The Pandora Deception--A Novel

by David Bruns

  Reedy Voice’s tone went sharp. “Let me rephrase my question: Did you maintain a low profile, as instructed?”

  In her report, Rachel had been open about Neema’s warning that her cover might have been compromised. She could have left it out, but what was the point? They always found out. Always. Better to be honest about every detail up front and deal with the consequences than be called a liar later.

  “I was working with a local prostitute who had provided valuable information in other contexts. I deemed her to be reliable.”

  One of the female panel members spoke up. “How does that work?” Her voice betrayed a hint of distaste that set Rachel’s teeth on edge.

  “The street girls in that region are mostly from neighboring Tanzania, there to make money to send home. We have observed how al-Shabab often used prostitutes as proxies to gather information about corruption within the local police department. They’re called the Mata Hari network. We used the same infrastructure for our operation.”

  The woman pressed the point. “And you considered their information reliable?”

  Rachel shrugged. “I was satisfied.”

  The woman did not seem to share Rachel’s assessment, but Reedy interrupted her. “Back to the matter at hand, Ms. Jaeger. Were you compromised?”

  For Noam’s benefit, Rachel pretended to consider Reedy’s question. Then she said, “I decided it was worth the risk.”

  Her answer was greeted with a scowl. “So, you proceeded to enter the bar and make contact with the target, is that correct?”

  Rachel remembered every detail of Estrella’s Bar like it was last night. The tacky beer signs, the Scotsman who tried to hit on her, and Abdul Wenje’s sleeves rolled up to show off his magnificent biceps as he leaned his chair against the back wall.

  But now she saw details she had missed. The way Wenje watched her as he checked his mobile phone every few moments and sent out text messages.

  She’d broken the cardinal rule of her business, the thing that kept field officers alive: Patience. The willingness to walk away. If she had been less anxious to finish the job, she might have broken off contact and figured out another way to get Wenje.

  Now she was dealing with the consequences of her decision.

  “And what was the result of your contact with the target?” Reedy asked.

  “It was a trap,” Rachel said.

  “Can you elaborate, please?” The smugness had returned.

  “The plan was to make contact with Wenje as an undercover prostitute, lure him to the beach with the promise of sex, and inject him with the drug that I had hidden in my purse.”

  “And what happened?” Reedy’s tone took on a slight note of triumph.

  Rachel made eye contact with every member of the panel. Reedy leaned toward her, but the others pretended to find their paperwork intensely interesting.

  “I made contact with the target,” Rachel said. “I lured him out of the bar and convinced him to go to the beach with me. It was a setup. On the way to the beach, we were intercepted by a second man, one of Wenje’s, who had the body of my informant with him.”

  “That’s when you realized you had been betrayed by your informant?”

  Rachel recalled the bloody pulp that had been Neema’s face. She saw the flash of her neon-yellow halter top in the dim light of the alley.

  “I was not betrayed,” she said. “The informant was tortured. Beaten to death.”

  Reedy’s bright demeanor dimmed a notch. “I see.”

  “Then I completed my mission,” Rachel said.

  “You just stated that a second man arrived, so you continued your mission?”

  “I said I completed my mission,” Rachel said. “I had two men who wanted to kill me. I killed them first.”

  Reedy exchanged glances with the rest of the panel. “You administered the poison to the target?”

  Rachel shook her head. “I used the poison on the second man. I was forced to kill the primary target by other means.”

  “Other means? What other means?”

  Rachel leaned toward the microphone. “I killed him with my shoe.”

  The two women on the panel gasped and Reedy looked uncomfortable. “You killed him with your shoe?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel saw Noam lift his head. There was a tiny upward teasing of the corners of his mouth. He was enjoying this.

  “I was wearing high heels.” She held her fingers apart to show the height of the heel. “It was a weapon of opportunity. I used the pointy part and jammed it into his brain.”

  Reedy struggled to regain his composure.

  “I see,” he said. “And then you dispatched the second man using the poison which was originally intended for the target. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  He cleared his throat. “Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Jaeger. If you could please wait in the hall while we consider this case.”

  Rachel paced up and down the deserted hall, her high heels tapping on the shiny linoleum. She hugged her arms across her chest in the chill of the air-conditioning.

  “What the hell was that all about, Noam?” she said. “Who was that guy?”

  Noam shrugged, a gentle heave of his broad shoulders. “Some politician’s kid probably. They give him a few cases and he feels special because he talked to field operatives like yourself. This was supposed to be a formality.” He glared at Rachel. “Did you have to tell them about the high heels? Your report said ‘weapon of opportunity,’ right? You could have left it at that.”

  Rachel grinned. “Did you see the look on his face when I told him?”

  Noam’s angry exterior cracked and he laughed, a deep rumbling in his chest. “High-heeled shoe … that was a good one.”

  The door to the inquiry room opened and one of the female panel members beckoned them back into the room. When Rachel and Noam had reseated themselves, Reedy took charge of the proceedings again.

  “In the judgment of this panel the actions of Officer Rachel Jaeger in the lawful execution of terrorist Abdul Wenje were justified.” His eyes glared at her over the rim of his glasses. “However, the panel is concerned about Ms. Jaeger’s attitude toward the sensitive nature of kill operations. Specifically, the low-profile nature of this mission was designated to minimize international tensions. Her actions led to potential compromise of the Israeli government and she should be administratively disciplined for her error in judgment.”

  As the panel vacated the room, Rachel leaned over to Noam. “So, you’re going to administratively discipline me?” She smiled wickedly.

  Noam’s massive head swiveled toward her. He did not appear to be sharing her sense of amusement. “You’re ordered back to Scorpion’s Ascent. Immediately.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Seattle, Washington

  Dusty’s Bar was sandwiched between a sushi restaurant and an ice cream shop advertising something called the Volcano Sundae. The narrow entrance, framed in distressed wood and set back from the street, was a black glass door that offered no hint of the interior.

  JP pushed inside and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. This was his final stop of a whirlwind recruiting trip around the world. After Madagascar, he had gone to Egypt, then two stops in Europe and now the United States. His body was time-zone confused and all he wanted to do was go home to Talia.

  But first, he had one more deal to strike.

  Rustic wood tables and matching chairs dotted the room. Ancient iron stools lined a bar made to look like an old-style saloon with a mirrored back wall. The waitresses wore cowboy hats, short denim miniskirts, and tight gingham shirts tied up to bare their midriffs. The air smelled of stale beer and the mildewed sawdust that covered the floor.

  A row of worn leather-cushioned booths lined the far wall. The only person in the place at 2:00 P.M. on a Wednesday afternoon occupied a booth far from the window. He hunched over his phone. In front of him, lined up precisely, were three long-neck beer bottles
and three empty shot glasses.

  JP had grown a salt-and-pepper goatee, and he wore round tortoiseshell eyeglasses. He approached the booth slowly, shuffling his feet as he moved. He allowed his shoulders to slump inside his worn tweed jacket.

  “Jason Winslow? Dr. Jason Winslow?” Instead of his normal confident baritone he phrased everything with a questioning lilt on the end. Apologetically, as if he expected the answer to be no.

  “Who’s asking?” Winslow replied without looking up. He wasn’t slurring his words yet, but he was well on his way to drunkenness.

  “May I buy you a drink?” JP asked.

  The question earned him a look away from the phone. JP quickly averted his gaze.

  “Well?” Winslow let the question hang in the air.

  JP extended his hand slowly, hesitantly. “My name is Harold Mortimer,” he said. “I’m from…” He paused, lowering his voice. “I represent…” JP named a Fortune 500 genetics company based in the US.

  Winslow slid out of the booth and stood to shake JP’s hand. The shorter man came to JP’s shoulder and his midsection sagged over his beltline. JP’s top-down view of Winslow confirmed that the man had dyed his thinning hair and wore a toupee over his bald spot, neither of which did anything to make him look younger than his fifty-seven years. He wore contacts that left his eyes looking irritated and yellowed.

  He was a repulsive human being, but necessary. JP smiled as they shook hands.

  Winslow repeated the name of the company in a loud voice. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  JP lowered his voice again. “I am here … I’m here on a matter of some delicacy.”

  Winslow’s eyes narrowed. “Delicacy? I don’t understand.”

  He was fishing, JP knew. Trying to figure out whether JP knew about his suspension from the university. Better to let him dangle a bit.

  “I was hoping we could talk a bit about your work?” JP said.

  Winslow relaxed, revealing a gap between his two prominent front teeth. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers at the waitress deep in conversation with the bartender.

  “Jenny, babe, bring us a couple of drinks, willya?” The girl at the bar rolled her eyes but nodded. Winslow pointed to the open side of the booth and reseated himself. He swept the empty shot glasses and beer bottles against the wall.

  He grinned at JP. “I like to come here on Wednesday afternoons. I’ve got my eye on that little number over there at the bar.” He jerked his chin toward Jenny, still at the bar.

  The waitress overheard them. “In your dreams, Jason.”

  Winslow blew her a kiss, then turned back to JP. “You said you wanted to talk about my work?”

  JP nodded, overdoing the gesture like he was nervous. “Yes, please, I’d like to hear the progress you’ve made at your dig site.”

  Winslow leaned back into the cushions of the booth and spread his hands across the table. “We’ve made magnificent progress. Our preliminary samples indicate we’ve discovered an ancient settlement. The permafrost up there is like one enormous freezer. Specimens are preserved in pristine condition. So far, we’ve found mastodon bones, stone tools, pottery shards—”

  “Any human remains?” JP asked.

  Winslow looked at him sharply. “Not yet, but we’re close. When you’ve spent as much time above the Arctic Circle as I have, you get a feel for these things and I can feel it. This is my life’s work. I know what the hell I’m talkin’ about.”

  The laziness in his tone was gone, and his voice took on an intensity that reinforced to JP that he had found his man in Winslow.

  “I thought the digging season in that part of the world was short. Isn’t it going on right now?”

  Winslow’s face twisted into a grimace. “Politics,” he spat.

  Jenny arrived with the drinks, setting a long-neck beer and a shot glass in front of each man. She sidestepped Winslow’s grasping hand. “What do you say, Jenny?” he said. “You and me? After your shift?”

  “Fuck off,” Jenny said. “And leave a decent tip this time, will you?”

  Winslow pretended to wince as if her insult had struck home. “Let me know if you change your mind,” he called to her retreating back. She replied with a middle finger.

  “It’s sort of our thing,” Winslow said to JP, exposing his teeth again. “The way Jenny and I josh back and forth. She digs me, I can tell, but she doesn’t like people to know that she’s dating an older guy, you know what I mean?”

  JP kept his expression neutral. “You were saying? About the digging season?”

  Winslow knocked back the shot in one gulp, then followed it with a long pull from the beer bottle. “Yeah, politics. That’s what I was saying. Politics.”

  “I don’t understand,” JP prompted.

  “My funding,” Winslow said. “The fuckers at the university pulled my funding. This politically correct, liberal-elite bullshit board of regents didn’t find my research ‘compelling enough’ to continue this season.” He made mocking air quotes around the term “compelling enough.”

  JP knew that was a lie. The real reason Winslow lost his funding was because he had been accused of sexual harassment. From what he’d seen in the past five minutes, those accusations were probably all true. But he’d also read Winslow’s grant proposal, and for all his vitriol, the man’s professional work was sound.

  “That’s actually why I’m here today,” JP said. “I may have a solution to your funding issue.”

  Winslow stopped in midswallow and set his beer bottle down on the table with a loud clack. “Who are you? I lose my funding and one week later you show up. That seems pretty fortuitous to me.”

  “My firm likes to keep abreast of these kinds of developments,” JP said. “And take advantage of new opportunities.”

  “New opportunities?” Winslow eyed him, his eyes greedy. “Let me guess: You fund me and keep all the results to yourself. You put your name all over my research, right? That’s what you’re after. I get this close”—he held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart—“and then you rush in and steal the spotlight.” He seized the beer bottle and drank the rest of the contents in one go. “No, sir.”

  JP waited for him to calm down. This was the most delicate part of the manipulation. Too eager and Winslow would be suspicious. Too slow and Winslow would think he was being strung along.

  “We don’t want to be named in your research at all,” JP said. “We wish to remain anonymous. The only thing we want is first access to your samples for our own research.”

  “First access? What does that mean?”

  “When you make a find—a human find—you let me harvest samples,” JP said. “The rest is up to you. You never see me again. You publish whatever you want. We want nothing other than first access to biological samples.”

  JP could see Winslow calculating, looking for a loophole, trying to see how JP was going to screw him.

  “How much?” Winslow asked.

  JP took a sip of the beer, ignoring the shot. It was a bland American lager as tasteless as carbonated water. He set the beer back down.

  “How much do you need to start right away?” JP replied.

  Winslow’s eyebrows hiked up. JP saw the wheels turning as the other man tried to figure out how much he could stick this guy for. He already knew Winslow’s lost funding from the university had been a hundred thousand dollars for the season.

  “To staff a team this late in the season and get them up there as quickly as possible is expensive. We’ve got eight weeks left…” Winslow began. He pretended to do some mental calculations. “I’d say we need two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” He watched JP’s face carefully, ready to retract the number if he got a negative reaction.

  “How about we make it an even three hundred?” JP replied. “For contingencies.”

  “That’s…” Winslow’s voice trailed off as he realized he could’ve asked for more. “That’s perfect. How soon can I get it?”

  JP slid an envelope
across the table. “Fifty thousand dollars cash. Consider that a down payment.”

  He plucked a folded sheet of paper out of his inner pocket. “This is the banking information for the balance of the funds. The account is anonymous, and we wish to remain that way. Our agreement on first access to samples is between the two of us. Is that clear?”

  Winslow fingered the fat envelope. “Absolutely.”

  JP reached into the other pocket of his jacket and pulled out a slim satellite phone and charger. He set them on the table between them. “When you find what we’re looking for, Dr. Winslow, call me immediately. After I have what I need, then the rest is yours. Publish, sell the stuff, get rich. All up to you. Is that clear?”

  Winslow nodded and licked his lips. “Perfectly.”

  “As an added incentive,” JP said. “If you find something this season and I’m able to get the samples I need, there will be another envelope for you as a bonus. I hope cash is acceptable?”

  Winslow licked his lips. “Cash is fine.”

  CHAPTER 9

  National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland—Yemen desk

  Nadia Hirsi-Simpson sighed as she considered the queue of incoming intercepts on her computer screen. She imagined computers all over the world Hoovering up streams of data from computers, mobile phones, and every other digital device. The data was sifted by algorithms, and suspicious bits were sent to analysts like her for further investigation.

  Her eyes slid to the clock in the lower right-hand corner of her monitor. Only one hour to go until the weekend. She had reservations with her husband at the new Indian restaurant on Dupont Circle, then maybe a movie … anything but listening in on the conversations of other people from the other side of the planet.

  She’d only been to Yemen once, as a teenager, a trip that still stuck with her to this day. The country she remembered was young and vibrant, full of colors and rich smells and wonderful food. But the Yemen she pictured in her mind as she translated selected intercepts might as well have been another planet. So much destruction and death …