The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1) (66 page)

              “
Mr. Li
,” said Mr. Li.  The waiter brought two glasses.  The old man poured a half measure of gin for both of them.

              “
Just a taste to give you the courage to tell me why you’re really here
,” said the old man.

              “
You’ve asked very few questions
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
So much doesn’t matter anymore
,” said the old man, “
I could ask where you’ve been but that would make it seem like we needed you.  We operate our hotels and have a few investments.  It’s all reported.  No one’s after me or my job.  Some kid studying accounting at the university can do my job better than me.  There’s no respect anymore, just numbers and ledgers and dividends.  I had never heard so much of these things and now I’m always hearing about them.   Life of a smuggler was simple in comparison.  I’m a seaman.  That’s me
.”  The old man took a sip of gin.

              “
Gordon’s has always been the best
,” said the old man, “
Always will be
.”

              “
Are any of the Sheltered Ones still around
?” asked Mr. Li.

              “
I told you to call me Uncle
,” said the old man.

              “
Uncle, are any of the Sheltered Ones still around
?” asked Mr. Li.  The old man kept his left hand on his gin glass and held up his right hand extending five fingers. 

              “
Which ones
?” asked Mr. Li.

              “
Wang Xi, Yi Le, Li Tao, Huang Sitian and Liu Ping
,” said the old man.

              “
That will work
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
Work for what
?” asked the old man.

              “
I need you to pull an old trick
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
I’m old
,” said the old man, “
So what’s the trick
?”

              “
I need you to put those five on a plane to Los Angeles,”
said Mr. Li, “
And some things on a boat
.”

              “
What things on a boat
?” asked the old man.  Mr. Li slid a sheet of paper across the table.  The old man took a look.

              “
These things are very difficult to come by in New Hong Kong
,” said the old man, “
Things aren’t like they once were.  It’s difficult to move things that are prohibited
.”

              “
That’s the trick
,” said Mr. Li. “
I’m not saying these things have to enter Hong Kong just that they need to arrive in Los Angeles and I will collect them before the container is checked.  You can use one of your legitimate businesses to order the shipment.  I’ll make sure your business stays legitimate
.”  Mr. Li slid another piece of paper across the table.

              “
What’s this
?” asked the old man.

              “
The name and address of the company you’re shipping to
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
You know anyone at this company
?” asked the old man.

              “
Only the company matters
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
Why
?” asked the old man.

              “
Because that’s the company you ship to, when you want to clear customs without inspection
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
I can ship all these things to this company in America with no problems
,” said the old man.  Mr. Li nodded.

              “
How do you know of this
?” asked the old man.

              “
I’ve been away a long time
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
How do we pay for all this
?” asked the old man.  Mr. Li handed the old man a third piece of paper. 

              “
Is that the right number
?” asked Mr. Li, “
The account you order through
.”

              “
I can’t be sure
,” said the old man.

              “
Be sure
,” said Mr. Li, “
You’ll see $800,000 posted to that account today, if it’s not already there.  The transfer was made last night.  Enough will be left over for your consideration after the arrangements.  It’s my thank you
.”

              “
Five plane tickets and these items on the list
,” said the old man, “
I should thank you.  About half of the money will be left over
.”

              “
When do you need them to arrive in Los Angeles
?” asked the old man.

              “
I need the equipment two weeks from today
,” said Mr. Li, “
The boys should arrive that same week
.”

              “
To Los Angeles
?” asked the old man.  Mr. Li nodded.

              “
That’s a tight schedule
,” said the old man.

              “
I wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t make it
,” said Mr. Li.

              “
Neither would I
,” said the old man.  He poured some more gin into Mr. Li’s glass before being generous to himself in the same regard.

              “
Let’s drink
,” said the old man.

              “
To what
?” asked Mr. Li.

              “
To privileges
,” said the old man, “
To the last of their kind
.”  Mr. Li pinged the old man’s glass and took a hard swallow of gin.

              “
Interesting toast
,” said Mr. Li, “
Interesting topic
.”

              “
Is it
?” asked the old man, “
You are the last of your kind, making me privileged to be here with you
.”  The old man took another swallow of gin.

              “
You do realize the old ways are gone.  Permanently
,” said the old man, “
The family is not coming back.  It’s simply outdated.  The force you brought was an inevitable one.  Even Deni saw it coming, he just didn’t know who or how.  Gone are the Dragons of Hong Kong and gone are their traditions.  Which means I’m now drinking with the last Jade Soldier
.”  The impact of the old man’s words hit Mr. Li and scattered throughout the atmosphere.  The space began to change and become absorbing.  Mr. Li felt himself being sucked into a different dimension, one that existed in the same space but a different room.

The room was as much a secret as it wasn’t.  Almost everyone who passed through CIA halls at Langley had the same idea. 
There must be a room
. 
A room no one was ever rebuked for asking about because no one knew enough to ask
. 
A room most would never visit.  A room full of men.  A relic of the agency’s misogynist past
.
  

• • •

During the 60’s, the name
The Stew
was given by an employee at Langley to describe what he thought went on in the Room.  He imagined the atmosphere remained heated.  That issues were constantly stirred.  And the final decision was a mixture of ideas.  Most of all, he felt decisions in the room took a long time to make.  His idea of the room reminded him of his mother’s stew.  This idea caught on and
The Stew
was stuck on the minds and lips of Langley staffers for the better part of a decade.  The trendiness of the 70’s updated the nickname to
The Soup
, which lasted about half as long as its predecessor.  Before the onset of the 80’s,
The Soup
didn’t match any current political trend and the Watergate scandal wiped everything else from front pages of Washington.  Although unidentified, many at Langley were fascinated with Deep Throat, a shadow behind an empire.  Deep Throat was the figure who met two sympathetic journalists in garages at late hours to spiel about President Nixon.  Deep Throat was a legend at Langley because he was as much one of them as the myth would suggest.  Deep Throat was a well-trained civilian informant as so many Langley staffers imagined themselves to be.  Although he would turn out to be an Associate Director at the FBI, Deep Throat’s sketch as a well-trained civilian informant was accurate.

It was decided that Deep Throat had the
inside scoop
.  It followed that those with access to the Room also had the scoop. The two terms being mutually inclusive lead to
The Soup
being dubbed
The Scoop
.  Not long after
The Scoop
became an unofficial designation for the Room it was decided that The Scoop did not accurately represent the scale of what went on in the Room.  Some letters and meaning were replaced by
The Scope
. 
The Scope
was an adequate name for the Room and lasted adequately long.  In the mid 90’s, a senior staffer played the name game after hearing about
The Scope
.  His long tenure did not lead him to more knowledge about the Room, but he was more familiar with what got digested in the bowels at Langley.  This staffer was senior-enough to be more practical and more cynical.  He imagined a more sinister use for the Room.  He was old enough to remember the name
The Stew
.  He was quite sure the men who had a seat in the Room spent much time stewing.  Like so many things for so many years, he was sure the Room was where managers at Langley went to make a decision and wash their hands of it.  But the Room served its purpose—it was there.

The Room was different than what was imagined.  The Room did not have the modern updates that most staffers assumed.  The Room was not decorated.  It was not comfortable.  It was not livable.  The Room was old, simple and subtle.  The Room had the faintest smell of must from carpet that had been worn but not changed.  The Room had no knowledge of the world outside. 
No windows
. 
No servers
. 
No computers
. 
No connects
.  The Room wasn’t on the top floor.  It was in the basement.  The Room had remained practically unchanged for fifty years.  The same topaz colored paint covered the stacked cinder block walls.  The same blue and gray checkered carpet was glued to the floor.  The Room was masculine and willing to reveal its age.  It made no attempts to hide a design from a once cash-strapped agency.  The one splurge was fifteen and one-half feet of solid cherry wood.
Polished
. The edges of the table were sharp.  The wood deflected but didn’t reflect light.  It wasn’t a mirror.  It wasn’t for looking at.  The table like the room didn’t take compliments.  The cherry wood slab rested on four cherry wood pods that resembled the legs of a lion weighing on the poured cement floor.  The Room was lit by eight rectangles, soaking everything in the whitest of artificial light.  The light in the Room was so acidic it wiped and smeared all other senses.  Most of the Room’s participants fell deaf after long discussions.  Before long, they no longer felt it necessary to listen at all because they could see everything, even the pores and wrinkles of each other’s skin.  It all became too much to look at before long. The light was so macho it had to pick on everything in the Room.  After a while, the light—like other bullies—became a problem.  The Room was occupied by officials but nothing official-looking occupied the room.  The walls boasted no pictures. 
No paintings
. 
No prints
.  Nothing framed or unframed hung on the walls.   Blue paint flaked and revealed a beige undercoating.

• • •

Georgia sat in the Room.  She was the Mona Lisa.  Her face was a feminine charm and a masculine beauty.  Her eyes dominated.  They were large chunks of amber that stared with daggers behind them.  When her eyes were fixed they locked.  They interrogated.  They were big and encapsulating, like two fiery planets—hot and incubating.   To avoid their gaze, most followed the trail created by her long left-leaning nose.  There was a noticeable bump in her nose.  The foundation had once been broken.  Georgia was an infecting beauty in her gloried days.  The Agency found her looks useful. 
A different technology
.  So many micro devices couldn’t collect as valuable information as Georgia’s eyes forced out.  She would drop her voice half an octave and her eyes would lock.  Men felt a masculine challenge in her eyes.  The challenge had proved too much once.  He broke her nose.
 
She looked in the mirror and saw blood coming out of her nostrils.  She felt like her sinuses were congested.    Yet the damage was minimal.  She would still be sexy over twenty-five years later.  And she was. 

Georgia’s lips were small and the top was noticeably smaller than the bottom.  They formed a comfortable contact.  Her face was narrow; her chin was narrower.  Her neck was slightly thick and her throat protruded out like something caught under a tablecloth.  It was either a man’s neck sculpted by a woman or a woman’s neck sculpted by a man.  Her skin was tan; even without sun it stayed dark.  She could easily be mistaken for Italian or Greek.  She wasn’t.  Her parents were English.  They left a bombed-out London in early 1946 and settled in Virginia.  Her father worked for a glass manufacturer; her mother worked in a kindergarten.  Their son—Henry—was born in 1949.  Georgia Noya Standing came along in 1952.  Her hair for the past ten years went from sprinkled with gray to bathed in it.  Nowadays she was usually the oldest woman in the room and the most sensual.  She could create a sensation from across the Room.  And the Room was small.  She sat like a queen bee with six drones.  Drones were only good for one thing.

• • •

“We’re going to have to take turns making this stuff,” said a slightly gravel voice, Edward. 

“More like take turns pouring it,” said the sarcastic, Philip.  The more hot coffee hit cups the more warm bodies took their seats.

“Y’all can make the coffee and pour it.  I’ll sit here and supervise.  I’m a supervisor.  It’s my job description,” said the one who pulls rank, Kevin.

“If anyone needs supervision to make coffee that person should not be here.”  He was level-headed and practical, Renato—Ren.

“So I should step out then,” said Philip

“And do us a favor,” said the passive aggressive, Bob.

While five spoke, two were quiet at the table.  One was Georgia.  The other was Gael Barron, a Senior Director in the Agency’s National Clandestine Service.  His eyes moved but not much.  He just sat.  A few file folders were stacked in front of him.  He ran his fingers back-and-forth over the tie that bound the stack together.  That was all he did.  He didn’t say a word.  He exhibited the outer patience and inner anxiety of a dam about to break. 

              The Room didn’t hold sarcasm well, all kidding was easily ventilated.  An anthropomorphic silence walked confidently into the Room.  The silence could speak for itself.  Its voice was emasculating.  It affected everyone except for Georgia.  She never had a problem with silence—especially with men.  To her, the cover of silence trumped the cover of darkness.  In darkness she could sneak; in silence she could peek.  And she sat with eyes lit on Gael.

              There were seven participants in the Room.  There were always seven, enough to run the gamut. Seven people could adequately discuss the things to be decided and there would always be a majority.  All participants had to vote.  There was no abstaining.  There had to be a majority.  Attempting to abstain in the Room was career suicide; all other participants would see to that.  Abstaining meant you didn’t deserve to be in the Room. There had never been abstinence.  It went against the idea of the Room.  The Room was a place to decided.  Georgia was the only woman to ever sit in the Room.  She had to vote.

• • •

              “What’s on the table now is Plan B,” Gael opened,  “Plan A would have been the events that ended with Mason Keig being captured.”

              “Did Plan A have a name?” asked Ren.

              “Plan A’s official designation was
Project
Filartiga
,” said Gael.

              “Were there multiple Plan As?” asked Bob.

              “No, there was just
Filartiga
,” said Gael.

              “
Filartiga
was Venezuela?” asked Edward.

              “Yes,” said Gael.

              “Was there anything else?” asked Bob.

              “Why would there be?” asked Gael.

              “Why wouldn’t there be?” asked Bob.

              “What I’m saying is
Filartiga
was Venezuela,” said Gael.

              “You mean all of it?” asked Philip.

              “I do mean all of it,” said Gael.

              “What were its objectives?” asked Edward.

              “You’ve all heard of
Petbol
?” Gael inquired.

              “Yeah,” said Kevin and Philip simultaneously.

              “Ok” said Bob.

              “It’s Venezuelan,” said Ren.

              Edward glared at the blue wall behind Georgia.

              “It’s the nickname for
Petróleos Bolivarian
,” said Edward, the only one in the Room who could pronounce the name without sounding uneasy.  Edward by birth was Eduardo de la Maria.  He was born and raised in Miami to a Cuban father and Venezuelan mother.  In addition to English and Spanish, he spoke fluent Russian.  He was an incredibly deft field operative.  Now, he was Deputy Director of the Regional & Transnational Issues Division.

“
Petbol
was created back in late 2003,” Gael continued, “We created
Petbol
as a way to keep an eye on Venezuela’s oil industry.  OPEC and the Energy Department always have different numbers on Venezuela’s output capacity.  They range anywhere from 500,000 barrels a day to over 5 million.  If you ask the Venezuelans they always come up with a number at the top of that range.  And they’re sitting on what used to be the largest oil reserves in the Americas.  Since the 2010 discovery, they’re the largest in the world.  The endgame of
Filartiga
was to let the Venezuelan government believe it was responsible for setting up
Petbol
.  That way
Petbol
could just operate.”

              “How did you get Venezuela to think it was responsible for setting up
Petbol
?” asked Bob.

              “It’s South America, just hand the man in charge a few keys of blow and say you wanna set up an oil company,” quipped Philip.  His sense of humor might have been funny in space, in a wormhole where everything got sucked in.  But his humor was bleached in the Room.  Instead of being sucked in, it was whited-out.

              “Small minds and big projects don’t mix,” Georgia cut in.  “In case you’re wondering why
Filartiga
wasn’t your priority.  Let the man talk.”  Her glare did its job.  Philip didn’t try to make a comeback.   Gael’s status as the Alpha male reassured, he felt comfortable to continue. 

              “We had to make the whole thing as organic as possible,” said Gael, “We first operated a
coup d état
in Venezuela back in ’02.  That triggered a change in the Venezuelan government for about two days.  Hugo Chavez was held by the military and a guy named Carmona took over as interim president.  We had agents on both sides of the coup but neither side knew it.  Our agents leading the anti-Chavez campaign around the Presidential Palace were under instructions not to give orders to fire at the Chavistas when they marched on the Palace.  As a result, the Chavistas took the Palace back without ever firing a shot.  And just like that, Chavez was President again.”  Gael eyed every warm body.