by Dale Brown
“Red butt” was a term veteran officers used to describe how someone in the field reacted when someone in the bureaucracy told them how to do their job. Someone with red butt typically began telling that person what he or she could do with their advice. The general result was termination of some sort — usually by reassignment rather than firing, though the latter was not completely unheard of. A red-butt-induced reassignment was both mind-numbing and career ending. Usually it resulted in something that made counting paper clips in Fredonia look exciting, and the usual result was early retirement.
Reid had ended up in Fredonia, though he didn’t count paper clips there. The small town in upstate New York had an outpost of the New York State university system. Granted a job as a permanent visiting professor — red butt or not, the Agency took care of its own — Reid had used his position to work behind the scenes, writing and lecturing on national security and technology issues, and quietly advising a number of politicians and government officials. One of his main themes was leveraging technology to help men and women in the field do their jobs more effectively. A year ago he’d been brought back by the new CIA director.
Reid had actually been offered the position of deputy director, an extremely powerful post whose responsibilities included overseeing the Agency’s covert action programs. But he had declined for several reasons, the most important that he thought he would be a lightning rod for controversy, since he had made many more enemies since leaving the Agency.
The fact that he had just celebrated his seventy-eighth birthday had nothing to do with the decision.
Alerted to the shooting, Reid had arranged to obtain information from the Italians on the investigation. An FBI liaison officer had been dispatched to the local headquarters. The FBI agent worked routinely with the CIA on terrorist cases, and had been instructed to forward updates to Reid.
“The shooter was a woman,” said Nuri. “Short hair. MY-PID didn’t get enough to ID her.”
“Yes, I’ve checked. But you might look at some of the online video sites and see if you can get a better image.”
“Good idea.”
“You looked pretty scared in the images, Nuri. It shakes my confidence in you.”
“I wasn’t scared. I’d just been shot in the damn chest at point-blank range.”
“Your bulletproof armor did its job.”
“How many times have you been shot in the chest?”
The answer was twice, but Reid, realizing he’d pushed a little too hard, said nothing.
* * *
The YouTube video shown on the news did not include a good image of the actual shooter, but a search of similar videos turned up three other videos of the same incident. Nuri, looking at the images in the hotel’s business center, forwarded the information to the CIA’s technical people via a blind e-mail address. By the time he got over to the embassy to follow up, they had sent the image to the FBI liaison in Rome, who managed — with some difficulty — to persuade the local prosecutor to let her compare the image to those captured by various security cameras around the Coliseum. Only about half of the possible cameras had been working, and only a half dozen of those were connected to computer systems that the carabiniere could easily access. Fortunately, one of them was the Metro system, which provided a good image of the woman getting on the same train Nuri had taken.
Nuri shook his head. The next time she saw him, she’d aim for the head first.
The woman had gotten off at the next stop, Cavour.
Nearly six hours had passed since then, but Nuri had decided to stay in Rome at least for another day, and if that was the case, he might just as well take a shot at finding her. So he went over to the Metro stop and began placing small video bugs, hooking them into the MY-PID circuit and hoping that the video would catch a glimpse of the woman. The bugs were about the size of a small bead on a woman’s bracelet. They attached to a wall or other surface with a tiny piece of a gumlike sticker. The small size meant their integrated batteries lasted only a few hours, and they needed a larger transponder to pick up their signals and upload it to the satellite network. But they were nearly invisible, and provided video quality on par with the typical laptop or cell phone camera.
From the Metro stop, Nuri bugged a number of hotels, then left bugs on lampposts and buildings. Hungry, he was about to go across the river to a Sicilian restaurant he remembered from an earlier visit when the Voice told him it had a possible match.
“How possible?” he asked. His stomach was growling, and he could almost taste the caponata di patate.
“Facial bone structure matches. Height is within five percent. Hair is different.”
“That could be a wig,” Nuri told the computer.
“Assumption cannot be tested.”
“No kidding.”
He walked over to the area where the computer had spotted the woman going into the Hotel Campagnia. It was a mid-level place, used by foreigners mostly, about evenly split between business people and tourists. He scattered a few more bugs around, and contemplated whether it would be useful to call the FBI liaison and try for a list of the guests. As he did, the Voice warned him that the subject was coming down into the lobby.
Nuri went across the street to a café and ordered a glass of wine. The woman paid her bill, then had the clerk call her a taxi to take her to Fumicino, better known to Americans as Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport, which was just outside of Rome.
He might have called the FBI liaison then, to get her name, but even if the Italians cooperated — an iffy proposition — it would have taken hours. Instead, he took matters into his own hands, swiping the pocketbook of the woman sitting next to him as her back was turned.
He slid it under his shirt and crossed the street.
“Sfortunate!” he yelled, rushing in. “The lady dropped her pocketbook.”
“C’e?” asked the clerk.
“The woman, who just got in the cab.”
“Who?”
Nuri described her. “Where was she going?”
“The airport.”
“Did she have a cell phone?”
The clerk looked baffled.
“I could call her,” Nuri explained.
The clerk bent over to the computer and pulled up the registration. “There is no cell phone.”
“What’s her name?” Nuri asked. “I can page her.”
He pulled out his sat phone quickly, fearing the clerk would want to do it for him.
“She was pretty, wasn’t she?” added Nuri.
“Ah, yes. Margaret Adamoni.”
“Her name was Margaret Adamoni,” said Nuri, repeating the name for the Voice. “Did she say which terminal?”
The clerk couldn’t recall.
“Check the wallet with me,” said Nuri, “so we can’t be accused of stealing money.”
The clerk agreed, and in short order they discovered that the wallet belonged to someone else entirely. Nuri, pretending to be embarrassed, made a quick exit, then grabbed a taxi to the airport.
There was no Margaret Adamoni registered on a flight out of Fumicino, but the MY-PID tapped into the international flight registry, which used computerized passport IDs to screen for possible terrorists and other suspicious persons. Discarding people traveling in groups and examining flight profiles, it found three possibilities. After buying a ticket, Nuri checked two out at the gates. He missed the third.
That, of course, turned out to be his subject: Bernadette Piave, who’d just gotten on her plane for Athens, Greece, when he reached the gate. He went back to the ticket area, bought a ticket for the next plane, and booked an Alitalia flight two hours later.
It was only as he was waiting that the Voice turned up an interesting tidbit from a file maintained by Interpol: Bernadette Piave was believed to be a pseudonym for a woman named Meg Leary. That was the extent of the file there.
The CIA had its own file on Leary. It was restricted; not even the Voice could access it. So Nuri had to get
help from Reid.
Meg Leary had been born in 1969 in Belfast, Ireland, the daughter of a convicted Irish Republican Army bomb maker and a woman from Dieppe, France. A short time afterward, Meg’s mother disappeared, and she was raised by her father’s family, shuttling back and forth between different uncles, aunts, and grandparents as the family members spent time in prison for their alleged roles in the Northern Irish “troubles.” Given her family history, it was not surprising that she had her first run-in with authorities at age thirteen; she was arrested for allegedly spraying a Protestant home with submachine gun fire. The Protestants in question were prominent “provos”—essentially the Protestant equivalent of the IRA — though that didn’t prevent Bernadette from serving jail time. Her rap sheet grew from there to include armed robbery and a variety of weapons charges, all before she was eighteen.
She was arrested a few days before her eighteenth birthday on suspicion of murder — a member of the family she’d first shot at when thirteen — but the evidence against her proved insufficient. That was the last time the British criminal justice system had anything to do with Ms. Leary. Officially, at any rate.
Reports from the various agencies charged with dealing with Northern Ireland stated that she had “apparently reformed.” There were rumors that she had been drummed out of the IRA, or that she was never a real member in the first place. In any event, she hadn’t received so much as a traffic ticket in the twenty-five years since.
“That’s all the file has?” Nuri asked Reid.
“That’s it.”
“The implication is what?”
Reid sighed. “Don’t jump to too many conclusions.”
The implication was that she worked, or more likely had worked, for the Agency in some capacity.
Like maybe an assassin.
“Can you get somebody to watch for her in Athens?” Nuri asked.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Reid.
“Why not?”
“She’s a freelancer, Nuri. She works for the highest bidder.”
“So you do know her.”
“Not personally. But you’ll be wasting your time in Athens.”
“Not if I can figure out who hired her.”
“Do you think you can do that by following her?”
Nuri leaned back against the thin airport lounge seat and thought about it. Someone like Leary was unlikely to lead him to an employer; she might not even know who had hired her in the first place.
“We didn’t hire her?” he asked Reid.
“Of course not.”
“You’re sure?”
“Reasonably sure.”
“Who? A competitor? The Sudanese? The Egyptians?”
“Unfortunately, your guess is as good as mine. When will you be able to return home?”
“Home?”
“Here. We have some new arrangements to acquaint you with. It will make starting over with Jasmine considerably easier.”
Months of work, down the drain.
“Get me a flight, and tell me when it leaves,” Nuri told Reid. “I’m already at the airport.”
4
Pentagon
Danny Freah’s initial reaction to general Magnus’s offer was thanks, but no thanks.
Magnus’s limited description made the assignment sound a lot like his job at Dreamland, without the security component. Eventually, the unit would be bigger than Whiplash, which at Dreamland had never numbered more than a dozen people, at least not while he was assigned to it. “Wing size, potentially,” Magnus said, though he added that it would start out much smaller.
Commanding a unit that large would be a definite plus in his plan to advance to general. But Magnus had made it clear that the job was outside the normal Air Force structure, and that wasn’t going to help him at all.
The detour on the road to general wasn’t the only thing bothering him. Magnus was undoubtedly right about how limited the opportunities in the near future were, so taking this job might not hurt at all. But Danny couldn’t articulate, not even to himself, the other reasons that made him hesitate.
Everything had bored him after Whiplash and Dreamland. There was no way it couldn’t. He’d traveled across the world, saving people, at times even saving entire countries, or at least good portions of them. No assignment that followed could ever come close in terms of excitement or gratification.
Yet, he didn’t want to go back.
He was…afraid.
The word came at him like a train in a tunnel exploding in a sudden rush.
Afraid.
Was he?
Yes.
Afraid of what? he wondered.
Not death. Danny had learned that when you were in danger — when it was actually a possibility — death was not something you tended to think about. There was too much else to do. It was only later that it hit you, if it hit you at all.
His fear was of something else: Not being able to measure up to what he had done before. Of proving unworthy of the Medal of Honor he’d been awarded. Of disgracing himself and everyone who believed in him or looked up to him, like the sergeant at the gate that morning and the others who had applauded.
Danny realized this on the way back to his hotel, as the Metro came to his stop. He got out of the car and walked slowly toward the exit. Outside, he took out his cell phone and called a cab to take him to the hotel. He was annoyed with himself, unnerved at the waves of introspection that consumed him.
This wasn’t what a leader did, Danny thought. And he was a leader. There was no question about that.
The taxi was just arriving when his cell phone rang. The number didn’t look familiar, but he decided to answer it anyway as the cab pulled to the curb.
“Freah.”
“Colonel Freah?”
“Yeah?”
“Please hold for the senator.”
“Danny, what the hell are you doing in town without calling?” said Zen Stockard, his voice booming out of the clamshell speaker on Danny’s phone.
“Hey, Zen. I just came in for a quick meeting.”
“That’s no excuse, Colonel.”
“Hey, hold on a second, OK?” Danny got into the cab and told the driver to take him to his hotel. “Still there?”
“What the hell are you doing staying at the Alexandria Suites?” asked Zen, who’d heard the destination.
“It’s nice and not too expensive.”
“I don’t care — you should be with us. Teri loves your bedtime stories.”
Danny laughed. The last time he’d stayed with them — a year before — he’d told her fairy tales for half the night, all variations of things his grandmother had told him when he was little.
“What are you doing for dinner?” asked Zen.
“There’s a nice restaurant about two blocks away. I figured I’d walk on down.”
“Forget it. The Yankees are in town to play the Nationals. You and I are going to the game.”
“Uh—”
“Listen, buddy, I’m not taking no for an answer,” said Zen. “A senator outranks a colonel by a hell of a lot.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” laughed Danny.
When he’d been in the Air Force, Zen played down the fact that his family was wealthy. He’d banked nearly all of his trust proceeds, never took money from his father or uncles, and with one exception had never called on them for help. That exception had been during his fight to get reinstated on active duty after the crash that cost him the use of his legs.
Now that he was older, however, and had clearly set his own path in the world, he took advantage of the conveniences his family’s money provided. A driver and a van specially adapted to his wheelchair were the most obvious. There were others, though — like open invitation to use the owner’s suite at the Nationals.
Zen arranged to pick up Danny at his hotel an hour before the game. He grinned as his old friend spotted him and trotted out to the van.
“Danny,” he said, as Freah pulle
d open the sliding door at the rear. “How the hell are you?”
“Is a U.S. senator allowed to use profanity?”
“Only if his daughter isn’t in the car. Jeez, man, you’re looking good.”
“You don’t look too bad yourself. You put on a little weight.”
“Too many fat cat lunches,” said Zen.
It was a joke. Among his strictest rules was that he always paid for lunch.
“So how’s Bree?” Danny asked.
“Good.”
“Teri?”
“Ready to run for princess. She’s taking tap dancing lesson now, besides the ballerina stuff. She’s amazing. Must get it from her mom.”
Zen rocked back and forth in the wheelchair, which was fitted with a special brace holding it in place in the van. The brace was similar to the one he had used in the Megafortress years before. The driver’s side had a similar arrangement, so he could push the regular seat back and use hand controls to drive himself if he wanted.
Too much beer drinking at a baseball game for that, though.
“Hear much from your father-in-law?” asked Danny.
Zen felt himself flinch. “No one hears much from Dog these days,” he said. “Not even Bree.”
Danny nodded.
“So don’t tell me that you’re rooting for the Yankees tonight,” said Zen, anxious to keep things cheery.
“I am from New York.”
“Buffalo is not in New York. It’s Canada, isn’t it?”
Danny did, in fact, root for the Yankees, though very discreetly. Zen was anything but discreet as the Nationals took a 6–0 lead into the sixth inning. But then the Nationals’ pitching crumbled and the Yankees mounted a comeback, tying it at 6–6 in the eighth. The visitors went on top by a run in the ninth, the home team scored one, and the game went into extra innings.
It wasn’t until the top of the tenth that Zen told Danny that he knew he’d been offered the new Whiplash job.
“I figured there was an ulterior motive here,” said Danny.