Chapter SEVENTY-THREE
Jock’s cell phone wrenched him out of a deep sleep. He was instantly awake, a habit honed by his many years of clandestine operations in some of the world’s most dangerous places. The caller ID was blocked. He glanced at his bedside clock. Six o’clock. He answered on the second ring. It was his agency’s director, Dave Kendall.
“Jock,” he said, “I’m boarding a plane at Reagan Airport as we speak. I’m flying down to Sarasota to meet you. Can you be at Dolphin Aviation by eight?”
“I’ll be there. What’s up, Dave?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.” The call ended.
Jock dragged himself out of bed, took a quick shower, dressed, and left Matt’s cottage. He stopped at the 24-hour Starbucks on St. Armands Circle, ordered a large vanilla latte, a pastry, a Wall Street Journal, and a New York Times and took them outside to one of the cement tables that lined the sidewalk.
He lingered over his coffee, the espresso giving him the jolt of caffeine he needed. He scanned the papers, looking for some clue as to what part of the world he might be headed. He hadn’t been unduly alarmed by the director’s call. It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Jock knew he was the go-to guy when the director needed an immediate response to a problem, and often the director would meet him somewhere to deliver the orders and documents or weapons that Jock would need.
Nothing jumped off the pages of the newspapers. Not that he’d really expected it to, but sometimes he could discern inklings of issues that he might be called on to address. He finished his coffee and went back into the shop. He dropped the used cup and napkins in the wastebasket and put the papers in the community rack for other people to read. By the time he pulled into the parking lot at Dolphin Aviation, Dave’s jet was being waved to a parking spot on the tarmac.
Jock watched as the door of the plane opened and the stairs unfolded. He walked toward them and met the pilot coming down, the copilot right behind him. “Hey, Jock,” the pilot said, “The boss is waiting for you. Mark and I are going for coffee.”
Jock climbed aboard the aircraft and found the director sitting in a chair with a table in front of it. A coffeepot and cups sat on the table. Nothing else. No documents, no weapons.
“Good morning, Jock,” the director said. “I hope I didn’t roll you out too early.”
“No problem, Dave. Good to see you. I could have come to D.C., you know.”
Jock took the seat across the table from the director and poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip. It was bitter, as if it’d been in the pot too long.
The director laughed. “Bad coffee is the government’s biggest failure.”
Jock smiled. “Well,” he said, “it’s certainly one of them. What’s up, Dave? You didn’t come down here to pass the time of day.”
“No, I didn’t, Jock. How long have we known each other? Twenty years?”
“That’s about right.”
“Have I ever withheld any information from you that I thought was pertinent to your assignment?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“I’ve been a bit out of the loop for the past few days,” said the director, “but my deputy brought me up to date last night.”
Jock said, “Then you know everything I do.”
“I haven’t been honest with you, Jock. I’m sorry, and now I need to bring you up to date.”
Jock was taken aback. This was not what he’d expected. His relationship with the director went back to when he was recruited into the agency. Dave Kendall had been a middle-aged, middle-level agent then, and he was responsible for Jock’s joining the agency. Dave had been in Jock’s chain of command and as he rose to director, Jock always reported to Dave. In the five years that Dave had been director, Jock had reported directly to him and gotten his assignments directly from him. Jock had never been given any reason to distrust his friend and boss.
“Tell me about it, Dave.”
Dave had a rueful look on his face and there was a hesitancy in his demeanor, as if he was about to deliver terrible news. He took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “I killed Gene Alexander.”
“What?” asked Jock, Dave’s statement hit him like a shock wave, bringing disbelief and pain. “You killed one of our own people?”
“I didn’t actually kill him, but I ordered it done. Gene was the mole.”
“That can’t be true,” said Jock. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. In all my forty years with this agency, this was the toughest call I ever made.”
“Did you have Nell killed, too?”
“No. That was one of those terrible coincidences that happens sometimes. Her murder was random.”
“Tell me about Gene,” said Jock.
“As you know, Gene was working with me on trying to ferret out the mole who was responsible for the deaths of our agents a few months back. He hit a dead end and we called off the investigation. But we left some traps in the computer system that would lead us to the mole if he ever started working again. Gene knew about the traps, but he didn’t know about all of them. That was my decision and the tech who set it up was one of my best and totally trustworthy. Plus, he didn’t know Gene.”
“And you got him?”
“Yes. After the last agent was killed a couple of weeks ago, the tech and I started our damage assessment. It took a few days, but we finally figured out that Gene was the one passing out the information to the cartels. He was responsible for the death of three of our agents. That couldn’t go unanswered.”
“Why would Gene do something like that?”
“We think it was all about money. We were able to find some bank accounts hidden away in the Cayman Islands that belonged to him. There was a lot more money in there than he ever earned.”
“I don’t understand,” said Jock. “Money never seemed to mean much to Gene.”
“I don’t think it did. But something changed. I think I know what it was.”
“What?”
“His autopsy showed that he had advanced prostate cancer. He only had a few months to live. My theory is that when he found out about the cancer, he blamed the government.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Jock said.
“Think about it. Are you familiar with how the Veterans Afffairs is handling some of these cancers in men who served in Vietnam?”
“No.”
“The docs finally determined that the medical evidence linking Agent Orange to certain cancers was so overwhelming that the VA had to do something. They came up with a matrix that essentially said if a person was in certain parts of Vietnam for a certain amount of time during a certain period of time and that person developed any one of several forms of cancer, then he or she would be entitled to benefits. In other words, the government was accepting the fact that the Agent Orange it spread over large parts of Vietnam was a carcinogen.”
“Do you know when Gene was diagnosed?”
“Yes. We found the medical records in his house. It was about three months before our first agents disappeared.”
“I still don’t understand the money part.”
“Gene was sixty years old. Nell was fifty-five. They had plans for a life together in Florida that would last twenty or thirty years. The cancer was going to put a quick end to that. I think he wanted Nell to have lots of money, sort of compensation for having to go through the rest of her life without him. I think he was just taking care of his family.”
“At a great loss to other men’s families.”
“That’s why he had to go,” said Dave. “You don’t kill our agents and walk away. Even if you just have a few months to live. And he could have done a lot of damage in a few months.”
“Would you have had him killed if Nell was still alive?”
Dave shook his head. “I just don’t know, Jock. Goddamnit, I just don’t know.”
The look of pain that spread across Dave’s face told Jock how much the order to take Gene out had cost him. It was an unpleasant part of the director’s life, the ordering of the death of anyone, but Jock was pretty sure Dave had never had to order the death of one of his own.
“When did you find out that Gene was selling information?”
“We didn’t know for sure until last Wednesday. We suspected it, but couldn’t nail it down until Wednesday evening. When you called me the Saturday before and told me about Nell’s death, I thought it might be the cartels trying to put pressure on Gene. After you killed the murderer on Sunday night, that began to seem a little far-fetched to me.”
“How did you do it?” asked Jock.
“I was aware of Cantreras and the fact that the cartels used him to kill their enemies. I knew how he was contacted. I thought we could use the same system without bothering with the middleman. In other words, I knew how the contacts were made and we simply followed the system. Cantreras thought he was dealing with Fuentes or one of the other cartel people. I told him to make Gene’s death look like a suicide.”
“That didn’t work,” said Jock.
“Yeah. I was hoping that if it appeared to be a suicide, it would be chalked up to his grief over Nell’s death. I didn’t want the police to begin looking into it.”
“Was that your man Cantreras gave the laptop and satellite phone to?”
“Yes.”
“Then why bring me to Washington last weekend over the laptop?”
“The man I had pick up the computer from Cantreras didn’t turn up in Tampa when he was supposed to on Friday night. I needed you to find that laptop. You were doing a good job of finding people and I didn’t want to stop you. I figured if you found Cantreras, you’d find the laptop.”
“And why didn’t you tell me about Gene?”
“I’m sorry, Jock. I knew you and Gene had a history. I was afraid your sense of loyalty to him might make you less inclined to help with the laptop. I was afraid you’d be so pissed, you’d quit the agency. And then I had an emergency in London and had to let my deputy take the lead on what was going on down here. If I’d been in D.C., I might have been able to keep you from getting involved in all the crap since Monday.”
“Then why tell me now?”
“Last night, I read the statements you gave to the federal people after the mess yesterday. I knew you were not going to give up on the connection between the whale tail murders and Gene’s. I wanted you to be satisfied that the one who ordered Gene’s death wasn’t still at large.”
Jock was quiet for a moment. “So the laptop is still missing?”
“No. It turned up Sunday afternoon.”
“How?”
“The agent I sent to retrieve the laptop got his signals crossed. He thought he was supposed to deliver the damn thing to me in D.C. He couldn’t get a flight out of Sarasota until Saturday, and when he got to Washington, he went home and turned off his phones. We finally found him Sunday afternoon and dragged his ass in. He said he didn’t understand that there was any urgency in getting the laptop back to the agency.”
“Come on, Dave. That sounds like the Keystone Kops.”
“I’ll admit it wasn’t our finest hour.”
“And the guy who had the laptop?”
“He’s no longer with the agency.”
“That’s it? You just fired him?”
Dave laughed. “I wanted to have him executed,” he said, “but our lawyers kept telling me some crap about due process.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d found the laptop when I called on Sunday afternoon?”
“You told me you were moving on Cantreras. I figured I’d let events take their course. I wanted him and we’d lost him. I knew if you got him, I’d have my crack at him.”
“But he was your man.”
“No. He was just a contract killer I hired because I could never ask one of our agents to take out one of our own.”
“Why do you want him now?”
“I thought he might have some information about the money flowing from the cartels to the terrorists. I told him to stay in the Sarasota area on the pretense that I might have more work for him. I thought he’d be easier to find that way. And he was expendable. I didn’t want his actions to ever be traced back to the agency.”
“Did he know anything about the money trail?”
“No, as it turned out.”
“Where is he now?”
“Where he can never do harm to anyone else.”
Jock knew not to follow up on that. Cantreras was either in some supermax prison or a grave. It didn’t really make any difference to Jock, and he didn’t have the need to know.
“Were you responsible for the Guatemalan gangbangers trying to kill Matt and J.D.?”
“No. I think that was some sort of coincidence.”
“Dave,” Jock said, “you and I have known each other a long time, and I’ve put my life in your hands time after time. I trust you implicitly, but there sure are a lot of coincidences popping up here.”
“Jock, listen to me. You know that the agency never, ever messes with our people’s family members. Never, not even once in all the years I’ve been with this agency.”
“I know that, Dave. But still—”
“Don’t you think I know Matt is your family? I’ve given him complete clearance to know everything you know. I did that years ago so that he would have the resources to pull you back from the brink when you finish a mission. To see you through the cleansing times.”
“Why am I not surprised that you know about that?”
“Not from Matt. I have to know everything about my agents. I’ve known for years about the times Matt has had to bring you back from the edge of insanity. If you didn’t have that need, I don’t know that I would have trusted you with the missions I’ve sent you on over the years. If you didn’t need to get past what you do for your country, you’d just be your garden-variety sociopath. I don’t want that kind of person within ten miles of this agency. No. I’d never put Matt in danger. And before you ask, I know Matt is close to J.D. and that makes her family too.”
“I believe you, Dave. I’m just sick about Gene.”
“I am too. I’m thinking it’s time for me to retire. My job just dictated that I kill a friend of many years standing. I won’t be able to do that again.”
Jock left him then, sitting alone on the plane, staring into a cup of coffee and probably into his future, trying to divine whether he would ever be able to wash Gene’s bloodstains from his mind.