Operation Sheba (13 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Daniel King finished his sandwich and lit a cigar as he sat on the patio just outside his home office. The estate was awash in bright green. Six massive oak trees, three on each side, lined the property, their spring leaves a perfect match to the normally well-manicured lawn.

However, today was not normal. An ugly line of rich black dirt bisected the once beautiful carpet of grass, and at the end of the trail, a small skid loader and a smattering of tools, hoses and pipes littered the ground. The part-time groundskeeper was working diligently to install a water fountain in the center of the property. Wife number two had insisted it was exactly what the place
needed
.

King blew smoke out of his mouth as he continued to watch. What
he
needed was to find the weak link in the proposal Susan Richmond had spelled out for him in detail yesterday to deal with the CIA’s problems.

He had to admit, the way she had it laid out, it was damn near flawless. She had evidence showing a conspiracy in the CIA spearheaded by the Deputy Director of Operations, Michael Stone.

His motive? Revenge. Stone’s father, William, had left the Marine Corps after ten years of service and was recruited as an intelligence officer for the United States. He took his family to Germany while under cover as a security consultant to a German diplomat. After two years, the elder Stone had extracted a good deal of compromising information from his foreign employer, all of which he had routinely fed back to the United States. However, the diplomat’s wife had figured it out and turned William Stone over to the local authorities. Because his nonofficial cover did not afford him diplomatic immunity, William was arrested and imprisoned for spying.

While the American and German governments were negotiating his release, William Stone was beaten to death by a group of fellow prisoners. Michael was ten when his father died. His mother returned to the United States, disgraced and devastated, with her family of six children.

While Michael had grown up to follow in his father’s footsteps, he was not suspected of harboring any ill will toward the CIA or the U.S. government. His psych evals and polygraphs were negative. His commitment to his country had been demonstrated in the field as a U.S. Marine, Force Recon, and later in the CIA’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism departments before he became the Operations director. He was currently in line for the Director of Central Intelligence’s spot.

But according to Susan, whether Stone showed it or not, somewhere along the line he had cracked.

The web Stone had weaved was intricate and Susan claimed she had detailed it down to the last strand. Stone of course had connections spanning all of the directorates of the CIA, but he also had a highly placed source within the National Intelligence Council.

To top it off, Stone’s current girlfriend, an analyst and former spy in Susan’s department, sat at the heart of the conspiracy. King knew the details of Julia Torrison’s CIA career. Her former partner had not been killed in the line of duty, as everyone believed. According to Susan, he was actively working with Torrison and another defunct operator, Ryan Smith, to assist Stone. Disgruntled employees all four, they were systematically wreaking havoc with the CIA.

The senator took a long drag on his cigar. Susan, after watching them all for years, clearly knew the modus operandi of each of the four players like the back of her hand. She believed if any one of the rogue employees suspected they had been found out, the whole operation would shut down and the participants would disappear. If the plug was pulled on their operation, she was positive they would resist apprehension and therefore cause a unique situation, one that might call for lethal force. Lethal force would lead to a formidable and exhaustive investigation.

In an effort to avoid that, King and Richmond had agreed the best way to handle the group was to neutralize them in a calculated manner. Torrison was the group’s weak link. Susan would use her to draw the others out. Conrad Flynn was the most dangerous of the group. His SEAL training had been honed to a steely efficiency for the CIA and his field skills used to quietly cripple countless terrorist organizations.

While Susan had left King in the dark about many of the specifics, he knew she had planned every step down to the smallest detail. The CTC chief had assured him she had analyzed every possible contingency and devised a strategy to handle each one. All she wanted now was a little help from him.

Because in the end, Susan Richmond still needed a safety net. Director Allen was at best an ineffectual leader who could not be trusted and therefore had to remain out of the loop. Nor did Susan know exactly how high the NIC source was in the food chain. If she delivered her information to the wrong person, Torrison and the others would not only disappear, the CTC chief herself would no doubt meet with a convenient death. She needed someone functioning outside the tainted halls of the CIA and the NIC to sign off on her operation and give her authorization to clean house. And because of the sensitive nature of the operation, national security issues had to be weighed against Congressional Notification.

In return for her allegiance, Susan Richmond wanted the DCI position when King became president. It was not an uncomplicated request nor was it an unreasonable one. He was sure there would be little blowback on him. She would have to be confirmed by the Senate, but with Michael Stone out of the picture and the fact she was more than qualified, she was assured serious consideration. He could make it happen.

For Senator King it all came down to calculated risk. Would Susan’s plan work in his favor so he gained the bipartisan and constituent support that he needed? He would definitely have to stand up to intense scrutiny, but fulfilling his end of the bargain would be easy enough. If indeed he were elected President of the United States, he would offer Susan up as a good DCI candidate and let the congressional wolves tear her apart as they saw fit. She would have to survive the confirmation hearings on her own two feet.

If, however, King refused to help her, he knew she would take her proposal to someone even higher in the government, possibly President Jeffries himself. The shit would definitely hit the fan, but the president would come out smelling like a rose. Jeffries would take full credit for cleaning up the CIA and, with his Homeland Security Director, would rebuild it from the top down to reassure the American people his administration had national security well under control. The voting public would sign him up for another four years without batting an eye.

King stubbed out the cigar and entered his office. Picking up his secure phone, he dialed Susan Richmond’s home number.

Julia picked up Michael’s briefcase off the bedroom floor and studied the digital keypad secured on it. “Piece of cake,” she muttered to herself. Michael and Pongo, along with Michael’s security detail, were out for a run. The only day Michael didn’t run was Sundays. She had approximately forty minutes to open the case and copy the contents to a memory stick Smitty had supplied. The previous night, before her midnight foray outside, she’d managed to copy the files from Michael’s laptop in his home office, including some encrypted files that had caused her problems. They were set up with special recognition software that wouldn’t allow them to be copied. Running diagnostics on them, however, she’d found a way to hack into the software, disable it and make her copy.

Now computer number two. Julia set the timer on her watch for thirty minutes and snapped a pair of latex gloves on her hands. A little more time-consuming because of the lock, but probably no more complicated.

Michael was organized and had an excellent memory, but he also dealt with layers of passwords and secret codes with multifarious letter and number combinations. Julia had already found several of these hidden in different spots in his office—inside his favorite Tom Clancy novel, underneath the encased American flag given to his mother at his father’s burial, a couple taped on the back of a framed shot of him and Tom onboard Tom’s boat, cigars and beers raised in salute. One of them had been for his home laptop. She pulled a piece of paper from her jean pocket and stared at the three combinations she had left. One happened to be a set of numbers.

Taking her time, Julia typed the numbers into the lock. Two seconds later, Julia let out a whispered “oh yeah” as the case opened.

Her joy was short lived. Every file on the computer was encrypted with a range of security levels. Disabling each level, copying the information and enabling the security codes again would take longer than the twenty-eight minutes she had left.

She started disabling anyway.

One hour later

“Have you seen my briefcase?”

Michael was standing in the office doorway, glowering, but on him Julia thought it was sexy. Pongo bounded in, carrying the large rawhide bone she’d brought him, and dropped it at her feet to begin chewing on it.

Michael was fresh from the shower, his blond hair still wet, and he was sporting a dark blue T-shirt and sport pants, looking every bit the weekend warrior ready for a backyard game of football. Unfortunately, she couldn’t enjoy his GQ looks, since the laptop that was supposed to be in the briefcase in question was under the couch where she was sitting, still in mid-download. She’d slid it there when she heard his footsteps on the stairs, picking up the remote and flipping the widescreen TV on. A rerun of
Get Smart
was filling the room. Julia hoped the doofus spy show wasn’t some sort of cosmic comment on her current situation.

“I brought it down,” she said, pointing casually to the briefcase sitting next to Michael’s desk and praying he wouldn’t open it.

Of course, he went right for it. Julia shut off the TV and jumped up. “You’re not going to start work already, are you?”

Michael picked up the briefcase and set it on the desk. Good thing she’d stuck a heavy coffee table book in it to weight it just in case. “I have a lot of work to do, Abby.” He dropped into his leather desk chair. “This thing with Iran is getting serious.”

So they were back to using her alias. Julia sighed inwardly. Before Michael could key in his security code on the briefcase’s pad, she inserted herself between him and the desk, and pushed the case back, planting her butt where the briefcase had been. “It’s Saturday and you haven’t even had breakfast or a cup of coffee yet. You need to get a life, Stone.”

Sitting back in his chair, he met her gaze with defiance, but his voice held little. “Watch it, Quinn. You’re starting to sound like my last girlfriend.”

She shot him a wide grin and used his own words against him. “Are you being testy, Michael?”

“I’m too tired to be testy, Ab.”

She planted her bare feet in his chair, one on each side of his lap. “What exactly happened to your last girlfriend?”

She was still wearing her capri pajama bottoms and Michael ran his hands over the smooth skin of her calves. “I admitted my darkest secret to her,” he said, “and then I had to kill her.”

Julia quirked an eyebrow at him. “Michael Stone has deep, dark secrets worth killing for?”

“Don’t we all?”

Regarding him for a long moment, she leaned forward. Putting her face down next to his, she whispered, “Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

The humor that had been in his eyes disappeared. “Don’t tempt me. There’s a lot about you I still don’t know. Huge gaps I can’t fill. Questions I should ask, but don’t because I’m not sure I want to know what you’re hiding.”

Julia pulled back, feeling slapped and wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. Before she could try to change the subject, Michael sat up. “If I ask about your childhood, you change the subject. If I bring up a family story, like a favorite Christmas or a pet I had, you listen and ask questions, but never offer your own family version.”

“My childhood isn’t full of fond memories. You know that. I never knew my real father. James liked to drink and knock us around. My mother died when I was still a teenager. That about sums it up.”

Michael nodded, seemingly in understanding, but didn’t stop badgering her. “How about your past adult life? Drunken college forays? Waitressing jobs? How Susan found you? The only time you volunteer information about your time in the field is when it’s directly linked to your current CTC work. Why is that?”

Julia studied him carefully for a moment, wondering which direction to take this conversation in. The laptop was still working away under the couch and she estimated it needed another few minutes to complete the file transfers to the jump drive plugged into its USB port. Then she needed another five to reestablish the security fields. And then she had to get the laptop back in the briefcase without Michael knowing.

And at some point, she had to feed her growling stomach. She was starving.

Go get
’em
,
Mata,
she told herself and took a deep breath. “That’s not exactly true. I’ve told you personal things about me and my life on several occasions, but I could tell you didn’t really want to know more details about my life with Conrad.”

Michael removed his hands from her ankles. “The Great Conrad Flynn.” His laugh lacked humor. “Isn’t that what you called him?”

Julia drew herself up a little, putting space between them. Sharing that piece of info probably hadn’t been her best move, but she couldn’t deny the female part of her kind of liked that Michael was jealous of Con. Conrad was definitely jealous of Michael. Having two good men in love with her wasn’t the worse thing in the world. However, she knew it was definitely time to get off this track with boyfriend number one. She needed Michael in a better mood before she could get him out of the room and hit him up with her plan.