Extraordinary Retribution (14 page)

“I think I’ve lost them.”

Houston brought him a bottle of water, which he accepted thankfully. “You’re too old to be playing cops and robbers, Fred.”

“Tell me about it.” He sat down on a chair across the room from the desk and exhaled deeply. “What the hell have you gotten me into, Sara?”

Houston shook her head. “I don’t know, Fred. You got my messages and the encrypted emails. You know as much as I do now. Can you tell us what happened?”

Simon nodded and glanced at Lopez. “I guess you’d be the priest. Forgive me, Father, if I sin and don’t properly introduce myself. Jesus, I’ve had a hell of a day.”

Lopez nodded. “I understand. Things seem to be getting crazier by the day.”

Simon turned back to Houston. “Well, it happened quickly. The timing was unsettling. I had just pushed for access to some of the files from Sara’s division. I’m not a director anymore, but I’ve got residual clout and a lot of favors owed. Despite all that, I was stonewalled and punted from office to office.”

“That’s incredible,” blurted Houston.

“Yeah, real slap in the face. No way the CTC was going to bend any rules, even for me. I don’t know what your boys were involved with, but they don’t want those details out. So, just as I was getting a handle on my new position in the food chain, things got real interesting. About five minutes after pulling out of the CIA parking lot for home, there’s a gray Honda Civic in my rearview. One of the most common cars on the road. Asphalt-gray Civic—hard to notice in general, and if I weren’t already primed from the shock earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have. But I did. It was mirroring my moves, speed, turns. Subtle at first, then as I did stupider things, the driver was forced to be more obvious.”

“A tail?” asked Lopez.

“Yes,” answered the CIA agent. “But these guys weren’t fooling around. They realized I was on to them, and suddenly the car accelerated and was drawing up on my side of the car.”

“Oh, my God,” whispered Houston.

Lopez was confused. Simon noticed and explained.

“Might be paranoia, Father, but there are only two reasons to tail someone and then pull up violently along the driver’s side—to positively ID the driver and, upon positive ID, to execute an action related to that person.”

“Execute?” Lopez sat down.

“Not necessarily a hit, Francisco,” said Houston. “Sometimes, as with the paparazzi, to get photographs.”

“But, as you can see, I’m not paparazzi material,” said Simon. “They weren’t looking for photographs.”

There was a brief silence. Simon gulped down more of the water. He continued.

“So, there I was on the G.W. Parkway doing near one hundred, dodging cars and looking for an exit. That crazy Civic was on my ass the whole time, and it’s damn lucky we didn’t get ourselves or someone else killed in that madness. I honestly don’t remember how I got here. Once off the highway, it was fifty different roads, wild turns, lights run, and the suspension on my Taurus banged to hell and back. They were better drivers. I could see that. But I had a lifetime of driving through Virginia on my side. Thank God. They didn’t know the roads. If they had, well, I don’t want to think about what might have happened.”

“But this is insane!” exclaimed Lopez, standing up. “We aren’t in a movie! We’re less than an hour from the White House! Shadowy men don’t chase a high-ranking CIA official through suburban Virginia because he asked some questions about a group at another division!”

“They didn’t use to.” Simon coughed a tired laugh. “Could’ve handled them maybe in my younger days.”

“This doesn’t make sense!” Lopez looked over to Houston for some sort of clarification. She didn’t have any.

“Did you get a look at the occupants?” she asked.

Simon shook his head. “Too busy practicing for the Indy 500.”

“I think Francisco is right, Fred. You get a hit put on you for
asking questions
? No way. CIA’s done stupid stuff, but this doesn’t add up.”

“Maybe it’s not CIA.” Simon’s words hung in the air.

Lopez furrowed his brows. “Then who?”

The CIA man eyed the priest and turned his attention back to Houston. “You said it yourself in what you wrote me, Sara. We have possibly linked assassinations of connected members of your division. The killers are highly trained and bent on some crazed mission. Maybe they didn’t want anyone getting in the way of their plans.”

Houston shook her head. “How would they know who you were? That you were investigating? How could they have a team on you that fast? The response time, the
knowledge
of events, suggests CIA involvement.”

“Well, they sure do their research,” said Lopez, who was staring off into space. “They do their damned research.” His entire body seemed flexed, his broad back and shoulders stretching the fabric of his vestments.

Houston stood up and walked toward the priest. “What do you mean, Francisco?”

Lopez clenched his fists. “Nobody knew about our family home in Gatlinburg. I
barely
remembered. Yet within days of his arrival, they were on Miguel. They defeated his security systems. They found out, planned, and executed their...
mission
. Executed my brother.” Lopez whirled around to face the agents, nearly striking Houston as he spun recklessly. “If they can do that, they can get to you.”

“Francisco,” began Houston softly, “They might have followed Miguel from Madison to the mountain home.”

“No way. He was too careful.”

Simon interrupted, standing up. “These are professionals, Francisco.”

“So was Miguel! I don’t think they had him followed.
Think
about it! All your best agents, downed one by one. Maybe the reason these killers know so much is that they have the information to start with.”

“So, now you believe it
is
the CIA?” asked Simon.

“No, I don’t think our government is that crazy, whatever I’ve thought about its actions over the years.”

“Then what?” asked Simon, his arms raised in the air.

“I don’t know. Bad agents, rogue agents, who have a grudge or want to bury the past by removing all involved.”

Simon nodded. “Maybe.”

“Or someone who has covertly gained access to CIA information: records, names, locations,” broke in Houston.

Simon sighed. “A lot of possibilities. Basically, we have potential killers out there looking for us, and we don’t have the faintest clue who they are, where they are, why they’re hunting us, or when they’ll show up on our doorstep.” He seemed to make a decision. “Too little information, too much heat. I’m going to phone in a vacation month, and I’m going to disappear for a little while. I don’t think I’m the main target. After what I’ve seen today, I would assume these hostiles are looking for the both of you. Sara, you’ve worked out of this room, from that connection, for much too long. I know you’re careful, but anyone can hack their way to the information given enough time. You need to move, and move now.”

Houston nodded. “You’re right.”

“I’ll be in touch, Sara,” said the CIA man. “I’m down, but not out. Let me hole up, circle some wagons, and call in some favors that
will
be repaid. Meanwhile, be very careful.”

With that, he opened the door and exited the hotel room, and was soon out of sight in the failing light. Houston bolted the door shut again and looked through the curtains for several minutes.

“OK, he’s gone. Doesn’t look like anyone followed him or took note.” She turned back to face Lopez and crossed her arms across her chest.

Uh-oh.
Lopez didn’t like that stance.

“Good thing you got that extension from your Bishop today, Francisco.”

He’d almost forgotten. In all the insanity of Simon’s story, the one good piece of news had seemed insignificant. But her tone spoke to something else.

“What do you mean?”

“Because we need the extra time to plan a mission.”

Mother of God.
“What mission?”

Houston flashed him a wicked smile. “We’re going to break into the CIA. We’re going to steal those files.”

Father Lopez crossed himself. “Lord, have mercy.”

24

I
t was nearly forty-five minutes of driving through early-morning rush-hour traffic to reach the CIA building. Unconsciously, he looked across the car and stared down at her left leg. This morning she had bought a large air cast from a local pharmacy and strapped it on. When he had asked what she was doing, she had dismissed his question: “It will take too long to explain, Francisco. If things go like I predict, you’ll find out soon enough.”
More secrets
. He was tiring of them but becoming accustomed to accepting deliberate unknowns in this new world that he had entered.

All along the way, Houston had explained that the building was a very high-tech experiment. She went on and on about it, describing its top-secret ring-decoder setup, designed by a new contractor specializing in ultra-high security for government installations. A “fourth-generation building, with two extra toppings of paranoia” she had added. Lopez had not listened very carefully. He had always been skeptical about the spy business idol worship in American culture. He’d seen enough American screw-ups at home and abroad to be forever jaded about the myth of the omniscient and omnipotent Intelligence Machinery of the United States. He wondered why she was going on so much about it.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. The building was set several miles into the Virginia countryside, isolated within an undeveloped rural landscape. Houston informed him that the US government held the deeds to all the land around the building and leased it to large agribusiness companies. The nice contracts meant the businesses asked no questions and kept to themselves. The government stranglehold on the land meant that the CIA building would remain relatively isolated.

His first impressions of the location were of a sudden and jarring contrast. With little transition, they exited the shaded, tree-lined, two-lane road they had been on for twenty minutes and entered a bright, open area devoid of trees, the forest forming a broad perimeter around the entire complex like a tall, green belt. Several hundred feet from the trees was a solid wall of concrete perhaps twelve to sixteen feet high. Lopez nearly laughed out loud—
it was like a castle wall!
Only less scalable.

An unusually large band of razor wire was spiraling across the top of the wall, giving the CIA building the look of a maximum-security prison. As they drew near the gate, Lopez was shocked to see how far they had taken the idea of sharp metal and walls: embedded like a lattice into the concrete itself were steel blades as long as his hand, thousands of them covering the wall and turning it into a giant cheese grater.
Or human grater
, he thought grimly. It was insane. Nobody was ever going to climb that wall, he was sure of that. What a giant slab of complete paranoia.
Did Congress see how the taxpayers’ money was being spent?

At the gate, Houston handled the most significant problem facing them today: Lopez himself. As an unannounced visitor, without security clearance or federal ID outside of his social security number, there were a lot of problems. He estimated that it took them thirty minutes outside the gate as Houston negotiated his entrance. In the end she managed, but Lopez was forced to go through a series of high- and very low-tech screenings. He had done TSA screenings before, but he had seen nothing like this. In size, the “gatehouse” was more like a starter home in Alabama. Two different body scanners stripped him with electromagnetic radiation. A man roughly cavity-searched him as well. Then the really weird stuff started. He was asked to provide several voice samples, to undergo a thermal body scan, and—strangest of all—he was asked to walk four times down a carpeted strip lined with cameras and what he guessed were motion sensors.

At the end of it, he was forced to leave all electronics behind, especially his smartphone. He signed paperwork linking his name to the serial number and a barcode, and the phone was taken away and placed in storage. At least they let him keep the cross around his neck! Finally, he met up with Houston, and they returned to her car. She limped with her fake cast the entire way.

“So, I don’t even get a fancy Visitor ID badge?” Lopez asked ironically.

“No need here,” she answered, unlocking the car.

Lopez opened the door and ducked his head in. “So how will they know I’m a visitor, or who I am? This is your fourth-generation security?”

“They’ll know,” she said. The car rocked slightly as they closed their doors, and Houston started the engine and shifted into reverse. “And not just because you’re wearing a collar. It’s a smart building, Francisco. A very smart one, actually. All that silly stuff they had you do that you were complaining about—they were taking your biometric ID.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Lopez’s smile faded as she evened the car with the road to the gate, shaking her head. “Biometric ID?”

“Short version: your height, weight, temperature distribution, face, and voice all are highly specific to your person, like a fingerprint. They took scans of your face for facial recognition, weighed you, measured you in three dimensions, recorded your voice and breathing patterns. They had you walk up and down a pressure-sensitive carpet that recorded information about your gait, the way you walk.”

“Seriously?”

“It gets better.” Houston idled in front of the thick steel gate as it slowly opened to let them through. “The individual measurements are nice, but the power comes in the integration of them all. It’s like when you surf the web—any individual website or search term, online purchase or download, they tell you something. But the privacy advocates are worried about the so-called “aggregators,” the sites that have access to multiple aspects of your behavior online. When they can create multidimensional databases of your behavior, they develop a highly precise portrait of your virtual self. And they sell it to advertisers, of course.”

The gate had opened, and Houston shifted and accelerated through it. “Of course,” said Lopez, fascinated.