A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  She stared at him, and Crocker took the opportunity to light a cigarette and, for the first time in quite a while, actually enjoy it, rather than simply feed his addiction.

  “Christ, Paul,” Cheng said finally. “You have any idea how long it’s taken us to get someone in position? How hard it’s been to get someone that deep, someone who has access and isn’t doubling back on us?”

  “It’s one man?”

  Cheng shook her head, saying, “No, I’m not giving that up.”

  “Chace and Wallace are going to destroy that camp.”

  “Then you’ve got to stop them.”

  “Why in the name of hell should I?”

  “We’ll lose our man!”

  “I don’t give a damn about your man,” Crocker snarled. “I don’t give a damn about your network. There were five separate bombing attempts today, all of them originating from that camp presumably.”

  “Five attempts! Attempts, Paul, that were stopped because we knew they were coming.”

  “Five attempts that could have been prevented altogether if the camp was shut down. The bomb that went off in Cairo killed three, injured fourteen, and four of those aren’t likely to make it.”

  “But it didn’t hit the Embassy.”

  “Which should make the Americans there sleep better tonight, but seven families are going to be mourning—no, wait, eight—because the damn thing went off anyway.”

  “Better that than the alternative.”

  “And is that alternative better than what happened on the Underground, Angela?” Crocker demanded, furious. “Your man inside, he didn’t see that coming? Or was it that the CIA didn’t think it was worth passing along the intelligence?”

  Cheng’s reaction was an honest hurt, mixing with disbelief. “We didn’t know! Jesus Christ, do you really think we’d have sat on it if we had known it was coming?”

  “How the hell did your man miss it, then? If he’s as good as all that, how is it that he didn’t see it coming?”

  “He tried, he told us he tried. We’re having a nightmare time running messages with this guy, he’s in deep, and he’s constantly being watched. There’s only so many opportunities he gets to pass along information, and he couldn’t warn us—or you—in time!”

  “Sounds to me like he’s picking and choosing.”

  “Name me an agent who doesn’t, damn you! But it’s better than nothing.”

  “Three hundred and seventy-two dead men and women would argue that point if they could.”

  Cheng shook her head. “All Chace has to do is lie low, it’ll blow over—”

  “Are you daft? This doesn’t blow over, ever! Even if the Saudis relent, even if the Government decides not to hand her over, she’s still buggered. Unless she shuts down the camp, she’s an agent who went AWOL, who went rogue, and I’ll still have lost my best officer. You put this in motion, Angela, and if you can’t control it now, that’s your lookout, not mine. I’m getting Chace back, right where she belongs, at the Head of Section, and the way to do that is to remove the Saudis from the equation.”

  “There’s a friendly there, she could end up killing our guy.”

  “Then you had better signal your guy to get the hell out.”

  “We can’t—aren’t you hearing what I’m saying? He contacts us, not the other way around, he’s in the middle of the fucking Wadi-as-Sirhan, Paul! There’s only so much we can do.”

  “You didn’t give him a microburst transmitter, a receiver? Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  Cheng looked, for a moment, almost pathetically defeated. “We did. It stopped working three months ago.”

  “Oh, fucking brilliant. Fucking brilliant, why hasn’t he been resupplied?”

  “Well, maybe you could ask Chace to do it,” Cheng shot back, “provided she doesn’t kill him first.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “This guy is worth gold to us, you’ve seen it. You do this, it’s all down the toilet.”

  “So you’re screwed?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “I’m sure Chace knows just how you feel.”

  Cheng fumed at him, then ran a hand through her hair, thinking.

  “I could get onto Langley,” she said. “Langley gets onto the White House, the White House jumps all over the Israelis, Chace and Wallace, they don’t go anywhere.”

  “No, you can’t,” Crocker said. “It would require the White House to do a complete volte-face, and for what? A single agent? They want that camp shut down, Angela. At best, they apprehend Chace and hand her to the Saudis, you’ve still got the same problem.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Cheng said.

  “Because I figured it out?” Crocker crushed his cigarette into the bottom of the ashtray. “Because I tried to protect my people? Because you lied to me?”

  “I didn’t have a choice, don’t make it personal.”

  Crocker laughed. “It’s not personal, Angela. It’s never been personal, however many gifts you give my daughters for their birthdays.”

  She exhaled sharply, then fell back, resting in the chair.

  “When are they going in?” Cheng asked. “Do you know?”

  “No.”

  “No you don’t know, or no you won’t say?”

  “I don’t know. They may be in already, they may go tomorrow, they may never go.”

  “Fuck.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Can you at least get a message to them, can you try to do that? Just let them know there’s a friendly, let them know he won’t fire on them, that’s how he’ll identify himself, he’ll be unarmed.”

  “What do I get in exchange?”

  Cheng looked sincerely incredulous. “You really are a son of a bitch.”

  “What are you offering?”

  Cheng’s chin dropped onto her chest, mouth tightening, thinking.

  “You want her back in the Pit when all this is over,” she said finally. “Langley will push it, we’ll smooth any of the feathers that get ruffled.”

  “No,” Crocker said. “Not good enough.”

  “Jesus Christ, Paul, what do you want?”

  “I want it in writing that Chace undertook the covert at the request of CIA London.”

  Crocker had never seen her look stunned before.

  “No way.”

  “The only way,” Crocker said. “It’s her job insurance. And mine, for that matter. You come on the chopping block with us, you’ll have a vested interest in seeing the blade doesn’t fall on any of our necks.”

  Cheng scowled, then leaned forward, grabbing one of the pens resting on Crocker’s desk. He reached into the second drawer on his left, pulled out a pad of paper, handed it to her, then sat back with another cigarette, watching while she wrote. It took her the entirety of his smoke, and when she was finished, she tossed the pen down on the desk and nearly threw the pad at him as well.

  Crocker read it over carefully. “You’re exonerating the Agency.”

  “I’m not going to give you a document that could end up with a congressional inquiry, Paul, I don’t care how big the pistol is that you hold to my head. I’m taking responsibility for it, that’s enough. You, me, Chace, all in it together. Happy now?”

  “No. But I’m marginally less unhappy than I was when you came in here.”

  “And here I am, much more unhappy than I was when I came in here.”

  “I’ll make copies,” Crocker said.

  “Hold it, hold on a second.”

  He stopped, halfway to his feet.

  “She has to get our man out alive, Paul. That’s my condition. I’ve given you what you want, now I want something, too. She needs to get him out alive and with cover intact.”

  “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

  “You’ve got a hell of a lot of gall, saying that.”

  Crocker thought about that, then nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do.”
r />   •

  It was past eleven by the time Crocker saw Cheng out of the building, and after leaving her he went straight to the Ops Room. The night staff was on duty, Gary Draper at Duty Ops, Max Fletcher at Coms.

  “D-Ops on the floor,” Draper announced as Crocker entered.

  “Easy,” Crocker said. “Max?”

  “Sir?”

  “We have a direct contact for Noah Landau at Mossad?”

  “Checking, sir.”

  Crocker waited, hands in his pockets, looking at the plasma screen wall. There were two operations running currently, one in Singapore, the other in Accra, both of them run-of-the-mill jobs, missions named Lightbulb and Bookstore, respectively. There was nothing marking Saudi Arabia.

  “We have a contact number, yes, sir,” Max said. “Two in the morning there, I’m not sure we’ll be able to reach him.”

  “Make the call, then run it through to my office.”

  “Very good, sir.” Max hesitated, then added, “Shall I log it, sir?”

  Crocker pretended not to hear him as he left the floor.

  •

  He caught the phone on the first ring. “D-Ops.”

  “Noah Landau on the line, sir,” Max said.

  “Patch him in.” Crocker waited for the click, then the line noise to resolve, the slight whining in the background scrambling the conversation. “Mr. Landau?”

  “Mr. Crocker.” Landau’s voice was distorted but understandable. “Very late to be calling.”

  “I need you to pass on a message to Chace and Wallace,” Crocker said. “There’s a friendly in the camp, he won’t raise arms against them, that’s how he’ll identify. They need to get him out. Can you pass that along?”

  The whining on the line grew louder, then faded before Landau spoke again.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because, Mr. Crocker,” Landau said, “they’re already there.”

  44

  Saudi Arabia—Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan

  22 September 0121 Local (GMT+3.00)

  The helicopter had flown in so low it hadn’t actually descended to let Chace and Wallace jump out. As soon as their feet hit the ground, their hands shielding their eyes from the whirling sand spiraling around them, the helicopter banked swiftly away, and for a moment Chace thought the bird would end up nose down on the desert floor. But as she and Wallace ran for cover, dropped to their bellies, their submachine guns in their hands, she heard the sound of the rotors receding to an echo and then to silence.

  It was warm, the earth beneath her still holding the heat from the day, but not unpleasantly so. Borovsky had said it would be in the low seventies Fahrenheit, “good weather for walking,” he had told them.

  “Want to come along, then?” Wallace had asked, and Borovsky had laughed that annoying laugh of his and shaken his head, saying that he thought the two of them would have more fun without him.

  Later, as Chace and Wallace had been kitting up, Wallace had said, “He knows we’re shagging.”

  “It’s your fault,” Chace said. “You’re too loud.”

  “Right, and you’re a churchmouse.”

  “Oh, so it’s bestiality you’re after now, is it?”

  “I’d say ‘moo,’ but you might accuse me of calling you a cow.”

  They’d pulled on their camouflage fatigues, supplied, like all the rest of their kit, by the Israelis. The camo was dark gray, splotched with black, and wouldn’t do a damn bit of good for them in daylight, but they weren’t planning on spending daylight anywhere they might be spotted. They blacked their faces, checking each other for spots they had missed, and wore black watch caps to hide their hair. The boots Landau had supplied were comfortable and fit well, and he’d even presented them with an extra pair of socks, as requested.

  “Anything to help,” he’d told them.

  •

  She’d returned to Tel Aviv via bus, a ride that had taken almost fourteen hours, getting her back to the apartment at six of two in the morning to find Borovsky waiting with Wallace. They’d already heard the news, and Borovsky had once again offered a proposal of marriage.

  “I drink, I smoke, I swear, I can’t cook, I don’t do laundry, I won’t clean, and I don’t like children,” Chace told him. “Why marry me?”

  “No woman is perfect.”

  “You’ve never met my mother,” Wallace said.

  Chace went to take a shower then, scrubbing the journey and the act from her skin as much as she could, examining her bruises. Her left arm was tender to the touch where she’d taken the baton, but the swelling had finally gone down, and her knee was apparently content for the time being to keep its silence.

  She’d been under the spray when Wallace came in, taking a seat on the closed toilet, watching her behind the pebbled glass.

  “Borovsky gone, then?” Chace asked.

  “Just left.”

  “Then you should get in here.”

  So he did, and they made love in the shower, or at least tried to, but the stall was too cramped and the danger of slipping seemed to grow exponentially the more aroused they became. Ultimately, they retired to the bed, taking things slowly, Chace basking in Wallace’s touch and attention.

  Afterward, lying together, bodies idle but for their hands, Wallace said, “I have a plan.”

  “Does it include this bed?”

  “For the Wadi.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “You seem uninterested.”

  “I’m easily distracted.”

  “Seems to me I should be the one who’s distracted.” He propped himself up on his elbow, brushing her hair with his fingers. “Landau’s still saying they can’t put anyone on the ground, but he’s willing to arrange the infil by helicopter.”

  “Nice of him, considering the favor we’re doing for him.”

  “They’re making a drop tonight, equipment, they’ll put it down about twelve kilometers west of the camp. Tomorrow night they’ll drop us in, twenty kilometers west of the camp. We’ll have GPS, move to the cache, load up, close on target.”

  “Why two drops?”

  “Time over target,” Wallace said. “We want to limit it as much as possible.”

  “And what are they dropping?”

  Wallace’s grin indicated the degree to which he was pleased with himself, and from it Chace concluded he was very pleased indeed.

  “Claymores.”

  “The swords?”

  Wallace put his head to her shoulder and nipped at her skin, and she yelped, pushed his head away.

  “Mines,” Wallace said. “Sixteen of them, four hundred feet of det cord, two timers, one for a backup.”

  “Daisy chain.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re a clever man, Mr. Wallace.”

  “I do have my moments,” he agreed. “They’ll also cache food and water for the exfil.”

  “So we’re going to mine the camp and let it fly?”

  “Landau’s giving us P90s, suppressed, and I asked for two hundred rounds apiece. We’ll set the mines, pull back, wait for the detonation—”

  “And shoot the survivors.”

  “Quick job. Brutal, efficient. Crocker would approve.”

  “Not of this, he wouldn’t.”

  “Let go of that, that’s not yours.”

  “I disagree. I have staked my claim.”

  He gently moved her hand away, then wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and stayed that way until he fell asleep.

  •

  Wallace got to his feet slowly, the P90 held ready, and he turned a slow circle in place, checking their immediate perimeter, while Chace used her GPS unit to get a bearing on the cache. The P90s were suppressed, which added roughly a pound to their weight but didn’t appreciably affect their handling. The weapons were loaded with fifty rounds; the remaining 150 for each of them with the cache.

  In addition to the guns, t
hey each carried a GPS unit and a knife on their person, and that was it. Nothing else was truly needed, at least not yet, and as soon as Chace had the bearing, she rose to her feet and indicated their desired direction. They spread out, putting twenty feet or so between each other, and began walking. They moved as quickly as silence would allow.

  There was no moon, but the stars were brilliant and gave off a surprising amount of light, and she felt better about the fact that they had forgone NVG, relying on their eyes alone. She remembered a story from the SOE days, before the Special Operations Executive had transitioned to become SIS, during the Second World War, when agents had been taught to keep one eye closed during night maneuvers. It was the kind of detail that stayed with you, and she wondered at it, wondered at the way the mind could detach from the action surrounding it.

  The terrain was even for the most part, and barren, and she had expected sand and was mildly disappointed that there wasn’t much of it to be found. They made good time, and when they reached the cache and found the canister lying on its side, its self-deploying camouflage blanket making it look like nothing more than a large rock, Chace slid back her sleeve to check her watch. Oh-one-fifty-nine.

  She stood watch while Wallace broke open the canister, removing the backpacks first, and set about loading them. He divided the claymores evenly, eight for each of them, as well as the det cord and the timers. When he had loaded both backpacks, he dug out the extra magazines for the P90s, handed three of them to Chace, kept the remaining three for himself.

  Two hundred rounds apiece, sixteen claymores, Chace mused.

  If that wasn’t going to be enough to get the job done, she didn’t know what more would’ve.

  The backpacks loaded and closed, Wallace reached into the canister again, this time removing two plastic bottles of water, factory sealed, labels removed. He cracked one, drank it down, then closed the bottle and returned it to the canister before getting to his feet and offering the other to Chace. She drank it while he stood watch, then repeated his procedure, putting it back where he’d found it. Inside the canister were another sixteen bottles and six MREs, to be used later, on the exfil.

  Getting out was as important as getting in, after all.

  The plan, as it stood, had them hitting the camp in the next ninety minutes, returning to the cache before dawn for resupply. After loading up on the food and water, they would strike out to the west, making for the GPS coordinates Borovsky had supplied, across the border with Jordan. It was an eighty-six kilometer hike and would take them the better part of two days to accomplish. Once they reached the lift site, they would wait for pickup, scheduled twice every twenty-four hours, at twenty-two hundred and oh-four hundred.