Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  Subsequently, Nolan sought refuge in the CIA human resources bureaucracy that had formerly tormented him with their inane box-ticking and form-filling. After enduring six weeks of paid suspension, the Company had agreed to a deferred exit that would take him to fifty-five and a full pension. In the meantime, the former high flyer was reduced to outsourcing malicious code from Asia hackers out of a CIA proprietary based in a small office tucked away in an office building situated on Scotts Rd in Singapore’s tourist belt.

  These days Nolan bounced between his home in Singapore and other Asia capital cities, hiring unsavory contractors to do ugly things. He collected these programs via various dark web–enabled dead drops, fed them back to Langley for vetting and further obfuscation, authorized Bitcoin or even old-fashioned dollar payouts, and tried to stay a step ahead of domestic law enforcement in each jurisdiction. Now he sat in a dead man’s pickup with hydrochloric acid etching the back of his throat. Just when he thought he couldn’t fall any further in self-esteem or professional pride, he had reached a new low.

  “Let’s go, Dara,” he said, and the driver put the Toyota in gear.

  Nolan was past caring whether Teller had left anyone at the Hyundai site to see who turned up. In any event, there weren’t any lights on the road behind them. He took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. If he lost focus, Teller would win for certain. He pulled out the Glock and put it on the seat.

  “Do you know how to use this?” he asked, and Dara nodded yes. “If anyone tries to stop us on this road, you shoot them.”

  “I drive. You shoot.” This was wordy by his driver’s taciturn standards.

  Dara accelerated. He didn’t plan on their being caught from behind. It was barely 5:30 and still darker than a bat’s closet when they rolled back into the vacant lot. No one else was there. Nolan was uneasy being on their own, but they were a half hour early. He wasn’t breaking radio silence to report something that didn’t affect anyone else.

  “Does your phone work here?” Nolan asked Dara. Surprisingly, it did. Einme must have a cell tower. Nolan clawed once again for Millie’s card, and Dara dialed her number. She picked up on the eighth ring.

  “Hello. Who is this?” Her voice was husky from interrupted sleep.

  “It’s Bob. I’m outside Einme. We went to swap the Toyota for the Hyundai, but the family was dead and their house burned down. The Hyundai was torched, too. Teller did this. He will be coming for you. Pack a bag and go to Dubern Park now. You’ll be safe there. We’ll figure out next steps once we’re back in town. I’m still waiting for our friends to come back from their field trip.”

  “My God! Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine, but you have to get moving. Maybe you should call Abrahams and have him send an escort.”

  “I’ll call a cab right now and leave as soon as it arrives. Getting Marines here on a Sunday morning at 5:45 will take a lot longer.”

  “Call me back on this number when you're safe inside. Goodbye.” He checked his watch: one minute flat.

  It was 7:15 in the morning in Singapore. Should he wake Joanie? And tell her what, exactly? That a madman from twenty-nine years ago had risen from the dead and promised to send the dismembered bodies of their children to them via air express? Nolan’s left eyelid twitched. “Can I call Singapore with your phone?”

  Dara smiled. “No. Only Myanmar.” Nolan handed the phone back, slumping.

  Trying to reason with Teller was like setting your own children on fire. You’d only end up with ashes and tears. Right now, Teller was hunting him. Nolan put the Glock in his lap, hand over the butt. They rolled the windows down to feel the cooler air. It was still black. Even the insects were quiet.

  Two vehicles rolled in, headlights shining on the pickup. Nolan couldn’t see anything. The cars stopped sixty feet away, engines and lights shut down. He scrambled out and crouched next to the passenger door with the Glock at the ready. Ten seconds passed. He saw the glow of lighters and cigarettes from inside the two cars. These had to be Zaw’s men. Nolan lowered his weapon and sheepishly re-holstered it. He climbed back in the Toyota and quietly shut the door. Dara averted his gaze.

  Three more cars pulled up beside the other two. Nolan managed to stay where he was this time. Ryder jumped out of the back and trotted over.

  “Let’s go.” Then he stopped and asked, “Where’s the Hyundai?”

  “Burned to a crisp, along with the owners and their house. Teller killed them.”

  “Zeya! Come over here.”

  Zeya, still in ninja attire but layered in mud from head to toe, hopped out of the other door and hustled over. Ryder filled him in and told him to explain it to Zaw’s men. They’d take care of the cleanup, including the truck.

  Hecker was saying his farewells and exchanged double handshakes and back clenches with his favorite police chief. Dara vacated the Toyota in favor of the second SUV. The last cars arrived and everyone was accounted for.

  The vacant lot was growing lighter by the minute. Time for the vampires to get back into their coffins. Nolan took Zeya’s filthy backseat spot and Ryder joined him a minute later.

  “Your mustache points are Day-Glo yellow. Did you heave?”

  “Damn straight. Ever see three bodies of people burned alive? It’s not nice, especially when it’s your fault.”

  “Ah, shit. This sort of thing happens. Don’t let it get to you.” Ryder was riffing, still buzzing from whatever had happened at Airstrip One.

  Hecker got in looking like the winner of the student science fair. “Let’s go.” The two white SUVs pulled out, leaving Major Zaw and his cohorts to confer next to the pickup.

  Ryder told Hecker what had happened at what Ryder dubbed “Bob’s barbecue.”

  Hecker mused, “Teller is certainly well connected. Imagine pulling a license plate in Rangoon on a Saturday night . . . . Hell, I don’t think we could do that in Bethesda. He’s one ruthless SOB, too. That’s for certain.”

  Nolan passed up the unopened fingerprint kit. “I didn’t get a chance to use this.” For some reason, Ryder found this hilarious. Even Hecker gave a snort.

  Hecker said, “You need to relax. We’ll get through this. Unless Teller ambushes us either side of Einme, in which case we’ll be dead before breakfast.”

  Their driver, Arun, accelerated despite the smattering of Sunday morning pedestrians, bicycles and farm equipment now on the road. Anyone taking a shot would have to be leading the Range Rover by a considerable margin before registering a hit.

  Ryder’s handset vibrated. “Yeah? OK, Dara, thanks,” he answered, then tapped off. “Bob, some woman called for you to say she’s at the embassy annex now.”

  “That’s Millie. I called her once we saw the burned-out house and car. I told her to get to Dubern Park.”

  “That was quick thinking.”

  “So what did you find out at the airstrip?” Nolan had been dying to ask.

  Hecker began, “Everything and nothing. No people, but we couldn’t have missed them by much. The building you were so keen on, it was burned out as well. Your friend Teller must be a pyromaniac. Zaw’s people set up roadblocks at either end of the road, but nothing doing. Travis and I made it to high ground, though with this cloud cover it was so damned dark that Travis couldn’t see dick half the time, even through his Starlight scope. I couldn’t see anything at all through my night-vision goggles."

  "Particularly when you forgot to take the end caps off to start, boss."

  Hecker ignored Ryder. “Gonzalez and Zeya dug under the fence and low-crawled three hundred feet to the building, and took soil and contents samples from the ashes of the burned shed. The metal was still hot to the touch. We’ll analyze what they collected to see if we can find out what was being stored there.”

  “That’s not very encouraging,” Nolan said.

  “It gets better,” Ryder interjected. “Inside the building were burned crates of something sweet, maybe fruit. We lifted samples. Maybe Teller’s sm
uggling bananas? Maybe not, because Gonzalez dug down and checked out the edge of the concrete floor. The pad was something like eight inches thick. That floor can handle quite a load: gold, ammo crates, dismantled heavy weapons—you name it.”

  “I can’t believe there weren’t sentries,” Nolan said.

  Hecker sounded upbeat. “Teller doesn’t have unlimited people, either. They left after they removed or burned what was on the strip. He won’t be using it again. Golden Elephant will transfer it to the Army or maybe a general. Perhaps most interesting of all was the smashed infrared beacon Hanny Gonzalez found behind the burned shed.”

  “Plus the fresh tire marks on the runway, slathered over in white paint,” Ryder added. “And muddy wheel marks headed east toward the main gate you saw yesterday.”

  “So what does it all mean?”

  Hecker took first crack. “Zaw’s men will ask around, but a couple of them living to the south already said there have been in-and-out late-night flights at least once a week over the last month or more. We have ourselves a newly completed mystery runway with big jets landing and taking off. I think Teller is smuggling drugs on the side, outside Golden Elephant. If so, there has to be Army protection, too. Probably heroin and meth going out, and maybe arms coming back.”

  “Nah, that’s not happening under Myat Noe’s watch,” Ryder said. “No one in Golden Elephant takes a dump without that lady knowing.”

  “Can you tell me more about Myat Noe?”

  Ryder was happy to oblige him. “We’ve got a book on the family in-house. I read it when I arrived here almost two years ago. Opium King Khun Sa died in 2007, leaving behind eight children. Golden Elephant is his daughter Myat Noe’s company, operating in property, jade mining, cement and illegal casinos along the China border and the Yangon-Mandalay toll road. Add to that the Yangon-Chaungtha Expressway, though neither the government nor the company ever made an official announcement.”

  Hecker expanded on Ryder’s narrative. “Khun Sa was a very wealthy man when he died. He paid a billion dollars to stay out of jail and another billion to ensure his children went unmolested while they spent and invested the laundered leftovers. Myat Noe was the most successful. As a daughter, she probably started out with only a couple hundred million, which she’s easily tripled since her dad died almost seven years ago. The road construction’s halted and the workers are gone, but it’s not because Golden Elephant went broke.

  “Forget drugs, too. Khun Sa’s family is as clean as Snow White’s snatch these days. My best guess is that part of the junta is laying up its own personal arms supply just in case, or maybe ahead of the next coup. That explains the frequent flights and the reinforced concrete floor.”

  Nolan stayed silent. No one asked for his opinion, and he wasn’t certain he had one.

  They were now well beyond Einme. The threat of ambush receding, Ryder shed weapons, clothes and assorted paraphernalia. Hecker went through similar gyrations. Nolan was too tired to do anything other than hand his gun to Ryder.

  “Whoa, remember what I told you back at Club Avatar? There’s no safety on a Glock, so keep the chamber clear.” Ryder ejected a shell and put Bob’s gun behind him on the deck.

  “Sorry.” Nolan put his hat, spare magazine, flashlight and walkie-talkie into the back on the proper piles.

  Soon enough they were on the outskirts of Rangoon, crossing the river into the city proper. Nolan’s mouth still tasted of bile while his brain worked overtime.

  A phone vibrated. “Yes, it’s Hecker. What? Holy hell! OK, Dubern Park at 10 a.m. with the ambassador. Yes, I can explain some of it, but not all of it.” He turned around.

  “That was Clay Abrahams. Kyaw’s dead. Found disemboweled in his hospital bed. Whoever did it also cut out his tongue post-mortem. Kyaw’s wallet had ID in it, so the police called the embassy’s head of physical security and got Abrahams out of bed.”

  “Fuck. This guy’s on a rampage.” Ryder reached back, pulled a pistol off the rear deck and passed it up to Hecker. Next he re-holstered his own weapon. He looked at Nolan. “You want a Glock, too?”

  Nolan shook his head no. He closed his eyes as he thought about the threat to his children and wife. He tried every combination that might lead Teller to them. There wasn’t anything other than the wallet photos. Even their house was in Joanie’s name. And Teller would need time to organize a hit, or whatever he had in mind. He’d been busy enough locally as it was. He wasn’t Superman. In fact, he was in hiding. He probably had zero international networks, other than the people who had put him in Burma to begin with.

  Nolan broke the silence. “Teller was the local end of the MH370 hijacking. I don’t know who he works for, but it’s probably someone he’s known a long time and not a local general. I don’t know where the plane is, but it’s not in Burma. It landed and took off early Saturday morning. I’ll bet Teller offloaded a high-value person or cargo from that plane.

  “The reason Teller’s killing everyone in sight is to deflect attention to him from the precious cargo. This is a smokescreen, a diversion. The high-value target is still in-country. We’ve got to find it before he ships it out. It was almost certainly in those containers that passed by yesterday.”

  Now it was Hecker’s and Ryder’s turns to reflect while Nolan continued. “If Teller’s men found my passport before they burned the house down, he’ll have my Singapore address. Next Teller will try to kidnap or harm my family to keep me from piecing together the overall picture. If he has a source inside Rangoon station, we have even bigger problems.”

  Hecker had his doubts. “This is pretty thin, Bob. You’re saying MH370 was hijacked, flown undetected into Burma, landed on Airstrip One where Teller offloaded treasure of some description, and it took off again, also undetected. Meanwhile, Teller acts the part of a wild man while behind the scenes he smuggles the HVTs out of Burma?”

  Nolan countered, “I think you’re missing the most important part. Teller can’t be working alone. He has a customer, maybe some people he used to work with or a government. And as you said earlier, most likely someone from the local station has been helping him hide out. Maybe it’s Matthews; maybe it’s not.”

  “This is some crazy shit. But it’s a crazy world. You might be on to something.” Ryder, the anti-intellectual, was the one taking him seriously? Nolan didn’t know if that was a good or a bad omen.

  Hecker brought them back to the present. “Gentlemen, let’s focus on the next few hours. We are roughly thirty minutes from the safe house. We are meeting with Ambassador Martin at ten to explain how in the hell we lost an embassy driver and car in the last eighteen hours. Presumably we don’t want to share Bob’s hunch or our night’s findings with Matthews. And we need to protect Millie.”

  Ryder said, “What’s your plan, assuming we’re still employed once Martin’s done with us?”

  “First we need to find out what came off that plane and why. Second, I’m going to kill Teller,” said Nolan.

  “Three minutes ago you didn’t even want to hold a Glock. Now you’re going to gun him down at high noon on Main Street?” Ryder asked.

  “I won’t shoot him. I’ll find his weakness and get him that way—but that comes later. We need to find the plane, or the people and cargo that came off it. Once we find the high-value targets, Teller will have other things to worry about than us.”

  Hecker said, “So he’s emerged after thirty years under deep cover to handle a secret mission. He’s back and black.”

  “Very black.” You could hear the excitement in Ryder’s voice.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FOURTH POLICY

  SATURDAY, MARCH 8, MOSCOW

  “Ecuador is still willing to take you despite pressure from the US. The Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Quito through Havana is best, because the US won’t dare to force it down.” Eric Watermen’s concern showed in his voice, ragged features and rumpled clothes. He’d driven straight from the airport to the Lubyanka Square head office of the F
SB, the equally oppressive successor to the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, before heading to his son’s apartment.

  The fugitive was impatient. His father had flown eleven hours to read him the airline timetables? “Dad, I told you before, I’m stuck here. Technically, I have asylum for another four-plus months, until the end of July, but they could kick me out anytime. Alternatively, they could lock me up. They want what I took before they let me go.”

  “So give it to them.”

  “I don’t have a copy. China’s goons stripped me clean before they let me out of Hong Kong ahead of the CIA snatch team. I landed here with the clothes on my back and a couple of wiped laptops.”

  “What about those journalists? You gave them copies.”

  “Dad, every intelligence agency in the world was after those files. MI6 and the CIA told them they would be killed for what I’d given them. To their credit, Greg, Marjorie and Alex destroyed their copies in front of witnesses. They were as paranoid as I was. The original plan was that, if something happened to me, each journalist would publish his or her copy. This was to keep the US from killing me. But now that I’m in Russia, the reverse is true. If my friends still had copies with instructions to release them on my death, the Russians would have pulled the trigger long ago.”

  “So why give you asylum? Russia caught a lot of heat for that.”

  “Putin loves jabbing a stick in the US’s eye. And the FSB seems convinced that there’s a fourth copy.”

  “Is there?”

  “There was, but I hid it and it’s not there anymore. I don’t know who picked it up. I’m probing old channels.”