Operation Sheba (3 page)

Chapter Four

“What happened, Abby?” His blue-gray eyes watched her intently. He was always so calm, so rock-steady. Handsome. Kind. Patient. Everything she wanted in a man.

She shrugged and stared at the horizon. “Nightmare. When I woke up I thought someone was in the room. Remnants of the dream I guess. I apologize for the holes in the wall. I’ll have them fixed immediately.”

She glanced at him to see his reaction. He nodded, but his brow creased with a frown. “Are you all right?”

Am I?
“I’m a little spooked.” She stood and forced a smile. “I haven’t had one like that in a long time.”

Walking over to the balcony’s railing, she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms before leaning her stomach against the parapet. She knew this would be the last morning she spent here.

What a shame
.
I was just starting to believe in Michael’s world
. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, imprinting the beauty of the morning on her brain.

“Anything I can do for you?” Michael asked.

She turned and faced him. Concern etched his handsome face, a face that would still be handsome ten years down the road when Abigail Quinn was nothing more than a beautiful regret to him. God, he had done so much for her. She swallowed hard.

The balcony’s tiles felt cool under her feet as she crossed to where he sat, crawling into his lap. She kissed him on the cheek and the clean scent of his aftershave filled her nose. “I’m all right,” she whispered, laying her head on his shoulder.

Part of her actually meant it.

CIA Headquarters, Langley

Two hours later, the phone on her desk buzzed softly, interrupting her thoughts but not her concentration. Julia ignored it as she continued translating a satellite intercept of a phone conversation in French that had been picked up in the previous night’s intelligence chatter. She was fluent in both Italian and French. Her German was passable, enough to buy a beer and find a public toilet. The phone conversation in her hands had been brief and on the surface made little sense, but was directly linked to the terrorist group she knew well. Translating the language was easy. The challenge lay in reading between the lines, peeling layers off the words. If Julia was right, Dr. Jean-Paul Bousset was back in business. He was producing and distributing biological agents to the Algerian GIA, the Armed Islamic Group, as well as another internationally wanted terrorist she’d been watching, Fayez Raissi.

The phone buzzed again. Her focus never leaving the paper, she pulled one ear bud out of her ear, pressed a button and picked it up. Susan Richmond, the CTC’s director, was on the other end. “Abby, meet me in Director Stone’s office, please.”

Susan had been with the CIA for thirty-some years, working both in the field and at Langley in the intelligence and operations departments. She was one of the few people in the CTC who knew the story behind Abigail Quinn.

“I’ll be right there.”

Julia dropped the ear buds, stuck the transcript in her desk and started down the hall, the heels of her shoes soundless on the commercial blue carpet. Like most professionals, she could effectively compartmentalize her brain. On the balcony at Michael’s house she had split off and shut down the part that wanted to dwell on Conrad. For today, she was Abigail Quinn and Abby had work to do. Julia Torrison would deal with Flynn tonight.

The door to Michael’s office was closed. Knowing they were expecting her, Julia knocked softly and stuck her head in. The room was quiet except for the faint hum of the notebook computer sitting on the broad top of Michael’s mahogany desk. He sat studying it, several files scattered nearby in front of him. His suit coat, discarded, Julia knew, the minute he’d walked through the door, hung nearby on a coat rack. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows.

Susan was standing behind the desk, gazing out the window at the Agency’s campus below. A tall woman at five foot ten inches, the CTC director was known for using her height to her advantage and always wore heels with her well-tailored suits. To level the playing field, she routinely told Julia with a wink. Her graying hair was cut in a short bob with bangs that accentuated her square face. It was a face Julia admired. This woman understood her, understood the seduction of playing spy. Susan had recruited her, had taken her through the Farm—the CIA’s training camp—and sent her on her first tour in Paris.

Julia hesitated inside the doorway, the tension in the room prickling the hairs on the back of her neck. Michael glanced up and motioned her in.

“Abigail, have a seat.” He stood and pointed to a chair facing his desk. His voice was neutral, his face expressionless. The two of them had agreed from the beginning to keep their personal relationship behind closed doors. Pragmatic discretion, Michael called it. There were rumors about them floating up and down the halls of the CIA headquarters, but they didn’t lend credibility to them. They arrived at the office separately and left separately. There were no stolen moments together in his office, no shared lunches in the cafeteria. Everything here was strictly business.

Julia sat in the proffered chair and glanced from Michael to Susan. Something was off. Did they somehow know about Conrad?
This might be it
, she thought, taking a deep breath.
Time to decide which side of the fence I want to land on.

Susan moved toward the desk and gave her a brief smile as she picked up a remote from Michael’s desk. “Abby, we have digital video of a surveillance tape from Dulles Airport we want you to look at.” She walked toward a TV/VCR unit on the room’s west wall and pushed a button.

Julia let her gaze rest on Michael’s face while Susan’s back was turned. He avoided her look and resumed his seat. Julia turned toward the TV.

Susan stood off to the side. “This footage was taken two days ago as passengers were disembarking from an international flight that originated in London.”

The footage was shot from an overhead camera angled down at a gate inside the airport. A solid stream of men and women with briefcases and carry-on luggage emerged from the gate and passed under the camera. Most seemed lost in thought and haggard from the flight. A few were impatient, pushing their way through the crowd but making little progress.

“What exactly am I looking for?” Julia asked.

Michael was watching her. “See if you recognize any of the passengers.”

She stood and walked around to the end of the desk to get a closer look. She could feel Michael’s gaze on her back.
Yep, they’ve caught him.

In amongst the mostly British and American group, there was a smattering of other nationalities, although few were obvious. Turbans, veils or other distinguishing head coverings were all but absent. Fallout from 9/11.

Julia watched as a heavily bearded man tried to push forward with his sari-wrapped wife. Then she caught sight of another man’s face weaving in and out behind them. Maybe it was the tilt of his head or the angle of his jaw that struck her as familiar. She leaned forward slightly, trying to pull the image in closer…

It wasn’t Conrad. “Freeze it there, please.”

Susan hit the pause button and the picture stopped. Julia frowned and studied the digital image of the man’s profile. His sandy brown hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him and his eyes were covered with sunglasses, but there was little doubt in Julia’s mind who he was. She almost let out an audible sigh of relief. “Smitty,” she said under her breath.

Susan glanced at her and back to the paused picture. “Ryan Smith, your Chief of Station in Paris. If you remember, he disappeared four months ago, right after he took over as Chief of Operations/Europe.”

Julia touched the face on the screen, a faint smile on her face. “Thank God he’s alive.”

Smitty had been much more than just her field coordinator when she was stationed in Paris. He had been her friend. During her first tour in Paris with Conrad, Smitty had been a junior case officer too. The three of them had sat in Smitty’s small flat, playing poker and laughing for hours, sharing
corniottes,
warm cheese pastries and cognac. Three years later, when she and Con went back to Paris, Smitty had been given the COS position. There had still been evenings spent at Smitty’s flat with a bottle of cognac between them, but things had changed. Smitty and Con were distant with each other, the easy camaraderie they had shared before strained. Ryan Smith was now the boss, the one enforcing the rules. Conrad didn’t like rules.

On her last tour, the fatal one in Germany, Smitty left his post and flew to Luxembourg to pick her up. Instead of simply hustling her off on a plane for the States, he bought a ticket for himself as well and held her hand all the way back. That was it, just his hand over hers that gave her the lifeline she had so desperately needed to hold on to.

Julia dropped her hand to her side. “Has he made contact?”

“No.” Michael let the word hang like a challenge in the silence of the room. “He hasn’t made contact and we still have no explanation for his disappearance. He entered the country under an alias. We are assuming at this point he’s AWOL.”

Julia’s stomach did a little flip. Ryan Smith AWOL from the CIA? Something was definitely off with that picture. Shaking her head, she looked at Michael. “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.” She turned back to the paused picture and squinted at it. “Look at him. Ryan Smith is a trained CIA operator. If he were AWOL and trying to avoid being seen, he would disguise himself. Sunglasses and a baseball cap isn’t a disguise. Plus, he wouldn’t enter the country via Dulles, which he knows is always under heavy surveillance. He doesn’t care if you know he’s here.”

Susan and Michael exchanged a glance. “So why didn’t he enter the country under his own name?” Michael countered. “Why wasn’t he standing on my doorstep yesterday afternoon?”

Julia’s mind was clicking through possibilities. “What was the last assignment he worked on? Could he be undercover?”

Michael let out a derisive laugh. “Undercover? For what? He was Chief of Operations. He wasn’t supposed to be working assignments, only overseeing the European COS operatives.”

Julia’s back stiffened instinctively in her friend’s defense.
Smitty
, Conrad would have said,
always preferred to have his fingers in the pie
. What were the two of them up to? “Maybe one of his officers was involved in something too difficult,” she offered. “Maybe Smitty was infiltrating or recruiting within an organization himself.”

Michael shook his head. “We can’t know for sure what he’s up to at this point, but there’s still too many unanswered questions. He’s been out of contact with me for four months. He’s now entered the States, unharmed and of his own free will, but fails to come in and tell me what’s going on. In my book, that makes him a rogue agent.”

Julia let out a sigh and resumed her seat. Susan was staring at the frozen picture. “We think it’s possible he may contact you, Abby.”

He better. If he doesn’t, I’ll hunt him down.
“Why?”

“You tell us.” Michael steepled his fingers under his chin. “You know him as well, if not better, than we do.”

She held Michael’s gaze, unnerved by the look on his face. Was her previous relationship with Smitty now suspect?
Michael thinks I’m the Agency mole
. The thought struck her mind with such force she felt like she’d been physically slapped. Her voice was harsh. “Ryan Smith is one of the best chiefs you’ve had in Europe over the past ten years. You owe him the benefit of the doubt to believe for now that his intentions are true to the Agency.” She paused, scanning Michael’s face. “As for me, if you think I’m the mole in your department, then say it straight out.”

Michael leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, studying her. Susan stepped forward. “Our European operations have been severely compromised, Abby. Probably from within Langley and quite possibly in conjunction with a field officer such as Agent Smith. Michael and I aren’t accusing you of anything…”
yet
hung in her pause, “…but the timing of your return to this office and your past working relationship with him may suggest collusion to people outside this room.”

Julia shifted her attention to the desk but otherwise remained completely still. It was part of the drill. Show no emotion, even when your pulse was racing. Underneath the façade, her mind was spinning and her feelings were hurt. She had whored herself for her country for the better part of eight years and basically no one knew or cared. The average American citizen took his liberties for granted and rarely wondered who exactly was keeping those liberties available. Now the two people she thought did care, the two she trusted and whom she believed trusted her, were accusing her of turning traitor.

Susan shot a look at her boss before continuing. “You’ll have to take a polygraph, Abby,” she said softly, “and then we’ll go from there.” Michael nodded his consent.

Julia continued to stare at the desktop. What they had proposed was completely logical. Reasonable. But how could Michael, after all they had shared, even suggest she was a mole? That she had committed treason? She looked up, searching his eyes, his face for a sign. Anything that would tell her he knew her, knew she’d never betray him.