The Cyclops Initiative (14 page)

“What are the specifics of your accusation?” the general asked.

“There was no way Captain Chapel could know the location of the Angel system unless Director Hollingshead gave him that information. Clearly he'd been sent to remove Angel and take it into hiding. If I'd been a little slower in getting there, he would have succeeded and nobody would have known what he did. And our investigation into the drone hijacking would have become impossible.”

The SecDef put a hand on the table in front of him and gripped its edge like he thought he might collapse. “Rupert,” he said, in a small voice. “Is this true?”

This was where it could get bad. If Hollingshead denied the charge, it would be his word against Wilkes's, and there was only one way that could play out.

But instead the director stood up, wiped his glasses on a handkerchief, and replied, “It is.”

Norton frowned. “Do you have a good reason why you would do such a thing?”

“No, sir,” Hollingshead replied. His face might have been made of stone. It was clear he had nothing more to say on the matter.

The SecDef gave him a good long while to change his mind. When he didn't, Norton said, “I think maybe you should go to your office now and wait until we've decided what to do next. Don't you?”

Hollingshead put his glasses back on. “Sir,” he said, and then he walked out of the room without even looking at anybody.

Wilkes had to respect the director. That couldn't have been easy. It almost made him feel sorry for the old man.

Almost.

When Hollingshead was gone, it was like somebody had flipped a switch. Suddenly everybody was talking at once. Norton quieted them down by raising his voice a few decibels. “This is the last thing we need. We're dealing with a terrorist attack—­maybe two terrorist attacks now, after this thing in New York—­and all we're doing is fighting among ourselves like dogs on a street corner.”

Charlotte Holman raised one hand. “Sir, if I may—­that could very well be the point.”

Norton glared at her. “What do you mean?”

“The original attack utilized an air force Predator drone signed out, spuriously of course, by the CIA. Now we have the DIA implicated. The terrorists must be laughing behind their hands. How many agencies can they tie up in knots before they're done?”

“I notice the NSA still passes the smell test,” Norton replied.

“Do we? We provided the intelligence product that led to Angel.” She shook her head. “You see? If something goes wrong, we can be blamed as well. These ­people are very good. I think we need to remember that we trust each other. If we don't, who can we rely on?”

The SecDef nodded. “What's your recommendation?”

“I'd like to take over this search for Angel. Of course, the NSA doesn't have any field agents, but our analysts are the very best. If you'd be willing to second someone to me, someone I can put on the ground, my associate Mr. Moulton here can steer them in the right direction. The most impor­tant thing is moving forward. If we can secure whatever's left of this Angel, we still have a chance of finding the terrorists.”

“You have a field agent in mind?” Norton asked.

“Lieutenant Wilkes,” she said.

That caused a little stir.

“We've established that the DIA is working against the common good,” Norton said. “And you want to use one of their agents?”

Holman smiled. She looked over at Wilkes and nodded at him. “He took a big risk here, accusing Director Hollingshead. It's clear where his priorities lie—­he's more interested in serving his country than playing politics. More important, he's already up to speed. No reason to bring in anyone else—­we would have to tell them everything, and the fewer ­people who know what's going on, the better.”

Norton stared at Wilkes for a second. Wilkes stayed at attention. Finally, Norton got up from his seat and headed for the door. “Okay,” he said. “Everybody else, with me.”

The room emptied out in a hurry, leaving only Wilkes, Holman, and Moulton behind.

When the door was closed, she walked over to Wilkes and put a hand on his cheek. “That was very well done,” she said. “Angel, Chapel, now Hollingshead. How long have we been working to get rid of the three of them?”

It was Moulton who answered. “A little over thirty-­six months.”

Wilkes allowed himself a brief smile. “You really sure Hollingshead was such a threat he needed to be taken down like that? He never impressed me much.”

“Rupert does a very good job of hiding his light under a bushel. Believe me, if anyone could have stopped what comes next, it would have been him.” She walked over to where the SecDef had sat and touched the back of his chair. She looked like she wanted to sit in it, to see what it felt like. “I know your now-­former boss pretty well. Though he can still surprise me on occasion. I would never have believed that Angel was an AI, not in a thousand years. He's always been a firm believer in human intelligence.”

“I know what I saw,” Wilkes said.

Holman steepled her fingers in front of her and nodded. “We at the NSA have proven time and again that computers are better at this sort of work. It looks like Rupert finally came around to that understanding as well.”

Wilkes had no interest in any of that. “You're supposed to give me orders, now, ma'am,” he said.

She gave him a very warm, very bright smile. “Of course. Well. You were looking for Chapel and Angel's hard drive. Carry on.”

Wilkes saluted and turned toward the door.

She wasn't finished, though. “When you find them, make sure nobody else ever can,” she added.

“Yes, ma'am,” Wilkes replied.

WALT WHITMAN SER­VICE AREA, NJ: MARCH 22, 00:14

Julia looked terrified as she told her story. Chapel could only imagine how she must have felt back when it was happening.

“I only saw him twice. The first time, he came to see me at my clinic. This was back when we were living together. You were out on a mission—­I had no idea where you were or when you were coming back, or
if
you were coming back. When he showed up, I could tell right away he was some kind of spy or whatever. He just had that—­that smug thing.”

“Smug?”

“Oh, come on,” Julia said, running her fingers through her hair. “Don't pretend like you don't get the same way, sometimes. He had that attitude, that look on his face. Like he knew a bunch of secrets and that made him better than everybody else. You all get that look sometimes. It's insufferable, to be honest.”

Chapel's eyes went wide. He'd had no idea he gave that off.

“So I could tell he was—­from the intelligence community, let's put it that way. And I was sure when he walked into the clinic, absolutely sure he was coming to tell me you were dead. That it was a courtesy call.”

“That must have been horrible,” Angel said.

“Yeah. Well. I felt like I was going to throw up, just seeing him there. Or maybe I was going to break down and start crying and I wouldn't even be able to explain why to my patients. My boyfriend was dead and I wouldn't even be able to tell my closest friends. It was something I always dreaded. But then he came into one of the examination rooms with me and he told me right off the bat you were still alive. He must have known what I was thinking. He said he'd been sent to talk about our relationship.” She glanced over at Chapel. “Yours and mine, I mean.”

“Somebody from the government came to give you dating advice?” Chapel asked.

“I was so relieved I think I laughed at the idea. He agreed it sounded funny. But then he told me I was going to have to break up with you.”

“What?” Chapel asked, loud enough that diners around them turned to look.

“He had a whole speech about why it had to be done. I could tell even he didn't believe it, but he wouldn't answer any questions. He said that I was a liability and I could get you in trouble. He said I was compromising your effectiveness in the field.”

“To be fair,” Angel said, “that's not all bullshit. We do prefer to work with agents who have no significant connections back home. It makes them—­”

“Hold on,” Chapel said to her. “Julia—­you're saying this guy came from the government and he told you to break up with me? I thought you did it because you were sick of being kept in the dark all the time.”

“I was,” she replied. “I was absolutely miserable. Who knows? I might have broken things off anyway. I definitely wasn't ready to marry you.”

Chapel closed his eyes. That didn't help. All he could see was an engagement ring in a little padded box. Sitting on the front hall table of Julia's apartment while she walked out the door.

He forced himself to stay in control. “What did you tell him?”

“To go fuck himself, of course,” Julia said. “That was when he started with the threats. No, no, don't get like that,” she told Chapel, who had been about to jump out of the booth. “He didn't threaten to hurt me. He threatened your career. He said if I didn't break up with you he would leak your name to the news media. He would out you. He talked about how many enemies you had, how many ­people would love to get their hands on you, and if your name was in the public record, there was nothing to stop them. He said if I didn't dump you, I would basically be sentencing you to death.”

Chapel put a hand over his mouth. He had to, or he knew he would start shouting.

“I couldn't let that happen. So I agreed,” Julia said.

Chapel couldn't reply, so Angel had to. “You said you met him twice,” she said.

Julia nodded. “The second time—­” She stopped and looked at Angel as if she wasn't sure she should say this in front of the younger woman. But then she shook her red hair and said, “The second time was a ­couple of months later. He came and showed me a photograph. It showed you, Jim. On a balcony, standing with—­some other woman. And you had your, you know. Your hand in her panties.”

All the blood rushed out of Chapel's body and he felt like he might collapse. Nadia. Julia had seen a picture of him with Nadia.

It was the last thing he'd ever wanted Julia to know about. The very last.

“I was . . . well. I didn't like looking at that picture. I mean, I'd dumped you, in a pretty bad way. It's true. And it wasn't like you ran right out and found a replacement; I know some time passed. But it made me . . . it made me uncomfortable. Can we just leave it at that? It made me angry, too.” Julia turned her face away. “He said he wanted me to know I'd made the right choice, breaking up with you. I think he wanted to make sure I didn't have any second thoughts.”

Chapel counted to ten in his head. Then he reached for Julia's hand. She pulled it away. “Listen,” he said, “do you want the details? I'll tell you all about her—­”

“Jesus Christ, no!” Julia said, looking at him with flashing eyes. “I don't want to know. Your life—­after I broke up with you—­that's—­that's—­”

Her eyes shimmered with tears that refused to fall.

“Who did he work for?” Angel asked. “This mysterious guy. Did he give you any idea of who he worked for?” When Julia didn't respond right away, she said, “Come on, this is important. Did he give you any kind of clue?”

“I asked if he worked for Hollingshead. He said no, and it was funny I would even think that. He said he worked for a different agency. That he was a civilian. That's all. I told him to go away and never bother me again and he just smiled—­he always smiled, I hated that smile—­he smiled and said he was sure we'd see each other again.”

“I can confirm he didn't work for the DIA,” Angel said. “I would have known about this.” She looked at Chapel. “We didn't do this to you.”

“To him?” Julia said. “They didn't do this to
him
at all. They did it to me.”

Angel drew back into her seat like she was afraid Julia would attack her. “Never mind. I didn't mean anything by that.”

Chapel shook his head. “I'm so sorry, Julia. That must have been terrifying.”

“A little. But I'm kind of used to it. Spies telling me cryptic things. Acting shifty.” She crumpled a paper napkin in her fist and looked out the window.

Chapel had forgotten that her parents used to work for the CIA. It was how she'd gotten mixed up with him in the first place. A CIA lawyer used to come over to their house once a month when she was a kid, just to make sure her parents hadn't been subverted by foreign spies.

“You think he was with the CIA?” he asked.

“Not really,” Julia said. “I tried tricking him into admitting just that, once, and he looked . . . contemptuous. Like I had insulted him. But he was definitely an intelligence guy, and an American.”

Chapel nodded. “So somebody from some agency screwed with our personal life. Then later, somebody framed Angel, somebody we're pretty sure was also part of the intelligence community.”

“You think there's a connection there?” Julia asked.

“Two attacks on us, coming so close together? I'm certain of it. Whoever is behind the drone hijacking is the same person who pressured you. Clearly there's a conspiracy to take us down—­and it's working.”

WALT WHITMAN SER­VICE AREA, NJ: MARCH 22, 00:33

“Are you sure about this?” Julia asked.

Chapel glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then tried the handle on another car door. Locked. He tried to make it look like he was just walking past the car toward the next one in the lot. Tried the handle. Locked.

Angel answered Julia's question. “If the police are looking for you, they'll have looked up your license plate number. There'll be an APB out for you. We need a new car.”

Chapel tried another door handle. Locked. The tricky part was testing the handles gently. Most of these cars had car alarms. If he pulled too hard, he would set them off, and the owner would come running out of the rest stop looking to see what was going on.