Tier One Wild (8 page)

And there were no chemical or nuclear or biological weapons involved, which greatly affected the sex appeal of the news story. The Jakarta incident was front-page news for a few days, but then the story faded as the media minimized the continued threat.

But while it was true that the majority of the weapons were back under the control of the Libyans in power, or had never been stolen in the first place, or had been scooped up by Western parties once they were in transit out of Libya, Dr. Marris and his staff knew that these were the low-hanging fruit. There still remained in excess of a thousand missing Igla-S’s and enough artillery shells to fuel IEDs around conflict zones for fifty years.

So Marris left the low-hanging fruit to the Americans or the Libyans or whoever else wanted to get involved, and he stayed in Tripoli, working the hard cases.

Within the last month he had discovered that, along with other arms traders who had poured into the nation after the revolution, a tight-knit organization made up of former members of the JSO, Gaddafi’s external intelligence service, were behind the bulk of the smuggling. These spies had survived the rebellion by using their tradecraft and now they were either in hiding in Libya or over the border in Egypt or Tunisia or Algeria, facilitating the sale of all types of conventional weaponry that had been hidden around North Africa after their government’s downfall.

Marris’ efforts were bringing him closer and closer to the JSO ring’s leadership.

His staff worked at his downtown office, but most days he stayed in his suite at the Corinthian, sat in front of his laptop, and reported via webcam to the UN in New York or conducted online meetings with government officials or Human Rights Watch or sat for interviews with Western news organizations. As the pace of his investigation increased, he found himself in higher demand.

An investigation such as the one Marris and his team had been involved in would, of course, draw attention from the criminals as well. And it was no surprise that a couple of his investigators had been roughed up in the past month. But to Renny this was good news. It meant he was getting closer to a breakthrough, closer to the JSO men who were, as far as Marris was concerned, much more afraid of him than he was of them.

Once again, Dr. Renny Marris was dead wrong.

*   *   *

He pulled into a parking lot near the Old British Consulate, in the center of the Old City, and he hefted himself and then his satchel out of his car. He crossed the street and entered his destination, and soon found a table at the large bustling courtyard café.

Marris sat in the quietest corner of the courtyard and ordered a lunch of skewered lamb and rice along with a cup of strong coffee. He opened his satchel and arranged a sheaf of papers in front of him, and then began reading, losing himself in his data.

He had a videoconference with New York this afternoon. In the meeting he would update UN leadership about a recent snag in his investigation. One of his confidential informants, a general in the Libyan army, had gone missing. Marris felt certain the man had lost his nerve and broken off contact, so scared was he about possible reprisals by the JSO.

It was a setback, no question. Marris had relied on the general’s cooperation, and now that the man had disappeared, Marris would need to find new access into the shadowy organization of ex-spies controlling the export of illegal weapons out of the nation.

This new access would not come without a great cost in bribes, and he needed the UN to foot the bill. So now he read up on the facts and figures he would use this afternoon in his case to the UN so they would give him the money he needed to retool his inquiries.

Renny’s food came and he ate it while he worked. He ordered a second coffee after his meal, and he sipped while he continued to read the reports before him.

While working, even while working out in the open like this, Renny took no notice of his surroundings. He had not a clue of his own personal security.

It was only when he looked up from his work to rub his eyes that he noticed a young, well-dressed black man sitting across from him at his table.

The man offered a toothy grin and an extended hand. “Dr. Marris. Good to see you again. Donald Meriwether, from the conference in Bruges last September. You are looking well.” The man spoke English with an American accent.

Renny
had
been to a conference in Bruges the previous September, but he did not remember this man. Still, he took the man’s hand and shook it. “Nice to see you. Meriwether, is it?”

“That’s right.”

“Yes.” Marris, suddenly aware that much of the paperwork in front of him was highly confidential, began stacking the sheets as if he were about to leave.

“Can I buy you another coffee?” the American asked.

“Oh … thank you, but I need to get back to work. Um … I am sorry. Bruges is a bit of a blur. I can’t say I remember meeting you. What do you do?”

“Much the same as yourself, at the moment. In fact, I’d love a couple minutes of your time to chat about a topic of mutual interest. Maybe we could step over to the lounge?” Just off the courtyard was a dark room full of cushions and low tables. Here men sat in the dimness and smoked from hookahs and drank tea and coffee.

“Why?” asked Renny Marris, on guard now.

“Please. I’d appreciate a quick word.” The man stood, beckoned Marris to follow.

By the time they had settled into the tobacco-scented cushions in the dimly lit long and narrow lounge, the Canadian weapons expert had determined he had not, in fact, met this man in Bruges. He had also decided that this was no chance meeting. This man would be some sort of American agent—CIA or military intelligence or something along those lines.

He groaned inwardly. He had few hard and fast rules, but he had made one, an ironclad oath to himself that he would have neither contact with nor connections to the American government.

The CIA had been running around Libya on the same mission as Marris and his team for the past several months. They had had some successes, successes Marris chalked up to the easy-picking variety. But in this work the CIA had ruffled more than a few feathers along the way.

Marris had worked around CIA and other intelligence agencies in all the places in which he’d plied his trade for the past thirty years and, as far as the Canadian peacenik was concerned, American intelligence was an enemy who, for their own benefit, occasionally worked toward the same goal as did the good guys.

Marris asked the man in front of him, “Why don’t you just tell me who you are?”

The young man said, “I read your article last month in
Foreign Policy
. Very interesting.”

Marris adopted a skeptical, slightly sarcastic tone. “Would you like my autograph? No? I asked who you are.”

The American’s comfortable smile dropped off. “I’m with the U.S. Embassy.”

Renny Marris did not blink. “You are CIA.”

The black man did not blink, either. Instead he just repeated, “With the embassy.”

“What do you want?”

“Associates of mine are big fans of yours.”

Renny clutched the strap of his bag tighter. “I am certainly not doing what I do so that I can generate fans in American intelligence. The proliferation of U.S. weapons is tenfold more harmful to the world than these Libyan arms.”

“Agree to disagree,” said the American, displaying no outward reaction to the insult. “Look. I’m not here to tell you about everyone who loves your work. I’m here to tell you about a few who do not.”

“Who?”

“The JSO guys you have been tracking.”

“How do you know who I am tracking? Do you have spies in my operation?”

“We have feelers in
their
organization, same as you. And we have learned something recently. They know about your investigation, and they know you are close to identifying their leadership. That puts you in the crosshairs.”

“And?”

“We want to help you out of the crosshairs.”

Marris laughed, a touch of anger along with it. “I do not need a babysitter from the CIA watching over me. And I certainly am not going to be recruited by you. You want to control conventional weaponry so that you will have the biggest guns on the block. That isn’t peace. That is force. That is domination.
I
work for the good of all mankind, which means I don’t work with or for America.”

“‘The good of all mankind’?” The American chuckled and clapped his hands together. “That was a fabulous speech, Doc. I bet that goes over well at the UN or at UC Berkeley or pretty much anywhere in Europe. But, brother, you are in Tripoli at the moment, and ‘all mankind’ around here isn’t so appreciative of your efforts. Look, we are glad you are here and doing what you are doing. But that’s us. The two vans that followed you here into the Old City and the three goons in the lime-green four-door outside the café are a subset of mankind who don’t take kindly to your nosy nature.”

Marris looked out toward the courtyard for a long moment. Only a sliver of the street was visible through the entrance of the café. “I don’t see them.”

“You will when you go outside. Big guys in bad blue suits, one eyebrow each. You need to start opening your eyes when you leave the sanctity of the Corinthian.”

“I’ve been followed before. It is part of my work. You followed me here yourself, did you not?”

“I did,” the man conceded. “But not to slide a knife across your throat. You need to take my word for it. Tripoli is not safe for you anymore. Not safe for you
or
your investigators.”

Marris swatted away the comment with an annoyed hand, but the American continued his pitch.

“You are doing good work, but you could be doing more good. If you had a little more money, more physical and capital assets helping you out. We want to get the rest of the loose munitions off the market. Just like you.”

Marris just rolled his eyes. “Do you think you are the first American spy to try this pitch on me?”

“I know that I am not. I am, however, the first to tell you this while in a position to protect you from immediate harm.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Warning you. Know the difference. They will kill you. The guys out front or men just like them.”

“It sure sounds like a threat.”

“It is an informed observation, Doc.”

The Canadian finished the dregs of his coffee, all but slammed the little cup back on the plastic table. “I don’t want to see you again.”

“It might be safer for you if you did. I think I will just follow you around for a while. For your own good.”

Marris looked back over his shoulder at the crowd in the courtyard café. There were easily seventy-five people there, all male. “Mr. Meriwether. I am calling you that because I do not know what else to call you, not because I am so naive that I think you gave me your real name. All I have to do is shout out to the room, in Arabic, in French, or probably even in English, that you are an operative of the CIA, and then, I am quite certain, you will be otherwise engaged from following me through the streets for the rest of the day. Maybe for the rest of your life.”

The African-American did not seem fazed by the threat at all. Instead he just smiled. “My real name is Curtis. And you might want to think first about how badly you want to draw even more attention to yourself right now, because I have friends who can get me out of any jam I might get into today. You … on the other hand, only have me.”

Renny Marris did not speak. Instead he collected his satchel, stood from his thick cushion, and headed back through the courtyard café toward his car.

*   *   *

The big Canadian made it back to the parking lot by the Old British Consulate. The early afternoon pedestrian traffic had tapered off to almost nothing, so after he unlocked the door to his car and looked back over his shoulder, he had no problem picking out the black American crossing the street toward him.

He tossed his bag in the backseat angrily.

Curtis called to him as he approached. “Dr. Marris? One more quick thing.”

Renny sat down in his car. He reached to close the door but first said, “No! I told you! I do not want to talk to you.”

“Then don’t talk. Just listen.” Curtis grabbed the door and held it open.

“I certainly do not want to listen to anything you have to say.” Marris fought for the door. He found Curtis surprisingly strong.

“All right, then. Don’t listen. Just look.” The CIA man pulled a small mirror from his microfiber sport coat. It had a telescoping arm on the back of it, and this Curtis extended to its full length.

“What’s that?” Marris asked.

Curtis did not answer. Instead, he just said, “Don’t leave home without it.” He held the arm and lowered the mirror to the dusty cement, just outside the passenger door, and he angled the mirror to reflect just under the car.

Marris leaned out of the car and looked down at the reflection. An odd device was attached to the bottom of his car. A cylinder the size and shape of a coffee thermos. It was wrapped in gray electrical tape and a coiled insulated wire ran out of one end and disappeared off the edge of the mirror.

“What is
that
?”

Curtis replied, “Surely, Renny, a man with your expertise can recognize a car bomb when he sees one.”

“How … how did you…”

“How did I know? An associate of mine saw the three men in the green four-door attach it five minutes ago. My associate took pictures—we can review them back at the embassy. Fortunately, they didn’t have time to rig a pressure plate under the driver’s seat, they just wired it to your ignition system.”

“No,” the Canadian said with a quavering voice.

“No? Look at it!” Curtis held the mirror steady and Marris looked down at it again. “Have you had your nose stuck so deep in those briefing reports and technical manuals of yours that you’ve lost the ability to ID a real weapon when you see one?”

Marris looked at the American. “No…” He said it with reservation, but then he shook his head forcefully. “No. It’s a trick. A cheap, cruel, patently obvious scheme to get me to jump into the arms of you, the CIA, like you are my only hope. You put that there to scare me.”