B
ruce Tupper lay on his back, replaying the conversation with Kurt Hale in his mind. He watched the ceiling fan above him spin lazily, the reflections of his bathroom nightlight dancing on the blades in the darkness.
He rolled his head on the pillow, seeing his wife of twenty years slumbering, a soft snore escaping with each breath. He wondered if they would finally split. If the firestorm coming from the latest revelation—and he was now sure there would be a firestorm—would cause the end of their marriage.
Fifteen years ago he’d been prepared for the cost, willing to take the separation about as badly as someone totaling his car in an accident. Some sense of loss, but not catastrophic. Tonight, it brought a sense of melancholy. He’d actually grown used to her. If not love, at least he
liked
her company. And the sex hadn’t hurt.
Twenty years his junior, Lilith wasn’t a looker by any stretch of the imagination, but she had been willing to explore, and that had always been something that brought him back. She was a little frumpy and plump, but the extra size extended to her breasts, something he had learned to enjoy. Especially when she let him tie her up.
Fond memories.
He gave up on sleep and threw off the silk duvet. He slipped out of bed, putting his arms in a bathrobe as he padded down to the second floor, to his art room. He clicked the outdoor lights and illuminated a balcony that overlooked the Potomac River. One of the very few mansions that did so.
He looked out of the French doors, but at three in the morning, it was too dark to match the sunset he’d been painting with the landscape outside the glass. He prepared a palette of paint anyway, mixing the yellows and blues until he was satisfied. At the end of the day, he had the terrain. The rest was his imagination anyway.
Working the paint mindlessly, he wondered if the thumb drive had been recovered. Given the time change, it should have been. He considered making direct contact, but decided not to. One, it was terribly risky. Two, he didn’t want to give those assholes any leverage. Right now, they still considered him in the stronger position. If he kept groveling for information, that might change. One thing was for sure: He was no longer willing to sacrifice his life for the mission.
When he was starting out, he never would have dreamed that one day he’d become the head of all US intelligence. He’d acted accordingly, working as if the sword of Damocles were hanging over his head, sure that each day was to be his last. That attitude had given him freedom, and he’d operated with commensurate risk, not caring how close he was walking to the edge. Now, the world was markedly different, beginning with the fall of the Berlin wall.
The demise of the Soviet Union—the mighty USSR—was a clear demarcation in the life of Bruce Tupper. Before that time, he conducted his work out of patriotic zeal. After the wall fell, it was a confusing new world. His whole life had been dedicated to the matching of wits in the Cold War, something that no longer mattered with the crumble of the hammer and sickle. For a time, he did nothing. He simply coasted along in the bureaucracy, wondering where his career would go. Wondering, with the loss of the Soviets, if he shouldn’t simply leave.
He eventually realized that he needed to refocus. Leaving wasn’t the answer. Yes, the USSR was gone, but the United States still faced turbulent times, and he could actually help with those new threats. Something he would never have dreamed while the USSR was around. But his focus shifted from patriotism to personal survival. That one thing superseded everything else. Even his marriage. And now that survival was threatened by a rogue element of an illegal counterterrorist organization he had no control over. Because the FSB had killed their men, the Taskforce was going to take revenge and, in so doing, expose that Bruce Tupper was working for the FSB.
The irony was incredible.
He was the most highly placed mole the United States had ever allowed, his climb higher than the defunct KGB could have even dreamed, and he was now at risk because of the actions of his new FSB masters. An amateurish operation the KGB would
never
have conducted.
Before the fall of the wall, his case officers had assumed he would last a year. Maybe two. Just making it through the CIA training would be considered a coup. Instead, he’d not only finished, he had thrived. His one misstep had been Ali Salameh—the Red Prince—which had almost caused his discovery. Ever since then, he had toed the line, ensuring he would never be investigated for anything. Too much had been put into his infiltration, and he’d come way further than he should have.
Born in Canada to a Soviet diplomat, he’d spent his first sixteen years in North America, his father following one diplomatic post after another, all attached to the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. By the time he was seventeen, he spoke Russian with a North American accent, and spoke English like an American from the Midwest.
His father had finally been reassigned home, and he’d immediately been snapped up by the KGB. Not that he’d minded. The sense of importance was exhilarating, the praise lavished on him intoxicating. He’d gone through four months of rudimentary training on tradecraft, and then been inserted into the United States on his own. Using the name of an orphan who had died years before, he never saw his family again.
Uncommonly intelligent, and with the help of an underground Soviet machine, he’d achieved a scholarship to the University of Virginia. Graduating summa cum laude, he’d applied to the CIA, with everyone holding their breath. Waiting on him to be caught.
He had not been.
He served diligently, doing what he could, becoming the star of the Soviet crown. With the fall of the USSR, Bruce not only lost the purpose of his existence but the anchor of his life. Adrift and petrified he was now going to be discovered without anyone having his back, he began to work for the CIA for real, proving his worth and ostensibly dedicating his life to US security.
Eventually, he’d grown comfortable in his role, the duality of working to enhance the security of the very state he’d undermined previously causing no issue. He’d bumped into Lilith at a White House function, a woman twenty years his junior, but smitten with his cloak-and-dagger past, and he’d found another reason to continue. He’d asked her to marry, more a function of his perceived safety than any feelings of true love. Well, that and the sex.
Then, a KGB man had taken over the presidency of the new Russian federation. One of the handful that even knew he existed. The rest had been killed or purged in coup after countercoup, and somehow
this
one had ended up as president. Bruce had had a good ten years before the knock on the door. When it had happened, it had shocked him to his core.
At the time, he was a deputy director of the CIA, and the contact had made him feel like the ground was shifting under his feet, his reality crashing into a new one. Luckily, his placement and access were so high that he was treated with kid gloves, spending his time shaping US efforts instead of directly passing information. Like he had when he’d facilitated a high school dropout’s ability to steal an entire library of NSA secrets, then successfully flee to Russia.
When the CIA had purchased the original secrets from Boris, he’d been caught off guard. Informed at an intelligence update, he’d been petrified that his true secret would be exposed. He was relieved when the greatest leak had been his efforts with Ali Salameh and the connection to the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre. He found it ironic that the head of the FSB—his counterpart in the Russian intelligence architecture—was the case officer for the Red Prince on the “opposing” side. Neither had known about the other, as often happened in the wilderness of mirrors.
When he’d learned of Boris’s second potential sale of information to Mossad, he’d passed that information along to Vlad in the hopes that he would interdict it, but the Russians had already killed members of an organization he didn’t even know existed. And because of it, Bruce Tupper stood to lose everything.
He could control all aspects of paramilitary activity in the guise of director of national intelligence, using his position to sway anything in the panoply of the US intelligence community, as he had with Edward Snowden, but could do nothing about an organization outside that system. Especially an organization with men like this Pike Logan. Even the damn Oversight Council he’d just been informed existed couldn’t control him.
Pike was on his own agenda, and his actions against Vladimir’s men would burn them both to the ground.
I
pulled up my e-mail and was pleasantly surprised to see a message from Aaron. After the mission at the Basilica Cistern, I figured there was a fifty–fifty chance he’d blow me off.
“Jenn, he responded to the e-mail. Looks like we’re a go.”
She gave me an incredulous look. She said, “After what we just did to them? He must really want that thumb drive.”
“Maybe it’s Shoshana. She’s probably smitten with me. Happens all the time.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes and said, “She’s a lesbian, Pike. I’m pretty sure she’s not smitten with you.”
Wanting to spark a little jealousy, that was the last thing I expected to come out of her mouth. I said, “Why would you say that? How do you know?”
“I just do. I knew it the minute I talked to her. I don’t know how.”
I closed the computer and said, “So you think she’s smitten with
you
?”
She punched my shoulder and said, “No, you jerk. She’s not
smitten
with anyone. They want the thumb drive.”
Squinting my eyes and looking at the ceiling, I said, “Hmmm. That’s too bad. We need someone from their team on our side. She needs to be smitten. Man, we could use Decoy for this. If anyone could change her stripes it would be him.”
I smiled and saw Jennifer’s face grow dark, the humor falling flat. She said, “Pike . . . that’s not . . .”
I rubbed her shoulder, saying, “I’m sorry. That was too soon.”
A grim smile floated across her face and she said, “It’s okay. Decoy would agree. I’m just glad we’re not making jokes about Retro.”
After the shooting, we’d hobbled along behind Shoshana as fast as we could, me with Retro over my shoulder, watching her vanish into the cloistered neighborhood next to the Blue Mosque, weaving down one alley after another. While Retro was bleeding pretty freely from his shoulder wound, he finally convinced me to put him down. Well, not through his voice, but through me growing tired of running with him on my back. It turned out he could use his legs just fine.
We turned a corner to see Shoshana sitting in a van, a scowl on her face. Daniel was behind the wheel, also looking pretty grim. We piled in and Daniel goosed the engine, skipping forward and asking where we were going.
I directed them to Knuckles’s hotel while Jennifer treated Retro. She cut a hole in his shirt and he complained about the damage. Shoshana said her first words at that point, snorting in disgust.
“You care more about your clothes than the operation. Typical. And that damn shirt is twenty years out of date and quite possibly the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I smiled, glad for the conversation away from the thumb drive. I said, “Everything he wears is twenty years out of date. He shops at thrift stores.”
She looked at me for a moment, then said, “What about the drive?”
Shit
.
I said, “I know nothing about that. I appreciate you helping us, though.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. She said nothing for the rest of the trip. Pulling into the hotel, Knuckles met us in the roundabout with a towel. He threw it over Retro’s shoulder, hiding most of the blood, and escorted him past the front desk. Jennifer trailed behind.
I thanked Shoshana and Daniel one more time and told them to tell Aaron to check the Gmail account he’d given me. She’d nodded and slammed the sliding door in my face. Daniel hadn’t said a word.
Inside Knuckles’s room I found out that exfil plans were in full swing. Brett would take Retro and the rock-star bird to Landstuhl, Germany. They’d meet a Taskforce liaison who’d get them into the military hospital located there. He’d get treated as a military member, then continue home once he was stabilized. Knuckles would wait here and fly home with Decoy’s remains via commercial air.
That left me and Jennifer to continue to track the men who had caused all of this pain. Both Knuckles and Brett asked if I wanted them to remain behind. I’d told them the same thing: “No.”
Brett said, “What about weapons? This is your last chance to ransack the bird for equipment.”
I said, “Yeah, I know. But I don’t want to get you guys in trouble. I’ll keep the kit Retro brought. I need that for the next step, and he had no sensitive items. Taking NODs, thermals, or weapons would cause you guys to pay a price. And I’m not going to do that.”
Brett said nothing for a moment, waiting on Jennifer to clear out of earshot. He looked around to ensure nobody else could hear, then said, “I get all this Taskforce accountability bullshit, but I can get you some black weapons that nobody can trace.
Nobody
.”
Brett had come over to the Taskforce from the CIA’s Special Activities Division, so Lord knew where the weapons he was talking about came from. I smiled, gratified by the support. “I hear you, Blood, but I don’t need the help. I’m good with the electronic stuff Retro brought. It’s a bare minimum, but it’s enough.”
“What are you going to do? Spit at them?”
I leaned back, checking to see if Knuckles could hear me. Not because I was afraid he’d turn me in, but because I wanted to protect him. When I saw I was clear, I said, “Back when we started the Taskforce, before you joined, we put in some caches around the world. We had no idea what we were doing, just flinging shit all over the place because money was no object. Burying kit in a multitude of countries to give at least a little cell of capability around the world. We learned early on that hiding all that shit was a waste of time. There were easier ways to get operational capability in-country. We hardly ever used any of it.”
Brett said, “And there’s a cache here?”
“I’m not sure. There’s a Taskforce guy whose sole job is servicing the caches. Pretty sweet gig if you can get it. I’ll have to figure out how to contact him, but I’ll have no trouble getting bullet launchers. If I need them.”
Knuckles approached and I said, “You good to go with everything?”
He said, “Yeah, I’m good to go. The question is whether you are. Did you talk to Kurt?”
“Not yet.”
“You need to think hard about what you’re going to say.”
“I know, but you’ve got the thumb drive. We accomplished the mission.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, I’m not sure how much that’ll matter. The last time you pulled something like this you were able to camouflage the op inside another one. This time, it’s all up front, especially now that the thumb drive mission is complete.”
A couple of years ago, while in the middle of an operation, I’d found the man who’d murdered my family. Knuckles was talking about my efforts against him while simultaneously conducting another kill/capture mission. While I’d stepped off the path for a span of time, I’d eventually come back and gained operational authority from Kurt and the Oversight Council. This time, I was going to thumb my nose at them from the get-go, which wouldn’t be a comfortable conversation.
We left it at that, and Jennifer and I had returned to the hotel to wait on the Israeli response. Three hours later, looking at my e-mail, I knew that dreaded phone call had just come one step closer. I hadn’t wanted to tell Knuckles about me trying to get help from the Israelis because if I did he’d be insulted and demand to stay, and so would the rest of the team. I wasn’t going to put them in the crosshairs of the US government. What he’d said before still held true: Unlike me, they were subject to official government sanction. I was a civilian. I would leverage that as best I could.
I hadn’t called Kurt yet precisely because I didn’t know if the Israelis would help, and if they wouldn’t, I was more than likely just catching a later flight home. I couldn’t affect any good outcome with only Jennifer and me. But the e-mail told me that Aaron was at least willing to talk. Now it just remained to be seen whether the little ace up my sleeve would rise to the threshold of “affecting Israeli interests.”