by HN Wake
She sat back, lit a cigarette, and digested the turn of events.
Back home at Langley, they wanted updates, they wanted progress reports, and they wanted everything plotted on a time line. She imagined Odom filing his report to his superiors: “Josh Halloway failed to check in on this date. On this date at this hour, I instructed Mac Ambrose to investigate.” She imagined the Agency Director, long after this op, sitting before a Senate Intelligence Committee, reading from the file, “This is when we sent an operative from Hong Kong over to KL.”
The geniuses in the hallowed halls of Langley may design the game plans, but they only got the updates. They had no idea what happened to the field operatives in the intervening hours.
2
Langley, VA
The early morning meeting was endless. They often were.
Joyce Terrell Tattle sat at the back of the room in a chair angled against the rear wall, balanced on two legs. To release her over-active mind, her feet swayed back and forth an inch above the large conference room’s grey carpet. Every few minutes, she tapped them together and listened intently to the small thud.
Joyce had a calm, self-assured confidence born from being the smartest in the room at almost all times. The youngest of two from a well educated family, she had learned at an early age to hold her own during debates. There were few people that intimidated her. Even the childhood taunts about an awkward last name hadn’t lasted long. The kids soon invoked it with a hint of reverence, as in ‘What does Tattle think?’
Joyce wore pencil pants in the vein of Jackie O below a J. Crew blouse. Her style was a mix of old and new. She prided herself on the heavy, black, cat-eye glasses she had found in a SoHo flea-market. When the seller had asked, “Why would a young, pretty girl like you want these old glasses?” she had responded, “Plausible distinguishability.”
Her boss, Neville O’Dore, Assistant Deputy Director of the Asian Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis Division was droning from the front of the room. O’Dore was a gruff, tenacious, and politically-connected man who, in her opinion, was too often condescending. He regularly cut his staff off in mid-sentence and rarely approved interesting work, earning him the nickname O’Don’t.
O’Dore finished up with the last update on the President’s Daily Brief. “Okay folks, you’ve got your marching orders. Tattle, can I see you for a second?”
Next to her Anatoli Katsaros, her dark, Greek-heritage cubicle mate, gave her a shocked look.
She shrugged.
Once the room had cleared, O’Dore picked up a heavy plastic bag full of documents and handed it to her. “We just got in some new intel from KL. Start sifting.”
The bag, stuffed with papers, was from a supermarket she recognized as Asian. “Sure,” she said. “What is it?”
“One of our assets is in DC. He brought this with.”
“Really?” Her heart raced. “He brought this stuff over in his suitcase?”
“He works in one of the government offices in KL. I’m not sure how we ever got to him. He’s a rank-and-file bureaucrat. ”
She hated the phrase rank-and-file. It reminded her how low she was on the totem pole in the Directorate of Intelligence. Hope crept into her voice, “Is this high priority?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“But Malaysia is ninety percent Muslim.” After all, she thought, since 9/11 the Agency was almost exclusively interested in Muslim countries.
He fished out a toothpick from his pocket, placed it on one of his back teeth, and chomped down. “Just clear that it does not have any real intel. Then hand it back with a cover note.”
She wouldn’t let him crush her eagerness. “What should I look for?”
“The regular. Any unusual activity. Malaysia is mostly a blind spot for us.”
“Got it.”
She cradled the plastic bag like a treasure and headed across the open plan fourth floor—a labyrinth of offices and cubicles. Her colleagues called the fourth floor the “Hive” because worker bees toiled away in their own little honeycomb cells protecting their projects, their “young.”
Joyce’s cubicle was in the far western corner of the fourth floor, part of the SouthEast Asian unit. Like those surrounding it, the cubicle was small and fenced in on three sides. Felt lined beige walls were covered in photographs, maps, and memos. The desk was dominated by a large screen and a keyboard.
The roller balls under Anatoli’s chair creaked and his head poked up over the short wall. Anatoli was odd and socially awkward. He had mild Aspergers and came off with a directness that verged on aggressiveness. Joyce found him refreshing.
“What did O’Don’t want?” he asked.
The plastic bag of intel, hot from the field and unfiltered, felt like manna from Heaven. “Some agent in KL carried this in his suitcase!”
He retreated with a grumble, “Why do you always get the good stuff?”
Gingerly, she set the bag on her chair, cleared her desk of the piles of books and files, and slid out the first manila folder. It smelled musty like a library book. It held at least fifty single documents. Many of them looked like forms.
Since high school, Joyce Tattle had gauged her emotions on a percentage scale. Fifty percent was content, neutral: neither happy nor sad. She spent a lot of time around fifty percent. Seventy-five percent meant she was mostly happy. Anything over ninety percent meant she was reaching the kind of happiness that exploded in singing or dancing. She didn’t hit ninety percent often.
She thought, right now, right here, I’m at an eighty-two percent. This is where I’m meant to be. I’m an analyst for the goddamned CIA and I’m chasing down intel.
3
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The US Embassy in KL was a large, white colonial building hunkered on the top of a small hill behind a huge white wall. Wearing a baseball hat and large sunglasses, Mac stepped into the security booth and handed over a clean civilian US passport with the name of Vivian Maier.
Stepping through the booth’s bulletproof door, she headed up the wide, orange-tiled stairs, through the main entrance, and into a quiet, cool lobby. The building was safe, orderly, and whitewashed. She was met by a nondescript man wearing traditional khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt. Down long, quiet halls, their feet tapped on terracotta tiles as they passed closed doors, muffled voices, and tapping fingers on keyboards.
This place was buttoned up, straight-as-an-arrow, no matter what was happening out in the real world. She wondered if anyone ever ran down the halls yelling. She doubted it.
The nondescript staffer opened the door to an inner, windowless conference room. The room was empty except for a long table ringed with chairs. The carpet was beige and well past its prime. There was no trashcan. There were no shelves. The ceiling was pin-holed, old-school, and utilitarian; it was the perfect hiding spot for microphones.
Mac knew better. This was a clean room with soundproofing, otherwise known as the Embassy vault.
The door closed softly behind her.
The last time she had been alone in a room like this had been after the Jakarta incident. Odom had flown in from Langley for a debrief. He had allowed her to vent her outrage at the Indonesian government, pacing the room as she laid out all the details. She had been anguished, wracked with guilt.
He tried to soothe her. “You did what you had to do for your country.”
She screamed, “They killed him! They fucking killed him because of me. Don’t you see that? How is that for my country?”
“You did the right thing. You did what you were told to do. It wasn’t your fault.”
“They left him there, in the heat, for three days. Three days. No one found him. They wanted me to find him.” She gulped in quickly. “I threw up, Odom. The smell hit me and I threw up.”
“You did what you were told to do, Mac. Don’t over think this.”
She jammed her fingernails along her scalp. “They turned off the air conditioner. They wanted him to ro
t.”
“This isn’t about you.”
Finally, she had lost her stamina and melted into a chair, dropping her face into her hands. Tears streaming, she had said to him, “It was my fault.”
“They killed him. You didn’t get him killed. You were following orders. You were doing your job.”
“He was my asset. From start to finish. He was mine. I was responsible for him.”
“You were responsible for getting what you could.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper, “It was on my watch. Not yours. Mine. He died on my watch.”
Odom had assured her that they valued her intelligence. “Invaluable,” he had said. “Without you, Mac, we wouldn’t have had any idea what was coming. What you got from him was exceptional. So exceptional.” She was a piece of a larger puzzle, he persuaded. “Trust me. We’ve got the larger picture in mind and the information you’re getting on the ground is critical. Critical. Trust me, Mac, you’re doing the right thing.”
She had trusted him. And true to his word, he had gotten her immediately reassigned to Hong Kong for a fresh start.
In the KL conference room, she settled her courier bag, hat, and glasses on the table, and walked the perimeter, loosening up from the flight, letting her feet decompress. Just as she chose the seat at the table facing the door, it opened.
Roger Shipman, the CIA Station Chief in KL, was a large man with outsized shoulders wearing khakis and a blue button down shirt. An Embassy ID swung on a neck lanyard. His mustache was a hold-over from the seventies. It made her suspect that maybe he hadn’t rotated for a home assignment in years.
He closed the door with a grimace, his body language screamed annoyance, almost anger.
She disliked him instantly and knew he would be of little help. She had heard he hadn’t been a good spy so they made him Chief of Station. It was a common career path for those who were incompetent in gathering intel. Rumor had it that he had once taken a taxi from the KL Embassy to meet a foreign agent in town. It was such a mind-bogglingly dumb move that it had been retold up and down through the Agency in a matter of days.
Fiercely controlled by a prime minister and his dominant party, Malaysia had never been a hot bed of intelligence. Actionable intel rarely came out of Shipman’s station. Maybe he discouraged his team or maybe his bad management skills stifled their capabilities. Either way, he was not highly regarded by his peers.
He yanked out the seat opposite Mac. Metal feet screeched across the linoleum. He sat down, jutted out his chin, and placed his large palms face down on the table in front of him, as if trying to hold himself back.
She nodded, introduced herself. “Mac Ambrose.”
“I know who you are. Roger Shipman.”
She nodded.
“Let me be clear, Ambrose. I’m not happy you’re here.”
His antagonism didn’t surprise her: her presence threatened his uneventful life. She shrugged, unruffled.
“But I’ll play by the rulebook. For now. Odom sent you. I’ll comply with whatever Langley wants. What do you need?”
“Does Josh Halloway check in with you regularly?”
“No.” He was defiant. “Is this about Halloway?”
She ignored him. “How often does he check in with you?”
Silence as Shipman reluctantly thought about it. “I speak to him via clean cell about once every six months.”
She raised her eyebrows. That was an unusually long time between check-ins with a Station Chief. It spoke of a difficult relationship. She suspected Josh kept Shipman in the dark. A lot. If she were Josh, she’d do the same. This guy was a piece of work—all anger and distaste. Not exactly a team player.
“He likes doing things his own way,” Shipman conceded.
“He didn’t like Embassy involvement?”
Shipman splayed his fingers across the cold conference table. “Let’s be clear on Josh Halloway. He is a loner and a liability. He plays his NOC role like he is some kind of James Bond. He does not check in. He does not interface with us.”
“So he doesn’t check in with you, in particular?”
“No, Halloway does not check-in.”
She wanted to push him, to see what he was made of. “Maybe that’s because of you.”
He shifted back, his chin pushing into his neck unattractively. “Slow it down there, cowgirl.”
So not only is he incompetent, he’s also sexist, she thought. Lovely. “Whether he reports to you or Langley, he’s one of ours. He’s Agency.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
Why were Station Chiefs such assholes? His resentment confirmed Shipman was of little use. She changed tack. “Who’s your security guy?”
“Why?”
“I need to talk to him about Josh’s recent travel.”
“We don’t keep track of Halloway’s travel.”
She gazed at him, waiting.
His jaw tightened. “Ambrose, I’ve got a congressional delegation coming out next week. Senators. Republican. It’s an enormous pain in the ass. I’ve got security detail and hotel details and site visits. I’ve got reports to do pre and post visit. I’m up to my eyeballs in reporting. I do not need you stuffing up my security team this week.”
“I just need a few minutes of his time.”
Shipman lost his patience and began rapidly shaking his head in frustration. “Listen to me, Ambrose. I am not going out of my way to help out Josh Halloway. He plays loose with the rules and is a cocky motherfucker. Tricks up his sleeve. Pulling some angle”—he breathed in, reined in the rant—“Josh Halloway never helps us out. Why should we be helping him out?”
“Because at the end of the day, he’s Agency also. And because he’s missing.”
Shipman stalled. This was news to him. Unnerving news. He recovered with a bad joke. “He’s probably out diving somewhere.”
She remained silent.
In the end, he blinked first. “How long has he been missing?”
“He missed his check in five days ago.”
His anger was dissipating. “Halloway is not my issue.”
She shook her head slightly, gave him a ‘shame on you’ look.
He stood. “Tell Langley we don’t like Halloway here. I dislike him even more that’s he brought you to my embassy. You can talk to my head of security, but that’s it.” He put his hand on the doorknob. “If the Malaysian Government finds out you’re here, they are going to be all over my shit.”
Better to keep him annoyed, keep him out of her way. “I’m pretty sure that’s part of your job description.”
He turned, yanked the door open, and disappeared down the white-washed hallway.
Twenty minutes later, the conference room door was opened by a balding, paunchy man who moved as if his steps were painful. The bottom button on his shirt was undone and a yellowed undershirt peeked out. As he shook her hand, he said, “Dan Esposito.”
“Mac Ambrose,” she replied.
He sat and set down a manila folder—emblazoned in red with SECRET—and a lunch pail sized cardboard box. He rested his hands on his paunch. “Josh didn’t tell us what he was working on. You know how it goes. NOC isn’t one of us.”
She sized up Esposito as someone who filled in the paperwork and punched the clock. He had probably angled for the low key job in KL. She didn’t resent him his choice. It was fine if someone wanted drama free work. She just needed some information from him. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Did you know him?”
She nodded. “I’ve met him.”
“Well then, you know he was…charming, full of himself, gregarious. I guess the ladies liked him. He had an arrogance that he smoothed over with…humor, with wit.”
“Did he attend Embassy functions?”
“No. He was fully deep. Proper NOC.”
“What about girlfriends?” It was a throw away question that she expected Esposito to deny. But it annoyed her that her heart picked up a beat as she waited for
his answer.
“I think I heard someone mention he had a local gal. Real vague. Not a wife, but a long-term woman of some sort.”
This caught her off guard. How could she not have known this about Josh? The idea that he had a long term lover made her chest tighten painfully. She took in a slow, extended breath to expand the constriction in her lungs. She swallowed. “Your people ever see him out with her?” She held her breath for his answer.
“No, not that I can remember. My guys never reported on him. He wasn’t in the Embassy orbit at all.”
She blinked, regained her composure. So no one could confirm this long term girlfriend. Where should she start? “Josh is missing.”
Esposito nodded slowly to himself, sad to hear the news. “That’s why you’re here? To find him?”
“Something like that. Anything you can tell me about what you know about him?”
“Other than the obvious?”
“Which was?”
“Not a lot of people liked him around here.”
“Even if he was charming?” She had intended to sound sarcastic—a defensive barb against the news that Josh had a long term lover. But it came out softly and with a painful note.
“You know how it is, Mac,” Esposito responded sympathetically. “If you don’t play by the rules, you make us all look like boring, stuffy bureaucrats. And that travels all the way up. He makes Shipman look bad.”
“How so?”
“Guys like Josh, they swoon around, making shit up--”
“You think he made shit up?” She knew Josh had an ability to spin a story. His deceit had cut her deeply.
“Kinda comes with the territory, no?” asked Esposito.
“What kind of shit?”
He considered his answer. “We would hear through the grapevine, from back at HQ, that so-and-so was going down in KL or Malaysia. None of us in these four walls knew about it. We figured it had to be coming from Josh. You know, out there in the field.”
“But you think some of his intel was made up?”
“I think some of this stuff was very sexy.”