“Are we suspecting the Saudis now, or one of the royal houses in the Middle East? They have more princes over there than camels.” Swanson leaned back against a table with his arms crossed.
Atkins had signaled his own frustration by rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt. “God only knows, Kyle. We’re playing the hand we’ve been dealt — Nicky Marks — and now the game has expanded. Luke, you need some aspirin or something?”
Gibson shook his head. “I’m good. Why would this Prince character do something as stupid as sending a street punk to frighten me? What the fuck is he playing at? Nicky was my recruit, true, and we partnered up a few times, but I took good care of him. Why is this crap washing up on my doorstep?”
Gibson had begun the meeting by describing how he had been running his miles out on the Mall after dark when a skinny kid stepped from between the parked cars only about twenty feet away. The guy was a punk, with a baseball cap turned to one side, a wool hoodie in April, and too large jeans that showed six inches of undershorts. He popped a shot at Gibson, missing by a good distance and pinging a tan Nissan sedan instead. Since Gibson already had momentum, he covered the gap between them before the shooter could adjust his aim. The boy took off in an attempt at escape, but his baggy pants made running impossible. Gibson tackled him three steps later. “Just a piece of junk .25-cal six-shooter. I leaned him against a tire and applied a little enhanced interrogation encouragement until he said some white dude with red hair paid him a hundred bucks to scare me, but not to kill me. He was also to tell me that the Prince was watching. I took the gun, broke his trigger finger, and told him to get lost in a hurry. No police report.”
Swanson opened a bottle of water; thought it over. “Basically the same thing that happened to me. Neither was a serious attack.”
“Then it was an intentional wake-up call for all of us,” Atkins interjected. “Why this man would openly reveal his existence to us is beyond comprehension.”
“Maybe he wants us to chase him rather than going after Marks.” Gibson had a sudden desire for a cigarette. “We would be running in circles.”
Atkins went over to the window. The world outside looked normal, but there in his office things seemed upside down. He stretched. “I want you guys out of the country ASAP. We’ll lay on an escort to take you directly out to Andrews, and hook you up with whatever big bird the Air Force has heading across the Atlantic; I’ll have somebody meet you on the other end to forward you on to Afghanistan. I’ll get the ball rolling to unmask this Prince. You guys still go and find Marks. Unlock this thing before it blows up in our faces.”
The Prince was enjoying himself as his plan unfolded. It was all so easy, with more little events yet to come. Let them hunt all they wanted. He was always a lap or two ahead, and was tying the mighty Central Intelligence Agency into knots.
Tomorrow morning, his latest coup, Congresswoman Veronica Keenan of Nebraska, would arrive at her desk in the Longworth House Office Building and breeze into the day’s ritual of being among the power élite. A priority envelope would be delivered to her. Prince figured that she might have bolstered her courage since meeting with him, and he didn’t want her drifting off task, so he had sent a reminder via a set of photographs. The instruction was: CHECK REGISTRATION & AREA — PRINCE
There was a small airplane sitting on a dirt runway. Three men and one woman, all in casual work clothes, were clustered around the tail, examining something that dangled downward. The set of letters and numbers N988QQ were in barely visible faint black paint that was hard to see against the gray stripe on the tail of the aircraft.
The congresswoman would share it with her top aide, who would assign another aide to start burrowing into the open electronic files of the U.S. government, including the Federal Aviation Administration. If the assistant had a brain, she would also run a routine Google search and learn that the plane was a DHC Dash-8 multiprop with a checkered history. It had once been seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after being forced to land in Florida, when it ran out of gas on a run up from Colombia. It was carrying four tons of cocaine at the time, and the DEA tracked it back through Immigration and Customs Enforcement and back even further through two private front companies. Bottom-line owner was the CIA.
By lunchtime, Ms. Keenan would start putting two and two together again. Apparently, the plane had been rehabilitated. The aide would identify the place by simply reading a handwritten sign the photographer had placed on a rock in the foreground. She had never heard of Girdiwal, Afghanistan. Neither had her boss. A CIA airplane sitting on a remote airstrip in Afghanistan wasn’t really earthshaking news, but combined with the earlier tip from Mr. Prince and the plane’s bad history of running drugs, maybe there was something there. She would see.
According to the Prince’s timetable, the gentlelady from Nebraska would instruct her aide to set up a private meeting by that afternoon with the vice chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She wouldn’t go straight to the chairman, who was an important figure in the opposition party, without notifying her own team first.
With his puppet dancing, the Prince relaxed, thinking great thoughts. The illegal retail sale of heroin and cocaine was worth about $10 billion in today’s market, just in the United States. That figure was dwarfed by the worldwide trade, estimated to be as high as $750 billion annually. He didn’t want it all, just a share, because he wasn’t a greedy man financially. What he craved was recognition as the man with a chokehold on the trafficking. He was the best. With a turn of his wrist, the drug faucet could be closed and a world filled with addicts would explode into turmoil. To them, their drugs were more important than their lives, or the lives of others.
Beth Ledford, Janna Ecklund, and Lucky Sharif shrugged off the news when Kyle called from Andrews in Maryland to let them know that he wouldn’t be going back home that night. In fact, the schedule was wide open. He gave no details. “He’s out of here,” Janna said.
They were in Swanson’s town house in the exclusive Georgetown area of the nation’s capital, ready to work in the middle of the night, but uncertain of what to do to silently investigate Luke Gibson without raising suspicions. Logging into a law-enforcement database might trigger an alarm, since the CIA would be on the alert for any inquiries regarding one of its special operators. After all, the guy had twice been the target of presumed terrorists in recent days.
“Original sources,” said Lucky. “We want a hard trail so Kyle can be certain that his partner is as good as advertised.”
“Personally, I think dodging a grenade and a bullet are pretty good evidence that Luke Gibson is at risk, too.” Coastie kicked off her shoes and flexed her toes.
“We hope for the best and assume nothing,” Lucky said, nodding toward the shoes. “We do old-fashioned shoe leatherwork. Real cop stuff.”
Janna smiled at her husband. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Coastie looked over at her. “What has Kyle told you about Luke? Who are his mommy and daddy, what was his high-school mascot, anything personal at all?”
“No, he’s got a good reputation in the agency. That’s about it.”
“Facts: Luke Gibson was born. He was given a name. He went to school. Somewhere along the way, probably early on, he was recruited by the CIA. That is our framework.”