The Poseidon Initiative (8 page)

Danielle shot him an appreciative look. “There’s that half full glass again.”

The Hague, Netherlands

Stephen Shah had a wildcard to play. He’d cleared the longshot tactic with Tanner, who had told him he was greenlighting it only because it wouldn’t take much time to fail. As soon as it did, he was to get back to the university campus to provide external lab support there.

Shah knelt behind his rental car in the parking garage of his hotel. Each of the three OUTCAST operators were checked into separate hotels under assumed identities to avoid associations. He looked and listened to be sure he wouldn’t be witnessed for the next minute or so. He’d already cased out the positions of the security cameras and deliberately parked in a blind spot.

Shah slipped a license plate from his leather messenger bag and then pulled a multitool from his pocket and deployed its screwdriver. In about thirty seconds he had the Netherlands rental plate off and in his bag. Thirty more saw a diplomat plate affixed to his gray Peugeot 207. He put the tool away and dusted off the knees of his charcoal gray pants. Then he adjusted his tie and jacket in the window reflection and got into the car.

As he drove out of the garage and toward the U.S. embassy in The Hague, Shah hoped that his past experiences here would be sufficient to see this through. As a middle-Eastern specialist, most of his time abroad in the CIA had been spent there, but on occasion he did have reason to visit the Hague embassy over the decades, and he still had some contacts there. Today, though, he hoped he wouldn’t see any of them, with one exception. Even of those who were still there, he highly doubted they would remember him. It was simply his familiarity with operating protocols of U.S. embassies in foreign nations in general that he was banking on.

Shah pulled up to a light and waited, deep in thought. Were his plan to fail, he would surely be imprisoned on multiple charges and cross-jurisdictional violations. Tanner would likely find a way to get him out of it, but it would take a while.

But it wasn’t himself he was worried about. He’d seen the replays of that halftime show in Miami, and knowing that if he were able to delay another event like that by even just a few hours — maybe long enough for other options to work — any penalty he might pay personally would be well worth it. He’d already put in his time, lived a full life. The U.S. no longer trusted him, but he wanted to help the nation that had taken his family in when he was a young boy from a war-torn Iran and given him a future. Given him an education, jobs, a career. Given him a life. Sure, things changed gradually over the decades. He’d noticed some ugliness creeping into the lexicon that hadn’t been there when he’d first started (or was he just too young and starry-eyed to notice it, he’d asked himself on many a sleepless night), and eventually things had ended badly when he’d filed suit against the CIA for not being promoted due to his race.

Still, even after all that, he’d been welcomed by Tanner Wilson and OUTCAST. The group lacked the security and prestige of his former position, but in a way it allowed him to actually do more to combat threats to the United States. So America was still good to him. And he would do his utmost to be good to it.

Shah approached a dull-looking, gray cinderblock facade of five stories and instinctively checked his rear-views. No one seemed to be tailing him. Taking in the building, he smiled and shook his head. It really didn’t look much different from his last visit here about eight years ago, when he’d stopped by on the way home from the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia to share information on a budding jihadist organization he had been tracking, called ISIS.

Shah cleared the memories from his mind and mentally steeled himself as he drove up to the manned entrance. He had his fake CIA Special Agent badge, papers and falsified vehicle documentation at the ready. When he reached the guardhouse he rolled his window down and reached his hand out with the documents to the guard without smiling. The young man took the credentials, also without a smile, and studied them carefully, an M-16 slung over one shoulder and a handheld radio on his belt.

“How long will you be staying at the embassy?” He looked up at Shah.

“Just for tonight.” That was the truth.

“And how long in the Netherlands?”

Shah looked away from the guard, feigning boredom while he looked around at the embassy grounds. He was buying time to formulate a response. He hadn’t expected this question. He didn’t think he’d ever been asked it before. Were they onto him already?

“Also just for tonight.” That was not so much the truth. But it went along with his here-on-important-business-that-won’t-take-long story.

“One moment.” The guard retreated into the small guardhouse structure and typed something into a computer. Shah knew he was entering notes about this encounter into an electronic log. Then he turned back around and handed him his papers, wordlessly nodding him through.

Shah parked in the employee lot and carried his briefcase to the building entrance, also guarded. He flashed his credentials to the guard here as well, this time also submitting his briefcase to a search, which turned up nothing suspicious. Again he was nodded through.

Shah took the elevator to the fourth floor where he knew the highest levels of government decision-makers to be housed. While in the elevator he made certain the contents of his briefcase were still in the proper order after being rifled through by the guard. Satisfied, he relaxed and took a deep breath just before the chime rang announcing floor 4.

Shah proceeded down the hall past closed doors on either side until he reached the room number he sought. He paused there, steadying his nerves. Satisfied he was as calm as he could make himself, he knocked on the door. A female voice told him to come in and he opened it.

Inside was a bustling open space divided into cubicles. A receptionist sat at a low desk off to the left. She asked him how she may direct his visit. Shah gave her a name and she asked if he had an appointment.

“No, I’m afraid this is a matter of urgency which arose too quickly to make pre-arrangements. I have orders from the President of the United States of America to close this embassy.”

Shah lifted a piece of paper from his briefcase bearing the presidential seal and dangled it in front of her face.

Charleston, South Carolina

Liam snapped his head over his shoulder before making a lane change. Amir’s cab was in the fast lane and properly making use of that designation. He coaxed his little Vespa scooter with epithets muttered under his breath, but the little machine was close to giving all it had to give. As it was, were he to be sighted by a police officer he’d likely be pulled over for having the scooter on the highway.

He stabilized the bike in the lane next to the fast lane and held the pedal to the floor. The speedometer crept up to eighty kilometers per hour, but meanwhile, Amir’s cab one lane over in the fast lane was easily doing one hundred. In a few more seconds the cab would be out of sight.

Then he caught a break when a WIDE LOAD procession of trucks carrying mobile homes took up the two right lanes, squeezing traffic to the two left-most lanes. Traffic slowed, but Liam was able to ride between the lanes. When he was ten cars back he switched into the fast lane, deciding it was risky to pass the cab and be seen by Amir.

His headset warbled in his ear, Tanner’s voice asking for a sitrep, a situation report.

“Target in sight on 26. Not sure how long I’ll be able to stay with him but I got him for now.” He gave the exit he just passed.

“Copy that, stay with him.”

Liam braked as he came up on the rear of the cab. Up ahead the wide load convoy was exiting, traffic already beginning to flow normally once again. Liam decided he needed all the momentum he could get. He moved over one lane to the right and sped between that and the slow lane, passing the cab so that he would have a lead once traffic began to flow again. By the time he was two exits ahead of the taxi, the traffic flow was full speed again. Motorists honked at him to get out of the way with his slow vehicle. He was drawing attention so he moved right one lane into the slow lane.

That’s when he caught the splotch of yellow in his rear view, moving left to right. The cab had changed lanes, all the way over. Liam cursed as he reflexively slowed his scooter.

The taxi exited one offramp behind him. He banged a fist on the handlebar as he shook his head. He transmitted to Tanner.

“Just lost him!”

Tanner’s reply was instant. “Scooter too slow?”

“Mobile home convoy slowed traffic and I was able to I pull ahead of him so I’d have a lead on him when the flow resumed, but then he exited while I was two exits up.” He named the exit.

“Take the next exit, I’ll give you directions; maybe you can circle back and find him on surface streets.”

“Copy that, getting off.”

Liam raced off the highway, turning right onto a main boulevard where he was able to make good progress toward the street on which Amir’s cab exited.

The closer he came to that exit, however, the more discouraged he became. The area was commercial and busy with many buildings on both sides, lots of places to duck into. He experienced a powerful jolt of adrenaline upon sighting a yellow cab, but when he got close he could see that the number painted on the door was different from that of the one Amir took. He looked into the back anyway, in case Amir may have switched cabs, but the rear was empty.

He sped on, soon reaching the avenue that Amir’s cab had exited onto. Liam stopped at a light, looked both ways, and had to admit defeat. The cab was nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless, he forced himself to patrol the area, circling block by block, looking down driveways, stopping to examine places where cabs congregated. Even if he had sighted Amir’s cab empty, it would have given him a clue that he had been let off in this area. But as it was he could still be speeding down the street toward the other side of town, headed who knows where.

Liam gave a sharp sigh and transmitted to Tanner that for now, at least, Amir had slipped away.

United States Embassy, The Hague

Stephen Shah read the nameplate on the woman’s desk. Lena Gandara. Didn’t ring any bells, not that he expected it to. She was a receptionist, not someone he would have worked with.

“I haven’t heard anything about this. Your name again, Sir?”

Now she wanted to know, Shah thought.

“Jacob Rahimi.” He’d chosen the name carefully, to mirror his own in that he had an Americanized first name but a Persian last name matching his ethnicity. He knew they would be used to many employees and contractors with similarly structured names.

Lena pressed a button on her phone and waited with the handset to her ear. “I’m sorry, Mr. Peterson,” Shah heard her say. “But there’s a man here by the name of Jacob Rahimi who says he has orders from President Carmichael to close the embassy. He asked to see you by name.”

Shah nodded his approval when she looked his way. As with everything under his control for this sortie, he’d chosen Peterson carefully. He was high enough in the government’s organizational structure to get the embassy closed if he believed the presidential orders were genuine, but at the same time he hadn’t been at this embassy long enough to have met Shah previously, so he had no reason to recognize him on sight as might be the case with one or two other employees.

A door at the rear of the office space opened and a tall man wearing a rumpled shirt and tie with no jacket emerged, his gaze fixed intently on Shah. He seemed to hold eye contact with him as he strode across the room. When he reached the reception area he glanced briefly at the document in Shah’s hand, and then at his plastic ID badge clipped to his jacket pocket.

“Join me in my office, please.”

Shah followed him across the space, where a few heads were already peeking over cubicle walls to watch him walk back. He could feel the grapevine growing in his wake as the employees speculated on the meaning of his visit. He and Peterson reached the office and Peterson stood to one side with an outstretched hand inviting him in.

“Please take a seat, Mr. Rahimi.” Shah sat on a simple leather chair in front of Peterson’s desk, a nice wood affair but nothing that would trigger excessive government spending complaints. Peterson walked around to his chair on the other side of the desk and sat.

“You have a document for me?”

Shah nodded and handed him the false order. Peterson quickly flipped it over to see if there was anything written on the back (there wasn’t), before placing it flat on the desk in front of him. He pulled a pair of reading glasses from a drawer and put them on.

Shah studied Peterson’s face while he examined the paperwork. One hand rubbed the side of his face as if massaging a cramp, while his eyes alternately squinted and relaxed as he read.

“…in keeping with this directive, all embassy facilities are to be properly discontinued and the premises safely evacuated until further notice,” he finished aloud, looking up at Shah, who nodded authoritatively.

“So they’re caving in to terrorist demands now?” Peterson shook his head in disgust.

“Trying to save lives. Don’t want another event like Monday Night Football, right?”

The embassy man threw up his hands. “But if we start giving in to demands, what happens when they want something else a couple years down the line? What kind of example does this set for other terrorists watching and waiting in the wings?”