The Socotra Incident (10 page)

They’d left the
Opongsan
ten minutes before the explosives in the hold had erupted and broken the
Opongsan
in half. Officially, the mission would be reported as a dry hole, target not found. Unofficially, Ritter’s life had become a lot more difficult.

Mike stood in front of a sink, brushing his teeth with fury and rinsing his mouth with Listerine several times a minute.

Ritter put the phone against his chest and looked over at Mike.

“Tony says the pill might have been pure sodium with some sort of time-delay coating. North Koreans have used it on prisoners in the past,” Ritter said. “The smell was sodium hydroxide.” Mike spat out a mouthful of Listerine and went back to brushing.

“Shannon wants to know if you’re all right,”

The toothbrush froze in Mike’s mouth.

“Fuck this job,” he said, then went back to brushing

“He’s fine,” Ritter said into the satellite phone. He kept it pressed to his ear for another minute before shutting it off.

A low warble came from Ritter’s stomach. Mike froze and looked at Ritter with suspicion.

“I’m just hungry,” Ritter said.

Mike rinsed his mouth out and sat on the bench next to Ritter.

“Squat and hold until follow on instructions,” Ritter said.

Mike grunted.

“Yeah, and I don’t think it’s going to get better anytime soon.”

Captain Oh of the research vessel
Jang Nan
watched as the hull of his ship opened to the ocean. The North Korean sailor stood in a hatchway overlooking the empty cavern that was the ship’s cargo area. The sea welled up into the bottom of the hold, and the retracting hull plates vanished beneath the dark waters. The
Jang Nan
had never been designed to do oceanography research as advertised; it had a different purpose.

Oh felt the tremor as the plates continued their journey. He glanced at the lifeboat dangling from the side of his ship, already uncovered and crewed to make a quick escape. Despite the best efforts of the engineers who’d designed this ship, one serious mistake during recovery would doom them to the ocean floor.

Such mistakes had sunk two of
Jang Nan
’s sister ships. Oh had been a crewman during both incidents and had survived because of a healthy amount of skepticism in his country’s manufacturing expertise and because of his swimming ability.

A leviathan stirred beneath the waves. Water ran off the tower of a squat submarine as the vessel rose into the
Jang Nan’s
cargo hold.

Oh held his breath as the submarine settled into place.

A hatch on the tower opened, and Kim emerged from within.

“Do you have it?” Oh yelled. If Kim had the nuke, Oh and his family in North Korea could rest easier.

Kim reached into the submarine and pulled a bloody and battered Guleed up where Oh could see him.

“Socotra!” Guleed cried through split lips and broken teeth. “It’s on Socotra!”

“Set course,” Kim said.

“It will take us days to get there,” Oh said. The
Jang Nan
could afford some standoff from the pirate areas thanks to the submarine’s range. Going to Socotra was a trip into the lion’s den. He had little to worry about with Kim and his band of killers aboard, but his route might garner attention from the naval ships on counter piracy duty.

“Get your ass moving, Oh, or we’re both dead men,” Kim said. “This one’s fate is sealed either way.” Kim slammed Guleed’s head against the side of the tower and shoved him aside.

Shannon thumbed off the satellite phone and pushed her chair away from the conference table. With her hair up in a severe bun and a black-and-white jacket and skirt tight enough to turn heads, she looked ready to launch a new product line instead of running herd on a nuclear crisis.

“Where are we on the Abu Sayf network?” she asked the team members in the conference room. Carlos and Tony were dressed little better than college freshmen during exam week—one by necessity, the other by nature. Natalie was as dressed to the nines as Shannon.

“They’re having trouble getting the gold bars the seller wants. The sellers want PAMP Suisse bars and euros. The Abu Sayf doesn’t have any, and they’ve had to send a second courier to Zurich. The first guy they sent over with a case full of cash vanished during a layover in Frankfurt,” Irene said.

“Who has the first courier?” Shannon asked. “Interpol?”

“The data center in Herndon and I have high confidence he stole it. His two wives and nine children all got on a one-way flight to Stockholm right before he vanished, and the chatter between the Abu Sayf principals is, uh, heated, to say the least,” Irene said.

“Why don’t we have the second bagman vanish too? Slow down the purchase?” Carlos asked.

“Because then they’ll find a different buyer, one we don’t have this level of penetration on,” Shannon said.

“Another update: Abu Sayf contracted with”—Irene pulled an Interpol arrest notice from a folder—“one Gert Botha, a South African national, but he hasn’t been back to his home country for a decade due to a list of indictments. He’s a smuggler and bush pilot.”

Carlos took the arrest notice from Irene and looked it over.

“I know Botha. He gave Mike and me a lift out of Liberia a few years back when we”—Shannon cleared her throat and looked at Natalie.

“—didn’t do anything at all,” Carlos finished.

Shannon looked at the Bvlgari watch on her wrist.

“If Botha is facilitating the exchange, then we need a trace on him. Natalie and I have to make a drop, and by the time we get back, I want to know the make, model, and color of the lavatory water of whatever plane he’s flying,” Shannon said.

Someone knocked on the door to the conference room. The receptionist with close-cropped blonde hair stuck her head into the conference room, her eyes glued to the floor. It was better for her to see no evil.

“Ms. Martel, there’s a call for you,” she said.

“Thank you, Pfennig. Please take a message, and I’ll call them back,” Shannon said.

“It’s…
them
, ma’am.”

Shannon tapped a finger against her armrest.

“Natalie, you’re going solo on the drop. Follow protocol, and whatever you do, don’t act surprised by anything. Got it?” Shannon said.

“Too easy,” Natalie said with a smile.

Shannon left the room.

“Your first solo. I think Ritter is the only one who had his in less time. Let’s hope yours goes a bit better,” Carlos said.

“Why? What happened?” Natalie asked.

“It got complicated,” Carlos said with a wink.

“Boring is good, right? By the way, who’s ‘them’?” Natalie asked.

Silence fell over the room. Irene picked up her files quickly and left with them clutched against her chest. Tony opened his mouth to answer, then closed it with a click of teeth.

“The Directors,” Carlos said. He pushed himself to his feet and put a calloused hand on Natalie’s shoulder. “Don’t ask about them ever again. Not every secret will make you happy. Good luck out there, kid.”

Shannon sat at a small table within the Eisen Meer vault. A bank-grade steel door locked her inside the room with servers and safes full of weapons and explosives. A conference speaker phone blinked in the dim light.

A light on the phone turned green and stayed lit.

Shannon felt tendrils of fear worm through her chest, just like they always did when she was summoned.

“Garnet,” said a voice from the speaker, the voice masked through a distortion algorithm that left the words sounding tinny and jagged.

“Obsidian.” Shannon answered the challenge with the non-distress response. Any other word would have told the Ddirectors she and her team had been compromised.

“The device wasn’t on the
Opongsan
,” said a different voice. In her years of speaking with the Directors, they always communicated through distorted voices and never in person. Despite their attempts to mask their voices, accents still crept through, and she used that detail to keep the Directors apart. Texas was speaking to her now.

“Correct. There’s still a chance we can recover the device by following the money to the drop site,” Shannon said.

“And the probability of success?” a different voice said, a woman Shannon designated as Vermont.

“I’d need the military’s cooperation, but the odds are in our favor.”

The green light flickered, and the line stayed silent. Another caller had joined the conversation and wasn’t interested in speaking to Shannon.

“You will recover the device with no further overt US involvement. Is that understood?” Texas asked.

Shannon’s face contorted in anger, but she held her tongue.

“Additionally, the Caius protocol is in effect once you’ve accomplished your mission,” Vermont said.

Shannon bit her lip as she considered the implications.

“Asset Ritter isn’t read on to Caius. Do we indoctrinate him?” she asked.

There was another pause before a new voice answered.

“Ritter is exempt from Caius,” Georgia said. “We will indoctrinate or terminate him without prejudice following the mission.”

“I have a course of action, but if it succeeds, it will burn the entire Vienna office. Can we remove the device from the playing field through a military strike and maintain our operation?” Shannon asked.

“Negative, Martel,” Texas said. “Do you lack the resources to accomplish your mission?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you lack the will?”

“No, sir.”

“Get it done. All assets are expendable toward mission accomplishment.”

The line went dead.

The security guard led Natalie into the vault room. Hundreds of box faces lined the walls. He guided her to box 12722 and inserted a key into one of two slots on the box face. He looked at Natalie, his face a mask of nonchalance.

Natalie put her key in the other slot and twisted it.

The guard shook his head slightly.

“
Drei…zwei…eins
,” he said. They twisted their keys together, and the box popped an inch from the wall. The guard turned and left, closing a steel gate behind him.

Natalie tugged at the safety deposit box, which was damn heavier than she would have guessed. She pulled it free and lugged it to a table in the center of the vault. A separate key opened a panel on the top of the box.

She slowly pushed the top open, looking at the contents with a sideways look. Packs of hundred-dollar bills had been wrapped in gold-banded “$10,000” labels. She dug ten of those out and set them aside.

Behind the cash was a plastic, black box. She popped it open and caught her breath.

Diamonds. Packets of diamonds had been wrapped in thick plastic and were vacuum sealed. Each packet was labeled with its value in the millions of dollars. A bar code was etched into a plastic tag attached to each pack.

Natalie counted out $37 million worth of diamond packs and put them in a padded envelope.

Where did all this money come from?
she thought. The entire largesse from her brief experience with Shannon and her field office was at odds with her years of working for the US government as a Soldier and now as a member of the CIA. Uncle Sam bought from the lowest bidder for a reason—to save money. How could Shannon and whatever senior government officials supervised her ever justify this?

When she’d been in Iraq, dispersing even $1,000 in funds required receipts, contracts, and a signature from three different colonels. She might have a different number on her back while playing for the government’s CIA squad, but it was all the same team. Wasn’t it?

She put the loaded envelope into a jacket pocket and repacked the case. Somehow, it felt even heavier when she slid it back into the wall. A knock on the gate later, and she was done with the vault.

She crossed the street to a café and took a seat at the window. She put a paperback book on the table and turned the spine perpendicular to the table. Whoever was supposed to pick up the payment would see her “clear” signal, just as Shannon had instructed her.

A waiter came to take her order, and her German failed as did his English as she tried to order a latte.

“
Zwei mélange, bitte
,” a gruff voice said from behind the waiter. Bronislava lumbered up from behind him and took a seat across from Natalie. The waiter nodded and disappeared.

“Shannon said you’d meet me. Odd. We do enjoy our coffee klatch,” Bronislava said in Russian.

Natalie did her best to look confused by the large woman’s choice in language.

“Let’s drop the act, little one. When you made your toast at the hotel you spoke with a Vladivostok accent. That was no accident and I assume that’s where your teacher is from,” Bronislava continued in Russian. “So let’s talk like cultured people, yes?”

“As you like,” Natalie said in Russian. Shannon had said one of Bronislava’s representatives would handle the trade-off; she hadn’t said anything about meeting Bronislava herself, or making small talk.

The Russian woman leaned against the table and looked to her right.

Natalie took the envelope from her jacket and slid it under the table. It left her hand with a smooth tug. What had she just done?

The waiter returned with two glasses, coffee topped with steamed milk and shaved chocolate and croissants. He set the drinks in front of them and left; Natalie saw the corner of the payment envelope disappear under his vest. So the waiter worked for Bronislava.

“So nice to see a new face in this business. After a while everyone becomes known—it gets boring.” The Russian stirred her coffee and took a sip, looking Natalie over as if she were something that could be bought at a bargain.

“It’s exciting. Better than a brokerage in Manhattan. If you have your documents, then I can be on my way,” Natalie said. Sitting across from Bronislava made Natalie feel like she was a sailor in a life raft while a school of sharks circled.

“No, we wait. You are new. Shannon asked me to tutor you a bit,” Bronislava tore the tip from her croissant and dipped it in the coffee. “The…items…you gave me are registered with a trusted third party. The third party confirms what you paid, and we go forward.” Natalie didn’t want to know what would happen if the “third party” took issue with the payment.

“They don’t strike me as being very liquid,” Natalie said. She wanted to take a sip of her coffee, but her hands were shaking beneath the table.

“No, they’re not. The third party will exchange them for the liquid asset of one’s choice. I prefer American dollars, but that’s just me. You understand why we use the registered items?”

“Liquid assets,” Natalie said, afraid to say dollar bills, “in that volume would be hard to transport inconspicuously.” Bronislava nodded as Shannon continued. “Bank transfers leave a trace.”

“Shannon said you were smart,” Bronislava said.

“It is funny. I invest all my money in the American real estate market. So many bargains after the bubble popped. It is like you are a stimulus package all by yourself.” Bronislava chuckled at her own joke.

“Is everything acceptable?” the waiter asked, his English suddenly perfect.

Bronislava tapped the table twice, and the waiter set a leather bill folder on the table and left. Bronislava pushed the bill toward Natalie. Inside were a forty-euro bill and a micro SD card, the size of her thumbnail.

“Transponder identification. Ship information. Manuals. Launch codes,” Bronislava said. “The ship will transport your purchase to any port you choose. You’re responsible for customs issues.”

“We’ll put our own security on the ship immediately,” Natalie said. That was the one thing Shannon had told her to pass on.

“We have our own men on board. Nothing to worry about.” Bronislava took a swig of her coffee and almost finished it.

“Not negotiable,” Natalie said. Having a stare down with an international arms dealer over coffee wasn’t how she’d thought her afternoon would play out.

Bronislava shrugged. “Your expense. I’ll pass on instructions for them to stand down when you arrive.” She swept her croissant around the edge of her cup and took another bite. She burped and tapped her chest with her fist.

“Pleasure doing business with you.” Bronislava stood up and left Natalie with the bill.

Club Sprockets pulsed with dubstep music churned out by a DJ wearing nothing but a green bodysuit. Patrons, most of them fresh off work from Vienna’s financial district, preferred Sprockets for its incredible view over the Danube and the high-quality ecstasy and cocaine brought in from Amsterdam.