by Elaine Nolan
“I suppose I shouldn’t expect less from a Trinity College graduate, and a graduate of the Goethe University in Frankfurt, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Looks like I’m not the only one who did my homework.”
“I always vet my prospective PA’s.”
“Yeah, but you’ve wasted your time. I’m happy with the job I have,” she told him.
“What? A woman of your skills, working at a basic pay civil service job? That’s a waste in my book.”
“I’m not in it for the money.”
“But for the greater good?”
“You do know me,” she shot back.
“My sources tell me you’re the one responsible for the security encryptions on the visas to Europe.”
“Am I?”
“Oh, we’re playing this game now,” he said. Even Jake wondered at Nathan’s motives.
“What game?” she asked.
“How about the secret agent game?”
Leigh laughed. “You’ve a very active imagination. I’m only here to update the software.”
“And programmers also stand in as security guards?” Rainey asked. Jake smirked, happy to know he wasn’t the only one doubting her cover story.
“I have a financial interest in a hotel and bar back home. I’ve done my fair share of bar-tending and working security on the door whenever they needed, and they sent me just when they needed it.”
“Hmm, brains and brawn. You’re sounding more and more like my perfect PA.”
“And I told you I’m not interested.”
“Not even a little?”
Jake scrutinised the video screen, nauseous at Rainey’s blatant flirting.
“Not even a smidge,” she answered, making Jake happy.
“Let me convince you over dinner,” Nathan cajoled.
“I doubt it.”
“Sounds like you’re willing to let me try.”
“I’d need to read the terms and conditions before I even agreed to dinner.”
Nathan laughed. “I’m not the only one to study business.”
“Part and parcel of software development. Banking and finance are the two top areas requiring my… particular services.”
“And what a happy coincidence I fall into the financial side. I still think you’d be perfect in my company.”
“You need to learn to recognise when no means no.”
“It’s not a word I hear often, to be honest.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“What can I say, it’s a gift.”
Nausea rose again in Jake, and that Rainey said it without a hint of shame.
“Did you keep the receipt?” Leigh asked. “You should xchange it for something more useful.” Jake sniggered to himself.
“Are you this fiery in bed?” Nathan asked, and Leigh laughed. Jake was appalled, and irrationally jealous.
“So we’re going to skip the foreplay?” she asked.
“I thought the last hour was foreplay.”
Leigh leaned forward, a sly smirk played at the edge of her lips, and a mirth that lit up her eyes. While the surveillance video didn’t pick up the nuances of her movements, Jake knew that look, and he missed it.
“You have no idea what foreplay is,” she said, in a sensuously low tone that hit Jake hard as he watched them.
“I’m always open to a challenge, to learning something new,” Nathan told her.
“It can be a painful lesson,” she told him, and Jake took a breath to steady himself, another twinge of jealousy again at hearing the same words she spoken to him. “And I don’t stop for the word no either.” Nathan leaned in, matching her posture.
“Neither do I. And you still don’t think we’d be perfect together?”
“I think we’d be a disaster together,” she broke the intense intimacy and stood. “Thanks for the coffee,” she added, and left.
CHAPTER 16
Leigh buttoned her winter coat against the cold, damp day and ignored the two surveillance vehicles; a car parked opposite, which she’d seen from her seat inside the coffeehouse, and the plain backup and support van parked nearby. A passing car’s headlight caught a camera’s glass lens in the surveillance car.
She guessed Jake hid in the van, eliminating the danger of her spotting him and compromising their surveillance exercise. If Jake had listened to her conversation, she hoped he remained clueless about her interest in Nathan Rainey, and it wasn’t sexual. The guy unsettled her, but she couldn’t work out why.
While Rainey put on a good show, peacocking himself, he had no interest in her in that way either. It left her to wondering why he engineered this meeting, but he alluded to her being an agent. Had Jake warned him? Told him who she was? She itched to get her hands on Jake and punish him for her pleasure, use it to get him to talk, then reward him with pain, for his pleasure.
She sighed and knocked that unlikely scenario out of her head. Jake knew that was his weakness, he’d be stubborn and continue to fend off her suggestions and advances, just to make sure he didn’t compromise himself with her. As he’d warned her, they sat on opposite sides now, and he’d never yield, or surrender to her, too resolute in his black-or-white stance.
She jammed her hands into her pockets, faced into the mist and walked, using her tradecraft to check for anyone following her, and again they didn’t disappoint. They obviously saw her as a serious threat, but it allowed other Irish agents and Garda members of the CTI unit in Washington to continue following Rainey unnoticed, when the opposition occupied themselves with following Leigh.
There was a new Irish joke about conning the rookie cop on duty late at night, eager to catch drink drivers as they left a remote country pub to head for home, and outwitted by the designated decoy, acting drunk, but in fact the only sober one.
The Gardaí found such jokes at their expense amusing, to a point, but only to a point. Drink driving remained the one offence they had the least tolerance for. But that didn’t mean the joke couldn’t work elsewhere, like here, and she smirked that as the decoy, she had an entire team of US agents shadowing her, switching from one agent to another.
She didn’t make it easy for them either, switching back on herself, making it obvious she suspected a tail. It’s what they’d expect from a seasoned agent suspected of operating on their turf, and she didn’t want to disappoint. Besides, if she acted oblivious to any potential tail, it would arouse Jake’s suspicions and compromise the rest of the Irish counter-surveillance team.
She zig-zagged her way back to the Embassy, making the US operatives improvise on their own strategy to avoid detection, and they were a good, experienced team following her. With no comms unit with which to contact Brennan at the Embassy’s Control centre, she knew she’d have to wing it on the meandering stroll back to the Embassy and trust someone from Brennan’s team watched her back in case the Americans got adventurous and made a grab for her instead.
She made it back, having led them on an easy going chase and waited the return of Brennan’s other team for an update on what intelligence they gathered while she distracted the Americans.
CHAPTER 17
While Leigh waited on updates on Rainey from the Irish team, she checked in on Jake’s mobile phone, tagging his recent outgoing calls and finding the single, 30-second call to what appeared to be another burner phone. No matter how careful the two men were being, switching off their phones to hide their locations, she still tracked both of them.
Every phone, irrespective of whether it was a burner, had an IMEI code, an International Mobile Equipment Identity code. The phone didn’t need internet access, she could track the IMEI with ease, using basic downloadable apps. No doubt they came in handy when hunting and confronting a cheating ex, or under the guise of keeping loved ones safe. A rose by any other name was still stalking, only Leigh used national security as a justification, and her ex wasn’t cheating on her. Well, not exactly.
Where it concerned Karl, Jake was likely to keep tabs on hi
m, assuming Jake couldn’t watch him 24/7. Her guess paid off. Jake used his phone to check the other phone’s location, multiple times a day, without Karl realising. It gave her his current location, the same as it’d been all day and she wondered if he stayed put out of necessity or deliberate choice.
She knocked and let herself into Brennan’s office without waiting for an acknowledgment to enter.
“Status on the team?” she asked.
“Still on Rainey, he’s at an interesting meeting,” he told her.
“So it’ll be awhile before they’re back?”
“You have something else to do?”
“Yes. For my other leash.” He didn’t appreciate her sarcasm.
“Don’t use the front entrance, there’s still surveillance outside.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
“Where’re you headed?”
“A place called Georgetown?”
“Ooh, upmarket. Pick me up a Khachapuri while you’re there.”
“A… what?”
“Eggs, butter and cheese in a bread hot tub. It’s heaven in your mouth.”
“Sounds a recipe for cardiovascular disease.”
“Ah, but what a way to go. And if you’re spotted, you’re running an errand for your delightful boss.”
“Not the adjective I had in mind.”
“Yeah, you’re right, charming… much better.” He handed her a comms set. “I can’t spare anyone to go with you, and it’s not our problem you’re trying to clean up, but I want you checking in.” She took it without an argument, grateful for the support.
“Khachapuri?” she clarified, and he grinned.
With the heightened security measures in place, a secure and discreet exit became the biggest open secret in the Embassy, but not to outsiders. She walked the few blocks to Georgetown, ensuring no one followed her and found the location where both Jake’s and the other phone signal converged.
She used the pretext of getting Donal’s gourmet treat in a nearby deli to scope out the apartment block, and figure out how to gain access. The culinary dish offered her the means as she checked the names on the post-boxes, finding the likely vacant ones, and noting the ones with just a single, generic name, such as Smith, and only one such named apartment.
Gaining access was too easy, a simple ‘I locked myself out, again’ in a flawless American accent did the trick of getting in the front door. After that, it was only a matter of picking the locks on the vacant apartments, but a quick search of them yielded nothing.
The accommodation belonging to the occupant Smith sat next door to the last vacant apartment, on the first floor. It sounded right, high enough to make it difficult to breach, and low enough to make an easy escape, without breaking a leg or two while jumping. The balconette offered only a glimpse next door, and in no way helpful in determining if anyone was home, hearing no sounds from a TV, or radio and she thought of calling the burner phone, just to hear if it rang. It was the stupidest idea ever, she thought as she mulled it over, knowing Karl would recognise her number, and run.
She had to trust her instincts, but if someone was inside, then she’d use a drunk story as her fall-back defence. And she had the food to add to the drunk story, if needed. If Karl was in there, it made her ad hoc plan redundant.
She picked the lock, slipping inside, keeping hunkered to minimise her size and chance of discovery. It had the same open planning as the others but this one had evidence of occupancy, although not much. Patience paid in this game and she stayed there for a few moments, listening for any sounds, both outside and within, and feeling more confident she was alone, ventured further.
She found a single bag of trash in the kitchenette, and had a look through it, finding convenience food wrappings, bloodied gauze and empty medical wipe packets. Whoever stayed here showed signs of injury, and the bottle of cheap vodka on the coffee table took on a deeper, more medicinal meaning.
In the bedroom, she found another trash bag, this time with bloodied and torn clothes, along with torn labels usually found on new ones. If Jake hid Karl here, he was running errands and getting supplies. It explained the cheap vodka. Jake never wasted the good stuff, but it didn’t explain where Karl was now.
She left, checking the hallway was empty before making her escape, still using the takeout container with Donal’s dish as a prop.
Parked on the opposite side of the street, she didn’t see Jake getting out of his car. He sat back in to watch her as she left the safe house, a mix of fury and horror at her finding it. And he couldn’t figure out how.
When she left his view, he got out and ran across the road, bounding up the stairs to the apartment, but found no sign of Karl, only a bag with his discarded bloodied clothes.
CHAPTER 18
Jake hesitated answering his phone. The screen displayed a generic 727 number. Why were the cops phoning him? How did they have his unlisted and protected number? He answered to a Detective Harrison from Homicide of the DC Metropolitan Police Department, demanding to know who he was. Jake asked why in the same belligerent tone the cop used.
“We found a phone on the body. It only had this number on it. He’d no other ID, so excuse me for trying to do my job and find out who the victim is,” the surly cop answered. Jake’s stomach reeled and he moderated his brashness. Instead, he gave the cop his name and credentials and asked for the whereabouts of the crime scene.
Harrison hesitated giving Jake details, wary of dealing with someone of Jake’s security level, which Harrison checked out on his desk PC while talking, not liking the restricted access notification on his screen.
Harrison hated these kinds of cases, the weird ones, the ‘liable to get him fired ‘ones because they were too political, or dangerous. He gave Jake the crime scene location and the name of the Detective overseeing the processing and relieved he wasn’t dealing with Jake in person.
CHAPTER 19
Leigh sat in on the debriefing session from the CTI team after they eavesdropped on Rainey’s second meeting. A team of trained Irish cops, they could give any intelligence agency in the world a run for their money, and as Leigh too learned, the ‘dumb drunk Irish’ stereotype played in their favour. Many a rumour and secret were discovered, uncovered, in an off-the-beaten-track bar, or similar; drunken confessions cajoled or trawled from unsuspecting targets.
“It’s one of the strangest meetings I’ve ever seen,” Garda Tom Lawler, the team leader, opened the briefing. “Not something I expected to see.”
“And what was that?” Brennan asked.
“Red and green together.”
Leigh didn’t understand the reference, and said so.
“Loyalist and Republican, the Red Hand of Ulster, and the green of Irish nationalism,” Brennan educated her, but she still looked perplexed.
“Weren’t the Loyalist side the colour orange, as in the Orangemen?” she asked.
“Usually, yes. This group, the Red Hand, is something else, working behind the scenes and we suspect they’ve been either orchestrating both sides, or just financing them. So far, we’ve not been able to find or infiltrate them.”
“Like a secret secret society?”
“A secret society behind the secret society.”
“Are we talking a classic conspiracy theory? Are the Illuminati or Freemasons involved too?”
He made a face that raised more questions than it answered. He pushed her tangent aside, and returned to Tom, suggested he got on with the debriefing.
“We’ve surveillance on McGinty and Bradford, and for different reasons,” Tom answered.
“Sounds like a legal firm,” Leigh commented, earning chuckles around the table.
“Then you’ll be glad to hear Bradford is. He graduated from Harvard Law, but his old man was Queen’s Council in Belfast before emigrating here.”
“Is he the red or the green connection?”
“Definitely orange, and a potential member of this Red Hand. Bradford senior defended most cas
es of alleged Loyalist terrorist activities during the Troubles.”
“And Garret McGinty?” she checked his name in her notes.
“His family had connections to the INLA, his grandfather was suspected of several political, high-targeted hits back in the day. Garret, like Rainey, is one of the new kids on the economic stage, but with old money to finance him.”
“To do what?” Brennan asked.
“He’s an architect by trade, but he’s in line to inherit a Fortune 500 construction company. Our friends in Immigration say they visit home on extended visits, long enough to use the Irish tax system, not the US one.”
“And Rainey?” she asked.
“He’s proven to be a shrewd business man, and he’s negotiated an agreement between two opposing political factions,” Tom answered.
“That still an issue? Even decades after the Good Friday Agreement?”
“You know we Irish never got over the Famine, the Good Friday Agreement is still very recent history, as are memories of the Troubles,” Brennan answered. “Old hatreds are hard to forget, and harder to heal. If Rainey’s pulled two opposing factions together, either he has the most amazing negotiation skills, or…”
“He has something powerful on them,” Leigh concluded, and Brennan nodded.
“The meeting discussed Rainey’s recent appointment to the advisory council, and how they could profit from it,” Tom continued.
“So money trumps political allegiances,” she concluded.
“And not only does money talk, it has the largest listening audience,” Brennan commented. “Anything else of value?”
“Not that we could make out. It was just business after that, how McGinty and Bradford fitted in to Rainey’s plan,” he answered.
“We need to up our surveillance on Rainey,” Brennan concluded, and the team leader nodded. “While he can fuck around all he likes here in the US,” Brennan continued, “I don’t want anything falling back on Ireland as a nation, or have allegations of ancient political crap levied against us, now we have tangible proof he’s engaged with persons of questionable… histories. And your meeting with him?” he turned to Leigh. “What was that about?” She shrugged.