“You owe the nations of the world a tremendous debt,” Graves found himself saying on many occasions during his long career. “In order to service that debt, we will begin harvesting a small portion of your abundant natural resources. This is necessary to help you and your country through this difficult time, and allow you to uphold your obligation to the world.”
Further indigenous resistance at this stage wasn’t uncommon, which brought more attrition. The service of so-called “jackals” was frequently necessary.
In the end, American interests usually got the resources they desired.
It was during one of these episodes that Erwin Graves had first come to the attention of the man who would eventually become Facilitator of the Consultancy.
They had seen each other at several events at the Council on Foreign Relations, as both were longtime members, but Graves had really caught the Facilitator’s eye during an operation of mutual interest. Graves’s performance was extremely efficient and extraordinarily ruthless, attributes the Facilitator liked very much.
The Facilitator was many things, but he was mostly an oilman. He built his career on the backs of men like Graves, whose sub rosa deals opened exceptionally profitable doors. With very little in the way of income taxes, environmental regulation, competition, or organized political opposition, the Third World was industrial nirvana. Oil execs—especially the Facilitator—along with their ubiquitous World Bank consultants, became exceedingly rich.
Of course, it was always necessary to control the political environment at home, and Graves excelled in this arena as well. As a consequence of his unparalleled skill both in the field and in the highly politicized home office, Graves’ rise through the World Bank ranks was nothing short of meteoric.
He spent five profitable years at the helm before “retiring” to a seat on the executive board of the World Bank Group—the governing body that oversaw all five ponderous financial institutions under World Bank auspices.
The executive board was where the real power was, and Graves hadn’t landed there by accident. The Facilitator had installed him, and subsequently orchestrated his rise to the chairmanship.
Then he had made Graves his Intermediary (it was less an offer, and more a command), and charged Graves with protecting the identity of the Facilitator above all else.
The reward? Graves would, quite literally, help rule the world.
He vetted oligarchs of all ilk, for powerful positions of all kinds, in more nations than he could count. He also ran a bevy of exceptionally talented odd-job men—the kind with multiple passports under multiple names who were handy with firearms, explosives, and sharp objects—whose services were frequently necessary to move past various inconveniences.
Normally, the Intermediary orchestrated his machinations behind an insulating layer of trusted super-agents.
Frank Higgs was one such proxy, even though for many years, the senator had no idea for whom the Intermediary actually worked. But the senator had evidently begun to piece things together, which was how everything had begun going to shit for the Intermediary.
Higgs had spoken to Worthington, the priest. The Monsignor, ever loyal, voiced his concern to the Intermediary.
Consequently, the priest and the senator both had to go.
It was hugely inconvenient and more than a little distasteful, but there was no other way. Graves had been forced to permanently retire his two most trusted go-betweens. There was already a memorial service scheduled for one of them.
But the other one just wouldn’t die.
Worse, without intermediaries of his own, Graves had been forced to deal with various operatives directly, at least until he could replace the senator and the Monsignor with another semi-permanent buffer.
Dealing with multiple lower-level agents directly was very risky, but the Intermediary didn’t have another option.
It was merely a different kind of risk than trusting regular go-betweens such as Worthington and Higgs. Graves took pains to take the right precautions for the new reality, using different cell phones, computers, and other accounts to insulate himself from his coterie of ambitious CFR-recruited operatives. It wouldn’t be healthy to be rolled up if one of them flipped.
But he failed to understand just how much the game had changed, and how rapidly. He had no idea that Sam Jameson had been able to find a common denominator between three of his regulars.
And Graves certainly had no idea one of his men had indeed flipped, caving in to enormous pressure applied by Sam Jameson, but ultimately caused by personal indiscretions.
The Intermediary walked into his bedroom and grabbed his overnight bag, then made his way through the monstrous mansion to the front door. His car and driver were waiting for him.
The timing of the Helsinki event was most unfortunate. He would vastly prefer to stay in DC and finish the messy business at hand. But he had no choice. A development loan was in the offing for one of the former Soviet republics, and the Facilitator also wanted Graves to quietly vet a potential future premier for that country. It was business that had to be done in person, and it couldn’t wait on resolution of the current situation.
Graves sat down in the back seat of the Bentley Mulsanne and pulled a report from his briefcase. He had long ago learned to use his time efficiently. Even so, his list of things to do was never empty.
90
Near Washington, DC. Monday, 7:27 p.m. ET.
“Think about it, Sam. No questions? No demands? Just an unverifiable picture and an address? You’re charging straight into a goddamned buzz saw.” Dan Gable’s voice boomed from her car’s speakerphone.
“What choice do I have, Dan?” Sam had just frantically reversed her direction of travel on the crowded I-95 freeway, and was no longer headed south out of the city toward Erwin Graves’s massive country estate. She was driving at ludicrous speed back north toward DC, on her way to the Severna Park address that had accompanied another terrifying picture of Brock.
“Gee, I dunno,” Dan said. “Maybe you can go get the guy who’s behind the whole damned thing, and put an end to all of this madness? You thought it was a pretty solid idea two minutes ago when I talked to you last.”
Her deputy was always thinking strategically, which is what made him so valuable. The sarcasm she could sometimes do without.
“We now have an address, Dan. Things have changed.”
“Have they really? Think it through. The one thing you know now that you didn’t know a minute ago is that they want you to show up at a particular address. They want you to go there. Why would they want that, Sam?” Dan’s voice had risen almost to a shout.
Sam mulled it over.
As usual, Dan had a point. Previously, she’d had no clue why Brock was abducted. His captors had sent evidence that he was alive, that he was in considerable pain, and that he was suffering from a disgusting-looking gunshot wound in his leg.
But they had revealed nothing else. She had asked them what they wanted, but they had made no demands. They hadn’t even replied.
Until now. They had just told her to arrive alone at the Severna Park address. They hadn’t asked her to bring anything, not even money. That was highly unusual, and it didn’t bode well.
It implied that she was the item of value that Brock’s captors were now after.
“Let’s assume you’re right, and this is somehow about me now,” Sam said. “What’s the strategic play?”
“By the book, Sam. We have people who do this stuff for a living, and they’re pretty good at it.”
Sam wasn’t excited about the idea. Doing things “by the book” meant that she would ask for proof from his captors that Brock was still alive, then make her way to the specified address. Along with a fifteen-man hostage rescue team.
“They’ll smell the HRT from three counties away, and they’ll kill Brock,” she said, that slight hint of hysteria creeping into her voice again.
“Not if they’re after you. They’re not stupid. They kn
ow they’ll need him alive to set the hook.”
“What if they’re not really after me?”
“Then all bets are off,” Dan said. “But everything we know—or rather, everything we don’t know—seems to point to you as the target of this whole thing. What if you hadn’t been out chasing the senator in the middle of the night? You’d have been home when the jackal broke in. Maybe Brock was the consolation prize.”
“Then why wait three days to reel me in?”
“That’s a question I can’t answer,” Dan said. “But you’ve kicked up quite a storm during these three days. Maybe some of the fallout was useful to them. Whoever they are.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, feeling exhaustion and panic wash through her. She let them pass, then re-centered herself. She knew she had to keep her wits about her.
“We’ve got to move on this, Dan. We don’t have time to waste while we get our act together.”
“I agree, but we need a plan. Here’s what I’d humbly suggest.”
Sam’s deputy laid out his thoughts.
She listened intently, blazing northbound on the shoulder of the I-95 freeway with her blue police light flashing and her horn blaring.
“That just might work,” she said, after Dan had finished outlining his idea.
They talked through a few of the details, then she said, “Dan, I . . . I can’t possibly thank you enough…” She felt herself getting choked up, so she stopped talking.
“You’re right,” he replied. “You probably can’t thank me enough. Now pay attention to the road.”
91
Somewhere on the East Coast. Monday, 7:38 p.m. ET.
Brock James groaned. His thigh was killing him.
His captors hadn’t mistreated him, except to hogtie him one more time, take a photo, then immediately untie him again.
“Seriously? After I gave you all that information?” His protests went unacknowledged, though he thought he saw a slightly sadistic smile come across Hawk Nose’s face.
He hadn’t seen the big, crazy-eyed guy in hours. That was a change to the routine. The giant with wolf’s eyes usually brought food, and was occasionally good for a sarcastic remark. Hawk Nose had performed those duties today, without much hint of personality.
Brock had run out of hydrogen peroxide and clean bandages the previous day. That was an issue. Already, his leg was turning red and starting to swell, and he had begun to feel feverish and woozy.
He asked Hawk Nose for more salve and bandages. “You won’t need it,” Hawk Nose said, a strange look on his face.
Brock didn’t have a good feeling about it. It sounded like a change in his circumstances was imminent. He wanted to be as physically ready as possible to make a move, if the opportunity presented itself. But he was certain his gunshot wound was going to require surgical repair and a great deal of healing time before his leg would function properly again.
As tough as it was, he forced himself not to worry about what might be coming. Control what you can, he thought, and don’t sweat the rest.
For the moment, he just let the pus ooze out of his thigh, doing his best to keep from brushing the exposed wound against any of the filthy surfaces in his cell.
Keep your wits about you, and never give up hope. That’s what he had learned during his Air Force prisoner-of-war training all those years ago. Hope really was the key, and he resolved not to lose his.
He looked at his leg for the thousandth time. It was an angry mess. Not going to win any footraces today.
He sighed. He felt that he was ready for a change, whatever it might be. Lying on a mattress in a dungeon had grown plenty old. Part of him welcomed the prospect of his situation moving toward a resolution, one way or the other.
The assassin drove quickly. He was due back at his other job, which he suspected was drawing to a close.
He’d never known his employers to keep a hostage longer than three days. They start to stink after that, he thought with a chuckle.
He had sanitized the fake cop car as much as possible, doing his best to make sure none of his fingerprints were recoverable.
But it was only a matter of time before someone discovered the fake cop’s body in the trunk.
It had been apparent within the first few seconds of the “traffic stop” that he wasn’t dealing with a real police officer. The man had ordered him out of his car, and commanded him to lean spread-eagled against the roof of the sedan.
Without so much as a word, the pseudo-cop frisked him, then pulled his hands behind his back, as if to handcuff him.
“I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I think you might have mistaken me for someone else,” the assassin protested.
If the “policeman” had said something, anything at all, the whole situation might have ended differently.
The assassin quickly realized that he wasn’t being taken into the custody of Johnny Law. He whirled in a flash and landed a devastating blow to the fake cop’s trachea with the edge of his hand. The uniformed impostor crumpled.
Those deaths—the writhing, agonized, desperate deaths—were not fun to watch. The assassin genuinely preferred administering the painless kind. But sometimes it just didn’t pan out that way.
In the process of losing track of his target, he had stuffed a fresh corpse into a trunk in broad daylight. Nice work, pro.
But he hadn’t had much choice in the matter. The Intermediary had insisted he follow the van full of shooters, which also contained his target.
He was certain the fake cop was part of the muscle team that had snatched his prey from his grasp. The bogus traffic stop ended his pursuit of the getaway van.
It was a serious bit of misfortune. And he’d had his share of misfortune over the past few days. He’d been sent to kill a girl, and instead he wound up kidnapping a man. Not his fault, but not exactly the path to longevity and job security.
But as he thought more about it, he decided that getting fired wasn’t an entirely unattractive prospect. It would be as good an excuse as any to start easing out of the business.
Easier said than done, he knew. One didn’t just stop killing spies, heads of state, and industry executives and start sipping cocktails in a hammock on the beach. It didn’t quite work that way. Retired life was much like life on the job—it demanded tradecraft to stay alive. Those details certainly weren’t in the CIA brochure.
He’d have to think some more about the question of his future.
For now, he had to get back to the prisoner. He didn’t know for certain what would become of the Air Force officer, but he had a pretty good idea. Why else would they be paying to keep an assassin around?
92
South of Washington, DC. Monday, 8:23 p.m. ET.
The Intermediary’s telephone rang. It was not his “normal” telephone, the one that his two grown kids never dialed.
It was the other phone, the one that brought either new problems to solve or updates to problems in progress. He didn’t recognize the number, but that was to be expected. Never use the same phone number twice, unless you want to get rolled up and smoked.
He offered his customary greeting: “Yes.”
“Leaving without saying good-bye?” Vice President Arquist’s friendly voice spilled out from the small speaker next to the Intermediary’s ear.
“Evidently not.”
“Mr. Personality, as always. Glad to see all is right in the universe.” Arquist’s laugh wasn’t kind, but wasn’t entirely cruel, either.
Politicians. The Intermediary said nothing.
“So, then, I’ll get right to it,” Arquist said after the silence became uncomfortable. “If you have a plan to spin LM’s theft of the ASAT goodies from the Limeys, you’ll want to have it handy.”
The Intermediary didn’t respond.
“The company’s still flopping around trying to figure out how to play it,” Averett said. “They showed it off for a DoD suit today.”
The Intermediary listened.<
br />
“But they were clearly caught with their hands in the cookie jar,” Averett went on. “He asked them to prove it was original work, and they couldn’t deliver.”
There was another long pause before the Intermediary spoke. “This is not your concern.” His voice sounded cold and brittle.
“The hell it isn’t,” Acquits said. “It’s one leak away from being my full time job, especially since you’ve bumped off the CEO.”
“I didn’t order Averett’s death. And I didn’t inform you of the LM situation so that I could be subjected your opinions whenever you felt it necessary, Mr. Vice President.” The Intermediary emphasized Arquist’s title as a reminder of who owned whom.
“Yes, of course, you’re a very busy man,” Arquist said, an edge to his voice. “You probably also don’t care to hear from the lowly Vice President of the United States that your man Landers has just been burned.”
The Intermediary frowned but said nothing.
“He called a minute ago for help with damage control, thanks to that DHS agent you did such a fine job handling. But I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing just now, big shot.”
If Arquist’s sarcasm and anger registered, the Intermediary showed no signs of it. “I’ll let you know if I need anything from you.” He hung up without another word and returned to his report.
The phone rang again. Arquist, again. The Intermediary sighed heavily, then answered.
“One more thing you should know.” Arquist employed none of his trademark baby-kissing friendliness. “Our DHS guy reports that there’s a hostage rescue team on the way to Severna Park. I’d tell you that you are running out of time to get this situation under control, but I’m sure you already knew that.”
Arquist hung up.
Graves shook his head and returned to his report. The problem with installed functionaries was that they inevitably began wearing their title as if they had earned it.
Annoyance aside, though, Graves knew that the vice president was only pointing out the obvious: The Intermediary still had a very volatile situation on his hands.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 139