by James Phelan
“You could have been killed by the guys we sent in.”
“I know. In a weird way I should be thankful that Walker took me down, because it meant that I was left alone by your team.”
“Like I said, I didn’t know you were going to be there.”
“Field operations move quickly. That’s why you need guys like me and Heller driving things like this. You worry about your upcoming IPO and pressing political flesh and all that.”
“Yeah, well, now there’s a lot of interest in you,” Bellamy said. “An FBI guy went to Heller asking questions about Walker, and your name came up.”
“So?”
“Just disappear for a bit. You’ve done enough. Hang in the hotel in Manhattan and enjoy the show.”
“Fuck you disappear,” replied Durant. “I’m part of this, a big part.”
Another pause from Bellamy. Then he said, “All right. We need to find Walker before anyone else does. You can help with that.”
“I’m working on it. I owe him a smashed face.”
“Where would he go?”
“He’s wounded. He’s got only the clothes on his back. He’s on the run.”
“So, where would he go for help?”
“That’s the thing,” Durant said. “The guy’s been a ghost. He could be anywhere.”
“Then think harder. He’s up against it. Maybe he knows we piggybacked trading info on the Agency’s courier network.”
“So he’ll be headed to Hong Kong.”
“Better he’s held up there than New York,” said Bellamy.
“My point is, he has to travel internationally.”
“There’s a lot of heat on him; we’re not the only ones looking for him. He’ll need iron-clad travel docs.”
“A guy like Walker could get documents anywhere.”
“But he won’t, not when there’s this kind of heat on him, because he’s a pro. He doesn’t trust just anyone.”
“Was a pro,” corrected Durant.
“By the by. He won’t take unnecessary risks. You worked with him all that time. Where would he turn for help?”
Durant paused, then said, “There’s a guy you could check in on. A guy he used to look up to, like a father. Marty Bloom. Retired spook from way back, lives in Europe someplace. Trained Walker in the early days. Recruited him in Kabul back in the Afghan war, when Walker was still a DoD boy. The way I heard it, he secretly made sure Walker got his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel because he knew that’d bring a desk job that Walker couldn’t abide. Next thing you know, Walker leaves the military for the Agency.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to Heller about this Bloom guy, get him tracked down. Where are you?”
“Texas,” Durant said, merging onto the I-81.
“What’s in Texas?”
“Leverage.”
•
The Croatian night was a veil of bright stars in the dark blanket above the Adriatic. Walker leaned against the outside wall of the bar and waited while Bloom stubbed out his cigarette.
“Those things . . .” Walker said.
“Will kill me? Please.” They headed back into the bar and sat at their table. The plates from their meal of cured meats, cheeses, and preserved and pickled vegetables had been cleared. It took a while for Bloom to say, “Hong Kong?”
“Yep.” Walker looked around, then said, “Lassiter was due to be there tomorrow, and I’ll be there instead.”
“It’s the wild west over there. Whole different set of rules. You get caught, they take you to mainland China and you’re fucked.”
“Yep.”
“I mean dead for real this time; it’s not a place you’d want to get caught.”
“Nope.”
Bloom was silent, then said, “You know what you need?”
Walker looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“You need a place, Walker, your own place. Somewhere, something that means enough to you to make you want to walk away from all this. When I got shot here in ninety-one during the siege, I should have died, but I didn’t because of the help of the good civilian folk who stayed behind. They stayed here with no water, no power, for months. They stayed, even while the place was occupied, because it was their home and they were prepared to die here. They saved me. And at the time I swore that if I lived through it, and all the other shit that followed, I’d come back one day and join them.”
“That’s a sweet story.”
“Damned straight. And you know what I meant by it?”
“You’re more sentimental than you look?”
Bloom raised an eyebrow in return.
“Fine, I get it,” Walker said. “You’re saying that I need my Dubrovnik.”
“Damned straight. We all do. Everyone needs a place to settle down. Somewhere to live. Somewhere to die. Somewhere to settle and stop looking over your shoulder every other second. It’s as simple as that. I’m a fat old man with plastic knees and yet these have been the best years of my life. I’m not saying you have to run head first into it. Just take your leave while it’s given to you. Open your eyes, man. Look at your so-called death as a gift. Walk away while you can. Be thankful for what you have. Find your Dubrovnik.”
Walker couldn’t, not yet, and Bloom knew that.
“Jed, before all this, there was a long time, while I was working,” Bloom said, “where I couldn’t live in the world of sobriety. Shitty time. Cold War ending, my friends getting shafted all over the place, plenty of excuses to drink with plenty of people who no longer had a place to fit in. You get to the point where you’ve done so much for your country and you think, What’s the point of staying sober?”
“I can’t remember you as a drunk. I was joking before, when I walked in here and called you that.”
“I know, I know.” Bloom smiled. “I gave it up after the siege. I’ve eased back into it since my demons have departed.”
Walker could see the change in the man in the four years since they’d last met in person: in his face, his eyes, the smile lines, his stance, his body language and his demeanor. “This place really changed you, hey?”
“Yep,” Bloom said. “And Yemen was your siege. Let it be. Just leave all this be.”
“Nope.” Walker shook his head. “My siege is yet to come, Marty. Yet to come. They started this war. I’m going to finish it.”
Forty-one hours to deadline.
39
Somerville broke her conversation with McCorkell and looked down to her phone sitting on the embassy desk between them: Captain Spiteri. She answered it and the voice came through on the hands-free speaker.
“The Trapwire system picked up images of Walker in Bari, on the eastern coast, a few hours’ drive from here,” Spiteri said. “I am messaging you the shots now.”
Somerville looked at the grainy images. One was taken through a convenience-store glass door, another from a petrol station as he had passed by, another from a security camera at a dock.
“There,” Somerville said. “The one on the docks. What’s he doing with that guy?”
“Talking,” Spiteri said.
“He’s doing more than talking,” Somerville said. The photos showed Walker passing over the bag; the other guy checking its contents.
Spiteri continued, “Walker handed him a rucksack, which we later intercepted and searched.”
The corresponding enhanced footage showed wads of euros and wrapped parcels that appeared to be drugs.
“When was that? Who’s he with?” Somerville said.
“Six hours ago. We haven’t confirmed ID on his contact yet. We arrested another guy with the bag during a vehicle stop.”
“Run him. Find that guy. It can’t be hard: a haul that big, he’s got to be a player. Have your local carabinieri get hold of him as soon as he’s made. I want to know what Walker said, and where he’s now at.”
“We are working on that,” Captain Spiteri said.
“Call me when you know more.”
Somerville ended the call and turned to McCork
ell. “You still think Jed Walker’s a poster-boy for good intentions?”
•
“Let me help you out a little,” Bloom said.
“You’ve done enough,” Walker replied. There was a third of the bottle of Scotch left, and the bar was almost empty but for a few patrons seeing the night through, though their vision and memories would be suitably impaired. Walker suspected that this bar was the kind of place that didn’t have a regulation closing time.
“No, no, I’m serious,” Bloom said. “One professional helping another. Tell me.”
“Tell you . . .”
“Yemen. The mission. What was it about?”
“Marty . . .”
“What, after all you ask of me, you can’t tell me this?”
“It’s . . .”
“Against the law?”
Walker shrugged. “No, not that. I just didn’t want to disturb your new-found peace.”
“Let me worry about that. Talk.”
“Okay, Yemen . . . I was in and out of country for a few months, chasing a guy. A courier.”
“How’d you get assigned?” Bloom asked. “I know you were out of the Agency then.”
“That’s right. Remember the story about that office in State, about how they ran DSS-type officers to handle sensitive investigations into diplomats, politicians, royalty and the like in foreign countries?”
“Yep.”
“That’s how.”
“No.”
“Yep.”
“No . . .” Bloom looked into his empty glass, to the bottle, then set the glass down and drank from his water glass instead. “That outfit at State was just a bullshit rumor.”
“Nope. As real as you and me sitting here.”
“Who runs it? Where’s it headquartered?”
“What, you looking for a job?”
“No, forget it. Go on.”
“I was in Yemen, had been ghosting a member of the House of Saud. He kept meeting with a guy. A courier. Louis Assif.”
“One of about ten thousand princes, meeting with a courier. And?”
“Yeah, well, Assif was already a suspected courier within Al Qaeda, dealing with Saudi money moving around in return for AQ not fucking around in their sandbox. And I’m talking big money. Intel initially pegged him as one of bin Laden’s personal guys. Turns out that wasn’t right, but he had links to one of the guys they got at bin Laden’s compound, probably his number-one runner.”
“But?”
“But at the Agency I could never get close—Heller always shut me out whenever the guy’s name came up,” Walker said. “And it turns out that Assif had already been made and turned. He was an agent, for the French.”
“DGSE?”
Walker nodded.
“That could be why Heller shut you out.”
“Could be, but I doubt it.”
“So then you went to State and looked into it anyway.”
“Yep. And before I could get shit out of Assif, my Agency minder turned on me and then, quick as you could blink, we were hit by the drone strike. All told, a couple of years’ work up in smoke, and whoever Al Qaeda’s using now is an unknown.”
“Because the HVT rolled in and the Hellfires rained down.”
“That’s about the sum of it. If you believe that.”
“Did you follow any DGSE leads?”
“Assif’s French handler was a dead end. And when I say dead end, I mean it: he’s dead. Car accident, they said. He was among the first to die in this clean-up, nine months ago now.”
Bloom nodded, staring down into his drink. Walker could see his legendary old mentor’s mind working overtime, connecting dots. “Who was the HVT who rolled in?”
“They had him made as AQ’s premier bomb-maker. Now he’s supposedly compost for the desert.”
“He’s probably got a date palm growing out of what was left of his butt.” Bloom looked up at Walker. “And only you got out of there alive.”
“Yep, saved by a bit of mud-brick wall and a whole lot of luck. I stayed hidden in what was left of the place for the next two nights, then I hot-wired a car and bugged the hell out. And you know the rest.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”
“This isn’t your fight. You’re out, remember? Retired.”
“Yet I feel I’m more than just your travel agent, you know.”
Walker laughed. “Yes, Marty, you are. You’re a friend. You’re a champ. But your days of fighting are over. You said so yourself. Hell, look at you, man. Your fight’s against angina and diabetes, not this.”
“I’ve still got a little fight left in me.”
“Save it,” Walker said, and gestured toward a couple of women seated at the bar, “for the ladies.”
Bloom laughed, then turned serious once more. “Hong Kong,” he said. “Lassiter’s contact. How are you going to proceed?”
“I’m going to question her, direct.”
“Her?”
“Yes.”
“You know his contact?”
“I know of her.”
“Is she protected?”
“Very well.”
“Okay. I think I have a better idea.”
Forty hours to deadline.
40
Bloom’s better idea involved a scalpel, a tiny plastic pill that contained a wireless storage chip, and surgical stitching gear. They sat in Bloom’s apartment, not a few minutes from the bar. The old man had a grin on him that Walker didn’t like.
Walker said, “You wanna stitch that into the back of my head?”
“You’ll be the new head case.”
“I can’t just keep it in my pocket?”
“They’re not designed for that. Besides, what if you get caught? This way, it’s hidden.”
“They booked Lassiter but they get me . . . But I’m supposed to be delivering info, not receiving, right?”
“You deliver some crap and download whatever she’s got.”
“Download?”
“Yep.”
“These things do that?”
“It seems you have much to learn, my young Padawan.” Bloom looked at the tiny head-case chip in the clear plastic container. “It’s not standard, but I had my guy back in the States make them two-way for a little project I did when I first moved here.”
“Of course you did.”
“It’s simple, and ingenious: you’ll be going to Lassiter’s agreed location at a designated time, and his contact will connect to your chip to download what you’ve got—and this little baby will automatically take all the data off whatever device she’s using.”
“She could be using a smart phone, tablet, computer . . . that’s a lot of data.”
“This will hold one-twenty-eight gig, and it can wirelessly transfer real-time data via the chip to a smart phone or tablet if need be.”
“And how am I posing as the head case?”
“The same way they all do,” Bloom replied. “Five minutes before you arrive, she’ll get the automated message, the picture of you sent to her phone.”
“That’s risky—that can be hacked; it’s how I made Felix Lassiter in Athens in the first place.”
“Yeah, but you were already on site and waiting for a head case to show up. This time, who’s going to be waiting for you?”
“Okay. And how will you get me listed as the head case?”
“I didn’t get a gold watch from Langley for being a boy scout,” Bloom said. “The Station Chief in Hong Kong is one of the best gigs on the planet, and the SOB sitting at the desk owes me more than you do. You’re already using the courier’s name—we’ll just get you logged into their system as the guy.”
“If he knows who I am, he’ll never give me cover—it’ll be his career over.”
“He’s never going to know who the new head case is.”
Walker was intrigued.
“I’ll tell him to give me a one-time access key to the secure network in the Hong Kong station. On
e use, to do something for an old buddy. He’ll give me that.”
“If he manages to trace what you’ve done—”
“He won’t, he’s not that kind of guy. He’ll look the other way on this.”
“But if someone sees, some IT desk jockey notices that my ID has been uploaded into the system.”
“It’s not part of the Intellipedia network, it’s internal, a LAN, so it’ll be buried in the local server in Kowloon.”
Walker nodded, the plan now making sense. “Head cases are like any other cutout agents—no one runs them but the officers who recruited them in the first place . . .”
“So, you’re going to be a ghost in the system. Life imitating art, or something.”
Walker looked at the scalpel. “I don’t know, Marty.”
“You want to forget about it? Fine.”
“How about we wait until we’re sober before you cut my head open?”
“We can, but it’ll hurt less now.”
Walker grimaced, paced the tiny kitchen and then sat down. “Fine. But if you butcher me, I’ll give you a vasectomy with that thing.”
“Ooh, kinky.”
41
“You know I fully support INTFOR, John,” the Vice President said to Senator Anderson. “But the Cabinet just won’t pass it. It’s the wrong administration for it. Especially in the wake of Snowden and all the press that got. You should bug out and lay low someplace, like the Blackwater guy is doing.”
“Academi,” Anderson said.
“Whatever they call themselves now. There’s too much heat on this sort of private enterprise right now for it to be all you want it to be. A couple of smaller programs, sure. But not what you and Bellamy presented last year. Wait a while, you’ll see.”
Senator Anderson stood and walked over to the window, looking down at the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory, the official office and residence of the Vice President.
Anderson said, “I came here today hoping there would be some movement before the IPO.”
“They feel we’re winning this war on terror, winding things up,” the Vice President said. “They don’t see the urgency to hand more to the private sector this fast. Under the last President, sure, INTFOR would have been a gift. But now, with bin Laden gone and us bugging out of Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s just not the urgency on the foreign front. Maybe you should have made things more domestic, taken on the DHS instead of the CIA—since the Boston bombing, that’s where the public support for more action against terrorism is. So either wait it out, or change your focus.”