Don't Order Dog (43 page)

Alex Murstead ran through the private hanger inside Reagan National Airport towards the sleek white Bombardier Challenger powering up outside. Waiting for him at the doorway to the tarmac were two of his SOG operatives, both of the powerfully-built men dressed in plain clothes. Like Alex, the only indication of their paramilitary status was the handgun holstered to their belts.

“Let’s go. I’ll explain on the way,” he said as they marched out across the tarmac and boarded the 8-seater jet. A few minutes later, as the plane’s wheels lifted off the runway, Alex excused himself and called the office of the Deputy Secretary.

“What have you got?” McCarthy asked impatiently.

“I’m in route to Flagstaff.”

“And why would you be doing that?”

Alex quickly explained the letters to Jeri Halston and summarized his conversation with Preston and Connolly earlier that morning. “Based on Connolly’s interpretation of the statements in the letters,” he concluded, “I believe our terrorist is on his way to Flagstaff to kill the woman he’s been writing. I intend to be there when he arrives.”

“So after killing several top scientists employed by a major energy company, you actually believe this man is going to fly onto US soil and risk his life to kill a bartender?” McCarthy asked skeptically.

“Yes ma’am.”

“And just what exactly has this young woman done to deserve that kind of attention?”

Alex hesitated before speaking. “I don’t know, Deputy Secretary, but you’re presuming this guy needs a reason in the first place.”

“He didn’t just pick that girl out of the blue, Agent Murstead,” McCarthy replied reproachfully. “Nothing this man has done so far appears to be random. I doubt his choice with this bartender is any different. What time will you be landing in Flagstaff?”

“My team and I will be on the ground in three hours, ma’am.”

“How many men do you have with you?”

“Two.”

“And how many men were in Amsterdam when you lost him?” McCarthy asked matter-of-factly.

“Six,” Alex replied.

“Then I suggest you get more men.”

“I have four more agents en route from San Diego, Deputy Secretary,” Alex replied tersely. “If he or any of his friends shows up, we’ll get them.”

“I’m sure y
ou will,” the Deputy Secretary said earnestly. “You know what’s at stake if you don’t.”

Alex didn’t respond to
the Deputy Secretary’s threat.

“Call me when you’re onsite, Agent.”

“Yes ma’am.” Alex hung up the phone and peered out the window at the snow-covered landscape falling away beneath him.

∞
 

Jeri stared at Chip in shock. “What the hell is going on, Chip?”
she asked breathlessly from behind the counter. “Why… why did he do that?”

Chip drained his beer and sat back down at the bar. He sat quietly, his eyes fixed on the empty pint glass in front of him as he collected his thoughts. A moment later he looked up and gave Jeri a weak smile. “I suppose all this calls for an explanation,” he replied. “But first I could use a drink.”

Jeri picked up a clean pint glass and started towards the beer tap.

“I’ll take a scotch instead,” Chip said quietly. “Neat, if you don’t mind.”

Jeri nodded and grabbed a bottle of their best single malt scotch. Her hands shook nervously as she poured the drink. When she was done, she placed the glass and the bottle of scotch on the counter in from of him.

Chip picked up the drink and threw back most of it in a single gulp. “Thank you,” he said, his voice raspy from the strong liquor. “Alright, time for a story.” He leaned forward against the bar and leveled his ice-blue eyes on Jeri. “As you’ve probably started to realize by now, I haven’t been entirely forthcoming about my background. The truth is, I
am
a retired archeology professor. But that wasn’t my only profession. My earlier profession was a bit more covert than that, though no doubt far less appealing. You see, a long time ago, long before you were even crawling around in your diaper, I was an agent for the National Security Agency.”

He paused and threw back the rest of his scotch. 

“They recruited me my final year at Princeton. Not that I required any hard sell. After all, it was the
NSA
– the most respected intelligence gathering agency in the world. For a patriotic young math nerd who’d grown up with a healthy fear of nuclear war and communism, joining the NSA was the opportunity of a lifetime. I walked in on my first day full of naïve ideals and grand delusions of fixing the world. But then, ideals are like everything else, Jeri. They evolve with time.

In my first year of service I was a code-breaker. Almost everyone started out as a code breaker. But I had certain abiliti
es that were quickly recognized, and over the next three years I was promoted steadily up the chain of command. Along the way, I came to realize the agency I admired so much was built largely on two unspoken principles – the first being that if the truth, once discovered, wasn’t advantageous, it could be
altered
. The second was an even more dangerous derivative of the first… the principle that enemies of the state were not defined by any moral rule, but simply by the report your superiors chose to write.” He gave her a wide smile. “For the few of us lucky enough to work there, it was, in almost every way, the perfect place to play God.”     

“But then something happened,” Chip continued, his expression turning serious. “One day I was given a new assignment. Nothing out of the ordinary
, just a standard domestic infiltration assignment. A
creep and sweep
job as we called it back then. The target was a young journalist with the Washington Post. Of course, that wasn’t unusual either. Journalists were a common target for agencies like the NSA back then. They still are. In many ways they’re the private sector equivalent of government agents – they investigate problems, they thread together facts, and, of course, they have confidential sources.”

“
I didn’t think twice about the assignment before undertaking it. Nor was I surprised when, as was usually the case with reporters, the target came up clean. The only thing even remotely suspicious was a file full of financial statements I found in his apartment that showed large amounts of money inside coded client accounts. But when I had them analyzed by our financial specialists, they also came out clean. Several weeks of wire-taps, records reviews, background checks and even me personally shadowing the target, and nothing. And trust me… I knew what I was doing back then. If my target came out clean, the target
was
clean.”

“So what did you do?” Jeri asked, watching him carefully. She slowly edged her way back towards her corner behind the counter.

“I submitted my report,” Chip replied with a shrug as he stared at his drink. “And assumed that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. Two days later I was sitting in my office when a messenger clerk dropped a file on my desk from my supervisor. I read it and immediately realized it wasn’t intended for me, but for the Director of the NSA himself. You see, back then
everything
was encrypted, even the communication protocols for delivering files by the messenger clerks. Apparently the messenger had read the delivery protocol wrong and mistakenly sent the file back to me, its original author. But when I opened the file and examined it, it was obvious the report inside wasn’t mine. Someone had completely rewritten it. But in this version, my target wasn’t clean. In fact, in this new fictionalized report, my young Washington Post journalist was as dirty as they come.”  

Chip grabbed the bottle of scotch and refilled his glass.

“Espionage, coercion, subterfuge… there were enough fabricated accusations in the report to convict him ten times over. And in case you weren’t aware, Jeri, agencies like the NSA effectively operate outside of the law. I knew once that damn document landed on the desk of the Director, my journalist was a dead man. Regardless of what three years in the agency had taught me, I just couldn’t live with that. So I made what you might call a
career-altering decision
. I placed a copy of my original report in the messenger’s file and destroyed the false version.” He stared solemnly at Jeri. “Then I walked out the front door of the agency to find the man I’d just risked my career saving.”

“Who was he?” Jeri asked as she slipped onto her stool in the corner. She waited for Chip to look away before discreetly reaching into her bag hanging from the counter behind her.

“His name was James H. Stone,” Chip replied as he picked up his glass and threw back another slug of scotch.

“Wait… what?” Jeri replied, immediately recognizing the name that was written on her father’s book. “That doesn’t make any sense. That’s the name–” 

“The name of your father, Jeri,” Chip said calmly. “His
original
name at least.”

Jeri froze
and looked at him suspiciously. “You knew my father?”

Chip nodded his head. “I did.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. My father was an economist, not a reporter.”

“I’m sorry to be the one telling you this Jeri, but your father had a life you and your mother were never to
ld about,” Chip replied bluntly. “And for good reason. The night I walked out of the agency, I went straight to his apartment in Georgetown and knocked on his door. When your father unlocked the door I stormed in, pointed my gun at him and asked why the NSA wanted him killed. He looked at me calmly and said ‘I take it you’re not here to kill me.’ Then he walked into the kitchen and poured me a drink.” He paused and looked at the bottle of scotch sitting in front of him. “A nice scotch like this if I recall. Anyway… after that, your father and I had a long chat.”

“What did you two talk about?” Jeri asked.

“The truth.”

“And what exactly
is
the truth, Chip?”

Chip picked up the bottle and waved it at Jeri. “Care for a drink first?”

Jeri looked at him for a moment before shrugging dejectedly. “Sure, why not.”

She stood up from her stool, quickly hiding the item from her bag behind her apron as Chip refilled the glass. She moved slowly to his end of the counter, watching him warily before picking up the scotch and draining it in a single gulp. Chip watched her with a sympathetic smile.

“I’m sorry… I know this is more than you were expecting to deal with today.”

Jeri slapped the empty glass onto the bar and shook her head.
“Continue your story.” 

“Oh yes… the truth,” Chip said, running his hand through his hair. “Your father was a brilliant man, Jeri. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who understood the way the world works as well as he did. When I first told him I was an NSA agent and revealed that I’d been assigned to keep him under surveillance for nearly a month, he wasn’t at all surprised by the agency’s interest in him. Nor was he surprised when I told him about the falsified intelligence file that accused him of being a spy.”

“If you really knew my father, then you know he was a good man,” Jeri replied defensively. “So why would anyone want to destroy him?

“That’s exactly what I asked him,” Chip replied as he refilled his glass of scotch. “And his answer changed my life.”

A cellphone began ringing.

“Excuse me for a moment.”
Chip said as he abruptly pulled out his phone. “Are we ready?” he asked impatiently. A moment later he nodded his head. “Okay, tell him five more minutes. We’re going to have guests soon.” He clicked off the phone and dropped it back into his pocket.

“Who was that?” Jeri asked nervously.

“Max,” he replied calmly. “He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“I’m guessing he won’t be alone.”

Chip smiled. “Probably not.”

Jeri stepped back from the counter. “Okay, Chip…
enough. I need to know what the hell’s going on here. There’s a dead federal agent lying next to your chair, and you just told me you’ve spent the last year lying to me about who you really are.” She reached beneath her apron and pulled out the handgun she’d taken from the buried container. “I’m sorry, but lately I’ve lost trust in just about everyone – including you. So here’s the deal.” She raised the handgun and pointed it steadily at his chest. “You’ve got whatever time is left before that giant murdering muscle-head and whoever else walks through that door to finish your story and get to the truth. Or we’re going to have a very awkward situation to sort out.”

Chip looked at the gun with a slight grin before continuing.

“The night I confronted your father and asked him why the NSA wanted to destroy him, he gave me a very direct answer. He told me was wrapping up a corruption story he’d spent the better part of two years investigating. A
big
corruption story. Your father was about to expose widespread misconduct within a large American investment firm that went all the way to the top – executives and board members alike – and, once published, would most likely prompt a full Federal investigation. But there was a complication. One of your father’s sources inside the firm revealed that the company was managing several large pension funds for the Federal Government, including agencies like the FBI and the NSA. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Now this by itself was entirely legal, but as your father’s inside source revealed, those funds were also getting special attention in the form of
privileged information
, which definitely was not legal. Of course, the people overseeing these pension funds on the government side knew all about this, but they weren’t going to say a thing. On the contrary; they were making far too much money to ruin the arrangement – or take any chances. When they found out your father was nosing around, they immediately got nervous. So they decided to find out just how much he knew.”