“I agree,” Connor said.
“Our national security can’t be put on a litmus test of political correctness, nor can it be filtered through bias,” Thompson said. “We follow the evidence wherever it takes us. That’s what you’d like to do, right?”
For the first time since leaving his office at Langley, Connor felt a surge of excitement. Regardless of how outlandish this entire situation appeared, the mysterious men in the overpriced black suits made a pretty good argument. Connor couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more than track down Hakimi and nail him to the wall.
“That’s right.”
“Excellent.” Thompson tapped a key on the table’s mirrored surface, and the screens went dark. “You’re being transferred.”
Connor uncrossed his arms. “Wait—transferred?”
Richards grinned. “Demoted, actually. Don’t worry, your pay will remain the same, and once you’re committed and finish your first assignment, you’ll be tracking to a higher pay schedule. Your agency credit card will debit from a new account—one of ours.”
Thompson keyed another command, and Connor’s CIA file reappeared, with his current assignment and position highlighted in red. A few more keystrokes changed his title from Counterintelligence Threat Analyst to Support Integration Officer, with ‘TEMP’ in small caps next to it.
“It’s done. You’re now a deployed SIO,” Thompson said. “With a field position, under a section chief who doesn’t exist. As far as the agency is concerned, you’re being transferred to a classified remote posting. We’ll keep you posted there until you decide whether this”—he motioned around the office—“is what you want to do.”
“I still don’t know exactly what this means,” Connor said.
“It means you’ll be able to have a real effect on important things. You know, what you left Spec Ops for,” Richards said. “Saving lives. Protecting the country.”
“But why me?” Connor asked. “I’m sure you have other operators with language skills. Most of us who’ve been in the sandbox have some Dari or Pashto or Arabic drilled into us.”
Thompson pointed at him. “Because you were the one who followed up on the lead. The only one who pushed to get the intel.”
“That could’ve been anyone. It just happened that the call was forwarded to my inbox and not someone else’s.”
“You followed up,” Richards said. “You could’ve just let it go. Even after that dickhead Pennington told you to drop it, you didn’t. You kept going. Hell, you went to Japan on your own dime, for Christ’s sake.”
“An unapproved move, I’d like to add,” Thompson said.
“That was a dumb move,” Connor admitted. “Damn near got myself killed.”
Straight-faced, Richards said, “But you didn’t.”
Thompson laughed. “That was a pretty legit piece of work, though. You really took that asshole down hard.”
Connor shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice. It was either kill him or he was going to kill me. And it got me nowhere. I didn’t get what I needed.”
“You didn’t,” Thompson said, “but we did.” He tapped another key, and Connor’s file was replaced by a grid of video images. They were dark, but Connor immediately recognized them for what they were: the security camera footage from the salvage ship.
“Holy crap.”
The videos played, showing the same salvage operation from multiple angles. Connor stepped closer as the remains of the fighter jet were hauled across the gap between the two ships. One feed showed the bow of the second ship, and when lightning flashed, the letters painted on its side were clear as day.
“Imperial Gift,” Connor read aloud.
“It’s registered out of Taiwan,” Thompson said. “Departed twelve days ago, bound for San Francisco. I doubt it’ll land there, though.
“How did you get this?” Connor asked, turning back to Thompson and pointing a thumb at the recording. “We couldn’t even get a FISA for this. Hell, I was turned down before I submitted the request.”
Richards laughed. “A FISA? You’re still thinking like an agency lackey. We aren’t looking to put this guy behind bars. We don’t need to justify where we get the information from. We just take it.”
“You hacked a foreign company’s computer system? That’s illegal.”
“You’ve got to stop thinking in those terms,” Richard said. “Legal, illegal, that’s all gray area to us. We’re not going to prosecute anyone, and no one’s coming after us. We don’t have an internal affairs section looking to catch us up on a procedural complaint or upper management breathing down our necks about a pissed-off senator. We don’t have to abide by a policy manual or regulations thought up by a bureaucrat in an office somewhere who doesn’t otherwise know dick about what we do. We just do what’s necessary to get the job done, always keeping in mind that what we do must be for the greater good.”
“It’s hard to believe you don’t fall under any kind of oversight at all,” Connor said. “It feels like I’ve been in the minors my whole life and have now just been called up to the big leagues.”
“This isn’t the big leagues, Connor,” Thompson said. “We’re in a league all our own.”
“So, what—are we really like James Bond?”
Richards smiled. “James Bond is a fictional character. We’re the real deal.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Okay, so now we go find the ship?” Connor asked. “It could be anywhere.”
“Agreed. And there’s no telling whether or not they moved the bomb from that ship to another one,” Thompson said.
“Which is probably what they did,” Richards added.
“And they’ll almost certainly need to work on it off-ship,” Thompson said. “It’s been under salt water a really long time. That tends to mess with things made of metal. Our experts figure it’ll take at least a few days for someone to extract the fissionable material, rebuild the casing, and establish a working trigger. There aren’t an awful lot of nuclear scientists who would be willing to work on a project like this.”
“That’s good for us,” Connor said. “If they’re bringing the nuke in through the ports, then at least the radiation detectors should let us know where. Those detectors will notice if someone’s hidden a nuke in a freight carrier, right?”
Richards
