by Tom Saric
Ellen got up, made her way to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She stared in the mirror. Has he changed? She wondered. Or are there more secrets? She rinsed her mouth and spit into the sink. Next to the soap dish was a note, in Paul’s handwriting.
Be back soon. Had to go see an old friend.
At 5:35 a.m., there was a knock at the hotel room door. Paul startled awake, thinking it was a dream. Another series of taps on the hard wood told him someone was there. He looked over at Ellen, who continued to sleep, motionless. She was the deepest sleeper he’d known.
Paul rolled out of bed, slid on his sweat pants and T-shirt and walked to the hotel door. He looked through the peephole. A man in a suit, short military haircut, with a wire poking out from under his collar to his ear.
Paul slid the chain off the door and turned the deadbolt.
“Interviews aren’t scheduled for another six hours,” Paul said.
“Sir, I’m sorry to bother you at this hour. But I’ve been asked to take you to meet someone.” He cleared his throat. “Off the record.”
Paul rubbed his eyes, trying to reorient himself. “At this time?”
“It was thought that this could be a breakfast meeting.”
“With who?”
“Sir, I work for Senator Carter.”
Paul looked at his feet and scratched his ear. For years he had thought about how he would respond to Janet Carter if he ever came face to face with her. He wondered if he could control himself from throttling her. “She wants to see me?”
The secret service agent nodded.
Paul thought he should decline. He didn’t think he could hear her thank him for saving her life. If he was only able to see a flicker of regret in her eyes, maybe he would feel vindicated.
“Just give me a minute to brush my teeth.”
Paul went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth and wrote a note to Ellen. He changed into his jeans and plaid shirt and found the cell phone he bought the day before on the vanity. He turned it on and saw that he had two bars left. In his jeans pocket he found the phone number and sent a text message hoping that he would get a response. Thirty seconds later, the phone buzzed and he looked at the screen.
I’m ready when you are.
Paul sat on a Victorian armchair inside Janet Carter’s living room across from an oil painting of a hunting scene. His hand shook as he took a sip of coffee from a bone china cup, waiting for her to appear.
Paul realized that he should feel calm. He was about to be discharged from any active duty in the National Clandestine Service; he was to be given his identity back; he could continue living with Ellen.
But the woman who was responsible for all of it was going to be sitting in front of him, wanting to say something. She had sent an agent for a reason. A pang of fear hit him. He hadn’t told Ellen where he was going, only that he would be back. He touched the cell phone in his breast pocket.
The French door opened, and Janet Carter stepped inside. She hesitated at the edge of the rug. She rubbed her hands against her beige skirt and swallowed before walking forward, arm outstretched.
“Dr. Ramsey.”
He didn’t take her hand. “Call me Paul.” If not for her he wouldn’t have the name, he thought.
She brought her hands together and sat on the chair across from him.
“It’s probably appropriate for me to thank you for what you did for me.”
Paul didn’t react. His involvement in the disabling of the weapon was labeled classified. His, Sidwell’s, and the NCS involvement was not yet disclosed to the public, and it was unclear whether it would be.
“As a senator, I’m privy to some classified information. As I’m sure you’re aware.” She cleared her throat and continued. “What I’m not here to do though, Paul, is to apologize for having identified you as complicit in the enhanced interrogation of Kadar Hadad. The ends don’t justify the means. No matter how important the outcome is. No matter how personal.”
“In your world, sure.”
“What world would that be?”
Paul shifted his gaze to the floor. “Why did you call me here?”
“I agree. Let’s not debate worldviews. That could go on forever.” She reached forward and poured herself tea. “As you’re aware, I’m going to be announcing my candidacy for the presidency. I’m aware that my popularity has come at your personal expense, however justified. I would not be in this position if it were not for you.”
“Frankly, you wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for me.”
“It isn’t lost on me, Paul.”
Paul sat upright, wondering what the senator was getting at. If early polls were to be believed, he was sitting with the next president.
“The CIA is recommending that we keep certain matters about the conspiracy confidential.”
“Which information?”
“Specifically, that members of the NCS and military were involved in creating a threat coming out of Somalia. They worry that it may impact public trust in the organization.”
Clandestine operations were one thing. But suppressing information about corruption within the organization itself?
“How would that look if it ever got out?”
“We have agreements that can take care of that.”
“And they get to escape consequence?”
“Nonsense,” she smiled. “There are consequences that can be administered in a clandestine manner.”
She meant military prison, or any of the various black sites around the world where the U.S. justice could be administered at the discretion of the site leader.
“So much for transparency, eh Janet?”
“That too isn’t lost on me. This bomb threat against me will only increase my popularity. But, of course, if it is revealed that Kadar Hadad had smuggled a weapon into the country, questions will be asked. And of course if it is learned that Steven Sidwell manipulated the military and CIA to facilitate this threat, then more questions will be asked.”
Paul began shaking his head. “You’re worried that when the story gets out, your judgment in persecuting us for Nairobi will be questioned. What about Sidwell? Evans?”
“Steve Sidwell is in the neurosurgical intensive care unit in a coma. Because of what you did to him it is unlikely that he will ever come out of it. Craig Evans has disappeared.”
He was the loose end. John Daniels only knew VeritOil’s involvement. And who knows how he was already threatened?
And Ellen.
“What do you want from me?”
Janet Carter ran her fingers across her lips.
“Or?”
“There is no ‘or’.” She smiled. “At this point.”
Paul considered protesting. Considered saying no and walking out. Then what? Looking over his shoulder again.
He took a deep breath. “What do you want me to sign?”
Paul’s heart raced as he stepped out of Janet Carter’s Georgetown house. He looked both ways and the street was quiet at that early hour. The CIA agent offered to drive him back to the hotel, but Paul said he wanted to walk.
Paul turned east, toward the rising sun. It was a façade. Janet Carter’s persona, one of integrity and transparency, was nothing more than a way ahead. His stomach felt in knots. She’d sacrificed him for her own advancement. She let Kadar Hadad go. She wrote a book about it. She was going to win the presidency because if it.
Paul smiled and shook his head.
He walked at a steady pace enjoying the smell of blossoms in the air. He knew that there was likely a car on him, or perhaps a person, following him, though when he looked around he didn’t see a soul.
When he was three blocks away, across from a Dunkin’ Donuts, he stopped again. A few people passed on foot, and traffic was starting to pick up. Paul reached in his breast pocket, pulled out his cellphone, and looked at the screen.
Current Call
32:13
And counting.
He put it to his ear. “H
ow much of that did you get?”
Bailey Clarke answered. “All of it.”
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Also By Tom Saric
Indicted
Compromised
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Find your next adventure in Indicted. Be sure to check out the following excerpt.
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INDICTED
Luka Pavić thought he had outrun his past.
Until it came back to hunt him.
Desperate and on the run, Luka must prove his innocence— before his past destroys him forever.
But war crimes investigator Robert Braun is certain of Luka’s guilt, and will stop at nothing to right the wrongs of history.
As secrets are laid bare and a deadly conspiracy comes to light, Luka and Robert find themselves careening toward a day of reckoning. One that will shake the foundations of everything they thought to be true…
And if they fail, it will cost them everything they hold dear.
INDICTED is a hard-hitting thriller about true justice and the power of redemption.
Click here to purchase INDICTED now
Turn the page to read a sample —>
INDICTED: Chapter 1
Border of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina
Natalia did the only thing she could: she prayed.
In her mind she groped for the words Mama had patiently taught her two weeks ago, but she couldn’t remember them, so the prayer turned into an incomprehensible mumble. But she didn’t dare stop. Anything to distract from the sounds outside.
Her knees ached against the wood. Her sore muscles begged her to adjust from her crouching position. Her body vibrated. But she didn’t flinch. Mama had squeezed her, her panicked tears wetting Natalia’s cheek, and whispered that The Bad Man wouldn’t find her here.
Dead silence encased the pitch-black bathroom. No more gunshots. No one pleading for mercy.
Was there anyone left to beg?
She raised her hand and pushed the vanity door open. She poked her head out and scanned the empty bathroom. Mama and Tata must have gotten away. The Bad Man couldn’t hurt them, Mama swore it. The quiet meant The Bad Man was gone. She just had to stay put under the sink and they would come back for her. Mama promised. She promised.
For a full minute she knelt, staring at the door in the darkness, waiting. Footsteps scratched along the concrete floor. She held her breath as the steps thumped louder. The line of light underneath the bathroom door disappeared. He was standing outside. She closed the vanity door and squeezed Pipa so hard she thought the doll’s stuffing would burst.
The bathroom door opened.
Sergeant Luka Pavić floored the gas and thought only about the yellow house on the outer edge of the village.
“This is impossible. There’s no way there’s enough time,” his passenger, Private Ante Čapan, said.
Luka glanced at his watch: 06:17. Eighteen minutes until the offensive. The violet sky would be ablaze, torrents of shells pounding from both sides. Luka kept his eyes on the dirt road. “There’s time.”
Čapan grabbed a box of Marlboros from his breast pocket and brought a trembling cigarette to his mouth.
“Put that away,” Luka said without looking over. It was best to ignore pussies, but he couldn’t help himself. “If you’re too chickenshit you can jump out here on the hillside and I’ll get you on the way back.”
Čapan rolled his eyes and flicked the cigarette out of the Jeep. “We’ve warned them. No point in us risking our lives if they want to be stupid.”
“Well that’s the difference between soldiers and civvies, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“We’re expendable.”
Yesterday, Luka had ordered the evacuation. He had knocked on doors, peered through windows, taped leaflets to the front gates of the twenty-two concrete houses painted canary yellow or stark white and capped with orange clay roofs built in two twisting rows along the banks of a brook. He had marched through olive and fig groves that connected the homes. He stopped and spoke with an old woman wearing a black babushka and supporting herself with a flimsy cane, ambling up a hillside path surrounded by a flock of sheep. She couldn’t leave, she explained; yes, she understood what was happening, but her husband was too ill in bed—the flu, she assumed—and she wouldn’t go anywhere. She’d lived her whole life here and she would die here. But if Luka arranged transport for both of them? She could never leave her sheep! Luka pleaded with her until she agreed to leave for forty-eight hours. He strode up rocky foothills to two homes on the outskirts and stood enchanted, briefly, at the stillness of the village nestled in the valley.
Little would be left of it in a couple of hours.
Just before daybreak, while reviewing plans with his artillery gunmen a half-mile up the mountainside, he noticed the subtlest of movements inside the house: the green shutters on the window drawing closed. A civvie was in there.
Čapan was right: they could reasonably ignore it. They’d done their due diligence.
But Luka knew that rationalizations like that meant little when faced with a dead civilian.
Never again.
He parked in front of the one-story house beside a rusted VW Minibus, underneath a vine-strangled pergola.
Čapan hopped out and slung an M70 over his shoulder. He made for the door.
Luka stepped in front of him. “Put that back.”
“My weapon?”
“You’re planning on walking into someone’s home holding an assault rifle? You’ll end up giving some old lady a heart attack.”
“This is war, last time I checked.”
“And you’re going to fight it in here?” Luka grabbed the machine gun and heaved it back into the Jeep. He pointed at the pistol holstered on Čapan’s belt. “You have that.”
Luka knew that all of Čapan’s eyebrow-raising and head-shaking had more to do with their closeness in age than Luka’s decision-making. The fact remained that Luka had toiled to reach the rank of sergeant at the age of twenty-five. Čapan hadn’t.
Luka stepped up to the front door. He raised his fist to knock but paused. An Orthodox cross hung on the middle of the door. A Serbian home. He heard Čapan huff behind him.
Before Čapan could comment, Luka pounded on the door, shouting for someone to open it. They waited for a moment. More shells rumbled, closer this time. Čapan stepped in front of Luka and slapped the door. “Open up right now; we have to get you out of here!”
No answer.
Luka pressed the handle, but it was locked. They circled the house, checking for an open window, but they were all sealed tight and the shutters were closed. They climbed the back terrace and Luka looked through the patio window but couldn’t make anything out. No lights on.
“It’s empty. Let’s get back,” Čapan said.
“Someone’s here. I saw them.”
Luka removed a small case from his breast pocket and took out a lock pick and torsion wrench. He crouched at the front door and inserted the pick, gently pushing it forward, feeling his way through the lock. He took his time, concentrating on the task at hand, ignoring the vibrations of bombs falling and Čapan’s panicked breathing. When he felt the spring release he used the torsion wrench to turn the lock. The door creaked open.
The entry was dark. Hints of mildew and diesel.
As he looked around, he realized
that someone had recently been there. The place was ransacked. A table was smashed, drawers were pulled out of a chest and the contents dumped on the floor, pillows were torn open. The kitchen cabinets were all opened and emptied of their plates, mugs, and bowls. Except for the crunch under Luka’s boots as he stepped on fragments of vases and glassware, the place was silent.
“Looters?” Čapan whispered, surveying the place.
Luka shook his head and brought his index finger to his lips. He pointed at the large flat screen that sat untouched in the living room. That would have been first on the list. Someone had been looking for something.
He gripped his Browning, flicking off the safety and motioning for Čapan to do the same. They moved into the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Luka provided cover as Čapan went through the three bedrooms, emerging from each one shaking his head.
Someone had been inside. They hadn’t left, at least not through the front door. Then there was the basement. People had been building bunkers, some with tunnels joining houses so that they could escape like gophers underground. When did people decide to hide instead of fight for what was theirs?
Fear made people crazy.
Luka wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He moved to the bathroom while Čapan walked into the final bedroom. Luka stood in front of the door and took a breath. In a fluid motion he twisted the handle, swung the door open, flicked on the light, and scanned the bathroom. It was pristine: towels left hanging on the racks, soap in the dish, and sparkling white tiles.