The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller (5 page)

They stood five feet away in identical crouches, guns aimed at each other.

“I see your knee is better now,” Irina said.

“Two surgeries. Now tell me, why are you here?” He shuffled slightly to his right. Irina moved slowly to her right as well.

“I’m part of the security detail. And you?”

“We picked up a shred of chatter that suggested Coffee might be interested in the summit.”

Irina blinked. “He’s back in the States?”

“We lost track of him in Colombia.”

“He went to Colombia from Mexico,” Khournikova said. “I lost him in Colombia as well. He disappeared into the jungle. There are a lot of drug dealers there as well as a lot of terrorist training camps. I’m sure Coffee would have found eager converts. There are plenty of unhappy, angry people with guns in Colombia looking for someone like Richard Coffee to come along and show them the light.”

Derek cocked his head. “Do you think he’s going to show up here?” He moved a little bit to his left this time. The Russian aped his movements.

“I’m intrigued that you think he might.” With a shake of her head she put her gun back inside her jacket and raised her hands. “Enough. I don’t believe you’re— how did you say it— a bad guy. As you know, I have personal business with Coffee. So, tell me.”

Derek lowered the gun, hesitated, and handed it back to her. He didn’t think she was on Coffee’s side, although figuring out exactly whose side she was on could sometimes be a problem. “What’s your government’s take on The Fallen Angels now?”

“We still want him for crimes committed in Russia, but we’ve seen no activity since his attacks here in the U.S. As you might say, he’s on the back burner.”

“And with you?”

“If I see him, I will kill him. I won’t talk to him or try to arrest him. I will kill him dead.”

Derek frowned. “Coffee was pretty deep into your intelligence agencies. Can you trust the people you have here?”

Her green eyes seemed to glow. “You are asking me that? Coffee’s collaborators were your government. Listen to yourself! One of your own FBI agents tried to murder me at his order. Who of your people should I trust, Derek Stillwater?”

He shook his head. “Only one. Me.”

She nodded. “And you can trust me— if you’re willing.”

Derek sighed. “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?”

She studied him for a moment. “How do I contact you?”

He tapped the Iridium cell phone on his belt and recited the number. She repeated it, committing it to memory.

“I will be patched into the security network,” she said thoughtfully.

“Where will you be?”

“I’m not inside with the meetings, but on the immediate advance team. I stay ahead of the main group. The summit begins at Cheyenne Hall. Your president is hosting and will be introduced by his chief of staff. Then President Langston will welcome everybody and set the agenda. There will be additional talks by President Vakhach, EU President Waldenstrom, and Prime Minister Hollenbeck before they break into groups. I will be at the International Center during this time period. You?”

Derek shrugged. “I don’t know. It’ll depend on where I’m needed. I won’t be in the main banquet hall during the activities, but I may be in the basement or the perimeter. If possible, I’ll watch on the security cameras in the security center.”

She nodded. “Then I can contact you if I need to.”

Derek nodded. “And you?”

She recited her number. He quickly memorized it. “All right. But don’t tell any of your people who I am.”

“I understand. Now you can go back to your toilet.” With a bitter, crooked grin, she turned and walked out of the restroom.

Lt. General William Akron, deputy director of the Office of the National Intelligence Directorate, paced around his large office in Liberty Crossing. Because of the sensitive nature of the NID, there were no windows in the offices, but it was a large office. It had also been furnished with some first-class furniture— cherry in his case. The building was nearly brand-new— it still smelled ever so faintly of fresh paint.

Akron was thinking about Mandalevo’s request. He had ordered it immediately, but he didn’t like it. It smelled of politics. The NID had been specifically created because politics interfered with intelligence; because of all the interdepartmental turf wars between the various intelligence agencies.

Akron thought he was up to date on the Derek Stillwater issue and on the matter of The Fallen Angels and Richard Coffee. But maybe not. The Stillwater issue, he thought, was dead and buried. As he walked past his cluttered desk, he reached out and snagged his coffee cup, taking a sip, thinking not for the first time that he wished his office had windows. Such was the life of an intelligence wonk.

Akron had come up through the army. Served in Desert Storm in ’91 and later in Kosovo. Ran military intelligence for a while, then worked at the CIA, and for a while directed the NSA. His career had almost ended during the Clinton administration, the so-called don’t-ask-don’t-tell period. Akron, who was more-or-less openly gay, had chosen to “not tell” and keep his job, although from time to time the subject came up in terms of national security clearances. He was currently single, and with the demands of his job, pretty much chaste and celibate. He did have a cat named Harley, but aside from Harley, there wasn’t a lot in Akron’s life except his work.

His secretary buzzed him and let him know the files were here. The chain of custody security issues could be a pain in the ass, so rather than add signatures Akron pushed into his secretary’s office and signed off on the thick folder containing confidential files and several computer disks. All were labeled Top Secret.

Akron’s secretary, an efficient man with a crew cut and wire-rimmed glasses who projected the sense that he would be happier wearing a military uniform, said, “Wheels up in ten minutes. Anything you need the director to know in the next twenty?”

“No.” Akron shrugged his broad shoulders, ran a hand through his unruly gray hair and pushed back into his office, shut the door, and opened the first file, the one on Derek Stillwater. It was thick and most of it was made up of conflicting FBI reports and attorney general briefs regarding Stillwater’s actions during The Fallen Angels’ first terror attack. Akron had been over it before and in his opinion Derek Stillwater had been acting in the only way possible during what turned out to be one of the worst terrorist events in U.S. history. The FBI had gotten their boxers in a bind because they were left looking like idiots.

There was more than an element of a witch hunt on the part of the attorney general, who made no secret that he would prefer that Secretary James Johnston had stepped down for good after the failure of the Department of Homeland Security to predict or prevent the initial attack.

Akron thought the AG had an easy job. Clean up the messes afterward and assign blame.

Scanning the document, something caught his eye. He read it carefully. It was a report concerning Derek Stillwater’s death. What had Robert said? Find out if he’s really dead.

Why would they fake Stillwater’s death?

One reason would be politics, wouldn’t it? Under investigation by the FBI and the attorney general, the AG hounding after Johnston’s job, Stillwater’s death would douse the flames of a major political brush fire.

Was Johnston political enough to do that? In Akron’s experience, Jim Johnston hated politics and avoided tricky political maneuvering when possible. Akron didn’t think much of Johnston’s administrative skills, even less of his political skills, but he thought he was possibly a tactical genius. If Johnston ever left Homeland Security, Akron would consider
him to run operations at the Office of the National Intelligence director.

Should be easy to prove, though. He picked up the phone and asked his assistant to get him in touch with someone involved in death benefits for the Veterans Administration.

Richard Coffee and El Tiburón completed setting out the special wine and champagne bottles around the ballroom. Unnoticed, they slipped into a storeroom and changed out of their catering uniforms and into the uniforms of the Secret Service technicians— dark pants, white shirt, dark tie, and dark windbreakers. They carried credentials supplied by their inside man, Vincent Silvedo. They plugged in the earphones and throat mics for their surveillance kits, which allowed them to stay in touch with their own people, and with a flick of a switch, monitor the Secret Service security network.

The storeroom contained extra chairs and tables and the carts to transport them. It was loaded with boxes and crates containing extra sound equipment, platforms, and backdrops for the stage in the ballroom.

El Tiburón, whose real name was Pablo Juarez, used a pry bar to carefully open the crate containing guns, explosives, and other equipment. Juarez liked guns, but he really liked explosives. C4, Semtex, dynamite, claymores, ammonium nitrate, it didn’t matter. He was an expert with them, having been trained by the CIA during the late ’80s when he was only a teenager living in Colombia. Trained, rewarded, betrayed, and hunted. He had fallen, and now they would pay for their betrayal.

He moved the explosives into a separate container. Coffee picked up the special device, his pride and joy, and carefully laid it in the center of the crate. El Tiburón smiled. He thought Coffee— The Fallen— was a genius. A madman even by his broad standards, but brilliant. El Tiburón had learned valuable lessons from The Fallen— have more than one plan; create backups for your backups; make the enemy think one thing while planning something different; think big and think global.

On top of the explosives and other equipment El Tiburón placed
flashlights, probes, and tools that the service used in preparing a security site. If anybody bothered to check, they would pass inspection, at least for a few moments. If anybody got that close to discovering them, El Tiburón and Fallen were prepared to kill without hesitation.

El Tiburón sealed the crate with an official Secret Service seal provided by Silvedo. He looked over at The Fallen, who was studying a floor plan. The Fallen looked different than he had only months before. His hair was blond, his face clean-shaven, eyes covered by tinted wire-rimmed glasses.

“¿Está listo?” Are you ready?

The Fallen nodded, folding the floor plan away in his pocket. “Si. Armenos una trampa para algunos ratones grandes.” Yes. Let’s set a trap for some big mice.

El Tiburón laughed. “Asi es que es la verdad. Si construye un ratonera major todo el mudno correrá a su puerta.” So it’s true. If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

“Si. Y doblar la rodilla por miedo y respeto.” Yes. And bow at your feet in fear and respect.

With a mutual laugh, the two men pushed the crate and dolly out of the storeroom and into the hallway.

After finishing with the lights, Derek used his phone to call Steve Planchette, his boss. “I’m over at the International Center. Anything else over here?”

Planchette’s voice was as easygoing as usual. The man just never seemed ruffled by anything, even the thought of twenty world leaders and their staffs pissing and moaning about cobwebs or toilets being backed up. “Not over there, but come on back. One of the walk-ins isn’t holding its temperature, there’re some problems with one of the ranges and there might be a problem with some electrical stuff in the kitchen, too. You mind?”

“No. I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

Derek clicked off and began the long trod back to the Cheyenne Center through Secret Service checkpoints. He was amused that Steve didn’t seem uptight with the kitchen problems. The caterers and kitchen crew must be flipping out.

He’d find out soon enough. As he passed through the tunnel into the Cheyenne Center, he noted two Secret Service agents working in the ceiling area just inside the security doors. There was a dolly loaded with a crate marked Secret Service. One of the agents stood at the base of a folding ladder. He wore the dark slacks, dark windbreaker, and rubber-soled shoes of the service. His face was angular and bony, complexion swarthy, hair dark. He looked Hispanic, maybe even Native American. His dark eyes locked on Derek.

Derek prepared to be stopped again, but the agent just nodded him past. He glanced up at the other agent, but he stood on the top of the ladder, his upper body hidden within a hatchway to the service areas that ran between the basement ceiling and the first floor subfloor. It was a
four-foot-high crawl space of dusty, grimy girders, conduits, valves, wiring, and circuits.

As Derek turned the corner, he glanced back at the two agents. Something inside his head set off a vague alarm, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was just that he didn’t know what they were doing in the crawl space. It had been swept thoroughly in the previous days, and he had even led some of the Secret Service agents around some of the nooks and crannies of the facilities, though it was always hard to tell if they were paying attention. The Secret Service tended to set their own agenda.

Riding up to the main floor, he pondered what it had been about the guy that bothered him, but couldn’t put a finger on it. He was used to relying on his gut instincts, but the truth was, he was never meant to work undercover. He had parents and a brother, family. He had a life that he liked, living on a cabin cruiser on Chesapeake Bay, kayaking, working. Undercover, he spent all his time worrying. Paranoia was like a tattoo, once it imprinted on your skin it was almost impossible to erase.

Maria Sanchez walked past the kitchen toward the banquet hall carrying a box of cloth napkins. “Hey, amante. Miss me already?”

Derek grinned. “You bet.”

“Ah, a tease. What you been doing?”

“Fixing the women’s toilet. You?”

“Making the place pretty, of course.” Maria made a face. “Of course, William is running around like his hair is on fire. The ice sculpture is melting in the freezer, and a couple of the ranges aren’t working. He’s loco grande.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Oh, you poor boy,” she said. “Better watch out. William’s a screamer.”