The Shield of Darius (6 page)

“Hardly ordinary, Warren. You’re not nearly as uncouth as you like to appear – you were an exceptional Russian language student at Washington University before enlisting in the service, and graduated fifth in your pilot training class – first in academics. Then you picked an 0-2 to fly, rather than a fighter. That’s hardly ordinary.”

This time the pause was Eddie’s. 

“Suppose I say I’m interested. Then what?”

“Call in sick tomorrow.”

“They’ll check me out. You must know that.”

“No they won’t. And if it will make you feel better, stay home and be sick.”

“Then what?”

“Go in Tuesday, and you’ll find you’ve been transferred.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Where to?”

“Nowhere. They’ll have what look like legitimate orders but they won’t be to any real unit. Just take them, clear out your desk and go home. We’ll get back to you with more information. By the end of the week, you won’t have any service record. In fact, you won’t have any record at all. I’ll contact you.”

“Give me some idea what we’re talking about here – by way of assignments.”

“First a new name, new face, and new identity. Eddie Warren disappears. If that’s not acceptable, go to work tomorrow and you won’t hear from us again. If you join, nothing is off limits. You’ll always be working as an American. No undercover stuff. And usually from the Washington area. Think of this as ‘shadow government.’ We do what can’t be done officially – what restrictions on the system or political expediency don’t allow through normal channels.”

“Why don’t you leave that shit to the CIA? I thought that’s what they were for – or maybe you
are
CIA.”

“You know the system, Warren. Even the CIA can’t touch some things anymore. Too many watchdogs.”

Eddie chuckled skeptically. “I know I don’t know everything that goes on, but I can’t believe that in this day and age there’s an apparatus so deep that I… that
nobody
– even the damn news snoops – have never heard of it!”

“If you’d heard of us, we couldn’t exist,” the voice said. “And we’re very small.”

Eddie leaned against the side of the booth and studied the windows across the darkening street. “What if I need a few days to think about this?”

“Then you aren’t one of our people. We’re looking for those who’ve been looking for us. You’re either ready, or you aren’t.”

Falen had been ready. As he punched the new data into his spread sheet, he thought again that he was doing exactly what he enjoyed most. He was doing it as Christopher Falen, and those who had known Eddie Warren would not recognize him. The bridge of his nose was narrower, his hazel eyes larger, ears pulled back closer to his head, and jaw squarer and accentuated with a small cleft on the chin. He no longer lived in Crystal City but in a brownstone inside the Beltway, north on 21
st
Street just off New Hampshire. He liked Falen. Eddie Warren had allowed himself in Vietnam to become crude and ordinary. Something of a stud, in his own judgment, but a crude and ordinary stud. Falen gave him reason to become smooth and self-assured, schooled in speech and protocol. Before changing his appearance, they had run him through special forces training, then through an intensive language program to sharpen his Russian skills. He now moved with a freedom and confidence Eddie Warren had never imagined possible. Starting over had given him a chance to do what other mortals only dream about – money, travel, women. He was now in his early sixties but looked ten years younger. Christopher Falen enjoyed who he was and what he could do.

He was particularly turned on by this new project. It wasn’t an assignment, and that made it all the more satisfying. His Control, Fisher, remained a quiet voice on the phone and Falen made no attempt to find out who or where he was, or who the man worked for. When Fisher initiated a call, he left only one of two messages. One was to confirm that Falen had ordered a medium sausage and onion pizza, which meant that Falen was to call in. The other invited him to have a demonstration for new double-paned, Dura-frame windows: he would find information in his post office box or downloaded directly to his computer by the following day. The technology had become more sophisticated with each year, but the two messages remained the same and Falen still preferred printouts. When they came to his post office box, they were never postmarked. Just there. Most of his work came from Fisher as assignments, but occasionally he initiated a project himself, with Fisher’s approval. His handler, whoever he was, could find out anything and get anything done. In most cases, overnight. He never asked for details when Falen said he needed special time to ‘follow up on something.’ Just granted the time, and gave him whatever support he needed. If an assignment required special action, Falen called Fisher on an encoded cell phone he had been given with an assurance that it was always secure. He never identified himself, but started every conversation with “I need some information,” or “I have something for you.” He then explained what was needed and occasionally answered a few questions. His recommendations were rarely turned down, and as his credibility grew, so did his ability to move unencumbered through the tangle of Washington red tape. He had been Christopher Falen now for half of his life, and he enjoyed it very much.

The DWAT thing had come to his attention by accident – a series of casual mentions that seemed to click together somewhere in the back of his brain. First the Washington party for Foreign Service officers where Falen was wandering from one self-absorbed group of aspiring diplomats to another, being conveniently ignored. Two mid-level embassy types from southern Europe in identical charcoal pinstriped suits had parked along one of the bars, swapping tales of abuses suffered at the hands of American tourists. Falen’s leaning on the bar beside them didn’t seem to bother them in the least.

“We’ve had two guys disappear on us in Spain in the last year and a half and you’d think from the way their wives reacted, I’d taken them myself,” one said. “These women just lost it – and frankly, I could see why the guys took off. They got a look at some of the Spanish
chiquitas
and thought ‘why am I living on meat loaf with all this steak on the hoof!’”

“Same thing happened in Turkey about six months ago,” the other said. “Must be a rash of them. But this guy wasn’t chasing Turkish skirt. Not much there to chase, and you risk getting your balls cut off if you do. Plus, this guy had a helluva wife. Tall model type with legs that could wrap around you three times. Took me days of personal attention to console her. The guy never showed up, but I couldn’t get her to stay.” They laughed and moved on to lost passports, but Falen had filed the disappearances. “
Must be a rash of them.”

The second mention was a four inch column in the Financial section of the
Post
.

Prominent Louisiana industrialist, David Haile, disappeared yesterday afternoon from a beachside resort in southern Italy. Haile and his family were vacationing in Capri and had planned to return to the United States today. Italian officials speculate that Haile’s disappearance was prompted by financial problems that have recently plagued Haile Enterprises, the family’s New Orleans based company, and do not suspect foul play. A spokesman for the Italian police said that although the incident was unusual, it was not unprecedented.

“We have had several Americans disappear like this,” the spokesman said. “They come here to get away from some business trouble, and then find that things at home have gotten worse. Rather than go back, they just disappear without a trace.

Disappear without a trace.
DWAT, Falen thought, and placed a call to Fisher to ask for a list of all Americans traveling abroad who had disappeared without a trace over the last five years. At 7:30 that evening, a woman with an Hispanic accent called and in an uninspired monotone, read Falen the beginning of a sales pitch about Dura-frame windows.

“I rent,” he interrupted, and hung up.

His box was in Washington’s main post office across from Union Station, a hollow stone cube of a building with marble floors that echoed under his leather heels. The sharp
click, click
had a certain drama about it that Falen enjoyed. His box held only a thick manila envelope. Inside was a quarter inch ream of spread sheets that gave every piece of information on DWATs for a five year period; name, address, date of birth, date of disappearance, countries visited, previous travel history – the works. The top sheets summarized the data, giving only names, dates and location of disappearances. Falen scanned the list quickly and smiled. He liked being right.

As the Italian officer had said, disappearances such as David Haile’s were not unprecedented. But until almost two years earlier, they had been rare. Three one year. Two the next. Then suddenly they increased five-fold. Fifteen last year, and another twelve to date this year. He walked back out into the din of Massachusetts Avenue and called Fisher on his cell phone.

“I need some information. Notify me immediately if other Americans disappear while traveling overseas.”

“You on to something?”

“Can’t be sure. But there appears to be a marked upward trend.”

“Should we notify the State Department first?”

“Let’s see what’s happening. Maybe then.”

“Stay with it and let me know what comes up.”

Falen took the Metro Red Line to Dupont Circle, walked the two blocks to his apartment, and sat down at his computer, plugging in the past two year’s data under the file name ‘DWAT.’ As the Toshiba laptop in the corner of his bedroom office massaged the information for the first time, Falen felt again the adrenaline rush of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Something was moving beyond the trees. A subtle change in the patterns of greens and browns. That ever so slight flicker of camouflaged motion that caught his eye and sent an almost giddy excitement rushing through his body – the first gut-gripping signal that something was about to break.

He sat at the terminal until 3:00 a.m., sorting and re-sorting, urging one pattern after another from the facts and figures until he’d developed three factor groups that seemed significant beyond coincidence.

Elements in Group Three didn’t apply universally to all DWATs, but occurred often enough to raise questions. Most of the group of twenty-seven were vacationing. Only three had been abroad on business. Twenty-two disappeared from locations within 60 miles of a coast, though the countries from which they disappeared were scattered. It still seemed curious that no one at State had become concerned about the rash of disappearances. As far as Falen could tell, embassies didn’t communicate much with each other.

Twenty were carrying their passports when they disappeared and of these, seven passports had been used within twenty-four hours by a person fitting the general description of the owner. In each case, the destination had been a city in central Europe. All but five on the list hadn’t traveled overseas within the previous five years, and seventeen had military experience. Eight were Rotarians, and twelve had flown overseas on American Airlines.

In Group Two, Falen placed characteristics that all DWATs held in common, but which didn’t seem on initial review to be primary pieces of the puzzle. They were critical in some way. He was certain of that. But he doubted that as a group, they held the key to the disappearances. The wealth factor was one. All had personal or family assets in excess of a million dollars. Some, twenty times that much. All were married with at least one child, though children’s ages ranged from newborn to over thirty. There had been no ransom notes, no contacts from terrorists, and no notes from the DWATs when they disappeared explaining why they were dropping out of sight.

It was this last factor, added to the sudden increase in numbers, that convinced Falen that these weren’t just people escaping some personal mess. He reasoned that a person bailing out due to family or business pressures would view it as something akin to suicide. Lots of guilt that needed some expression. So why no notes?

It was conceivable, though not probable, that Group Two and Group Three factors could all appear in unrelated disappearances involving overseas Americans. Not true of Group One. The demographics of the DWATs, their distribution by region, community size, sex, and race defied coincidence. The group of twenty-seven contained eight women, six African Americans, three Hispanics, and one Japanese American. Hell, these people were disappearing according to some pre-arranged affirmative action plan!

But even if this were some kind of Equal Opportunity kidnapping, why no small-town Americans? God knows, they traveled. And lots of them traveled with money.

Falen remembered with irritated amusement a night two years earlier in his favorite Amsterdam hotel and watering hole,
Die Port Van Cleve
. The always noisy, smoky restaurant had overflowed with charter tour members from the American Cattleman’s Association. He was there to meet with David Ishmael when the agent of Mossad, Israel’s Intelligence organization, was first gathering information on the location of a suspected training site for Iranian-supported terrorists. Falen used the restaurant because it
was
noisy. It was tough to eavesdrop on other conversations because it was difficult enough to hear your own. Everyone, including the waiters, shouted.