He drove the little four-door back to Reagan Washington National Airport, and here he parked in a long-term lot. He wandered around for a moment, then dropped down behind a vehicle parked rear-in against a back wall. He removed the car’s Maryland license plate, attached it to his Escort, and then left the airport.
It took him another hour to purchase a motorcycle. He found a black-on-silver Yamaha 650XS on Craigslist. It was almost as old as Court himself and had some issues, but it was fast, perfectly nondescript, and, after a bit of haggling, only 750 bucks. The seller tossed in a helmet and a plate he had lying on a workbench off another old project bike of his.
Court rented a twelve-by-twelve storage unit within walking distance of his room and parked both vehicles inside, along with one of his two backpacks, this one filled with clothes.
By ten p.m. Court was back in his basement apartment and back on his tablet computer, calling up a website called USCrypto.org.
Even surfing through the pages of the site made the former American intelligence operative feel dirty.
USCrypto was the brainchild of a group of self-proclaimed anarchists and fervent anti-Americans, and it billed itself as an online library and repository for stolen and hacked classified documents, information about secret intelligence sites and personnel, and articles, photos, and videos that it claimed proved illegal U.S. intelligence eavesdropping.
One subsite on USCrypto.org was called Spycatcher, and Court clicked the link to take him there. On the pages contained in the subsite, USCrypto employees revealed the addresses of secret government facilities, and the names and home addresses of employees of American intelligence.
The site even provided Google Maps Street View images of the homes of clandestine personnel.
All this information was divined from open sources by USCrypto staff, so it was completely legal, but the very existence of Spycatcher made Court sick to his stomach.
The site could easily serve, and had probably already been used, as a tool by terrorists and other agents provocateur to allow them to physically target installations and personnel. But now USCrypto.org was an asset to Gentry, because he found himself in an adversarial relationship with his former employer.
It occurred to him that, if he were still working for CIA, he would love to be assigned to target the founder and author of this website, because the head of USCrypto.org was certainly a danger to every man and woman who worked in the U.S. intelligence community. Court would think nothing of killing the founder, although Court had never killed for his country on U.S. soil.
Court searched for the names of several people, and he found only one, because although USCrypto.org was good, Court’s old associates at CIA were among the blackest of the black. He jotted down the address, pulled out his phone, and recorded it all on a mapping application. He also looked up addresses for several clandestine government contractors. There he had more luck, and he noted these on a pad and in his phone.
Quickly he ate a microwave enchilada and drank a bottle of water. As soon as he was done he took off his shirt, grabbed the hacksaw off of the little kitchen counter, and sat on the edge of his bed.
Court slowly and carefully began sawing the cast off his right arm. Less than a month earlier he’d taken a handgun round straight into his forearm, snapping the ulna in two. His doctor’s orders were to leave the cast on for six weeks, and it had been less than four, but Court decided the time was right to free himself of this annoying burden. He’d have to be careful with it, of course; the broken bone and soft tissue had healed, more or less, but there was still some more growing together that needed to happen, and certain high-stress actions to his arm could quite easily reinjure it.
But Court knew his body. It came from a lifetime of hurting it and watching it heal. He knew he could go without the cast as long as he was careful with the arm, and he also knew he was out of time.
Each and every day he remained in the U.S. with the CIA’s shoot-on-sight sanction in effect he compounded the risk. He had to begin his operation now. He didn’t have time to nurse his wounds.
As soon as Court had the cast off his arm, he put on several layers of his darkest clothing, loaded his pockets with gear, and headed back out into the night.
He’d already had a busy day, but his real mission was only now about to begin.
16
Chris Travers ordered his fourth shot of Jameson at last call, then he polished off the last few gulps of his draft beer. He’d been drinking since before ten p.m., it was nearly one a.m. now, and he wanted one more for the road, or more precisely, one more for the six-block walk back to his apartment.