OUTWARDLY, THE TALL, STURDILY built man with short-cropped blond hair and a stubbly growth of beard seemed no different from the other passengers on the Metro train hurtling toward the suburbs of northern Virginia, fifty feet beneath the streets of Washington, D.C. Eyes slightly glazed, looking toward an advertisement above the doors. Holding onto a pole for balance as the subway car lurched side to side through the underground tunnel at sixty miles an hour.
But Charles Mallory’s mind was not in idle mode this afternoon. He could not afford that. Not after what had happened to Paul Bahdru. He was using the time in transit to work through puzzles. To think about three people who were going to figure in his life over the next several days. And to wonder about a fourth.
Charlie was en route to a meeting with Richard Franklin, head of the CIA’s Special Projects Division, his only remaining liaison with the intelligence community and his sole point of contact on what Franklin called “The Isaak Priest Project.” It was Franklin who had sent him to Africa to find Priest.
Mallory and Franklin had weeks earlier established a private code, a simple system of communication based on numbers. Six numbers, six meanings. Valid for six meetings, during the span of this operation. A system known only to them—although that was what he had thought with Paul Bahdru, too. And somehow that had gone terribly wrong.
The message Franklin had sent began, “Thought this was interesting.” Four words. Corresponding with a number. The number representing a meeting place that the two men had agreed upon and memorized. A code that existed only in their heads.
Number 4 referenced a parking space at a shopping center garage in Arlington, Virginia, a five-minute walk from the Ballston Metro stop. Pasted in the window with Franklin’s message had been a news story about anti-government uprisings in Iran, something Franklin had evidently copied from The Washington Post‘s website. For Charles Mallory, the story contained only two pieces of pertinent information, and they had nothing to do with Iran. Two other numbers, agreed upon verbally, which corresponded to words in the story. Six and seventeen.
A date and a time.
Charlie had counted out the words in the story: The sixth was “protest,” the seventeenth “nullify.” One signified a day of the week, the other a time. The first word contained seven letters, translating to the seventh day of the week. Saturday. The second word corresponded to a number, also. “Nullify” began with “n.” The fourteenth letter in the alphabet. Which translated to 1400 hours.
So, Richard Franklin was asking to see him at 1400 hours.
2 P.M. on Saturday. Today.
The rest was up to Charlie. He was not obligated to accept the request or even to acknowledge it. That was the arrangement. If he wanted, he could let it disappear into cyberspace and move on. But this time, he would respond. He had to. This time, he needed to know more. After Kampala, there was too much at risk, and there was nothing, it seemed, that he could afford not knowing.
As the train snaked through the concrete tunnel below the Virginia suburbs, Charles Mallory glanced at a man standing by the opposite set of doors who had let his eyes linger on Charlie a moment too long. He took inventory of the others—a young man holding onto a pole, nodding to a beat playing through earphones; an older woman staring at a newspaper, then closing her eyes, then opening them, then closing them—and returned to the man. He was not going to look at him again, he saw. It was okay.
Charlie went back to his thoughts. To the three people:
A defense contractor named Russell Ott, who had helped coordinate the surveillance project code-named Tribal Eyes.
Ahmed Hassan, the assassin who had tried to kill him in France, whose organization was known as the Hassan Network.
And his father, whose final message about a shadowy African businessman named Isaak Priest included several questions, one of which might be answered by a former colleague of his father’s. A man named Peter Quinn.
CHARLES MALLORY EXITED the subway train and proceeded through the underground tunnel to the parking garage in Ballston Common Mall. He walked with the crowds as long as he could, then took a stairway into the garage. He found the designated spot, on the third level. An Escalade, parked earlier in the day, presumably, reserving the space.
Charlie looked at his watch as he approached the passenger door.
1:59 P.M.
He reached for the handle, pulled open the door, and got in. Behind the wheel was a familiar face: Richard Franklin, Ph.D. Head of Special Projects Division. Former deputy director for clandestine services. Former CIA analyst. A mentor to Charles Mallory when he had come to work for the Agency years ago.
“Greetings.”
“Richard.”
“I’m glad you decided to do this.”
“Not a decision I made, Richard.”
FRANKLIN GLANCED AT him but said nothing. Didn’t speak for the next twenty-seven minutes as he drove them through the busy suburban streets to the Beltway and then out toward Virginia farm country. Franklin was an unusual mix of intelligence and instinct. Silver-haired, in his mid-sixties now, he conveyed an air of knowledge and sophistication, yet he retained a robust physical presence, as well—an active man who, like Charles Mallory, understood the connection between mental and physical acuity. He was dressed in a tan sports jacket and open blue shirt, khaki slacks. Driving five miles an hour above the speed limit, he took them into the rural suburbs of northern Virginia, where the road became two lanes. Winding, hilly terrain. Horse country. Then he made another turn, onto a long gravel road, finally pulling up to a stone house set on a slight rise.
Franklin’s division, Special Projects, fell under the umbrella of the CIA’s Special Activities Division. Traditionally, the SAD had been divided into two sections, one for paramilitary operations and the other for political action. But the distinctions had blurred with the rapid development of new technologies and cybercrime. The division relied heavily now on “blue badgers”—private contractors like Charles Mallory, who were not officially part of the government and did not carry identification showing they were.
Franklin stopped under the carport, next to another vehicle, a Jeep Liberty with Maryland plates. This was a safe house, owned by the government. Its parameters were fenced off, the grounds protected by wireless sensors, monitored by camera towers and a guard station at the rear gate. A wide open, nearly flat space; no one could approach the house without being spotted from a distance.
No house is really safe, though, Charlie thought.
“Fly here from Nice?” Franklin asked as they walked to the side door.
“To Heathrow. Heathrow to Dulles.”
“British Air?”
“Continental.”
“How are their meals these days?”
Mallory shrugged. “Airplane food.”
“Get to see a decent movie, anyway?”
“Skipped the movies.”
Franklin unlocked the door and led Mallory inside. Neither man was much for small talk. It was a tidy, airy house, single-story, with antique furnishings, hardwood floors, a fireplace. Surprisingly warm. They walked into the living room, and Charlie stood by the picture window.
“Coffee? Lemonade?”
“No, thanks.”
Franklin went into the kitchen. He came out with a glass of lemonade for himself.
“Not a decision you made. Interesting.”
Franklin sat on an antique easy chair. Whether he was happy or in crisis, his face rarely changed. But it was like detecting seasons in the tropics, Charlie had found; the changes were there, they were just subtle.
“That’s right,” Mallory said, still standing. “But go ahead. Tell me why you contacted me.”
“Something of the same thing on this end, I suppose.” He waited until Charlie was looking at him. “We had a report that Frederick Collins was involved in a shooting death in Nice two nights ago. That may not have to get out to the media, if we’re fortunate. But the police are fairly certain Collins was the perpetrator.”
Mallory traced the top of a chair-back with his finger.
“No comment?”
“They’re probably right. Do they know who the victim was?”
“Unidentified,” Franklin said. “Nothing on his person. Nothing back yet on fingerprints or dental.”
“Do you want me to give you a name?”
“If you have one.”
“The victim’s name was Ahmed Hassan,” Charlie said.
Franklin’s mouth seemed to tighten.
“You know who he is.”
“Yes.”
“And you know why he was there.”
“No. I don’t. Tell me.”
“He was there to eliminate Frederick Collins.” There was a long pause. Charlie noticed the tension under his eyes. “How did it happen, Richard?”
“What do you mean?”
“No one was supposed to know about Frederick Collins. That was the arrangement. No one was supposed to know he existed. No one was supposed to know who he was or where he was.”
Franklin’s eyebrows arched very slightly. Both men knew that Collins’s identity, his passport, credit cards, and recent history, had been invented by the U.S. government. “It’s airtight, Charlie. No one has access to that information. It’s off the books, the whole thing. That was the arrangement. A single point of contact. You contact me when you want, I contact you. Your job is to hunt down Isaak Priest. Period. It’s your operation. We leave you alone.”
“And it’s not possible that the arrangement was compromised. At any level?”
“Not possible, no.” Franklin watched him. “Not from this end.”
Not from this end. Charlie understood the implication. From his end, maybe. Anna. Anna knew about Collins. She had visited him in Nice, to talk about his father, and the project he had overseen. The parts of the Isaak Priest operation he hadn’t wanted Franklin to know about. But he didn’t want to think that. Wouldn’t think that. Because he knew it wasn’t true.
Franklin said, “We also have a report that Collins may have been in Kampala recently. Which was surprising because there’s no indication Priest has any connection there.”
Charles Mallory didn’t let on his surprise.
“As you say, it’s my operation.”
“Yes. It is. But, frankly, Charlie, I’m afraid we may be at something of an impasse.”
“How so?”
He sighed. “I mean, Collins is useless now. And I’m having a hard time justifying this—”
“Give me ten days,” Mallory said.
“Ten days.”
“Yes.”
After a lengthy silence, Franklin lowered his eyes, nodding once.
“All right.”
“But there are two things I’m going to need to know, Richard. Before I leave here.”
“Go ahead.”
“First: I need to know what happened to Operation Tribal Eyes.”
Franklin showed nothing. He seemed to be waiting for the next question.
Tribal Eyes. A heavily funded signals intelligence project that Charles Mallory had worked on as a consultant, because of his experience in tracking targets in mountainous terrain. The technical coordinator had been Russell Ott, a smarmy, well-connected military contractor who spoke fluent Arabic. Ott had worked with several bad actors in the Middle East and Africa, people the government needed to know about. Charlie had never met Ott, but he’d heard things about him over the years; not good things.
The objective of Tribal Eyes had been two-fold: to aggressively develop and then implement satellite imaging technology more advanced than anything on the market—capable of seeing through a window and reading a note that someone was writing inside a house. In 2009, the government had managed to capture several video images of Osama bin Laden walking from a Mercedes sedan to what seemed to be a French-made armored transport vehicle on a low mountain road in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. But as with several of the government’s other efforts to capture Bin Laden prior to May 1, 2011, this one had failed to produce the prize. They had monitored the location for several weeks and found nothing more, determining that Bin Laden had moved on, almost as if he had known what was happening.
“Why?” Richard Franklin said, finally. Charlie answered with silence, feeling something stir deep within himself, a yearning he couldn’t articulate.
The things he was chasing were different from what Franklin’s branch was pursuing. Charles Mallory’s real clients, he reminded himself, were his father and Paul Bahdru. But there was an overlap. Priest was a name his father and Bahdru had also given him.
“I mean, Tribal Eyes is history, Charlie. Why would you want to know about it now?”
“Because I think it has something to do with Frederick Collins. With what happened to him.”
Franklin made a face. “I thought you said you wanted to leave everything else behind you when you got into this. You wanted to focus on this organization. On finding Priest—”
“I did. But I didn’t realize the two were connected.”
Franklin blinked once. “I don’t see how that’s possible, Charlie. Collins was created after Tribal Eyes was disbanded. Why do you think they’re related?”
“It is possible, Richard. I saw it.”
Franklin gestured impatiently with his right hand. “Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”
“Yes. A man came to kill Frederick Collins, in Nice. I saw him. It was a man who had been approached by the American government two years ago. For Tribal Eyes. A Yemen-based wetboy named Ahmed Hassan. Also known as Albert Hahn. Two of his cousins are a pretty big deal in terrorism circles, as you know. Tribal Eyes made use of a process developed in part by Russell Ott, which had a lot of government bucks behind it. It’s probably the most powerful satellite imaging in the world right now. Ott, interestingly, also had a way of contacting Hassan when other people couldn’t. He’d done business with the network. That was one of the reasons he was kept on the government payroll. Two points of intersection, Richard, and I don’t think that’s just coincidence.”
Franklin pushed at the coaster under the lemonade glass. “So what are you asking for?”
“I’d like to know how Hassan might have learned about Collins. I need to know anything you have on Russell Ott and Tribal Eyes. I need every loose thread, Richard. I’m not taking a chance again until I know everything you know.”
Charles Mallory waited. He had a deep-rooted allegiance to the government, but he also knew that there were too many inconsistent and corrupt players to ever trust it categorically.
“Hassan was never employed by the Company, Charlie. Okay? He was approached by a private contractor and paid for information about the region. It never got to the point of using anyone. It remained a surveillance operation.”
“He was approached because of his organization,” Charlie said. “The government wanted it to be the devil they knew. And the Hassans seemed to be open for bids.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Franklin sat up straight, crossing his legs at the knees. Both men knew that the Hassan Network represented a troubling new model for the intelligence community—a greater threat in some ways than al Qaeda and its many spin-off groups. A professional, terrorism-for-hire network that carried out select projects strictly as business, with no interest in ideology—although they didn’t like to work with American clients. Which was why Ott’s connection with Ahmed Hassan, even if Ahmed was a weak link to the network, had been considered valuable in Washington.
“What happened to the people involved in Tribal Eyes?”
“Reassigned.”
“Ott?”
Something subtle changed in his eyes. “Private sector. Based in California. Works for various companies.”
“Works for the government still?”
“He has. Some. I think so.”
Franklin’s cell phone rang. He checked the number, stood. “Excuse me for a minute, Charlie,” he said. He walked back to the kitchen, talking in a low voice.
Charlie stepped into the den. He looked out the side windows and saw the fencing, the faraway camera towers. Underground sensors probably. Bare trees, rolling hills in the distance. On an antique tavern table was an old wooden globe. Charlie spun it round to Africa, looked at a remote region where he maintained an office that even Richard Franklin didn’t know about. On the desk was a manual typewriter, a cast-iron Underwood No. 5. Next to it, a stack of typing paper. Maybe fifty sheets. Charlie gazed at the yard and thought about his brother. And other autumn afternoons. He remembered hurling a baseball with his father in the back yard as dusk soaked the air. Trying to throw the perfect pitch. And other evenings with his brother. Football. Jon running patterns but missing catches, not able to keep his eye on the ball.
Then he thought of something less pleasant, something that was maybe his fault. He tucked a sheet of paper into the typewriter, twisted it through several notches. Sat at the desk and pecked out a single word. Seven letters. Looked at it. Pulled out the sheet. Folded it into eighths and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
“So, how’s your family been?” he asked, as Franklin returned.
“Fine. Big get-together planned for Thanksgiving this year. All of us up in Michigan. You?”
Charlie shrugged. He thought of Anna Vostrak. The sober clarity of her face, her dark eyes watching his. “Nothing, really.”
Franklin coughed. “Does this change the favor you asked me for last week? Your brother?”
“Should it?”
“No. Everything’s good. You can trust me, Charlie.”
Mallory breathed in deeply and exhaled. Then he nodded. “Okay.”
Forty-nine minutes later, Richard Franklin stopped in the parking garage at another suburban shopping complex, this one in Rockville, Maryland. He was driving the Jeep Liberty now; the Cadillac sat under the carport at the Virginia safe house. They had answered each other’s questions, but neither seemed fully satisfied with the results.
Charlie shook Franklin’s hand and opened the door, stepped out. Then, almost as an afterthought, he leaned in the passenger window. “One other thing, Richard. If something were to happen—to me or to anyone else in the next few days—see if you can isolate it. Okay? Don’t let the local pathologist keep it. Have it sent to an Army lab.”
Franklin squinted at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just listen to me, okay?”
“Okay. But why?”
“Just in case someone wants to ensure a pre-determined outcome. All right? Hypothetically.”
“And what would we be looking for?”
Charlie pulled the folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to him. Franklin opened it, looked at the single word that Charles Mallory had typed out at the house in the Virginia countryside. Seven letters. “Ouabain.”
“What is it?”
Genuinely confused, Mallory thought.
“Probably nothing. But just make sure the pathologist is aware of it, okay? It’s just a hunch. I’m probably wrong. I hope I am.”
Charlie stepped back, closed the door, nodded, and walked away. He took the escalator down fifty-seven feet to the Metro train platform, walking among the tourists, not expecting to see Richard Franklin again for a long time. He was anxious to be away from Washington. Contingencies. He needed to eliminate the possible scenarios in order to get closer to the real one. That was all. Now he could move on to the next step. Although he needed to take care of one other matter first. He needed to send a message to his brother. To give him a new direction.