Lauren wasted no time. She took one of the comfortable swivel seats and faced Summers. “We have to help Kyle.”
“We intend to,” replied Summers, with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “What do you have in mind?”
Lauren looked around at the traffic and realized the RV was doing a slow loop of the perimeter roads around the supermall. “Do you think we’re being followed? Can anyone overhear our conversation?”
“No, you’re not being followed, Agent Carson. Commander Freedman was in the burger joint when you arrived, I was watching from the security office, and our driver was roaming the area. Nothing suspicious. And no one is listening because we have jamming devices and shielding in this old buggy. Now talk to me, Lauren. Kyle Swanson is our buddy, part of our team. Tell us what we can do to help you.” Summers had decided to go the personal route, and it worked.
To Lauren Carson, Major Summers was both very competent and believable. Once she decided to trust them, the words came out in a rush: the Islamabad experience with Jim Hall and the Taliban politician, Kyle’s stern behavior in changing the entire mission on the spot to get the soldiers out, the unexpected catastrophic explosions, and then the start of the CIA inquisition and her two weeks of mandatory leave.
“A serious discrepancy has already turned up in their internal investigation. A covert bank account was cleaned out yesterday, five million dollars, based upon codes and commands known only to myself and Jim Hall. I didn’t do it, so that means that Jim did! The problem is it happened after Jim supposedly was killed. They have to blame somebody, and pointing the finger at a corpse doesn’t work. So they are leaving me to be the scapegoat.”
“The withdrawal came after the fact,” said Freedman, just to be sure of the point.
“Yes.” Lauren opened her purse. “Here’s the zinger. That was hardly the only covert account to which my old boss Jim Hall had access. He had worked for the Agency for many years, and I know of at least twenty others because he had my name on those, too. Jim never actually returned money to the general funds, and the Agency watchdogs knew it. It was already authorized and approved through proper channels, so if a couple of million was needed for some really off-the-books operation, Jim could supply it. Untraceable, with no questions asked.”
The RV continued its journey to nowhere. The parking lot at Tysons Corner could handle 165,000 vehicles, and traffic was always coming and going. Perfect civilian cover. Sybelle looked at Freedman. This CIA agent’s story, wrapped with their own timeline about how Swanson could not have been responsible for the explosions, seemed to jell. “We also think it was a setup. Your superior, Jim Hall, is feeding both you and Kyle to the wolves.”
A stricken look came across Lauren Carson’s face. “I’m going to be friggin’ executed,” she said. “I’m a loose end. Kyle is the only one I can really trust, because he knows Jim Hall even better than I do.” She unfolded a sheet of paper that listed the series of financial institutions and account numbers that she had culled from another computer workstation before leaving Langley. “I’ve got this information, but getting into those systems for confirmation and status reports is beyond my technical ability. The Agency has people who do just that kind of thing all the time.”
“So do we,” Summers told her. “Lizard, do your thing.”
Lieutenant Commander Freedman spread his fingers, like a concert pianist warming up, and ran both hands through his thick black hair. He opened the wooden cabinets along the left side of the RV and tossed out several bags of dry cereal. With the touch of what looked like a light switch, the plywood backing and single shelf folded forward to reveal a multiscreen computer center. Green dots of light indicated the power source was on. “Let me give it a try,” he said, adjusting a rolling chair into position.
ISLAMABAD
THIS WAS AS BORING as sketching. Kyle hated drawing-going into a target zone prior to a main assault and sketching everything around in complete detail in a little notebook. The observations would be molded into the other intel gathered by other means, and the attack would proceed. Drone airplanes and their sharp cameras had taken over a chunk of that overall task, but airplanes, by definition, stay in the air. Men on the ground bring a much different perspective. A pilot twiddling a joystick hundreds of miles away to guide a drone would never have the same outlook. It just took so much time, being completely hidden and still except for drawing and measuring things with lasers before you could go kill somebody. Some of the same techniques of waiting could be applied to enduring the passing time in a prison.
He popped the shirt knot twice, but without enthusiasm, just to keep the rats on their toes and awake and alert and fearful. He spoke to them. “There was this one time, guys, talk about being bored, I crawled into an abandoned building about six hundred yards from the actual home of this dude who was the big leader of a rebel force in an African country. Can’t tell you which one. Sorry about that, but it’s classified. Stayed there forty-eight hours, clicking away pictures with my Nikonos and narrating on the radio about who came, who left, their tendencies, how much security they had, when they slept, you guys know, the usual stuff. The guy thought he was safe, but I was living in his front yard…”
There was a sound outside the door, and Swanson stopped his conversation with the rodents. He had been expecting it, sooner or later, so his heart did not go into overdrive. With a squeal of metal, the grate at the bottom of the door slid open, and a plastic plate with some food and tea was passed through. The bluish green light in that brief moment was from the fluorescent lights in the long hall, which told him nothing. The grate was left open, so he was expected to eat and return the plate, two beverage containers, and plastic fork.
None of the rats had a watch. He had asked them. Now his jailers had provided the start of a feeding pattern, allowing his internal time to click to zero. Swanson began counting seconds, adjusting his thoughts to let the silent little metronome in his brain begin twitching back and forth on such a regular basis that he could do two things at once. When he picked up the plate to determine which meal of the day it was, he gave a soft laugh. No problem; it was breakfast, of a sort. The imam had been at work again, determined that Swanson would have familiar food, and Kyle thought that might have been a mistake. Instead of a regular large Pakistani breakfast, the cook had tried to prepare an American meal. Swanson had been given runny scrambled eggs, a couple of slices of charred toast slathered with honey, and a cup of sweet black tea and milk. No matter. This was survival, and he ate it all, while at the same time using a prong of the plastic fork to punch a little hole in his shirt. Then he pushed the plastic and paper back through the hole. Someone picked it up and closed the grate.
Darkness again, only this time with a difference. He worked on his timeline, his boring, tedious, glorious timeline. More than just a count, it gave him something to do, something to think about to keep his psyche engaged. The count was already up to almost ten minutes, piling higher second by second. The strike had been at evening prayers on Tuesday, so this was Wednesday morning, breakfast time. Sixty seconds to a minute. Three thousand six hundred seconds to an hour.
Swanson’s fingers had already widened the hole he had punctured in the tunic, and when the hour mark passed, he made a small rip along one edge. The shirt was now a physical clock. He could keep time, counting down to the next feeding time. It was a routine that he could do for days if necessary.
He leaned back against the wall with a sigh, gently touching the rip. One hour. There was no such thing as an indefinite mission. Each operation had an end time, and a purpose. This didn’t.
30
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
CRISP MORNING LIGHT SLANTED through the blinds covering the bullet- and soundproof windows in the private interview room on the second floor of the CIA headquarters. Despite the glare, the faces of the three investigators on the Agent Lauren Carson case were dark, betraying their emotions. Jack Pathurst, the internal investigator from the Office of Security, had a muscle twitching in his jaw. Mia Kim from Finance had a pursed mouth, as if she had eaten something sour. Team leader Mel Langdon of the Department of Operations adjusted his rimless glasses and looked over the report one more time.
“She has not returned to her home since our meeting yesterday?” Langdon asked Pathurst.
“No.” He did not say that there was nothing for her to return to. His searchers had torn the place apart-stripped out the insulation in the attic and pulled up the floorboards, sliced apart the stuffed furniture, tore down cabinets,
