Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  But now? The murdered IT woman might have been dead over a year and a half, but the Bob Nolan-Lam Shao Yin union had been on life support for most of the previous three. Maybe it was time to restore conjugal relations to their lives. Bob treated her well both in public and at home, and seemed to adhere to his promise of fidelity. Of late, she couldn’t fault him for much at all.

  * * * * *

  Nolan logged onto his Agency email to drop his heart rate back under one hundred thirty beats per minute. Ee Ling kindly sent two maps, one in Chinese and one in English, marking police and military installations near to the Lam family’s ancestral duck farm. Nolan printed both and wondered how long it would take for copies to wend their way to Constantine.

  He booked an overnight flight to Tokyo on Thursday under his Larson alias. If he used the Agency travel service, they’d want to know whom he was seeing. And since he wasn’t going to make an appointment to see Burns—that would surely have immediate repercussions in Singapore, starting with Constantine—he was better off going direct to preserve the element of surprise.

  It was 4:30 p.m. and he was tired. He also needed to do several important things that shouldn’t be logged, videotaped or recorded in the embassy. “Millie, I’m exhausted. It will be a long night with the DOE nuclear crew working the port and the Spec Ops team on alert. I’m leaving here to grab a few hours of sleep before seeing what else needs to be done.”

  “I need to know where we stand,” Millie said in a voice that carried at least three cubicles in all directions. The sound of typing ceased.

  “I’m beat and I’m headed home. Let’s talk tomorrow.” He gathered his laptop and spare papers, pocketed the still unsigned passport and planted a chaste kiss on her forehead. Millie’s look was by turns disbelieving and betrayed. Nolan could take no more and walked toward the public elevators, waiting for the imprecations to follow. He used his key to call the elevator down. As the doors closed behind him, he realized the baggage of this short affair was gaining weight by the hour.

  The elevator doors opened in the lobby, where citizens and visa seekers mingled with embassy staff and an out-of-breath Millie. “I’m serious! I want to talk this out tonight. I know you’re married, but you already said you and your wife aren’t sleeping together.” The Marine duty guard standing behind bulletproof glass pretended he hadn’t heard her comments through the microphone, but Nolan knew otherwise. The leatherneck held her in his peripheral vision and barely shook his head side to side, a gesture Nolan well understood.

  “We have more important things to do right now. You need to get a handle on the rendition patterns and providers, and I—”

  “I’m going to come see you when I have all there is to know about rendition flights in South Asia. Don’t you leave me standing in the street.” Millie was so upset he thought she might burst into tears.

  Nolan wanted to hide as they drew more curious looks. “Email me first, then call or text to make certain I saw it. We both have to return to work. Goodbye.” By some miracle, she did not call after or follow as he left the building.

  The taxi line was so long he ended up taking the bus, which took thirty minutes. He used the time to take photos of Ee Ling’s Guangdong police station printouts and email them to Mei Ling’s encrypted Safe-mail account. From what he could tell, no one followed him.

  When he finally arrived at Watten Drive, he told Juanilla not to answer the door or the phone. He said he was taking a nap and later wanted to eat dinner up in the home office. A long shower washed away much of the tension. There were too many jobs outstanding for him to contemplate sleeping, with the Sri Lanka files commanding his immediate attention.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  GLOWING PORTRAYALS

  TUESDAY MARCH 11, RANGOON, SINGAPORE

  “Special Agent Ryder,” called out Sheldon Howard, one of the borrowed Department of Energy Fukushima inspectors.

  “Yes, what is it?” Ryder was distracted, more interested in tracking the progress toward Hogwarts of the two SS Bandana crew members who had tried to flee custody. He assigned the Delta Force staff sergeants to guard them, authorizing them to shoot anyone who impeded their progress. Gonzalez’s calls had set his heart racing. Tony Johnson was one sick sonofabitch, but the man was good in a gunfight. Ryder could just imagine Johnson’s kicking the plywood shutters out of that second-story window, bringing the M-4 up and cutting loose before Teller’s gunmen knew what hit them. Damn!

  “We’ve found a highly radioactive container on the SS Bandana. It’s buried, but we can dig it out in maybe an hour or so. What do you want us to do?” Howard felt exposed in nineteen different ways: being in Burma without a work visa, on a container ship with a hostile crew, surrounded by Soldier of Fortune–type armed men ostensibly guarding him—and to top it all, they were looking for U-235 in unknown quantities, protected by a suit designed for exposure to 2,000 rad over ten minutes versus God-knew-what was in that forty-foot container. He couldn’t do much about the first items on the list, but he wasn’t dying of stupidity by walking into a metal coffin with uranium sitting in a cardboard box.

  Ryder adopted his boss voice. “Evacuate everyone from that ship, unload the other containers and drop the hot one down at the end of the dock away from everything else. Knock the seals off and tell us what’s in there.”

  “But if the radiation is strong enough, these suits won’t protect us.”

  “If you don’t want to go in there, I’ll put on a suit and do it myself.”

  “Thank you! That’s what I was going to suggest. I’ll let you know when the contaminated container is on the dock.”

  “Fuck.”

  Sheldon Howard was 5’11” and weighed one hundred forty pounds soaking wet, his body type tending toward pear-shaped. His decontamination suit fit him like a glove. Ryder was three inches shorter, twenty pounds heavier and had a body shape most frequently found on wrestlers and cheese wedges. The suit barely zipped up. Ryder figured as long as he could see through the visor and read the Geiger counter then he was good.

  “Cut off the lock. I’m ready.” Two Rangers stood on either side, primed for al Qaeda suicide bombers to come storming out.

  Will Tanner, a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant of legendary strength, knelt and clipped that hardened alloy shackle like he was pinching off a hangnail. Lock discarded, Tanner lifted the locking rod on the container door and stepped back, bringing up over his head the sawed-off 12-gauge that had been sitting in a scabbard hanging between his shoulder blades.

  They waited a minute, then another. Ryder was satisfied and silently waved them off with his Glock. It took another twenty seconds for the Spec Ops crew to cat foot it behind the invisible safety barrier set by the DOE technicians sixty yards down the dock.

  Ryder swung the container door open three feet, shining a light while leveling his Glock as he followed the beam. Near the door was a large forklift, and behind it were sandbags stacked head-high across the width of the container. It looked like the top of a six-foot-tall packing crate was poking over the bags. The rest of the container was a mystery, but no one was inside and a quick look with the light didn’t reveal any tripwires.

  Ryder stepped back and consulted the nuclear detection gizmo lent to him by Howard. A chorus of clicks that sounded like the maracas from Hell’s own rhythm section emanated from it. His light showed the needle bouncing around the three o’clock mark on the dial. “It’s 3,400 rad!” he shouted down the dock.

  “3,400? Close the door! Get out of there!” Howard, sans suit, was sprinting down the dock. “Run! Run!”

  Ryder leaned against the heavy steel door, eased it closed and ran faster than he thought possible. He passed Howard and arrived at the other end in record time for a man with no knee cartilage. Howard trailed him, shooing everyone else even farther away.

  “Am I a dead man?” Ryder gasped.

  “Maybe,” came Howard’s reply. “Let’s see the rad count, and we need to take you to a hospital, but fi
rst we have to clean your suit so you don’t contaminate the rest of us.”

  “Hospital? I hate needles. Keep me away from hospitals.” Ryder felt weak and sat down. “Do the cleanup now. I’ve got to get out of this suit: I can’t feel my nuts.”

  * * * * *

  Nolan split his time in the home office between two tasks: the final doctoring of Watermen’s Fourth Policy files—the special FSB edition—and prepping for the Sri Lanka trip. For breaks he checked the Safe-mail account every half hour for family updates.

  He read Hecker’s short account of his near fisticuffs with Matthews outside Club Avatar. Matthews asserted the CIA’s primacy. The DEA’s imported talent reported to him, all papers were to be handed over and the DEA was only to liaise with the local police. Additionally, Matthews had alerted Washington, and Hecker should expect to be recalled ASAP. Perhaps he’d best go home and start packing.

  Hecker told Matthews to get fucked, adding, “When I’m done with you, the only threats you’ll be issuing will be from behind bars.” That gave Nolan a rare chuckle. For his part, Hecker let Nolan know that he’d recorded the entire Matthews conversation and figured the COS would be suspended or fired by sunup Wednesday.

  * * * * *

  Ryder was receiving more attention than a first-time mother in labor. The Toyota Prado weaved in and out of traffic headed away from Thilawa port, while Howard’s focus alternated between Ryder’s appearance and the exposure tags that had been clipped to his containment suit and placed around his neck. Gunny Tanner was riding shotgun, tight-lipped, head on a swivel and .45 in hand. Another DEA SUV with three of the Wild Bunch was fifteen feet behind them on a virtual bungee cord. Their progress was slow given that it was seven o’clock and traffic hadn’t thinned out. At Ryder’s feeble insistence, they were headed not to the hospital, but to the backup DEA safe house Hogwarts. Hecker had arranged for the US embassy’s preferred physician to meet them there.

  Howard said for the third time, “Travis, I really don’t know what to tell you. The Geiger counter reading of 3,400 rad is critically high, yet your exposure tag shows only 2,800 rad and your neck tag is 2,400. That’s serious, but not likely to be fatal. How do you feel?”

  “Like I’m going to pop you if you ask me again how I feel.” Ryder used a brave voice, but he was terrified. Radiation toxicity wasn’t on the career menu when he’d taken early retirement from the Navy after eleven years to join the DEA as South and Southeast Asia head of security and Hecker’s bodyguard. He’d rather walk the streets of 2004 Fallujah wearing only his jock than deal with U-235 decontamination.

  A memory popped into his head, jolting him to full alertness. “Gunny, in case I don’t make it to the safe house, tell Hecker I saw a red-and-blue fish on the packing crate. A sticker or label. That’s important. And whatever you do, don’t let Howard take me to a hospital. The last embassy employee who checked in ended up gutted.” Falling back against the door from the effort, he wretched a little more bile into the flimsy plastic bag Howard held in front of him. The vehicle smelled of stomach acid as Ryder used the back of his hand to swipe at the spittle.

  * * * * *

  “Tell the team to stand down, Lieutenant Connors. Lower your weapons and walk as a group to the vehicles. Don’t give the Army anything other than the papers and files from the port. Keep your phones. They won’t lay a hand on you. If they continue to block your vehicles, stay in the SUVs and call me back. I’d be amazed if they didn’t move out of your way once you’ve mounted up. They may be acting tough, but they’re scared. Burma doesn’t want a war with the United States over who has possession of your camera phones. Call me back if there’s trouble on the way to the new safe house and I’ll come a running with the James Gang. For now, just try to maintain. And thanks for everything.”

  Hecker had met Lieutenant Mark Connors for the first time earlier in the day. Connors and the rest of the Wild Bunch took leave to come to Burma on zero notice as personal favors to Ryder. These men never complained, expected no payment other than reimbursed airfares and laid their asses on the line.

  When about thirty Army regulars rolled up in two canvas-backed trucks, the Wild Bunch responded by throwing up a thin cordon to buffer the DOE scientists while they wiped down Ryder and loaded him into the two-SUV mini-convoy. The Wild Bunch stayed on station for over two hours, watching Howard & Co. decontaminate the dock and allowing the crane operators to reload boxes back onto the SS Bandana. Sometime around 21:30 hours an armored personnel carrier and two additional dark olive trucks had roared up and disgorged another fifty or sixty commandos wearing cammies. Weapons lowered, they started advancing on Connors’s men.

  After conferring with Hecker via satphone, Connors withdrew his remaining Special Forces operators, bartering the papers they’d collected from the port offices for safe passage. With only seven shooters among them, it took a big pair of cojones to stare the senior officer in the eyes and tell him he couldn’t have your phone, much less your weapon. All the while this was happening, Hecker couldn’t tell from Connors’s tone whether he was ordering a pizza or preparing to open fire.

  The last half day was the toughest in Hecker’s professional life. No sooner had Matthews left Club Avatar than Zaw and Hecker found themselves in a diplomatic fight with Rangoon’s police chief general over the custody of the prisoners being interrogated by SPC 4 Johnson. Realizing he was on thin ice, Hecker gave up Teller’s surviving men plus the two crewmen off the SS Bandana. After ninety minutes of cigarettes, arm-waving and raised voices, Zaw arranged a semi-amicable handover. The battered, bruised and drugged hostages were hooded and plastic cuffed as Zaw’s men walked them out of Club Avatar and into the back of a deuce and a half.

  In return, Zaw negotiated a hands-off on the safe house itself with one of the on-site staff officers. Zaw promised the chief of police to produce Johnson at 08:00 hours at police HQ for questioning the next day, which everyone knew was really a deportation order. All of Hecker’s DEA staff at the safe house kept their weapons, a reasonable request in light of their blown-out windows, a gaping hole in the living room wall and a perimeter wall missing a twenty-foot section.

  Zaw neglected to mention to the chief of police that his men had taped Johnson’s interrogation sessions. The recording was safely back at Dubern Park, where DEA staff could transcribe it. Perhaps this was all for the better, Hecker mulled. Had Johnson been given any more time with the prisoners, he might have made good on his promise to start clipping fingers and toes to promote cooperation.

  His DEA skeleton force had spent over four hours cleaning up Club Avatar, moving Ryder’s arsenal surreptitiously into their SUVs, packing personal effects, shredding nonessential documents, and boxing up others, along with their computers and other electronics. Hecker’s people worked with frenzied intensity to salvage as much as they could, for as soon as they left, the Army surely would strip the house bare.

  This latest confrontation at the port was disastrous on several levels. For starters, they didn’t know what the container held other than a highly radioactive object housed in a six-foot-plus-tall packing crate surrounded by sandbags. Gleaning that small bit of information had cost Ryder dearly. Losing the paperwork from the port would make tracing the ship’s ownership much more difficult, although some deft camera phone work had captured several pages, according to Connors.

  Clearly, Teller was connected to a powerful government faction, one that could defy the president of Burma and muster troops at will. Hecker realized he should have expected that, given that Teller already accessed immigration records and vehicle registrations in near real time. For once, Matthews wasn’t the culprit. This was orchestrated by a local sitting high up the food chain. Traditionally, the US got out of these sorts of messes by spreading cash like poppers at a gay disco. Hecker wondered whether that would work this time, and what Nolan would make of it all.

  Hecker got in the SUV and told his driver to take the long way to Hogwarts in case they were being followed. He
swapped batteries and rebooted his dead cell, spotting a text from Sophie. The wife would have to wait.

  “Bob? Sam here. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “Well, it’s nearly midnight and I was just about to email you. Anything new since the Battle of Club Avatar?”

  “Plenty. Let’s start with Travis’s getting a look inside a highly radioactive container at the port, and possibly absorbing a fatal dose in the process. He’s on his way to our other safe house, and the embassy’s preferred doctor is waiting there to examine him. We’ll have him on the first plane to Singapore tomorrow, and have the Navy docs and acute radiation sickness specialists take it from there.”

  “Oh, hell! That’s terrible. What did he find in the container?”

  “We’re not certain. Getting a detailed rundown will be the first thing I do once he gets here. Travis called me once he was back in cell range. A big forklift, a crate over six feet high by maybe eight to ten feet wide and an indeterminate depth, surrounded by burlap bags full of sand, dirt, lead—we just don’t know. That’s as much as he saw in the five seconds he was shining a light. Oh, and one other thing. He saw a packing sticker on the crate: a red-and-blue fish.”

  “The Malaysia Airlines logo! Email me a photo when you have a chance. If you’ve got a bomb disposal robot in country, you can use it to remove the sandbags and—”

  “Bob, Bob! Slow down. The Army surrounded our team and we’ve left the port. At one point there were maybe eighty guns against fewer than ten. The team barely got out with their asses in one piece.”