by James Phelan
“To soften you up,” Durant said, with a small smile. “You know the playbook. Hell, you helped write it, yeah? The infamous Jed Walker, as I live and breathe. You know . . .” Durant stood, and paced as though considering what to say or admit next, then sat down where he had been before. “There were rumors about you, you know?”
Walker held his silence. He started to wedge the right-hand flexi-cuff in the tiny gap where the seat met the backrest.
“People were saying things.” Durant waited, clearly wanting to pique Walker’s interest and draw him into conversation, but Walker wouldn’t bite. “You went KIA on a State Department op, along with an Agency grunt. Neither family got remains, not even ashes. Shit like that’s hard to take, especially about a legend on a seemingly bullshit little op. That kind of thing makes people wonder. They talk. Whispers at first. Then they grew louder. Then—then I heard from Eve.”
Walker jolted his arms against the back of the chair, as though in a twitch of rage. He felt the right-hand cable-tie slip from the gap. He wedged it back. Couple more times, it might weaken enough to snap through . . .
“See . . .” Durant said, pleased to be getting through. “Eve came to me, a couple of months after I broke the news to her. She asked me to look into it: your death; the rumors and questions about you she’d heard via a couple of the other wives. From your father. He kept in touch with her, right up to the end. So, I helped her out. It was the least I could do, right?”
Walker shifted again. Pulled as hard and sharp with his arms as he could, felt the cable-tie looped through the bottom shaft of steel break free. His arms were still flexicuffed behind his back, but he could now lift them over the seatback. His ankles were still cable-tied around the front chair legs, but with the front legs unlocked from the ground he could tilt back the chair and be free of it.
“I mean,” Durant said, leaning forward, “we were friends from way back, right? We’d all gone out a lot, right? We—you and me—we were friends, man. And I mean, damn, Eve was always way too hot for you.”
Walker’s muscles in his arms and chest tensed. His face remained passive, his eyes dead. He knew that in one swift motion he could take the weight of himself forward and connect the ridge of his brow against Durant’s nose: 230 pounds snapping down in a sharp whack that would drop the intel officer to the floor, collecting a knee or two to the face on the way down and then a sharply cracked boot to the side of the head to render him unconscious. It steeled Walker, knowing he had options like that. It eliminated panic.
There were always options.
13
“Where are we at?” McCorkell said as he entered the boardroom, which had been transformed into a situation room. Six staffers were manning computers or phones, or putting intel up on whiteboards dedicated to pertinent information on their three interconnecting targets: Lassiter, Walker and Bellamy.
“I just heard back from Bev Johnson in Rome,” Hutchinson said. “They’ve picked Walker up, taken him to an Agency safe house on the outskirts of the city, with four Special Activities Division officers watching over him. Debriefing has already started.”
McCorkell said, “Okay, where’d you get with State?”
“Nothing doing, they’re saying they never heard of Walker, so I’m about to head to Heathrow for the next flight to DC.”
“Right. Where are we at with the van driver—the guy who went into the embassy and called Bellamy?” McCorkell studied the printout pic taped to the whiteboard that they’d pulled from the embassy CCTV.
“Gone. Disappeared. Bev’s got a couple of people on it. And it seems the body of the dead guy from the apartment—”
“The golfer?”
“Yep, he’s gone too.”
“How’s a dead guy go someplace?”
“Missing from the coroner’s office. Guy was on a slab one minute, vanished the next.”
McCorkell sighed and looked around at the staffers in the room. “Jesus, INTFOR’s cleaning up their mess faster than we can chase leads. Do we have anyone in Rome that we can pull into the fold?”
“Nope, not like we need,” Hutchinson replied. “The Feds are all tied up with a few big local cases. I thought you had a local source on Lassiter.”
“Gone quiet.”
“Damn.”
“Call in some favors, and I’ll do the same. We need all the help there that we can get. We’ve lost Lassiter but this could be our in on Bellamy—if we can play catch-up fast enough. And I want to know more about this Jed Walker.”
•
“I mean, I looked into your death, as much as I could,” Durant said. “I called buddies at State. Worked nights in the basement at Langley. Chased whispers around Fort Meade. Rumors in the Pentagon. Lies in Crystal City. I got the full goddamned runaround. In the end I was called into the Deputy Director’s office and told to drop it. That was that. A month later I got the station gig in Berlin.”
“A reward for keeping your nose out of it.”
“Maybe,” Durant said, his smile receding. “I think I earned it, though.”
“Don’t be coy. They paid you off. You’re a part of it now.”
“Am I? And what would it be, exactly?” Durant stared at him. “What do you know, Walker? Hmm? Where you been? Who you working for?”
Walker stared at him silently.
“Sure, if you’d stayed around, Berlin would have been yours,” Durant said. “Hell, a post like that should have been yours from the get-go. But that wasn’t for you. You liked the chaos, not the plush stuff. And you bugged out a while back, right? That was your choice. Never good with commitment, were you, Walker? That’s what Eve always told me.”
Walker was still. He put together a mental list of the actions he would take. He imagined Durant’s warm blood between his fingers as he used the unconscious agent’s teeth to open the cable-ties at his wrists. He saw himself hurl the chair through the mirror, slide the heavy bolt lock closed on the door, which he knew would be steel plate and set into a steel frame, terror-resistant up to small-arms fire. From there, to freedom, via the incapacitation of three guys—four, with the landlord, behind the mirror—in a couple of minutes. He would get what he came for, and bug out.
“Where you been, Walker?” Durant repeated. “Hmm?”
Walker remained silent.
“What’s this about? Why’d you go under? Why’d you walk away from everything you had?”
Walker pushed ever so slightly through the balls of his feet against the floor, readying, feeling the weight coming off the front chair legs.
“Eve said you might have lost it,” Durant said. “That you were in this shit too deep, too long. You couldn’t leave it—so she left you. You made that choice, right? This life over her?”
Walker smiled, waited. Answered a question with a question. “If you were in Berlin driving a desk, how’d you end up in Rome so fast? On a rendition grab team? A little beneath a Station Chief, hey, Pip?”
Durant smiled in return and leaned on the desk. His hands were on his knees, his weight well forward and out of balance for a counter-attack.
“You’re getting sloppy, Walker,” Durant said. “We got a facial-rec shot from a port in Spain four days ago. Then yesterday here in Rome as you passed an ATM’s camera.”
Walker was a little surprised by that one. Money machines linked into the surveillance net now?
“Oh yeah, Trapwire’s over here now too, didn’t you know?” Durant said, all smiles again. Then he mouthed, silently: “Talk, I can help. What’s going on?”
Walker shook his head, said, “Where’s my friend? The woman I came in with?”
“Friend?” Durant said, leaning a little closer still. “I’m the only friend you’ve got left. Talk.”
Walker began to imagine the pathway of each muscle from his feet up his legs and through his core and back and chest and neck as he would launch his attack.
“Okay, Walker, okay. Let me tell you what I know,” Durant said out loud. “Stop me if
I get anything wrong. Two years ago you bugged out of the Agency. No one knows why, although Eve believed at the time that you did it for her. I know it coincided with the Syria op, which you saved but it burned you. You shouldn’t have done that. But you wore it. You took the blame, and by doing that you saved the op. Agents’ lives too. Patriotic. Stupid, dumb, but patriotic. So, you go home, play house, happy days for what—three, maybe four months? That’s the last time I saw you—remember? You, me and Eve. Four days up at your folks’ cabin in the White Mountains. You remember that? Yeah. Shit, I remember it well. We had a moment there, me and Eve. Did she ever tell you that? Did you notice it? Yeah, Walker doesn’t miss the little things . . . So that’s it. A couple of weeks later you’re back at work, this time for State. Right? You’re doing fuck-knows-what for them, probably training fat wannabes in how to protect diplomats or investigating visa fraud or some shit. But then you’re out in the field and you get a taste of an old op—and you can’t help it, can you? You step outside your role, your mandate. You go into Yemen working on an op that should have been the Agency’s all the way.”
Durant stopped, watching Walker. No reaction. “So, you know what I figure? You did Yemen through State because you knew that the Agency wasn’t going to go in there to shut them down like that. They have too much interest otherwise. You’re chasing a money man through the mid-east who they don’t want fucked with, but you work them into a corner because you sell it somehow to State. It’s planned, all of it: you bugging out as the Agency hero who took one for the team, having your time out to appease Eve, go to the bullshit State job—all of it to get free rein to go mess around in the sandpit. Problem is, not only did you not belong there, you don’t have a damned clue about the damage you were doing. Plans were in motion for a decade, and you go in there and fuck it up. You think you know more than the rest of us? Know better?”
Walker was silent but there was a slight smile in his eyes, which he allowed Durant to see.“Why Yemen? Why go against the family?” Durant gave Walker the room to provide an answer but none came. “You could have been part of something special, a big part, if you’d just stayed in your own lane. Instead, you think that protecting your country involves putting bad guys out of business. You know so, so much better than that, Walker. Shit, man . . . this business we’re in? It’s a goddamned gold mine, and it’s only getting better as the world turns to shit. Syria, Yemen, all that wasn’t your business to try and fix.”
“It’s not a business, Pip.” Walker finally spoke.
“Really? You really believe that? Think about it. The Agency’s outdated—hell, it was outdated the day it was founded. Didn’t your father ever tell you that? Look around you, man. The world’s not about governments and borders anymore. It’s all business, and America’s the best at it—at least, we were, and maybe still are, so long as people like you and me realize all it can be, and we do what we can to make it so.”
Walker looked at his old friend and wondered when he’d lost it.
“This isn’t about what you can do for your country,” Durant said. “It’s about what you can do for yourself. We’re all the authors of our own story, Walker. You need to see that. You need to see that the evolution of America is based on enterprise and expertise, and yours doesn’t belong in the shadows anymore, nor in the ground. See what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” Walker said, his voice quiet, his head down slightly so that Durant had to lean in closer to hear. “You want to privatize what’s left of the intel community, and you want to be there from the ground up so that you can profit from it.”
“So that we can all profit from it,” Durant said. “The country, every citizen, the entire world—we’ll all be better off. It’s evolution. You gotta move with it, or it moves on without you.”
“And you’re offering me what?”
“A gift,” Durant said. “A second chance.”
14
Special Agent Fiona Somerville arrived at the American embassy in Rome and was kept waiting. Fifteen minutes. Three times she checked and was told to wait some more. Finally the assistant head of mission for security, a young guy named Ben, came to assist her.
“I’m here to see the Station Chief,” Somerville said once they were in Ben’s office.
“She’s out. We’ve had some excitement here.”
“I saw, out in the street. A car bomb?”
“Van. It could just be a gas tank accident, but it looks more than that. What can I help you with?”
“You’re not cleared for this.”
“I assure you, ma’am, I am.”
Somerville shook her head, made for the door.
“No, wait, I’m DSS,” Ben said. He handed over his business card.
Somerville summed him up: Ben Hobbs, RSO, US Diplomatic Security Service, a few years in, with a juicy posting; so, the kid was a rock star.
“Hobbs,” Somerville said, her tone somewhere between chastising and condescending, “as of right now there’s a category-one counter-intel operative in your backyard.”
“Jed Walker?”
Somerville nodded.
Ben Hobbs motioned to a seat, which Somerville took. Ben poured two coffees from a Thermos jug. Somerville took the cup: fine china, a short pour, the coffee rich and dark, the aroma only an Italian espresso could create.
“He was flagged as being in country, probably the same info you got in, where was it, Athens?”
“You’ve looked me up,” Somerville said.
“Hence you had to wait a bit. Quite the record,” Hobbs said. He sat on the edge of his desk. His posture made Fiona think that he was leering, playing her, trying to make up for something he felt he lacked. She got that a lot from male agents, mostly her juniors but often her superiors as well. Amazing, how women in law enforcement were still being underestimated.
“Hobbs, maybe you got to where you are by playing the bimbo,” Somerville said, draining her coffee and setting the cup down not on the saucer but on the timber side tabletop right next to it. “But I certainly didn’t.”
Somerville took a typed letter from her briefcase and handed it to Hobbs.
“That’s from my director,” she said clearly, firmly. “As in, Director of the FBI. I have jurisdiction on this op, no matter who gets in my way. Walker’s been in the wilderness a year, and he’s mine—and mine alone—to bring in and debrief.”
Hobbs read the letter and was quiet for a moment. Then he folded it and returned it, before walking back around his desk, where he took a seat.
“You’re too late,” he said, in a less cocksure voice. “Walker’s in the process of being rendered.”
“To where?”
Hobbs was silent.
Somerville stood and stared down at him. “Where is he?” she demanded.
“Right now, he’s at an Agency safe house,” Hobbs said. “South of the city. It’s an initial debrief, then they’ll move him on. The Station Chief’s headed there now. I’ll call her.”
•
“What makes you think I want to come back in?” Walker said.
“Because you showed up on the grid, and that was no mistake,” Durant replied. “Let me help you, Walker. Let me make sure you’re protected. They listen to me. You do this, you follow me, and you won’t have to be put into the ground—for real this time.”
Walker tensed his arms again, his chest, visualized the moves ahead.
“Tell me who you’re working for,” Durant said.
Walker said, “Why don’t you tell me who it is that you’re working for?”
Durant smiled. “Last chance, Walker. Orders to pick you up came from up high.”
“Probably from the same person who ordered me dead in Yemen.”
“You were sticking your nose where it didn’t belong. But this is a second chance. I’ll vouch for you. You come back in. You work for me. And in ten years you’ll see a world you could never have believed.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
<
br /> “Okay, sure, count me in. Why don’t you start by telling me who it is I’m helping out? Tell me that, I’ll tell you all I know.”
Durant’s expression changed. This was now the guy that Walker had seen beat an insurgent to death in Iraq. This was the operative who’d had more than his share of reprimands. This guy was a dinosaur, a relic of a short and dirty period of the Agency’s recent past, when the pointy-end military and intel community had expanded too fast against a threat it never fully understood. Durant had always been as much a friend as an enemy.
“I’m not fucking around, Walker,” Durant said through his teeth. “You need to tell me everything. Then we deal. Be thankful they sent me. I’m your only friend here, remember that.”
“And how about my other friend, the woman you picked me up with?”
“She’s in the room next door,” Durant said. He could sense Walker changing then, a slight shift in demeanor, and pulled his face up close to Walker’s, breathing stale coffee and cigarettes. “Man, is she sweet. I’ll get to her in good time. See how much duress she needs to make her talk. Show her what she’s missing out on. Damn, Walker, you sure get women who are too hot for—”
Durant didn’t finish his speech.
Walker went through his motions, rising fast and furious, his arms sliding over the back of the chair. At his full height he came back down, head-butting Durant on the way, the force of the downward blow shearing the nose cartilage from Durant’s face and sending him slipping forward, into Walker’s space.
As Walker rose, he slid the chair legs through the cable-ties that bound his ankles, freeing his feet, and in the same movement his rising left knee met the falling chin of Durant.
There was a satisfying snap of whiplash, and Durant was out cold.
Walker moved to the door and slid the steel bolt across. There was frantic banging on the outside as the officers in wait heard the bolt slide. In moments they would be in the viewing room. Then they would take another moment to react, perhaps up to a minute as they opted to either smash the mirror and rush through the shards of glass into the room, or wait Walker out from the dead-end interrogation room.