by Jack Hardin
“What? What are you talking about? Who’s ‘we’?”
“Everyone from the team.”
“Framed? Virgil, for what?” Her heart started pounding.
“I’m not sure yet. You don’t know anything about this?”
“Of course not. Why would I? I got out.” She motioned outwardly. “I’m down here.”
“Yeah. All right. Sorry.”
“So...what?” she prompted.
“Did you...did you ever feel at any point like maybe we weren’t always fed the right information?”
“How so?” She had, of course. But she wasn’t prepared to tell him about Saint Petersburg, about the night she received a secondary envelope containing details contradicting the dossier she had initially been given by Mortimer. “The briefings always seemed tight to me. Why?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he changed course. “Has anyone from the Agency been in contact with you since you made your exit?”
The answer, of course, was yes. Ryan Wilcox had come down to Pine Island just last month and left her with an uninterpreted picture of her father. Risking an honest moment, she nodded, and then asked, “Why?”
“You mind if I ask who?”
“Virgil, I—”
He put up a hand. “I get it. I’m sorry. I know this is weird, showing up like this.” He ran a hand across the back of his neck, grimaced. “Was it Ryan Wilcox? He was your head in Kabul, right?”
Ellie’s eyes thinned into slits, and her tone hardened. “How do you know that, Virgil? You need to cut it with the tip-toeing around whatever’s on your mind. Have you been talking with Ryan?”
“That’s the thing, Ellie.” He looked unsurely at the floor and then back at her. “Ryan. He’s dead.”
Chapter Twenty
A naked bulb hung above the work table and cast a dingy glow across the inky room.
He had picked out the wrapping paper himself. Something he had never done in his life. It had taken a trip to Hobby Lobby to get it, something else he had never done before. Why any man would go into Hobby Lobby of his own accord he didn’t know. Next time, if there was a next time, and he knew there wouldn’t be, he would go to Wally World and get it.
While he cut off a section of paper, he hummed the melody to Pink Floyd’s “Money,” and it occurred to him just how much he could relate to the lyrics. Like, maybe, had he been born a generation prior and Roger Waters had actually known him, it could have been biographical. He thought of this because he had, in fact, been snagging cash with both hands, even stashing a good bit away. If he kept this up, he figured he’d even be able to afford a Learjet one day in the not too distant future.
He set the scissors aside and placed the package in the center of the blank side of the paper, started folding the wrapping up the little box. It crinkled, and he pressed it over the top, trying to fit a piece of Scotch Tape across the seam.
Three minutes later he stepped back and took a look at his handiwork. He shrugged. It wasn’t flat or even. If fact, it looked more bulbous than square and a bit like it had been rolling around for some time at the bottom of a trash can.
But, well, that was all right. All right indeedy, he thought. What mattered wasn’t the skill of the wrapping, but the contents of the gift itself. Even more, the heart behind the gift. That is what they said, isn’t it?
A gift that would go to a delightful woman, someone who probably didn’t get enough presents as it was. And shouldn’t everyone get a little care package outside of their birthday and Christmas from time to time?
He picked it up and walked happily back to the main house.
Yes, a delightful lady indeedy.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Dead?” Ellie’s thoughts were suddenly slogging through a mental swamp. “When?”
“Last week. He was in Moscow.”
“An accident?”
“No,” he huffed. “Definitely not an accident. But they made it out to be.”
“Who? Who made it out to be?”
He paused. “I don’t know. Ryan came to see me a few weeks ago asking me questions about a mission I had gone on while I was with the team. I didn’t give him anything. I had never worked with Ryan before, and up until then I’d never even heard of him. I spent some time digging around, checking him out, and finally had a sit down with him two weeks ago. He was killed six days later.”
Ellie looked away and stared at a stack of boxes labeled “scuba.” Ryan Wilcox was one of the most capable men Ellie had ever had the privilege of working with. And now he was dead? He hadn’t even reached fifty. Question upon question crashed through her mind. She started with the obvious. “What did he want to know?”
Virgil slid his palms down a weary face. “Ok, so here it is. Faraday and I had been sent on a brief assignment that took us to Australia. Perth. It was labeled ‘Bonsai.’ The directive was to upload encrypted content onto a laptop left in a hotel room. Faraday planted the information while I took lookout. We got in, we got out—semper idem.”
Semper idem. It was a phrase Ellie had not heard in a long time. Always the same. Each mission was different, but what remained the same was a commitment to get in and get out. That never changed. But now an unholy entropy was beginning to taint everything Ellie looked back on; everything, it seemed, was changing.
“I was the only contact Ryan had for that mission,” Virgil said. “Obviously, he couldn’t ask Faraday.” His voice trailed off. He was right. Faraday had been killed two years before the team broke apart. While on assignment, she had been hit in the neck by a sniper round after making a hasty exit from a building in Mogadishu. It had been the first and only fatality their team would experience.
Virgil continued. “And predictably no one knows where Mortimer is. You probably know that when we all left Brussels he retired from civil service altogether. But now it seems that no one can find him either.”
Ellie had known that Mortimer retired. She hadn’t, however, realized that he had ghosted. “What makes you think that you—we—are being framed?”
“Because whatever we put on that laptop in Perth evidently had information that detailed our complicity in not only all the missions we ever went on but, get this, each mission for the next fifteen months thereafter.”
“How’s that possible? Unless…” she stopped talking. There was a picture trying to form in her mind, and it was coming together rapidly. “Unless the wizard behind the curtain knew what levers he was going to pull well in advance.” When her eyes came back to Virgil’s, she knew she wasn’t wrong. “Oh God,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said soberly. “I know I’m breaking all kinds of old protocol telling you all this, but, Ellie, I’m scared. One day I’m chartering a boat down in Panama, and the next my entire perspective of the last decade of my life is turned upside down.” He looked at her with worried eyes. “Ellie.” Their eyes met. “What did we do?”
She tore her gaze away and chewed nervously on her bottom lip. I don’t know, she thought. The nightmare borne of her previous suspicions was true. There really was a monster under the bed. “What you are going to do?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I can hide as well as anyone. But my concern isn’t falling into the shadows as much as it is never being able to come back out of them.”
“What all did Ryan tell you? Did he leave you with anything else to go on?”
“No. That was the only window he opened, but he hinted that well trusted people within the Agency are behind it. I think he was trying to put all the pieces together, someone found out, and,” Virgil snapped his fingers, “lights out. Right now I’m trying to get in touch with everyone from the team and seeing if I can create a picture of my own. You’re the first one I’ve reached out to.”
“What about Bri—Voltaire,” she corrected.
“You know his name?”
“Yes. That’s...a different conversation. Do you know where he is?”
“No. He’s vapor. Can’t find him anywhe
re. Cicero’s in Arizona. I’m going there next.”
They couldn’t stand here talking much longer, but Ellie still had one more question. She couldn’t let him leave without knowing. A dread pressed heavily on her chest. She didn’t want to ask because she didn’t want to hear what she already knew would be his response. “Did Ryan happen to say anything about my father?”
“Your father? Why would he do that?”
Disappointment came easily. “Nevermind.”
“Listen, I’ll be in touch. I’m going find out what’s really going on. But you need to watch your six. I don’t know what kind of purgatory we’ve just fallen into.”
“Thank you for letting me know, Virgil.”
He shook his head. “I’m not Virgil anymore. Haven’t been in years.” He extended a large hand. “Ethan. Ethan Bradford.”
She shook it. “I always had you pegged for a Sam or a Barry.”
He shrugged. Then with a final nod, Virgil opened the door and stepped out. When it clicked shut behind him, Ellie was left alone with only anxious thoughts and fresh concerns. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. Ryan was dead. An adept man who had given his entire life to serve this country. She tried not to let it get to her that the one link she had to the mystery of her father was now gone and she had no other leads. But it was getting to her. By way of a tangled ball of anxiety whirling behind her sternum. Who had killed Ryan? Why? Where was her father? Who was her father? Who was framing them? For how long, and why? She had no answers to these questions; neither, it seemed, did Virgil. He had come here and verified a suspicion that Ellie’d had for the last four years: that TEAM 99 had been complicit in illicit action and may have, in some part, acted as the muscle for the political version of a mobster. After all, isn’t that what some politicians were? Mobsters with pretty smiles, corny comb overs, and firm handshakes? She had served her country with honor. They all had. If Virgil was right, then whoever was set against them wasn’t going to get away it. They had picked the wrong group of people to incriminate.
Ellie opened the door of the storage room and flipped the light switch off as she stepped out. She negotiated her way out of the dry dock and back to the boardwalk. Tyler was standing at The Salty Mangrove, holding a beer and watching a baseball game on the flat screen set above the bar. She didn’t try to mask her concerned eyes, her taut face. “Hey,” she said softly.
Tyler looked over and his smile evaporated. “Are you okay? Geez, Ellie, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She forced a smile. “I have.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
This time, César Solorzano had deferred to Ringo for the location of their meeting. For the last decade, like clockwork, the two men met once each year somewhere off the U.S. mainland, generally on the coast of a neighboring country—Cuba, Jamaica, Grand Bahama. The meetings were to discuss business: changes in the marketplace, new technologies, strategic alliances, the most recent government policies and directives—U.S., Mexican, and South American. With Ringo’s policy of not speaking over the phone, it also afforded them an opportunity to ensure their relationship remained healthy and intact. It had been eight years since Ringo had agreed that Ángeles Negros, the fierce cartel that César represented, would be his one and only supplier. And for the better part of those eight years, the arrangement had worked well on both sides. The cartel gained another trusting and discerning associate in the U.S., one who continued to purchase larger quantities over time, and for Ringo it meant the cartel would not be selling to local competitors, few as they were now. For nearly a decade now, that relationship had held solid, and a genuinely mutual respect had been established between both parties. Up until recently, that is, when César had become more and more intent on getting Ringo to expand his portfolio of interests and products.
El Toto was Ángeles Negros’ harsh and pitiless leader, and for the last fifteen years César, a childhood friend of El Toto, had risen through the top layers of the cartel’s ranks to become one of only four men in their leader’s small and trusted inner circle. But, as Ringo had come to see of late, the years of undisputed power and success had begun to make César forget that business, even illicit business, was built and maintained by a mutual respect and trust. Ringo was not a low-life. He was not an expendable border donkey or a boat runner speeding across the Gulf at ninety knots, hoping to evade detection.
No, he was the cartel’s most valuable contact in Southwest Florida, and one who, every couple of quarters, increased the value of his orders. César had begun as a shrewd and discerning man of enterprise – one could even say a friend of sorts—but over the years he had cloaked himself with a hubris which spawned an incessant need to have his own way, even if he did maintain a charming and hospitable disposition.
Ringo had always been clear: one meeting a year, and up until this year César had respected that. Ringo had no desire to get caught with his hand in the cocaine jar. So, the less they spoke, the less they met, the easier it was for Ringo to lay low and stay off the radar of agencies intent on finding men like him. Today would be Ringo’s third meeting with César over a span of ten months. Adding folly to folly, César had, of recent, begun prodding Ringo to sell heroin and guns in addition to cocaine. Ringo wasn’t interested. Not in the least, and César knew it. Ringo’s stance, even before his relationship with the cartel, was that he was only and ever interested in selling cocaine. Nothing else. New kinds of drugs, weapons—these required new networks, new allegiances and alliances, greatly increasing the chances that someone, somewhere, would slip and Ringo would be caught up in the net when it fell.
So now, here he was, waiting with Chewy and Andrés for César to arrive. Ringo had selected the Barracuda Cay Resort in Crown Haven, located on Little Abaco, one of the Bahamas’ most northerly islands. He had been here before, this exact spot, a couple years ago, all by himself, after he received the news that his best friend had died in an automobile accident in Cape Coral. He had holed up here for two weeks, thinking that it might help him heal. The ocean had a way of doing that, its expansive waters and open horizons allowing you to pour your pain and confusion into it, absorbing it all like a faithful friend and carrying it far, far away.
But two years ago, when he was grieving the loss of Frank O’Conner, it hadn’t worked. He sat here, here in this very bungalow, and cried, mourned, and drank far too many bottles of local rum that still couldn’t—didn’t—burn or cloud away the cradle of sorrow that had opened up within him. And it was then, toward the end of his stay, after he had set the impotent rum aside, after he had cried his last, that he discovered a hard kernel of apathy wedged inside him like a malignant stone. Maybe it had been there all along. Smaller for sure, much smaller, and he thought that maybe it had started to form that day when he found Norma Jean’s body bobbing in the ocean like a fallen buoy. That day that she and Gunny were murdered. Maybe that’s when it started to grow in him. A subsurface indignation that burned hot and, as the months and years went on, cooled and left a hard and dispassionate place within; a cavern in his heart that would never feel again.
Still though, he felt for so much.
Now, he stood with the toes of his Birkenstocks hanging off the edge of the bungalow’s deck, looking out at the horizon, allowing his thoughts to return to the present and to the conversation he was about to have. The bungalow was an overwater style, mounted on hidden pilings and sitting only a few short feet above the calm, bright cerulean waters that flanked the island. The quarters featured glass floors in the master bedroom, outdoor showers, its roof and indoor ceiling made of dried palm fronds, and interior curtains that took the place of walls and doors. It sat two hundred yards off a private beach, positioned like an island of its own in the middle of the shallow, transparent waters.
Ringo walked to the back deck, found some shade, and laid down on a bamboo lounge chair. He closed his eyes and finally lost track of how much time elapsed before Chewy appeared from around the corner. Che
wy had set his earbuds aside for the soothing sound of the water lapping beneath the bungalow. He sat down in a matching chair next to Ringo and adjusted the back support so that he was in a sitting position.
Ringo, shades on, looked over at him. Chewy was still wearing his trench coat. A delightfully sunny summer day in the northern Caribbean and Chewy was still cold. Ringo was stocky for a man his height, but not what one might call fat. If he put on that trench coat he would pass out in three minutes, maybe two. Chewy, on the other hand, appeared as content as an eskimo ice fishing in the North Pole.
Chewy said, “I just heard from one of César’s men. His Viking docked a half hour ago. They should be here any minute.” He looked like he was going to say something else but didn’t.
“What’s on your mind, Chewy?” Ringo thought he might hear a concern about the conversation they were about to have with César. Instead, Chewy said, “I think I would like to live here one day. In a place like this. My grandmother always talked about living in the Caribbean. She never did make it. Never had the money. I think this could be my most favorite spot I have visited with you yet, Ringo.”
“You should buy it one day,” Ringo said. “Make it your own.”
“You pay me well, Ringo. I don’t have the money for a place like this. It’s not even for sale.”
“All good things in time, Chewy, my friend. You deserve a place like this. Everything is for sale.”
Andrés stepped into view. “He’s here.”
Ringo nodded at Chewy. They stood and Ringo tugged down on the bottom of his Hawaiian shirt, a white background graced with small images of palms and conch shells. Ringo then walked around the perimeter of the structure and turned down the short boardwalk that led to a docking slip. Three men had just stepped out of a skiff and were coming toward him. One wore cream-colored linen pants and a white dress shirt that was open four buttons down, revealing an ample carpet of chest hair and two gold chains that glistened in the bright sun. His dark black hair was slicked back with a high shine, and a brilliant silver watch adorned his left wrist. César Solorzano. Two large men followed behind him wearing navy blue shorts, white polos, and shoulder holsters. His bodyguards. Ringo met César halfway to the bungalow, and they exchanged a brief hug, a kiss on each cheek. The azure waters lapped beneath their feet and cast the entire panorama in a field of bright and stunning display.