“Tell me?”
“Not on this line. I really just called to hear your voice.”
There was a pause, and she said, “I’m always here for you. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“Then go get ’em. Bye.”
His new theory in the Kingsley saga related to the changing times of World War II, when the look of the postwar world was being mapped alongside active battle plans from Salerno to Okinawa. West Point produced the generals, Harvard turned out the young government types, and Yale was the school for spooks. Sure enough, there was no Royce Kingsley among the Harvard graduating seniors, but there was a Roy King coming out of Yale with academic honors, and, like many of his fellow graduates, firmly plugged into the Office of Strategic Services, the the CIA’s predecessor. Royce returned to the Middle East, this time as Roy King, and took over the family spook business, and also begat a son of his own, Thomas.
That closed the loop, as far as Sharif was concerned. It was impossible for the King family not to succeed with so much backing from so many quarters. Royce steered it further into the shadows by not being a competitor for the lucrative contracts but gathering secrets and doing favors for individuals and governments and skimming a piece of the transactions. Father and son took the business through the Vietnam War and the Cold War years, expanded its fortune and its influence, and along the way Lucas was begat, to the new King was groomed from birth to someday lead the family firm.
Sharif found the old obituary of Thomas King in the International Herald Tribune, read it, printed it out, and suddenly knew that he had forgotten to ask an important question of the neighbor lady, Mrs. Boykin. He dialed and got the attending nurse, who gave the phone to the old woman. Lucky made his apologies for disturbing her, but Mrs. Boykin couldn’t be more pleased.
“When we spoke yesterday, you mentioned that Luke Gibson seemed almost happy when his stepfather died, right?”
“That is correct, Special Agent Sharif.” Her voice was crisp, her memory sharp as it was the previous day.
“Exactly how did Perry Gibson die, Mrs. Boykin?”
There was a momentary lull. “Why, we didn’t discuss that? How negligent. Shame on us both.”
“Was it anything unusual?”
“Quite so, Mr. Sharif. Mr. Gibson was killed in a hunting accident. The boy shot him.”
Now it was Sharif’s turn to be silent. “You sure about that, ma’am?” The copy of Tom King’s obit was shaking in his hand.
“Of course I am.” She didn’t like being challenged on something so obvious. “There was a police investigation, and they decided it was an accident during a quail hunt. The boy blew the back of Mr. Gibson’s head off with a double-barreled shotgun. You can look it up in the Savannah Morning News if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you, Mrs. Boykin.” Sharif was on his feet, pacing. “I believe you. Thanks for your time.”
“I think Luke murdered him, but he was a juvenile, and it was all hushed up.”
“Okay. Thanks again. I have to go now.”
“Anytime, Special Agent Sharif. Goodbye.”
Sharif hit the speed dial to get Janna. “We need to get word to Kyle to get away from Gibson as fast as he can. The guy is a total fraud and a psycho.”
“Are you sure?” She seemed worried.
“He killed his stepfather in a hunting accident. He killed his VMI friend in a climbing accident. And he killed his real father in a shooting accident while hunting big game in Africa. I have the obit in the Herald Tribune. A double patricide. God knows how many people he’s killed legally for the CIA.”
“I’ll call Sir Jeff and Marty Atkins right away,” Janna said.
“Tell them I’m cold certain about this. The first two were written off as accidents, but the third one — Tom King in Africa — wasn’t. By that time, Gibson was a sniper for the CIA, and knew exactly what he was doing when he pulled the trigger. Removing his father gave him total control of the family’s riches. He’s a killer and a freakin’ psychopath, Janna. Get Kyle out of there!”
Almost down, sliding easily under the whispering cones of the parachute, working the risers to keep the little red light Gibson wore in front and below him. Swanson had given him the lead because Luke had been to this section before and was heading toward a precise GPS pinpoint familiar to him. He was pleased that the private investigation of Gibson’s background hadn’t turned up anything, and Gibson had the seasoned attitude of a veteran. Apart from the man’s irritating sense of humor, they got along fine.
The bright array of village lights became clearer and more individualized as they navigated closer, stacked one behind the other. Swanson could see a few headlights moving on a road. He looked at the altimeter again and mentally ran through the checklist of gear — from ammo to food, guns to survival gear, and satellite phone. No surprises in the inventory. Nothing to do but pay attention to everything. He could feel the ground climbing up to greet him.
They were in a final gentle curve to get a better airflow, and at about two hundred feet up Swanson made out a rectangular field that reflected the overcast moonbeams and came together like a painting of soft colors. He adjusted for landing, dumped the air to kill all the speed, and dropped into a waist-high field of opium poppies. Gibson was about fifty feet away, already gathering his collapsed parachute.
“You okay?” Swanson asked.
“Best day of my life,” Gibson responded. “Let’s go do this thing.”
Swanson dug the sat phone from a cargo pocket and hit the Send key that would transmit a numerical code, meaning that the snipers were in position and proceeding with the mission. Then he turned it off. No one could contact them until the mission was done and he called for extraction.
A CIA analyst involved in drone targeting was seated at his messy desk deep in the bowels of the agency operation at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. When the machine began to flash an alert code, he was facing away and didn’t see it for a while. There were open books, sheaves of paper, and other screens vying for his attention, and in his job it was hard to assign priorities because everything was important, so at present, Ryan Winters was getting his butt kicked by a Rhydon in a Pokémon Go turf war.
The computer behind him clocked off the passing seconds, and when Swanson’s landing confirmation wasn’t recognized, the machine began a steady beep that broke through the game-brain trance and shook the analyst back to the real world. He called up the data and said to himself, “Weird.”
But CIA computers don’t often make mistakes in processing data, given that they’re very expensive electronic number crunchers. The landing alert had been expected, but a second alert had also begun to beep. It shifted him over to an identical set of GPS coordinates from an entirely different channel. That wasn’t normal. He banished the Rhydon game and started earning his paycheck again, did verifications, and printed out the results. He tossed the brown bag of chocolate M&M’s and tucked in his shirt. At the age of thirty-five, and with no life beyond his desk, Winters had started noticing how his belt was getting tighter.
“Got something for you, boss,” he grumped as he marched uninvited into the office of Marguerite del Coda.
“I was just leaving, Ryan. Can it wait?” She badly needed a glass of wine and some sleep.
“You better look at it.” He gave her the matched coordinates.
“What’s it mean?” she asked, and sat down again.
“Beats me, Marguerite” He put his finger on the top line. “This top one is from the GPS sky file on where emergency caches of equipment and gear for agents are located. We have them all over the world.”
“And…?”
“The second set is the precise location of the two operators who just went in. Same, same.”
Del Coda thought about Swanson and Gibson, who had passed through Ramstein only about a day ago, flown down to Pakistan and were now being inserted into Afghanistan. The team communications were monitored at Ramstein, codename “Checkerboard” for this mission. The landing zone had been designated by Gibson for the CIA liaison man in Pakistan who had been tasked to scramble up the covert insertion flight.
“So they have dropped right on one of our safe houses?” Winters asked.
“Looks like it.” She gathered her purse again.
“No shit? We’re attacking our own place? How cool is that? Now let me show you the kicker.” Winters dialed up a third piece of information, an automatic alert that was triggered when the secure safe containing all of the goodies was opened. “Someone was messing around in there just a little while ago,” Ryan said.
“Before our guys got there?” She knew that ordinary procedure would have dropped them some distance away to avoid exposing the exact location of the secret hideout. Instead, Gibson chose to land almost in the back yard. That was peculiar, but not a deal breaker. However, someone else being inside the target house and in the weapons storage area could not be just a coincidence.
“Dig out the background on this cache, then send everything we have back to Langley, with the addendum that we’re are running diagnostics to rule out a systems glitch. This exact match made me uncomfortable, and I definitely don’t like the unknown factor that is showing. After sending our data back home, try to contact our boys to make sure they both know what’s going on.”
“I’ll try, but they are probably in radio silence. You have a good night.”
“I will. You start losing some weight, my friend.”