Five Years in Yemen

by Luana Ehrlich

Zachary nodded. “It’s the same reason you lied to me about the job. The end justifies the means.”

  Ouch.

  * * * *

  I didn’t defend myself to Zachary. For one thing, I didn’t really have a defense, and for another, I’m not sure he expected me to have one.

  Although I asked him a couple of other questions about Levin’s actions in Karbala, I finally decided he’d told me everything he knew.

  He must have sensed I’d run out of questions, because, at that point, he glanced down at his watch and made a comment about heading back up I-44 to Springfield.

  He gestured off to his left and said, “Why don’t the two of us go get something to eat before I leave?”

  Although I declined his invitation, I suggested he try a Chinese restaurant on Robinson on his way out of town.

  “It’s not nearly as good as the China King Buffet,” I said, “but I’ve been told it’s not half bad.”

  “I’ll go check it out,” he said. “Can I drop you somewhere?”

  I pointed across the lake. “No, thanks. I parked my Range Rover over by the playground. I’ll just jog back over there.”

  “You know, for an analyst, you’re a pretty sneaky guy. I never spotted you anywhere near the Yukon until I opened the door.”

  “I developed that talent after years of sneaking out of work early in order to beat the traffic.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I opened the car door and got out.

  I started to walk away, but then I leaned back in and said, “Just out of curiosity, if I happened to come across a job opening for a security officer in Pakistan, would you be interested?”

  “Are you serious? Of course, I’d be interested.”

  I told him to expect a call from Southridge on Monday, and then I offered him my hand.

  “It was nice meeting you, Travis. Stay safe out there.”

  He shook hands with me and said, “Right back at you, Titus Ray.”

  * * * *

  As I jogged back over to the park bench where I’d left my binoculars, I thought about the intel Zachary had given me on Jacob Levin.

  For some reason, I had a feeling Carlton wasn’t aware of most of it, and I was anxious to give him a call and discuss it with him. I was also curious to know if he’d asked someone to get in touch with Stephen Gault.

  If he had, I planned to ask him why he hadn’t told me about it.

  Then again, maybe I wouldn’t ask him.

  I was still trying to make up my mind what to do when I noticed the two kids who’d been using the playground equipment earlier—a boy and a girl—were now down by the lake playing tag with each other.

  As I got closer, I watched as the boy dashed over to the park bench where I’d left the binoculars. When he spotted the glasses, he snatched them up and held them up to his eyes. When the girl ran over, he handed them to her.

  She squealed the moment he placed them in her hands, but a few seconds later, she suddenly turned around, ran down to the water’s edge, and tossed them into the lake.

  They sank to the bottom immediately.

  I had no idea if the expensive Bushnell Rangefinders were waterproof or not. All I knew was when I’d asked Nikki if I could borrow the binoculars at the game, she’d told me to be extra careful with them.

  “The department just purchased these,” she’d said. “The property manager had me sign for them in blood when I checked them out.”

  As I drove away from the playground, I considered my options.

  Going for a swim in Summit Lake wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 8

  Sunday, October 25

  After returning to my house on Saturday night, I’d immediately phoned Carlton to let him know what I’d learned from Travis Zachary.

  When he hadn’t answered his cell phone, I’d left a message asking him to call me back.

  I’d told him the callback was critical but not urgent; a yellow alert as opposed to a red alert.

  When he still hadn’t called me back a couple of hours later, I’d called him at the Agency.

  An operator in Communication Services told me Douglas Carlton was temporarily unavailable. She said he wouldn’t be able to return any calls for at least twelve hours.

  A communication blackout with my handler usually meant an operation was running, and since the timing of an operation could be unpredictable, I didn’t think Carlton would be calling me back anytime soon.

  But, I was wrong.

  Just as I finished breakfast, he returned my call.

  He wasn’t in the best of moods.

  “Can we keep this conversation short? I haven’t had much sleep.”

  “What kept you awake?”

  “We had an operation up on the board, but don’t bother asking me about it; I can’t tell you anything.”

  Since I was a Level 1 operative, there was nothing in the Agency rules which would have prevented Carlton from telling me the particulars of whatever operation he was running.

  However, he seldom shared those details with me, even though I usually asked him about them. Today, I decided not to ask him any questions.

  On the other hand, I was tempted to make a comment about his use of the term “board”—a throwback to the days when the Ops Center had used a physical chalkboard on the wall outside the Ops Center to keep track of its active missions.

  After considering his lack of sleep, I changed my mind. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I won’t ask, and I promise to keep this short.”

  “Frankly, I’m surprised to hear from you. Didn’t you get the email I sent you?”

  “If you’re referring to the email about the job opening for the security officer in Pakistan, then yes, I got it.”

  “Don’t tell me Zachary turned it down.”

  “No, when I saw him yesterday, he jumped at the chance to work for Southridge again.”

  I heard Carlton take several deep breaths.

  ‘Okay, Titus,” he said. “What’s going on? Under what circumstances did you see Travis Zachary yesterday?”

  “He showed up in Norman. As a matter of fact, he was down here running surveillance on Nikki.”

  “If you caught him doing surveillance on Ms. Saxon, that could only mean one thing.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You messed up.”

  * * * *

  I confessed to Carlton that I’d included Nikki in the interview I’d done with Zachary in Springfield. I also told him I’d allowed her to use her real name when she’d posed as Jared Russell’s assistant.

  When I finished, he was quiet for a few seconds. Finally he said, “I’m guessing Zachary found out she wasn’t one of SSG’s employees.”

  “That’s right. He contacted someone he knew in administration who verified his suspicions about her. He said he might have been okay with Jared Russell lying to him, especially after he confirmed Russell was a recruiter, but after I failed to call him back with a job offer, he started checking with some of his sources and snooping around the internet.”

  “He’s a security expert, Titus. I imagine he has some expertise in conducting an investigation.”

  “I should have thought of that, but, for some reason, I failed to take it into account.”

  “Perhaps your decision to include Ms. Saxon in Agency business flawed your judgment.”

  “No, I don’t think so. It was just—”

  “Let’s save that discussion for another day. Right now, I want to hear what you did when you discovered Travis Zachary was running surveillance on your fiancée.”

  I gave Carlton an abbreviated version of what happened once I noticed the Yukon was tailing us, and I also told him I’d asked Danny Jarrar to do me a favor and find out who owned the vehicle.

  “When I discovered Zachary was the person driving the Yukon, I had a feeling he would run the plates on my Range Rover, and, sure enough, the moment I confronted him, he identified me as Titus Ray.”

  “I assume this confronta
tion took place in private.”

  “It was just the two of us sitting in his vehicle having a friendly chat.”

  “Please tell me he only identified you as Titus Ray, a CIS employee, and not Titus Ray, a CIA operative.”

  “I wish I could tell you that, but unfortunately, Zachary pinned the CIA label on me. Perhaps that shouldn’t be all that surprising since he’s been a CIA contractor, and, from what I understand, most of the Agency’s contracting services know the Agency uses the Consortium to provide cover for its employees.”

  “How did you handle that disclosure?”

  “The only way I could; I admitted I worked for the Agency but only as an analyst.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “It was hard to tell, but listen, Douglas. I’m not worried about Zachary knowing my Agency status. I called you last night to update you on some new intel I got out of Zachary, and I—”

  “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  “—and I also wanted to ask you if you’d sent one of our guys to Detroit to have a talk with Stephen Gault.”

  “That’s a strange question. Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because Zachary told me Stephen Gault had called him a couple of days ago to see if he’d heard anything new about Levin’s disappearance, and he said it was the first time he’d heard from him in several years.”

  “Now that’s interesting.”

  “Interesting because of the timing?”

  “Interesting for a number of reasons.”

  “Does that mean you sent someone to have a chat with Gault?”

  “No, Titus. I didn’t send anyone to Detroit to question Gault about Jacob Levin.”

  * * * *

  I was too stunned to respond for a moment, but then Carlton acknowledged there was a possibility the DDO had initiated contact with Gault and had failed to tell him about it.

  “However,” Carlton said, “if that’s the case, then the Ops Center will know about it. Stay on the line while I check with them.”

  When he came back on, he said, “No one from the Agency has had any contact with Gault since Levin’s disappearance.”

  “I’d say that makes Gault’s call to Zachary even more mysterious.”

  “What did Zachary have to say about it?”

  “He was suspicious about Gault’s call, primarily because he’d just talked to me about Levin, and when he brought this up with Gault, the guy got all nervous and hung up on him.”

  “That’s odd, especially since Gault initiated the call in the first place.”

  “Zachary thought Gault was nervous because neither one of them had told their supervisor that Jacob often fantasized about pulling a disappearing act. According to the fine print in their SSG contract, they were supposed to snitch on each other if anyone on the team exhibited unusual behavior.”

  “Does Zachary think Levin staged his own disappearance?”

  “No, he said that was Gault’s theory.”

  “He could be right, but, for my part, I’m withholding judgment on Levin’s actions until we launch Operation Rebel Merchant, and you get a chance to talk to Jacob Levin yourself.”

  “Zachary also gave me some new details about Jacob’s personality that could have some bearing on his disappearance.”

  “I may know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about his obsession with all things Iraqi.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “There wasn’t anything about Levin’s behavior in his data sheet.”

  “No, but you’ll hear all about it at your full briefing in January. Right now, there’s no need for you to be concerned about Levin.”

  “What about Stephen Gault?”

  “What about him?”

  “Since it’s obvious there’s something going on with him related to Levin’s disappearance, do you plan to send someone to Detroit to look into that?”

  “The first thing I’ll do is set up some surveillance on him, but, yes, eventually, I’ll have someone show up in Detroit and do a one-on-one with him.”

  “Why not let me do it?”

  Carlton sighed. It was an exaggerated sigh, so I knew what was coming next. “Tell me, Titus. What part of being on leave do you not understand?”

  “Hear me out, Douglas. I was planning to visit my sister in Flint for Thanksgiving, so it wouldn’t be any trouble for me to drive over to Detroit and spend some time with Gault.”

  “Since when do you voluntarily spend time with your relatives?”

  “Since Nikki decided to adopt them as her relatives.”

  “Is that right? Well, personally, I consider that a good thing, but since you’ll be in Flint to have Thanksgiving with your family, I don’t see how you’ll have time to have a chat with Stephen Gault.”

  “More than likely, Nikki and Carla will be preoccupied with making wedding plans. They’ll be begging me to leave them alone.”

  He chuckled. “No, I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

  “Does that mean you’ll set things up so I can question Gault?”

  “I’ll let you know in a few days. For now, I’ll have the Ops Center arrange for a surveillance team to keep an eye on him.”

  “It might not be a bad idea to monitor his internet activities at the same time.”

  “Thanks for that suggestion, Titus, but I’ve got this. I’ll call you back with my decision in a few days. Whatever I decide, it shouldn’t change any plans you’ve made for you and Nikki to be in Flint for Thanksgiving.”

  When Carlton hung up, I decided I might need to mention those plans to Nikki—and, of course, inform my sister I was coming for a visit.

  * * * *

  I switched over from my Agency satellite phone to my personal iPhone and punched in Carla’s number.

  “Hi there, stranger,” she said. “It’s about time you got in touch with me.”

  Although Carla was used to not hearing from me for months at a time, she seldom failed to mention my long absences—whereas I always tried to minimize them.

  I said, “It hasn’t been that long, has it?”

  “You’re right. There’ve been times when it’s been a lot longer; a whole lot longer.”

  “There you go. Catch me up on what’s been happening with everyone. How’s Eddie?”

  “He’s doing great, and the kids and I are fine too. Eddie’s still enjoying his promotion to district manager. How about you? Are you okay?”

  Carla, who was a couple of years younger than me, had married Eddie, her high school sweetheart, the same year she’d graduated from the University of Michigan.

  As children, we’d both vowed to leave Flint forever and spend the rest of our lives exploring the world. However, not long after she’d married Eddie, he’d landed his first job in pharmaceutical sales, and they’d purchased a home in Flint.

  Except for a brief vacation to Hawaii, she’d never left the mainland.

  “I’m doing fine,” I said. “Busy as always. I was out of the country for a couple of months doing research for a policy paper the Consortium is about to issue on the future of democracy in Syria.”

  Carla—like the rest of my family and friends—was under the impression I’d been employed by the Consortium for International Studies for the past twenty years.

  Unlike Travis Zachary, no one in my family was acquainted with anyone in the intelligence community, and thus, they had no clue the Consortium served as a convenient front for CIA personnel.

  “When we didn’t hear from you, I told Eddie you were probably working overseas. I guess that means you haven’t been able to spend any time with Nikki.”

  “Actually, you’re wrong about that. I’m not sure you remember, but the last time we talked, I told you she was taking a training course at the FBI Academy in Quantico. We’ve been able to see each other quite a bit lately. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I was calling you. I wanted to let you know Nikki and I are engaged.”

  She gasped. “What? No!
Are you kidding me? You shouldn’t mess with me like that, Titus.”

  I laughed. “I’m not messing with you. I asked Nikki to marry me. I gave her a ring and everything.”

  Carla sounded giddy. “Oh, Titus, that’s great. I’m so excited for you. Congratulations!”

  “Nikki said she might need your help with the wedding.”

  “I’d love to help her. Have you set the date?”

  “No, not yet. I’ve left that up to her, but the last time I heard, she was talking about having it in the spring.”

  “Spring is such a pretty time of year for a wedding. Have you decided on a location yet?”

  “Ah . . . no, I haven’t given it any thought.”

  “You could have it here.”

  “Yeah, I guess so, but—”

  “You remember Pastor John, the minister who did mother’s funeral for us? I’m sure he’d be happy to perform the ceremony for you.”

  “Pastor John? Of course, I remember him. Nice guy.”

  “I attend his church now. I could ask him if he’s available.”

  Suddenly, I felt like I was being smothered.

  There was no other way to describe it.

  It was as if Carla were standing over me pushing a pillow down on my face. However, I told myself not to panic.

  I’d been in far worse situations and survived.

  Breathe.

  I just needed to breathe.

  Long, deep, breaths.

  In and out. In and out.

  “That’s a great idea, Carla, but maybe Nikki and I should ask Pastor John ourselves. We were thinking about coming to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving with you.”

  “Seriously? First, you tell me you’re engaged, and now you’re telling me you plan to spend Thanksgiving with your family. Have you lost your mind?”

  I was asking myself the same question.

  Chapter 9

  Nikki belonged to the Faith Community Church, and I’d been looking forward to attending church with her all week. Now, as I was driving over there to meet her, it occurred to me I didn’t have any idea what to expect.

  I didn’t even know if I had on the right clothes.