Clark rolled his eyes. He was no accountant himself, but he sure knew assholes, and this made him an expert on Choi. He knew without reservation the lunatic kid running North Korea couldn’t be trusted to open his accounting ledgers to inspectors.
If the UN Sanctions Committee vote failed, then Choi would keep his worldwide criminal enterprises operating; and either he would give the UN cooked books to look through or else he would rope-a-dope them with obfuscations and delays, and it would be half a decade before the UN would pronounce him in violation of the agreement and do anything about it.
And in five years Choi could have the ICBM he was after, and when that happened, the UN wouldn’t do a damn thing to stop him ever again.
Clark tossed the paper on the table in frustration, and then looked up quickly when he realized a man was seating himself right in front of him at his little two-top.
The man had wavy blond hair streaked with gray, a ruddy complexion, and a big grin on his face.
Well, shit, Clark said to himself.
It was Duke Sharps.
Clark showed no surprise, and he said nothing, he just gazed at the man in front of him with eyes that were too cold to read.
Sharps kept his smile wide. Clark was pretty sure he was looking at veneers, and the man’s blue double-breasted blazer and striped shirt made him look to John like he should have been sitting on a yacht in Palm Beach instead of in a hipster coffee shop in Manhattan.
Duke said, “John Clark. It has been one hell of a long while. How are you, brother?” He extended a hand and Clark reluctantly shook it.
He was waiting for the man’s pitch or threat, whichever way Sharps was going to play it. Sharps, however, was in no rush.
“When and where was the last time we ran into one another? It was after I left the Bureau. You were at Rainbow. Was it over in the UK?”
“What can I do for you, Sharps?”
“Right to the chase? Not going to waste my time, I see. I respect that.” Sharps picked up the copy of the Times and pointed to the article Clark had just been reading. “A blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. No big fan of the Times, but they are right on this one. North Korea isn’t the bad guy here. They have as much right to interact in the marketplace as any other country. As long as they are not proliferating weapons, how dare Jack fucking Ryan tell them where they can put their money and how they can spend it?”
Clark snorted a little. “When did you become a card-carrying member of the Fair Play for the DPRK Committee?” Clark’s reference was to Lee Harvey Oswald. He had worked for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization that protested the U.S. government’s heavy-handed tactics over the communist island.
Sharps chuckled. After a moment he said, “I’m in the right on this one, Clark, but my high school debate team days are long behind me. I’m not going to try to convince you.” He leaned forward on his elbows. His smile dissipated. “An associate of mine mentioned he happened to notice a known colleague of yours down in Turtle Bay yesterday. I guess it could have been a coincidence, but it got me thinking. You’re an old fox like I am, and you know there is no such thing as a chance encounter. I snooped into your colleague, which led me to you. My man was on the job, and this leads me to believe you are on the job in some capacity as well. You aren’t with the Agency anymore, not even as a training cadre, so I’m guessing you’re doing contract work for someone.”
Sharps leaned closer. “Maybe some people are still scared of you. You’re an old snake eater, after all. But as far as I’m concerned, the operative word is ‘old.’”
Clark was not a snake eater, old or otherwise. That was an archaic term used for Green Berets, U.S. Army Special Forces, and Clark had been a Navy SEAL. He didn’t expect Sharps to know the difference, and he didn’t bother to correct him.
The sixty-year-old Sharps said, “I sit before you as a professional courtesy. I am here to kindly ask you to pack up your op and take your gang of washed-up boys down to Penn Station and put them, along with yourself, back on a train for D.C. You’re out of your element here. My guys and your guys keep bumping into one another… and somebody is going to get themselves hurt.”
Clark’s jaw tensed, clamping down tight to keep from saying what he wanted to say. He knew he had to take whatever Sharps dished out as a short-term tactical defeat. Sharps had somehow compromised his operation, and this was a terrible blow, but Clark identified something quickly. Sharps had misidentified what Clark’s operation was all about. He clearly thought Clark was working some sort of counterintelligence contract job for one of the foreign embassies or UN delegations. This would have been highly illegal, but Sharps wasn’t objecting on moral or legal grounds. No, his quarrel with Clark was that he thought Clark was trying to protect one of the delegates Sharps and Riley had been targeting.
If Clark pushed back at this moment, it would just up Sharps’s level of curiosity. Much better, Clark realized, for him to make Sharps think he’d won, that it was all over.
Clark, for the first time in this conversation and for one of the first times in his life, demurred.
With a long, slow nod he said, “You can’t get good help these days. My crew blew it. Fucking Keystone Kops.”
He saw the glint in Sharps’s eye, the look of a man full of his own power and worth. A winner, glorious in his victory but forcing a magnanimous comment. He said, “It happens, friend. Maybe my crew just got lucky.”
Clark pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Ding. When he answered, Clark said, “Go back to the place, break it all down. Get yourself and the others to Penn Station in ninety minutes.” A pause. “Just do it. I’ll see you there.” Clark hung up and slipped the phone back in his jeans.
The glint in Sharps’s eye remained.
Clark shrugged like a man who knew he was busted, but a man acting like it was no big deal. “What the hell, the money wasn’t what we thought it was going to be, anyway. Shitty per diem. You’d think they had us working in Port-au-Prince for what they were giving us for food and booze.”
Sharps smiled. “Ouch.” With a nonchalance that Clark read as bullshit he said, “Since it doesn’t matter anymore, maybe you’ll tell me. Which delegation were you working for? My guess is Chile, or Denmark, but I’m prepared for you to surprise me.”
Clark put up an apologetic hand and gave his shoulders another huge shrug. “C’mon, Duke. We’re running home with our tails between our legs on this one. Allow me to retain a modicum of self-respect by not having me completely lose my professional decorum and reveal my client’s identity.”
Sharps said, “You had a lot of glory days in your career. One hell of a good run. Everybody gets old. Everybody loses their touch.” He smiled, a look that seemed like he felt sorry for the old man in front of him. “Just as there was honor in being the best, there is also honor in knowing when it’s over.”
Clark took three slow breaths, forced his blood pressure back down a notch, then stood and extended his hand. “Thanks, Duke. I owe you.”
Duke Sharps shook Clark’s hand, but he did not get up.
Clark pushed his way through a crowd of hipsters, left the coffee shop, and walked back to the safe house. He assumed he was being watched, but Sharps had known he was in the 79th Street coffee shop, which surely meant he knew Clark’s operation was set up at the building next door.