Hidden Order: A Thriller (25 page)

Their next stop was a midrange men’s clothing store that specialized in business attire. Against McGee’s more flamboyant taste, Ryan picked out a cheap, off-the-rack gray suit, along with a plain white shirt, a boring tie, a belt, shoes, and a pair of dress socks.

“You got me everything but the pocket protector,” he said as she directed him toward a dressing room to put it all on.

When he stepped back out and the salesman complimented him on
the fit, Ryan had him remove the jacket. Because of his physique, it was too tight. That was not going to do for her purposes. “This isn’t a casting call for a mob movie,” she stated as she sent the salesperson to find him a bigger size.

Twenty minutes later, and with McGee costumed for his part, they paid cash for the clothing and left the store. At a coffee shop a couple of blocks away, they assembled their props and quietly went over the plan one last time.

“What if I get asked a question I can’t answer?” said McGee.

“You’re there strictly for intimidation. You don’t answer questions, you
ask
them. By the time we leave, I expect this guy to be admitting to things he did all the way back in grade school. The object of our visit is simple. We scare the hell out of him and then we give him an out.”

“But what if he talks? What if the minute we leave, he picks up the phone?”

“When you see his credenza, you’ll understand why that won’t happen.”

 • • • 

The small community bank was an hour’s drive northwest of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. Ryan parked a couple of blocks away, rather than in the bank’s parking lot, just in case anyone got suspicious and wanted to take down a description of their vehicle along with its license plate number.

It was a pleasant enough bedroom community with broad sidewalks and thick-trunked, stately trees. It looked like it was probably a nice place to raise a family.

As they walked toward the bank, Ryan wished she had brought along an umbrella. It was warm and the cloud cover was thickening. They were going to get a heck of a thunderstorm at some point.
Probably as soon as we’re ready to leave the bank
.

The air-conditioning hit them full blast as soon as they stepped into the lobby and was a welcome relief from the heavy humidity outside. With McGee in tow, Ryan approached the receptionist.

“Good morning. We’re here to see Erick Stevenson, please.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but please tell him Lydia Ryan is here to see him.”

The receptionist smiled and picked up her phone. “If you’d like to take a seat right over there, I’ll see if he’s available.”

Ryan had eyeballed Stevenson’s vehicle in the parking lot, so she had no doubt that he was in. She also had no doubt that he would see her. Durkin had chosen well when he had recruited the small-town banker. Erick Stevenson loved feeling like he was a part of the CIA. No matter what any members of the team had ever needed, he had always dropped everything to take care of them.

Within seconds of the receptionist hanging up her phone and telling them that Mr. Stevenson would be out shortly, they could see him coming down the hallway. He was a middle-aged man with a round, ruddy face and a stomach that hung well over his belt buckle. He was wearing a tie but no jacket and had a grin on his face that stretched from ear to ear. He was obviously very pleased to see Ryan. That wouldn’t last long.

“Lydia,” he exclaimed as he crossed the reception area. “How wonderful to see you again. How have you been?”

Ryan set the tone immediately. “Erick, this is Robert McGee. I wonder if we could go back to your office where we can talk.”

McGee neither smiled, nor offered his hand, but simply stood there with a stack of bulging file folders under his arm.

Stevenson looked him up and down and sensing something was wrong turned back to Ryan and said, “Sure. Of course. Please follow me.”

After they had been seated and he had offered his visitors coffee, the banker closed his office door and sat down behind his desk. “Wow. It really has been a while. And you cut your hair. It looks great.”

“Erick, I don’t mean to be rude, but we have some pretty serious business to discuss with you.”

“I understand,” he said, somewhat deflated. “What is it I can do for you?”

Ryan looked at McGee and then at the banker. “If you decide at any time during this process that you would like to have counsel present, we’ll of course understand, but that means everything will stop
and we will have to set a time for you and your attorney to come to CIA headquarters.”

Stevenson’s eyes turned into a pair of saucers. “My
attorney
? Why would I need an attorney? What the hell is this all about?”

“What this is about, Mr. Stevenson,” McGee lied, “is a substantial sum of money that has gone missing.”

“Erick, if you come clean and return the money, this will go a lot easier on you,” Ryan offered.

The banker couldn’t tell which of them to focus on and his eyes swept back and forth between them as he tried to decide whom to address. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What money?”

McGee glanced past Stevenson to the credenza filled with family photos. There were pictures from the beach, fishing trips, camping, sailing, even shots from Cub Scouts with Stevenson, apparently a den leader or scoutmaster of some sort, in uniform.

“There’s money missing from the Caring International account, Mr. Stevenson.”

“I’m sorry,” said the banker. “Who are you again?”

“Mr. McGee,” Ryan stated, “is on loan to the Agency from the attorney general’s office.”

“But I didn’t do anything. Why are you here asking me questions?”

McGee pulled out a manila file folder stuffed with printouts he had fished out of the dumpster behind the office supply store. Across the outside of the folder in capital letters he had written
CONFIDENTIAL CASE FILE: STEVENSON, ERICK
along with the name of his position and the name of the bank. He held it up so that Stevenson could see the writing, but not the documents he was flipping through inside.

Care International was the name of the NGO front organization that Ryan’s political destabilization team had operated under. Knowing the CIA in general and Phil Durkin in particular, if the program had been moved to the dark side, she doubted they would have built a whole new cover for it. They would have changed passwords and authorizations, but probably not much of anything else. She had come to see Stevenson in order to put that assumption to the test. If the funds were still flowing, that would jump their investigation to an entirely new level.

“Erick, listen,” said Ryan. “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Of course I haven’t done anything wrong,” he insisted. “I’m a patriot. I don’t steal from you guys. I’m here because I want to help you. I want to help my country.”

Although she didn’t let it show, that remark was like having a little knife slipped between her ribs and up into her heart. Stevenson was a good man. She didn’t like doing this to him, but people’s lives were on the line, including her own.

“Then the sooner you cooperate with us, the sooner we can get out of here,” she replied.

“I am cooperating.”

“Then tell me why funds are missing from the Caring International account.”

“Because I was told to bring that account down to a certain level.”

Ryan looked at him. “Told by whom?”

“Durkin.”

“Why would he tell you to do that?”

Stevenson put up his hands. “I provide the accounts and I move the money as directed. That’s it. Everything else is on your end. Speaking of which, something’s not making sense about all of this.”

“What’s not making sense?” she asked.

“You,”
the banker replied. “Your name was removed from everything. Durkin called me himself and told me to scrub you from all of it. He said you were moving on to a new position or something. Said he wasn’t going to be working with you anymore. That’s why I was so surprised to see you. If there’s a problem with the money, why didn’t I get a call from Durkin?”

Ryan, who had come up with the ruse of misappropriated funds, had thought the banker might take this road, but McGee was way ahead of her.

“Ah, yes. Mr. Durkin,” McGee said, cocking an eyebrow as he removed another file, this time with
DURKIN, PHILLIP
written across the front of it. “Mr. Stevenson, how long have you been conducting transactions with Mr. Durkin?”

The banker was thrown off balance and was suddenly nervous again. “I don’t know. About six years?”

“Are you asking me, Mr. Stevenson,” McGee stated. “Or are you telling me?”

“I guess I’m telling you. That is to say, I
am
telling you.”

“During those six years, did you ever assist Mr. Durkin in setting up a personal offshore account for his own use in Grand Cayman?”

“No, of course not.”

“Zurich?”

“No.”

“Andorra?”

“I never did any private, personal banking for him.”

McGee ran his finger down an imaginary list in his Durkin file. “So no accounts then in Gibraltar, Grenada, Belize, or Vanuatu, either?”

“My God, he’s got that many personal accounts?”

“There’s a lot of money missing, Mr. Stevenson.”

The banker turned to Ryan and implored her. “Lydia, you have to trust me. Whatever money is missing, I had nothing to do with it. The Caring International account was drawn down and a new account was started.”

“New account for whom?” she asked.

“The same team. The only name I left off was yours.”

Bingo
. “Did it ever occur to you that Durkin might not have been authorized to ask you to do that?”

Stevenson gaped at her. “Lydia, you guys came to
me
. I didn’t come to
you
. I manage a small community bank. One day a couple of CIA agents walk in, I think they’re here for a small business loan, and suddenly I’m being asked to serve my country all without leaving my office.” He paused for a moment. “My wife warned me something like this might happen. What have I gotten myself into?”

“Big trouble. That’s what,” McGee replied.

“Hold on,” Ryan said, intervening. “If what Erick is telling us is true, then the investigation should focus on Durkin.”

“It is true. It is,” the banker stated emphatically.

McGee looked skeptical and remained silent.

“What name is the new account under?” she asked.

Stevenson turned to his computer and brought it up. “They kept the same NGO structure, just changed the name to Hands of Peace International.”

“When did the account last receive funding?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Credit cards, wire transfers, it’s all feeding into that account?”

The banker punched a couple more keys. “Through a series of branch accounts, yes.”

Ryan looked at McGee. It was now time to give Stevenson a way out. “I think we know now how Durkin has been hiding the money,” she said.

“That doesn’t change Mr. Stevenson’s involvement,” he replied.

The banker started to protest, but Ryan held up her hand to quiet him. Turning to her partner, she said, “Bob, I think Erick has proven he’s willing to cooperate with us.”

McGee tapped the Durkin file against his thigh as he pretended to mull it over. “That might not be good enough.”

“Not be good enough?”
Stevenson exclaimed. “What else do you want from me?”

“My biggest problem, Mr. Stevenson,” he responded, “is your safety.”

“My safety?”

“And your family’s.”

The banker’s eyes had gone wide again. “Why would we be in any danger?”

“Suffice it to say that since we began our investigation, banking in some parts of the world has become particularly dangerous. Especially if Phil Durkin is your client.”

“Oh my God. What am I supposed to do? What about my wife and my children? What if Durkin calls me? What do I tell him?”

“If Durkin calls you,” Ryan instructed, “just act natural. Handle whatever he asks for and that’s all. Be professional and be polite.”

“He’ll know I know something.”

“No, he won’t. Relax.”

“And my family? How are you going to protect us?”

“The only way we can help you,” said McGee, “is if you help us.”

The banker opened his arms. “I’ll give you anything you want. What is it?”

An hour later, they walked out of the bank with a cardboard banker’s box, which contained a paper trail a mile long.

“Now what?” McGee asked as they climbed into the Mustang and the first drops of rain began to fall on the windshield.

“Now that we know who’s putting the meat in the cage,” Ryan said as she put the key in the ignition and fired up the car, “it’s time to rattle it.”

Off in the distance, there was a low growl of thunder. It was matched by the throaty growl of the Mustang as Ryan pulled away from the curb and pointed the car back toward Fort Belvoir. She had already decided what they would do next. McGee was going to like it even less than he had her idea that they shelter in place at Brenda Durkin’s house. But as dangerous as this next step was, they had been left with no other option.