by HN Wake
He rushed into the Hawkinson’s office. “Philly. The ATF agent is headed to Philly. I know Mac is originally from Philly. She’s gotta be camped out there.”
Hawkinson recovered quickly. “If he finds her, I want our guy to engage”
“How?”
“I don’t care. I want our guy to interfere somehow. I do not want her talking to the ATF agent. Odom, do you understand? ”
“Yes.” Odom backed out through the door.
“This is career make or break time Odom.”
Out in the hallway, Odom punched in Beam’s cell phone. “Beam, listen to me. If the ATF agent finds Mac, I want you to engage him.”
Beam’s voice pitched high. “What?”
“She cannot spend time with the ATF agent.”
“How am I supposed to engage him?”
“Do what seems as natural as possible in the situation. Do not let Mac spend time with the ATF agent alone. He is a loose canon with nothing to lose - we cannot allow him to ask her questions.”
“Sir, how do I do that?”
“Just do it, Beam. Your career depends on this.”
53
Manayunk, PA
Joe ambled along the sidewalk below the loft. Mac leaned over, eyeing down three floors of warehouse wall, watching his bald head bobbing slightly.
Her burner phone pinged with a text from Penny, “You watching the news?”
Mac watched Joe to the end of the block. He had a book under his arm.
When he turned the corner, Mac responded. “Nope.”
“We should know in 30 minutes!”
Mac counted to five then hustled down the loft stairs.
She poked her head out the street door. The street was empty.
She raced to the corner, slowed. She looked around the building’s corner.
He was sauntering along Roxborough Avenue toward Main St.
She remained by the corner, watching him.
On Main Street, he turned left and headed up the small hill.
She hustled along to the next corner, peeking around onto Main Street behind him.
He was in her line of sight.
She let him advance 100 feet, then followed.
Two blocks down he stepped into a bar with an open, large front window topped with a red awning. Bright red umbrellas were stretched over sidewalk tables.
She entered a women’s boutique and pretended to browse, giving him ten minutes lead time. In between racks, she opened the burner phone and typed a response to Penny. “You can stop worrying. ATF agent not after you anymore.”
She exited the boutique, ambled toward the bar’s open window, and peeked in
He sat alone at the end of the bar, his back to the window. He had a beer in front of him and a book open in his hand. His head was bowed, reading.
She passed. When she reached the next corner, she stood for a moment, killing time. She felt her pulse with her injured finger. It was normal. Strong.
Penny had texted. “Are you sure?”
Mac typed back. “Yes.”
She slipped the burner phone down into her courier bag, crossed at the corner, and meandered back on the opposite side of the street.
Minutes behind her, Cal stood at the door to the loft. The lock had been jimmied and it stood ajar.
A naked mattress rested, tilted length-wise against the far wall next to an old fan. Otherwise the loft was barren. Only the sterility of the space, the absence of dust, suggested someone lived here.
Through the window, a street lamp blinked on.
Cal shook his head once, twice. A small smile formed.
Clever, clever Maar, you saw me coming a long time ago.
He slipped his Glock inside his belt at the small of his back.
He walked the loft’s perimeter slowly, noncommittally opening empty drawers and the bare, warm refrigerator. She must have had an arsenal of cleaning products; the place was spotless. Even the waste basket was empty.
There was a noise in the hallway.
Cal pulled his Glock as he turned on the open door. A tall, dark-haired man walked by and glancing in saw Cal with his gun drawn. The man jumped out of sight, yelling, “Holy shit, man. Just making my rounds. I’m the building manager!”
Cal called around the doorway. “ATF. Sorry. Come on in.”
The man peeked around the doorframe, hands raised by his head. “Just making sure everything is ok up here.”
Cal holstered his gun and flashed his badge. “Sorry to scare you. ATF.”
The man retreated backward down the hallway, mumbling, “Ok, man, really, ok. Will leave you to it.”
Cal continued his search. In the makeshift bathroom, he found a damp sliver of soap. It smelled of rosemary and mint.
At one of the huge windows, he gazed into the dusk. In the park, under the light of the street lamps, two dogs enthusiastically rough-housed. One of them was a pug.
A mixture of disappointment and relief flowed through him. He had lost her.
On the desk, he noticed a piece of paper. It was a baggage claim ticket from 30th Street Station.
Down on Cresson Street, Beam called Odom. “It’s clean. She’s gone.”
“What did you see?”
“He was inside checking it out. It was a big loft. Spotless. No sign of life. Except a mattress on the floor.”
“She’s flown. Damnit. Ok, keep on the agent but from a distance.”
There was silence down the line.
Beam spoke again. “Maybe she’s finished, Sir”
“Maybe she is.”
New York, NY
Freda watched the MSNBC newscast on her screen. An excited reporter stood outside Capitol Hill. He gushed, “We’ve just learned the Senate has passed the Assault Weapons Ban!” Behind him on the lawn of Capitol Hill, a crowd holding a vigil threw up their arms, hugged each other. Whoopie horns blared and cameras flashed. The camera panned wider. The crowd started chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Freda glanced up. Jack stood in her door. He smiled. She smiled back. He turned and walked down the hall.
RESOLUTION
The Weeping Woman's right ear has turned into a bird sipping at her tears, a sign of new life. Her hair flows like a river. She has a flower in her hat. But this moment of hope does not erase the fury of the painting.
- Jonathan Jones
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me:
I am a free human being with an independent will.
- Charlotte Brontë
54
New York, NY
Penny softly closed the door to her apartment behind her. The smell of grass and soil from dirty cleats tickled her nose. She leaned against the inside of the door, listening to the silence; the boys weren’t home from school yet.
In the kitchen, she poured a glass of water and took a long sip, the cold hitting the lump in the back of her throat.
She found Kenneth in bed in a t-shirt and boxers, unshaven, unbathed, typing on his laptop. He didn’t look up.
“Kenneth.”
“I’m right in the middle of some killer dialogue.” He purposefully kept typing.
She waited.
He finally looked up.
She swallowed. “I’m not going to let you follow this Peter Pan dream anymore.”
He lifted his fingers off the keypad, annoyed at the interruption, not taking her seriously.
She said, “I’ve been letting this go on for too long.”
He leaned back, waiting.
“It’s time.” Her tone was sympathetic, soft. “I take part of the blame. I haven’t done you any favors by allowing this dependency.”
He rested his hands on his stomach and gave her a ‘go ahead’ look, taunting her to carry on.
She did. “While you’ve been able to chase your dream, Kenneth, I’ve had to work. But you know what? I have dreams too. We don’t talk about them. You don’t ask about them. But I have them.” She shifted on her feet, took a moment to clarify her thoughts. She redirected. “It’
s not fair to blame you for not asking about or not knowing about my dreams. But it’s also not fair to me to keep them buried. I need the space to let them breath. This is really, truly, about me. Not about you.” She chuckled to herself, her relief now unfiltered. “That’s such a line, but it’s really true. This is about me letting me dream.”
He finally spoke. “What are you talking about Penny?”
She took a large breath and exhaled slowly. “You have three months to find a job. If you don’t, I’m going to file for formal separation. One of us will have to move out and get a second apartment. It’s time.”
Philadelphia, PA
Cavernous 30th Street Station was a cacophony of noise and movement. Late evening commuters rushed past Cal as he entered through the West doors.
He found the ‘leave luggage’ counter, handed the baggage ticket to the attendant, who in turn returned with a white courier envelope.
Reaching for the envelope, Cal asked, “How long do you hold bags?”
“Only 24 hours.”
“Then what?”
“We clean ‘em out.”
“So this has been here less than 24 hours.”
“For sure.” The attendant nodded to the envelope. “Actually, I remember her.”
“The one who dropped it off?”
“Yeah.”
“Blond, 5 foot 8, slender? Short bob cut?”
“Exactly. Nice lady.”
Moments later, at a cafe table off the main station hall, Cal sipped a coffee and stared at the sealed package on the table. The train announcements blared loudly in the main hall. A policeman and his dog passed. An Amtrak employee laughed loudly to a colleague.
Cal opened the envelope and slid out a bulky pile of documents.
The top document appeared to be a simple cover memo.
Final Operations Report - SFG Destabilization
Classification: Need to Know
Tags: Rogue, Firearms, National Security, Fraud
He began flipping through the stack. The package included a snapshot of one of the Picasso Weeping Women series. It included photographs from the internet of a run-down tenement building captioned Harlem Polo House and what appeared to be the former Newtown elementary school. There were the three photos of Neil Koen sitting across the restaurant table from Congressman Peters. Cal recognized these as the same photos the New York News had been sent.
Next in the pile were the four Blue Lantern cables. They were followed by a photo of the raid on Scimitar taken from a local newspaper’s website. In the photo, up on the hill, Cal stood to the right of Sheriff Soloman.
Deep below the station a train churned to the platform. A forlorn bell announced its arrival, followed by the whistle of brakes. The air pressure changed slightly as the train pushed fully into the station.
Cal turned the pages. There was the ‘post-Newtown strategy’ email from Neil Koen to Charles Osbourne.
Each of Stacia DeVries’s New York News articles on the SFG had been neatly clipped and included.
Dora Maar - whoever she was - had compiled a full, final report on her entire operation.
Toward the end of the pile, Cal found a black-and-white photograph. His hand hovered over it. In the photo, a man was lying on a bed in a dark room. A yellow sticky note was attached to the right top corner: “Your ‘get out of jail, free’ pass.”
His eyes narrowed on the photo. It was his apartment. It was his bedroom.
Across the bottom of the photo she’d written in Sharpie: CIA Case Officer Frank Odom: birth name - Thomas Apostle: DOB: 8.20.68, Cincinnati, OH: SS#: 405-80-1329
Maar had given him proof of a CIA officer undertaking a domestic op against an ATF agent.
The last page in the pile was a short, hand written note on clean, crisp linen parchment.
“Cal, I know you’re probably in trouble with your boss. This should help that. But I wouldn’t use it further than that. I’d recommend a safe deposit box in an international bank. But in the end, you decide what’s best for the country. Be careful, they’re watching you right now. - Dora Maar”
Across the busy station hall, Beam stood in a corner with a cell phone to his ear, watching Cal. “He’s finished looking through the documents. Now he’s looking around.”
Odom barked, “He’s looking around?”
“Yes.”
“Looking at faces?
“Yes.”
Odom yelled through the cell phone, “Abort --”
“ — Christ he’s seen me - recognizes me from the loft — “
“ Abort now! Abort now!”
Beam had already hung up.
Manayunk, PA
Mac stepped across the threshold and into the bar.
The small restaurant was fairly crowded. There was an open kitchen at the far end where the bartender chatted with the chef. Deep red walls were crammed with framed reproductions of famous paintings. Was that a Picasso? Yes. La Muse.
At the bar, Joe held his book with one hand while the other slowly lifted a forkful of food to his mouth.
Silently she stepped forward and slipped unobtrusively onto the bar stool next to him. He took another mouthful, didn’t look up.
The bartender noticed her from the other end and she indicted she was in no hurry.
Next to her, Joe continued to read.
Steadily, slowly she turned on the stool so her knees faced him and propped one elbow on the bar. It was an intimate position.
He looked up over his book, eyes widening, then softening.
She smiled hesitantly.
He closed his book and set it on the bar.
She sat frozen.
His voice was gentle. “About fucking time.”
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Ghosts in Macau
H.N. Wake
1
“It makes me feel covetous, and strange, and somehow powerfully female.”
- Rachel Cooke. “Searching for the real Francesca Woodman.” The Guardian, Saturday 30 August 2014.
Hong Kong - 10 years ago
19:00
Langley hadn’t called in six months. Despite the long silence, the first four words of the call irked her. To prevent a rash response, Mac Ambrose stared across Hong Kong Harbour from the high-rise apartment on Conduit Road, breathed deeply through her nose, and focused on the unusually pink, panoramic sunset. The pollution index must be high, she thought.
When she didn’t respond, Frank Odom repeated, “I’m dusting you off.” He then added, “A potential Beijing asset has some intel to trade. We think for money. We don’t know much.”
Across the phone line the dead air lengthened.
He forged ahead, “Possible contact is tonight. Macau. At the Wynn. Mac, are you there?”
The thought of a new mission caused her skin to tingle. She finally conceded, “I can do it.”
“Good. It’s the mistress of a senior PLA guy. Like I said, we don’t have much on her. She had a brief exchange with an embassy staffer at a dinner last night. A cold contact. We need you to find out what she knows and what she wants. Report that in to me. The Agency will decide if we make an offer.”
Whenever the petty, timid Odom wielded his power, her resentment surged. Of course the Agency would decide; field ops like herself didn’t make those kinds of decisions.
Sensing her anger, he rushed on, “How quickly can you get to the Wynn?”
The wall clock read 7 pm.
“21:00,” she said.
“It will be tight, but it should work. OK. Mission is a go. I’ll be on real time. I have authority up to a high level. And, I have people on standby for higher approvals. This goes all the way up.”
Her adrenaline rippled. “Understood.”
“Mac, if the op goes south, leave the asset, cut ties, and come home quietly. We think she’s potentially a big fish but she’s not worth serious trouble. There are some details we don’t like about this one, including the fact that we’re not sure what her boyfriend is up to. Second, this is last minute. And third, you’re running this alone, on the fly.” He paused. “I don’t want any blowback, either external or internal.”
She understood his meaning; the operation had a strong chance of turning sour and he wanted to minimize his own exposure. She was fine with that. Her actions six months ago had lost her some Agency fans. She didn’t need to make more enemies.
“Understood,” she said.
His fingers clacked on his keyboard. “I’m sending the cable from Beijing now. It came through last night HK time.”
SUBJECT: POTENTIAL ASSET
Origin: Embassy Beijing/AMEMBASSY BEIJING
Classification: SECRET
To: SECSTATE WASHDC
REF: STATE 457860
Potential asset is Ms. Lily Lui (chose English name), the current mistress of Fang Gaoli. Fang Gaoli is a senior member of the General Staff Department, Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). It is believed that Fang has recently been promoted to Department Head for either Military Intelligence or Electronic Warfare. No explanation is available. Beijing Station has limited intel on Fang.
Lui expressed a deep desire to turn over state secrets.
Station is not in possession of any information regarding Lui or her intel. She is an unknown to us. She did insist, “I sleep with him. He tells me things. I know big things.”
Station finds Lui’s access compelling. Lui often accompanies Fang on weekend visits to Macau where he plays high stakes poker in the Wynn VIP gaming rooms.