by J. B. Turner
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 J. B. Turner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503936614
ISBN-10: 1503936619
Cover design by Stuart Bache
For my mother
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
One
The headlights appeared out of the darkness on the dirt road that led to Jon Reznick’s isolated home. He was sitting on his front porch with a mug of strong black coffee, trying to figure out whether he should reach for his Beretta. He didn’t often get visitors to his oceanfront home on the outskirts of Rockland, Maine. And certainly not before dawn broke.
He gulped down the rest of his coffee as he was bathed in the harsh headlights of the oncoming cars. The tires crunched the bone-dry earth, rutted by the current heat wave. The birds in the trees took flight.
Three vehicles?
The lead car, a black Suburban, pulled up in a cloud of dust. A few moments later, the rear passenger door opened.
A man wearing a dark suit and tie emerged. He walked toward Reznick and flashed a badge. “Special Agent in Charge of Boston, Jimmy Richards,” he said. Perspiration beaded his forehead. “Jon Reznick?”
Reznick remained seated. He stared up at the Fed but stayed silent.
“Sorry to drop in on you like this. But we need to talk.”
Reznick shrugged. “So talk.”
“I’ve been asked to speak to you in person by Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein.”
“About what?”
“I think it’s better if you come with me.”
“Not possible.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m catching a flight down to New York later this morning to visit my daughter.”
“That might be a problem. You’re required to come with me, sir.”
“Required to come with you? I’m not required to do shit.”
“Jon . . .”
“You can call me Reznick or Mr. Reznick. Look, Mr. Special Agent in Charge, I don’t know you and I’ve sure as hell never met you. You turn up on my property unannounced. So I’d appreciate it if you could leave me alone.”
SAC Richards’s gaze wandered over the salt-blasted wooden house Reznick’s father had built many years ago. He sat down on the porch step beside Reznick and stared toward the three vehicles. “Here’s the thing. You need to come with us, Reznick. She asked specifically for you.”
Reznick said nothing.
“She couldn’t make it herself. Back-to-back meetings with various intelligence analysts. But she thought it was appropriate for someone to talk to you in person.”
Reznick closed his eyes for a moment. His gut reaction was to tell them to take a hike. His trip to New York was something he’d been looking forward to for weeks, not having seen his daughter, who was at boarding school, for nearly four months. He’d paid for the tickets, the fancy hotel room, not to mention Springsteen at Madison Square Garden. But he was in Meyerstein’s debt. He owed her.
“You need to tell me more.”
SAC Richards sighed. “I’ve only been told what I need to know.”
“What exactly do you know?”
“We need to find someone.”
“That’s it?”
“More or less. It’s on a need-to-know basis.”
“I’m guessing the FBI doesn’t send Special Agents in Charge of Boston all the way up here in a three-car convoy for the sheer hell of it.”
Richards stared at Reznick.
“Who’s gone missing?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” The Fed looked at his watch. “You need to get your ass into gear. You got five minutes to pack a bag, Reznick. Let’s get to it.”
Two hours later, after a turbulent flight from Owls Head’s small airport, they touched down at Dulles, where three Lincolns were waiting.
They drove east. The first tinges of a blood-red sky appeared as the sun peeked over the horizon, throwing long shadows. Reznick called his daughter and left a message apologizing for having to cancel at such short notice. Then he told her he loved her. And that he would make it up to her when he got back home.
Richards turned to Reznick. “I don’t know many people that would drop plans to see their daughter at a moment’s notice.”
“The only person I’d do that for is Meyerstein.”
“You mind me asking why that is?”
Reznick sighed. “The long and short of it is I was supposed to be carrying out a job . . . but it went wrong. And my daughter was kidnapped. Meyerstein tracked me down to Key West. But instead of hauling my ass in, she let me find my daughter . . . in exchange for information about a guy I was supposed to kill.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“So there you have it.”
They sat in silence for the rest of the journey.
After about fifteen minutes, Reznick saw a sign for the town of McLean. Upscale and affluent. They headed down tree-lined streets and past huge mansions with manicured lawns and electronic steel gates.
He couldn’t see any street signs, only trees. And, in the distance, men in black, standing guard outside a six-story concrete building. The car stopped at a set of hydraulic steel barriers. The window wound down.
“United States Police,” a guy in black wearing shades said, emerging from a guardhouse, walkie-talkie crackling. “What’s your business?’
The driver had his FBI lanyard scanned. “We good?”
The guard nodded as he handed out an individual access badge to each of them. “We were expecting you. Remember, you must wear these at all times.”
Reznick and the Feds all clipped on their badges.
Then the guard handed over a pale-blue card to the driver. “This is to enter the facility gate.”
The driver nodded and they were waved through, with the other two
Lincolns following behind. They headed to a parking garage at the rear of the building, where a two-man team rechecked the individual access IDs—taking particular time over Reznick’s—and escorted them into the lobby.
More security, and airport-style scanners. Two large welcome mats with the words Liberty Crossing.
Reznick knew exactly where they were. It was one of the most secure facilities in the United States and it housed both the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center, shielded behind steel barriers and armed guards. He’d once been told that at least 1,700 federal employees and 1,200 private contractors worked at Liberty Crossing, which was the nickname for the complex.
An NCC official escorted them to the elevator and they rode it to the fourth floor. He led them along a windowless corridor until they got to a glass door, two cameras scanning the entrance.
He punched a long numeric code into the keypad. The doors clicked open and he ushered Reznick inside.
“Take a seat, Mr. Reznick,” the official said.
Reznick did as he was told and he was left alone. He looked around. White walls, modern prints. The Washington Post on a small table. He looked at the clock and sighed. He hated waiting.
Time dragged. More than twenty minutes later, the official returned.
“They’ll see you now.”
Reznick got up and followed the man through to an open-plan office. Wooden desks, geometric-patterned carpets. Then it was down a long corridor to a conference room with plasma screens on the walls. Gathered around a large oak table were six men and one woman.
Meyerstein looked up, as did her right-hand man, Roy Stamper, who Reznick already knew. Meyerstein stood and shook his hand.
“Glad you agreed to join us,” she said.
Reznick was introduced to those around the table: all members of the intelligence community with high-level security clearance, including the head of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team and a “special advisor” to the Department of Homeland Security.
He shook their hands. He knew all about strategic analysts and rated their skills highly. They were the ones who sifted raw data and tried to figure out the big picture, providing people like Meyerstein with an understanding of what was known about a threat and what wasn’t. But they were also concerned with trying to determine what threats lay over the horizon.
“Take a seat, Jon,” Meyerstein said after the formalities were over. The only person who hadn’t been identified was the man sitting to her left.
Reznick sat down and looked up at the clock on the wall. 7:03 a.m.
“You mind telling me why we’re here at this ungodly hour?”
The man to the left of Meyerstein cleared his throat. “My name is Lieutenant General Robert J. Black. I am employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, although for the last year I’ve worked out of an office at the Pentagon. Now that we’re all acquainted, let me lay down some ground rules.”
Black’s gaze lingered for a moment on each and every person in the room.
“What I’m about to tell you is not to be discussed and, secondly, is not to be acknowledged. Only the team working on this, plus the President, know the details. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.” A few nods. “A senior diplomat—a military attaché, Major General Dennis O’Grady, who also worked as a national security advisor in a previous administration—didn’t show up for a scheduled appointment with me, after supposedly meeting with a trusted source of his in Bethesda forty-eight hours ago.”
Reznick shifted in his seat. A few people in the room scribbled down notes.
“Now, I want to make it clear that this is very, very out of character. Seems to have just vanished. O’Grady worked in the Middle East for the best part of twenty years and was a special advisor on the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia for the State Department.”
Meyerstein nodded before she interjected. “While General Black will be providing oversight, I will be taking the lead. We’ve got a fifteen-strong team working solely on this special access program. This means only those around this table—and some hand-picked intelligence specialists and NSC officials—have access to this most sensitive of classified information.”
Lieutenant General Black leaned forward and allowed his gaze to wander around the assembled faces. “Assistant Director Meyerstein’s word is law. She will report back to me as and when she decides. We want to keep this tight. In-house. But for now, your primary responsibility is to find O’Grady before it’s too late.”
Two
Once Black had gathered up his briefing papers and left the room, Meyerstein cleared her throat and looked at the stern faces around the table.
“At this stage, it’s not possible to rule out that this is a terrorist-related incident with an international connection, so let’s bear that in mind.” She flipped through some papers in front of her. “First things first—I want O’Grady back safe. That is my top priority. The basic investigative legwork has already been started. We’re piecing together his movements in the last week, we’re speaking to his wife and children, and I’ve ordered bank records and cell phone records to be subpoenaed. I’ve also ordered a track-and-trace on the cell phone. But so far, nothing.”
Larry Verona, a CIA senior intelligence analyst, said, “Can I play devil’s advocate for a moment?” A few puzzled looks. “Is it possible, just possible, that he’s simply run off with his mistress? Can we rule that out?”
Meyerstein nodded. “O’Grady is a devoted family man. It’s a fair point you’re raising, Larry, but that angle is not on our radar.”
“What’s the DC police saying?” Reznick asked.
“As it stands, we’re bypassing the DC police on this.”
Clearly this was no run-of-the-mill disappearance.
“Ordinarily, we would have issued an all-points bulletin within the first four hours. But that wasn’t appropriate in this case. The media would have gotten a hold of it and that’s the last thing we need.” She turned to Stamper. “OK, Roy, I know it’s early days, but what’s the latest?”
Stamper picked up a remote control and flicked a switch. A huge color photo appeared on the plasma screens. It showed a fifty-something man wearing a beige linen suit—his face flushed crimson, possibly with the heat, a glass of wine in hand. “This was taken only last week. It shows O’Grady at a reception being held by the US embassy in Qatar. The next day he flew back to Washington. Two days ago, O’Grady left the house he shares with his wife and three kids in Chevy Chase and drove to a meeting. Never seen again.” He looked across at Lieutenant Colonel Ed Froch, a State Department official. “Can you update us on who he was supposed to be meeting with?”
“I believe O’Grady was meeting with a high-placed source, the name or identity of whom only O’Grady knew.”
Stamper sighed. “We need that. Can you look into it?”
“I’ll get on it. But it may take time.”
Meyerstein bit her lower lip. “Christ. So we don’t have any footage? What about the GPS?”
“He vanished off the grid at 10:37 a.m. Eastern Time nearly forty-eight hours ago. And that was that.”
Meyerstein leaned forward, hands clasped. “I need more details about O’Grady’s work. Your area of expertise within the State Department is the Persian Gulf?”
Froch nodded.
“By that you mean Iran?”
“There are other countries we cover but, yes, our main focus is Iran.”
“Now, you say you don’t know anything about O’Grady’s meeting. But I don’t buy the fact that the State Department has no clue about this whatsoever.”
Froch gave a thin smile. “I said that we don’t know the identity of who he was meeting. But we have some intel.”
Meyerstein stared at him, long and hard. “Colonel Froch, are you being deliberately obstructive?”
Reznick had been wondering the same thing. He didn’t like the man’s smartass attitude.
Froch remained cool. “I ca
n assure you that’s not the case. In my line of work, we must be very careful what can and can’t be shared with the wider intelligence community.”
“Let’s cut to the chase. Tell me everything you know.”
“Well, as far as we can tell, O’Grady was liaising with a Bosnian émigré originally from Sarajevo.”
“And that’s it?”
Froch said nothing.
“Tell me more about this meeting.”
“I’ve put in a few calls to those who knew O’Grady better than I did. Nothing. The trail goes cold.”
Meyerstein arched her eyebrows as she leaned back in her seat. “What do you take that to mean?”
“Maybe O’Grady got careless. Maybe he was being followed. We just don’t know, as O’Grady had autonomy, more or less, in what he did.”
“Sounds to me like a lack of oversight.”
Froch looked around, making eye contact with everyone, as if trying to gauge their mood. Then he fixed on Meyerstein. “I don’t accept that. I think an experienced diplomat who had moved in such circles for so long needed leeway.”
“So much so that we don’t know who he was seeing and where the hell he was?”
“Like I said, he needed leeway.”
“You mind trying to explain the connection between Bosnia and O’Grady’s area of expertise?”
“The Iranian sphere of influence is always there. Bosnia was the fallout from the fragmentation of the former Yugoslavia. The Serbs were allies of the Russians, so we were sympathetic to the new Bosnian state. The Bosnian Muslims amount to less than half of the population and are deemed among the most secular and liberal in the world. However, they are, by and large, not Shia, like Iran, but Sunni.”
“So where does Iran fit into this?”
“The Shias constitute around seven percent of the Muslim population in Bosnia—about a hundred and sixty-five thousand people. So, while they’re the minority, that’s a lot of people who could be linked to Iran in some capacity, to a greater or lesser degree, and perhaps come under their influence.”
Meyerstein pondered on that for a few moments. “So there may be an Iranian link to this?”
Froch shrugged.
“Take a guess?”
“They can’t be ruled out, that’s for sure.”