The Guangzhou general’s son went to prison, and, thanks to Leigh Murphy’s stable of assets in-country, so did a sizable criminal outfit whose operation spanned from Nairobi to Mauritius to Cape Town. Yao added the information he gleaned from the general’s son to his intelligence file, but the CIA didn’t take credit for busting a narcotics ring, even one that large. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had a robust presence during the operation from the beginning, and they, along with the National Police Service, got the headlines.
Leigh Murphy and Yao had slipped away from the limelight — like good intelligence officers do — and celebrated over a plate of nyama choma—in this case, traditional grilled goat — at a quiet bar in the upscale Nairobi neighborhood of Kilimani. The light was low, the afterglow mixed with the slight buzz from her third Tusker lager. Stupidly, like some giddy schoolgirl with a crush, she’d looked into his eyes across the table and tapped the neck of her beer to his.
“Bia yangu, nchi yangu.”
He was impressed that she spoke Kiswahili, but she admitted that it was written on the Tusker bottle—My beer, my country.
It just sounded cool.
They spent two days together, debriefing… and whatnot. The romantic part of the equation never seemed to work out. Both were still working on their careers. Prohibitions against dipping your pen in company ink weren’t the problem. Agency relationships made for a tighter circle of trust. Long-distance relationships sucked, though, and could take an operative’s mind off the game. Neither of them wanted that. So Adam Yao had slipped back into his secret life of a NOC — no official cover — operative somewhere in Asia — he’d never even told her exactly what his cover was. It was safer that way for both of them. They kept in touch, and Yao had become her behind-the-scenes unofficial mentor and confidant. When it was time for Murphy to have a new posting, he put in a good word with his boss, who talked to her boss, who got her posted to Tirana.
She’d do anything for him, even this. She just needed to figure out how to do it without pissing off her chief — or, worse, doing something to cause an incident and making the papers by pulling back the sugar coating of the Albania she loved.
On the outside, the country was a wonderland, gorgeous mountains, delicious food, friendly people, not to mention the Adriatic, but there was a hidden underbelly — a bad spot on the melon — that required a delicate touch.
Albania — Shqiperia, to the locals — was an incredible place to be a young intelligence officer. Korrieri, one of the country’s now defunct newspapers, had once run the headline during an American state visit — PLEASE OCCUPY US! Americans might have a difficult time finding Albania on a map, but people from the Land of the Eagles loved all things red, white, and blue — and made no bones about telling the world how they felt. The Albanian ambassador to the United States had once written an opinion piece in The Washington Times that said, among other things, “If you believe in freedom, you believe in fighting for it, and if you believe in fighting for freedom, you believe in the United States.”
But Langley didn’t send her here for the love and good feeling. She was interested in seedier stuff. If she was going to play patty-cake with America-lovers, they had to know something important about people who didn’t feel the same way.
Some experts denied the existence of a true Albanian Mafia, but those paying for protection, or being trafficked by one of the Fifteen Families, likely thought otherwise. These families controlled organized and unorganized crime all over the country. Drugs, human trafficking, and, of particular interest to Leigh Murphy, military arms sales simply did not happen in Albania without at least one of the Fifteen having a hand in the pot.
And then there was gjakmarrja. Albanians had made the blood feud an art form. The philosophy of a head for a head was part of the social code or canon of twelve books known as the Kanun. Revenge was deeply ingrained in Albanian society, with gjakmarrja vendettas passing from generation to generation.
Still, even an asshole station chief, blood feuds, and Fifteen Family hit men who were often more disciplined and brutal than the Russian Mob — the good outweighed the bad. For Leigh Murphy, it was more of a calling than a job post.
Chief Rask made it out of his office on his gouty legs about the time she stood up.
“You know how I feel about lone meetings,” he said. “Grab Joey or Vlora to go with you.”
Two other case officers looked up from their respective desks in the bullpen, deadpan, clearly not wanting to get involved with more of Rask’s BS. Joey was a kiss-ass, but he was almost as lazy as Rask and didn’t feel the need to overwork himself tagging along on some meeting that was probably bullshit — like ninety percent of them were.
Murphy remained stone-faced. “Who said I was going on a meeting?”
“We read people,” Rask said. “It’s literally part of the job description.”
“Well, Chief, you misread. Just going to get a haircut.”
There was no set of circumstances where she wanted the station chief sticking his nose in this interview before she was done. She told Adam as much and he’d agreed. Besides, Rask would break into a wicked-gross mental fit if he got wind that she’d just been on the phone with a well-respected senior intelligence officer in the Agency — one who cared about the people he worked with and didn’t use their backs as rungs on his career ladder. Rask didn’t like other lions sniffing around his pride.
He sneered, licking his lips. Maybe he didn’t believe her, or maybe he felt deprived of the meat he’d expected when he saw her on the phone. Langley wanted frequent results. How was he supposed to kick intel up the line to make himself look good if his chief hunting lioness worried more about her personal grooming than making a kill?
He screwed up his face like he was about to sneeze. Murphy wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it. The man wore his emotions like a neon sign. The polygraphers surely had a good old time with him.
“You sure you’re just getting a haircut?”
The rusty adage of not being able to kid a kidder applied doubly to a liar. But then, lying to a liar was CIA tradecraft 101.
She thought of popping off to him, something like “You can try and follow me if you want… oh, I forgot, you haven’t run a surveillance op in ten years…” but a smartass attitude would only give him some juice to write her up on come performance evaluation time. It was her job to work people. Might as well start with her boss.
She gave him her most benign smile. “Yep, just a haircut, Chief.” He relished it when subordinates called him that. She looked at her watch, then grabbed a tweed sport jacket from the back of her chair and put it on over the sweatshirt, adjusting the hood so it draped over her collar in back. Her mom back in Boston would have called the outfit a Fall River Tuxedo. “I came in early, and I’ve got scads of comp time.”
Rask waved a hand in the air over his shoulder, already shuffling back to his office. “Better be logged.”
Murphy took the Glock 43 and inside-the-pants holster from her lap drawer and shoved it down the waistband of her jeans, over the small of her back. Her dad, a Boston PD detective, had always said that God made that little hollow in a person’s back just the right size to carry a .45. He was a big guy, and could get away with carrying a big gun. Just under five-five, she stuck with the baby Glock nine-millimeter. Single-stack, the pistol carried only six in the mag and one in the pipe, but she was a case officer, not some ground branch operator. If she had to resort to her sidearm, things had gone terribly wrong.