Viking Bay (4 page)

“Not me,” Mercer said.

“Well, maybe not you,” Callahan admitted to Mercer. “So do you understand?” he asked Kay.

Kay was wondering if by
a little hot water
Callahan was saying he'd go to jail. Instead of asking that question, she instead said, “Yeah, I understand. But how about giving me a couple examples of the sort of things you've done in the past?”

“Sorry, I can't do that,” Callahan said. “In one respect, we're very much like a typical intelligence organization and everything's strictly need to know.”

Kay shook her head. “Mr. Callahan, I'm not even going to pretend that I understand the limits of the president's powers and what he is or isn't supposed to tell Congress. And I definitely don't understand how money gets moved internally to the government or from the government to the private sector. But what I do know is that I'm not going to go to jail working for you.”

“Hey, you're not gonna go to jail. We're not criminals. We're acting in the nation's best interest as determined by its chief executive.”

“Like I said, I want an example of the kind of things you do so I can decide if I want to work for you.”

Callahan's lips compressed into a stubborn line. Kay figured he was probably trying to decide if he should fire her before he'd even really hired her.

“Okay, I'll tell you what I'm going to do,” Callahan said. “I'm going to give you a hypothetical that's pretty close to something we actually did so you'll understand.”

“Thomas,” Mercer said, a warning tone in her voice.

Callahan waved a hand at Mercer, a gesture that Kay interpreted as:
Don't worry about it.

“Let me think for a minute,” Callahan said, and as he was thinking, he pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, ignited it, then said to Kay, “I hope smoke doesn't bother you.”

“Well, actually . . .”

“Tough shit.” He gazed up at the ceiling as he continued to contemplate, puffing on his cigarette, spewing toxins into the air.

“There's a company,” Callahan said, “in, let's say Germany, a country which happens to be a U.S. ally. This company makes a gizmo that's used, peripherally, in the enrichment of plutonium. It's actually an instrument that measures atomic shit and it has various applications in laboratory testing, commercial power plants, et cetera. Anyway, the German company is allowed to sell the gizmo to other countries, like the British or the French, but not to places like Iran or North Korea, and the number of gizmos sold is carefully tracked.

“But this German company is run by a greedy prick and he starts selling the gizmo to Iran for ten times the market price in a very clever under-the-table way so he doesn't get caught. How do we know this? Because the CIA has a spy in Iran. But we have a problem. If we tell the Germans to arrest the greedy prick, the Iranians might figure out who our spy is, and we can't afford to lose this spy. The spy is much more important to us than the Iranians having the gizmo.

“The CIA could, of course, do something like you see in movies and bump off the German, making it look like an accident. But the CIA doesn't usually, or at least not very often, knock off our allies' citizens because if they got caught we'd have a real mess on our hands. So the president's guy met with me and
suggested
I do something.”

“And you bumped off the German?” Kay said.

“Oh, hell, no. We don't do things like that.” Callahan said this like he was astounded Kay would make such an accusation—but the twinkle was back in his eyes. “What we did—hypothetically—was put the German out of business. This company was suddenly
besieged
with problems. Union hassles, material shortages, lawsuits, sabotage, accounting disasters. We
destroyed
this fucking company. Could the CIA have done the same thing? Sure. But keep in mind that this was a legitimate enterprise that employed three hundred taxpaying, beer-drinking Germans, and if the CIA got caught . . . Well, like I already told you, there would have been hell to pay. On the other hand, an international company like the Callahan Group was just doing what private companies do: annihilating another company. You understand?”

“Yeah.”

“And do you approve?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Whew! What a relief. I'll be sure to let the president know.”

Ignoring Callahan's sarcasm, Kay said, “But if that's the sort of thing you do all the time, I don't see why you're hiring me. I don't know anything about business or taking over companies or anything like that.”

“Well,” Callahan said, “that's not exactly the kind of thing we do all the time.”

5
|
After Hamilton left his office, Callahan lit another cigarette and thought about Hamilton and her reaction to what he'd just told her about how the Callahan Group had been formed—and what he'd just told her was total bullshit.

As for Hamilton . . . He'd seen her photograph before they hired her, but the photo didn't really do her justice. The woman had a body that could stop traffic and she was incredibly . . . Hell,
sexy
was the only word he could think of. Not all beautiful women are sexy, and Hamilton wasn't as beautiful as some women he'd known—but she just oozed sex appeal. A man would have to be either dead or gay for her not to turn his crank. And like he'd been told before he hired her, she came across as bright and cynical and not the type that he or anybody else was likely to intimidate.

Which was pretty much the same conclusion the Group's psychiatrist had come to. He basically said that Hamilton wasn't a team player and not really suited for work in a conventional law-enforcement or military unit. She would excel at special ops, undercover, something where she could be out there on her own. She would be loyal to people, not organizations. She'd follow orders, but only if she agreed with the orders. The shrink's bottom line was basically the same thing Callahan decided two minutes after he met her: She'd be a good operative but tough to control—which made Callahan wonder why they even bothered with the shrink.

Her reaction to the origination of the Callahan Group was no different from the way other employees had reacted when he told them the
same story. Hamilton had been surprised, of course, but she appeared to believe him, and he suspected the reason why was that people had so little faith in politicians these days. That is, they were willing to believe that a president really would set up an off-the-books group to do nefarious things and avoid congressional oversight. Anybody old enough to remember the Watergate “plumbers” would have no problem believing this. The other reason people bought the story were the little details: like he'd been eating pizza the night the president's guy came to see him, or how W had been in his stocking feet playing with his putter.

The story about how the Callahan Group had destroyed a German company selling nuclear hardware to the Iranians was completely true and had actually happened. There had been nothing hypothetical about Callahan's example.

The part about intelligence agencies being extremely risk averse was also true, and it was true that there were advantages in using a private-sector company to do certain things the U.S. government wanted done. True, too, was the fact that the Callahan Group had provided some information that made Obama's decision to go after bin Laden in Abbottabad a little less risky, but the information was never provided directly to the president.

It was also true that Callahan had a bright young man who moved money from the U.S. Treasury to Callahan's accounts, but the money wasn't in any way pilfered from the government's coffers. It came instead from funding sources that were classified as secret, difficult to identify, known to very few people, and
arguably
legal—but which would prove problematic if Congress or the GAO ever asked the right questions. And, as he'd said, the tremendous amounts of cash poorly accounted for during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had greatly increased the amount of money Callahan had to spend.

So Callahan had told Hamilton many things that were true, and one reason for this was some advice his mother had once given him. “Thomas,” his mom had said, “you should tell the truth as often as you
can, because that way it's easier to keep track of all the lies you tell.” His mother had been an interesting woman.

What was completely untrue was that George W. Bush, or anyone on his staff, had authorized the formation of the Callahan Group. Neither Bush nor Obama had any idea the Group existed.
The president's guy
, whom Callahan frequently referred to, did not exist. The complete truth about the Callahan Group was known only to Thomas Callahan and three other people, and none of those people worked at the White House.

6
|
Following her initial meeting with Callahan, Kay and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Jessica, moved to D.C. They arrived on the first of July, and the weather that entire month was hot, humid, and miserable. Jessica particularly didn't like the humidity and she missed the beaches of San Diego, but July was good as it gave them time to settle into their new apartment on Connecticut Avenue near the National Zoo and get Jessica enrolled in school.

Kay didn't really want to live in an apartment, although the place she was renting was nice enough and convenient to Jessica's school. In Miami and San Diego, she'd bought houses that needed some work, then spent her free time fixing the places up so she could turn a profit when she sold them. She not only enjoyed the money she made, she also enjoyed doing the home-improvement projects; they were like a hobby for her and, thanks to her dad—who'd been a cop and a terrific father—she knew how to use a few tools. The only reason she decided to get an apartment was that she wasn't certain she'd be staying with the Callahan Group, and until she was sure, she was going to wait before investing in a house.

Kay decided that in many ways she liked what the Callahan Group did. That is, she liked the idea of a covert organization that dealt with national security issues but wasn't hobbled by the bureaucracy of the federal government. She also liked the salary. What she found particularly enticing was the training they were going to give her, especially the language training. That was something that would look good on a résumé if she had to look for another job. So she'd stick with Callahan
at least until she'd completed her training and see, as time passed, if working for him would land her in “hot water.” A little hot water she could tolerate; becoming an inmate in a federal penitentiary was a totally different story.

Regarding the school Jessica chose to attend, it was basically an egghead factory—a Juilliard for math and science wizards, as opposed to musicians and dancers. Jessica had decided that she wanted to be a doctor, and the school would give her a leg up on getting into medical school. And, as Mercer had told her, Kay had no problems getting Jessica admitted. The Callahan Group had some
serious
clout.

—

IN MID-AUGUST,
Jessica began school and Kay started what was supposed to be nine months of training. For the first three months, three days a week, six hours a day, she would attend language classes. They wanted her to learn Farsi first, then Arabic. She guessed the priority was placed on Farsi because of Iran. The other days of the week—which would include some Saturdays and evening sessions as well—the curriculum would include classes on Mideastern cultures; there would be surveillance and surveillance-avoidance training conducted at the FBI's training facility in Quantico. There was one forty-hour course that would be taught over at Fort Meade in Maryland where the NSA's headquarters were, and here she'd be given an introduction to listening devices, alarm systems, and computer security. These classes weren't intended to make her an expert in any of these subjects but to simply acquaint her with the state of the art so she'd know the technologies available to her and those she'd be up against.

In the spring would come the fun stuff, and Kay was really looking forward to it: scuba training down at the navy's dive school in Panama City, Florida, and jump school and survival training at Fort Benning, taught by the army. The jump school would focus on low-altitude night drops—and Kay could hardly wait.

Kay was surprised to learn that although she wouldn't be enrolled under her own name, she would just be another student attending classes with a variety of people from the military services, government agencies, law-enforcement organizations, and private companies. Some of the other students might even be from countries that were supposedly—or currently—U.S. allies. The language classes, for example, would be held at Georgetown University in D.C. and the Mideastern cultural classes at George Mason University in Arlington, and in these classes, Kay was told, she would most likely meet people from the State Department, the FBI, and the CIA.

The only classes she took where she was not a student in some standard program were the classes related to killing people: demolitions, firearms training, knife fighting, and the stupid hand-to-hand combat course. Kay had tried to get out of attending the hand-to-hand and firearms courses, saying that she'd already had similar training when she was at the DEA, but Mercer refused to give her a pass.

The killing classes were taught by the Callahan Group's own instructors, and the only people in these classes were Callahan employees. As near as she could tell, the Class of 2014 included only three other people and they were told not to socialize with one another. She had no idea how many people the Callahan Group employed; she did get the impression that they had employees in several places around the globe. One thing she was sure of, based on her training alone, was that the Callahan Group did a whole lot more than hostile takeovers of foreign companies.

She was only forty-five days into the training program the day she kicked Bowman in the balls and Anna Mercer called her.

—

KAY STEPPED INTO
the outer office and the colossus who acted as the receptionist said, “Hello, Kay. I'll tell Anna you're here, but just head on down to her office. By the way, my name's Henry.” This time Henry
didn't wand her to see if she was wired or armed; apparently, she was now a trusted member of the club.

Kay learned later that Henry was an interesting fellow: an ex-Marine with enough medals to cover even his big chest. He got the medals in Iraq, where he hardly got a scratch; then he went to work for Callahan and his right leg was blown off below the knee. Kay never did learn what he'd been doing when he lost the leg because she didn't have
need to know
—the mantra of classification.

Kay proceeded toward Mercer's office, but Mercer stepped into the hallway before Kay reached her door. She was cuddling her fat white Persian cat, Scarlett, in her arms. “We're meeting in the conference room,” Mercer said.

Kay thought that was rather rude: No
how are you doing, how are the classes going, is everything okay with your daughter?

The conference room contained a typical boardroom table with seats for ten, and at one end was a flat-screen TV mounted on a rolling stand. Along one wall was a sink, a microwave, and a small refrigerator. There were two people already in the room, a man and a woman.

The woman was younger than Mercer and older than Kay, maybe forty. She was slender and dressed in a dark blue pantsuit and a plain white blouse; her clothes didn't come close to matching Mercer's in terms of style or expense. She wore no makeup, no jewelry, and had wire-rimmed glasses with fairly thick lenses. Her long, dark hair was tied in a sloppy ponytail, a few unruly strands falling onto her forehead. Kay thought she might have been pretty—even sexy—if she applied a little lip gloss and ditched the glasses.

The man sitting next to the woman was in his late thirties or early forties, and Kay's initial reaction was:
Wow!
The guy was absurdly good-looking: perfect straight nose, little crinkly smile lines radiating from blue-gray eyes, a strong chin, and lips God had engineered for kissing. He had sandy brown hair and a slim yet muscular build. He was
wearing a blue suit that Kay guessed cost about five grand and a shirt that was a perfect color for his eyes.

“Kay, say hello to Sylvia Sorenson and Eli Dolan,” Mercer said. “Sylvia's one of our lawyers and specializes in international law. She may not look like it, but Sylvia's a wolverine. That story Callahan told you about the hypothetical German company that we destroyed with lawsuits and financial sabotage? Well, Sylvia was behind the lawsuits. Hypothetically.”

Sylvia blushed at the compliment. She looked to Kay more like a field mouse than a wolverine—but you can never tell.

“Eli's our money guy,” Mercer said, and Kay remembered Callahan telling her about the Group's money guy: Goldman Sachs, Treasury Department, OMB; she still didn't know what OMB stood for, because she'd forgotten to look it up.

“Not only is Eli cute as a button,” Mercer continued, “he's also richer than God from old family money and all the people he fleeced in investment banking. I've been throwing myself at him for years, but he keeps spurning me. I think he's gay.”

Kay was pretty sure, judging by the way he was looking at her, that Eli Dolan wasn't gay.

“Guys,” Mercer said to Eli and Sylvia, “this is Kay Hamilton, one of our newbies. She looks good now, Eli, but we know she was fat as a child and will most likely get fat again when she gets older. And her boobs are fake.”

Sylvia looked away, embarrassed by Mercer's bawdy comment, but Eli laughed. Kay felt like punching Mercer in the face.

Kay had come right from the gym, and she was dressed casually as she was through with classes for the day. She was wearing jeans that were tight and low on her hips, and a designer sweatshirt that tended to leave one shoulder bare and exposed her flat midriff. Her long blond hair was still a bit damp from her shower and hung in tangled tresses down to her shoulders, since she hadn't taken the time to comb it out.
Thank God she had taken the time to apply a little makeup and her lipstick.

Dolan stood and reached out to shake Kay's hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said. He was a perfect height, too: six-foot-three, which Kay liked, since she was a tall girl at five-eight. She could wear high heels when she went out with him.

Then she thought:
Stop it! You don't know anything about the guy.

As Mercer was placing Scarlett in a basket identical to the one in her office, Callahan flung open the door to the conference room, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, and dropped heavily into the seat at the head of the table. He was dressed exactly as Kay had seen him the first time she met him: rumpled gray suit, wrinkled shirt, loosened tie.

“Kay, have you met Eli and Sylvia?” Callahan asked.

“Yes.”

“And I'm assuming Anna's already introduced you to Scarlett.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kay said, but she was thinking:
What is it with the fucking cat?

“Okay, then let's get started,” Callahan said. “Now, I'm bringing you in on something even before you've completed your training, because you're the only person I currently have that fits the bill for the job. It's not a hard job—basically, all you have to do is be yourself—but it's something you might be involved in for years. This is a really long-range operation, and it's complicated.”

Callahan picked up a remote that Kay hadn't noticed lying on the table next to his right hand. He hit a button on the remote and the following appeared in the center of the TV screen:

Li
³