The Shadow Priest: Omnibus Edition: Two Complete Novels

by D. C. Alexander

  However, within minutes, Arkin's impression was that the man either had no espionage training, or that he considered himself on territory that was so safe that he could let his guard down. He wore headphones and kept his gaze set on the ground in front of him, never seeming to look up, behind, or to either side of him. In short, he seemed oblivious to the world around him. Of course, it was always possible he was playing dumb.

  Arkin passed several smallish embassies as he followed Trlajic deeper into the capital. Belarus, Nicaragua, Grenada, Swaziland, Namibia, Argentina, and Jamaica, among others. Approaching what must have been a preschool, Arkin watched Trlajic circumnavigate a group of parents and toddlers gathered at the front steps of a brownstone row house where they largely blocked the sidewalk. As Arkin got closer to the group, he saw, to his horror, a yellow plastic ball about the size of a navel orange roll out into the middle of busy New Hampshire Avenue, with its speeding taxis, buses, and other vehicles. He raced forward, and as he neared the group, he saw what he hoped he wouldn't see. A small boy, maybe 3 years old, toddling toward his ball. The father was fiddling with his smartphone along with half the other adults in the group, oblivious. Without a thought for the risks of Traljic noticing him—the risk of his whole mission being blown—Arkin raced to intercept the child, waving his hands in the air to get the attention of drivers. Traffic slowed and horns blared from the cars of impatient drivers. But Trlajic didn't bother to turn around to see what all the hubbub was about. Arkin was able to scoop up the child and return him to his father who, instead of saying thank you, merely nodded and looked at him with suspicion.

  Finally, upon reaching Dupont Circle, Trlajic turned north and went into a Starbucks coffee shop at the corner of 19th Street and Connecticut Avenue. Arkin found a place to observe in the shadow of a building just across 19th Street. Trlajic ordered a coffee, then sat down at a window table and opened a laptop computer he drew from his leather bag. Arkin noted that Traljic sat with his back to the door, in a place with limited exits—not a position a trained intelligence operative would choose. Arkin crossed the street and came up behind Traljic for a closer look through the window. Trlajic was logging onto Starbuck's free Wi-Fi service and reading the online version of The Washington Post newspaper.

  Nearly 20 minutes later, Trlajic emerged from Starbucks, crossed the street, and, as Arkin expected, descended the nearly 200-foot-long broken escalator of the Dupont Circle Metro station. Arkin continued to follow as Trlajic caught the Red Line subway, rode it to Metro Center Station, then emerged on surface streets and walked a few blocks to the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance of the U.S. Department of Justice Headquarters Building.

  *****

  Arkin spent the rest of the day casing Tom Killick's Federal Style red brick condo building on Capitol Hill, figuring out what time of day residents tended to depart and return, memorizing their faces, finding a good spot from which to observe the approaches, and so forth. As darkness fell, he once again retrieved his secondhand clothes from Columbia Island and made his way back to the homeless shelter for the night.

  *****

  Arkin followed the same schedule the next day. Again, Trlajic stopped to read The Washington Post online edition and drink coffee at the Dupont Circle Starbucks before taking the metro to work. The residents of Killick's Capitol Hill condo building came and went at roughly the same times as the previous day. Again, Arkin retreated to the homeless shelter after dark for an anonymous night's sleep.

  FOURTEEN

  "The eagle has landed," Morrison said to Arkin over the phone.

  "Where are you?"

  "Already checked into the Crystal City Sheraton. Got a double bed here with your name on it. I'll even let you use my bathroom. For 50 cents."

  "Hallelujah."

  *****

  An hour later, in his regular clothes, Arkin strode through the door of Morrison's room, walked straight to the remaining made bed, and fell face-first onto it.

  "Holy cats, this bed feels good."

  "Living your cover becoming a bit much for you at your advanced age?" Morrison said.

  "I've slept in tents, on airplanes, and in a homeless shelter every night for the past two-and-a-half weeks. Trust me, if I died right here, I'd be happy."

  "You're getting soft, Nate."

  "If you'll give me just 10 minutes of quiet, to lie here in a tranquility untainted by unintelligible mumbling, Tourette's Syndrome shouts of profanity, or the smells of moldy armpit, fortified wine sweats, or dried urine, I'll be reborn."

  "You're being insensitive to the plight of the homeless."

  "I'm too tired to care."

  "Well, I can't make any promises about the dried urine smell."

  *****

  Arkin woke to Morrison talking on his phone behind the closed door of the bathroom. Hearing only half of the conversation, Arkin couldn't piece together what it was about. Morrison mumbled on. "The AUSA who ran the grand jury." Pause. "I don't remember. It was three months ago." Pause. "Well, look, I already told what's-his-face that I'm no good with names." Pause. "Then he should have given me a pen so I could write it down. Give me a break," Morrison said, a little louder. "Fine. Talk to you tomorrow."

  Morrison emerged from the bathroom looking irritated. "Good morning, sunshine."

  "Everything alright?"

  "Yeah. Work stuff. Dealing with a pushy little bootlicker at headquarters. Trying to throw me under the bus for his own screw-up. When I still worked in D.C., he's one of a handful of people I told I had an identical twin brother so that when I ran into him in public, I didn't have to talk to him."

  "Sounds like an ass."

  "A climber. But he'll get his someday. After all," Morrison said, straightening his back and putting on an expression of facetious, exaggerated authority, "ambition sows the seeds of misery."

  "Ambition sows the seeds of misery?" Arkin said, a smile spreading across his face. "Did you just come up with that?"

  "I'd like to think so. But I probably just heard it somewhere and stored it in my tortured long-term memory."

  "Well, it's genius either way," Arkin said, taking a seat at the hotel room's small desk, sipping a cold beer Morrison had just poured for him.

  "So, tell me about Lily Bryant."

  "She was a piece of work. An angry old atheist who felt alienated and marginalized by most of her uber-rich family, yet was clinging to remnants of the family's social status as if they were the only things keeping her afloat."

  "I figured you were wasting your time."

  "I wouldn't jump to that conclusion just yet."

  "Don’t tease me," Morrison said, grinning.

  "It seems that back in the day, she was in the process of drawing Father Bryant away from the Catholic faith, planting dangerous ideas in his head about fundamental flaws of the world's religions. She regurgitated the usual Marxist lines."

  "So?"

  "She also said—wait for it—that religion does nothing more than serve as an excuse and basis for extremism and all the violence and horror that goes with it."

  "Sounds like something Sheffield's group might say."

  "It does indeed. Plus, she was just a hair too callous discussing the tragic loss of her beloved brother, and a hair too sure that he hadn't killed himself. It could have been my imagination. But I had the distinct impression that she was holding back."

  "Holding back what?"

  "That Bryant was on the verge of a philosophical transformation shortly before he disappeared. That she knew he didn't drown in the Mississippi River in 1974."

  "You're telling me you think she knew he was a fledgling fanatic? That he embezzled money from the parish, staged his own death, and made a run for it to Canada?"

  "The only thing I can say definitively is that I had that proverbial funny feeling."

  "It doesn't mean Bryant is still alive."

  "No, I tend to think that he died many years ago. But perhaps he really did create the group, or at least have a significant role
in its founding. That seems more plausible to me than the group merely picking up and exploiting his identity after he died."

  "What does that get us?"

  "I'm not sure."

  They sat thinking for a quiet moment.

  "So where are we with our new Serb, Trlajic?" Morrison asked at last.

  "My first impression of him is that he has no training whatsoever. Walking down the street, he's as oblivious as Mr. Magoo, wearing headphones, staring at the pavement. He never once tried any of the usual tricks to check whether he was being followed. And most damning, in enclosed spaces, he sits with his back to the entrances and seems to have no concern whatsoever for potential escape routes."

  "Could just be that he thinks he's on friendly territory and doesn't need to worry about any of that stuff."

  "Possibly. But you know as well as I do that you can never completely switch off the worry about that stuff, as you call it, even if you think you're in quote-unquote friendly territory. Any half-decent counter-surveillance training inks the worry habit onto your frontal lobe like a cheap tattoo. Ugly and permanent."

  "True. But, like I said, he could just be a non-operative functionary of the group. If he is involved, maybe he's not a pair of boots on the ground guy, so to speak, but a pair of soft hands on a keyboard in a cubicle guy. Or maybe he's playing possum."

  "Whatever the case, it would be irresponsible of us not to take a closer look."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "Burgle his house. Take a look at his email. Did you bring your coconut?"

  "I did bring my coconut."

  The coconut was one of the newer gadgets in Morrison's ATF law enforcement arsenal. It was a small device concealed in a brown coconut-like plastic shell that could create a rogue Wi-Fi hotspot—a hotspot that could be made to imitate a free Wi-Fi hotspot a person uses to log onto the internet every day. Such as the Wi-Fi hotspot at the Dupont Circle Starbucks. If Trlajic logged into his email, bank, or other accounts while inadvertently using Morrison's rogue hotspot, Morrison and Arkin would be able to see everything he did, and gather any passwords he typed in for their own purposes.

  Morrison grabbed them another couple of beers from the mini-fridge.

  "So what's new in Durango?" Arkin asked.

  "Oh, Nate. We have to get you exonerated so you can get back to work. I went on the best JTTF raid last week."

  "Do tell."

  "Do you know my boy Philip Daniels? Deputy U.S. Marshall in the Salt Lake City field office?"

  "Don’t think so."

  "Apparently Daniels has been working undercover, setting himself up as an antigovernment activist on some dirt farm over near La Sal. Putting out subtle bait on internet chat rooms and all that about how he knows people who can get hold of contraband weaponry, explosive components, and all the usual toys. About how he's a former Green Beret—which is actually true—who can teach fellow patriots all sorts of good combat tricks. Long story short, didn't take long for him to hook some gang of knuckleheads who drove all the way down from Oregon for a promised load of Tovex water-gel explosive. Called themselves the Constitutional Patriot Shock Force."

  "Love the name. What was their beef?"

  "I don't think they could ever narrow it down. The government is evil. Gun control is evil. Muslims are evil. LGBT people are evil. The Girl Scouts are evil. Sesame Street is evil. The guys were the usual. Bunch of tubby meatheads who got bullied on the playground and couldn't get dates in high school. Made themselves a cool shoulder patch to sew onto the black BDUs they paid too much for at some army surplus store. Probably had a secret handshake."

  "So anyway, half the arrest team is hanging out in the basement of the little rambler Daniels has been living in while undercover, watching multiple camera feeds and listening to the transaction unfold via a parabolic Bluetooth microphone we have disguised as part of a meat smoker that Daniels is honest-to-God smoking a pork butt in while we wait so that he can share it with us after the arrest. So, after the Constitutional Patriot Shock Force loads their fake Tovex into their supercool Dodge Grand Caravan minivan, Daniels asks them if they want a few free lessons in practical combat tactics before they hit the road back to Oregon. They say sure. He takes them back over to the barn where he stored the fake Tovex and proceeds to teach them a couple of basic things. How to break out of a chokehold. How to target the common peroneal and suprascapular nerve bundle strike points. Then he says, 'Hey, do y'all want to know how to break out of a riot control daisy chain?'"

  "What the hell is a riot control daisy chain?"

  "Exactly. Daniels made it up. He tells them it’s a technique police use for quickly immobilizing large groups in protest or riot situations. A good thing to know how to get out of in the coming struggle against the federal government. Shit yeah, they say. Teach us. He gets the whole group of them sitting together in a circle with their backs to the middle, then proceeds to zip-tie their hands together behind their backs, and also to each other. So now they're a big cluster of six idiots, literally attached to one another, sitting flat on their asses, each facing a different direction. Needless to say, at that point Daniels spoke the go-for-arrest code word, and we all swept in in full tactical gear to find these poor dopes sitting in a circle on the floor of the barn, looking utterly dumbfounded, already gift-wrapped for us neat as can be. You should have seen their faces. I haven't laughed that hard in years. Laughed so hard I had to sit down. You would have died."

  "Sorry I missed it. How was the smoked pork butt?"

  "Five stars. It was Daniels' granddad's recipe. His family's from Tennessee. Seems they know how to smoke a hog down there. Anyway, the Marshalls rolled up the whole group. Conspiracy to bomb the Federal Courthouse in Portland, et cetera, et cetera. I sent Daniels a case of Gentleman Jack Tennessee whiskey as a thank-you for the barbeque and the laugh."

  Morrison's smile faded.

  "What?" Arkin asked him.

  "Those guys. The Constitutional Patriot Shock Force. They were just so dumb and lost and scared."

  "Most of the folks who join those groups are. What was it that Yoda said to the young Darth Vader? Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to…domestic terrorism. Or something like that"

  "It's like they'd all had fetal alcohol syndrome as kids or something. Not many prospects for them in our modern, fast-paced world. I almost found myself wishing there was some place they could go where they could turn back the clock to a slower, simpler time—where they wouldn't get all anxious and turn into extremist crazies. Almost felt sorry for them."

  "You'd have felt even more sorry for all the innocent people they wanted to blow up."

  "True. You know something else?"

  "What?"

  "During the arrest, I remember thinking that this was exactly the type of group Sheffield and his people would have decapitated. Yet here we are, fighting the Priest's group too."

  "It's a confusing world."

  "Yes, it is."

  FIFTEEN

  That evening, they visited the Dupont Circle Starbucks that Trlajic favored for his morning coffee and internet browsing.

  "What does a coffee snob like you feel like this evening?" Morrison asked as they stood in line. "It's on me."

  "Single-origin Timor Mount Ramelau. Clover brewed. Venti."

  Morrison almost started laughing. "What?"

  "Single-origin Timor—"

  "Let's have you order that yourself, shall we? I have my reputation as a man to consider." Morrison ordered first. "Do you accept Colorado money?" he asked the cashier.

  "I can ask my supervisor," the young man said, utterly serious.

  For a split second, Morrison stood there staggered. "That's okay. I'll just use dollars."

  Once they had placed their orders, they shifted over to the pickup area where Morrison immediately started making small-talk with the young female barista. "Did you get that in Hawaii?" Morrison said, gesturing to the barista's puka shell bracelet.

  She s
miled and shook her head. "Tulum."

  "Mexico?"

  "Yes."

  "I've heard good things."

  "It's beautiful. You should go."

  "If I can ever get time off work."

  "I know, right?"

  "Do you get decent time off here for vacations and stuff?"

  "Oh, yeah. It's a pretty good gig, Starbucks. And the manager is nice. Flexible."

  "Speaking of the manager, is he or she here right now? I'm actually supposed to be assessing your electrical system for updating."

  "You just missed her. She usually works from 10 to 6."

  Morrison was somewhat relieved to learn that he wouldn't have to deal with the manager. "Is she here 10 to 6 tomorrow too?"

  "I think so."

  "Thanks. I'll come back then. Could I get her name from you?"

  "Jessica Stapleton."

  "I appreciate it."

  SIXTEEN

  The next morning, having sanitized themselves of all possible forms of I.D., and shortly before the time at which Trlajic routinely stopped in, Arkin and Morrison sat at a table by the window on the second floor of the Dupont Circle Starbucks—Morrison drinking a basic drip coffee, Arkin drinking something Morrison didn't want to try to pronounce. Arkin had the coconut hooked up to a cheap new laptop Morrison had brought along. It was set up to mimic the Starbucks free Wi-Fi signal and capture the activity of anyone who logged onto it as soon as Arkin activated it. In the meantime, Arkin's eyes were locked on the corner of 19th Street and New Hampshire Avenue, watching for Trlajic. Within 60 seconds of when Arkin predicted he'd arrive, Trlajic appeared. He stood on the corner, waiting for the crossing signal to turn.