The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers

by Sam Powers

  “Because he works in intelligence?”

  “Yeah. Or he’s made someone’s naughty list. Either way, that makes him the kind of guy you don’t want to see coming your way.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I’m the kind of guy you don’t want coming your way.”

  “Uh huh. What am I supposed to call you, anyway?”

  “Over to you. Call me Joe, I guess.”

  “That’s not your real name, is it?”

  “Tough to put one by a reporter.”

  “Uh huh. Don’t lay it on too thick, ‘Joe’.”

  They realized they were smiling at each other. Brennan averted his glance, guilty at flirting with someone other than his wife. He went back to the file; they’d had a moment, a connection; and that was all it was going to be. He and Carolyn had troubles, there was no doubting that. But he loved her, and he loved his kids.

  He shook it off and scanned each page in quick succession. “Here,” he said. “There’s a European company based out of the Isle of Man listed as Novextra’s parent, a Kalispell Resources. The Isle of Man is notorious for having no corporate tax, making it an offshore haven for various financial instruments.”

  “Yeah, I saw a piece on 60 Minutes about it a few years ago. What does that mean?” Alex said. She kept leafing through the pages. There were more investigative notes, some photocopied emails, and a copy of a business card. “Raymond Slocombe, Director of Finance, Kalispell Properties. A parent company?”

  Brennan nodded. “A parent company with an address in Baltimore. Look, you should get home. I need to check this out.”

  Malone’s eyebrows shot up faster than the price of water in a heatwave. “You’re kidding, right? I’m not going anywhere except wherever you’re going. I still have nothing tying Ahmed Khalidi or any of the other ACF board members to Kalispell.”

  “I can’t be responsible for your safety. And I have no idea what we’re walking into. Logistically…”

  “Logistically, you can kiss my ever-widening ass if you think I’m giving up a second of this story. If I was a guy, would you presume to make a safety decision for me?”

  “If you were a civilian, yes. It’s not because you’re a woman, it’s because you’re a member of the general public, unskilled in self-defense and survival and, I hate to tell you, likely to just slow me down.”

  “Tough. I found a source who gave us a hard tie, potentially, to the ACF and atrocities; it doesn’t explain why someone’s killing off its board members. But it’s a hell of a story, and you know it.”

  Brennan gathered up the paperwork. “Then we should get going. Just remember, if things get violent, don’t put me in a position where I have to choose between protecting civilians and saving you; because you’re there by choice. So you’re going to lose that contest every time.”

  Malone nodded in short, rapid takes, surprised by the gravitas in his voice. She had no doubt he was serious.

  They left her car at the townhouse, parked in the rear lot, and took Brennan’s rented Lincoln for the ride to Baltimore. He was silent for most of the trip, keeping things impersonal, his mouth a grim line and his eyes on the road.

  Malone studied him. He had an almost muscular tension, a sense that he might uncoil at any moment, as if nothing going through his mind could be allowed to be off mission or off topic. Did he even realize how surreal their lives were just then? Or was it just another day at the office for him? There had to be more to his mission than just the snipers, she thought. He’d never explained sufficiently why America would be so involved in a case that didn’t involve its diplomats or jurisdiction.

  How far out on a limb would he go for her? She didn’t doubt for a second that her intelligence source would abandon her if he needed to. Would ‘Joe’ do the same? Malone wasn’t inclined to consider the risks she took, or how they might affect her life and career. But leaning so heavily on others wasn’t her usual M.O; she knew she should have felt a greater sense of unease, of self-preservation. Maybe spending so much time with the agent was providing a false sense of security, she thought.

  Kalispell’s head office was in a mid-size office tower along West Lombard Street. Through the revolving doors, a polite young woman with dark blond hair and wearing a grey suit sat behind an information desk. To one side, a security guard sat along the wall in a wooden chair, looking bored, with his arms crossed. The young woman had a wireless headset attached to her left ear.

  “Kalispell Properties, one moment please,” she said. “Kalispell Properties, one moment please. Kalispell properties… yes, that would be the billing department; one moment, I’ll connect you. Kalispell… yes sir, we’re based in the United States. Yes sir. Kalis… oh… he hung up.” She tapped the earpiece. “Kalispell Properties may I help you?”

  Brennan and Malone looked at her blankly. The woman’s eyes flitted between the two of them. “Sir? Madam? Can I help you?”

  “Sorry,” Brennan said. “We’re looking for Raymond Slocombe. I understand he’s the director of finance?”

  The woman looked puzzled. “I don’t think we have anyone by that name, sir. Let me check the directory…no, no Raymond Slocombe. One moment…” She answered another three calls before getting back to them. “If you’d like I can make a quick call to human resources…?”

  Brennan smiled as warmly as he could. “Thank you; that would be very helpful.”

  She made the call while they surveyed the lobby. The place was underwhelming, a polished concrete floor and a series of semi-modern benches, surrounded by fake ferns. “Well,” Malone whispered, “if nothing else, we know these people are guilty of lousy taste.”

  The receptionist cleared her throat to signal to them. “Yes… I’m sorry but this is kind of awkward. It appears Mr. Slocombe passed away a few years ago. However, if this is a financial matter, I can direct you to his successor, Mr. David Grant…”

  “That would be fine,” Malone said.

  “No! No… that’s unnecessary,” Brennan interjected. “We’ll come back another time. Thank you.”

  He directed Malone away from the desk and towards the door. “Come on,” he muttered, “I’ll explain outside.”

  On the street, Brennan looked around for somewhere convenient to keep an eye on the building and talk to Alex at the same time. He nodded across the street, halfway down the block. “That coffee shop – come on, I’ll buy you one and explain.”

  Once they were seated at the small, round table in front of the glass windows, he pointed across the road. “What do you see?”

  She looked over her shoulder, then at him. “Come on, Joe, spare me the dramatics, okay? It’s still early, and I’m still hung over.”

  “What I see,” Brennan said, “is a big building. Big enough that there might be, say, two hundred people working in it. Can you tell me how many of them are armed?”

  She sighed, annoyed. “No, I can’t tell you how many of them are armed.”

  “But you figure it’s wise to just walk into the place, maybe be led up to somewhere less public than the lobby? At a company that might just have sponsored mass executions?”

  “So what were you going to do if Slocombe hadn’t kicked the bucket?”

  “Have him meet us in the lobby, something like that.”

  “Fine, Mr. Security, so what are we supposed to do now?”

  “Give me your phone,” Brennan said.

  She handed him the phone. “Don’t look in my directory,” she said. “I have private numbers in there.”

  “I just need your browser.” He searched for a minute, then handed her back the phone. “That’s a picture of David Grant. They may be involved in crooked business over in Africa, but they still have to maintain their image here. Corporate website.”

  “Okay, so we know what he looks like. So?”

  “So we know that at some point, the director of finance for the home office has been responsible for sending money to Africa to fund insurgencies. Do you thi
nk they’d replace the late Mr. Slocombe with a straight shooter? I’m guessing no. Whoever took that role on has to be crooked. This is a standard rented office mini-tower with above-ground employee parking in a rear lot. At some point, Mr. Grant has to go home. Then we grab him.”

  “And?”

  “And I convince him to talk to us.”

  “Convince? Is that a euphemism for some sinister agency thing?”

  “Not if he talks to us, it’s not. But it wouldn’t hurt for him to think so, so no good cop, bad cop, okay? Just let me be bad cop for a few minutes all by my lonesome. Stay here, enjoy your latte. I’ll be back with Mr. Grant in a few minutes.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.” He got up and left her with both coffees, disappearing out the front door and back down the street at pace. A minute later, Brennan was back in front of the Kalispell building. Instead of taking the broad stairs up to the front door, he followed the sidewalk another fifty yards to the parking lot side entrance, to the building’s left. It led, in turn, behind the building to the large, open lot, divided into dozens of white-lined vehicle bays.

  The lot was fenced, but behind the back fence was a small hill covered in pines, firs with old, dry needles. Brennan scanned the empty lot, then climbed the fence quickly and dropped over. It was a perfect vantage point, out of immediate eyesight, unlikely to draw attention.

  He thought about the reporter, sitting just a block away. How would she react if she saw him working on Grant? If she actually saw how far he was willing to go to get the job done? Brennan didn’t like exposing her to field work at all, but it was a necessary wrong; her source was too important for her to be on the streets without a safety net. She was probably safer with him, he reasoned, than in D.C. on her own.

  Her business also meant that, best intentions notwithstanding, he couldn’t trust her with all of the details yet, not until he was sure she’d keep things under wraps until any danger to the public was averted.

  Forty-two minutes later, the businessman walked out of the back doors of the building and headed towards his black Audi. Brennan moved quickly, scaling and hopping the fence in two motions. His pace was rapid as he intercepted Grant, just as he reached out a tan-suited arm to unlock the driver’s door. Brennan flashed the pistol and said quietly, “In the car, Mr. Grant. We need a quick word, and I’ll let you go back to your doubtless idyllic life.” Brennan used the pistol to direct him inside. “Open the passenger door lock before you get in, or I might get nervous,” Brennan added.

  Inside the car, Grant kept his hands on his lap, looking frightened. “Who are you?” he said. “Look, I don’t have any money on me. You can take my car…”

  “Start the car, Mr. Grant.”

  He had a dazed look but he followed the instruction. “Where are you taking me?” Grant asked.

  “That depends. You tell me what I need to know, we don’t have to go anywhere. You cause me problems, I’ll take you to a world of pain. Are we clear?

  Grant looked sideways slowly at the gun. “We’re clear. But you should know…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Some of the people I work for are likely to take substantial offense to intrusions into their business.”

  “Is that a threat, Mr. Grant?”

  “No, sir…” he said haltingly. “Frankly, I’m as scared of them as you should be.”

  “Tell me about that, Mr. Grant. Tell me why they scare you. First of all, who are ‘they’? Who owns Kalispell? I checked the EDGAR database and it’s not a public company.”

  “The sole owner is an oil and gas conglomerate, PetroGlobal.”

  “Based where?”

  “France. Look, I’m just a title. I move money. I don’t ask questions.”

  “Who owns PetroGlobal?”

  The man sighed deeply, nervously. “AK Industrial SARL. In turn it’s controlled by the family of Ahmed Khalidi, a Jordanian national who lives in the United Arab Emirates…”

  “I’m familiar with the name. Look at a picture for me.” He produced the headshot from the Nigerian file of Andraz Kovacic. “You know this guy?”

  Grant’s eyebrows rose slightly and his lips parted minutely. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You’re lying, Mr. Grant.” Brennan prodded him with the gun. “From this sort of range, you don’t want to know the damage a .40 caliber slug will do to someone’s stomach.”

  “Okay! Okay, for chrissake! He’s a fixer of some sort that Kalispell had on the payroll in Africa. But he left the company in 2009.”

  “Left the company?”

  “He disappeared. Off the radar, completely. I was told to cut off transfers to him.”

  “How much had they sent him?”

  “I couldn’t say exactly; it was for the whole four years that I’d been here by that point…”

  “Give me a ballpark.”

  “During that entire period? About six-point-two million.”

  Details were sliding into place, Brennan thought. Khalidi had been financing regional insurrections, probably to force local villagers off of profitable oil leases; that explained the money and the village slaughter. He certainly wasn’t the first to do it. But his fixer, his money man, had disappeared. “How much of the money that you sent to him was unaccounted for when he vanished?”

  Grant’s head slumped. “You realize they’ll kill me if any of this ever gets out.”

  “You knew something seriously wrong was going on, but you chose to stay.”

  “It’s complicated,” Grant said. “I had debts…”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Do you really think it would be healthy for you to know?”

  “I suppose not,” Grant said. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “No. But if you tell anyone about this, they will, just to be sure you aren’t around to corroborate anything you told me. You know that, right?”

  He nodded but said nothing.

  “So how much?”

  “About four million,” Grant said.

  “They must have torn the country apart looking for him.”

  “They were frantic, at the time. But in the long run, for a company the size of PetroGlobal, four million is lunch money. They got over it.”

  “Turn off the engine,” Brennan said.

  “Are you going…”

  “I told you, I’m not going to kill you. But if I were you, I’d find another line of work.”

  Brennan got out of the car and slammed the door. The lot was still empty. He strode quickly towards the sidewalk, blending in among the pedestrians, disappearing with the crowd.

  FEB. 27, 2016, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  They arrived back in D.C. just after midnight, and Brennan took Malone back to her townhouse. He parked across the street. “Thank you for your help today,” he said. “We made a lot of headway. Look, I know I can be a hard case, but…”

  She interrupted him. “Something’s wrong.”

  Brennan turned to look at the building. There were no cars parked on the street outside. He checked his wing mirror and saw no one on the sidewalk in either direction. “What?”

  “My side table lamp.”

  “Eh?”

  “I always leave my side table lamp on when I leave in the morning, by the front door. The telephone table. I always leave that light on…”

  “Maybe the bulb burned out?”

  “No, it’s one of those long-life, low wattage things. I just changed it recently.”

  The apartment was black. “When I get out of the car,” Brennan said, “I want you to slowly slide over to the driver’s seat. Try and keep your shoulders level while doing it. From that distance, if anyone looking out of your apartment window has already made us, they won’t realize you’ve changed positions. As soon as I get to the opposite sidewalk, I want you to start the car again and go. Once you’re at least ten blocks away, call Walter,” he said, repeating his friend’s phone number twice so that she would
n’t forget it. “That’s his private cell, away from even agency ears. He’ll help you from there while I deal with whatever this is.”

  “Are you going in there?”

  “I have to know what we’re dealing with, whether they’re trying to get to me through you, establish my possible location through a contact.”

  “Or?”

  “Or whether they’re here to kill you, Alex. Quickly… give me your keys.”

  She did so silently, the weight of the prospect hitting her. “I’m going to get out now,” Brennan said. “Are you ready?”

  Malone nodded. He opened the door quickly and climbed out. As he crossed the street, she did as he’d suggested and slid over into the driver’s seat. As he reached the sidewalk, he heard the engine start; she pulled away too quickly and the tires squealed once.

  And then the car was gone, and the night was as silent as it ever gets in the city, just a stiff breeze accompanied by background traffic noise from the busy road a few blocks away; somewhere, a long way off, a police siren sounded.

  He’d been as honest with Alex as he thought she could take; there was no reason for anyone involved with the ACF to suspect he’d be at her townhouse. The only person anyone was looking for was the reporter. What he really wanted to know was who ordered the hit.

  The fact that all of the townhouse’s lights were turned off suggested someone would try to double-tap her inside her own place, maybe move her elsewhere for disposal. Brennan was expecting a single assassin; a team would be too high-profile, too visible in such a public place. The fact that the person had stashed their ride out of sight meant whoever it was had eyes on the street, which meant he was being watched for the entire time it took to cross the road and walk up the short flight of steps to the front door, separated from its neighbor by a short black railing. The light above the door gave off a feint orange glow.

  He unlocked it with Malone’s keys, but instead of opening the door simply left it untouched. Then he climbed over the outside rail, the angle too acute for anyone inside to see through the window, as he moved to the right of the building and down the parking lot driveway.