Blood spurted but there was no pain. Not yet.
The man calmly placed the hedge trimmers on the floor and picked up the medical supplies. He began removing gauze pads from their packaging and unrolling an Ace bandage.
And J.R. screamed. First from the shock and then from a rolling wave of pain. It began in his now-nonexistent little finger and radiated toward his body, racing into his hand and up his arm.
The man ignored him, working diligently, preparing, presumably, to stanch the flow of blood from J.R. Humphries’s suddenly misshapen hand.
J.R. felt a rush of bile rising into his gullet and knew he was going to be sick. He tried to tell the man, but before he could get the words out his brain decided it had seen enough. Everything went black and the world disappeared.
16
Wednesday, September 9, 1987
7:00 a.m.
Washington, D.C.
Tracie yawned and tried with little success to rub the sleep out of her eyes. There had been no real alternative to getting a few hours of sleep—the body can run only so long on coffee and adrenaline—but now she wondered whether sacking out for just a few hours had been a mistake. Sleep had not vanquished her headache and her shoulder throbbed just as badly now as it had last night.
She rolled her shoulders in a vain attempt to loosen them and showered quickly, then dried off and padded to her bedroom, towel wrapped around her. There would be no young urban professional woman business attire today. She picked out a comfortable pair of jeans and a loose-fitting grey top, then slipped into her clothes and was out the door less than fifteen minutes after waking. It was going to be a busy day.
* * *
Wednesday, September 9, 1987
8:50 a.m.
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Marshall Fulton was one of the CIA’s top analysts on Middle Eastern affairs. Tracie had met him years ago at a company Christmas party and the pair had hit it off immediately, spending most of the evening discussing their mutual interest in rock music and noir films. It had been one of the truly rare instances when she had been able to shed her natural reticence and fully enjoy a night out.
She had seen him occasionally over the intervening years, always at Langley during the few times she had been called back to Washington. Their relationship, Tracie knew, would barely even qualify as a casual friendship. They certainly weren’t close enough to justify her requesting backdoor intelligence from him.
But that was exactly what she was going to do.
Whether he would agree to help her was anyone’s guess. The CIA was the ultimate “need-to-know” entity—for an operative to access intel through unofficial channels was considered a major offense, punishable by immediate termination and potentially even criminal prosecution.
It was the sort of thing that could end not just Tracie‘s career, but Marshall’s as well. He would have no reason to talk to her without a specific order or formal Information Request from a superior. CIA data analysts were always busy, swamped with the sheer volume of information being funneled through Langley from hot spots around the world, and the likelihood of Marshall Fulton agreeing to waste his valuable time on the hunch of a field operative—disregarding the possibly felonious aspect of the request—was slim.
Still, it was worth a try. The Middle Easter connection to Humphries’s kidnapping was becoming increasingly clear to her if not to anyone else, and her expertise simply did not extend to that region. She knew she needed help.
Tracie parked at the CIA complex and entered the labyrinth of hallways and offices crisscrossing the massive headquarters building, saying a quick prayer that she would not bump into Director Stallings. The odds of that happening were infinitesimal—her boss’s office was located in an entirely separate wing, and with something big going down he wouldn’t have time to stroll through the operational areas of the complex—but being seen by someone she knew was a possibility. Which would be almost as bad.
If word got back to Stallings that Tracie was still investigating a theory she had been told specifically to abandon, the response from her boss would be thunderous and immediate. Even her presence in the building was risky. The CIA director had made it clear he expected results—the sooner the better. In his bureaucratic mind that meant pounding the pavement and rounding up the kidnappers, not drinking coffee and chatting with a young, handsome data analyst.
Stallings wouldn’t consider the problem of how she was supposed to know what pavement to pound. It wasn’t his concern. He had given her an assignment and she would carry it out. Period.
Tracie wound her way through the corridors until she reached a mammoth room located behind a set of reinforced glass double doors. The room was the size of a gymnasium, dissected by movable partitions erected to form dozens of workspaces.
Inside the resulting cubicles were men—and occasionally women—who looked no different than typical midlevel corporate office workers. Their workspaces included desks, telephones, printers, small televisions all tuned to CNN, most muted, and the occasion clunky computer monitor. Reams of paperwork cluttered the desks, and shelves and filing cabinets lining the walls testified to the sheer volume of intelligence being monitored and interpreted by the analysts.
But unlike the typical midlevel office worker, these harried men and women daily handled information of the most sensitive nature. Information considered top secret and which affected national security.
Tracie wound her way through the room. She knew who she was looking for but not where his workstation was located. Most of the analysts ignored her as she passed, occupied as they were writing reports, speaking with contacts on secure telephone lines, or studying data.
Finally Tracie spotted Marshall Fulton. A massive black man, Fulton looked far too big for his cramped workstation, like if he leaned back in his chair and stretched he would knock the flimsy partition right over. He was youngish, good-looking—she guessed he might be about thirty-two—dressed impeccably in a sharply tailored charcoal suit, cream-colored dress shirt and lavender tie. A thin sheen of perspiration covered the rich chocolate skin of his forehead. Tracie thought he looked more like a high-powered stockbroker than an overworked CIA intelligence specialist.
His was talking on the telephone, half-turned, leaning against his desk as she approached. He didn’t see her coming. She stood for a moment, watching him work, until he seemed to sense her presence and looked over. His expression of puzzlement lasted approximately one second then transformed into a wide smile of recognition. “I’ll have to call you back,” he said into the phone. “Something critical just came up. Yep. Talk to ya later.” And just like that he hung up.
“Something critical?” Tracie said, returning his smile.
“Everything’s relative,” Fulton said. He lifted his hands, palms up in imitation of a set of scales. “Do I hang up and engage in conversation with a beautiful woman—” he raised one hand and lowered the other “—or make small talk with an eighty-five-year-old Jewish bookie in Georgetown?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “It’s no contest, really.”
Tracie laughed knowing there was absolutely no way in the world Marshall Fulton’s telephone conversation had been with a gambler, unless that gambler was somehow involved in a Middle Eastern bookmaking ring with national security implications. She also knew she wouldn’t have handled the situation any differently, had their positions been reversed.
“The lovely Miss Tracie Tanner,” the analyst said amiably. “I bet I haven’t spoken more than twenty words with you since…let’s see . . . must have been Christmas Eve, 1983.”
“Close,” she said with a grin, secretly pleased he had remembered her name after nearly three years. “You have the right holiday, but the wrong year. It was 1984.”
He snapped his fingers. “Dammit. Almost said ’84. Winston Andrews’s townhouse,” he continued. “As I recall, we shared a couple of drinks and commiserated that our personal lives were so pathetic we had to spend the holiday i
n the company of a geezer old enough to be our grandfather.” His smile faltered. “Sorry to hear about Winston. The way things ended for him was horrific.”
Tracie nodded. “Thanks.” She had gotten somewhat used to the awkwardness of dealing with CIA associates aware of her former mentor’s suicide. They weren’t privy to the exact circumstances of his death, of course—Tracie was the only person left alive who carried that awful memory—but agency people were among the few in the world who could comprehend the bond between a field agent and her handler, so they had an instinctive understanding of the pain she would feel at his loss.
Fulton sensed her discomfort and hurried to change the subject. “So,” he said, crossing his arms and gazing shrewdly at her. “What brings a big shot field agent all the way down to the dungeon to commingle with us little people?”
Tracie laughed, taking in his muscular appearance. “Little? I don’t think you qualify.”
“Point taken. Still, I know you’re not here just to pass the time, as pleasant as that thought is to me.”
She lowered her voice and squeezed into the cramped space next to the analyst in an attempt to secure a little privacy. “I need some information.”
Fulton wrinkled his forehead and spoke quietly. “I know you spend most of your time battling the bad guys, but I also know you’re well aware of how intelligence gets processed. I don’t see an Information Request Form in your hands, and I’m certain I’d remember if I had received one prior to your visit.”
Tracie cleared her throat. This was where things would get a little dicey. She would either get what she needed or he would tell her to pound sand. Marshall Fulton had been a CIA analyst since before Tracie was hired, and he had a sterling reputation in the agency. The few times Tracie had interacted with him he had seemed like a true professional. So she had no real reason to believe he would be willing to put his career on the line for a casual acquaintance, and that was exactly what she was about to ask him to do.
“No,” she admitted. “I didn’t send you an InReq. The information I’m looking for would be of a more…unofficial nature.”
Fulton stared at her openly, his handsome brown eyes questioning but not angry or suspicious. For a long moment he said nothing, and she was beginning to think she had made a mistake by coming to see him. Then he glanced at his watch and said, “You know, time sure flies when you’re busy. I’ve been hard at work for hours on end. I’d say it’s long past time I took a break. Care to join me in a cup of coffee?”
* * *
The cafeteria was big, crowded, chaotic, and noisy, filled with agency employees eating breakfast, drinking coffee, gossiping, and passing the time. Short of leaving the CIA complex entirely and driving to a local coffee shop, it was perfect.
They found a table in one corner of the massive dining hall and sipped coffee. Tracie grinned at her colleague. When she spoke, it was in a voice barely above a whisper. “Hard at work for hours on end? It’s not even nine-thirty in the morning! What time did you get here, four?”
Marshall laughed. “Okay, you got me. I’ve only been here since eight. Still, I’m one hard-working dude. An hour of work for me is like three for anyone else.” He lowered his voice. “Plus, as I’m sure you’re well aware, you never know who might be listening. Depending on what you want to know, we may not even be safe having the conversation here.”
She shrugged. “We’ll be okay as long as we keep our voices down. There’s a lot more ambient noise here than in your cubicle. And while I’m certain we’re being watched, I doubt the company is going to waste the really good surveillance equipment on their own spooks eating in the agency cafeteria.”
“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll yield to your experience. Now, I have to admit you’ve piqued my curiosity. What can I do for you? And be aware, I may get up and walk away at any moment.”
“Fair enough,” Tracie said. She took a deep breath and tried to decide how to approach the issue. “Your area of specialty is the Middle East.”
“I remember,” Fulton said, and they both laughed.
“Have you seen any…unusual activity…in the region over the last few weeks?”
Marshall Fulton raised one eyebrow. He took a big bite of a cinnamon roll and eyed Tracie curiously. “You’re going to have to be more specific. The Middle East is a powder keg. People have been worried about the Soviet Union and the Cold War for decades—and rightfully so, I guess—but in my opinion, the region we really ought to be concerned about is North Africa and the strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent many years analyzing intelligence from there, but people in the Middle East have been butchering each other for thousands of years, and I believe it won’t be much longer before things reach critical mass there.”
“You make the situation sound hopeless.”
“Maybe ‘hopeless’ would be overstating it a bit, but I’m very serious about my concern. I’m afraid the Iran hostage situation of a few years ago might be just the beginning. At least with the Soviets we can understand their motives, as much as we may disagree with them. In many cultures of the Middle East, people do not operate with thought processes or logic that we understand. If we don’t begin to shift our perceptions in that part of the world, we are headed for big trouble.”
Tracie was silent for a moment as she considered Marshall Fulton’s statement. He was clearly passionate about the subject, and as a CIA intelligence analyst, he was closer to the situation in that region than almost anyone else in the world who was not experiencing it firsthand.
But did that give him more credibility, or less? Maybe he was too close to things happening there.
“Be more specific,” she repeated to herself, speaking even more quietly. Then she looked up at him. “Okay, let me try this. Intelligence gathering over a long period of time in any region reveals traceable patterns of behavior by individuals, as well as by governments and military forces. Has any intel coming across your desk recently led you to raise your suspicions or to suggest that something out of the ordinary—even if ‘ordinary’ is typically strange or chaotic—might be happening?”
A trace of a smile crossed Marshall’s face and then disappeared. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Surely you are familiar with the Iran/Iraq war.”
“Of course,” she said. “As a specialist in Soviet-bloc affairs, undoubtedly I’m not as well-versed on the subject as you are, but it would be a poor covert-ops specialist, maybe a suicidal one, who wasn’t aware of something as significant as that. That war’s been ongoing for years.”
“That’s right,” Marshall agreed. “Seven years, to be exact. It’s the longest-running war of the twentieth century, and has been particularly brutal and bloody.”
“Okay,” Tracie said, wishing the analyst would get to his point but not wanting to push too hard and change his mind about sharing information that was likely classified.
“Well, your point about patterns emerging is particularly apt, given the way the war has dragged on.” Marshall’s voice was barely louder than a whisper now, and he glanced furtively around the cafeteria before continuing. “Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed what I interpret as a significant migration of Saddam Hussein’s troops.”
“Migration?” Tracie asked, thinking it an odd choice of words.
“Yes. Men and equipment have been moving slowly but steadily south from the Iran/Iraq border, where the fighting has been raging, toward Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia.”
“Why?”
Fulton shrugged. “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. I have no idea.”
“But what about the front lines? Won’t the Iraqi troops and equipment be missed when it comes to fighting the Iranians?”
“You would think so, but there have been continuing attempts at diplomatic solutions—cease-fires and peace talks and the like—in an effort to stop the fighting over the years. Ultimately they’ve all been unsuccessful. But
maybe Hussein knows something we don’t. Maybe he anticipates an upcoming diplomatic effort that will stop the fighting for good.”
“Isn’t that a dangerous gamble for him to take?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why would he do it then?”
“Again, good question. I don’t know.”
“What have your superiors said? Surely you’ve passed this intelligence on to them.”
“Of course,” Fulton said. “But as far as I know they haven’t even acknowledged that these troop movements are taking place.”
“What? Why not?”
“You have to understand,” Fulton said. “These movements are not major, dramatic personnel shifts. If I weren’t monitoring the situation extremely closely I would never have even noticed anything at all. It’s more like a very subtle change in their focus. No one seems to consider it significant except for me.”
Tracie sipped her coffee and stared down at the table, thinking hard, trying to make connections between seemingly unconnected events.
The brazen kidnapping of a sitting United States secretary of state, seemingly by representatives of the United States’ major geopolitical enemy, the Soviet Union.
The vehement denial of responsibility, offered up under duress, by a Soviet official who would be in a position to know the details of the kidnapping.
The assertion by the CIA’s foremost linguistics expert that the author of the kidnappers’ list of demands was likely someone with Middle Eastern roots—an Iraqi, to be specific.
And Iraq’s apparently illogical positioning of military assets away from a war zone and toward one of the most strategically important countries in the world in terms of oil production, a critical component of the economic well-being of the United States and the rest of the industrialized world.
As she tried to puzzle it out, Marshall Fulton sat across the table, sipping his coffee and eating his cinnamon roll. The longer she considered everything, the more the connections seemed to become clear.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 35