The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers

by Sam Powers

Tarrant pointed at her quizzically. ‘Ms….’

  Mah intervened to introduce. ‘Agent Jennifer Parnell, my NSA opposite number on Legacy. They’ve… requested that she have full access to our plans and be my field liaison.’

  Jonah shook her hand. Her grip was firm, her expression confident. ‘We’ve worked together before…’

  She nodded. ‘Your memory is exceptional, sir. I wouldn’t have recalled it if you hadn’t mentioned it.’

  Tarrant’s eyes narrowed and he peered at her, trying to place the face. ‘But what was it, again…?’

  ‘I was D.C. Metro Police back during the Evans case…’

  The missing recruit. Tarrant had been a young analyst when Evans had jumped into the Potomac; her suicide had sent shock waves through the agency, which was under fire at the time for putting candidates under too much stress.

  ‘Of course! You were the lead detective…’

  ‘Second. That was my partner.’

  ‘And a decade later, you’re a senior agent with the NSA. That’s impressive.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ She blushed slightly under the pale gloom of the fluorescent lighting.

  Tarrant motioned toward the office. ‘Come, let’s talk.’ His assistant leaned over to the receptionist and whispered for her to bring coffee.

  The office remained spartan and impersonal after the death of Tarrant’s predecessor. He hadn’t felt right about it, not yet. Not having been the one who’d pulled the trigger. That he’d saved lives didn’t really matter. It was a stark, harsh memory for a man who had never been a field agent and he bristled slightly every time he walked into the room. He gestured to the two chairs ahead of the desk while his assistant sat on a couch along the far wall.

  Once he was behind his desk, Tarrant leaned forward, both hands clasped. ‘Well guys… this one is a clusterfuck, to say the least.’

  Mah crossed his legs, then tapped on his notepad with his pen. ‘They wouldn’t go for the idea of cancelling the motorcade?’

  ‘They wouldn’t even go for cancelling the meet-and-greet with the centenarian. Parnell, are you fully up to speed?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ she nodded. ‘My superiors are equally anxious about this and frankly, we really just think it’s asking for trouble given Legacy. They suggested I ask about the possibility of a last-second adjustment, perhaps a road closure or detour, something the public can quickly adapt to but that might upset anyone planning an attack.’

  Tarrant’s secretary interrupted with coffee, passing him a cup then offering one to each of the agents. Mah turned it down, but Parnell gratefully accepted the beverage.

  ‘Cream and sugar?’ the woman asked.

  Parnell covered the cup with her hand. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She leaned in conspiratorially. ‘A little lactose intolerant, to be honest.’

  She was more approachable than Carolyn Brennan, at least. Tarrant thought the idea that the NSA would be able to keep something like a route change secret laughable. His own spies in her department had already filled him in on the idea. The Chinese probably knew six seconds after I did, the way the NSA talks. ‘Not a likely option, right Brandon?’

  Mah knew a political question when he heard it. Tarrant had no intention of annoying the leaders of China and every official in Texas simultaneously, not when their decision already incorporated the risks. On top of that, he still didn’t like her being there. ‘It would be highly unlikely that city police would be able to work with something like that and we need them on the day…’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Parnell said. ‘It was just a suggestion, of course. I’m just here to lend a hand.’

  Tarrant nodded politely. Sure. The NSA needs a scapegoat and it’s either her or us, should something go wrong. ‘Well, don’t you worry. Just follow Brandon’s lead and keep in mind that he has final call on everything, okay?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ She couldn’t help but frown a little as she said it. They were making it clear where she stood.

  Mah listened stoically, but Tarrant got the sense he was happy the lines had been drawn. He got the sense he didn’t like Agent Parnell very much.

  HARBIN, CHINA

  DAY 14

  The limousine crashed through the chain link fence and reinforced gate, pieces flying in all directions, the metal shimmering like a cymbal as it scraped the asphalt.

  It was after midnight, and the guard had been bored, barely paying attention, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip and his AK-47 resting across his stomach. The crash jolted him alert, and he looked around confused for a moment before slamming the red alarm button under the gate control’s dash.

  Near instantly, men began to flood out of the small compound’s four large buildings.

  In the warehouse, where a storage locker had been turned into a makeshift prison, Jackson Chu poked his head around its door and motioned to the guard. ‘What’s going on?’

  The young gangster looked nervous and barely old enough to shave. ‘I don’t know, Mr. Chu. No one is answering my radio hail. Should I…?’

  Chu nodded vigorously. ‘Go and help; I will take care of this pair for you, make sure they don’t try anything while you’re gone.’

  The younger man bowed quickly. ‘Many thanks, Mr. Chu. I am blessed by your leadership.’

  Chu poked his head back into the room. ‘Quickly! By the time they get the doors open and figure out there’s no one behind the wheel…’

  ‘The wheel of what?’ Lee asked. ‘What was that?’

  ‘That was a Harbin Limousine Services stretch Cadillac breaking through the front gate. No time to explain: come on!’

  They followed him out into the hall. But instead of heading toward the front door of the warehouse, Chu led them in the opposite direction. ‘There’s a back door to this place and my car is parked on the other side of it. There’s also a back gate to this compound.’

  ‘So we might have guards to deal with?’ Brennan asked.

  ‘Potentially. But I don’t think so.’ He opened the door and as he uttered the last word, the sound of machine gun fire split the night, a furious assault. ‘The gentleman who wedged down the accelerator also left a tape playing on the back seat. Small arms fire, I believe he said.’

  ‘Who owns the limo company?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Why… we do, of course,’ Chu smiled back at her.

  Brennan almost laughed. The Black Cranes were eviscerating a limo from their own firm.

  They clambered into Chu’s sports coupe. ‘I’d advise everyone to buckle up,’ he said. Then he stepped on the gas, hard. The car shot toward the rear gate. One guard had stayed behind, a thin man with wavy dark hair and a look of shock. He didn’t even get a chance to train his rifle on them before the car smashed through the gate, bouncing on hard racing shocks out onto the street. He spun the wheel left, the back end sliding out, then straightened the car out as he punched the gas one more time.

  ‘And where exactly are we going now?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Not that you could tell anyone,’ Brennan interjected. ‘Seeing as how you’re cut off from help. Right?’

  She gave him a hard stare. ‘I imagine I’ll fare better on my own in these parts than you would, Agent Brennan.’

  Behind the wheel, Chu laughed. ‘She has a point, American. You don’t exactly fit in.’

  ‘The question stands,’ Lee put to him. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Now? Now we go find the venerable Master Yip... and then I no longer owe your friend Ms. Lee her favor, while you, in turn, will be beholden to me, Gwai Lo.’

  ‘Great,’ Brennan muttered. ‘Because things were going so well already.’

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  The church on the corner of Highland and Pratt had been there for over a century, back when Baltimore was a more prosperous port, and inner-city crime was a fraction of the modern problem it had become. Swaddled in red brick, with a copper steeple long turned green by age and acclimation, it had served a small-but-vital congregation since the Teddy Roosevelt admini
stration.

  Gessler didn’t know anything about that. Now, it was just a target.

  He leaned out the driver’s window slightly and looked back across the street at it. Then he took in the surroundings, looking for obvious threats or impediments. He’d surveyed it over the weekend, trading off with Codename Air until they had a sense of the neighborhood, of whether witnesses would be likely at eight o’clock in the morning on a weekday.

  In the back of his brain sat a faint, dull recognition that once, many years earlier, this place had been pivotal in his life. But none of that was needed. The mission was restricted to essential knowledge only. And Paul Gessler didn’t need to know where he’d come from, or who he was, or why the place was important.

  He just knew he had a task to fulfill.

  He checked both directions before getting out of the car. He moved to the trunk and opened it, taking out the two bleach bottles full of fuel. It had been the other’s idea to use those instead of standard red fuel containers, which would attract attention. He closed the trunk and walked across the road, checking around once more for onlookers.

  The church’s front door was open. He walked inside, frowning again at the strange familiarity. A front reception area led through to the main church hall, sets of pews divided down the middle, an altar on a raised dais at the front of the room, a pipe organ behind it. The place looked deserted.

  He walked up the aisle. There was a door at the back, beside the stage. He didn’t know how he knew to go there, but he was certain.

  Before he could reach it, the door swung open. A short, stocky senior in a clergyman’s robe closed it behind him, then turned and saw that he had company.

  ‘Can I help you, my son?’ he asked. The priest had to be at least eighty, Gessler figured.

  The man looked emotionless, brooding or brutish… the priest wasn’t sure which. But it was a tough neighborhood, and not much surprised him anymore.

  ‘Are you Father Peter Fischer?’

  ‘I am.’

  The man put down the two big blue bleach bottles. Then he reached into his coat side pocket and drew the small pistol. He reached into the other pocket and withdrew the silencer, then began threading it onto the barrel, realizing he should’ve done it before entering the church.

  But the priest did not try to run. ‘Are you going to rob me? We have very little here. Our congregation is humble, and the Sunday collection is very small.’

  Something was nagging Gessler, a feeling of unease. He pushed it out of the way, as trained. But it returned. The man was familiar, like the building. He peered at him, trying to place the face beyond the photo they’d found online.

  ‘Do… we know each other?’ the priest asked. ‘You seem like perhaps you recognized me.’

  Gessler squinted, feeling a sudden pressure behind his eyes. He’d had one of the headaches already, when he’d first been activated and had tried to remember the little Indian man. It was something… something he wasn’t supposed to know.

  The priest had been studying the man’s face. But suddenly, his eyes widened, his mouth held open in a moment of stunned surprise. ‘I… think I know you,’ he said, his voice quavering. ‘My Lord in Heaven. You’re him, aren’t you? You’re the Taylor boy… Donald, wasn’t it?’

  Another stabbing pain struck Gessler behind the eyes, this time radiating to his temples and burning a hole through the top of his skull. ‘I… I don’t remember,’ he began to say.

  The priest looked shaken. ‘We were never supposed to meet. I… I’m shocked to see you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Gessler said. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway.’

  He raised the pistol and shot the elderly priest through the forehead, the force taking the old man over backwards. He lay on the cold stone floor. his life ebbing away, his final moments filled with regret.

  Gessler walked over to the prone man and shot him once more in the head for good measure, then in the heart. He unscrewed the suppressor and blew out some smoke, then placed it back in one pocket, and the gun in the other. Then he walked back to the bleach bottles and picked up the first, unscrewing it as he walked to the back office.

  Unless the priest had been dishonest many years earlier, there would be no paper record of any of them. But they couldn’t leave anything to chance. The office was comfortable, personal, with pictures of church groups on the walls, a single crucifix on the back wall the only decoration. He stared at it sullenly but without judgement for a few seconds, then went about his business, soaking down the furniture, the two bookshelves and the carpet. He poured a thin trail of fuel behind him as he walked back to the other bottle. He looked around the assembly room, then up at the ceiling. Wooden beams would help, he noted.

  He began to soak down the pews to his left, splashing fuel on a half-dozen before the bottle was empty. Then he drew a strike-anywhere match, lighting it off the stone floor and tossing it into one of the bench puddles.

  The pews were engulfed in seconds. Gessler waited until the flames began to make their way to the back office before making his exit. He’d checked the street for cameras or other surveillance but had seen nothing. Even the nearest streetlight intersection cam was more than four blocks away. He headed back to his car, leaving the bottles behind, not staying to watch the old building engulfed in flames.

  32/

  DETROIT POLICE, Homicide Division

  ‘Anyone here order a well-done filet of Lutheran pastor?’

  Det. Ed Kinnear approached the desk he shared with Dave Underheath, half-eaten sandwich in hand. He’d been working on a cold case from the Nineties, a new lead suggesting new suspects and real progress for the first time in years. Then he’d popped out to get a tuna on a kaiser.

  ‘Really, Dave? While I’m eating my lunch?’

  ‘Is it my fault you were out when the call came in?’

  Kinnear sighed. ‘Every damn time I leave…’

  ‘Yeah, well, you missed a good one. I think you and I are going to be hitting the road. Someone at Baltimore P.D. spotted the all-points, noticed the similarity with a security camera shot.’

  ‘Uh huh. That doesn’t sound so good. What happened?’

  ‘Someone decided to torch the Inland Protestant Church early this morning. Unfortunately, Father Peter Fischer, eighty-seven, was inside at the time.’

  Kinnear frowned. ‘He was still serving at that age?’

  ‘Three days a week by agreement with his replacement,’ the younger man noted. ‘I guess his father had been the pastor before him, and so on, right back to his great grandfather.’

  ‘Yikes. And now he’s charcoal,’ Kinnear said. The nature of the job made insensitivity and gallows humor a sort of stress release, to be summoned only around serving members. ‘Local murder cops have leads?’

  ‘Yeah… well, that’s where things get really, really interesting my friend. Because wouldn’t you go and guess who showed up there this morning…’

  Ed shrugged. ‘I have a hundred-and-sixty active-but-cold cases to pick from dating back to Nineteen Eighty-Two. How many tries do I get?’

  ‘Mr. Paul Gessler himself. Our friends in Baltimore already mailed me what they’ve got.’

  ‘You don’t say! Did they get a make on a vehicle?’

  ‘Unfortunately not.’

  ‘A witness, then?’

  ‘Nope. A camera shot from inside the church office. The pastor had a ‘nanny cam’ installed in a crucifix on the wall behind his desk. They’d had some break-ins over the years.’

  ‘No kidding,’ Ed scoffed. ‘In inner city Baltimore? Shocked, I am. Shocked.’

  Underheath handed him a phone. ‘Check this out.’

  Ed pressed play on the video. The footage was grainy, low-res and black and white. But it was clearly Gessler, soaking down the office with gas. A few minutes later, flames crept into the room and the desk was engulfed.

  ‘The metal from the cross protected the camera. The video was being recorded then erased each day automatica
lly by an app on the pastor’s phone, which was trapped under his body. The fire crew pulled him out before the place went up completely, hoping to save him.’

  ‘Smoke inhalation?’ Ed asked.

  Underheath shook his head. ‘A twenty-two slug from an older model Walther handgun, right through the forehead, just like the late Mrs. Gessler. The shot was so clean, the analysts managed to peg the calibre right off the entry wound. Then he shot him twice more once he was down.’

  ‘Huh.’ Ed stared at the still image of Gessler, looking at the crucifix blankly. What the hell were you doing there, of all places? He’d been a homicide cop for years, and there seemed no shortage of reasons for people to kill a loved one. But Gessler felt different. There was something way off about the whole thing.

  ‘No idea,’ Underheath answered for him. ‘But things are getting weirder already. I checked with state records, and that got me making a few more calls. Mr. Gessler, it seems, was not born in the State of Michigan. Or the State of Maryland. Or, as far as we can tell, anywhere else in the continental United States. His parents registered no record of his birth, and there is no record that they adopted a kid.’

  ‘Whaaat the Hell…?’ Ed wondered. ‘His identity is fake? How can that be? He’s got records back to grade school in the state system.’

  ‘Well, wherever they got him from, they didn’t do it legally. They began registering him as a dependent in Nineteen Seventy-Four, listing his age as eighteen months.’

  ‘And his folks? Do they seem like the baby buying types?’

  ‘They’ve both been dead for a few years. Salt of the Earth individuals. Upstanding, even; they’d volunteered in their community for years, did missionary work overseas; bought Lions season tickets, even, which is its own fresh kind of Hell. The old man opened a contracting company, which he eventually left to his kid. It didn’t take that kid long to run it into the ground.’

  Ed just nodded affirmation, then stared at the grainy photo some more. What the hell was Paul Gessler up to? His father – or whoever Tom Gessler was – had been from Baltimore originally, so there had to be a tie. ‘I think you’re right,’ he told the younger detective. ‘We better talk to the captain and get back in touch with Baltimore P.D., then book a flight. Oh... and see if Baltimore has any motel recommendations.’