Buried Beneath

by Debbie Baldwin

At Steady's raised brow, Cam shrugged. “Mrs. Jones taught science.”

  Both men laughed, and Steady redirected the telescope toward the sky. “There's a meteor shower tonight. Starts in about twenty minutes. Beer's in the cooler, and Maggie dropped off some snacks.” Steady pointed to the supplies on the blanket.

  “Sweet.” Cam parked next to the food as Steady snagged them each a beer and took a seat on the blanket.

  “So no luck at the bar last night? I saw you sneak out solo.” Steady grabbed a handful of the seasoned popcorn.

  Cam took a pull on his beer. “Wasn’t feelin’ it, you know?”

  “Not even a little. I’m pretty much always feelin’ it. Shit, I’m spying on my neighbor.” Steady swung his beer bottle toward the other house.

  Cam laid back, resting his head on his forearm. “I guess I’ve just been a little off lately.”

  “Dude, you were pretending to be someone else for what? A year?” Steady asked.

  “Two,” Cam replied.

  “Cut yourself some slack. My dad always says you gotta be comfortable with you before you can get comfortable with anyone else,” Steady commented absently.

  Cam lifted his head. “Yeah, that's… yeah. Good advice.”

  Steady rested his forearms on his knees and looked out at the water. “Of course, I never liked you much on the Teams. Swooping in and stealing all the ladies. Maybe this new you will be a little more magnanimous.”

  “Oh, damn.” Cam pointed toward the house they’d been scoping out. “She's naked coming out of the shower.”

  Steady turned so fast the open beer fell from his hand and erupted at his feet.

  “Psych.” Cam laid back, his hands locked behind his head, and grinned.

  Steady dumped the foamy beer in the sand and fished another out of the cooler. “Asshole.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  New York City

  December 2

  C

  am got out of the Uber and scanned the block. He didn’t know Spanish Harlem well, but he knew one of his former colleagues in Dario Sava's organization, Luis, had moved here after Sava's death to live with his cousins. Cam didn’t even want to guess at the nature of his current employment. Luis had instructed Cam to meet him at a bar called El Vaquero. Cam rounded the corner onto 115th street and spotted it. Two Latin men were smoking out front listening to a third man playing a guitar and singing. Cam pulled out his wallet—Miguel Ramirez's wallet—and dropped a few bills into the musician's open guitar case, nodded to the men, and pulled open the door.

  It took a second to adjust to the lighting—or lack thereof. A half-lit neon Corona sign buzzed over the pitted bar to the left, and a handful of round tables filled the remaining space. Luis was sitting at the back table with a white guy with blond hair Cam had never seen before. The man wore an expensive suit and had the bearing of an operator. Despite the alarm bells clanging in his head, Cam shifted his mind to his cover, Miguel Ramirez, crossed to the table, and took a seat.

  “Eres el pendejo que me está buscando?” Are you the asshole who is looking for me?

  “You are Miguel Ramirez, correct?” the blond man asked.

  Before Cam had confirmed his identity, the door opened, and two more white guys entered and hovered by the entrance. Cam silently cursed.

  Luis answered for him, “He's Miguel.”

  The man withdrew a thick envelope from the breast pocket of his jacket and tossed it across the table.

  Cam went to take the money, pulled a bill from the stack, and held it up to the light. At the same time, Luis withdrew a syringe from his jacket and swung it. Cam felt the prick of the needle in his neck and grabbed Luis's forearm as he compressed the plunger. Cam jumped from his seat, knocking his chair over in the process. He rammed Luis's head into the table then stumbled to the filthy floor. Luis held his bloody nose, snatched up the envelope of money, and ran out the back.

  Cam tried to stagger to his feet as the two men each took an arm and hauled him up. He reached for the cell phone on the table but fumbled, and the device clattered to the floor with a crack. One of the men holding him raised a booted foot and crushed it.

  It didn’t matter. The phone was an untraceable burner Twitch had given him for the New York trip. When the front door to the bar opened, everything got very bright, then very black.

  The buzzing cell phone had The Conductor setting aside the well-worn copy of Tolstoy's Master and Man.

  “You have news.” It was not a question.

  The voice on the other end did not bother with a salutation. “Your puppets are dancing.”

  The Conductor waited in silence.

  “As you suspected, Camilo Canto, a.k.a. Miguel Ramirez, is no longer with The CIA. He's working for some bodyguard business in the States. We provided the information as instructed. Luis Flores made contact, and Canto was acquired in New York.”

  “And Señor Flores? Is he still with us?”

  “I took the liberty of trimming that loose thread,” the voice on the line explained.

  “Very good. You’ve done well.”

  “Thank you,” the voice replied.

  “Keep me apprised.”

  Now, with Camilo Canto otherwise occupied, it was time to uncover the CIA officer's secrets.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Washington, DC

  December 2

  T

  he distinguished Senator Harlan Musgrave rapped his knuckles on the file in front of him.

  The old, pine desk was modest, dwarfed by the size of the office. It had been his grandfather's desk from his childhood home on their family farm, and Harlan Musgrave made a big show of telling the story to visitors and colleagues. Never forget where you come from. The strength of the tree is from the roots. He said it so often that his assistant, a sycophant named Arlo, unconsciously mouthed the words in awe as his boss spoke them. It was a lie, of course. The closest his grandfather had ever come to a desk was standing before a judge.

  He glanced out the window at the low buildings, a blanket of gray promising snow. It was beautiful. It wasn’t merely harsh winters and time that had buffeted the eighteenth and nineteenth-century architecture; like the people of his adopted town, the buildings had been sullied over the years by crime and corruption. He placed his palm flat on the glass, secure in the knowledge that he had contributed substantially to the adulteration.

  Musgrave stood and began to pace across the cavernous office. He was a big man in every sense of the word, tall and broad, loud and imposing. He had a limp from an old football injury that he exaggerated when it suited him, but now he wore through the carpet with a steady stride.

  He paced when he had a problem. And The Conductor's most recent request was indeed a problem.

  Drugs, weapons, women, antiquities, hell, if a goddamned Indonesian white cockatoo was being smuggled in a drainpipe, The Conductor knew about it. And collected. No one, no one, moved illegal goods without going through him. And if they tried, The Conductor arranged for one of the customs agents or CIA officers in his pocket to get a well-deserved bust, which also served to make his people look good.

  Power and connections had enabled Musgrave to line his pockets for decades. Bribes, blackmail, graft: nothing was beneath him. It wasn’t, however, until he crossed paths with The Conductor that he realized he had merely been dabbling.

  Perhaps crossed paths was not the correct term. He had never actually met The Conductor, never even laid eyes on the man. Communication was handled through assistants and assistants to assistants. Even the one time he had been invited onto the yacht, The Maestro, he hadn’t had the pleasure of an introduction. For twenty hours, he had indulged in every vice the mind could conceive—and even a few he had never imagined. He mingled with models and celebrities and partook in sex and drugs as casually as playing a deck-top game of shuffleboard. When the time came for business, two executive assistants sat with him at a small conference table and outlined expectations and compensation. No phones or electr
onics of any sort were permitted at the meeting. Harlan correctly surmised that, like him, The Conductor wasn’t foolish enough to presume he was above the law, that his money, ruthlessness, and power had moved him beyond the wingspan of justice. Quite the contrary. Law enforcement evolved as quickly and momentously as crime. The Conductor, with meticulous care, never revealing himself, never trusting anyone, operated in the shadows. He hadn’t evaded law enforcement and government probes by being careless. Musgrave looked on The Conductor with the kind of awe usually reserved for the looks he received from others.

  Harlan almost laughed out loud. No one in his world had the slightest suspicion of the dark depths he plumbed. They certainly wouldn’t dare to imagine an association with The Conductor. After all, The Conductor didn’t exist. Harlan made sure of it. The Conductor was a myth, a dark web fairytale, a conspiracy theory, and Harlan Musgrave was paid handsomely to ensure that's how it stayed.

  To date, The Conductor's demands had been expected and reasonable, but this most recent request would prove to be a bit more of a challenge. No matter. He may have even relished the opportunity to show The Conductor his power.

  Camilo Canto.

  Discovering the identity of a NOC officer was next to impossible, but The Conductor had done it. Now Musgrave had been tasked with locating a piece of evidence the spy may have stashed anywhere in the world. That was a bit of a challenge. This spook, Canto, had dirt on The Conductor that must be found and destroyed. The “destroyed” part was easy. It was the “found” aspect of the assignment that was vexing. The best Musgrave had managed up to this point was having Canto followed.

  A soft knock on the thick door interrupted his contemplation. His assistant, Arlo, held the exterior knob and leaned into the room. “Senator Musgrave? The Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism meeting starts in fifteen minutes.”

  The senator pasted on a grin. “I’d forget my shoes if my feet didn’t freeze. Thank you, Arlo. I’ll head over shortly.”

  Arlo returned his boss's smile and retreated.

  Musgrave ran a hand across his smooth jaw, dreading what he was about to do, but there was no way around it. Failing The Conductor was not an option. He returned to his desk, grabbed the cell phone he used for such matters, and placed the call.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Bishop Security

  Somewhere outside Beaufort, South Carolina

  December 2

  W

  hen a shadow fell across his desk, Nathan Bishop looked up to see Miller “Tox” Buchanan eclipsing the overhead lighting. He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable.

  Nathan set down Cam's leather journal. “Everything okay?”

  “Got a sec?” Tox asked.

  Nathan gestured to the suede and chrome chair opposite his desk, and Tox folded his six and a half feet into it with surprising grace.

  “How's Emily?” Tox drummed out a rhythm on the arms of the chair.

  Nathan checked his phone then replaced it face down on the desk. “Still a few weeks out.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “What's going on?”

  “So, uh, we pulled the goalie,” Tox said.

  “What does that mean?” Nathan asked.

  “It's a hockey metaphor,” Tox explained.

  “For…?” Nathan prodded.

  “The female reproductive system.” Tox's face reddened.

  “Ahh.” Nathan nodded his understanding.

  “The goalie being birth control, the net being Calliope's uterus, the stick and the puck—”

  Nathan cut him off, “Yeah. I got the picture. Congratulations, man. That's great. Jack and Charlie need some younger kids to corrupt.”

  Tox half-laughed. “The thing is, nothing's happening.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She's not pregnant yet.” Tox threw up his hands.

  “Well, how long ago did you… ‘pull the goalie?’” Nathan borrowed Tox's metaphor.

  “The honeymoon.” Tox bugged out his eyes, emphasizing the situation.

  “That was two months ago,” Nathan stated.

  “Exactly. You get it.”

  “Tox, I realize I’m not the typical case when it comes to fertility, but from what little I know, two months sounds like nothing.” Nathan entered something on the search bar on his phone. “Says on WebDoctor that the average length of time is six months to a year.”

  “A year!” Tox leapt to his feet.

  “You’ve got to relax. It’ll happen when it happens,” Nathan soothed.

  “You sound like Calliope.” Tox sank back down.

  “Is she concerned?” Nathan asked.

  “Calliope? Fuck no. She's so fucking Zen about the whole thing; it makes me want to put a fist through the drywall.” Tox ran a hand over his stubbled head.

  Nathan finally released the laugh that had been building. “You know I’m not a Zen guy, but in this case, she's right. Don’t invite trouble. Hell, it's no imposition to keep trying.”

  The thought lit Tox's face. “Yeah, that's true. I do enjoy the trying.”

  Before Tox could lift himself from the chair to leave, a frantic knock on Nathan's open door had both men looking up. Nathan looked across the room and spotted Twitch holding her laptop and shifting her weight from one pink Converse to the other. “Something's not right, boss.”

  “What's up?” Nathan gestured to the other seat.

  “We know Cam went to New York to try to get some intel on who was asking about his old identity,” Twitch said.

  Nathan nodded along. Tox listened.

  “And we know he was planning to meet with his former handler after that to determine how to proceed,” she continued.

  Taking the remaining chair, Twitch set her laptop on the opposite side of Nathan's desk and typed as she spoke. “According to Sofria, Cam hasn’t contacted his handler.” Sofria Kirk was a CIA analyst who had helped them in the past. She and Twitch had become good friends.

  “I don’t think that's cause for panic,” Nathan said.

  “But this is.” She rotated her computer screen so Nathan could see the grid with the blinking dot. “Calls don’t go through, but the tracking chip is functioning.”

  Twitch had installed a modified tracking chip on all Bishop Security phones that continued to send a signal for up to two weeks after a phone had been disabled.

  “According to this, Cam, or at least his phone, is still in Spanish Harlem at the bar where he was supposed to meet that Luis guy… four hours ago,” Twitch explained, her concern evident.

  Nathan texted the Bishop Security office in New York. After dispatching two men uptown to assess the situation, he set his phone on the glass-topped desk and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “There's no indication he's been blown. The communication was with Miguel Ramirez. For all we know, he met with his contact and went willingly to another location. Whoever it was may have insisted he leave his phone so he couldn’t be tracked,” Nathan offered.

  “I also got the info on that license plate,” Twitch added.

  She reached for her laptop. Nathan had come to think of it as her security blanket as well as a tool of her trade. She brought up the information.

  “The Ford Explorer belongs to a small security firm in Charleston. From the website, it looks like they mostly do event security and some P.I. work. They also need a cybersecurity expert because their firewalls are nonexistent.”

  “Any idea who hired them?” Nathan asked.

  “I know the who but not the why. Or if Cam was even their target.” She ran her fingers across the keyboard. “The firm currently has three active clients, two out of Charleston and one out of Washington. The DC client is listed as John Smith. Payment was wired from the bank account of Harlan Musgrave.”

  Tox sat up in his chair. “Senator Harlan Musgrave?”

  Twitch held up her hand. “The job was terminated yesterday.”

  Nathan reached for the landline on his desk. “We need to spe
ak with Cam's handler.”

  “Um, I’m assuming you don’t just call the CIA's main number and press two for handlers,” Tox remarked.

  Nathan chuffed. “Not quite.”

  He picked up the handset and dialed. Then put the phone on speaker.

  “DDO Sorensen's Office,” A pinched voice announced.

  “Is she available? Nathan Bishop calling.”

  While Nathan waited for the call to connect, he watched Twitch do a quick search. Her eyebrows shot to her hairline. Jennifer Sorenson was Deputy Director of Operations for National Clandestine Services at the CIA. In government acronym speak, the DDO of NCS.

  “Hi, Nathan. How are you?” Jennifer Sorenson greeted.

  “Good, good. And you? How's Dave?”

  “He's great. Loves the new job. Has that baby made an appearance yet?”

  “Christmas, we think.” Nathan unconsciously checked his cell phone.

  “What's up?”

  Nathan explained the situation with Cam to the DDO. Sorenson had come up through the ranks, so she understood, as only a former undercover officer could, the red flags that were flying. She arranged for Nathan to meet with Cam's former handler. After ending the call, he directed his attention to Twitch.

  Twitch smirked. “Friends in high places, huh?”

  Nathan shrugged. “I knew her at Dartmouth. You’d never peg her for a spook. Probably why she was so good at her job.”

  Nathan's father had helmed a prominent private defense contracting company, and his Uncle Charlie, who routinely helped them out, was a former Secretary of Defense. Nathan may have had a troubled childhood, but his family connections had their advantages.

  Nathan continued, “I don’t know what his handler is willing or able to share. Twitch, you are our best asset for information gathering. Start digging. We know this has some connection to Dario Sava because Miguel Ramirez was his cover for that op, and for the year after, hunting down Sava's associates. Do whatever you have to do. We aren’t at DEFCON 5 yet, but I want to be ready.”

  “Copy that, boss.” She grabbed her laptop and stood. Nathan thumbed the worn leather journal on his desk.