘Sir, I said we must take off now. Or, sir, because of the laws limiting flying hours, I can’t fly.’
‘Really?’ asked Franklyn.
‘Yes sir.’
‘Come here, boy.’
The pilot leant his face towards Franklyn, puzzled. The doctor’s first punch was to the pilot’s temple, knocking off his hat; the second and third to the side of his face, bringing him down. The split second he was on the ground, Franklyn started kicking him in the gut, repeatedly.
‘Dominic, no!’ cried Veronica.
At that very moment Ham broke from cover, darting from behind a baggage truck to bolt for the open runway. It just so happened that he started his escape while Joe was standing in the shadow of the tail fin of one of the aircraft. It was the easiest thing in the world for Joe to grab hold of the boy. Having been headbutted by Ham, this time Joe was taking no chances. He grabbed Ham’s arms and pinned them behind his back. Ham kicked backwards, trying for Joe’s groin, but Joe sidestepped him, his captive safe in his hands.
‘OK, we fly, we fly now,’ said Franklyn coolly. He reached out to the pilot with his arm and pulled him upright. ‘Come on, soldier, we’ve got to move.’
The pilot stood up, rubbing his temple where Franklyn had hit him. He had a moment to make his choice: fly the client who had just hit him or swallow his pride. Given more time, he may well have made a different decision. But he shook his head to clear it and started to walk, fast, to the jet, calling out behind him: ‘OK, let’s go.’
On reflection Joe, too, may well have behaved differently. But the necessity of getting the jet airborne, the take-off deadline ticking by, made him move fast. Only later did he think hard about what he had seen with his own eyes: a boy running from his father, and the same father violently attacking an employee – one critical to his own and other people’s safety at that – for no good reason.
As it was, Joe, moving slower than the others because he was pushing a reluctant Ham towards the jet, was last up the steps. Veronica welcomed Ham with a frozen smile and the needle of a syringe that she jabbed into his arm. Rendered unconscious almost immediately, Ham folded into her arms. Joe stood awkwardly, halfway up the steps, while Veronica disappeared then reappeared.
‘You’re not coming.’ The finality in her voice brooked no reply. ‘Dominic’s very grateful. We’ll send a banker’s cheque to your account the moment we’re airborne. Thank you.’
Joe stepped down onto the tarmac. The moment he did so, she hit a button inside the plane and the steps flipped up and folded themselves back into the fuselage; the plane door closed with a thump; the engines started to whine. Joe jogged over to his car, switched on the ignition and began to pull away. Quick as he was, the car was still buffeted by the backwash of the jet’s engines. Within thirty seconds, the jet was barrelling down the runway; within a minute it was becoming an ever-smaller dot in the sky.
Joe had returned a boy who had been kidnapped by an ISIS sympathiser to his father. He’d done the right thing and had been paid more than two million bucks into the bargain. But, looking up at the sky, it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like that at all.
CARACAS, VENEZUELA
The eyes of Hugo Chávez – brown, seductive, watchful – gazed down on the barrio from the mural on top of the decrepit tower block. A heavily tattooed Chavista in a red T-shirt was exhorting the masses through a loudspeaker on top of his minivan: ‘We are fighting the economic crisis the people are facing, but all through the Bolivarian Revolution we have been attacked unceasingly.’
The clouds stacking above the eastward hook of the Andes hung heavy in the air. Caracas sweated at the bottom of a bowl of hills, the humidity made more unbearable by pollution from too many elderly cars running on too-cheap fuel. The air was slimy and gaseous. The rain, when it came, would be a blessing.
The man of the new-old faith in the minivan had the voice of a crow and his sound system had seen better days. Passionate, pious, the crow warmed to his theme through a hiss of static and the odd burst of negative feedback: ‘The oligarchs who dominate the’ – hiss-hiss-hiss – ‘to strangle us, to suffocate us. They are cutting their’ – a long, ear-piercing shriek – ‘so the shops run out of goods. But Chavismo will rise above . . .’ hiss-hiss-hiss. Nothing worked in Venezuela anymore; not even the cawing of power.
On the other side of the steeply tumbling street, the people queuing for hours at the state-subsidised co-op on the rumour of toilet rolls, eggs, rice, aspirin, cooking oil, soap, cheese, washing powder, beer, chicken, whatever, found the old slogans unimpressive. One old man spat on the ground; a woman formed the fingers of her free hand, unencumbered by shopping bags, into a quacking mouth. The Chavista saw the gesture and started yelling into his megaphone: ‘See the ducks spout their rubbish for the oligarchs.’
The queue, mutinous now, gave him the finger, and with a squeal of tyres he accelerated away, up the hill, in search of a less fractious audience. Once, Chavismo had held so many in his thrall. El Presidente had gone to the United Nations in New York and sniffed the podium just vacated by George W. Bush and smelt sulphur. And now? His corpse was guarded in a fancy mausoleum by four chocolate soldiers in Bolivarian fancy dress, all tights and shakos, but the old slogans of his movement sounded like the tired routines of an elderly comedian.
Joe, anonymous in his motorbike helmet, took in the slow-motion revolt, then released the clutch on his Triumph Bonneville and slipped slowly, delicately down the steep slope. At the very bottom, he came across what he was looking for, a noxious stream, chock-full of rubbish, smelling of shit, slowly treacling towards the Atlantic. This was the real crime of Chavismo – that he and his cronies had taken the nation with the world’s greatest oil reserves and made it poorer, so poor that obtaining the ordinary essentials of life – clean water, food, the simplest medicines – had become a wretched struggle for millions of people.
Joe stopped the Triumph and debated taking off his helmet but thought better of it. He’d been trained to kill by the North Koreans and was not a timid man, but in his two days in Caracas he’d heard too many stories of p
eople being mugged at gunpoint – or worse, at the end of a hypodermic syringe loaded with someone’s infected blood. Security lay in anonymity; on his elderly motorbike, the red paint on the petrol tank grazed by a previous accident, the pillion seat slashed and repaired by cheap black sticky tape, he could be a local. If he took his helmet off, he would stand out as a gringo and, in this barrio where the police only dared come in strong daylight, he would be ripe for the picking.
Not too far away, someone let rip a round of automatic fire. The gunfire was taken up by the foothills of the Andes, making the sound ricochet around the concrete breeze blocks of the barrio. They said that Caracas was now the murder capital of the world. Nobody knew for sure because nobody dared count. So, rivulets of sweat pouring off his face, Joe kept his helmet on while his fingers dug out the little map scribbled onto a sheet of paper by his informant – snitch, more like – showing the toxic sewer-stream running along the bottom, a wooden bridge across it and, up on the other side of the slope, finer houses, a better class of slum-dweller.
The house he was looking for was as described, an orgy in cerise, its windows shuttered and barred so that it had the appearance of a mini-prison. He killed the engine of the Triumph, put the bike on its arthritic stand, and walked up to the door and knocked loudly. The time for reckoning had come.
Only the door wasn’t opened by the man he was looking for but a little black girl, maybe seven years old, wearing a white dress, her frizzy hair neatly done up in Minnie Mouse bunches.
Joe’s Spanish was so-so but he had no choice. He asked to speak with the little girl’s father or mother. She shook her head. He told her that he was looking for a man called Caesar. She nodded, and said that was her papa, that he was in the big hospital. Why was he in the hospital, asked Joe.
‘Zika,’ she said, and Joe thanked her and left.
The hospital was an even more pitiless indictment of Chavismo’s sloppy posturing than the stinking river. The power had gone, so the metal detectors at the main entrance – there to ensure that gang members did not pack heat when they visited the sick – weren’t working. Joe shuffled forwards in the queue and was searched pretty effectively by an old guard. No power meant none of the lights were working, so the hospital festered in gloom, and nor was the air conditioning, so its 1970s concrete structure breathed out a prickly heat, suffused, it felt to Joe, with infection; nor were any of the elevators working. The Zika ward was on the seventh floor, fourteen flights of stairs in all, and Joe felt a very old man when he made it. In any kind of well-run country, it should not have been possible for a stranger tracking down a debt to enter the ward treating the world’s most terrifying infectious disease, but this was Venezuela.