by James Phelan
“Maybe you should wait in the car,” Muertos said as she undid her seatbelt.
“No,” Walker replied. “I want to hear what your contact has to say, and I might have questions for her.”
Muertos hesitated, not looking at Walker as she opened her door and climbed out.
“What is it?” Walker asked as he got out of the car and looked over the roof.
“I told you, Overton’s very cautious.”
“Just tell her I’m a friend, helping you out.”
Muertos looked around the street.
“If you really think she won’t talk with me there, I’ll stay behind,” Walker said. “But I think we should stick together when possible, because we don’t know what we’re going to get thrown at us from Homeland.”
She looked back to Walker. “Okay. Come with me.”
The night air of Washington was cold, and over his black shirt Walker had the light-weave black cotton jacket from California that Eve had brought for him to be discharged in. The wind bit at him, and he popped the collar and stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets as he fell into stride with Muertos. Nowhere near as cold as his time at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, nor the mountains of Afghanistan while on tours of duty, but after the warmth of the little Beetle’s heated interior it woke him up and sent an ache through the wound in his leg.
The line of restaurants and bistros, lit by fairy lights in the bare-branched trees, was a hubbub of diners tucked in from the cold. Plenty sat outside in al-fresco dining areas wrapped in giant plastic tents to keep the cold night out. Their restaurant was called Le Nook, and it was dark inside, black-stained timber paneling and dim light fixtures with exposed orange-glowing globes. The side walls were lined with booths that sat six apiece, and the center area of the restaurant was taken up by a long U-shaped bar crammed with suits and pencil skirts. Waiters were dressed in black, liveried like old-school barbers complete with elastic armbands that kept their rolled-up shirt-sleeves in place. Walker and Muertos made their way amid the low background din of people talking in close, conspiratorially, like they were plotting Machiavellian maneuvers at work or life, or both. The food was deconstructed French fare—not Michelin-star, not a bistro, it was somewhere in between, with portion sizes that would leave Walker wanting a burger on the way out.
Walker followed Muertos around the left of the bar and toward a booth down the back. Each booth was full of animated patrons but for the one Muertos stopped at. There, a small woman sat in solace. She was about forty years old with short dark hair and porcelain-pale skin, and she bubbled with even more nervous energy than Walker had seen in Muertos. By the shadows thrown by the small candles on the table and dull light globe dangling above, the woman’s eyes were big and searching.
“Really?” Overton asked, recognition in her eyes.
“Sally, this is Jed Walker, he’s helping me,” Muertos said. “Walker, this is Sally Overton.”
“Hi,” Walker said, hand outstretched. Overton hesitated, then took his hand in hers and shook it. Her hand was small, soft, cold.
Muertos slid in first, sitting opposite Overton, and Walker took off his jacket and sat beside Muertos on the worn, tactile leather bench. The table was fixed in place, and the gap between Walker and the table was just big enough to be considered comfortable.
A waiter came and poured sparkling water and asked if they were ready for menus.
“Sure,” Walker said, taking them before the women could object. He could feel their eyes on him as he put two menus on the table and opened his. Eat when you can, rest when you can was about the only motto he continued to live by from his days in the military.
“I’m sorry,” Overton said, looking to Walker. “What are you doing here?”
“Like Muertos said, I’m helping her out.”
“I mean—”
“I don’t work for anyone,” Walker said, closing his menu. “I was with the Air Force and the CIA for near-on twenty years all up, then State for a little bit. Muertos came to me because our interests overlap.”
Overton let silence hang in the air for a moment, as though weighing and computing that information, then said, “You don’t look old enough for all that.”
“Good genes.”
“You went to the Air Force Academy?”
Walker nodded.
“My father went there,” Overton said. “Missed the air and altitude so much he retired to Colorado.”
“Smart guy, it’s a beautiful state,” Walker said.
Overton asked, “And what do you do now?”
“Now I freelance.”
“You’re a private contractor?”
“No,” Walker said, scanning over the menu. “I’m not that organized. Or driven. I just help out where I can.”
“And what is it that’s driving you now?”
“My father might be connected with this,” Walker said, then looked to Muertos.
“Walker’s father was in Syria,” Muertos said to her friend. “He was there when everything went wrong—when Almasi fled.”
“We need to talk about that,” Overton said looking toward the bar. “You need to tell me what happened there.”
“Sure,” Muertos said. “But so you know, Walker is helping me unravel this in the hope he can figure out the connection to his father. We need to find Almasi. Walker wants to find his father.”
“Who’s your father?” Overton asked.
“He was an academic,” Walker said. “In foreign policy and international relations.”
“He was a spook?” Overton said.
“Never confirmed,” Walker said. “But he did a lot of moonlighting for various administrations over the years, so I’m sure he was on the Agency payroll on and off throughout his career. We’ve had what you’d call a difficult relationship of late. I just want to find him, get some answers about all this mess.”
Overton looked uneasy when she said, “Everyone’s looking for somebody.”
“What’s that mean?” Walker asked.
Overton hesitated, then looked to Muertos and said, “There was no news from the field about your team being hit, until a couple of hours ago. It’s just made the wires now—and it’s been spun as something else entirely.”
“Spun as what?” Muertos asked. She stared at Overton, who avoided her eye contact by looking to Walker. “Five of our people were killed there, Sally. What are they saying?”
“State reported it as all five staff lost in an aircraft crash,” Overton said.
There was silence around the table for a full ten seconds.
“Why would they do that?” Muertos asked. “It’s a blatant lie, and it’ll get out as a lie, and then it’ll look even worse.”
“Officially, if you could get an answer?” Overton said. “They’d say it was because of operational security.”
“And unofficially?” Muertos asked.
“The State Department’s covering someone’s butt,” Overton said. “I think they were ordered to.” She looked from Muertos to Walker, and back, then leaned forward across the table. “And I think it’s because of Almasi.”
21
“When I heard from you,” Overton said to Muertos, “I asked for a team of my own to track Almasi should he turn up stateside. And hand-picked agents—not just a couple of bumbling Homeland agents—I mean full twenty-four-seven surveillance, by my guys. My Director okayed it, but he then rescinded it about an hour later, saying it was out of our hands and I was to cease and desist all inquiries into what he described as the Syrian problem.”
“Problem?” Muertos said. She paused to retain a sense of calm. “We lost American lives, and they’re stonewalling?”
Overton looked to her hands, fidgeting on the table in front of her.
“Muertos said you can track the money from that meet?” Walker said. “Some kind of newfangled nano-tech.”
“That . . .” Overton leaned forward again, and looked from Walker to Muertos, her expression hard. “That was highly
classified, Rach.”
“Almasi handled the money,” Muertos said. She looked at her friend across the table, unflinching. “Can you track him or not?”
Overton sat back in her booth seat and looked uneasy.
“I assure you,” Walker said to Overton, “whatever classified stuff is going on, you have nothing to worry about from me.” He tapped the side of his head. “I’ve got a whole bunch of big secret stuff up here, and that’s where it’s staying.”
“And what would you do,” Overton said, glancing back to Walker with a resigned look, “if you found Almasi? What then?”
“My understanding is that he can lead us to the American connection to the smuggling outfit,” Walker said. “We need that information to work up the chain. Find where the buck stops. Find out what’s happening in Homeland—because he’s got at least one highly placed contact there. Getting to Almasi will bring answers for all of us.”
“Look, after Syria . . .” Overton said, again looking down at her hands, her fingers tightly interlinked. “My hands are tied. The multi-agency investigation has been shifted away.”
“Away?” Muertos said.
“Broken up, and put back together into smaller teams, looking at different groups,” Overton said. “And no longer in Syria; it’s deemed far too hot. They’ve been sent to Egypt and Libya, with smaller outposts in Turkey and Iraq.”
“Jesus . . .” Muertos said, leaning back and shaking her head. “They really don’t give a damn do they?”
“They closed down all Syria operations?” Walker asked.
Overton nodded. “Like I said—we’ve got nothing to do with Syria anymore.”
“They can’t do that!” Muertos said, then looked around for fear of being overheard. She needn’t have worried—the sound of the full restaurant and bar was enough to drown out any eavesdropping. “Why would they do that?”
“Officially, it’s too dangerous,” Overton said.
“Yeah, Sally, I kinda know that,” Muertos said. “But that’s not what we do. If America ran away from everywhere dangerous, where would the world be?”
“I don’t make the rules, Rach,” Overton said, and there was sadness or desperation in her eyes. “I’m sorry. But it was never meant to cost lives.”
“Never meant to—do they know the stakes here?” Muertos shook her head. “This isn’t what we do—we don’t turn our backs because we’re scared. We double down. They kill our people? We should send in a bigger team, with bigger security. We hurt them, we send in the Marines.”
“They won’t allow it,” Overton said. “I argued where I could.”
“Who’s they?” Walker asked.
The waiter came and asked for orders, and to get rid of him Walker ordered pommes frites and a bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône Syrah.
“Who’s they?” Walker repeated, once the waiter had departed. “Who’s calling the shots on this?”
Overton said, “The lead agency is Department of Homeland Security.”
Walker looked to Muertos.
“It’s a border-security issue,” Overton said, and it was clear by her demeanor that she was trying to get a read on that look between them. “State Department handled the inter-country liaison and the joint taskforces in the field. We, with the help of Treasury, handled the money. FBI had investigators on it, there were a few CIA liaisons, as well as Naval Intelligence, DIA and NSA all putting resources on the table. But ultimately the buck stops with Homeland.”
Walker said, “Do you know who it is at Homeland?”
“I don’t, but it falls within Deputy Secretary Daniel Harvey’s wheelhouse, though he’s probably too holier-than-thou to have any direct hand in it.”
Walker and Muertos shared another look.
“What?” Overton said.
“Nothing,” Walker replied. “It’s just we had a run-in with a couple of guys earlier today. They paid me a not-so-pleasant hospital visit.”
“A couple of guys . . .” Overton said.
“A couple of Homeland agents,” Muertos said. “They attacked us.”
“Why would they do that?” Overton asked.
Muertos shrugged.
Walker watched her, and Muertos shot him a sideways glance and he kept quiet. He wondered about the dynamic between them. He knew that there were things Muertos was keeping from him, now he knew that she was keeping information from a long-time friend. And not just any friend—a friend on whom she was relying to provide answers and Intel that would propel them onward.
“Right, well, the joke is that Homeland is populated by agents the other departments and agencies reject,” Overton said, shaking her head. “It’d be funny if it wasn’t half-true. But the thing is, Homeland modeling puts the illegal immigration at about half a million per year. Which is down from five years ago, and that success means they’re being given all that they ask for.”
Walker said, “How much of that success is because they’re policing the borders more?”
“A big part,” Overton said. “But we suspect there’s a big increase in those with false papers, even getting through our biometric scans with legitimate-looking ID.”
“How are they beating the biometrics?” Walker asked.
“It didn’t make news,” Overton said, “but our border fingerprints and retinal scans have gone through some serious glitches. At one point they reckoned one in ten passing through Customs was not properly identified or tagged. Homeland says they’ve got it patched now, and that it’s somewhere outside their one-in-a-thousand mandated ratio of acceptable error.”
“Where are the refugees facilitated by Almasi getting through?” Walker asked.
“Refugees in name only,” Overton replied. “I’m sure Rach knows more about it than me.”
“I told Walker about those paying the big bucks for the new lives here,” Muertos said. “With all the trimmings when they arrive.”
Overton shook her head. “There are taskforces on that, and a lot of it’s driven by DEA as much as Homeland. But Homeland has their own Counter-Narc Department, which steps on the DEA’s toes and cuts their lunch all the time—believe me, I’m well aware at every turn that I’m in the Department of Justice umbrella, and that we won’t be that surprised if the DEA and FBI and the rest of us are all absorbed into Homeland one day soon. Whatever, all our agencies have got arrangements in place with smuggling networks on the other side of the Mexican border. If there was ever a big influx of Mid East illegals via those channels all hell would break loose, and they know that. So, there’s kind of an unofficial alliance in place.”
“Right,” Walker said. “So, unlike the others, who are using the coasts and the Mexican and Canadian borders, Almasi’s illegals are getting through at airports, right through TSA?”
“Yes,” Overton said. “Right under Homeland’s nose. That was always the joint taskforce’s driving force, to find out how.”
“He’s getting them in through the front door,” Muertos said, for the benefit of Walker. “Social security, IDs, housing, jobs, the works.”
“Yep,” Overton said. “He’s more connected to legit IDs on a scale we’ve not seen, hence the green light to put our nano-tracked cash out in the field.”
“And the big multi-agency taskforce,” Muertos added. She shook her head. “I can’t believe they’ve shut it down. After all the work . . .”
“Did you track Almasi, via the money?” Walker asked Overton.
“That’s . . .” Overton looked from Walker to Muertos, and her voice wavered when she said, “not that simple.”
22
The waiter came and poured the wine. Overton wrung her hands, took a few breaths. Muertos reached over the table, put a hand on Overton’s and squeezed. The waiter departed.
“It’s okay,” Muertos said. “Tell us what you can, and we’ll do everything we can to fix it.”
Overton nodded, sipped her wine, and then said, “Okay, we tracked the cash. The nano-trackers attach to anyone who comes in contact with t
hose people—shaking hands, brushing against them. A day after your meet, the cash was put through a casino in Monaco to be laundered. The trick was tracking the right contact up until that point—Almasi and three others handled the money that day in Syria, so we kept on all four of those. We tracked them until yesterday, when it was shut down. Now I don’t have access. No one does.”
Muertos asked, “Who ordered that?”
“Someone high-up at Homeland?” Walker suggested.
Overton nodded and was silent for a beat. Then she said, “Two of the contacts—both known to us—stayed in Syria, then crossed into Israel, where they remained. Mossad had eyeballs on them, and we crossed them off. The other two we tracked went to Monaco, via boat. They stayed a night there, and we had them ID’d at the same hotel, two different levels of accommodation—standard room, and presidential suite. We took the presidential suite to be Almasi, and we managed to hack the hotel’s security cameras and we got confirmation. The other guy was Almasi’s right-hand man, Bahar. The next day both men took a flight to London, where they hired a car and went to a hotel in the city for four hours, before heading back to Heathrow and taking a flight to DC.”
“So, they’re here.” Muertos looked to Walker.
“They got into the US without any problems?” Walker asked.
Overton nodded. “Neither is on an official watchlist, and each entered with false papers and biometrics.”
Muertos said, “Which we know Almasi’s contact here can arrange.”
Overton nodded again.
“Do you have any thoughts as to why he would come to DC?” Muertos asked. “This is the lion’s den of security services and surveillance. Why not JFK and get lost in the masses, where we know he’s entered before?”
Overton shrugged and sipped her wine.
“Because he’s not afraid,” Walker said. “He knows someone up high has his back, so why not walk right in through the front door.”