Smith felt a bit of irritation rise, but he tamped it down.
“Two scientists were investigated and one was presumed to be involved, yes. A definite link was never proven.”
“Maybe they’re looking to hang you for it.”
Smith had had enough. He opened the door. “Thanks for the ride,” he said, and he stepped out of the car. The light turned green, but the car didn’t move. The passenger window lowered and she leaned over to look at him through it.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. This isn’t even close to a train station.”
The car behind her honked, and Smith backed up onto the curb as she moved her car over and switched on the hazard lights. The vehicle behind her pulled alongside and honked again. She flipped the driver the bird, which made Smith smile despite his irritation. The car sped away. She looked back at him.
“As a child, I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper,” she said.
“So it would seem. Where have I heard that before?”
“Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Darcy says it. Get in the car, Lieutenant Colonel, and I promise not to offend your pride again.”
Smith relented and resumed his seat. “Pride and Prejudice? Given your reputation, I would expect a quote from The Art of War.”
She smiled as she drove. “‘He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.’ Sun Tzu knew what he was talking about. I never make light of opponents. Especially when they’re as powerful as the government.”
“Are you always so blunt?” he asked.
She nodded. “Always. I find that it saves time in the long run. Anyone who can’t take the truth doesn’t belong in my world. It’s too exhausting to keep up a front for them, and I find that most people who require hand-holding are just too weak to stomach the issues that I deal with on a daily basis in the human rights field. Wouldn’t work for either of us.”
“You have a lot of tough cases, then?”
She nodded. “Beyond tough. Take Mr. Chang. He was tortured in that Chinese prison.”
“The Chinese deny it.”
“I know they do, but I believe him. So why do you think that man was chasing you?”
Smith shook his head. “I honestly have no idea.”
“That’s a shame, because there’s a car tailing us and coming on fast.”
3
A quick glance in the side mirror confirmed that she was right—they were being followed.
“Keep turning as often as possible,” Smith said. He pulled out his phone and dialed a private number that he knew would be answered, day or night. In addition to his duties at Fort Detrick, Smith was a member of Covert-One, a highly secretive organization run by the president and not overseen by any congressional authority. As a covert operative, Smith often worked with a small, select team of other operatives from various walks of life. The one he was calling was a high-ranking CIA officer.
“Make it fast—I just woke up and haven’t had my coffee yet.” Randi Russell’s voice was pitched low and held a note of humor. Smith heard the clink of a glass in the background.
“I’m in a car with a famous human rights activist lawyer and being chased by men in suits. Any idea who they might be?” Smith said.
“Who’s the lawyer?”
“Katherine Arden.”
“Whoever they are, let them have her. She’s a pain in the agency’s ass.”
“She’s a bystander. They’re chasing me.”
“Not good. How did the two of you end up in the same car? That’s like fraternizing with the enemy.”
“I was at a cocktail party for Chang Ying Peng—as were, I suspect, many of your CIA colleagues. And while you’re at it, can you have someone swing by this location?” He gave her directions to the alley.
“Okay. What’s there?”
He glanced at Arden while he thought about how to answer Russell.
“I may have tripped one of the men and he may have hurt himself.”
He saw Arden smirk.
“Hmm. How bad is he? Are they going to have to contain a situation?”
“Perhaps. I’m not sure. There’s more, but I’ll have to fill you in on that later.”
“Okay. Hold tight. I’ll call you right back.”
Arden turned twice and then maneuvered through a stale yellow light. The trailing car was forced to stop when it turned red and the cross traffic began moving.
“I couldn’t help overhearing; did you just call a CIA officer?”
Smith pointed to a narrow street on his right. “Turn here. This street feeds into a larger one that is often empty at this time of night. You might be able to get some speed going.”
She did as he asked and gave him a questioning look.
“May I hire you as my attorney?” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Of course. But doesn’t the military have its own lawyers?”
“Here.” He reached into his wallet and placed a twenty-dollar bill on the console between them. “Now you’re my attorney and the attorney-client privilege applies. So what you just heard you can’t repeat, correct? Besides, it was a slip of the tongue.” His phone rang, the screen displaying “RR.”
“Good news?” he asked Russell.
“I’m afraid not. The local FBI office is denying any interest in you. They routinely keep an eye on Arden but didn’t bother tonight because they had three agents attending the Chang cocktail party. Likewise, the CIA also attended the party and they said they have no one on the street following attendees. Looks like your guys are private contractors. And one of the officers from the party was still in the neighborhood and drove down the alley. There was nothing there. Seems like they cleaned up their own mess. The FBI offered to help. Want me to send an official escort? Back everyone off?”
He checked the side-view mirror. “They’re not behind me now, so we may have successfully lost them, but they could have another team ready at my house. I’d appreciate it if you could have that checked for me. And I left my car near the party. Would love another to use tonight.”
“I’ll make a call. If you see an unfamiliar number on your phone, answer it. It’ll be your bodyguard with the information about your house and the location of a car you can use. Either way, I don’t suggest that you go home right away.”
“Understood. I’ll head over to the lab for a couple of hours, finish up some paperwork.” He gave her the Metro stop that he would be taking.
“I’ll be sure to tell them to arrange for a car somewhere along the line,” Russell said. “Is that all?”
Smith paused. He wanted to tell her about the device and the drugged man in the alley, but he didn’t want Arden to overhear.
“I’ll contact…” Smith paused. He was going to say that he’d call Nathaniel “Fred” Klein, the head of Covert-One, but he didn’t need Arden overhearing. “…Our mutual friend. The rest I’ll handle on my own,” he said.
“Well, that certainly sounds cryptic. When you get a chance, I’d love to hear it.”
“Oh, you will. But in the meantime, thanks. I owe you one.”
“Anytime,” Russell said.
He turned to Arden. “Looks like we lost him, but for safety’s sake, turn left here again.” She turned. After a few minutes, she sighed in relief.
“Nothing behind us that I can see.” She handed the twenty back to him. “I hate to inform you, but I require a much bigger retainer. Don’t worry—your slip is safe with me.”
Smith believed her. He pocketed the bill. “I’ll take that Metro stop.” He pointed to a sign half a block ahead on their right.
She pulled the car over to the curb. “Well, Mr. Smith, it’s been an interesting and enlightening ride. Should you ever need an attorney, please feel free to give me a call.”
“Thanks—I’ll remember that,” he said. And he meant it. His phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number that instructed him to take a train to a particular M
etro stop where a car would be available for his use. Once out of the car, he jogged down the steps and was relieved to see a train pulling into the station. Within twenty seconds, he was on his way.
4
The kidnappers came at midnight. Carter Warner, the undersecretary of defense, had just stepped inside his house outside Washington, DC, when a hood was thrown over his head and a rope around his neck. A baton swept his legs out from under him. After the first few seconds of shock, Warner’s former military training kicked in, and he began to fight. He’d served in Vietnam and though forty years of civilian life had dulled his reflexes and aged his body, they hadn’t dimmed his will to live.
He was flat on his back and blinded by the hood, so he used his feet, kicking in a frenzy of hard blows and rage. He connected twice, as was evidenced by the grunts of pain that he heard after a lucky strike from his hard wing tip shoe. One of the attackers began kicking him in the ribs. Warner gasped in pain when the steel-toed boot sank deep into his side. Another attacker flipped him over and yanked his arms behind his back. He felt the clamp of handcuffs; the rope around his neck tightened to cut off his airway, and in that moment he knew the physical aspect of his fight was over. He went still.
Warner had climbed the political ladder in DC by virtue of a formidable intelligence coupled with a practical, clear-eyed manner. Tapping into his typical self-control, he did his best to keep the overwhelming fear at bay and think. As they worked around him, tying his ankles together and wrapping a strip of cloth over the hood and around his face in a gag, he tried to rein in his unruly mind and focus. They lifted him, hands under his arms and clutching his feet, and moved him along the hall to the back of the house, where they laid him on the floor. He heard a series of beeps as one of them fired up his computer in the home office he maintained in the rear of the narrow town house. The PC played the usual tones as it allowed access to the main drive.
How did they get my password? he wondered.
As undersecretary, he had high-level clearance, a government-issued PC system, and a cell phone with extraordinary threat protection provided by the best minds in the cyber counterterrorism unit of the Department of Homeland Security as well as the secret military communications unit located at Fort Meade, Maryland. What he didn’t have was Secret Service protection, a perk given to cabinet-level personnel only.
He never worked with confidential material on the home computer—it wasn’t allowed, a fact for which he was now grateful as he listened to the clicking sound of rapid typing. While they would access routine emails between him and his secretary, nothing of national importance would be linked to the home unit. He lay on the floor, listening to the harsh breathing, his own and that of the attacker near his feet, as the other kidnapper worked on the PC. The clicking stopped, and Warner felt someone at his shoulder.
“We just sent your secretary an email from your computer telling her that you’re ill and won’t be at the office. Now, I’m going to dial your secretary’s number and place a phone to your ear. I expect you to leave a voicemail telling her that you’re sick with the flu. Ask not to be disturbed. Tell her to forward on the email that explains this. If you say anything else, I’ll slit your throat immediately. Nod once if you understand.”
Warner nodded. He heard some rustling, felt the cloth gag being removed, and he jerked as a hand slid under the hood and placed the receiver to his ear. When he heard the beep, he did as he was told. When the call was finished, the attacker put his hands under Warner’s arms, the other took his feet, and they carried him out the back door.
He wasn’t one to avoid the hard truths of life; he knew that whoever was currently stuffing his bound body into a waiting vehicle wasn’t going to treat him with any human dignity. When the torture came—and he had no doubt it would—he needed to be mentally prepared. He heard the engine turn over and felt the vibration as the vehicle started to move. He lay in the darkness and prayed.
Richard Meccean, the head of Health and Human Services, was walking his dog for the last time that evening when he heard running footsteps behind him and spun around in time to see a pair of men, their faces covered with hoods, racing toward him. His dog, a Weimaraner and Doberman mix, reacted. The dog planted her four legs, hunched her back, and began barking with such force that her entire body shook with the effort. One of the men shot the dog with a gun equipped with a silencer, and the other man made an irritated, hissing sound before placing his own gun against the small of Meccean’s back. A van slid to a halt on the road beside them, and Meccean was hustled into it. As they trussed Meccean, the image of his pet lying on the ground rose in his mind. He tried but failed to stop a tear escaping down his cheek.
Nick Rendel was sitting in front of a computer screen in his home office, his fingers tapping out a staccato beat as he waited for a page to load, when the security alarm in his house began to blare. A small monitor placed in the wall near the door showed two men, dressed in black, approaching at a jog down the main hall from the house’s backyard entrance.
Rendel, a slender man in his late twenties, used his mouse to turn on several internal closed-circuit televisions, slid open a nearby drawer, and removed a gun. He held the Beretta in one hand as he worked on the keyboard with the other. The computer page loaded, and he accessed two passwords before the men stepped into the home office.
“What do you want?” Rendel asked.
“Put the weapon down on the carpet. Slowly,” one of the men said. His heavily accented English was laced with an Eastern European pronunciation. Rendel lowered the gun and shot a glance at the alarm keypad on the far wall.
They successfully killed the system, Rendel thought.
As if reading his mind, the man nodded. “It’s disconnected. Won’t call the authorities, and that button in your humidor won’t work either. Now move. Down the hall to the backyard.”
Rendel padded toward the man, who stepped aside for him to pass, and he continued into the hall. The door at the far end was open and guarded by another man with a balaclava covering his face. When he reached the door, Rendel looked back at his kidnapper.
“May I put on my shoes?” He indicated a pair of shoes resting next to the door. The kidnapper shook his head.
“Where you’re going you won’t need them. The slippers will do.” He gave an order in a foreign language to the man holding the door and pushed the gun’s muzzle into Rendel’s back. “Around the side and to the van.”
Rendel gave a quick look to the CCTV camera the size of a pack of cigarettes set high in a corner at the hall’s end. The LED light glowed red. Moments later, as they tied him up in the back of the van, Rendel wondered when the blowback that would follow his kidnapping would begin. He figured forty-eight hours for someone to notice that he hadn’t appeared at work, and then another twenty-four before the Metro police would start a serious investigation. If by some dumb luck they found him, Rendel didn’t think they’d survive a rescue attempt. The crew driving this van was professional, cool, and deadly.
5
Smith found the rental car at the stop exactly where he’d been told he would. He retrieved the keys from under the mat and drove toward the office, mulling over his options. His biggest issue was what to do about the tail and the drone, for that is what he decided the device had been. After a moment’s thought he dialed the cell number for Mark Brand, a man he’d worked with on a Covert-One matter in New York and whose regular job was with the FBI. He was relieved when a sleepy-sounding voice answered the phone.
“Brand? It’s Jon Smith. Sorry to wake you, but I recall you telling me to call you anytime if I had a problem, and I have one now.” Smith heard static on the other line and a pause that made Smith think that Brand was not going to speak to him. “You there?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m here. It’s been a long time and I was just catching up. When I told you to call me I meant it. What’s the problem?”
Smith told him about the attack and drone. “One of your guys alre
ady canvassed the alley, but both the man and the drone were gone.”
“Didn’t this Chang guy work for the Chinese in their defense department?” Brand asked.
“Yes. He’s actually the Chinese equivalent to me: a microbiologist working in cutting-edge biochemical warfare research. The Chinese imprisoned him after he blew the whistle on some illegal testing they were conducting on the general population. They accused him of treason, saying that even if they were wrong Chang had a duty not to reveal confidential defense secrets.”
“Think they wanted to get you and debrief you on what you might have learned from Chang?”
Smith rubbed his face. The night had been long, and just the idea of the Chinese thinking he knew more than he did made it seem even longer.
“I guess it’s possible, but you have to be incredibly paranoid to think that two microbiologists would discuss confidential defense research in the middle of a cocktail party.”
“Take it from me, the Chinese are incredibly paranoid when it comes to their defense secrets. Just like us. What bothers me the most is the drone and the drug. What the hell could cause paralysis like that?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. Lots of drugs can cause that. Common ones, like marijuana or LSD. Crystal meth when it’s first administered will as well. But why use a drone? It’s not an efficient way to go about drugging me. It would have been a lot easier just to spike my drink.”
“Do you know what it was that Chang claimed the Chinese had been testing? Think they’re testing it here?”
“It’s an angle definitely worth following up on.”
He heard Brand groan over the phone. “This one’s for the counterterrorism unit. I’ll start waking everyone up right now. And I’ll be sure to check with the guys at the party and ask them what they know about Chang’s allegations. You want me to send someone to watch your house?”