by James Phelan
“I don’t follow,” Somerville said.
“You will,” Walker replied. “Think about 9/11. Remember what happened to the money markets?”
“They closed,” McCorkell said.
Somerville added, “And went haywire.”
“It was havoc,” Walker said. “Billions, trillions were wiped. People lost big . . . but not everyone.”
Somerville stared at Walker as she figured it out. “Bellamy’s outfit is going to make a huge profit out of a terrorist attack, in New York, one that’s going to affect the markets.”
“I didn’t know about Bellamy,” Walker said. “You guys brought that to the table.”
“You’re talking put options?” McCorkell asked, nodding.
“That’s right,” Walker said, and he could see that McCorkell was starting to get it. “Put and call options are contracts that allow their holders to sell or buy assets at specified prices by a certain date. They allow their holders to profit from declines in stock values, because they allow stocks to be bought at market price and sold for the higher option price.”
“Just like on 9/11 . . .” Somerville said.
“Yep. Two of the corporations most damaged by the attack were American Airlines, the operator of Flight 11 and Flight 77, and United Airlines, the operator of Flight 175 and Flight 93,” Walker said. “The spikes in put options occurred on days that were uneventful for the airlines and their stock prices. On September 6 and 7, when there was no significant news or stock-price movement involving United, the Chicago exchange handled almost five thousand put options for United stock, compared with just a couple of hundred call options.”
“People were betting those stocks would fall,” said Somerville.
“And fall big they did,” Walker said. “On September 10, an uneventful day for America, the volume was a few hundred calls and almost five thousand puts. Bloomberg News reported that put options on the airlines surged to the phenomenal high of hundreds of times their average. And add to that, over the three days before the attacks, there was more than twenty-five times the previous daily average trading in a Morgan Stanley ‘put’ option that makes money when shares fall below forty-five dollars. When the market reopened after the attack, United Airlines stock was almost cut in half, and American Airlines wasn’t far behind it. Those who had bet the shares would fall made fortunes.”
“There were similar calls on stocks for defense contractors like Raytheon,” McCorkell said. “While most companies would see their stock valuations decline in the wake of the attack, those in the business of supplying the military would see dramatic increases, reflecting the new business they were poised to receive.”
Somerville said, “If something big happens again, the New York Stock Exchange will immediately close.”
“For a day or two, maybe longer,” Walker said. “After 9/11 it came out that huge put options had been placed on airlines, on banks and insurance companies that would be hurt by the attacks and crashed markets. In each case the anomalous purchases translated into large profits as soon as the stock market opened a week after the attack: put options were used on stocks that would be hurt by the attack, and call options were used on stocks that would benefit.”
“That’s the target, isn’t it?” McCorkell said.
Walker nodded.
“That’s what happens at nine-thirty in the morning, in New York City,” McCorkell said. “The New York Stock Exchange opens.”
57
“Has anyone been in contact with you about Jed?” Hutchinson asked.
Eve replied without turning to face him, filling the kettle. “Contact?”
“Since—after you were given the news.”
“You mean has anyone been here asking about him since?”
“That’s right. Has anyone called? Any contact at all?”
“No. Not for ten months. At least. Not since wrapping up his affairs, the life insurance and all that. Before that the State Department sent me a flag; I forwarded it to his mother. Before that a friend from the CIA—Pip Durant—visited, to tell me what happened. And that’s it, the sum of all contact.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.” Eve stopped still, lost for a moment, then went on. “It’s great, isn’t it? You die for your country and your wife gets a visit and a flag and then all’s forgotten.”
Hutchinson could see that she had tried to move on. Pictures on the mantel showed her with another guy. Happy snaps. Different places. The Grand Canyon. The ferry going around the Statue of Liberty. Disneyland. Hutchinson felt bad bringing all this back to her.
The place was not a museum full of old memories—it was an art gallery with blank walls, ready to be filled with new ones.
Eve made the coffee. Ground the beans, put them in a French press. Hutchinson sat on the stool at the kitchen bench. Eve set the coffee plunger on the bench, alongside two mugs, a sugar bowl and a small carton of milk.
“Agent Hutchinson, what’s this about?”
“It’s due process, is all. I thought I’d . . .” Hutchinson trailed off as the dog sniffed him, tail wagging, a well-chewed toy in his mouth. “It’s really nothing that need bother you—I’m sorry to have disturbed your day.”
“No,” Eve said. “I know that look. I saw it on Jed’s face enough times. You’re not lying to me but you’re also not saying something, to protect me. But you know what? Leaving things unsaid doesn’t do anyone any favors.”
Hutchinson was silent. He closed his notepad.
Eve said, “Tell me, Agent Hutchinson. What’s going on?”
•
“Before he was CIA, Jack Heller used to be in banking,” Walker said. “Until 2002 he was chairman of an investment bank that was acquired by Banker’s Trust.”
“One of twenty major US banks named by the Senate as being connected to money laundering,” Somerville said.
“That’s right,” Walker said. “And Heller’s last position there was to oversee ‘private client relations,’ giving him direct contact with some of the wealthiest people in the world—and their money.”
“Yemen?” McCorkell said.
“Yes,” Walker said. “I was tracking a courier for financing operations. Thanks to him being a double, through the DGSE I was able to get details of some of his transactions.”
“They pointed back to Heller?” McCorkell said.
Walker nodded. “That’s why he shut me down when I was at the Agency; he didn’t want me looking into it. When I went to State, I picked up where I left off.”
“And then Heller ordered you dead,” Somerville said.
“That’s what I thought, though via Bellamy, you say,” Walker said. “And they weren’t taking chances—my Agency guy riding shotgun turned on me, then the drone strike came in. They wanted me dead and they left nothing to chance.”
“Jesus,” Somerville said. “If you have this, I can take Heller down. I can have a team of agents—”
“He’s Director of the SAD,” McCorkell said. “It’d have to be beyond watertight, and a guy like that is cautious.”
“The kill order on me would have been recorded, in Agency files,” Walker said. “If I get that, it’s enough to take him in and get a federal warrant to comb through all his affairs.”
“You’ll never get that kill order,” McCorkell said. “It’ll be buried under so much national-security red tape that you and a room of lawyers would take a thousand years to get to it.”
“I’m not going to ask for it,” Walker said. “I’m going to take it.”
McCorkell fell silent.
“That’s what Felix was getting from Athens . . .” Somerville said, making the connection. “We knew that he had a list of buyers, money men, laundering through Greek banks.”
“And those people in the know who made put options that certain stocks would crash tomorrow morning,” Walker said.
“I’d bet on it, but we’ll never know the names,” McCorkell said.
“Though maybe I have
them now,” Walker said. He touched the small bump at the back of his head. “They’ve been using Agency couriers like Lassiter to communicate with each other. Probably for years.”
Somerville asked, “How did Heller go from banking to leading the pointy-end division of the CIA?”
“He joined the CIA in 2005, as counsel to the Director,” McCorkell said. “He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in 2008, then sidestepped to the role he’s now in.”
“The short answer,” Walker said, “is that Heller’s made a career out of taking down competitors.”
“That’s something he and Bellamy have in common,” McCorkell said. “Bellamy has been brutal in his intelligence operations against his competitors.”
“Bellamy has competitors?” Somerville asked.
“The legit agencies,” McCorkell said. “CIA, NSA, MI5 and 6, Mossad, you name it. Bellamy’s people at INTFOR infiltrated the internet chat rooms where hackers would boast about their achievements; from there they developed contacts and recruited agents. They employed former police detectives and intelligence operatives of many nationalities, including a former head of Scotland Yard’s criminal intelligence bureau. These agents used their contacts with state agencies, bugged phones, burgled homes, set traps and employed every device familiar to readers of crime fiction—with apparent disdain for the law. As in the high times of maritime piracy, one man’s pirate would be another man’s privateer.”
“So, he’s chasing the American dream, forging ahead as the titan of a new industry, getting filthy rich and powerful in the process.” Somerville shook her head. “Sounds like a true patriot.”
“That and more,” McCorkell said. “If Heller goes over to INTFOR, it lends a hell of a lot of credibility to their operations.”
“What can we do about it?” Somerville asked.
“A lot, I think,” replied McCorkell.
“I’ve got my own battles,” Walker said. “I’ve got a deadline to beat, and I’ve got Heller to take down.”
“No,” McCorkell said. “This is the main game. This is the World Series. This is do or die.”
“I was never much of a baseball fan,” Walker said.
“Really?”
“The Phillies depressed me too many years growing up. Nearly gave my old man a heart attack thirty years before he had one.”
McCorkell shifted position. “I knew him, you know.”
“Most in Washington did,” Walker replied.
“He was a good man. Honest. Never turned his back on a fight.”
“I can’t fight Bellamy for you. I’ve got my own battle waging right now.”
“I hear you. But you’re soon going to realize that all roads lead to Bellamy.”
Walker looked out his window. “What could I possibly offer you that you don’t already have?”
“Two things,” McCorkell said.
Walker looked at him, waiting.
“Ability,” McCorkell said, “and deniability.”
58
Hutchinson could see more detail with each passing moment. There wasn’t even the barest trace of Walker in this house, but then, it had been a while, and Hutchinson understood that each person was unique in their grief. Twenty years at the Bureau and he had seen it all when it came to grieving spouses. He had to admit, he preferred these ones; those who picked up and moved on. However long that process took, it was better than spending the rest of your days sitting in a chair and looking at a photo and wondering what if . . .
“It’s something that Jed was working on,” Hutchinson said. “It’s still unraveling.”
“The mission that got him killed?”
Hutchinson nodded.
“For the State Department?”
“That’s right. Did he tell you much, about his work?”
“No. Only arcane things. Broad brush-strokes of places he went and things he saw.” Eve smiled. “And minute details of the food he ate, interesting things he saw in cultures, stuff like that. He’d tell me about every little thing, but never any details about the work. Never any secrets. Nor the people he met. Not even a reason for being away so often, for so long.”
“What do you remember him saying about that last assignment?”
•
“In Yemen,” McCorkell said, “you were tracking a lead from one of the cell-phone numbers that was found on bin Laden.”
Walker nodded. “It led us to part of their funding network, before Heller dead-ended it citing ongoing operational reasons.”
“What do you remember about bin Laden getting hit?” McCorkell said.
“I remember a buddy in the 160th SOAR telling me that we got him. That the SEALs had killed him.”
“When did you find out?”
“An hour after the event.”
“It was under wraps until zero-six-thirty,” said McCorkell.
“Like I said, my friend flies with the 160th,” Walker said. “He took the SEALs and the body out on a Chinook to Bagram. I was told that at zero-six-thirty it would go out on the Intellipedia net.”
“Did you worry about reactions?”
“Hell yeah,” Walker said. “I was in the field. You know the drill—the world was gonna light up when the news broke. Back home, people would celebrate in the streets. And elsewhere, just like Newton’s third law of motion, there’d be equal and opposite reactions. I laid low that day.”
“Then?” McCorkell said.
“Then, I got ready for a shit storm. Prepared for anything and everything. We’ve all got something in a glass case to break on a rainy day when the devil’s breathing down our neck, and I got ready to break mine.”
“You know why I’m asking, right?”
Walker nodded. “Because of Heller. And Bellamy. For them, and for INTFOR, that was a bad day.”
“A bad day?” Somerville said.
Walker said, “Our SEALs killed their cash cow.”
“They need a new war,” Somerville said, the dots connecting. “So, they’re starting their own.”
McCorkell nodded.
Walker too. Then, he said, “And they’re calling it Zodiac.”
59
Eve exhaled. There was a broken woman behind that mask, Hutchinson saw. She could put up a good front, set things up in her life just so, but it would never completely leave her. Maybe she kept a box of Walker’s stuff up in the attic, out of view from her new life, but there for when she needed it.
“Jed was gone for months, and I had no idea that he was in Yemen,” Eve said. She poured the coffees and added milk to hers and stirred it ten times, then tapped the spoon on the rim of the mug as if out of habit. “We were already apart then, and that—it was the final straw. He emailed a few times; I deleted them without reading them. I was so angry that he’d gone away . . . But he—it’s like he was addicted to the job, and they knew it.”
“They?”
“Whoever he was working for. The Agency, State, whoever. It’s like they had an emergency Rolodex with one name in it: ‘You need a long-term mission done well? Call Walker, he’ll do it.’” Eve was quiet for a while, looking into her coffee. “But that’s all in the past. Is there anything else?”
“Have you ever had any contact?”
“Contact?”
“Has—I thought maybe he might have left something behind, a letter or email, that came later, after he—”
“No. He died. That’s it. Are we done?”
“Yeah,” Hutchinson said, finishing his coffee. She didn’t know anything that he couldn’t get from the files. “Thanks for your time.” As he stood, the dog came up to say goodbye and get a scratch behind the ear.
Eve opened the door and stood aside.
“Will they get them?” she asked.
Hutchinson turned around. “Sorry?”
“Will they get the men who killed my husband?”
My husband. Hutchinson was looking at a woman who still cared.
“I’m working on it,” Hutchinson sai
d. “Everything I can do, I will do.”
•
“The mood at the CIA has shifted,” Walker said. “It started a few years back. A big change was the path they’d gone down with interrogations and tortures. The new administration came in, and they meant it when they said we couldn’t torture anymore. A lot of guys were left disgruntled. A lot bugged out, in case they were the ones left holding the ball when the lawyers came knocking.”
“And add to that the scaling back of activities in Afghanistan and Iraq,” McCorkell said. “It meant that for Agency personnel, times had definitely changed.”
“So, Bellamy has designed a series of attacks to—what, make his private-spy company viable?” Somerville said. “That’s what Zodiac is?”
“Viable, necessary—the big player on the block,” McCorkell said. “He can scale up a hell of a lot faster than the Agency can in order to respond to the new crisis. He was a junior counselor on the 9/11 commission. Worked for Senator Anderson. Got a sweet gig in the Green Zone for a couple of years, running the oil ministry, re-building and securing billion-dollar contracts for companies back stateside.”
“Have you ever met him?” asked Walker.
“Only in passing. He recently did a bit of work for the Agency.”
Walker raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“He was never payrolled,” nodded McCorkell. “Just a few jobs here and there. Ran a few ops for them.”
“But not payrolled?”
“No. He gifted his services, or, rather, those of his company.”
“Showing them what INTFOR could do.”
McCorkell nodded. “Yes. Think of it as proof-of-concept type stuff. Clamped down on some big-time computer hacker in Spain operating out of a decked-out van. And I gotta tell you, a hell of a lot of folks on the Hill like what he’s selling. He’s got the Vice President in his pocket. If Zodiac’s big, it just might see INTFOR become the next multi-billion-dollar security company.”
“More than that,” Walker said. “It’ll be an intelligence apparatus with no government oversight.”