Sphere Of Influence (19 page)

He kept going, but he wasn't sure where. Tears came up in his eyes, making it even more difficult to see and forcing him to stop. He tried to recall the last time he had cried. He hadn't been prepared for this. When Gasta's men had started beating him, he assumed the end result would be death--an infinitely uncomplicated state. But he wasn't dead, and despite a considerable amount of pain, he didn'
t
think he was dying. He wanted to drop to his knees and search for Chet--for the grave Gasta's men had dug with the shovel they'd beat him with. But what would be the point? He'd seen it all. They'd killed him. He'd watched the life suddenly ripped from those clear, trusting eyes, and he hadn't done anything to stop it.

The anger started slowly but grew brighter and hotter as his mind cleared. He started down the barely visible dirt road toward the highway that he knew was only a few miles away, ignoring the excruciating pain every time he weighted his left foot. They'd regret leaving him alive. He'd make them regret it.

Chapter
22

"A GODDAMN FBI agent! Jesus Christ! Do you have any idea how fucking dangerous this is?" Alan Holsten shouted. The shades to the conference room were down, covering the soundproof glass that looked out onto an empty corridor. It was Saturday and the CIA's Langley headquarters was nearly empty, but Holsten obviously wanted to make sure that he wasn't seen with Jonathan Drake.

"How could you let it go this far?"

Drake remained passive, sitting motionless at the table. His boss's tirade was just a release of fear and frustration: There had been no choice but to get rid of Chet Michaels, and Holsten had approved the sanction personally. However, it had been a barely audible verbal authorization given in the small office he kept in his home. There would be no paper trail to follow if it should ever come to that. "I gave Gasta strict orders that no one was to know of my existence, Alan. I told him that if anyone ever found out, I would pull my support from him. There was no way to know he was going to ignore that order."

"I told you we shouldn't get involved with that son of a bitch--that we'd end up getting flicked."

That wasn't even vaguely true, of course, but it was undoubtedly how Holsten remembered it.

"We've talked about this before, Alan. Gasta is arrogant, has an inferiority complex, and is stupid. The first two made him easy to manipulate, but the last always had the potential to make him unpredictable. But we needed him.

We needed someone who could take on a fair amount of Afghan heroin--to keep the money flowing to us and to al-Qaeda. It's not like we could just ask Congress for the financing--"

"You said you could control Gasta."

"I said that he was the most controllable person who met our criteria. Going with someone bigger, smarter, or more powerful would have been too dangerous. They wouldn't have needed our support as desperately and they would have asked questions."

Holsten laughed bitterly. "Jesus Christ, Jonathan. This whole thing is crumbling around you and you're giving me a dissertation on why you've made all the right decisions. Well, you haven't made the right decisions. And you failed to control an uneducated street punk from Brooklyn."

Drake ignored the insult. Alan Holsten seemed to think that the world moved along an even, predictable path--that all things could be modeled and statistically analyzed, just as his Harvard professors had taught him. But this was the real world.

The fact that Chet Michaels had seen him was, at first, a more or less minor issue. When a background check on the man revealed him to actually be an FBI agent, though, there had been little choice as to what action to take.

"I want to know what you're doing to make this all disappear, Jonathan. And I want to know now!"

Drake forced himself to remain calm. Holsten was the CIA's deputy director of operations and the only other man in the Agency who knew the full details of this operation. He had the potential to become extremely dangerous if he lost confidence.

"Alan, you have to understand that we didn't kill Michaels, Gasta's men did. Anyone investigating his disappearance would simply assume that his cover was somehow blown and that Gasta did away with him. The fact that Gasta is still on the street is a major embarrassment to the FBI, and they'll be happy to have something to pin on him."

"But is Gasta under control, Jonathan? He's scared now and that could make him even more unpredictable."

"I don't think so. He brought an undercover agent to meet me and he gave the order to have him killed. He recognizes that he's in a dangerous position and he's going to look to me for help and advice. From here on he'll do everything I say, exactly."

"You're sure about that," Holsten said, gripping the back of the chair he was standing in front of tightly enough to turn his knuckles white.

Drake nodded. "He has no real choice. I pulled the money we originally wired him for this drug buy and I've made it clear that there will be no more coming."

"What about the FBI? They're going to come after Gasta when they find out that their man's disappeared." "But that works perfectly for us, Alan. Gasta's already gone into hiding. He won't be able to draw money from his normal operations, and we've cut him off. With no other source of cash, he has no choice but to go after the heroin. "

"And you're confident that the FBI won't be able to find him?"

"Absolutely. I have people in Washington who are keeping me up-to-date on the L
. A
. office's investigation into Gasta as well as Laura Vilechi's investigation into the rocket launcher. I'll always be one step ahead of them. But as far as Gasta is concerned, it doesn't really matter: He'll be dead before the FBI even realizes their man is gone, and that will be the end of it. Gasta will be posthumously blamed and there will be no reason to look any further." Holsten didn't speak for a long time, and Drake could feel the perspiration starting at his hairline.

"You're very smooth, Jonathan. Very convincing. But I sometimes wonder what's really going on in your head." "If you don't think I've told you the truth, I suggest you check it out yourself."

"Oh, I think it's the truth. But I think it's been attractively packaged. You've allowed al-Qaeda to smuggle a sizable weapon into the U
. S
. and hold the American people hostage. We know from our intelligence that they have three operable rockets, but you have no idea where they are. And now the FBI agent. . . . You're very good at telling me how this al
l
works for us, but I'm not convinced. Chet Michaels met with a drug supplier from Afghanistan, and Laura Vilechi knows from us that the Afghans are fighting in the Golden Crescent. The drug connection isn't going to be something they miss forever."

"Like I said, Alan, I've got ears high up in the FBI, and I'm hearing nothing about Gasta in relation to the terrorism investigation. He's being handled out of the L
. A
. office as nothing more than another organized criminal."

"When is Gasta meeting with the Afghans again?" "A week."

"And you guarantee that no one will walk away from that meeting?"

Guarantees were dangerous, but there was little choice at this point. "No one will. Gasta will attack them based on my orders, and anyone who survives that firefight will be taken care of by our people. It will just look like a drug buy gone wrong."

"Gasta is top priority," Holsten said, stating the obvious, as he often did when he was frightened. "If we can't get the Afghans, so be it. Let them drive away. Recovering the launcher, whatever al-Qaeda is or is not accomplishing in the drug trade--that's all second priority now. We have to focus on the CIA's exposure."

"It's all being taken care of Alan. We're in the process of cutting off contact with al-Qaeda and destroying all evidence of our involvement. But we have to do it carefully. We don't want to tip Volkov off that we're shutting this operation down. The illusion of continued business with him is critical to our being able to get close enough to kill him." Holsten's expression darkened. "It hasn't done much good so far, though, has it, Jonathan? Does he know we were behind the attack on his house in the Seychelles?" "We would certainly be one entry on a very long list. All of his enemies would know that he would have to send someone to reassert his power over Laos. In any event, with Pascal dead, he's weakened."

Jonathan knew that this was true but wondered now if killing Pascal would have the devastating effect he had hoped for. The few bank accounts they knew about wer
e
already gone, and large fires had sprung up in areas where the CIA suspected Volkov had houses. The speed and efficiency with which he had cut himself off from everything he had built was startling, though this was something better left unsaid at this point.

"You're keeping in touch with Volkov," Holsten said. "Keeping him reassured?"

"Of course."

"We have to get to him, Jonathan. Everything the FBI uncovers has to lead to a dead end. Nothing can go through to us."

"I understand. But Gasta and his people have to be our first priority. Volkov will be difficult for the FBI to reach, even if they discover his existence. Based on my information, the investigation into the launcher is pretty much stalled now. They have no physical evidence to work with and aren't getting much international cooperation."

Holsten nodded slowly, and for a moment Jonathan thought the discussion was over.

"What about Mark Beamon?"

"I had the information regarding his inspection report leaked. It was perfect for us: heavily critical of his ASACs, blaming them for his own failings as a manager. The implication is that he was going to let his ASACs go down in his place. He's got his hands full with them right now. That, combined with the fact that he and Laura Vilechi's boss can't even be in the same room together, should keep him out."

Chapter
23

MARK Beamon opened his eyes to a woman dressed in white, holding his wrist and looking at her watch. He tried to pull away, but she was stronger and more determined than she looked.

"Stop being such a baby," she said. "You're going to be fine. You have quite a few cuts and bruises, and a sprained ankle, but no broken bones. Do you understand? You're going to be fine."

Apparently satisfied with his pulse rate, she dropped his arm unceremoniously and held up something that looked like a business card. "The police officer that brought you here told me to give you this. When you're feeling up to it, he'd like to talk to you." She placed the card on the table next to his bed and disappeared through a door without another word.

His head was beginning to clear and he managed to push himself into a sitting position and look around him at the private hospital room. Satisfied that he was alone, he fell back onto the mattress. His memory of the night before was hazy at first, but once the images started to come, he couldn't make them stop: his meeting with Gasta, Chet's death out in the desert, Mikey and Tony beating the shit out of him, finally finding the highway and being picked up by a disinterested cop.

Chet.

Beamon felt the tears starting again, but he forced them back with thoughts of a drunk, swaggering Carlo Gasta. What had happened? How had Chet's cover been blown?

The answer was obvious. The mysterious man behind Gasta had taken the time to do a little digging after his accidental meeting with Chet and had somehow come up with his real identity. It was he whom Gasta had called last night. And it was he who had given the order.

Beamon threw the covers off and slid carefully from the bed. The pain when his left foot touched the ground was excruciating, but he stood anyway, putting his full weight on it in a pointless act of defiance. Gritting his teeth and refusing to favor his injury, he walked stiffly to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

An examination, made easier by the less-than-modest hospital gown, suggested that the nurse was right. Most of the skin on his arms, legs, and torso was an uneven yellow/brown, broken by the occasional laceration. Only a few of the cuts had been bad enough to warrant stitches. His face was another story entirely. Other than a few little scratches he'd gotten when Tony had thrown him to the ground, there wasn't a mark on it. He ran a hand along his dirt- and sweat-matted beard, looking for hidden swelling or abrasions. Nothing.

A brief search of the room turned up his glasses but not his clothes or what was left of the cell phone he'd had in his pocket. Ignoring a crutch propped against the wall, he pushed through the door and started down the hall, watching everyone he passed carefully with semi
-
controlled paranoia. In the end, though, no one seemed to be particularly interested in a middle-aged man hobbling by with his ass hanging out.

He finally found a pay phone near the elevator and dialed Laura Vilechi's cell number.

"Yeah, hello."

"It's Mark."

"Mark! Jesus, we've been going nuts trying to find you. Are you all right? What happened? Where's Chet? Was his cover blown?"

Beamon looked around him and confirmed that there was no one within earshot. "Look, I've only got a second, okay. Listen carefully. I'm at the San Bernardino County Hospital. Call Claude Heiss--I think he's still working ou
t
of the L
. A
. office. He grew up in Quebec. Tell him to come here and meet me. He's Nicolai's bodyguard and doesn't speak much English, mostly French. You got that?" "Mark, what's going on?"