The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich

by Lars Emmerich

  CIA.

  Was Charley connected with them, too?

  “You are much confused.” El Grande pointed a finger at his temple, made a twisting motion, and laughed. “La maquina, your machine, it is turning fast, no? But it is simple, really. You think there are two things, but there is just one thing.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Kittredge said.

  “The oil brings gringos. Always.”

  “I’m still not with you.”

  “They are the same. Exel. CIA. Solamente uno.” He held up one finger.

  Then he pointed it at Kittredge. “But you are a different kind of gringo. You do not like puta. You like hombres and their pepinos. You have made small money and big enemies. And you are afraid that you will never be free of these enemies.”

  Kittredge nodded. That pretty much sums it up.

  “And you are afraid at this moment, because you have helped gringo oil companies, and now you help the gringo CIA. And you have heard me say that I do not like them.” El Grande stared at Kittredge, eyes unwavering.

  After a moment, he looked away from Kittredge, and smiled at the girl. She rose and sat on his lap, and he wrapped his arm around her waist.

  “But do not worry, Peter Kittredge,” El Grande said. “The jihadists have a saying: The enemy of my enemies, he is my friend.”

  El Grande puffed on the hookah. “And you could use a friend, I think.”

  26

  Tuesday morning dawned in Caracas, and sunlight crept into Bill Fredericks’ hotel room. He had failed to close the curtains all the way the night before, and a beam of light found his eyelids as if by magic.

  He stirred, and asked himself the same two questions that groggy salesmen and spies had asked for eons: What city am I in, and which direction is the bathroom?

  Both answers came to him slowly, and he rolled out of bed and found his way to the toilet without stubbing a toe. He was nearly finished with the first order of business when his cell phone clattered on the dresser. Fredericks waddled with his underwear around his ankles to reach the phone.

  Curmudgeon. “Twice in one week? People will start to talk,” he said.

  “Hello, Bill,” a deep, calm voice replied. “It’s always a pleasure. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “Nope. But I am in the middle of something,” Fredericks said, making his way back to the bathroom, wondering for the thousandth time how a Catholic priest ever came to be mixed up with the Central Intelligence Agency.

  At least, Fredericks thought Curmudgeon was an Agency asset. He didn’t know for sure.

  “I’ll make it quick. This is just a heads up that people aren’t happy with the pace of things down there.”

  Fredericks felt defensive. “Then maybe people should come down here and take a swing at this themselves,” he said.

  “That wasn’t meant as a personal affront,” Curmudgeon said with a practiced, disarming ease. Fredericks could easily imagine him in front of a congregation, exhorting his flock to turn away from intrigue, greed, and murder. But they’d have to quit their federal jobs.

  “Besides, you’re not yet green-lighted for the op, are you?” Curmudgeon asked.

  “You would know better than I,” Fredericks said pointedly. Curmudgeon didn’t reply.

  “Anyway,” Fredericks said, after the silence had grown a little uncomfortable, “Quinn just picked the package up yesterday and flew down here last night. I’m not sure how we could possibly speed things up.”

  “As I mentioned, I don’t think the sentiment is directed at you, per se,” the priest-cum-spy said, his voice reminding Fredericks of a radio host on a classical music station. “I just wanted you to be aware that your work has the attention of the very highest levels.”

  “The director?”

  Curmudgeon laughed. “No. I said ‘highest levels.’”

  Shit. The Intermediary.

  “That is good to know, because there wasn’t enough pressure on this thing already,” Fredericks said.

  “You have my full support,” Curmudgeon said.

  “Do I need your support? I mean, I just got the call yesterday telling me to make this thing happen. I wasn’t aware I was already screwing it up.”

  “You’re not. That is to say, if you are making a mess of things, I’m not aware of it. I’m just saying that you have my support in a very high profile operation, and there’s significant interest in making it happen quickly.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk, padre. Shouldn’t you be molesting a young boy?”

  “Low blow.”

  “Sorry. Guess the pressure got to me. And, my pants are around my ankles, which makes me feel a little more vulnerable than normal. Anyway, I appreciate the head’s up. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Please do. I get about one phone call every hour asking about this op, so it’ll be helpful if you can keep me in a steady supply of mundane details, which I will dutifully feed to the old men.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No,” Curmudgeon said. “Don’t forget to take your heart medicine.”

  Quinn parked his rental car illegally on the street in front of the apartment building where Kittredge and Arlinghaus lived. His attempts to reach Kittredge by phone had failed, and he had left a number of messages urging Kittredge to call as soon as he saw fit to remove the penis from his mouth.

  Fredericks had insisted that Kittredge be rounded up, if for no other reason than to confirm that the troubled new Agency asset hadn’t caved beneath the emotional turmoil of the past few days, or otherwise taken leave of his senses.

  Quinn turned on the car’s hazard flashers, bounded up the stairs, and knocked on Kittredge’s door. Hearing no movement, he tried the handle. Locked. He picked the lock using a credit card. He always wondered why there weren’t more burglaries in the world. It really was easy to break into just about any residence, with just a little training.

  The door yielded, and Quinn let out a low whistle when he saw the disaster inside the apartment. “Peter!” he yelled, suddenly concerned that Kittredge might have been whacked.

  He did a quick search of the apartment, noting the lowbrow thoroughness employed by whoever had done the job, but didn’t find Kittredge or his rotting corpse.

  He dialed Fredericks. Fat Freddie’s going to need some more heartburn medicine when he hears this, Quinn thought as the phone rang.

  27

  Sam awoke in a sweat. As grogginess left her consciousness and the reality of the past three days rushed back to her mind, a sickening heaviness settled in her stomach. She took a deep breath and shuddered as she exhaled, feeling her body’s response to the extreme stress of having her life turned upside down.

  Sunlight peeked through the hotel’s windows. She had paid cash, of course, and had checked into the hotel using identification cards belonging to one of her work legends, the name Jennifer Garman captioning the deliberately unflattering photo on her fake driver’s license.

  The hotel desk clerk had demanded two forms of ID, and Sam had produced a Jennifer Garman passport as well. It struck her as odd that she was required to present two forms of American identification to the North African hotel desk clerk in order to pay cash for a night in a cheap DC flop house. But such was the modern world. It was interconnected in absurd ways.

  The way to stay alive in extreme situations was to keep moving forward, Sam knew. When the shit hit the fan, it rarely turned out well for those who simply stayed holed up, hoping for the best. Sitting still was a good way to wind up with even bigger problems.

  She turned on one of the three burner phones she had bought after her escape from the scene of Phil Quartermain’s murder, and dialed Dan Gable’s number.

  Sam cringed as Sara answered. “Hello.”

  “Hi, Sara,” Sam said. “You’re probably extremely tired of me disturbing you guys at home.”

  “It’s okay.” Her tone said it wasn’t.

  Awkward silence.

  “Um, is Dan available?” Sam
asked.

  “Just a minute.”

  Sam heard a shrill “Dan!” along with muffled but strained conversation, and then Dan’s voice: “Happy Tuesday, boss.”

  “Sorry, Dan. I need to quit getting you in trouble with your better half.”

  “If it wasn’t work, it would be something else. Anyway, got a pen handy? I have some info for you.”

  Gable gave her a phone number, address, and a name: Jeff Jensen. “I think I’ve seen him around,” Sam said. “Younger guy, looks tired a lot?”

  “Yep. He doesn’t yet know he’s a volunteer for some work on the side, but there’s a fairly compelling angle you can work.” Dan filled her in on the details.

  She showered, called a cab from her room, and stopped in the lobby for the free “continental breakfast,” which would have been barely edible on a good day but was nearly unbearable with a queasy stomach.

  She stepped out into the DC dawn, and her cab arrived seconds later. Sam climbed in the back seat, and set Phil Quartermain’s backpack, containing what she suspected was John Abrams’ music box, on the seat next to her.

  Traffic was light but picking up steadily, and she fretted about whether she would arrive at Jeff Jensen’s residence before he left for work.

  In fact, she made it with a couple of seconds to spare. Jensen recognized Sam as he opened the door – there weren’t many people in the DHS headquarters office who wouldn’t recognize Sam instantly, as a five-ten redhead with Playboy looks tended to attract more attention than the average employee – and his surprise was evident. “Uh, hello?”

  “Hey Jeff. Sam Jameson.” She extended her hand. “I think we’ve worked a case or two in the past. Sorry to drop in unannounced.”

  “Of course. Come on in. Sorry about the mess.” Jensen had dark circles beneath his eyes. He had showered and shaved, but somehow still looked disheveled. His apartment had a mild bachelor funk, making it clear to Sam that there wasn’t a woman in his life.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

  “Well, it probably won’t be a pleasure, unfortunately.” She unhooked the backpack from her shoulder and took a seat on the couch nearby, suppressing the slightly grossed-out feeling brought on by the mess.

  She took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “I need a little on-the-side work for a case that’s taken a bit of an interesting turn.”

  Jensen stiffened, and a look of concern crossed his face. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as forensics work ‘on the side.’ At least, not if I’m interested in keeping my job.”

  “I understand your reticence—“

  Jensen cut her off. “It isn’t reticence. Collecting evidence without a warrant is a misdemeanor at best. Processing evidence outside the normal chain of custody will get me fired. And you could never use any of the info for an arrest or conviction, anyway.”

  Sam nodded.

  “But I’m sure you knew all of that already,” Jensen said.

  She nodded again.

  “I’m sorry, Jeff. I should have explained this a bit better. . . It’s not what it sounds like,” Sam said. I screwed this up, she thought. I should have taken my time with him.

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” Jensen said. “But I think we’d both have a hard time explaining it to a jury, or to our bosses.”

  “That’s just the thing,” Sam said. “I think this evidence may point toward someone inside Homeland, and I don’t want to tip them off.”

  “So you have a warrant, then?”

  “No. Same problem – it would be impossible to get one without alerting the parties in question.”

  Jensen shook his head. “So what you really have is a hunch.”

  Sam decided to take a risk. “Yes. And a group of police officers trying to kill me.”

  She watched Jensen carefully. He cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes, which Sam recognized as the universal human signal for skepticism, so she added a few details: “They chased me from a scene on Saturday night. One of them broke into my house, and was gunned down in my entryway. Another one followed me yesterday.”

  Jensen shook his head. “No way am I sticking my nose in the middle of whatever that is all about,” he said. “Unless you bring something into the lab via the normal channels, no sane man would go near it.”

  “Isn’t there any way you can think of to examine a couple of things without logging them into the database? People really are in danger, and I’m afraid that DHS might be compromised.”

  Jensen shook his head. “I worked my ass off for this job and I need to keep it. I don’t have much of a life, but it’s the only life I’ve got, and I don’t want to screw it up by getting fired. Or thrown in jail.”

  Sam sighed. She felt a heaviness descend. Without a bit of forensic help with the music box, Sam knew that she was dead in the water.

  She knew what she had to do, but she hated doing it.

  “Jeff, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this—“

  “I think you should leave. I have to get to work. You’ve already jammed me up by asking me to do this. You know we’re supposed to report stuff like this.”

  Sam sighed again, suddenly feeling extremely tired.

  “Methadone,” she said.

  Jensen’s eyebrows raised and an expression of fear came over his face.

  “I know about the clinic, Jeff,” she said softly.

  She saw his eyes moisten, and she turned away to give him some psychological space. Sam had used human frailty as leverage more times than she could count. It was often enjoyable – it was satisfying to watch a blustering bastard reduced to rubble by a meltdown of his own creation – but other times, like this one, when she was forced to use a good person’s demons against him, she felt only weight.

  “I know you’re getting your life together and you’re managing your issues,” she said, softness in her gaze. “But you can’t be a drug-addicted CSI. And you must have perjured yourself during your security investigation, didn’t you? They ask you about drugs while you’re under oath.”

  Jensen shook his head. “How did you find out?”

  “You work for an intelligence agency, Jeff.”

  The silence lingered. “Trust me, if I had any other option, I’d use it,” Sam said. She felt awful.

  “I’ve been clean for three months.”

  “I know how hard that is. Booze was my thing. One addict to another, you can beat it.”

  Jensen kept shaking his head. “They give me take-home doses now. I don’t have to go to the clinic every night anymore.”

  “You’ve worked hard to get here. You should be proud of your progress.”

  She stayed quiet for a while, letting Jensen begin to drown in a sea of imagined consequences before throwing out the life preserver: “One music box. That’s what I need dusted and analyzed. That’s it. If you can do that, the other thing will remain between us.”

  Jensen pondered. Sam sweetened the deal. “And I’ll give you a few hints to help keep other people from figuring out your secret, too.”

  He finally nodded. “Okay.”

  Crime scene investigators were often called upon to perform their duties at odd hours, so most of them kept a briefcase full of rudimentary supplies handy. Sample containers were chain-of-custody items, meaning that the investigator in charge of the scene was responsible for bringing them from the clean vault to the scene, and they couldn’t be kept in a CSI’s personal kit. But nearly every CSI eventually ended up with a briefcase full of items like fingerprint powder, blood die, lock picks, and DNA tape.

  Jensen cleared a space on his kitchen table, set down some newsprint, and got to work. It took him less than fifteen minutes to examine the exterior of the music box, and his efforts produced over two dozen full or partial prints.

  He set them aside, and picked the lock on the front of the music box. Inside was a slip of paper and an unlabeled CD ROM disc, which Jensen also dusted for prints. Sam saw the circular striations, like rings on a t
ree trunk, and knew that the disc contained data. She talked Jensen into letting her borrow his laptop for the day in order to examine the CD ROM’s contents.

  Jensen next removed the curled piece of paper. Turning it over, he realized it was a photograph.

  Sam’s heart stopped when she saw the photo’s subject.

  Herself.

  The photo was actually a shard torn from a larger photo, one that Sam didn’t recognize. It looked like it might have been taken at a recent office Christmas party, or some other event, but Sam couldn’t be sure. There was an arm around her shoulder – undoubtedly Brock’s, a realization that brought yet another wave of grief and anxiety – but no other faces to provide context for the photo or a clue to who might have taken it.

  Her hands shook, and she must have done a poor job of hiding her apprehension, because Jensen asked if she needed a drink of water. She did, along with something solid to lean against.

  This is messed up like polio.

  Jensen got a couple of prints off of the photo and added them to the pile for analysis, used a pair of surgeon’s glasses to find and collect fibers from the music box interior, and declared himself as done as he could possibly be without doing a real workup in the lab.

  “You realize, all of this work is meaningless without running the prints through the system to get names,” he said to Sam. “That requires associating them with a particular case file.”

  Sam nodded. “I trust you to think of something.”

  She collected Jensen’s laptop and placed it in Quartermain’s backpack, along with the music box. Then she added, “Just don’t associate it with any of my cases. I’m sure I’m flagged in the system, and everything with my name on it will turn to shit before your very eyes.”

  Jensen smiled.

  “Thank you, Jeff. Believe it or not, you’ve done a good thing.” Sam gave him the number to one of her burners, asked him to call as soon as he had any results, and stepped out of the front door into the growing daylight.