Enemy Agents (6 page)

7

A day later, still sequestered in the unfinished office, Quarrel was sitting with his feet up on the desk reading a magazine, when the phone rang. Quarrel was surprised the phone was even hooked up. It had never rung before, and he’d never had any reason to pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Speedy?”

Carol had assigned everyone at her CSIS-2 office both a number and a codename. The number was on file. While those in the field got low numbers, double-digits, Chris was number 4042. The names, however, were not on file. They were strictly in-house, memorized by those who needed to know. Chris had only known his own name and those of a few direct superiors, and Erica, the one person who worked under him. In a quirk that must have given her some private fun, Carol had named everyone for DC Comics superheroes. Carol herself was Wonder Woman, and others included Mr. Freeze and Black Canary. Chris had been named Speedy, after the sidekick of Green Arrow. He had been disappointed, after Wikipedia-ing the character, to find that modern-day Speedy was actually a girl. It suggested that Carol didn’t give the slightest thought to personalizing a cool codename. But that concern was childish even back then, and was absurdly petty now that Carol was gone.

In fact, everyone who had known that name was dead, weren’t they?

“This is Speedy.”

“My Name is Harry Milton. I work for the CIA. You’ll want to verify that, even though simply getting through to your phone is proof enough. So call your superior and ask about me. I’ll call back in five minutes. And you might want to take this seriously if you intend to learn about Takahashi.”

The man hung up. Chris did as he was told and called the head of the station. He asked about Harry Milton and if he was legitimate. The chief, a man called Brooks, was unhappy that he had to lower himself off his pedestal to talk to someone as useless as Chris, but the mention of Milton made him sigh loudly and confirm that Milton was for real. While he waited for Milton to call back, Quarrel tried not to focus on how much he hated dealing with his so-called colleagues and once again wished he could be deployed into a nice, faraway city somewhere. Somewhere alone. Man on a mission. None of this bureaucracy and politicking.

The phone rang again.

“Quarrel,”

“Speedy?” said the man on the phone.

“Yes. I checked you out.”

“Good,” said Milton. “I’m told that you’re the last person who ever talked to Carol Kimura.”

“Yes.”

“Wrong. I was. After you spoke to her about the letter you opened, she called me. An hour later she was dead. And we both know why. Theresa Takahashi.”

“I never told anybody th—”

“Never told a soul. I know. And that means you have good instincts. We have a leak, Quarrel. Someone’s got high-level information and they’re using it against us. Your co-workers were not the first to die. One of my deep-cover operatives was taken out the day before. Which means that you and I are the only people who know that something’s fishy in the community. My people are already booking your transfer to Langley.”

“Transfer, sir?” asked Chris.

“You’ve just been called up to the big leagues.”

#

Chris Quarrel approached the customer service desk at a bank in suburban Virginia.

“How can I help you, sir?” asked the woman at the desk.

“I’d like a loan to buy a Jet Ski,” said Quarrel.

“Do you have collateral?”

“Only my father’s watch.”

“Follow me.”

The woman led Quarrel to an office at the back of the building, told him to sit, and left. She closed the door behind her, and Quarrel heard it lock. Quarrel looked around. It was a very boring office: An organized desk with a large blotter, a framed photo of a woman dressed in out-of-date fashions, and a motivational poster on the wall that said “Faith” with a picture of a man about to bungee jump. The blinds on the window were closed. Most of the brushed concrete floor was covered by a large, ugly area rug depicting a squiggle of blue lines on a background of brown squares. After a moment’s hesitation, Quarrel followed the woman’s instructions, and sat in the armchair in front of the banker’s desk.

After about twenty seconds, there was a click and Quarrel started to lower into the floor. The busy tangle of lines on the rug had perfectly concealed the seams where the drop-away floor was outlined. Chris, the chair, and a four-by-six-foot section of the carpet steadily lowered into the floor until he was so deep underground that the bank office became a small square of light overhead.

Finally, the downward movement slowed, and light appeared in front of Chris’s feet. The other three sides of the shaft were solid concrete, but in front of the chair the wall ended eight feet above the floor, creating an opening. Once the elevator reached the same level as the floor in front of him, Quarrel stood.

There was an old man waiting for him. Harry Milton was almost seventy, with sagging jowls and thin, grey hair. He wore a neatly pressed shirt tucked into rumpled pants, and his shoes were a new pair of sneakers.

“Quarrel,” said Milton. “Good of you to join us.”

“Sir,” said Quarrel, shaking the elder’s hand. “It’s an honour.”

“Nonsense. You wouldn’t call me ‘sir’ if you knew the things I’ve done.” Milton paused while they started to walk down the corridor. “But then again, you never will.”

The office was four stories below ground, and made entirely of concrete. In a few spots the walls had been painted, but mostly this was a grey, ugly place with fluorescent lighting and no windows. Quarrel noticed a series of coloured lines on some of the walls, like you’d see in a hospital, but decided not to ask what they meant or where they led.

He also noticed the dozens of security cameras that were constantly watching him. They were out in the open, hanging from the ceilings, not hidden under plastic domes or behind mirrors. These were the ones they wanted you to see, and Quarrel immediately understood that the best cameras were undetectable. The hallway led to a large office space, divided into cubicles. Along one wall was a bank of TVs, and there were several small rooms off to the left that looked like editing bays or some kind of video-dubbing rooms. They walked straight through the middle of the office, and the pathway led them directly into Milton’s private office. Milton closed the door to provide some privacy, and Quarrel sat down.

“No cameras in here?” asked Quarrel.

“None that I approved of. Or that I can find. But probably, someone’s watching.” Milton sat behind his messy desk, littered with both intelligence reports and fast-food cartons. “Why, you paranoid already?”

“Someone did try to blow me up. Plus I’ve just never been to a CIA facility before.”

“We’re not CIA. That’s just what I tell people on the phone. We’re CIB. Counter-Intelligence Bureau. It’s our job to screw with the guys who want to screw the CIA.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Wonder why.” Milton smiled a little. “Think of CIB as Internal Affairs for the American spy world. CIA, DHS, DOD, yadda yadda. We protect American agents from assassination, and root out moles and turncoats. We protect the people who smuggle secrets for America and catch the ones who smuggle secrets for our enemies.”

There was a natural pause in conversation where the old spymaster sized up the new recruit. It was interrupted when two other men entered the office. Both wore suits, although one man’s clothing was much more expensive than the other. The man in the nice suit was grey-haired, tanned, with deep frown lines ingrained in his forehead. The man in the cheaper suit was very tall, with a barrel chest and gorilla hands. He had thick, black hair and looked to be about fifty. He must have been a soldier at one point, but years of inactivity had packed on the pounds. Quarrel did a double-take when they entered, then stood up and held out his hand to the older, well-dressed man.

“Senator Anderson. It’s nice to meet you.”

The senator shook his hand, eyebrows climbing up his forehead. “You know me?”

“Sure. Senior senator for Ohio. Fifth term. You sit on several funding committees who hold closed-door meetings people aren’t supposed to know about, and more publicly on the Armed Services Committee. I’m not really surprised you’d be in a place like this.”

The senator looked at Milton. “This kid’s not bad.”

Milton spoke up, “Kid, this is Mr. Hinkston of the Central Intelligence Agency, and I see you already know who the good senator is. Now sit down.”

Hinkston shook Quarrel’s hand, his massive fingers engulfing Quarrel’s right hand, while he also slipped a business card into Quarrel’s left. Quarrel sat down, but Anderson and Hinkston stayed on their feet. The card had a CIA logo on the back, and on the other side it simply said HINKSTON and a phone number. Milton picked up the conversation.

“So Carol liked you, which means you got something going for you. But I gotta be honest, kid, you don’t look like much.”

“A good spy should never look like much. Much is conspicuous.”

Milton chuckled. “Damn right.”

Milton pulled open a drawer and fished around. Quarrel noticed that the old man’s computer monitor (a big old VGA monitor, not a modern flat screen like in the other offices) was turned off and covered in dust. Milton found what he was seeking and tossed a photo at Chris. It was a generic-looking man of about thirty. Short hair, brown eyes, clean shaven, Caucasian. It was just a headshot, so there was no way to judge his height or build. Milton waited for Chris to size the man up. Quarrel shrugged.

“What you are looking at is the least conspicuous man in America. His name was Matthew Crowe. He was the best.” Quarrel had never heard the name. Milton continued, “Crowe was a master of disguise. He could become anyone. Young or old, any language, any level of fame or notoriety, Crowe could assume the identity so completely that not even the subject’s own mother would know. And last week somebody killed him. Twelve hours later they hit your office.”

“Did his identity get leaked?”

“Don’t know if anyone knew his real name, but his cover was definitely broken. Crowe was in the middle of a deep-cover mission posing as a Russian businessman. Somebody knew. And they had him taken out.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a hit on the Russian he was playing?”

“The killer left us a note. He drew a picture on the wall of the room where Crowe’s body was found.” Milton handed over another photo. It was a finger-painted letter F, written in blood.

“F. The sixth letter of the alphabet. Like in the letter to the CSIS-2 postbox that I opened.”

“CIB has a specific mandate. We protect American agents from things like this. It’s one thing for us to investigate a dead CIA agent, but it’s exceedingly rare that one of our own ends up dead.”

Hinkston spoke now, “We need to sort this thing out, Mr. Quarrel. I’ve been pushing for an agent from outside the CIB to take point on Crowe’s murder.”

“You’ve been pushing for one of your lackeys to take point on this,” said Milton. “And I refuse to let them know the inner workings of my organization.” He turned back to Quarrel. “But I agree, CIB is too small a family to let any of my guys run this investigation. I could easily wind up tasking the traitor to find himself. I need someone from outside,and someon
e
no
t
answerable to Mr. Hinkston here.”

Hinkston snorted but said nothing.

Senator Anderson interjected. “I think you see the conundrum. CIB is supposed to root out corrupt CIA agents when the need arises. Can’t exactly send CIA agents in here, but at the same time the CIB is clearly compromised. Son, we need someone, to put it bluntly, like you.”

Quarrel nodded. “Who had access to Crowe’s mission files?”

Milton answered, “Nobody but me. However, there are a number of highest-value agents who have above-top-secret clearance. Any one of them could theoretically have gotten into our files, either here in the building or on the server, without my knowledge. But we have no record of anyone accessing the records in either manner.”

“How many agents are we talking about?”

“Seven. The seven best agents the CIB had ever employed. One of them is a traitor.”

Quarrel nodded, thinking.
“
At leas
t
one. More than one of them could have turned.”

“We’ve considered that,” said Hinkston.

“OK,” said Quarrel, “why me? No offence, I’m happy to be here, but why call in a junior analyst from Canada to look at a leak at the highest level of American intelligence?”

“Because you’re nobody. Because you aren’t from here, you don’t know me, and my agents have absolutely no idea that you exist. If I’m going to find this bastard I need someone on whom I can rely, and unfortunately that doesn’t include any agent within my office or the CIA. I need a total outsider. And because yesterday you pulled some intel out of thin air that saved one of those seven agents from a slow and painful death.”