Shadow Agenda: An Action Suspense Thriller (30 page)

“Oh, bravo,” Abubakar said, clapping slowly. “I suppose this all came to the surface because you were investigating Khalidi? Due to the recent murders of his business confederates? Why would that be an American concern? You are American, are you not, Mr. Smith?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Abubakar sighed. “Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be. Hit him again, Mr. Nkube.”

The interrogator stepped in and held the sponges to Brennan’s side; he convulsed violently as the electric current ran through him. The big African pulled the sponges away and Brennan slumped again, barely conscious.

“People think it’s the voltage that’s important,” Abubakar said. “But as Mr. Nkube would explain, it’s actually the amperage, the resistance in the electrical current, which determines the damage. Who do you work for, Mr. Smith?”

“Get… stuffed.”

The interrogator didn’t need to be told; he stepped in and hammered Brennan with an extended shock, the agent’s torso shaking even after the sponges were removed, his muscles contorted from lactic acidosis, spit flying from his mouth.

“Enough, Mr. Nkube, enough!” Abubakar said in French. “Don’t kill the man! I need information from him.”

Abubakar leaned in. “How did you know we’d extracted the device? That I had a buyer?”

Brennan shook his head. “I didn’t, just that it was on the move. You want truth, there’s some. You were supposed to be a Slovenian arms dealer working for Kalispell ...”

“If that’s true, my timing is impeccably bad, as usual,” Abubakar said.

“English is impeccably good….” Brennan said.

“Thank you. I’ve had years to learn.”

“… for a murderous scumbag.”

The Chechen’s face was red, flustered. “And what of my loss?!?” he yelled, slapping himself on the chest. “My country. My family. My name! I’ve lost everything! Once I get out of here, even my face.”

“You were going to use the device on Russians civilians.”

“Spare me your sanctimony!” Abubakar said. “You’re an American. Your people have killed millions in wars, insurrections and revolutions around the globe, either directly like Iraq and Vietnam, or indirectly by funding dictators and murderers. You have no moral high ground, Mr. ‘Smith’. I suppose your stubbornness with respect to revealing your employer means that it is government, an agency. If you were just a hired hand you would not care enough to dig in and endure this. Maybe the CIA, yes? I don’t think it would be Khalidi. Does anyone else know where I am, other than Francisco?”

“You answer a question for me first.”

The Chechen eyed him suspiciously. “American, you piss me off, you presume so much.”

“Who’d you sell the weapon to? You wouldn’t be this frantic to move it right now if you hadn’t found a buyer.”

Abubakar turned his head, exasperated. “You know, this was not how I wanted to spend today,” he told Brennan. “Hit him again, Mr. Nkube.

The big torturer leaned in again, smiling.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Myrna leaned forward over the steering wheel and scanned the parking garage again. “Are you sure he’ll be here? It’s been nearly an hour, hon,” she told Malone.

They’d parked at the far end of the second level, on Malone’s suggestion, so that Myrna could be nearby and Malone wouldn’t be potentially spotted on the street while walking in. It was unlikely her source’s newspaper code had been broken, but after Walter’s death, Alex wasn’t taking any chances.

Instead, they waited for him to arrive. “Just remember: stay out of sight while we meet,” Alex said. “I don’t want him seeing you, and I have to respect his anonymity, so I don’t want you seeing him. We’re cool with that, right?”

Myrna gave her a sour look. “Sweetie, I was playing this game long before you were born. I think I know how to…”

“Down!” Alex snapped, as a figure appeared out of the stairwell that led up to the mall above. “I’ll be back soon.”

She got out of the car and closed the door, slinging her purse over her shoulder in the same motion. She walked towards the man, and they met midway across the darkened parking level, their shadows cast long by the emergency lights overhead.

“I expected to hear from you before now,” the source said. “You haven’t written an article in a while, either.”

“You must have known it would be difficult to confirm the information you gave me,” Alex said. “But we’re getting there. Don’t worry.”

“If you need evidence, perhaps you should go back to Miskin. My sources suggest he’s nervous; he suspects one of his fellow ACF board members, perhaps even the chairman, may be behind the shootings.”

“Why? What…”

“Don’t be naïve; there are any numbers of reasons. A power grab; to cover up bad decisions from the past; perhaps what you need to do is ask Miskin.”

“When you say ‘mistakes from the past’, you’re talking about Khalidi and Kalispell Properties; am I correct?”

“That’s one interpretation. But he’s not the only ACF board member who has overreached, Ms. Malone. You should know that much by now.”

“You mean the Chinese delegate…”

“I mean all of them. Like I said, don’t be naïve.”

“So you agree with Miskin?”

“I didn’t say that. There are plenty of political forces from outside the ACF who could stand to see it exposed, to see it fail. Follow the money, Ms. Malone. Who benefits from Khalidi’s group being exposed, or wiped out, or both? Where does this seem to be headed to you?”

He turned around and began to walk away.

“Wait!” she said. “I think the ACF might have had Walter killed. I think they might be trying to kill me.”

“I guarantee it,” he said as he walked, without turning. “But don’t give up, Ms. Malone. The story is too big.”

He reached the street door, opened it, and was gone.

They’d debated shooting Brennan on the spot but in the end had decided to hold onto him as a potential bargaining chip. He hadn’t revealed who he worked for, but it was probably an American agency, Abubakar had suggested, and they might be willing to pay to get him back.

So they’d housed him in a shipping container, not unlike those that made up the walls of Abubakar’s house, except that it had just one small window, big enough to let some air in but not enough to do more than reach out an arm.

It was stifling in the crate, well over a hundred degrees, and dehydration had begun to set in, his eyes itching, his head hurting, breath getting shallower. Brennan went over to the window hole against and sucked in some air from outside, then scanned the environment. The guards never walked close enough to the hole to grab at keys or a weapon, so escape seemed out of the question.

If Francisco was planning any kind of rescue attempt, he was taking his sweet time, Brennan thought. Not that he suspected it to be the case; the arms dealer had almost certainly cut his losses and long since left. He wondered how often outsiders visited, whether there would be an opportunity to attract attention. He thought for a moment about Carolyn and the kids, then pushed everything personal out of his mind as unproductive, detrimental to getting the task done.

There were voices near the entrance and he craned his neck trying to see it from an acute angle through the tiny hole. The big double gates swung open and a pair of military style transport trucks slowly entered the compound, followed by a Humvee with a top-mounted machine gunner. The figures getting out of the vehicles were all in army-style fatigues, but not from any of the local militia, as far as Brennan could tell.

At the front of the convoy, one of Abubakar’s lieutenants was talking to someone. It looked like… was that a woman? The body shape suggested so. Brennan couldn’t see her face, but got a glimpse of aviator shades. She had long black hair under a maroon beret, and she held an M16 copy in her left hand, pointed skyward.

The discussion became animated. The lieutenant was getting angry about something, raising his voice. Brennan could see her other hand resting on the pistol butt at her hip. The lieutenant was gesticulating now, pointing towards the two barracks-style buildings, then at the truck. He took a half-step forward and she drew the pistol and fired, hitting him in the head.

One of her underlings slapped the sides of the trucks and troops began to pour out the back of each. Abubakar’s men were roused from sleep, hurrying out of their barracks in a state of half-undress, guns in hand even as they buttoned up shirts and pants. The new arrivals moved methodically among them, a few steps, a volley of three shots, another one put down for good. The camp’s residents were so undertrained and unprepared that the soldiers had wiped all but a few out within gunfire-filled minutes.

Brennan watched the slaughter grimly; whoever had cut a deal with Abubakar for the device appeared to have reneged. Either that, or the Angolans had discovered the camp. Neither was a positive prospect.

After a period, the gunfire slowed to a trickle, then stopped. He waited, tense. He had few options; he could hide behind one half of the container doors, hope they opened the other, try to surprise whoever was there. But that was suicide, with a guard full of armed men who actually knew what they were doing.

The decision was made for him. The giant bolts clanged back and both doors swung open simultaneously. There were a half-dozen men facing him, all with guns at the ready. But the woman standing at the front shook her head and pushed down one of their barrels, indicating to the rest that she expected them to stand down.

“Well,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Brennan.”

“Hello, Dr. Han.” The military fatigues and glasses had changed her look considerably, Brennan thought, since his visit with Allan Ballantine to her lab in Brussels. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to see you, either.”

She smiled. “I suppose I might have foreseen this based on your line of questioning. You’ve certainly forced various parties to amend their schedules, Mr. Brennan. Can I take it that it’s a waste of time to ask for whom you really work?”

“You can. Same question, right back at you.”

“Same answer.” She tilted her head slightly, studying him with a thought to mind. “But the way you approached me in Europe, through Allan… that suggested to me that you’re not exactly on official business. Am I right?” He tried to stay stoic, but she must have seen something in his gaze that she liked, Brennan figured. “Yes, I think that’s it. You’re working off the books, probably looking into whatever that naughty Ahmed Khalidi has been up to.”

“That’s one theory,” he said. “What about you? I can’t figure too many research professors keep SIG P226s in their nightstands, or cart them around on expeditions.”

“Well…” she thought about it with mock seriousness. “Let’s just say that, like you, I got in on loan and leave it at that.”

“SIG P226 is standard issue for South Korean National Intelligence Service, isn’t it?”

“They must get a nice discount,” she said. “I’m sure the SIG Sauer company is happy to have their business.”

“Now what?” Brennan said. “You snag the nuke, whisk me out of the danger zone and save the day?”

She smiled again. “Afraid not. Unfortunately, all of the excitement around here tonight is almost certainly going to bring the Angolans down on this place, probably by the morning at the latest. That means we have to get going as soon as the item is loaded. You’re a time sink, Mr. Brennan, and one who might get in the way.”

She barked a series of commands at the soldiers in mixed French and Portuguese. Brennan got the gist. One of the guards took Brennan’s arm and pushed him back into the container, then closed the door behind him. He heard the bolt slide into place.

“You’re kidding, right?” he yelled out through the small square window. “Hey… we’re supposed to be on the same side!”

But if Han was listening, she didn’t let him know.

March 29, 2016, ANNANDALE, VIRGINIA

Carolyn pushed her food around the plate. Their friends Callum and Ellen McLean had invited her over for dinner, picked up from one of several local Korean barbecue places. It wasn’t dislike; she just didn’t have much appetite after two weeks with no word from Joe.

The kids were with her mother for the night. She’d thought getting out of the house would take her mind off of it, but her friends had wanted to talk politics and that had turned into her thinking about the agency, which in turn was a steady reminder that the father of her children might be in harm’s way.

But at least she was with friends who understood. Callum was technically retired from the SEALS, but was consulting and still away occasionally. And when he’d been serving, he was gone constantly. “You can only take it a day at a time,” Ellen had told her over short ribs and bulgogi, a thin-sliced barbecued beef dish. “I know you’re used to Joe telling you when he’ll be back, or expect to be; but try to think about it like he’s just delayed. There’s no point fretting about worst-case scenarios.”

She couldn’t tell them why he was gone, or where, and they understood that. Carolyn also had to admit to herself that she’d become more upset after going around to their house; seeing Callum and Ellen enjoying normalcy made her yearn for it. She was just wanted him home.

“We’ve seen him for about six hours in the last two months,” she said. “Josh told me yesterday that for a few minutes, he forgot what his father looks like.”

Ellen gave her an awkward look but it was obviously something she’d never encountered. “Ouch,” she eventually managed. “What did you…”

“I just reminded them that their father loves them, and then we looked at the pictures I took last summer in the Napa Valley.”

Callum finished his glass of water and placed his cutlery in the center of his empty plate. “I thought Joe was pretty much frozen out these days. What happened?”

“Agency politics,” Carolyn said. She’d had a couple of drinks and knew she shouldn’t talk about the agency’s business, but had lost some of her inhibition. “You know the cause of all of this was a mission a few years ago now. The guy he was helping on that case was killed a few days ago by a burglar. It all seems so pointless.” Then she remembered with whom she was talking. “Sorry, Callum. You know I don’t mean…”

“I know, I know,” he said. “We miss him too; I have no one to shoot pool with, and when I stay home all day, Ellen and the boy have to put up with me.”

“I want him home and I want the agency to accept his resignation,” Carolyn said. “I’m just so tired of worrying all the time. Even a desk job…”

“Joe would shoot himself before he’d do that,” Callum said. “Me too. You work in the field for long enough, the idea of pushing paper…” He shook his head. “At least he’s doing what he loves, Carolyn. You can be sure he knows how to take care of himself, and how to keep himself safe.”

APRIL 2, 2016, LUANDA, ANGOLA

Brennan was dreaming, a jumble of images that couldn’t be reconciled, time spent in Afghanistan, trapped under fire in a trench; then just as suddenly in his backyard at home and with the kids, Carolyn arguing and laughing at him, the kids pinning him down, only to turn a moment later into an insurgent, leaning over him, blocking out the sun.

The cold water slammed into him, stinging like a nettle, the shock immediately waking him up.

He’d been chained to a wall for the first two days; they’d brought him in on a bus with blacked-out windows, but he’d caught glimpses of the prison through the front windshield, an old colonial-style concrete and plaster building on the Luanda Harbor, adjacent to an ancient Portuguese governor’s mansion, still in fine condition despite two hundred years of conflict.

They’d taken his clothes, leaving only his trousers, then thrown him into a cell with a half-dozen local men; he’d managed to get some heavy shots in before they’d overwhelmed him in the tiny cell, the lack of space to operate taking away the advantage of his training; they proceeded to beat the foreigner for most of his first night, raining kicks and punches down on him, leaving Brennan curled up in a fetal position in the corner of the room, one hand above his head for protection, the other over his groin. They’d tired of it shortly before the clock, a block down the street from the prison, chimed for midnight; he’d spent the rest of the night watching the rest of the room, the low light of the moon just barely filtering through the high, barred window.

On day two, the fatigue-wearing guards came for him, picking him up under the armpits and dragging him down the corridor, first to a small medical office where a nurse patched him up and strapped his ribs; then, to a small cell in the next wing of the building, one on the first floor, the harbor seawall just below his window. The cell was filthy; the floor was smeared with dirt, his only companions a small wooden cot, devoid of mattress, blankets or pillows, and a pot in the corner for a toilet. It hadn’t been emptied or cleaned in a long time, lying on one side, a small puddle of semi-damp fecal matter gathering around it.

In the afternoon, the tide had risen, and water from the harbor began to slop through the window, splashing the dirt loudly at first. Within an hour, as sunset approached, it was nearly a half foot deep, the small drain in one corner unable to keep up, the water pouring in like a faucet left open. If it kept rising, Brennan knew, he’d be in even more trouble; as it was, the water was dirty, polluted, all manner of debris floating in it. He’d huddled on the cot until it subsided, hours later, the building’s overwhelmed sump pump finally drawing most of it out.

Day three had been hot; they finally brought him food, a hunk of the local bread and some plantain bananas, along with a bowl of water. But the conditions in the cell were vile; the heat began to evaporate the remaining harbor water, filling the room with a muggy humidity that topped the already damp local conditions and added in the smell factor. Brennan spent hours breathing through his mouth, trying to ignore the rank odor of dead fish and decay.

They’d come for him at ten o’clock that night; for the walk out of the block and across the courtyard, he’d been grateful. They’d led him into a near-identical four-story colonial building, then down a flight of marble stairs to its basement, where the torturer worked. Brennan wouldn’t have labelled it interrogation; the methods were too crude, too designed to induce physical pain over psychological, making the subject likely to say anything he thought the torturer wanted to hear, just to stop the pain.

The subject?
After the first hour, he was already thinking about himself in the third person, as if his mind was dealing with the agony as an abstraction, something happening to a different version of him. The man working on him was short, dressed in a simple button-down Oxford-style dress shirt and pants, with no pretense to military rank or social status. But despite his inoffensive appearance, he seemed to take genuine pride and enjoyment from his work, smiling gently at Brennan as if he were a small child, even as the man pulled out his fingernails one at a time.

He hadn’t even started asking questions until he was through the first hand, Brennan refusing to scream, gritting his teeth and jerking spasmodically from each painful yank, each arm strapped to the chair, his ankles similarly bound.

“That must hurt,” the man said quietly, his English perfect. He tilted his head slightly and studied Brennan’s bleeding fingertips with clinical detachment. “What’s your name?”

Brennan said nothing. The man smiled gently once more. “Well… that is fine.” He reached behind him to the table that contained his tools and picked up a small, clear bottle, then unscrewed its cap. He turned back to Brennan and looked him in the eye as he poured a small amount of the liquid over his captive’s raw, fingers. The isopropyl alcohol was excruciating and Brennan shuddered, feeling his stomach and bowels clench.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” the man said. “What’s your name?”

“Skip.”

“Skip? Skip what?”

“Skip the fucking questions and send me back to my cell.”

The interrogator glanced down at his own shoes again, still smiling. “That’s not very polite, Mr. Smith. Your papers seem genuine but your visa stamp was a forgery, which leads us to believe you have someone in the American government facilitating your mission here, but that you came urgently. What were you doing in Cabinda?”

“Sightseeing.”

The smaller man nodded then paced the room for a moment with his hands behind his back. “We have an impasse of sorts, you see, Mr. Smith: my government is presently on very good terms with your government. Much American money is finding its way into this country for investment. And so I have been informed I’m not allowed to work on you to the degree that I would prefer. A few fingernails will be forgiven. But if I were to, say, pluck out one of your eyes or cut off an ear, there might be diplomatic ramifications.”

He walked back to the table and picked up what looked like an old Yellow Pages phone directory. “The pages of the phone directory, however, offer me an alternative. You see, they are so thin and packed so tightly together that, when held against a human body, they make an effective protection from damage. And yet, force transferred into one side of the book via a punch still follows Newton’s third law. There is an equal and opposite reaction, and the person on the other side of the book is likely to find it quite excruciating, particularly once their ribs have broken. But the skin on the outside is left unmarked. Clever, no? I believe it was invented by police in your country.”

The man held the book against Brennan’s ribs with his left hand then hammered a punch into it. Brennan felt it, his ribs bruising slightly. He felt it more the second time; by the third, the interrogator was stepping hard into each punch, and Brennan felt his rib crack, the sting like a gunshot. The interrogator had a wild look on his face, as if delirious from a drug. He hammered Brennan with punch after punch. “Of course,” he said, breathing hard, “if you were to die from internal injuries, who could have foreseen such a thing, with you obviously having already been injured at the time of your arrest?”

He switched the book to the right-side ribs and continued hammering Brennan with bodyshot after bodyshot, another rib cracking, Brennan attempting to suppress a groan without much success.

“Is that enough, Mr. Smith?”

“You know…”

“Yes?” the man’s voice was full of anticipation.”

“If you stood on that phone book, people would think you were taller.”

Brennan caught a flicker of genuine annoyance on the man’s face before his expression once again reverted to something more serene.

“How are you enjoying our accommodations, Mr. Smith? Is your cell warm and cozy? I understand you have a sea view.”

“It’ll do,” Brennan said.

“You may yet be there for a very long time. There has been some discussion of ‘losing’ your paperwork. We have had no word yet from your people, so I must assume that you are here “off the record”, as the say. Do you know how many people after five years are still in here? Don’t bother to answer; I can assure you, no one lasts five years. How are your ribs feeling?”

“Like it’s the first day of the rest of my life.”

“Good, good. Then you’d enjoy a few more?” He raised the phone book and began hammering Brennan’s side with more punches. Another rib cracked, and the agent groaned loudly.

“Now, I suspect that was not a groan of pleasure, Mr. Smith,” the smaller man said.

Brennan was panting from the combination of stress, adrenaline and heat, the pain radiating through his side, throbbing like the world’s biggest bad tooth.

“Let’s begin again,” the man said. “What is your name?”

Brennan was too tired to bother trying. “Fuck off,” he said.

The interrogator shook his head in disappointment. “Round three, I suppose,” he said. “We’ll just have to have a convincing story. Let’s see: perhaps you were attacked by another inmate when you took his food. Yes, that’s a good rationale for losing an eye.” He turned back to the table and when he faced Brennan again was holding a scalpel in his right hand. “You said something about sightseeing, Mr. Smith. Perhaps…” he leaned in close, the blade less than an inch from Brennan’s eyeball, “… we can cure you of your inquisitive nature.”

He used his other hand to push Brennan’s head back, two fingers pulling back one of the agent’s eyelids. He leaned in, his breath hot and rank, “Don’t worry: soon you’ll have a whole new lack of perspective on things.” The blade crept forward until it was almost touching Brennan’s eye.

The door to the room swung open; the interrogator took a step back. The man who entered the room was in full military dress, a colonel’s bars on his shoulder. “Leave us,” he said to the interrogator.

The diminutive psychopath looked disappointed and glanced once angrily at Brennan before listening to his superior and leaving the room. A male nurse was standing behind the colonel in the doorway, anxiously awaiting instruction.

“Clean him up,” the colonel said.

The nurse set about binding Brennan’s finger tips in gauze, alcohol-soaked cotton and bandages.

“My apologies, Mr. Smith,” the colonel said. “It appears word of your captivity has somehow leaked to your fellow countrymen. Or that may be the case; I’m not certain what I’m allowed to say in this regard. However, I must apologize for my comrade’s… overzealous methods of questioning.”