Chasing the Son (13 page)

“Fucking Wing,” Dillon muttered, then he had to smile. “Fucking Wing,” he repeated.

He knew it wasn’t the cadet’s fault. Had to be the Topper from the Quadrangle. Or worse: someone from the Supe’s office had alerted the cadets. The Corps was infamous for protecting their own and Jenrette’s death was a dark spot that everyone wanted forgotten. He’d gone into their den and paid the price.

Apparently Mrs. Jenrette’s influence did extend only so far as she had warned. Dillon understood the fundamentals from the Institute and the Corps point of view: Greer Jenrette was dead, Brannigan was gone, let it alone. The Corps had closed ranks and he was on the outside, ring or no ring.

Dillon got to his feet. He looked in the mirror. There was a bruise on his right cheek. Running his hand over his head, he found a lump was forming where the axe handle had struck. He had a bad headache, but time would cure that.

The ass-whupping was something he’d have to cure some other way.

He headed for the door and then remembered something. He went back to what had been Brannigan’s desk. He was sliding the back off the picture frame to remove the photo, when something fell out.

Another photo. This one was of a woman, not quite as old as in the one that had been covering it, and a white-haired man with spectacles. They were standing on the rear of a sailboat. The name of the boat was visible on the stern:
Epodes

A piece of where Brannigan came from.

Dillon opened the drawers. Nothing.

He looked around the room, then remembered something from his own time at the Institute. He went to the air vent and used his Leatherman to unscrew the cover. He reached in, then up and to the right. As it had been in his own room, there was a small shelf there, a convenient place for hiding things, such as booze, porn or whatever the powers that be at the Institute deemed contraband. While it was a familiar spot for cadets, investigators would not know of it. Wing didn’t strike Dillon as the type who would even try to hide contraband.

Dillon’s hand closed on something, a leather pouch. He pulled it out. It was closed with a leather lace, which he untied. He emptied it into his hand. A silver bracelet, tarnished with time. Dillon frowned; he doubted it was something Harry would wear; it was woman’s jewelry. He looked inside and there was something inscribed:
With You I Should Love To Live; With You I Should Love To Die
.

Dillon considered the photo and the bracelet. Someone had left in a hurry. Which is what the official report said: after the incident in the Sinks, no one at the Institute had seen Harry Brannigan again. He’d run fast.

Dillon put the bracelet back in the pouch and then put it in his pocket. He left the room. He took the stairs two at a time and hustled across the Quadrangle, feeling many eyes looking out at him until he made it into the sally port and out of the cadet area.

* * *

“She’s supposed to be dead,” Hannah said.

“She isn’t.”

“That’s the name she’s going by now?” Hannah asked. “Sarah Briggs?”

“Yes.” Cardena was seated across from her in her office three hundred feet underneath the ‘crystal palace’ that was the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Hannah was head of the Cellar and while her office was underneath the NSA, she was not part of that organization, nor did she answer to it. She answered only to a Presidential Executive Order authorizing from the dark days of early World War II giving her free rein as judge, jury and executioner of all the inhabitants (and there are many) of the covert world that the United States ran.

“And she was involved in the Karralkov incident?”

“Correct,” Cardena said.

Hannah fixed her subordinate with eyes the color of dark chocolate. “And you did not make the connection as to who Sarah Briggs truly was?”

“No.”

Hannah was in her late forties, in good shape, the result of a daily workout regime that was intense and brief, as she begrudged the time she spent on it. She had blond hair with gray roots, cut to her shoulders. She was known only by Hannah; no last name, no title.

“That’s unfortunate,” Hannah said. “But you did authorize a Predator strike that took out Karralkov’s boat. And saved Sarah Briggs.”

“Yes. I was focused on Karralkov. I misjudged.”

“Partly,” Hannah said, which was a strong rebuke coming from her.

“I’ve alerted an asset, one who knows one of those involved in events in South Carolina.”

“Knows how?”

“They worked together long ago when the asset was CIA and the person involved was in Special Forces. The asset also has a stake in the Sarah Brigg’s case.”

Hannah rubbed her forehead, a surprising sign of weariness, one Cardena had never seen before in his boss. Cardena was short, wiry and dark-skinned. His hair was completely gray. His eyes mirrored what Hannah was exhibiting: exhausted and haunted.

“Westland.” Hannah did not frame it as a question. “What happened with, let’s call her Sarah Briggs in order not to get confused, was before my time. Under Nero’s reign. Westland was her handler in that unit. I suggested the unit be disbanded and it was.”

“Before my time also,” Cardena said, as much of an excuse as he was going to attempt with Hannah.

Hannah allowed him that. “Nero thought Briggs was dead. He wouldn’t have closed the file if he had had any suspicions she was still alive. I suppose we have no idea how she escaped, if she did escape. She might have been turned.”

“Nothing,” Cardena said. “I’ve been able to track her back only to Hilton Head, fronting this off-shore gambling site. Before that, nothing until we go all the way back to her jump into Russia.”

“Odd place for her to show up.”

“The gambling site was hacked several times by the Russian mob. Paid off millions of dollars.”

“So the hack might not have been a hack,” Hannah said. “Perhaps money laundering and she was in on it. Which would explain how she got out. We know the Russian government and its organized crime elements are almost the same thing. Putin is no fool. He wields power and makes deals as needed. One might say he’s the biggest crook of them all in Russia.”

“That’s a possibility if she’d been turned,” Cardena said. “But she was well trained against torture and interrogation.”

Hannah could not tell Cardena that it would not have been difficult to turn Sarah Briggs given the circumstances around her capture.

“She also had a suicide option,” Hannah said. “Obviously that wasn’t used.”

Hannah leaned back in her seat, deep in thought and Cardena waited on her. She was thinking of the ‘greater good’. How the ability to truly make the hard decisions for those two words was an extremely rare trait. One few humans possessed. Most were ruled by fear; those who weren’t ruled by that most prevalent of emotions tended toward extreme self-interest. Neither were for the greater good.

She was located in such close proximity to the NSA because it was the greatest collector of information in the history of mankind. It sorted a considerable amount of that information into intelligence. Hannah needed intelligence in order to make those hard decisions for the greater good.

Another person might have some empathy for the woman called Sarah Briggs. Might want to understand who she was, why she did what she was doing. Empathy was not in Hannah’s arsenal.

“This is a Sanction in the hands of the field agent,” she said.

Cardena cleared his throat.

“Yes?” Hannah asked.

“The way Briggs has resurfaced after escaping Karralkov has caused me to investigate why. She’s involved in some sort of land deal south of Charleston. There are other parties involved. One of them is Senator Gregory.”

“How so?”

“The land involved is on an island. Gregory quietly pushed through an appropriation for a causeway to be built to the island, which would then be developed as a resort, vastly increasing the worth of the land. But the existence of this appropriation has been kept under wraps. Additionally, Briggs has involved elements of the New Jersey mafia in acquiring a piece of land on the island. It’s complicated, but there appear to be irregularities involved in Senator Gregory’s involvement.”

“Is Briggs connected to the Senator?”

“Not that I’ve been able to find,” Cardena said.

Hannah considered the information. “Send backup for Westland. She’s to gather information. It’s up to her to determine when the backup will conduct the Sanction. Inform me about the depth of the Senator’s involvement. He’s a powerful man and it’s always good to have leverage on such people.”

Cardena stood. He waited a second to see if she had any further orders.

When there was nothing he left.

The heavy door swung shut behind him, leaving Hannah alone, as she usually was. There were no windows in the office, not that there could be. No personal touches. It was austere, much like her mind. If Cardena had known her background, he would have been surprised: she’d been a suburban housewife in St. Louis before being hand-picked, recruited without her knowledge, tested under fire and then blessed by her predecessor, Nero, to take his place. Because she had that most critical of talents: she could remove herself from the process and analyze, judge and order a Sanction without compunction.

She was not swayed by emotion, by money, by ambition. To her the greater good was the scales on which she made decisions.

The same scales that had tipped against Sarah Briggs so many years ago.

* * *

Kono had his hand lightly on the wheel of the
Fina
, expertly guiding the former patrol boat through the shallow waters north of Port Royal Sound. Hilton Head was to the south. Several rivers flow in the Sound, primarily the Broad River, but there were also the Coosawhatchie, the Colleton, the Chechessee and the Pocotaligo. With that many coming in, the place was a maze of islands, swamps, marshes and waterways.

Parris Island was to the west, where the Marine Corps did its own version of turning boys into men; they were much more effective at it than the Institute, because their mission was to prepare soldiers for combat, although, again, in the end the definition of what it meant to be a ‘man’ was up for grabs. Kono had the
Fina
on a waterway cutting through St. Helena Island, a path few boaters would attempt and one that was entirely dependent on understanding the tide. Chase and Gator flanked him on the bridge as they finally came out in Trenchards Inlet.

“Pritchards Island,” Kono said, nodding at the land ahead. “No man other than Tear live there.”

“University of South Carolina has it set aside for research,” Gator explained.

“No man allowed,” Kono said, ignoring his sometimes partner-incrime, “or else face bad spirits. Blackbeard buried many a sailor in the beach there. Many of my people are buried there after escaping from working the rice.”

Kono cut throttle and the patrol boat slowed. An old dock, looking like it hadn’t been used in decades, was ahead. The pilings were rotting and several boards were broken. A rowboat was to the left of the dock, flipped over. It looked like it had been used recently, the wood in good shape.

“I remember this place,” Chase said as he spotted a crumbling concrete structure beyond the surf line, nestled among the palmettos.

“Old Coast Guard station,” Kono said. He pointed to the right. “Good view of shipping channel during big war.”

“You took me here when we were kids,” Chase said.

“Aye,” Kono acknowledged. “To let Tear see you. But you never seen him.”

Gator grabbed a line and jumped into the water. He tied the
Fina
off.

Kono pointed to the flag on the bow. “Recognize it?” It was a black flag with a white skeleton holding a chalice which it appeared to toasting from and in the other hand a spear that was thrust through a heart.

“No,” Chase said.

“Blackbeard’s flag,” Kono said.

“Cheery,” Chase said. “He’s waiting,” he added as an old man appeared in the open doorway of the old Coast Guard building.

The old Gullah was wearing denim coveralls and a black turtleneck. Like Kono, he was barefoot. His white beard flowed down to his belt buckle. His dark skin was wrinkled and worn.

“You let me talk,” Kono said as he and Chase went ashore. “He speaks English but it’s easier if he and I talk in Gullah. Okay with you?”

“It’s okay with me,” Chase said. “How he’d get the name Tear?”

“He cried for a long time once,” Kono said simply.

Chase’s cell phone buzzed, picking up the signal off a tower on Parris Island. “Hold on.” He recognized the number and answered it. “Go.”

“Chase, Riley. Briggs did have Farrelli checking after Erin. And your son. He does go by Harry Brannigan, not Horace Junior. And he disappeared at the same time as Doc Cleary.”

“So they’re together,” Chase said. He wasn’t too thrilled with Harry, but he’d never liked Horace much either. His mother had named him after the poet for some strange reason she’d never explained.

Of course, he’d never asked.

But his son being with Doc Cleary relieved a lot of his angst.

“Most likely,” Riley said. “And get this: he was a student at the Military Institute of South Carolina before he disappeared.”

Chase had attended West Point primarily because he’d been given an automatic appointment; tendered to the son of a Medal of Honor winner. Chase had never known his own father, killed in Vietnam, and it shook him to realize that his son was in the same predicament. But why would he go to M.I.S.C.? Then he remembered: Doc Cleary wore the ring.

“Any idea why they took off?” Chase asked.

“Nope.”

“Any idea where they are?”

“Nope. But there’s some guy, Fabrou asking around for him. He’s involved in a land-grab for Daufuskie. Not sure how that’s connected in any way, but it might explain why Doc got out of town so fast and took Harry with him.”

“All right,” Chase said, more confused than when he’d answered the phone, but now armed with one key piece of information: his son was with Doc Cleary. That was a comforting thought. He turned the phone off and joined Kono with the old man.