Last Days of the Condor (16 page)

“That's not Peter. He was a
don't give a fuck
guy.”

“But there he was. And logged to Admin, not your unit.”

Sami shook his head. “Oh, Condor.”

Faye said: “You know him.”

Faye let black-haired Sami who held her life in his hands fill her eyes.

Let the luminous second hand sweep a circle around his watch.

Let him fill the silence in their glass booth with what he thought he dared to say.

“We will never have talked about this.”

“I've got to know if I'm going to help us, help you.”

“Trust, right?” Sami smiled. “Was a time, no one I trusted more than Condor.”

“He was your partner. Or your case officer.”

“More than that. He was … the legend inside the legend.”

Sami spoke a man's name.

Faye said: “Wait, I—”

“Under that name,” said Sami, “he was a CIA whistleblower back in the days of truth, justice and the American way after Watergate.”

“He was the one who—”

“Went to
The New York Times
. I don't know the real details. Neither did the newspaper. Something about heroin. Something about Middle East operations. Or the CIA lying about a reason to invade someplace with oil. Something about a bunch of people getting murdered in some undercover facility somewhere.

“The paper printed a bare-bones story. Used that citizen name of Condor's.

“
But nobody cared!
It slid into the deluge of stories about the Agency using the Mafia for assassinations, black-bagging citizens, secret LSD tests, overthrowing governments. Condor became a bit player, didn't get called to testify at the Church Committee Senate Hearings or mentioned in their final report. You'd think that whatever the reality was about Condor, it would have been a big deal, but if enough of the right people don't say
boo,
reality disappears into what's official. Or at least it did before the Web made alternate realities easier.”

Faye shook her head. “The Agency would never forget. Maybe they decided not to prosecute Condor for violating any secrecy laws or oaths, but he would have been…”

She saw it.

Whispered:
“Holy shit.”

“Just like Phil Agee who published a book and blew the covers of a hundred of our people, everybody in our bad-guy streets knew Condor by that civilian name, knew he was on the CIA enemies list. The enemy of my enemy…”

“It was all cover Op to plant him out there!”

“No,” said Sami. “Whatever bloody Op gone wrong triggered him, that was real. He started out some first-job-out-of-college guy in the right place at the right time.

“After-Action Evaluation was he'd tried to be on the side of the angels. The Agency rerecruited him. He had the perfect cover: a verifiable enemy of the CIA.

“Nobody knows all he's done. At least two stateside counter-spy Ops, one I think involved China. Mixed with American expat draft dodgers in Europe targeting Soviet agents and terrorists who tried to co-opt the antiwar GIs and draft resisters. Life isn't Hollywood, terrorist or rule-the-world megalomaniac organizations with chrome skyscraper headquarters and pension plans, but I think he ran with Marxist-tinged groups in the seventies. Red Brigade types. Japanese Red Army. And Neo-Nazis like the National Front, he told me about one night on the docks of London. Maybe even some IRA
boyos,
something about Paris. Locked onto the drug cartels early, they're more important politically than most countries. He was the perfect flytrap. They'd come to him. His truth became his cover.”

“But he's been
Vin
for…”

“Since he got out of the CIA's secret insane asylum in Maine.”

Faye's frown asked her question.

“No, he really was crazy. Or went crazy. Evidently, still is crazy.

“Your drone rumor,” Sami told her. “That Op was one of the big ones he thought up after 9/11. That's what he was best at—the wild idea.

“Bottom line,
yeah,
he got cornered in the shit, used one of the first iPads to call in a drone strike on himself. Some al Qaeda wannabes decided he was who he really was, a CIA plant. The bad guys were racing to torture and/or kill him, we couldn't exfilt and evac his ass, he couldn't go under, so he waited until they were right on top of him …

“The drone killed bad guys and proved they were wrong: the CIA'd sent a drone to kill Condor, so he must have been their enemy, and the Op he'd created stayed safe.”

“Why didn't he die?”

“Suicide is a hard shot when you've been taught to take out the other guy.”

Sami leaned across the table and his gravity pulled Faye closer to him.

We're whispering in a soundproofed glass box,
she thought.

Somehow, that doesn't seem crazy.

“That part of the world,” said Sami, “when it does rain, it pours. Lot of runoff goes down the gutters into city parks, so cities like that, they got big storm drainage slits.

“The argument around the Seventh Floor is: Did he plan for the slit being there when he called in the drone, or did he call in the drone
then
suddenly see the slit and change his mind about being a kamikaze?”

“What do you think?” said Faye.

“Doesn't matter,” answered Sami. “Whatever he decided, he got it done.

“Figure this: Hard as it might have been calling in the drone strike, after he exploded his world, when he was down there in that storm sewer, dust everywhere, a slit of sunlight, the sound of rescuers racing to find survivors …

“To be trapped there and
not
shout for rescue because that will reveal your truth … That buys him a hell of
get out of jail forever
card from me.

“Night comes, he can't claw his way out, crashes down and tumbles through the storm drains, into the city sewers. We figure fourteen hours he was down there. Saw the sunshine of another storm drain, crawled out with the rats. Had to mess some woman up to steal her cell phone, call the panic line, hide while he was soaked and stinking of shit.”

Sami stared out the glass walls.

Drilled his eyes into Faye.

“When we got him back, he seemed damaged but doable. Had to stay officially dead, of course. Even had some surgery on his face—repair the drone attack damage away from
had been
to
what could be
. Getting older had changed his looks anyway.

“That was when I knew him best. That was back when private contractors were all the rage—Blackwater, a dozen others you know, a dozen more you've never heard of. Contractors still account for about one in four U.S. spooks, but their clout is dropping. Condor set me up in an outsourced Op. If you don't trust who's in charge or how their show might go, stick in a player you rely on. I did what I did, it cost what it cost, never mind now. By the time I got clear of all that—got my head on straight, got back inside Uncle Sam—Condor'd officially gone crazy.”

Sami said, “They didn't even let me know he'd gotten better.”

“Maybe he hasn't,” said Faye. “What's going on?”

“That's what I want to know.”

“You're the boss.”

“Really?” Sami smiled. “What about the buzz? What about ‘the record' we keep rewriting with our ABCs? What about Seventh-Floor Langley or the West Wing of the White House? What about every hustler looking for anything that gets TV? What about our people out there hunting a fugitive who they think is as good a killer as they are?”

“They're going to shoot first.”

“In their shoes,” said Sami, “so would you.”

Sami looked at her. “You're the last known contact with Condor I can trust.”

“You want me to find him.”

“Oh, he'll be found. Forget about the overt global BOLOs, we got great shadow headhunters out there after him. He's not that good, not for long.

“But before that happens, before he gets grabbed up or gunned down, either way out of my control, I want
you
to get found by
him
.”

Faye blinked. “What makes you think he's looking for me?”

“Crazy as he's supposed to be, he might not be—
not looking for you,
I mean. But if he spots you … You're the last known official contact for him, too. If he's looking to escape the sewers, you're someone who might know a way out. Which is me.”

“I have no idea what to do.”

“Hit the bricks. Follow whatever it is that makes you duck before your mind tells you there's a bullet coming your way.”

“There's a million miles of nowhere out there.”

“Yeah.” Sami didn't blink. “We can't give you a cover team. He spots that, he'll know and go, blood bath or back into hiding. Then the percentages suck for me, for us.”

Sami leaned back in his chair. “You've got my phone number, I've got yours. I don't want to be the one who calls to say Condor's been got.”

“He was your friend. You like him. Trusted him. You want him alive, right?”

“I want to know what I want to know, and I want this all to go down right.”

Faye stood. “What about Peter? You would have turned his life inside out.”

“The saddest thing about his dying is he left nothing behind him worth knowing. You ask me, Peter was the wrong guy in the wrong place at somebody's wrong time.”

“What about Condor?”

“Yeah.”

She put her hand on the handle of the glass door.

Looked back at him: “What, no parting ABCs?”

“
Always Be Careful
.” He shrugged. “If not:
Accept Being Crucified
.”

She walked through Complex Zed's warehouse, full of portable workstations and data screening posts and folded-up tables in front of giant steel trunks full of hardware and that glowing soundproof glass booth.

Thought:
Act Beyond Crazy.

She wore post-shower clothes from her GO! bag she kept by her desk. Dark slacks, gray blouse, a business-acceptable blazer to cover the Glock .40 on her belt and carry the folders of official IDs and badge. Faye marched to the locker room and her locker searched by squirrels who were professionally respectful enough to leave it untidy so they wouldn't insult her by pretending not to have been there. She knew everything they found. Unless something had been planted there, in which case,
not knowing
had a better chance of being believed on a polygraph test or with whatever confession drugs the priests used in their interrogations.

Like maybe whatever drug they gave me last night.

Not a problem, she knew. She had nothing mission critical to hide.

So far.

But if they got me to offer up Chris …

Some things we don't like to think about.

She snapped the pouch with two ammo magazines on the left side of her belt under the jacket. Her dull metal spring-bladed jackknife had a belt clip on one of its flat handle's sides, rode on her belt over her spine—
tolerable
if she sat in a chair.

Smart tradecraft would have been to unpack the hip, suede leather backpack-like purse
thoughtfully,
put its contents on the locker shelves
in
and
with
some kind of order, a tidy display that implied she believed she was coming back, a trustable clue for profilers and squirrels who'd open her locker after she was gone.

She dumped her backpack purse into her locker, put back in only the pouch of mission toiletries, grabbed her short black raincoat she'd worn when she interviewed Condor, slammed the locker shut.

A handmade poster above the camp made from portable storage and delivery trunks read:
EQUIPMENT DISBURSEMENT DETAIL
. Two M4 carbine-slung SWAT guards paced near the bulletproof vest over his white shirt & tie Santa sitting behind EDD's unfolded table that would have fit in at a church social.

Faye confirmed her ID through Santa's portable retina scanner, established her Access/Action Level logging her identifier and Op code word into the laptop on the table, negotiated what she wanted out of what Santa said he had and could release.

Two credit cards with a phony female name came from him without a blink.

Cash was no problem, $2,500 in twenties and fifties, two tens, two fives.

Faye unbuttoned her blouse.

Santa stared at the list they'd typed into his iPad.

Said: “You going to war, Agent?”

“I know what I'm doing,” lied Faye.

Before he disappeared in canyons of locked storage trunks, Santa gave her the advice every good government spymaster bestows on their secret agents: “Get receipts.”

She laid her blouse on the table and stood there in her black bra.

Santa brought her a charger for her cell phone and spare battery, a forgettable light blue nylon jacket a size too big for her and a ballistic (bulletproof) vest.

“Seven pounds,” he said as she strapped it on. Faye told herself the vest fabric that would show above her blouse's open collar could pass for a hip T-shirt. “No plates, but rated for most combat pistols. Never had any complaints.”

“If they had to, they couldn't.”

His shrug conceded the point. He returned to the canyon of gear trunks for what he could get. Came back and helped her arrange that weight in her backpack purse.

“You were lucky we got these.” Santa shrugged. “I'm a sentimentalist.”

“I'm a satisfied shopper,” lied Faye as she walked toward the elevators.

She knew it was useless to divert to the
WOMEN'S
room. Rub her hands over her body. Use the spring-bladed jackknife to check behind the badge in her folder. Smell the soles of her black sneaker-like shoes for the scent of fresh glue. Sami or her bosses at NROD or Home Sec or the CIA didn't need to plant a tracking bug on her. They and probably the whole world were pinging on the GPS in her cell phone.