Shadow Agenda: An Action Suspense Thriller (39 page)

Khalidi turned his head away from the television slightly. “That sounded… uncouth.”

“Nothing significant,” Faisal said. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

Fenton-Wright stood in the agency parking lot, phone in hand, contemplating how quickly things were getting out of control.

The hit team in Montpellier had missed Brennan and was frantically searching the region and contacts across Europe for any sign of him. Fenton-Wright had seen a window of opportunity in the Aquarium meet and had paid through the nose to use local undercover assets, a renowned team of close-up hitters from Paris who would ensure the job was done right.

Instead, they’d blown it. Fenton-Wright had turned it to his advantage and Brennan was a wanted man --- by the hit team, by the police, by security officials across Europe. But in the meantime, the deputy director’s own value to his employer had become a question, obviously. He’d taken care of Walter Lang but failed with the reporter; it wouldn’t take Brennan long to piece together why Fenton-Wright had asked him to stay in the French city, instead of pursuing leads on the so-called nuke. If Brennan ever returned safely to the U.S., Fenton-Wright would have a whole other series of questions to potentially answer.

He needed to close the intelligence loop; Walter had been a start, but someone else had to be helping the reporter, Malone. There was no way she was getting so much valuable intel without someone at the agency helping her, and since Walter was already dead, that meant another contact.

He dialed human resources. “John? David. Yeah. Yeah, I know, long time. Anyway, I’m trying to work up a profile on someone who may be tipping the press without my say so. Yeah… yeah, I know, you’d think so. Anyway, can you round me up a profile of Walter Lang’s closest agency contacts? Retired and active, yeah… the top ten names.”

Walter had been an agency legend, but he’d never been social or political. One of the names on the list would probably be Malone’s other source. Once he’d found the source, he’d be able to find the reporter. Once both were silenced and his own exposure minimized, he would only have the problem of Joe Brennan to still handle.

On that front, he thought, he had an ace in the hole. He dialed the phone again. “Carolyn? It’s David. Are you free this afternoon for a quick chat?”

Carolyn’s stomach hadn’t stopped churning in hours as she sat at their kitchen table and nursed a mineral water.

She’d been on a week of administrative leave, granted to her after Joe’s alleged shootout in France, a story that had been molded and massaged before release to draw minimal North American press attention. But he was cut off from the agency and its resources, wanted by the police, a killer.

She didn’t believe a word of it.

Carolyn had always known that covert work got dirty, even deadly on occasion. They’d married when she was just a new recruit and Joe was a SEAL, trying to figure out what to do with his life right after the Marines. Early in their relationship, they’d agreed to stop discussing the details, as much for national security as to spare her the gory details; Carolyn wasn’t a shrinking violet by any means.

Then David had called. And now she faced a prolonged meeting about her husband, the contents of which were completely unknown to her. She’d already told herself one thing: she wouldn’t be forced to choose between her husband and her job. She wouldn’t let DFW put her in that position.

A day earlier, she’d talked about the call before it had even happened, while having lunch with Ellen. She’d been expecting it since the announcement that Joe was burned.

“Whatever you do, don’t let him threaten your job without protecting yourself,” Ellen had said. “Bureaucrats always think they can push people around as long as they do it within the rules, because they’re the gatekeepers. The only way to show them they’re wrong is to stand up for yourself. Make sure you have a union rep there…”

“Association,” Carolyn had replied, somewhat distant and distracted at the time. “We have a staff association. Same thing, basically.”

“Either way, make sure you have a rep there if they start talking about job stuff. If you protect your job, at least you can transfer to…”

“It doesn’t really work like that,” Carolyn had tried to explain.

Nothing at the agency worked quite the way it did at a normal workplace. There were entire areas of the building that weren’t even allowed under legislation to talk to one another, where cell phones and caller ID were banned.

And covert was in a league of its own. So much of what it did was off the books that its senior officials were left with great leeway, a flexibility to assign solutions that wouldn’t even be legal in the real world, let alone leave staff properly protected.

As a senior support staffer, she was supposed to be separate from all of that – which, realistically, was as likely as suggesting someone in the communications department be apolitical and unconcerned with public relations spin. In real terms, she had the same exact problem with David as many in the agency under him did: he could do basically anything to her and get away with it, if the grounds seemed sufficient.

What would Joe expect of the meeting? She contemplated it, tried to look at it strategically. They wanted to track her husband down and he was operating off the books. So they were looking for a potential information pipeline, a hardline between their target and someone they could control. They would probably ask her to contact Joe, and when she said she couldn’t, that it was up to him, they would leave her with a message designed to bring him in…

No. That was too easy and Joe would just ignore it. They would set him up; they’d be unsure of her loyalty and Joe’s willingness to take her information on face value. So they’d make it something he couldn’t resist, something they could dangle that she’d be sure to mention to him, something designed to catch her attention.

Thirty minutes later, she was seated across from David’s desk as he reminded her of her duties to the agency and her country, the capitol laid out behind him through the large picture window. “So if at any time Joe contacts you, Carolyn, you are required as a function of your employment – whether on leave or not – to let us know about it and his whereabouts. Am I clear?”

“Yes, David,” she said.

“Good.” He leaned forward on his elbows casually. “Look, I know how difficult this must be for you and I want you to know that I understand what you’re going through,” he said. “While you have an obvious personal conflict in this matter, the agency has wonderful counselling services available if you’re feeling the stress.”

That was unexpected, she thought. Usually, David showed about as much concern for people’s feelings as a stone. “Thanks, I might do that,” she said.

“Well, all right then,” he said, standing. It was her cue to leave. Carolyn was surprised. The meeting had gone surprisingly smoothly, with no attempt at leverage or bullying. She felt a little better about things.

She walked to the door. “Thank you for this, David,” she said.

“Fine, fine,” he said as she opened the door. “It’s all a bit uncomfortable, this one, isn’t it?”

“Very much so,” she said.

He looked genuinely perturbed. “I know I can be a hard-case, Carolyn, but I’m not inhuman. I do see how difficult this must be for you, and I’m sorry you have to go through it.”

She smiled. “Thank you. That actually means a lot.”

“It’ll probably all just blow over, get resolved eventually,” he said. “These things turn out to be misunderstandings, difficulties in getting past the noise to the signal of what’s going on overseas.”

“That’s been my impression in the past, yes,” she said.

“Joe was just trying to do his job, I’m sure, and things perhaps got out of hand.”

Perhaps? “That’s a very charitable position,” she said.

“Not really,” David said, only vaguely paying attention to her still as she stood by the door, his focus shifting to paperwork. “He’d been looking for something for us, something hot and below board.” He looked up at her again. “All this could probably have been avoided if he knew we’d already found it, but he didn’t get back into contact with us when he left Moscow. If he had, as he was supposed to, he’d already know that.”

“I didn’t realize that,” she said.

“Still…. If you hear from him, let us know? Thank you Carolyn.” He lowered his head to the paperwork and she took her cue.

On the way to the elevator, she considered what David had said. Carolyn wasn’t an agent, but she wasn’t stupid, either. He’d gone from being DFW, noted pit bull, to David, caring boss and sympathizer, the moment she’d stepped through the door. It was a brilliant performance, Oscar worthy. She still didn’t believe it for a second. And he’d waited until she was almost gone to mention, just casually, that Joe had been wasting his time, that they’d found an item he was looking for.

He’d dangled it, she decided, just as she’d expected. Now she knew exactly what she had to do: Carolyn had to get a message to Joe, to warn him; to tell him to stay the hell away from D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Malone felt like a spy in her own backyard, although she wasn’t really sure what she was looking for.

It was a daily pilgrimage, one nearly two months old; she would round the block that was home to her townhouse, cruising just a little more slowly than normal in Myrna’s square little Toyota sedan as she tried to spot someone out of place in the neighborhood, someone who might be there to look out for her, or for the little red convertible she would normally drive.

Then she’d pass the townhouse’s steps and look for a double newspaper drop, hoping each time that her source would decide to offer up more useful information.

Instead, she’d find only a single Washington Post and the same sense of disappointment.

The rest of her days at Myrna’s weren’t that much more successful; the older former agency staffer introduced Malone to a string of new online databases and sources, but information on DynaTech – beyond the typical public filings – was difficult to come by. It wasn’t that it was trying to hide its operations, it was just a great front: a firm with multiple international customers that designed the software for video poker machines. Whatever it was up to that was illicit and that the source thought she’d find, it wasn’t evident from the paperwork or news clippings.

So she cruised through her old neighborhood one more time, the mid-afternoon weather warm and pleasant but her mind on the story and whether it was unravelling.

She glanced at her doorstep almost perfunctorily, not expecting anything.

There were two newspapers.

She stepped on the brake, idling there for a moment; then she remembered Myrna’s advice and slowly crept forward, scanning the street. It was nearly devoid of cars, and those she could see were empty. There could have been someone in the surrounding buildings staking the place out, she knew, but that just meant that she would have to act quickly. Malone stepped on the gas before taking the next right turn, going around the block, circling back to the front of the building so that she could park right in front. She threw the car into park and left the engine idling, climbing quickly from the car and running to the steps, grabbing the paper and sprint back, jumping back into the driver’s seat, hitting the gas. The tires squealed with overenthusiasm but a few seconds later, she was off the block, heading downtown, occasional glances in the mirror spotting no one.

She met the source at the usual parking garage early the following morning, before most people were even at work. She had begun to wonder about his motivation, what he hoped to gain from keeping her in the loop. But Malone debated with herself whether to raise the issue, whether it might spook him when the source had already become a more infrequent presence.

He was there when she arrived, standing in the shadows by the door. “You’re late.”

“It’s early. I don’t even have my face on by now, normally.”

“There have been developments,” he said. “Khalidi is in hiding; but the package your friend is looking for is on route somewhere or perhaps already there.”

“Tell me about Peru and the bus explosion in 2009,” she said.

That caught him off guard, it seemed. He paused for a moment. “There are competing theories from multiple intelligence agencies. The official version is that a Chechen militant blew it up. Have you made any headway with the Las Vegas angle?”

“Are you kidding? DynaTech is a big, busy firm. I’ve only been looking for a couple of weeks and so far it’s just the usual stuff. Would you be surprised to know the Chechen survived?”

He smiled. “Not really. There had to be a reason the device made it back to the open market. Again, what about DynaTech? What have you tried?”

“A wide gamut of business contacts, people in Nevada who know everybody, tech sector types, official paper, EDGAR filings. The usual.”

The source sighed with mild exasperation. “I chose to talk to you because I’ve read your stuff and thought you could handle this. Have you even established Konyakovich’s ties to DynaTech’s parent?”