Incitement (24 page)

“Still, there’s been no indication yet that the plug will be pulled,” Brewer reminded him.

“It’s already been agreed at the highest levels,” came the reassurance. “All that’s required is to provide the administration with the appropriate opportunity. The
ceasefire we’ve discussed will serve. They’ll rush to issue an announcement of the Plan’s suspension.”

“Suspension implies temporary,” Brewer pointed out.

“That’s simply an exercise in face-saving, it won’t be relaunched. I doubt a similar strategy will be contemplated again in our lifetime.”

“Excellent. Alright, all other loose ends are well in hand. Excluding Larsen, the other participants who constitute possible threats can be handled within the week.”

“With no danger of Larsen being alerted?”

“None whatsoever,” Brewer answered confidently. “We deliberately structured the operations so that he was provided with a completely new team each time out. When the mission
was over he never saw them again.” Brewer’s companion did not appear to be quite convinced by his certainty, so he added, “Tuur was a perfect example. Once you alerted me of his
indiscretions, he’d been taken care of within seventy-two hours, and Larsen’s still none the wiser.”

“How do you think Wallace is going to react when it starts grinding to a halt?”

“He’ll be relieved to get as far away from the whole mess as he can. He’s lost the stomach for his vendetta and, once you arrange for Larsen to be dealt with, he’ll have
the perfect excuse to drop it. I’m still not convinced we shouldn’t just get rid of him too.”

“All in good time, if he doesn’t pose an immediate danger, I’d rather wait. We’re already making a lot of moves and he’s still got some very powerful connections,
why take an unnecessary risk by alerting them?”

“That about wraps everything up then!” said Brewer, preparing to say goodbye.

“Not quite. There may be one more person we need to consider.”

“Who?”

“A DEA agent, Diane Mesi, who’s approached the Agency for help. She’s looking at the possibility that the conflict is being orchestrated by a third party.”

“I thought you said the investigations were being managed. How did this happen? Jesus, how much does she know? Who has she been talking to?”

“Take it easy. She’s in a minority of one, isolated and a long way from figuring out what’s going on. If I’m correct, she’s heading in entirely the wrong
direction.”

“How can we be sure? Shouldn’t she be dealt with as a precaution?”

“The situation’s being watched closely. If at any stage it seems more prudent to handle her, we’ll know.”

After Brewer had been pacified a little more, they finished up the meeting and he headed back to his waiting limousine. By contrast, his companion, deciding it would be a sin to waste the
glorious weather by returning to the office immediately, started another leisurely circuit of the park.

She pushed herself back from the desk, stood up and tried to stretch the day’s tension from her shoulders. Another long frustrating day was coming to an end. Any sense of
momentum generated after her visit to Tom Hughes at the CIA had almost totally dissipated. Mesi had spent countless hours talking to the various police officers responsible for the investigations
of the attacks on Alliance resources but had gotten nowhere. There had been no evidence of involvement by any of the first group of operatives whom Tom had identified and she was now working her
way through a second batch. Meanwhile Tom had been equally unsuccessful in turning anything up from a series of interviews with personnel from the various stations under his control. She knew that
a lot of investigations succeeded through this kind of tedious, repetitive investigative work but it was becoming difficult to keep her hopes alive. Tuur’s death had been a real body blow.
Had he been alive perhaps he could have worked with Tom to learn Lorcy’s real identity. That one breakthrough might have been all they needed. Wearily, she walked over to the water fountain
and splashed some cold water on her face.

Her lack of progress had only encouraged Samuels in believing he had been right all along. She still found it hard to understand why he had such a preference for believing that it was a
straightforward war between the Kosovars and the Alliance. Yes, her theory meant they still had work to do to discover what had kicked off the conflict, but look at the alternative. If this was
just a bloody transatlantic crime war then how did you even begin to go about stopping it? At least a third party provocateur, if identified, might be neutralised.

She looked at her watch and saw it was after eleven o’clock. More than sixteen hours in the office. She should really head home: some sleep and time away might help. She mulled it over and
decided to give it another half hour before calling it a day. She decided to put Tom’s folders to one side and try a change of approach; she couldn’t bear to trawl through another file
for the time being. She took out a sheet of blank paper, turned her back on the computer and started randomly writing facts about the investigation, possible theories, ways to progress, whatever
came to mind. At first, all it accomplished was to relax her a little, limber up mental muscles fatigued from hours of poring over documentation. But then something gradually started to emerge.

None of the crime scenes had supplied anything other than the indications of Kosovar involvement. She was convinced this had been left deliberately, meaning the perpetrators had successfully
avoided leaving any real indication of their identity. If this kind of professionalism was a constant throughout all of their activities, the investigation was doomed to fail. However, what had
been obvious, especially after speaking to Tuur, was that the Mexican operation had required good advance intelligence. Tom and she had dedicated a lot of time to finding people who might have
contributed to it. But due to the fact that she was the only full-time person on the investigation, they had pursued the intelligence angle solely by looking for likely candidates in Tom’s
files. At the edge of her consciousness, she began to realise there was another route to explore. It was a long shot but worth a try. Was there a chance that even one of the reconnaissance phases
of any operation had not been performed to the same standard of professionalism as the subsequent attacks? If so, a trail may have been left. A trail she could follow.

She spent some time trying to figure out a way to test this before deciding that what was required was a query that linked several distinct databases, something far beyond her own modest SQL
skills. Luckily she got on well with one of the senior data operators and he agreed to return to the office after she had apologised for disturbing him at home but stressed the how important it
was. When he arrived she explained what was required. She wanted to compile a list of people who had entered more than one of a list of specified countries up to ninety days before a number of
associated dates. The countries had all been the sites of possible operations and the dates those of the attacks. Ninety minutes later, after the query had been built and started, she headed
home.

The scope of the search meant it took the query over thirty-six hours to run. One hundred and fifteen people were found to have visited more than one country within the specified timeframes with
thirty-four visiting more than two. Mesi set about the task of running background checks on these thirty-four, which took the remainder of the working week and right through to Saturday evening.
Nineteen people worked for multinationals involved in either telecommunications or manufacturing. She put these to one side. Eleven more were students who had been travelling during their vacation
and were now back at college. These too could be disregarded for the moment. The last four were more difficult. All appeared to provide a consultancy service which was vaguely defined. It took
almost a full day to nail down what the first two did before being able to dismiss them. It was only on the third of the four that she hit pay dirt.

Richard Kates worked as a contractor for a venture capital company ostensibly looking for viable investment opportunities in emerging markets. The first thing that drew her attention was his
extended tenure in the Marines, hardly the typical background for an investment advisor. A closer look at the company he was contracted by revealed a significant proportion of its ventures were
related to either security consultancy or arms manufacture and she started to feel a stir of excitement. The company’s funding was particularly interesting. Eighty per cent of it came from a
trust, set up and run by a Washington law firm, with the remainder coming from a variety of sources. Piercing the trust would be difficult and time-consuming. Looking into the management of the
company was more easily arranged. It was at this point that the name of Andrew Brewer emerged.

She kept reminding herself not to jump to conclusions, yet the longer she looked into Brewer’s background, the more difficult it became. He had formerly worked for the CIA, spending more
than twenty years with the Agency before entering the private sector. The company he had subsequently founded, Spartan Personnel, had enjoyed a spectacular rise as a provider of lucrative defence
contracts, making a practice of beating more established competitors during the tendering phase. In addition to his role as CEO of Spartan, Brewer served on the board of a number of smaller
concerns, one of which was the venture capital company who had employed Kates. Her instinct told her that Brewer was the key she had been looking for, he had all the necessary contacts and means to
put together operations like these, but caution forced to her to consider whether she was making too much of a tenuous chain of coincidences. After all, there was so much legitimate international
business travel these days that almost any pattern might be present if you analysed flight records for long enough. Even if Kates was connected to the attacks, where was the solid basis for saying
Brewer was involved? Was she so desperate that she was resorting to leaps of pure fantasy? Maybe so, but it was not as if she had a lot of alternatives. She couldn’t leave it here; she needed
to pursue this to its conclusion.

If her hunch was correct, she needed to determine what it might mean. Andrew Brewer, affluent businessman and respected former government employee, had set the major drug powers of the world at
one another’s throats. What motive might he have? Was it to add such instability to the South American continent, where Spartan did most of its work, as to lead to a greater need for his
services? That didn’t seem plausible but she was at a loss to think of another obvious motive. She knew she would need a compelling one if she was to convince Samuels or even Marshall that
they needed to look at someone of Brewer’s reputation.

She debated whether or not to call Tom. He was sure to have known Brewer considering their similar backgrounds and he was far better placed to comment on whether her suspicions were remotely
credible. She reached for the phone and then stopped herself. It might be unfair, she thought, to put him in a position where he risked incurring the enmity of Brewer based on nothing more than her
hunch. From the little she knew of Tom and based on how hard he had worked to help so far, he might feel obliged to take the risk. No, she would wait until she had something more solid to go on.
She realised the danger that investigating Brewer posed to her own career but she couldn’t let this go. A check of the map revealed that Kates’ residence in Charles City, Virginia was
within driving distance of DC. If she drove up there the next day, she could conceivably be a step closer to Brewer before the weekend was over. After so little progress for so long the prospect
was impossible to resist.

Early Sunday morning Mesi left the city, trying not to let her excitement get the better of her. The scenery changed gradually from urban sprawl to unspoiled countryside. It
was a pity, she thought, that it took something like this to get her out of the city. Kates’ tax returns since the Marines had specified his main source of income as consultancy and a small
recreational facility he owned. The facility hosted survival days for businessmen who wanted something more than the standard paintball experience, and he lived only a few miles away from it. She
had no idea whether he would be home; for all she knew he could be travelling, but she could not call ahead. If she was to have any chance of learning something, she needed every edge she could
get. Pre-warned, he could either have time to fabricate a plausible story for his trips or simply disappear. She passed a sign indicating only five miles to Charles City and felt butterflies start
to flutter in her stomach.

Roger Abeylan looked through his field glasses at the small window, satisfied with what he saw. For three days they had shadowed Kates, waiting for the right time. The
instructions were clear: avoiding detection was paramount, the body must be disposed of so that it would never be found. Abeylan didn’t know what his target had done or who wanted him dead.
He was happy to work through a broker – ignorance provided protection. Forewarned of Kates’ military service, he was careful not to rush. The opportunity had finally presented itself
when Kates had headed out to the deserted survival centre on the Sunday.

The facility was situated about a mile from the road and accessed by a dirt trail. Kates sat in the small hut which, along with living quarters for clients staying overnight and a storehouse,
formed three sides of a square. Abeylan and his partner lay concealed in the high grass on the perimeter of the square. Even though they were confident the target was alone, they had decided to
wait for him to exit rather than try to take him in the building. They would shoot him as he came down the front steps, bring their car up and load the body in the trunk. There was less chance of
the unknown that way and less clean-up after the fact. Once they had ditched Kates’ car in the parking lot of the nearest train station, they would dispose of the body. Simple. Moving the car
was a slight risk, but worthwhile, as it would delay questions being asked, an important consideration to the client.