by Jake Needham
She checked the number assigned to the SIM she had just bought, looked up Frank’s number in the Agency phone she had with her, and sent a text.
Call 406-555-1278 from an unused prepaid immediately. Langley.
She didn’t want to have her name in a text that could conceivably be retrieved someday, and she figured using Langley as a signature would be good enough to get Frank to take the text seriously and call the number. Hong Kong Station did so much flaky shit that her text probably wouldn’t even move the needle on Frank’s weirdness gauge.
Frank could be anywhere, she knew, but it was after nine at night and with just a little luck he would be in Hong Kong and at home. She had no doubt that Frank kept a few burners at home and surely he had at least one he’d never used before. With him on an unused prepaid and her on the one she had just bought, that was about as secure as they could hope to be without using Agency communication facilities, and she had no intention of doing that.
It was less than five minutes before the phone she had just bought rang. She hadn’t bothered to set a ring tone for it, but now she wished she had. It went off with a noise that sounded like a World War Two air raid siren. Why in God’s name did anyone think that was a good idea?
“Hello, Frank. I’m sure you recognize my voice, but please don’t use my name.”
There was a long pause, which made sense, and then after maybe ten seconds Frank Ward said, “Okay.”
“And when we’ve finished this conversation, please destroy the phone you are using now. The number I’m on is for one-time use. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
Rebecca described being ambushed in the IHOP by the man who identified himself as Inspector Tay of Interpol, and she described Tay’s interest in the explosion at the Cordis Hotel.
“I have no idea why he would be asking me about that,” she concluded carefully, “but since you’re there in Hong Kong I thought I’d at least ask you what you’ve heard from Interpol.”
“Not a thing,” Ward said. “Are you sure this guy was kosher?”
“He certainly wasn’t some guy off the street. He…”
She paused, looking for the right way to put it.
“…appeared to know a lot about my, ah, circumstances, and his ID looked good.”
“Well, it would, wouldn’t it?”
“What are you saying, Frank? If Tay wasn’t really Interpol, who the hell was he?”
“No idea, but no one from Interpol has been asking any questions around here. I would know if they had been.”
Rebecca didn’t know what to make of that. If Tay was really Interpol, why would he have come straight to her without poking around Hong Kong at all? That didn’t make any sense. But if he wasn’t really Interpol, how did he know as much as he obviously knew?
“What’s happened with the investigation there?”
“I haven’t been asking my police sources any direct questions for obvious reasons so I’m just getting a bit of gossip. It sounds like they’re not even sure of the cause yet. There’s a view that it was an accident of some kind, but there’s also another view that a bomb was placed in a guest room. About all they know for certain is that they have three bodies.”
“Have they identified the bodies yet?”
“Nope. No guests in the part of the hotel that exploded are unaccounted for, although there are a few guests who were in undamaged sections of the hotel who disappeared after the explosion. The cops don’t seem to be too bothered by that. I’m sure they think there’re always a certain number of people in every hotel in Hong Kong who don’t particularly want to be identified, and of course they’d be right about that.”
“So, you’re telling me that you haven’t heard from Interpol and the local cops don’t have shit yet.”
“That’s pretty much it. They can’t find the cause of the explosion. They can’t even decide if it was accidental or something else. All they’ve really got are the bodies of the three women they can’t identify.”
“Wait… what?”
“I already told you. They haven’t identified any of the bodies.”
“But… you said they were all women?”
“Yes,” Frank Ward said. “Three women. All Chinese.”
When Rebecca said nothing, Ward cleared his throat.
“Does that surprise you for some reason?” he asked carefully.
“I’m not sure,” Rebecca said, and then fell silent.
That made no sense at all, of course, but Ward was smart enough not to ask any questions and Rebecca had no intention of telling him anything anyway, even if he did ask. Ward had managed to put in twenty years at the Agency by not asking questions he didn’t need to ask, and he was hoping for maybe another ten. So, he said nothing.
“Look, Frank, if you catch any whiff of Interpol sniffing around, let me know right away, would you?”
“Sure, but…” He paused to think about how best to put it. “Do you want me to let you know through official channels or—”
“Call me on my personal cell number. You have it, don’t you?”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Just leave a general message. Say something like Your friends have been here, and then I’ll get back to you for the details.”
“Got it.”
That left nothing else to say and, not being one for small talk, Rebecca immediately cut the connection.
She sat in her car thinking over the conversation she’d just had with Frank Ward as she popped the SIM out of the burner phone and snapped it between her fingers.
Three unidentified bodies.
All Chinese.
All women.
That obviously meant August was alive, and he was out there somewhere.
It wouldn’t surprise her one bit if he was already looking for her.
And judging from the sudden appearance of whoever this was claiming to be an investigator from Interpol, he might have just found her.
So, was this guy Tay who claimed to be an Interpol investigator really an Interpol investigator, or was he working with August? If it was the former, her arrest by the FBI was certainly within the realm of possibility. If it was the latter, John August would just turn up one day and kill her.
Either way, she was well and truly screwed, wasn’t she?
Fuck.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
For her next call, Rebecca didn’t bother with security. She was way beyond that now. She pulled her own phone from her purse and dialed a number she had memorized, a number the man she was calling didn’t know she had.
When he answered, she said, “We have a problem.”
“What? Who is—”
“I said we have a problem. Right now, I have the problem, but I’m about to make it yours, too. And then we will have a problem.”
“Rebecca?”
She said nothing.
“Is that you, Rebecca?”
“Of course it’s me.”
“How did you get this number?”
“I think you ought to be a lot more worried about the problem we have. I sure would if I were you.”
“We’re not talking on secure phones here, Rebecca. I certainly don’t want to discuss—”
“I really don’t give a damn right now what you want to discuss or don’t want to discuss. I am not going to go down for this alone!”
“Calm down, Rebecca. Just calm down.”
“Given what just happened to me, I think I am remarkably calm. Do you want to hear what just happened to me?”
“Naturally I do, Rebecca.” The man spoke in the kind of voice he might use to try to talk someone down off the ledge of a very tall building, which was exactly where Rebecca Sternwood sounded like she was right then. “I just don’t think this—”
“Meet me in the same place where we met last time. Exactly the same place. One hour from now.”
“One hour? I can’t leave here now, Rebecca. I really can’t. There are all sorts of things going on. Let me call
you tomorrow morning and—”
“One hour. If you’re not there, don’t bother calling me tomorrow. You can just read about everything in The Washington Post.”
“Now look here, don’t you threaten—”
She cut the connection and dumped the telephone back in her purse.
During the American Civil War, a good deal of effort went into protecting Washington D.C. from invasion by the Army of the Confederacy since it lay barely fifty miles north of the rebel capital in Richmond, Virginia. A line of earthwork fortifications reinforced with batteries of cannon was built along the south bank of the Potomac River in 1861 and 1862 and one of those fortifications was located atop a promontory called Prospect Hill which overlooked Chain Bridge, a primary route of access to Washington from Northern Virginia. This particular fortification was named Fort Marcy in honor of Randolph Marcy, the chief of staff to the Union commander, General George McClellan.
The site of old Fort Marcy is now a park administered by the National Park Service. It is a peaceful place, heavily wooded with towering trees and a carpet of pine needles covering the ground. It is mostly silent other than for the sound of the river rushing through the narrow gorge underneath Chain Bridge and the distant whoosh of traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. A few picnic tables are scattered here and there, watched over by a couple of old cannons presumably dating back to the Civil War, but the brush is thick between the trees and it largely obstructs the sight lines between the tables. There could be a couple of dozen people in the park and they would never see each other except when they arrived and departed from the parking area.
That parking area has become a popular spot for workmen and other people who spend a lot of the day with their cars. People like that take breaks there, drink a soda, maybe sneak a cigarette or look at their phone for a while, but the park itself isn’t used very much, particularly not in the middle of the day. There are seldom more than a handful of people in it, and often none at all. That’s why it’s such a good place for a quiet conversation.
It’s a good place for another reason, too. Fort Marcy Park lies between the Potomac River and the George Washington Memorial Parkway not far from the center of the city and only about a fifteen-minute drive north of the White House. More important in these particular circumstances, it is less than a mile from CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Rebecca Sternwood sat in her car in the parking area at Fort Marcy Park and waited, although not patiently. It had been an hour and fifteen minutes since she had made her call and the man wasn’t here. What would she do if he ignored her and didn’t show up? She didn’t really mean what she had said about going to The Washington Post, at least she didn’t think she did, but she certainly couldn’t go to anyone higher up in the Agency. Maybe she would have to pull a Snowden and make a run for it with all the classified data she could carry. No, of course she wasn’t going to do that either, but what alternatives were there left for her to get the weight of this off her?
She had undertaken an operation to kill a rogue operative who was ex-Agency and was threatening to bring down the Agency’s whole Chinese network. She knew what she was doing was illegal, but it had been for a patriotic purpose, and she had done it under instructions that came from the very top of the Agency’s executive leadership, at least she thought they did. What if they tried to cut her loose now and portray her as the rogue? What if they tried to protect themselves by claiming they had never given her any instructions to do anything? What proof did she have that she had been acting on instructions? The more she thought about it, the lonelier and more vulnerable she felt.
The parking area was nearly deserted. A dirty white van with a collection of ladders tied to a roof carrier was parked a hundred feet or so away from her. Behind the wheel she could see a man wearing what looked like a painter’s cap and coveralls who was eating a sandwich and drinking from a thermos.
The only other car in the lot was a black Mustang parked forty or fifty feet past the workman’s van. A couple in the front was engaged in what appeared at a distance to be an earnest conversation. The woman was behind the wheel and she seemed to be doing all the talking, although she held a cell phone in one hand and looked as if she might be talking both to someone on the phone and to the man in the passenger seat at the same time. Or maybe she was on the phone and he was simply waiting for her to finish. She couldn’t see his face since he was half turned away from the passenger window, but he didn’t appear to be saying much.
Rebecca wondered for a moment if they were having a break-up conversation. Was she was breaking it off with him or was he breaking it off with her? The longer she watched, the more convinced she became that it had to be one or the other.
Rebecca looked at her watch. It had been nearly an hour and a half since she had called and he still wasn’t there. Was it possible he would just blow her off and not show up? Surely not. His neck was on this block as much as hers was, probably more since the operation had originated with him. If he didn’t fix this or at the very least try to keep her sweet while he figured out what to do, she was a huge risk to him. He wasn’t going to blow her off and hope for the best. He would be here.
Still, how much longer was she going to give him before she drove away and… well, what? That was the problem, wasn’t it? Since she had no idea what she would do if she let herself get so pissed off that she left, she ground her teeth and continued to wait.
“Is that white van one of your people?” Tay asked Claire, “or is that just some innocent jerk who wants to be left alone to eat his lunch?”
“That’s strictly need to know, Sam, and you don’t need to know.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, cut out the spy crap, would you? It’s getting downright irritating.”
Claire cut Tay a huge wink and wiggled her eyebrows. “If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll give you the password to our clubhouse.”
Tay shook his head, looked away, and changed the subject.
“I’m still not sure this is a good idea for us to be here. If that woman recognizes me from this morning, she’ll drive off and the whole plan is in the toilet.”
“She’s more than a hundred feet away and can’t see anything but your shoulders and the back of your head through a tinted automobile window. How obsessed with you would she have to be to recognize you just from that?”
“That’s not what—”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you meant, hot shot. You men are all alike. You think every woman you come in contact with starts seeing you in her dreams.”
Tay wasn’t sure what to say to that so he said nothing at all.
Suddenly Claire sat up a little straighter and moved her cell phone closer to her face.
“Here we go,” she said. “This could be show time.”
Tay risked a quick glance back over his shoulder. A car had pulled up next to Rebecca’s and parked. It was a BMW sedan in an odd color, a sort of brown-green.
“What would you call that color?” Claire asked.
“I don’t know. It’s more or less the same color as—”
“A goose turd.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” Claire wiggled her eyebrows again. “But I’ll bet that’s exactly what Beemer calls it: Goose Turd Green.”
A man got out of the BMW and walked around to the driver’s window of Rebecca’s car. He was in every way unremarkable and looked exactly like every other man Tay had seen so far around Washington: middle-aged, ordinary, forgettable.
“He’s too far away for you to get a clear picture.”
“Don’t be silly,” Claire said. “We’ve got more cool gadgets than you cops have ever seen. The tech people who get this file will be able to count his nose hairs if they want to.”
That was an image Tay could have lived a long time without.
“What’s happening?” he asked when Claire kept her eyes on the screen of her phone and said nothing else. “I don’t wa
nt to keep looking back at them.”
“She’s getting out of the car and they’re walking into the park.” Claire panned her cell phone slightly to the left. “Now they’re out of sight.”
Tay watched as Claire lowered her telephone and worked the buttons on its face.
“Done,” she said after a moment. “Now August can send this to our tech people and they’ll find a way to identify the guy.”
“Surely that won’t be easy. It’s going to take a while, isn’t it?”
Before Claire could answer, her telephone rang, almost as if it were admonishing Tay for his lack of faith.
“That was fast, John,” she said when she answered.
She listened for a moment.
“Holy shit, are you serious?”
She listened some more.
“Okay. I understand. No, he didn’t pay attention to us and he doesn’t have anyone with him. He’s definitely alone. No doubt about it.”
More listening.
“Got it. We’ll leave right now and come straight back there. Can I tell Sam?”
Then after a couple of moments she cut the connection without saying anything else.
“Can you tell me what?” Tay asked.
“Who Rebecca is talking to in the park.”
“How did August find out so quickly?”
“John is with the Conductor, and the Conductor recognized the man.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense. Are you going to be allowed to tell me who he is?”
“His name is Zac Reed.”
“That doesn’t give me much to go on. Who in the world is Zac Reed?”
“Zac Reed works for the Agency.”
Tay thought about that, but he didn’t have to think about it for very long.
“I gather then that eliminates the possibly that Rebecca was doing this on her own. So, you now think she did what she did at the direction of the Agency?”
“Uh-huh.”