bombing of a clandestine CIA office in London dedicated to stopping illicit transnational activities. His office was part of the Special Projects branch – which, as you know, does the work that even the CIA is not supposed to discuss.’ The mention of Special Projects caused a bit of a stir in the room: glances exchanged, water sipped, eyebrows raised. ‘These days Special Projects is specifically interested in any criminal, non-terrorist activities that can affect American national security.’
He paused; they stared. Waiting. He tapped on the laptop button and a picture of Sam Capra appeared on the screen. Brownish-blond-haired, green-eyed, the lean face of a runner, mid-twenties, boyish. ‘Capra survived only because he walked out of the office before it was bombed, however, and was regarded by the CIA as a likely traitor due to financial irregularities committed by his wife, and the inconvenient fact that his pregnant wife had told him to leave the office right before it was destroyed. Capra escaped from the CIA’s custody, went searching for his wife, infiltrated our group in Amsterdam and disrupted the assassination plots.’
The nine waited while the Watcher took a long drink of water. He studied their faces. Most of them would not have been recognized by any government official, any police department, any journalist, any intelligence service. They were, for the most part, so ordinary. Frighteningly ordinary. The person who might sit next to you on the subway, or stand behind you in the grocery store line, or drop off their child at the same time you did at school. They came from around the world, yet they all seemed to have that same suburban sameness. It was, the Watcher thought, a superior camouflage. Yet they had come so close to delivering a history-changing death blow to American stability, to bringing the country to a level of chaos that promised an erosion of the rule of law and, in turn, enormous profit.
Look how far we’ve come since the early days, the Watcher thought. A tremendous lesson could be learned from a tremendous failure. They were unbloodied and unbowed. ‘You will note that we lost our main CIA contact. He was killed in action by Capra. We have since lost two other low-level contacts I… recruited inside the CIA. They’ve been arrested. Fortunately we did not deal face to face with them, and they cannot betray us.’
‘So right now, we have no eyes inside the CIA?’ the Banker asked.
‘We have an eye or two that never blinks.’ He smiled. Let them know he still had information feeds inside the agency, but not exactly what kinds. ‘I do not know if they can see as well, or as far.’ The Watcher cleared his throat. He could have shared a file two inches thick on Sam Capra’s life with his compatriots, but he’d decided not to play up the man’s importance. ‘We do, however, have leverage over Sam Capra. We have his infant child.’
‘Children,’ sniffed the Banker. She was a Chinese woman, petite, thin, with a lovely face that could have sold cosmetics by the tonnage. She made a frown, as though the word held a sourness.
‘Control,’ countered the General.
‘Control of a puppet with no strings for us to pull. While we have control over his kid, there’s no way the CIA will let him close to any information that is useful to us,’ the Diplomat said. He spoke with a deep baritone, a South African accent, hands tented before his face. ‘I say we kill him. Show that we cannot be defied.’
‘Sam Capra,’ the Watcher said, ‘doesn’t know that our group has steered him from six years ago, that we have guided his life as surely as a hand on a rudder. We made him into what he is, not the CIA. The setback with his wife was… unfortunate. But he only knows us as a name that means nothing, a vague threat. He doesn’t know who we are, he doesn’t know how we came to be.’
‘He has damaged us like no one else has,’ the General said. ‘I truly prefer that he be dead.’
‘We should not be killing CIA agents unless absolutely necessary,’ the Historian said. He was a heavy-set Russian, head shaved bald, muscles thick under the black of his tailored suit. ‘It provokes attention. It is bad for business. He’s no longer with the CIA, he is useless to us. He cannot hurt us. He cannot find us. He dies at our hand, the CIA will be coming to investigate.’
‘I agree,’ several of the others murmured. The Watcher scanned their faces, taking the temperature of their reactions. The Banker stared at him and he nodded at her and said, ‘You have a thought to share?’
‘Yes. You wanted us to finance your ability to spy on very specific people. I want to know how much of that ability has been compromised by this failure.’
‘The whole reason we were able to attempt a project of this scale was because of me. Because I have made it easy for us to access information that is critically damaging to some of the most vitally placed people in the world and use it to force them to do what we need. We had a failure. It doesn’t change the fact that I – I mean we – now own several people in key positions in government and business around the world.’
‘So. You want to mount another project, using your resources.’ The Banker’s tone mocked him. In another time he would have slapped her across the face, torn her silk suit from her body, taught her who was master. His jaw quavered. Those days were done. Instead he nodded gravely. ‘Yes. But first I want to clean up the mess that Sam Capra made for us, but I want you to understand why it’s a risk.’
The Banker nodded.
‘We had an asset in Amsterdam, a computer hacker who had helped me with infiltrating the laptops of our targets so that we had a free view of the classified information that came into their systems. Nic ten Boom. He’s dead, killed by Capra. There is a loose end there that we have only now discovered.’
‘What? Who?’ the General asked.
‘A young Chinese graduate student, a computer hacker named Jin Ming, was present at a shootout in a Rotterdam machinists’ shop that was owned by the smuggling ring we used in Amsterdam. He was Nic ten Boom’s hacking assistant, if you will. Ming is in the hospital, recovering from his wounds.’
‘The assistant may know nothing.’
‘He may not. I would very much like to know if he is going to be a problem. We know that Nic ten Boom was most ambitious.’ He had to be careful here. ‘In checking my own computer’s logs, I found out that ten Boom was trying to learn more about us, and about our organization when he died. We hired him to spy for us, but he was starting to spy on us.’
‘Then I’m glad he’s dead, and you should hire with a more careful eye,’ the Banker said.
‘Nic was attracted by success. He wanted to move up the ladder.’ The Watcher shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem to realize we require success before promotion.’
‘Kids today are lazy,’ the General said.
‘Everyone else involved in the Amsterdam operation is dead, either killed by Capra or by one of our people, Edward, who sought to minimize our risks by eliminating those who could identify him. Edward is dead.’
There was no sentimentality about the death of a hireling.
‘I did not know until now that this young man, Ming, was alive. He was grabbed by the CIA from an internet cafe, then we assume Ming gave them the Rotterdam address. They took him in when they raided our smuggling operation and Ming was shot. Apparently both our side and the CIA left him for dead. He is in an Amsterdam hospital, under police guard.’
‘So have him killed.’ The Banker gave a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘I can assure you, if there is a surfeit of anything in the world, it’s Chinese grad students.’
‘I will. But why I’ve told you all this is because it’s all part of a bigger picture. We have shaped Sam Capra, over the years, like he was made of clay. And I don’t intend to let that wheel stop spinning until he is molded in just the way we need. The time has come. I have thought of a way in which Mr Capra can be invaluable to us.’
‘Because we have his child,’ the Banker said. ‘You just got a new pawn on your chessboard, darling.’ She actually smiled at him.
He did not like her changing his metaphor. ‘You have to seize what advantages you can,’ the Watcher said. He felt the tension in his chest begin to loosen. At any moment any of the others would have been in their rights to call a vote on his life. They hadn’t.
‘The CIA will never trust him while we have his child. Ever,’ the General said.
‘Oh, I know. I intend to take full advantage of that. It’s not like there’s a surplus of highly trained CIA operatives on the market. And most of them would never consider working for us.’
‘But he will,’ the Banker said.
The Watcher nodded. ‘Yes. He will.’ He was going to get to live another day, he decided.
3
