The truth was that he was out of his element here, but he was fairly sure of one thing: the woman had slipped up. The most experienced professional could make mistakes, but mistakes of this severity were extremely rare and hard to forgive. If what he was seeing was correct, she’d left herself open to a secondhand contact, which meant that she trusted her handlers much more than she should have. Unless…
He pulled out the pay-and-go phone he’d purchased earlier and dialed the number by heart. As expected, he saw the woman glance down at her side, then come up with a phone in her right hand, her face twisted away from the road — away from him. It was this last gesture that caught his attention, the first real sign that something was wrong.
“Yes?”
“It’s Monterré,” he said in fluent French, using the prearranged code. “I missed you at the restaurant last night.” I’m ready to meet.
“Yes, I’m sorry about that. We should set something up.” As soon as possible.
“How about Le Bouclard at four p.m.?”
No response. “Le Bouclard,” he repeated, “at—”
A rap on his window stopped him in mid-sentence. He froze, then lowered the phone in a casual movement and turned his head to the right, his stomach sinking. He had no weapon, no means of defense. His hands were useless in this confined space. If the Iraqis had grown tired of him, if they had lost faith in his abilities, it would all end here.
He lowered the window. The woman staring in at him was clutching a cell phone in one hand, the other pushed deep beneath the folds of her coat.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said. He did as he was instructed, eyes riveted to the bump beneath her dark coat, calculating distance and opportunity. “Can you leave this car?”
“Yes.”
“Then get out and follow me.” She seemed to sense his thoughts. “You should not be concerned.
We’re on the same side… I’m only taking the proper precautions.”
Relaxing slightly, Vanderveen nodded once. “Fair enough. Lead the way.”
“This could be a problem.”
“Could be,” Harper agreed.
They were seated in the director’s palatial office, the last light of day drifting through the west-facing windows. After leaving the chaotic scene on Duke Street, Harper had ordered his driver straight back to Langley as Kealey filled him in. Less than two minutes after clearing the turnstiles in the Old Headquarters Building, Harper had been called up to the seventh floor.
While he’d fully expected this development, the urgent summons to the director’s office wasn’t made any more palatable by his foresight. To make matters worse, Rachel Ford was seated next to the DCI, her lips turned up in a smile of self-satisfaction. Their chairs faced his and were arranged in a distinctly confrontational manner.
“I just got a call from Harry Judd,” Andrews continued, shaking his head in semi-disbelief. “He was extremely pissed, John, and I didn’t get the impression he’s going to let it rest. According to him, you went behind his back to get access to the staging area, and then — and this is the part that really gets me — Kealey went into the building and engaged the subject? Is that right?”
The DDO frowned and said, “No, that’s not accurate. He never fired his weapon.”
“You’re sure?” Ford asked skeptically. “It doesn’t seem to me that you have much control over this man.”
“I’m sure,” Harper replied, an edge to his voice. “Kealey was the only person I saw who was even slightly concerned about taking Mason alive. He wouldn’t have fired unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“I hope to God you’re right,” Andrews said. “Where is he?”
“Getting cleaned up. He didn’t get a chance before he flew out.”
“And the laptop? What’s the story on that?”
“It’s hard to say. I turned it over to Science and Technology, but it could take a while. Mason probably deleted most of the relevant files. I’m not holding my breath.”
The DCI began tapping the end of a cheap ballpoint pen against the edge of his desk, lips pursed in thought. “I don’t see why we need to be involved in this,” he finally said. “We were tasked with identifying and tracking down the people who bombed the Babylon Hotel. We managed to do the first part in record time — without Kealey’s help, I might add.”
“Bob, we knew that Kassem was—”
“In fact,” Andrews said, raising his voice a little, “all he’s done is cause problems. That shit he pulled in Fallujah put us on shaky ground with the military, and now he’s interfered in a Bureau investigation on U.S. soil. How does any of this help us, John?”
Harper caught Ford nodding in agreement as he turned his gaze to the windows. Not for the first time, he was struck by the fleeting nature of gratitude. Nearly a year earlier, Ryan Kealey had saved at least 500 lives and possibly many more. Included in the list of potential casualties was at least one head of state — David Brenneman, the president of the United States. Now the Agency was ready to dump him for what would amount to a small embarrassment, and even that was an unlikely scenario. The failed raid on Duke Street was already beginning to generate serious fallout, and bringing charges against Kealey would only result in more press coverage, making matters worse. None of that would appeal to the Bureau’s leadership. They would be more likely to hold on to the chit for a time of real crisis, for a time when the Agency had dirt on something the Bureau would rather keep quiet. Such events were not as rare as the public perceived.
“Look, John,” the director continued, his voice dropping a notch. “You and Kealey go way back.
I can understand that, and I know what he’s done for us. Believe me, I do. But things have changed, and right now, he’s doing more harm than good. Perhaps it would be best for everyone
— including him — if he just stepped down. Christ knows he’s been through enough.”
Ford’s smug expression disappeared, and she turned toward Andrews in surprise. Clearly, she’d been expecting him to take a much harder line.
“I can’t ask him to do that.” The other man frowned, and Harper’s anger boiled over. “Jesus, did you ever think about what would have happened if Vanderveen had succeeded last year? What if he’d gotten all three — Brenneman, Chirac, and Berlusconi? How would that have reflected on us?”
“I hear you, but—”
“I know exactly how it would have played out, Bob. The dollars would have skyrocketed, but we wouldn’t have seen a dime. Everything would have gone to Homeland Security or the NCTC, and rightfully so. The oversight committees would have been screaming for blood.” And you would have been out of a job, Harper didn’t add.
He paused and looked away, trying to rein in his emotions. “Kealey is the only reason we managed to avoid all of that. He didn’t ask for a damn thing in return, except for a full-time place in the Agency. I’m not inclined to take that away from him because of a minor spat with the FBI, and I don’t give a shit about what they’re saying on al-Jazeera. The man deserves our support.”
“I don’t think you can discount the Bureau’s position that easily,” Ford began heatedly. “They have a right to—”
“No,” Andrews said, cutting her off. “John’s right on this.” Realizing she was on the losing end of this argument, Ford sat back in her chair and glared at her subordinate.