The Protectors (2 page)

CHAPTER 3

T
ucker stared at me as silence hung in the air. Finally, he exhaled and clapped his hands together in slow, measured applause.

“Bravo, Mr. McAlister. Bravo. I could not have said it better myself. You and I happen to share the
exact
same assessment of the strategic and tactical risk Ms. Ravzi brings to the table. Does that surprise you?”

“Not really. You seem like a smart guy.”

“Thank you.”

“For a government stooge.” M-16s be damned, the guy just plain irritated me.

Unbothered, he flipped to a tabbed section of the folder and turned it around.

“Well, be that as it may, let me entertain you with some comedy. As any good stooge would.”

The page in front was from the
New York Times,
dated one week ago—“North Korea Unilaterally Suspends Nuke Program,” with a smaller section below reading, “Agrees to hand over existing weapons for dismantling, UN to revoke sanctions immediately.”

“Yeah, I watched the coverage on CNN. Sanctions work, apparently.”

“No, Mr. McAlister, I don’t believe they do.” Tucker turned the page over to reveal a collage of long-range surveillance photos. “These were taken two days before the announcement. That’s the courtyard of the presidential palace in Pyongyang, from almost a mile away . . . needless to say, these photographs were incredibly difficult to obtain.”

The photos were black-and-white shots, grainy due to the extreme
length of the telescopic lens, but still viewable. There were several time-coded shots, but in the first, it was easy to make out the portly figure—the recently promoted son of the largest pain in the ass in the United Nations’ brief history—with a large group of military advisors flanking him. As the pictures progressed, a smaller group approached and the two sides shook hands. One shot near the bottom of the page caused me to lean forward and bend close. The picture isolated the Outstanding Leader himself and the central figure of the smaller group. Even at a distance, I recognized the shape and the hair. The final picture was at maximum magnification and showed her profile, exactly as I remembered. Tucker tapped the picture twice.

“It appears as though Aphrodite is exercising some of that power you say she doesn’t want.”

I grinned. I tried not to, but I wasn’t strong enough. “Son of a bitch,” I whispered.

“According to our North Korean assets, she stayed just over two hours, then left with her party. Two days later, backdoor channels to the UN magically open up, and the Korean Central News Agency makes their announcement. I find it highly unlikely these events are unrelated. Would you agree?”

“Oh, I most wholeheartedly agree.”

“Which brings us to the reason for my visit. We have a problem.” Tucker closed the folder. I slowly rose and turned toward the kitchen sink, choking off laughter as I looked out the window at two nervous soldiers peering back. So she’d decided to get in the game and make the world a better place—my first thought was
Good for you. Give
’em hell, Lyla.
Unfortunately, my second thought came from the cynical bastard within:
The world tends to beat the shit out of Good Samaritans
. Which made the smile easier to hide.

I turned back to Tucker with folded arms.

“So let me get this straight . . . your big problem, the one that caused you and Mr. Sleepy over there to fly halfway across the continent, is that Lyla single-handedly removed one of the world’s biggest threats to peace and stability? At a cost of zero dollars and zero collateral damage? Is that about right? Because honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t ask her
to do this yourself a long time ago.”

“If we
had
asked Ms. Ravzi, I’d shake her hand, thank her for the service, and send her on her way. But that’s the point. We didn’t ask. We don’t even know how to contact her. She went off the reservation a long time ago. And while this little ‘Save the World’ stunt looks good on paper, I get paid to look at the big picture—what gets affected down the line. And I’m very concerned about what happens down that path, as are the CIA and the Department of Defense.” The unflappable Mr. Tucker started to raise his voice. “And the fact that you’re barely hiding your glee at what she’s done, frankly, pisses me off.”

I heard metal clacking and shuffling footsteps as the soldiers grew more alert. Tucker was on a roll and saw no need to put them at ease.

“You think she’s done the world a favor? Fine. I’ll agree with you. But what does she do next week? Now that she’s seen what a little lovey-dovey visit with a world leader can accomplish, where does she go next? Because I promise you, she won’t stop with North Korea. She’s gotten a taste of true power—world player style—and that sort of thing changes
everyone
. If I’ve learned anything as an intelligence operative it’s this: people become ravenous once they’ve had a taste of power . . . even the ones who swear they have no appetite for it. I’ve seen it in pencil-pushing, family-man diplomats who get control of some shit-pot hovel in Africa. Big on promises, bright future, freedom and liberty for all . . . and in five years, The Hague wants them for genocide. And did any of them have even a
thousandth
of the power Lyla Ravzi has?”

“Lyla is nothing like those dictators,” I said.

“No. She’s worse. Not just because of what she can do, but because of who she is.”

He thumbed through the thick folder, letting the pages zip between his fingers.

“It’s all over her psych profile—the one analysis she actually let us perform—she’s always been the riskiest of you all. You know why? Because she’s an idealist. Ms. Ravzi sees the world as it should be, not as it is. She has grandiose ideas about equality and justice, but neither the patience nor the practicality to understand concepts like compromise. That may sound fine to naïve purists, but trust me, compromise is the
one reason this planet is not a giant glowing cinder after the last half century.”

His assessment scared me a little because he was so damn correct, more than he even knew. Lyla was almost childlike in her black-and-white view. It was one of the reasons I’d been so taken with her—but when you extrapolated her value set upon the entire world, Tucker’s fears looked a lot less paranoid.

“Just think,” he continued. “What’s to stop her from paying a visit to the president of the United States, thirty or forty senators, and a handful of governors? She’s always hated violence—maybe she decides, ‘Gosh, we don’t need guns anymore, time to ditch the Second Amendment.’ Funny, right? Well, the joke’s on you, America, because Aphrodite can make it happen.”

He paused only long enough to run his fingers through his short hair.

“And I assume you know about her other problem. After she ‘releases’ someone.”

“No,” I lied.

“Our scientists call it the ‘hangover.’ Severe depression with feelings of emptiness and longing. There’s an entire section devoted to it,” Tucker said while letting a fifty-page chunk of the file ruffle through his fingers. “Since almost every scientist personally experienced the effect, their descriptions were quite detailed. Nauseatingly so.” He closed the folder and pushed it aside like a trashy romance novel. “Her control doesn’t last forever, and whether she does it on purpose by letting go, or it simply . . . wears off . . . the hangover can be brutal. How do you think our new friend in North Korea will react when the bill finally comes due on what Ms. Ravzi has done? How smart is it to make men with the capacity for global destruction into the equivalent of wounded, heart-stricken teenagers? Is it still funny to you, Mr. McAlister?”

It was so tragically unfunny, I felt nauseous. My initial delight in seeing the all-powerful CIA puppet masters upstaged by a five-foot-six, 120-pound brunette had vanished. Tucker was a complete and utter jackass, but also an intelligent jackass—because he was right. Not about fantasies of Lyla undermining the Constitution or throwing
a democracy into turmoil—it took too many people and left far too much to chance. But a totalitarian state was different. Lyla’s effect didn’t last forever, and no matter how good she was at manipulation, putting nuclear-equipped dictators on the edge of emotional collapse was worse than irresponsible. It was criminal. And Tucker was spot-on when he said she wouldn’t stop, because I knew if she was willing to take on the North Koreans, her own birthplace wouldn’t be far behind. Her next stop would be Iran, a home she hated—and embracing one person wouldn’t be enough this time. She’d need the president, the mullahs, the Ayatollah . . . so many potential problems, each one a fuse that could spontaneously ignite once her power wore off.

Dammit, Lyla, it’s so YOU—everything is simple, do the right thing, change the world. No thought beyond the immediate goal, no plan for the future.

A furrowed brow and wandering eyes broadcast my thoughts. Tucker dropped his bluster.

“You know I’m right. I can see it. Scott, I’m not the bad guy here . . . I want what you want,” he said.

“Let me guess: a better, safer tomorrow for all Americans. The CIA was always big on that.”

He looked like he smelled a skunk.

“I don’t give a damn about a safe world, because it will never be. I’ll settle for the next-best thing: a predictable one. An active, idealistic Aphrodite makes the world far too unstable to predict anything. Which is why we need you.”

I found my chair again and slumped into the seat.

“You want me to stop her,” I said quietly.

“Don’t be so dramatic. We need you to find her . . . talk to her. She respects your authority, your wisdom—or at least she used to—and that’s far more than we have in our pocket right now. Once you achieve contact, make every effort to bring her back into the fold. Ms. Ravzi could be wondrously effective if used in a focused, targeted manner—rather than this ‘civilization’s Good Samaritan’ ridiculousness.”

“I hope you’re willing to settle for less than that,” I said.

“Yes, I can imagine she’d be unwilling to join us again. Trust me,
we’d be satisfied if she’d merely abandon her quest, however far-ranging it may be.”

“What if I can’t find her?”

“Then we’ll have to take other measures to solve this problem.”

“What kind of measures?” I said, struggling to stop my fists from clenching.

“The kind that offer a zero percent chance of Ms. Ravzi being useful in the future. That’s the reason we came to you first. You succeed, everyone wins. You fail, well then . . . we’ll still win, but certainly not in an optimal way.”

I chuckled. “Terminating Lyla might be a lot harder than you think.”

“With all due respect, you are not the only meta-human vulnerable to a sniper rifle.”

I couldn’t stop from making fists after that. He was right. He knew I’d do whatever I could to find her, if not for the world’s sake, then certainly for hers. He’d read the psych and behavioral files well, and knew there was more to me and Lyla than just the bond between teammates—something we’d gone to great pains to conceal. No matter.

“I’ll find her. I’ll do your detective work and go to her. And I’ll try to make her understand what she’s doing is wrong—but I won’t promise anything. It’s very likely she’ll take the first opportunity to embrace me, after which you’ll have an even bigger problem on your hands.”

“A contingency that has been discussed,” he replied. “We have every confidence you’ll take matters into your own hands if she proves . . . aggressive . . . toward your approach.”

“Tucker, I’m gonna say this slow and use tiny words so I know you understand: I won’t drop Lyla. Not for a little while, and certainly not for good. Get that thought out of your mind right now.”

He pointed to the three folders in front of me.

“Feel free to keep those, they’re copies,” he said, still holding the one folder he’d neglected to show. He rose from his chair and turned to leave without acknowledging me. “Gentlemen, let’s go. Mr. McAlister has work to do.” The soldiers behind him snapped to and filed through the shattered doorway. Took three of them to carry Reyes away. I heard a chopper engine whine.

“Goddammit, Tucker, I mean it! I will not kill her, no matter what she does!!” I yelled, angry at being ignored.

He turned back. “We’ll leave one of the choppers and a pilot—to be used at your disposal. He’ll take you wherever you need. Oh, and I enjoyed your speech about dogs earlier. Entertaining and true, but you know the other thing about dogs? They’re wonderful companions, loyal and loving until the end—but when an animal goes bad, there’s only one thing a responsible owner can do, isn’t there?”

The rotors spooled up and Tucker raised his voice to counter the growing roar.

“Bad dogs get put down, Mr. McAlister. You should know that better than anyone. After all, wouldn’t be the first time . . . would it?”

He tipped the fourth folder to his temple in a mock salute before slipping through the doorway, leaving me fuming in the wreckage of what had started off as a beautiful day.

—

Thirty-six minutes.

Found her in just over a half hour, and I was surprised it took that long. Of course, my guess was that the CIA probably wouldn’t have sent her an email simply asking. She’d used four different addresses back when we were part of the team, and all of them were still in my laptop even though they’d sat unused for five years. I copied all into a single email, a message with only one word . . .

WHERE?

. . . and waited. Used the time to clean up the mess from the doorway—even replaced the doorjamb with the help of a nervous chopper pilot who somehow believed he’d be rendered unconscious if he didn’t assist. The door still wouldn’t close right. Damn government owed me yet again.

Precisely thirty-six minutes after clicking “Send,” I heard the laptop
bing
with incoming mail. As expected, Lyla’s reply was cryptic so only I could interpret it.

BEST FOOD IN SWITZERLAND—745

The words made me smile. I wasn’t an idiot—I knew full well the NSA monitored my Internet link and read her email at the exact same moment—but it would do them no good. I told the kid to fire up the helicopter and log a flight plan to Denver International Airport.