Last Days of the Condor

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” he whispered so only she could hear.

  Her head shook no against his chest.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “I’m trying,” she whispered. “My best. My best.”

  She held him and she danced and they danced.

  The song ended. Songs do.

  He stopped, she stopped, they stopped, stood in a home that wasn’t theirs.

  Condor saw Faye sitting on the floor, fighting sinking into slumber.

  Said: “Now there’s something we need to risk.”

  “What?” whispered Merle standing oh so close to him.

  “School,” said Condor as he watched Faye stir herself back to the killing edge.

  Chris echoed Merle: “What?”

  “You never know what you’ll need to know,” said Condor.

  So for thirty-seven minutes, he and Faye risked not being on a National Rifle Association (NRA)—Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)–approved range, and first with Condor’s .45, then with Faye’s Glock, made Chris and Merle practice aiming, firing, chambering rounds and (on Condor’s pistol) learning the safety to click off. Spies made citizens learn how to load ammunition magazines even though almost no scenario envisioned that necessity, but the exercise helped demystify weapons neither Merle nor Chris knew before that night. They learned the three-point aim, breathe & squeeze, the Weaver stance, the OSS pioneered from-the-belt quick-fire move. Though such things are not advisable for long-term weapons preservation, long term for this crew projected as high noon tomorrow, so Chris and Merle practiced dry firing the pistols. Click! Click!

  After Condor and Faye reholstered their fully operational pistols, Condor again led them all through tomorrow’s best-case choreography.

  Then made Chris and Merle talk through the plan backwards.

  Condor quizzed them on what-ifs he answered as soon as their faces showed him they understood the scenario he’d spelled out.

  He saw Faye’s concentration fade.

  Lied and said: “We’re ready.”

  Chris and Merle cleared a space on the main room’s floor for a self-inflating air mattress left over from his sister and brother-in-law’s visit. Merle used extra sheets, a fuzzy blue oversized blanket and two pillows to make a bed for her and Condor.

  The apartment’s one bathroom was in the hall.

  Chris used the bathroom first, then Faye.

  Faye motioned for Merle to take her turn. The older woman did.

  Condor nodded toward the bedroom where Chris waited.

  Told Faye: “You’ve done all you can do. Get what you can in there.”

  The bedroom door closed behind her.

  Merle came out of the bathroom, walked past Condor with a tired, tearful smile. He heard her undressing, getting onto the bed held by this floor.

  Behind the closed door of the bathroom, Condor used the toilet.

  Washed his hands, brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth and spit.

  Counted out the nighttime pills he chose to take—his heart, his bladder, his pains, his edgy insomnia—swallowed them with water from the sink faucet he cupped in his hand. Noted that no one living or dead was in the bathroom with him, that he was alone.

  Condor stared at the man in the mirror.

  Said: “There you are.”

  26

  The essence of love is betrayal.

  —Chris Harvie

  Not here, not now, thought Faye as she entered Chris Harvie’s bedroom.

  But she knew that was a futile lie.

  And as that door closed behind her, as he closed the exit behind them, Faye scanned this room lit by a lamp on the scarred wooden table holding the book he was reading, checked to be sure the shade was pulled down over the waiting-to-shatter glass window between her and the street-lit killing night.

  She turned toward his comforting reach, said: “I’m sorry!”

  He cupped her face, smiled at her tears: “What else could you do?”

  “Not have gotten involved with you. At all. In the first place.”

  “In the first place, I love you. After that, it’s just how our luck got us here.”

  She slid into his arms, whispered as loudly as she dared: “I love you.”

  “I know.” He kissed her forehead, her wet cheeks, her dry lips.

  “Come on, get in bed, go to sleep,” he said. “You’re dead on your fee—

  “Bad choice of metaphors,” he blurted.

  “Wrong,” she said. “Dead on.”

  Faye pulled the blue blouse out of her black pants, flew her hands up its line of white buttons until they were all undone. Opened the blouse. Touched the puckered white scar slashed up from her groin across her taut white stomach.

  “You deserve to know how you got here,” she told Chris. Her fingertips brushed the scar lined on her stomach like a lonesome road: “You deserve to know about this.”

  Tell him.

  Paris. Call it last year. And you’re doing everything right.

  The Seine, stone bridges across its rolling gray ribbon between beautiful walls of apartments rising over streets that traffic in the best that humans can be. Museums. Sidewalk cafes. All the women are beautiful because they’ve found one thing in how they look to believe in as magnifique. All the men are taut with the intensity of caring. No one looks stupid except for an occasional tourist who brought his mirrors to the city of lights instead of his sunglasses. He’s not like most of the millions of lucky souls who visit this cosmopolis where crosses of salvation rise in the same stone castle that’s home to flesh-eating gargoyles. Marching past street stalls of North African leather goods comes a well-suited woman carrying a Hermès briefcase and closing a billion-euros financial package with curt orders into her cell phone. Profitable movie theaters play François Truffaut and John Ford movies older than 90 percent of their patrons. And though you can buy heroin at the plaza called Stalingrad, the retail market point for multinational cartels & syndicates, Parisian dealers never guarantee happiness.

  But your Paris is narrow broken pavement streets, cramped apartment buildings violating housing codes in hundreds of who cares ways, smells of cooking goat and North African stapes, water, Mon Dieu you’d kill for a glass of water and you could, you can, you’re packing a Glock in a holster taped handle-down to your smooth stomach under the Moroccan blouse above the black slacks and flat shoes for running or kicking. Nobody you pass on the narrow sidewalks looks at anybody, or else it’s some man who glares X-ray vision at everyone. You wear brown contact lenses because green eyes are a reveal. Thank God you’re not pretty, so nobody’s going to go out of their way to notice you except for people who hate the headscarf wrapped around your face and covering your dyed hair that passes for the Algerian-French blend you and your ID papers claim.

  Six weeks’ language prep at Langley sandpapering your textbook French.

  Seventeen days of Immersion Familiarization with an NOC team in Algiers.

  Boats, trains, buses and walking to a Paris address you only knew from videos.

  Your Op name is Djamila.

  The real Djamila has been Tagged & Targeted in another Op from some other CIA crew, or maybe they were Pentagon. The Agency scooped her up during a “family” trip to Yemen, found the explosives in her battered suitcase.

  The al Qaeda affiliate barely trusted any woman, so her explosives’ customized detonator with perhaps traceable components, that clue-carrying detonator went to Paris by UATT (Unknown At This Time)—pronounced “you-at”—means & methods.

  The bad guys are obsessed with Op Security. Got great tradecraft.

  Took four weeks, but our best wringers sweated enough lies and evasions and slips from Djamila to piece together much of what she knew, then bluffed her out of what she had left by letting her think we had it all anyway, but would turn her over to Malaysians or Israelis or somebody who scared her more than we did if she didn’t tell us everything and if it didn’t match what
she thought we already knew.

  Wonder whatever happened to Djamila.

  But you can’t think about that.

  Not in your Op.

  Not when she reveals the target is America in Paris.

  Not when you’re doing everything right.

  Your Op plan is classic: You become Djamila. Cool it in Paris until she gets a mobile phone call to a rendezvous. A Montprix—a French franchise store. In the cosmetics aisle. You meet a man named Neuf—that’s right: Nine, a number that implies a sizable Op cell, and that’s an intel bonus or it’s batshit, depending on how you play it, but so far you’re doing everything right. Textbook. Streetwise.

  Neuf’s never seen Djamila. You only know he’s got a scar on his wrist that can’t be seen from street-pole surveillance cameras. He gives her—you—the attack’s when:

  Tomorrow.

  Remember, you’re in an NOC Op. No notice to the Agency Chief of Station in the embassy, no liaison to the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure) or DCRI (Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur), or to DRM (Direction du Renseignement Militaire) or DPSD (Direction de la Protection et de la Sécurité de la Défense), or even to their off-the-books group—won’t tell you that name. You and your team are alone. All you know is the target is American or maybe NATO with a long shot of it being French, because chatter NSA monitored off suspects sweated out of the real Djamila indicate that the bad guys think they have some inside track about French intel and security moves and are about to make the French pissed off at their allies.

  The analytical conclusion that the bad guys want to divide and conquer us with some America-targeted bomb attack in Paris with even a hint of our allies being compromised or penetrated made Langley nervous with its complexity. So they made Sami run this Op simple: totally in the black, no allies’ involvement.

  In that Paris drugstore aisle. Cheesy French music playing over the loudspeaker, Neuf says tomorrow he’ll be “another person,” which you figure means in disguise. The plan is for you Djamila to go to a safe house and deliver the explosives for him to check—which is why the Op couldn’t switch phony material for real explosives. We knew they’d check, and if they found bogus bomb material, they’d go in the wind and come back at us some way we didn’t have penetrated.

  After he checks your delivery, only then will he phone someone called Sept—Seven—to bring the trigger device. They’ll make the bomb operational. And off the three of you will go to the then-disclosed target. You’re supposed to provide cover surveillance and film the whole thing with your cell phone, then wait to get the right call to e-mail it to the number you’ll be given and maybe from there to YouTube.

  What Neuf doesn’t know is you’re wired and geo-tracked and hooked in to a Black Ops cover team who, when you confirm the target, will charge while you shoot the guy holding the bomb—disable preferred, but do what you gotta do. Even if that means you taking on both Sept and Neuf, the cover team rescuers are close.

  But they’ve got to hang back. The bad guys are Op savvy. Ready to rabbit. So it’s up to you to wait until your team can grab the optimal get of the bomb, the trigger and Op soldiers.

  And so far, you’re doing everything right.

  Come rendezvous, you know Uncle Sam has your back, though from a distance.

  Neuf shows, wears a suit and tie, clean shaven. He’s carrying the gym bag favored by stockbrokers, plus an attaché case—either one of them good for the bomb. He walks you to an apartment in the 18th arrondissement, bare white walls, no furniture.

  And while you’re waiting, he says when he gets to paradise, he hopes you’ll be one of the blessed virgins waiting for him.

  I mean, what can you, what can Djamila, what can anybody say to that? The bomber on his way to martyrdom has a crush on you.

  You should have paid attention to the timing of his dream.

  Sept shows up. A big guy, Western-looking. Like Neuf, he’s suit & tie city.

  But you wait. You tell yourself you gotta wait. No way could the cover team advance to a close and quick-enough breach of the apartment for a clean takedown. Get out in the street, after Neuf reveals the target, then speak the Go Code.

  Neuf marries your explosives to the timer Sept brought. The bomb’s in the attaché case. Neuf needs five seconds to unsnap the catches, open it, flip the bomb trigger. Plenty of time to shoot him first, shoot Sept if the Black Ops boys haven’t dropped him because first you’ll give the Go and they’ll be running. You can grab the case. No explosion that will kill you, too. No intel scandal. The good guys win again.

  What could go wrong when you’re doing everything right?

  You mutter something about sixty seconds, not the Go Code, but your throat mike broadcasts it as a “get ready,” and knowing how your cover team works, you figure they’ll be moving closer, ready—

  Neuf shoves the attaché case into Sept’s arms, whirls toward you—

  Knife! Where’d he get that fucking knife stabbing—

  He’s multitasking. Making his virgin reward and obeying orders you’d never expected. Djamila was supposed to die in this apartment. She was an easy sacrifice for security, an expendable liability. Make her transport what you want into place. If she’s caught, she’s expendable, no great loss. If she completes her mission, then terminate her. Don’t call it betraying her, call it Op security or serving the greater cause.

  But Djamila’s not Djamila, it’s you.

  Training. Hours of practice. One night in Buenos Aires. You grab the lunging knife wrist and jerk, palm heel smash Neuf’s elbow. You hear the knife hit the floor.

  Neuf gets off a punch, knocks enough wind out of you so all the throat mike transmits is a grunt. You finger slash Neuf’s eyes, nail a snap kick into his hip …

  Behind you, Sept punches for your spine. But he was smart enough to set down the bomb before swinging into a fight, and that smart delay gives you time to whirl, turn his off-balance strike through a hip throw and crash him to the floor.

  Where he scoops up the knife, bounces up with a stab that cuts you …

  Cuts me …

  Cuts you groin to guts. Like a rip in time. You fall back. Grabbing your gushing blood, grabbing your gun, years of training and BAM! BAM!

  Sept flips ass over teakettle, drops the knife.

  Neuf grabs the attaché case, runs out the door. You shoot. Hit the wall.

  Burning fire in your guts as you swing your Glock to zero Sept who’s flopping around on the floor and he screams at you.

  Screams at you in English, in British: “Fockin’ bitch!”

  Both of you lie on the floor in that unfurnished Paris apartment. You realize he’s some kind of London spook, SAS it turns out, all set to take down Neuf’s Op they penetrated from their end. But now the man with the bomb has run out the door. Later we learn from two cell guys SAS sweeps up, Neuf’s headed for a nearby apartment building where CIA has a NOC Op you and your team know nothing about. That secret CIA base being blown up would not only piss the French off because we made a target for killers in Paris, but we put spooks on their soil without telling them. Plus people will get slaughtered, damaged, public mess.

  As the gun slides from your hands—BOOM!

  Your cover team closed in on Neuf, but he’s on the sidewalk, narrow street, running with his hand on the bomb in the case and when he spots gonna get me …

  BOOM! He’s a martyr. BOOM! A garbage truck and two parked cars. BOOM! Fragment wounds on three cover team gunners. BOOM! A seventy-three-year-old Parisian woman in a black coat, walking her yippy little dog … Boom.

  Yeah, could have been a whole lot worse. Could have been so much better. One dead and your backups have wounded and you’re lying in a puddle of your own blood hearing those classic French sirens Wee-ooo! Wee-ooo!

  Then you black out.

  And so now I’m officially a traitor. Told secrets to an unauthorized person.

  Faye sat beside Chris on his bed.

  Said: “I d
idn’t die. Everybody’s pissed off. The press cover story stinks. The French, the British, execs all over the CIA looking to point the finger of blame. The Agency had to—Sami had to—go up and tell the Hill a version of the truth, get lucky and get some kind of pass for fucking up. I earned some blame for not tumbling to what was what sooner, for shooting a British agent, for not dropping Neuf and the bomb. The French deny they were compromised by the bad guys and all we got saying otherwise is chatter we don’t want to disclose how we got. But Sami pled my case. I got to start working my way back to being on the inside, being the who who matters, who knows, who does. Sami opened the door on the soundproof glass room inside your Committee offices and I walked out and got a cup of coffee.”

  “And me,” said Chris.

  “And you. You trusted me. Freed dreams. Let me fall for you. Let me believe. And now I’ve betrayed you. Put you here. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

  “This is where I live.” Chris wiped a tear off her cheek as they sat on the bed. He grinned. “You know how hard it is to find a great apartment in this town?”

  Call it an upside-down grin and she leaned into him.

  Faye said: “I got an innocent civilian killed in Paris. I can’t do that again. I can’t do that here. I can’t, I will not do that to you.”

  “You forget,” said Chris. “I’m no civilian and I’m not innocent.”

  “Liar,” she whispered with all the love in her heart.

  Let go, just let go.

  “I got your message from the mirror in the Tune Inn,” Chris told the spy in his arms. “The woman who found it called me from the bathroom. She read it to me three times. Didn’t ask a single question. Promised to wash it off before she walked back out to the bar. Didn’t let me thank her—thanked me for letting her be part of us, our story. For letting her believe someday she’d write on a bathroom mirror with her lipstick. She told me I was so lucky. I told her yes, I am.”