The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (39 page)

It was time to wait.

Nearby was a bench upon which sat a fairly attractive young girl. Smiling, he walked over and admired the length of her sinewy legs as he sat beside her.

She looked at the stranger, happy to see how handsome he was—even with the slightly discolored nose. She smiled, too.

He saw her eye his injury and motioned toward it, remarking, “I was boxing earlier today for exercise—I wasn’t fast enough.” And then he smiled again while holding out his hand. “Cigarette?” Charney smoothly offered to the accepting young woman.

Thanking him bashfully, she pulled out his last one and put the filter to her full, sultry lips; Charney already had a lit match at its tip.

It’s turning out to be a splendid day
, he thought.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

LISTENING IN
CIA HQ—LANGLEY, VA

I
t was late at Langley; night had arrived long ago, but no one had left for the day.

Far from it.

The room was awash with movement and the frazzled energy that comes when a clear direction cannot be found.

The section chief sat in his office and gazed out at his team. Soundproof when the office door was pulled shut, the entire front wall was made of glass. Unfrosted and clear as placid water, he could see everything unabated.

The men and women of his section looked tired and worn. Many had pulled their ties loose and removed their jackets. Sleeves were rolled up. Even most of the women had let their sensibilities wane and had unbuttoned their blouses to find even the remotest bit of comfort. The room was stifling and increasingly humid from body heat and all the electronic devices.

A few of the darker-complexioned men already wore unkempt cheeks and chins from the reappearing shadow of facial hair.

Well past closing time, Langley was no different than any other corporation with respect to the management of the buildings and facilities. After 5:00, the central air shut down, no longer having the mission to provide comfort, but to conserve energy use and taxpayer dollars.

Everyone had a budget to monitor and, these days, a green attitude—the CIA, too.

The section chief watched as his people worked to find Dr. Michael Sterling. Their efforts, thus far, had been in vain, but he was, nonetheless, impressed at their commitment.

They wouldn’t find him unless by some accident or blind luck. The Doc was just too good. His boss—their boss—was the best. The only way he would be found is if he wanted to be found.

Almost prophetically, the air out in the bullpen—as the sunken space where the team worked was called—became electric.

Bodies began to move faster; voices climbed higher in both sound and octave. He couldn’t hear them, but he could see it.

He watched as his young apprentice and second-in-command, Jorge Garrido, jumped to his feet and pointed simultaneously in two directions. He was directing the underlings with obvious vigor and confidence.

Those that had been on their feet already moved faster, while the ones that had been, moments ago, sunken and slumped in their chairs now sat erect, upright, and focused on their respective terminals.

Moving away from the glass wall, the section chief headed to his office door. Before he could put his hand on its handle, Jorge turned and caught his attention. Jorge pursed his lips tightly together and nodded once.

They had him.

The section chief furrowed his brow. There was no way this was kosher.

In the bullpen, Jorge was standing over the shoulder of one of the junior, but seasoned, officers. “He’s in the secured database!”
What the hell, Doc?
“Ping the IP, get online with CORe, and feed the location into LACROSSE; get a backup KH online. And someone find me the source of that IP! I want a name, address, phone number, and all known aliases of its user! I want to know what the source was doing today, yesterday, and what he has planned for tomorrow!” he ordered.

“Yes, sir. Doing it now. IP trace effective. Localized the signal; it’s coming from Portugal. A few more seconds, and I should have the exact location.”

“Seconds are a luxury we don’t have, Jason. I need it now,” barked Jorge. “Get me the source!”

“Yes, sir. Got it, sir.”

Jorge gave the young man’s shoulder a slight squeeze of appreciation; it was in direct contrast to his chief’s methods of leadership. “Good,” replied Jorge as he pointed to a middle-aged woman to his right. “Ms. Samantha, when it’s in LACROSSE, use it. Get it on-screen.”

Jorge pointed to another officer; this one was a new trainee, fresh from the Farm. “You”—he didn’t know his name yet—“position AEHF-3 over Portugal; paint the coordinates. See if you can get me sound.”

“Got it,” was the slightly insubordinate reply. Jorge cocked an odd glare the young man’s way, but he didn’t seem to notice. Ms. Samantha did, however. He would just have to critique and retrain—C&R—the young man later.

Ms. Samantha—Samantha L. Hightower—returned her focus to her own task. Nearing her retirement, she was content to stay behind a desk as her career waned. Once a young and rather striking field officer, her time in the Clandestine Services came to a screeching halt the moment a stiletto had grazed from the corner of her left eye and diagonally down to the right side of her chin.

The Company gave her the best medical attention possible; after a number of cosmetic surgical repairs, the long scar had faded to nothing more than a faint, long line. Age and career had taken its toll, but her beauty was still apparent.

The wound had been horrific, but what she had done to the Algerian attacker had been worse. He had survived her fury, but had been separated violently of his manhood. Ms. Samantha—as she was affectionately known as the matriarch of the section—had disarmed the man of the same stiletto that sliced open her face and had used it to make him a eunuch.

She tucked a wisp of her thinning, blond hair behind her ear and shouted out to Jorge. “LACROSSE in place, CORe confirms,
Mr. Garrido
,” she said with some obvious emphasis as she leaned toward the slightly insolent young officer. “GPS coordinates input, magnifying now. On-screen in five, four, three…now.”

Jorge had no doubt, as he offered Ms. Samantha a smile, that she had already completed the task well before his command had exited his lips. Silently, he thanked her for her own bit of ad hoc C&R on the young man.

All eyes moved to the front of the room.

On the screen, a very clear satellite image of Lisbon materialized. All at once, everyone seemed to hold their breath; the room basked in what would be a short-lived silence. The entire bullpen was staring at a birds-eye view of the top of an old silver Mercedes—Michael’s cab.

The section chief could hardly believe it to be possible, but the message was clear: Dr. Michael Sterling was back on the grid.

From different vantage points in the command center, the two men watched the cab come to a halt at an open plaza adorned with a tall, marble structure.

The section chief banged on the glass, drawing Jorge’s attention. He pointed to his ears; Jorge nodded in understanding, and then shouted out, “Where’s my audio, SATCON?!”

“Sir, AEHF won’t come online.”

“Malfunction?”

“No, sir. We are locked out; our control has been overridden.”

“What the hell do you mean,
overridden
?!” Jorge’s voice rose more than one octave, and he nearly sprinted over to the SATCON officer.

Sensing her young superior might be losing his control, Ms. Samantha caught Jorge briefly by the eyes and gave him a look that said
get your shit together.

Instantly, he slowed both his stride and his thoughts.

The Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) is a joint-service satellite communications system that has ten times the capacity of the aging Milstar constellation of satellites. It is jam-proof and consists of four highly classified satellites. AEHF-3 was the third launched of four satellites, and the CIA had the highest priority for its use.

This shouldn’t be happening.

“Get on the horn with CORe at NORAD, Ms. Samantha; get me some answers. I need that satellite online!”

Ms. Samantha nodded, but she already had CORe’s on-duty commander—an Air Force major—on the phone.

The section chief didn’t like the way things were adding up; going back to his desk, he was more than aware that not one speck of this felt, smelled, or tasted right. Michael was up to something.

The section chief tapped commands into his laptop and soon saw what Garrido and everyone else did. Files showing invoices, purchase orders, and flight plans streamed across his monitor. He could hardly believe what he was looking at.

And then he saw it.

He nearly tumbled out of his chair. Michael had just accessed the CIA’s central data repository for black operations. Only those at the deputy director level and with Eyes Only clearance could be in there. This shouldn’t be happening.

Across his screen he watched as Michael tapped into a long-dead mission. Out in the bullpen, all eyes were cemented on the large screen at the front of the room.

Most were on their feet; some eyed one another uneasily. All thought the same thing—
is this true?

Grabbing his desk firmly, the section chief righted his balance and pulled himself out of his chair. He was frantic. Shouting for Jorge, his mind was in too great of a flurry to remember that the young officer couldn’t hear him through the soundproof glass wall.

The section chief sprinted to the door and bolted through it, screaming. His face had turned a nasty shade of crimson. “Shut it down! Shut it down now, goddamn it! All of it!”

Jorge was still on his feet, dumbstruck, both at the shouts coming from his boss and by the Black Operation that appeared larger than life on the screen at the front of the room. But he was trained enough to know certain orders are not to be belayed. Without sitting, he slammed the tips of his fingers deep into the keyboard, commanding the system to be shut off.

Yelling out to those closest to him, they obeyed his orders and, too, shut down their systems.

“Out,” continued the section chief, “everyone, get out! Go home until further notice! You are to speak with no one about what you just saw! Mr. Garrido, you stay!”

Quickly the room emptied except for the surprised underling.

Jorge wasn’t sure if he should say anything; he had never seen his boss like this. But he asked anyway. “Sir, what’s going on? Why the fire drill?”

“Mr. Garrido, is the trace of the source complete?” The section chief straightened his tie and smoothed out his sleeves in an effort to purposely gather his composure.

“Yes, sir, the source just came through.”

“An asset of ours?”

“No, sir. An unknown.”

Jorge bent over and stroked a few commands into the CIA database. A face, along with a name, address, and phone number, flashed across the large screen at the front of the room.

The section chief stared blankly at the image of the young man on the screen. It was a driver’s license photo. “Who is that, Mr. Garrido?”

“Hard to say, sir. Local asset of the Doc’s, perhaps, but he could also just be collateral damage—in the wrong place at the wrong time. His name is Alberto Blanco: twenty-three years old, no known aliases, no record of arrest or military service; he is listed as a student at the nearby university—no major declared. He was born and raised in Lisbon. He appears clean, sir.”

“No one’s clean, Mr. Garrido,” stated the chief almost passively. “Who do we have in Lisbon?” He scratched at his chin as if in deep contemplation, calculating the events that had just transpired. “I believe we have two teams there?” The question was rhetorical; he didn’t want nor expect an answer.

Jorge had anticipated the forthcoming command, and thanks to Ms. Samantha, he already had a list of the two sleeper teams in Lisbon. A few more strokes of the keys, and the members of both teams were on the screen.

The section chief thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you have Mr. Blanco’s location?”

“Yes, sir, I do. He made a call to the local police about three minutes ago. He claimed that he was attacked in a bathroom, and his laptop was stolen.”

The section chief smiled slightly and whispered, “Some things will never change, will they, Michael?”

“Sir?” asked Jorge.

“Nothing, Mr. Garrido—activate team one; bring Mr. Blanco in; have him interrogated. Get the team in there now; I don’t want any interaction with the local PSP.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But instruct the team to go soft on Mr. Blanco—he may just be a casualty of all this. We need to know what he knows, what he saw and heard. Everyone knows something, Mr. Garrido; sometimes they just don’t know it. Soft techniques only—understood?”

“Understood, sir,” answered Jorge.

Jorge activated the team in Lisbon; the section chief just stood over his shoulder without saying another word. Moments ago, the room had been awash energy and adrenaline; now it was empty—quiet and almost cavernous. Jorge was eager to know what was going on, and his actions were starting to show it.