FILE NOT FOUND
He really needed a picture, damn it! If he was going to run a facial scan through the Entries portal, he need a full-face shot of a series of suspects. Without a picture, he hadn’t a hope.
It was possible the man did not officially exist. Not under that name, anyway. Yet he had used the name in Italy. Why was he using that name in the first place? Would the name carry some kind of special significance for the man? Or for his victim?
Naumann was a CIA employee.
Start there.
The CIA internal database carried a list of personal and operational names, often code names randomly generated by a mainframe in Langley, code names that were sometimes used for various operations around the world. Sometimes for foreign agents. Perhaps the name would ring a bell inside the Intelligence community. Unlikely, but worth a try. He went back to the Intel Link home page, logged on to the Umbra program, and typed in Sweetwater.
NAME RETIRED
Retired?
Retired!
That could only mean that at some point in the past, possibly the very distant past, the code name Sweetwater had once been an active Agency name, a name used in a previous operation of some sort.
Then why was an old Indian in Venice using the name out loud.
Coincidence?
A message?
A message to whom?
To the CIA itself, of course.
Coincidences did happen in Intelligence, but nobody liked them very much. Let’s review: Naumann is a CIA agent. He has possible contact with a man calling himself Sweetwater.
Now he’s dead. Really quite sincerely dead.
Then Micah Dalton, another CIA agent, has probable contact, extremely memorable probable contact, with a man using the name Sweetwater, and he almost dies himself. This Sweetwater guy was becoming more interesting by the second. But he still needed to narrow this field. So how?
He reached down beside the desk and lifted up his suitcase. Hazmat had left it in Sally’s office for him, tagged with a CLEARED sticker and a list of the remaining contents.
Section of burned raffia cord — fourteen cm — clean
Dried moonflower petals — traces of SUBSTANCE UK present
(Neutralized — Inactive — see Hazmat report)
Organic material — seven pieces focaccia bread
(Neutralized)
Multiple sections of clay cylinder — terra-cotta
(Mineral scan — American Southwest — age indeterminate — less than one hundred years — hand-turned pottery — Comanche/ Apache/Kiowa style)
Burned paper items — Italian-made — grocery receipts, bus tickets, etc.
Fragment of carbonized paper milled in Omaha Nebraska.
Fragment of carbonized U.S. stamp present — franked.
Electron scan of carbonized paper fragment shows following image:
seco
Timp
A fragment of burned paper.
With traces of a U.S. stamp.
Was he looking at what was left of an address? If what he was looking at was part of the recipient’s address, wouldn’t it have some recognizable traces of letters that would be found in Cora’s Dorsoduro flat in Venice? Calle dei Morti? Dorsoduro? Venice?
Actually, no, Micah. There was no special reason to think so, other than wishful thinking. The letter — if that’s what it actually was — could have been in Sweetwater’s possession for any amount of time. There was no rational basis for believing that the image the techs had found would have any connection to Cora’s apartment.
A dead end. But the image was all he had. Either his conjectures were on the point or they weren’t. So give it a shot. Let’s assume that “seco” and “Timp” form part of a return address. An address somewhere in the United States, since the techs seemed to believe that the stamp was American. This was all pretty slim, but it was something to run with, the only thing he had. He dug out a CD of Microsoft Streets and Trips and looked up every city, town, and county name in the continental United States that began with those letters.
He started with s, e, c, and o.
He expected to get fifty variations.
To his relief and delight, he got only one.
Seco, Kentucky
How about “Timp”?
His luck was holding. He got four.
Timp Ball Park, Utah
Timpie, Utah
Timpas, Colorado
Timpanagos River Park, Utah
All right.
What do we have? We have a Native American Indian. Let’s agree that his real name is unknown right now. We can reasonably assume that he has a background of violence.
With a possible connection to the United States government.
Why do we think that?
Because he’s running around using an operational name that was at some time in the past activated by an unknown branch of the American intelligence community. Weak, weak as cold tea, but so far his guesses were turning out to be more useful than his certainties.
Note to self, thought Dalton: Find out what agency had run an op known under the code name “Sweetwater.”
We also have a fragment of pottery that the tech guys dated at around a hundred years old, possibly turned by Comanche, Apache, or Kiowa potmakers. That bit of data strengthened Dalton’s hunch that the man he was looking for was a Native American.
Possibly Kiowa or Comanche or Apache.
Timpas, Colorado, come to think of it, is Comanche territory.
Utah is largely Ute, which makes sense, since that’s why they named the place “Utah.” They also had some Yakima and Nez Percé clans. But Colorado, certainly southeastern Colorado, is definitely Comanche country, as any number of slaughtered cowboys and butchered cavalrymen could tell you, if their mouths weren’t stuffed up with two yards of prairie dirt.
Okay. A Native American male between sixty and seventy-five years of age — Dalton’s subjective but professional estimate — with a connection to the world of intelligence and possibly from one of these five places in the United States.
How about we run a LexisNexis search? Dalton typed in a search string for INTELLIGENCE and NATIVE AMERICAN and TIMP BALL PARK UTAH or TIMPIE UTAH or TIMPAS COLORADO or TIMPANAGOS RIVER PARK UTAH and SECO KENTUCKY and hit Enter.
The screen blipped and he was looking at a string of useless hits, but one of them tagged a mention in a Pueblo paper called The Colorado Miner. He punched it up and got this:
NATIVE AMERICAN WINS SILVER STAR
December 21, 1952: A Timpas, Colorado, native was awarded the prestigious Silver Star for his service with the United States Marine Corps in Korea. This native Apishapa Comanche has served with a secret intelligence unit of the USMC. The exact circumstances of his award cannot be released at this time. Even his Marine Corps name has been suppressed, since Indian intelligence operatives must operate in highly dangerous forward positions. The award was accepted in a private ceremony in Korea and word of it only reached this paper because his clan sister spoke of it to a reporter who later verified some of the basic details with the Public Affairs Office of the USMC. The man’s family has refused to comment.
Somebody spoke out of school, thought Micah.
Probably another member of the same Marine combat unit, perhaps another Comanche serving in the same area of operations.