End Game (7 page)

“In large measure because your government overreacted,” Philip countered. “Must we really have this conversation now? Neither one of us is a decision maker.”

Datsik backed off. “True enough,” he said. “As you Americans like to say, we are only pawns, yes?”

“Sometimes I feel more like the board the pawns play on.”

Datsik chuckled, but his eyes showed no humor. He looked out at the river, toward the lights of Old Town. “Things did not go well, as you know. We got our team in place on Morrow Road in Antwerp well in advance—”

“Were you there?”

Datsik paused, looked back at him. “I might have been.”

From the tone and the sly smile, Philip took that to mean yes.

“That Chechen pig was already there, waiting in the blue pickup truck that we had been told he would drive.”

“For the sake of clarity,” Philip interrupted. “Which Chechen pig are we talking about? Adam Dudaev?”

“Yes. Our team was in place at least one half hour before Dudaev arrived, and once he did arrive, he waited in place for twelve minutes, lights on, engine running, until another car arrived. This was, we assumed, the contact who would pass along the codes.”

“And who was that?” Philip said. Of all the intel to be gathered through this abortion of an op, that was the one bit of information that the United States needed most to know.

“I will get to that,” Datsik said. Always a natural storyteller, Datsik liked to take his time to build the tension. “We were cautious,” he continued. “We didn’t want to, as you like to say, jump the gun. One day you must tell me where that expression comes from. The two vehicles faced in opposite directions, so that the drivers could speak without getting out. This posed a problem for us because we did not know what the other vehicle would look like. We thought it unlikely that this could be just a chance encounter, but given the stakes, we needed to be certain. We kept waiting for them to pass something,” Datsik went on. “If they had done that, we’d have taken them both into custody, just as you asked.”

That was the third reminder that the assault team had been acting on a direct request from Philip’s bosses. Philip wondered if that was a hedge against some form of recording device—if, perhaps, Datsik was recording the conversation himself. “But . . . ?” Philip prompted.

“They never had the chance. Two carloads of men with guns swooped down out of nowhere and opened fire. They were too trigger-happy, shooting too early, hitting the vehicles but not the people. Our team engaged the other shooters, and things went crazy.”

Philip felt a tug in his gut. No one else was supposed to know what was going down. This was another security breach of epic proportions. “Other
shooters?
”

“Other shooters. More Chechen pigs, we found out, after we searched their bodies.”

“Why would they be shooting at their own? Weren’t they getting what they wanted?”

Datsik gave a derisive chuckle. “Philip, my friend, perhaps you should spend more time trying to talk to dead men. It is an instructive exercise in frustration. In any event, those shooters lost, my shooters won. Is a good ending.”

“But what of Dudaev and the codes?”

A deep sigh. “Alas, in all of the confusion, he got away. Unlike his contact, who took two bullets to the head. He had no identification on him, but our people are working to identify him.”

“My boss will want the body,” Philip said.

“My bosses will tell your boss to kiss their asses. Your boss started this. You don’t get to write the rest of the script.”

“This was an FBI screwup,” Philip insisted. “My team had nothing to do with it.”

“We don’t care. One big government, one big screwup. The details don’t matter.”

Philip opened his mouth to pursue the issue, but decided that now was not the time. “So, Dudaev. What happened to him? Did he drive away with the codes?”

“We didn’t know at the time, but later we found out that yes, he did.”

“Did you follow him?”

Datsik cleared his throat. “In a manner of speaking, yes. We were not in a position to chase him—we were in positions away from our vehicles—but we knew where he would be going.”

“To our friends the Mitchells?”

“
Your
friends the Mitchells,” Datsik corrected.

The Russian had clearly missed the irony, and Philip chose not to correct him. As far as Philip’s bosses in Langley were concerned, they could all die a fiery death.

Datsik continued, “At this point, our team decided to eliminate all of them. We get the code, we kill people who want the code, and everything will be all right.”

A glimmer of hope grew in Philip’s mind. “So, that’s what you did?”

“Is what we
almost
did.”

“Ah, Christ.”

“Yes, was bad. Dudaev arrived at Mitchells’ house already wounded, I think. When we got there, he is already on floor bleeding. Maybe Mitchell shoot him, but I don’t think so. There is other shoot-out. Mitchell dies, Dudaev dies, but wife and boy get away along with their maid.” Datsik scowled and shot a look to Philip. “Why would they have maid?”

Philip fell silent as he ran the facts through his head. This could still have a happy ending. “But the codes,” he said. “You got the codes.”

Another sigh, this one deepest of all. “No codes,” he said. “We think maybe wife took them with her. What’s her name?”

“Sarah.”

“Yes, Sarah. We think she took codes with her. Sarah, maid, boy, codes, all gone. But she was shot and shot bad. Gut shot.” He pointed to a place high on his own abdomen. “Maybe not live.”

Philip’s mind raced. That happy ending was feeling further and further away. “Wait here,” he said.

Datsik recoiled. “Where are you going?”

Philip cupped the back of his own head with his hand and rubbed the lump that was a souvenir from a bar fight gone bad in his twenties. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I just need to think. I think better when I walk.”

“If walking makes people smart, someone must have been sitting on his ass when they came up with this Chechen missile idea,” Datsik teased.

Philip pretended not to hear.

Think this through,
he told himself.
It can’t be as dark as it seems. There has to be a way.
Because if there wasn’t another way, the world—Philip’s world in particular—was going to be in a very, very bad place.

Philip walked slowly, unaware, really, that he was even walking. He thought through the logic. If this was an FBI operation, the logic had to be perfect, because Fibbies were that way, so buttoned-down and regulated that every one of them tied their shoes the same way.

Sarah, maid, boy, codes, all gone.

“Yeah, why would they have a maid?” he asked aloud, his words lost in the traffic rush. That was a significant point. Why would they even want a maid? The house they lived in wasn’t that big to begin with. It would be tight enough with the three of them living there. A fourth person would just be in the way.

Perhaps she was just a housekeeper. You know, one who just comes in the daytime.

No. That wasn’t it. The raid happened at night, and she was there. That meant she was live-in help, a conclusion that just circled him back around to his original question—Why was she there?

Then he got it. At least he thought he did. He turned and walked back to Anton. “You said the Mitchells got away with a maid,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure she was a maid?”

“Who else would she be?” Datsik asked. “You told me that they have only one child. A boy. Our intelligence confirmed. Who else would she be?”

Philip didn’t want to jump to his conclusion. He had a tendency to do that. Once he had an idea in his head, his brain took ownership and then nothing else would make sense to him.

“You look like you’re having a vision,” Anton said. “You seeing God?”

“No,” Philip said. “I think the girl you thought was a maid might be a security detail.”

“Not much of a detail,” Datsik scoffed. “One girl.”

Philip rubbed his head again. “When you got to the Mitchells,” he said, “what was their response?”

“They fought back,” Anton said. “They were better fighters than the Chechens at the drop-off.”

They were also expecting you,
Philip didn’t say. “That meant that they were prepared,” he did say. “Which in turn means that they expected to have to defend themselves.”

“That’s what happens when you betray everyone all at once,” Anton said. “Makes friends hard to find.”

“The point,” Philip pressed, “is that if they were expecting a possible attack, then they might want to have personal security.”

“But only one person?”

“Probably for the boy,” Philip thought aloud. “Was she young?”

Anton laughed. “To me, everybody is young. I guess under thirty, but not much.”

Philip nodded. Yes, he’d seen this before. It was a trick used over in the Sandbox when defending important families. Young people are inherently resistant to personal protection, so to combat that, contractors would recruit younger operators for that purpose.

“You’re smiling now,” Anton said. “First vision from God and now something funny. What is funny about armed security guard?”

“It means they had a contingency plan,” Philip said. “And plans have to make sense. To make sense, they have to follow a straight line.”

“Straight line to where?”

He paused a beat. “I don’t know yet.”

“Is lots of help. You don’t know.”

It had been seven years since Philip was last directly involved in running field agents and field ops, so it took him a while to pull the standard protocols from memory. Of course, there was no guarantee that the Bureau would use the same protocols as the Agency, but the elements had to be pretty much the same. You had the routine components, such as never traveling predictable routes, and the tradecraft to recognize and elude tails. Then there were the elements that kicked in at the time when shots were fired—the specific actions to guard the protectees and get them out of harm’s way. Those he knew for a fact were common not just to the two agencies involved in this mess, but also to Secret Service and State. Anybody who protected anyone.

Equally predictable, yet far more fluid, were the protocols to be followed if a protectee under assault was hit in the crossfire. Hospitals would be prequalified for their capabilities and preplanned as a function of the nature of the problem. Most any hospital could help a protectee with a gallbladder attack, but if a gunshot wound were involved, only a shock trauma center would suffice when such facilities were available. When the protectee was a senior government official, certain staffing requirements at the hospitals would need to be proved prior to the trip.

Coming into this meeting, Philip had known that people had been shot during last night’s incident, but a check of hospital records had turned up nothing.

“Other than the mother, Sarah, were there any surviving wounded from either assault last night?” Philip asked.

“Yes,” Datsik said. “But they were all on our team.”

“And where did you take them?”

Datsik’s expression turned dark, defensive. “We took them to what your government likes to call a secret, undisclosed location,” he said. “That means none of your business.”

Philip pointed at Datsik’s nose. “Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“Exactly the answer. When it is important to remain covert, hospitals are out of the question. At least standard hospitals are out of the question.”

Anton smiled as he got the point. “You have secret hospitals, too.”

Philip confirmed by making his eyebrows dance. “Won’t it be really freaking weird if we both use the same doctors?”

“I doubt that to be the case.”

The irony thing again. It was a strange part of Anton’s personality. The guy had a biting sense of humor and he enjoyed a good laugh, but subtleties were often beyond him. Perhaps it was a language thing.

The question on the top of Philip’s list was how to determine who that doctor might be. It was possible that the Agency and the Bureau used the same medical contractors, but extremely unlikely. Just as it would be awkward to run into Russian FSB operators, it would be equally awkward—maybe even more so—to run into a Bureau puke. The two groups did nearly as much warfare between each other as they did with the nation’s enemies.

It was not uncommon for agents of the CIA to see agents of the FBI as the bad guys, and of course the reverse was equally true. The animosity came from different views of how the world operated, and what right and wrong looked like. Common to both agencies, however, was hatred of the State Department. All State wanted to do was surrender. Philip thought of it as serving the French model.

“I need to make a couple of phone calls,” Philip said. “Private ones. I’m going to wander a few yards toward Maryland, but don’t go anywhere. If you need to make some phone calls yourself to get your team back together, now would be a good time.”

J
olaine put her Glock in the top drawer of the thin-walled faux-mahogany dresser.

The officer rapped again. “Ms. Bernard! Please!” His tone was harsher this time.

Jolaine looked at herself in the mirror. She saw nothing in the image that telegraphed the nightmare of the past few hours. All she saw was a young woman—an attractive one, she liked to think—who looked a little tired, but there was no tattoo on her forehead announcing that she’d killed people. Jolaine opened the door just as the cop was preparing to knock again. “Good lord, what is it?” she demanded as she pulled it open.

Outside, the officer who was doing the knocking stood off to the side. Another, with his hand resting casually on his sidearm, stood at a distance in the parking lot. Clearly, the agenda here was serious.

“Are you Marcia Bernard?” the cop asked.

With that question, she knew that the call had been placed by Hi-my-name-is-Carl, the only person in the world other that herself to know that she had an alias, let alone what it was.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“May we come in?” the cop asked as his partner moved closer. The partner’s hand never moved from his gun.

“I don’t understand,” Jolaine said. “Is there a problem?”

“I’d really prefer to talk inside,” the cop said. “No sense waking the entire complex.”

Jolaine’s heart and head raced together to figure out a plan. She stepped back from the door and ushered them inside.

“I’m Officer Bonds,” the first cop said. “This is Officer Medina. Is everything okay here?”

“Of course,” Jolaine said. “Why wouldn’t it be?” She played it as absurd, and hoped she hadn’t oversold it.

“Are you here alone?” Bonds asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m here with my little brother.”

“And where is he?”

“In the bathroom. Excuse me, Officer, but I’m not comfortable—”

The bathroom door opened, releasing a cloud of steam, and revealing Graham with wild wet hair and a white towel wrapped around his waist. “Hey Jolaine, did we bring—” He saw the cops. “Holy shit.”

“This is my brother, Tommy,” Jolaine said, suddenly aware that she hadn’t yet told Graham that he had an alias.

Graham said nothing, but his expression was an open confession to the Lincoln assassination.

“Who’s Jolaine?” Officer Medina asked. He stood in the doorway to the parking lot, blocking the only route of escape. He asked the question to Graham, and the boy still couldn’t find any words.

The cops’ eyes shifted in unison to Jolaine. “I am,” she said. She was winging it now.

Medina stayed focused on Graham. “And who are you? I mean
really?
”

“He’s Tommy Bernard,” Jolaine said. Her words clearly pissed off the cop, who was trying to get a rise out of the boy, but she had to get it out there if the kid was going to have a chance.

“I’m Tommy Bernard,” Graham said.

“Uh-huh,” Bonds said. “What’s going on here?”

“My brother and I are on a trip,” Jolaine said.

“Where to?” Medina asked.

“I don’t see where that’s any of your business,” Jolaine said. They’d crossed the line where she felt her best defense—maybe her
only
defense—would be a little offense.

“Why did you lie about your name?” Bonds said.

“Is that a crime?”

“It could be. Let me see some identification.”

As Jolaine fished through her pockets for the business-card folder she used to house her driver’s license and credit card, Medina said to Graham, “How about you? Got any ID?”

Graham shook his head. Jolaine could tell that his own fear was giving away to annoyance. “No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m fourteen and I just got out of the shower.”

“You got clothes in there?” Medina asked, craning his neck to see into the bathroom.

“Yeah.”

“Then go put some pants on,” Medina said. “But keep the door open.”

Graham started to retreat back into the bathroom, but then stopped and gave Medina wicked glare. “Wait, you perv. I’m not going to take a towel off so you can watch me naked.”

Medina’s ears grew red as Graham stepped back to his original spot.

Jolaine’s heart raced faster. She’d seen Graham after he’d crossed into high adolescent indignation, and it never made a situation better. Never. She pulled her driver’s license out of its pocket and held it by the edges so Bonds could read it.

When he reached for it, she pulled it away. “Look but don’t touch,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“This is my property. If I don’t give it to you, you can’t take it from me.” Across the room, Graham seemed to like that.

Bonds gave a derisive, condescending chuckle. “I don’t know what Internet law books you’ve been reading, but you have an obligation to provide identification to a sworn officer of the law.”

“I am providing identification,” she said. “I’m just not letting you have the card.” Her fear was that if she gave him her license, he would have leverage over her, tacit permission to stick around until he was damn good and ready to give it back.

“You’re a pretty smart-mouthed team, aren’t you?” Medina asked. His color still had not recovered from the accusation of pedophilia. On one level, Jolaine thought he had it coming—that was, after all what Hi-my-name-is-Carl had thought of her, thus launching this confrontation in the first place.

“What we are,” Jolaine said, “is a tired team. It’s been a long day, and frankly, I’m feeling a little harassed right now. I know what the desk clerk was thinking when I checked in, and I know why you’re here. And yes, frankly, it pisses me off.”

“That so?” Bonds asked. “Why are we here?”

“Because you think Tommy and I are having sex with each other.”

Graham’s reaction was instant, and straight from the heart. “What? Eew. That’s disgusting! Jesus, you
are
a perv.”

Hearing it said out loud made it seem even more disgusting, and just like that, Bonds’s discomfort became obvious.

“If you’re not, then our friend Carl up front is,” Jolaine said.

“How come you and your
brother
have different names?” Medina asked. From the way he leaned on the word, she could tell that he wasn’t yet buying.

“Different fathers,” she said. The explanation came so quickly that it made her proud.

“Where’s your luggage?” Medina made a show of scanning the tiny room. “I don’t see any suitcases.”

“Okay,” Graham said. “You got us. You want the truth? We were in this big shoot-out tonight where a lot of people were killed, and now international spies are chasing us and trying to kill us. That’s why we’re here. How’s that?”

Jolaine nearly dashed over to shut him up. This was it, the end of everything.

“Man, you really do have an attitude problem, don’t you?” Medina said. “I see punks like you every day when I put them in jail. What do you bet I’ll see you one day, too?”

Holy shit, they don’t believe the truth!
Jolaine nearly laughed. “Come on, Officer,” she said. “He’s fourteen and he’s tired, and you guys are riding pretty hard. Cut him a break.” To Bonds, she said, “I don’t know what to tell you, other than to say that so far as we know, we’re not breaking any laws.”

Bonds’s eyes narrowed. “Are you two runaways?”

“I’m twenty-seven,” Jolaine said. “Who would I be running away from?”

Bonds turned to address Graham. “Are you okay, son? If there’s a problem, this is the time to tell me. No one can hurt you, I promise.”

Graham rolled his eyes. “Jesus,” he said, and he disappeared back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

“I get to be with that for five days,” Jolaine said. “Don’t you wish you were me?”

Bonds regarded her for a while longer, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You win. Sorry we bothered you.”

After they were gone and the door was closed, Jolaine wasn’t convinced they were really on their way. Finally, the cruiser backed out of its spot, and she could breathe again.

Morning came early.

All things considered, Jolaine decided it would be best if she left Graham in the room and shopped alone. It was just too damned hard to come up with an explanation for his near-nakedness. Having never bought clothes for an adolescent, she cursed herself for never having studied the labels in his clothes.

She had to guess on the sizes, but a clerk at the Walmart helped a lot. Turns out that at a certain age, all boys can fit into size medium T-shirts, and
no
boys would be caught in underwear that bore the word “briefs.” She could verify that one, thanks to the laundry duties that came with her contract with the Mitchells. With no idea of appropriate shoe size, she bought one pair each of medium and large flip-flops. That was all Graham wore this time of year anyway, and it seemed to her that his feet were growing even faster than his disproportionately long arms and legs. It was no wonder that he suffered so from teasing at the hands of the other boys in his school. She suspected that the teasing came from the girls as well.

Forty dollars later, she was back in the car, ready to return to the Hummingbird. Sarah’s last words haunted her.

Finish your mission.

Jolaine smacked the steering wheel. Goddammit, she hadn’t signed up for this. She hadn’t even applied for the job. The job had recruited her.

She’d just come back from her second tour as a civilian gunslinger in Afghanistan. The money was great, and the job was simple—until it wasn’t. Her responsibilities mostly involved personal security for Afghan muckety-mucks who were important enough to require bodyguards, but not quite important enough to have the best. Not that she wasn’t good at what she did—in fact, she considered herself to be damn good—but the outfit she worked for, Hydra Security, didn’t have the clout to get big-money contracts. As a result, she’d been stuck with old-school M4 rifles and M9 sidearms while the big boys got the fancier MP7s and much lighter body armor.

Jolaine had been shot at plenty in her two tours in Afghanistan, but the intended targets had always been the people she was supposed to protect. Her response had been to lay down cover fire—a blanket of bullets that was more intended to keep bad guys’ heads down than to kill identifiable targets—and to shove her protectees into their armored vehicles. The work was mentally engaging and exciting. And since she was still breathing—as were her clients—she liked to think of herself as pretty good at the job. When she was on her last break before her contract expired, she’d decided to sign on for another two years.

Then, three years ago, she was sitting in a Starbucks in Vienna, Virginia, enjoying a grande coffee and a blueberry muffin when a blond supermodel sat down at the table next to hers and made a point of staring at her. Jolaine tried to ignore her, but after ten minutes it became unbearable.

“Can I help you?’ Jolaine asked. At the time, she’d assumed that it was a lesbian come-on, and she’d girded herself for the confrontation.

“You’re Jolaine Cage, aren’t you?” the lady asked.

Jolaine’s protective shields shot up. “Who wants to know?”

The superhot blonde flashed a gold badge from the pocket of her slacks. “Can we take a walk?” she said.

Jolaine recognized the distinctive shape of the FBI shield. “Am I in trouble?”

The blonde smiled. “Not hardly. I just want to talk to you, and it’s too crowded in here.”

At the time—in the moment—Jolaine felt a surge of adrenaline. Within the community of freelance security folks, stories abounded of clandestine meetings in which operators were recruited to be Uncle Sam’s muscle. “Sure,” she said. Jolaine rose from her little table and started to walk away from her coffee.

“You’re probably going to want that,” the lady said, pointing to the paper cup.

Jolaine grabbed the cup by its insulating band and pulled it close to her body. “Where are we going?”

“Just out.”

They stepped out into chilly October sunshine. Traffic on Maple Avenue was heavy more or less all day, thanks to traffic lights on every block. At this hour, about eleven in the morning, it was as light as it was going to get.

“Let’s walk north,” the lady said.

Jolaine noted that the left turn out of the Starbucks led them toward CIA headquarters, six miles down the road. “I won’t get into a car,” she said.

The lady laughed. “This isn’t a rendition,” she said. She extended her hand. “My name is Maryanne Rhoades. I’m with the FBI.”

Jolaine shook her hand. “I got the FBI part in there. And you already know who I am.”

“Yes, I do.”

“
Why
do you know who I am?”

“We’ve been watching you.”

A danger bell rang in Jolaine’s head. She stopped walking.

It took Maryanne a few steps to realize that she was alone, and she turned. “You look unnerved,” she said. “Don’t be. This is all good.”

“Then I think you should get to the good part,” Jolaine said.

Maryanne smirked, as if hearing a joke that was audible only to her. “Do you like working at Hydra Security?”

A second bell rang in harmony with the first. “That’s a question, not an answer,” she said.