High Treason Read online

  “Jason,” she said, leaning closer. “Where did you say that ship originated?”

  “Antwerp,” he said absently while typing.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  Jason stopped typing. “What do you mean?”

  “I learned a thing or two about international smuggling while working the Russian mob.” She explained that Antwerp and Rotterdam had some of the best port security in the world. “Only an inside job could get an unregistered container on a ship at Antwerp, and terrorists aren’t that good. But the Kremlin is.”

  “Look, Jen. Drop the Russia thing. Please,” he said in a whisper. “The boss already warned you, and you’re on unofficial probation as it is.”

  “He may be too dim to get it, but it doesn’t make me wrong. I have to try,” she said, standing up.

  “No Lin, don’t even think about it!”

  She ignored him and walked into the boss’s office, shutting the door behind her.

  Chapter 8

  “We have a problem,” said Holt.

  No one ever likes hearing the head of the CIA utter those four words. Jackson frowned and waved her into his office. He was midconversation with the secretary of state, Jan Novak, who turned around in his chair to greet her with a fake smile. “Please have a seat, Nancy. Jan just left the Oval and is back-briefing me on his conversation with POTUS. We’re in a tough dialogue with Saudi Arabia over the terrorist attack. They’re being especially recalcitrant, even refusing to support our investigation.” Jackson sighed. “Anyway, I hope you don’t mind if Jan sits in.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said, clearly minding.

  “It must be serious if you came from Langley to deliver the bad news in person,” said Novak.

  Holt winced. The man had a gift for the velvet put-down. It was how he got ahead.

  “It . . . is,” she said, chagrined. She carried a briefcase and set it down beside her chair. They waited for an aide to shut the office door before talking.

  “What kind of problem?” asked Jackson in a measured tone. He was paid to be a problem solver and not a blame shifter.

  “The terrorist theory. It’s falling apart.”

  “Falling apart?” responded Jackson, startled.

  “What do you mean, ‘falling apart’?” added Novak. “I just spent the last twelve hours on the phone yelling at Riyadh, and now you are telling me I was wrong? It was you who put forward the terrorist theory to begin with, and the FBI keeps finding corroborating evidence pointing to the Islamic State, or whatever they call themselves now. The FBI even found a dead terrorist on-site. Foreign terrorists are clearly responsible. It’s a slam dunk!”

  “Yes, but there are problems.”

  Novak was about to reply when Jackson held up a hand for silence. Jan Novak got to his station in life by sucking up and spitting down. By contrast, Holt was no pole-climbing political appointee. She had spent a career in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, mostly as a targeter. Some thought her methods extreme, but Jackson liked her because she got stuff done, bureaucracy be damned. That was why he’d urged the president to appoint her the CIA director, even though she initially turned down the honor.

  “Explain,” said Jackson.

  “It’s TS/SCI. It can’t leave the room,” she said, meaning the intelligence was highly classified, and if leaked, it could compromise sources and methods.

  “Go ahead, Nancy. We’re all cleared here. You know that.”

  “The terrorist we found in the bridge wreckage—” said Nancy.

  “Abu . . . something or other,” interrupted Jackson.

  “Abu Muhammad al-Masri. I don’t think he was involved.”

  “What?!” said Novak in disbelief.

  “I knew when I first saw his body something was off,” she said.

  “How so?” asked Jackson.

  “I’ve been hunting jihadis most of my career and I ran the targeted assassination program that decimated Emni. I know them the way a magician knows a deck of cards.”

  “But wasn’t al-Masri a part of Emni? I think you said so earlier,” asked Jackson.

  “Correct, he was. When we identified his body, my gut told me something was wrong. At first, I dismissed it. Then it hit me,” she said, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out a thick red folder marked top secret in bold, followed by code letters. She handed it to Jackson.

  “What’s this?” asked Jackson as he opened the folder.

  “The problem,” she said.

  Jackson carefully removed files from the folder and laid them out on his desk. Each was about thirty pages thick and clipped together, with a photo and cover sheet on top. Novak stood up and walked around Jackson’s chair to get a better view. There were five files in all.

  “Who are they?” asked Jackson as Novak fumbled for his reading glasses.

  “This is al-Masri’s terrorist cell in Emni. He wasn’t the leader but a member,” she said. “They were tight, and always worked as a unit. Always.”

  “That’s unusual. They not trust other jihadis?” said Jackson.

  “Hard to say. Perhaps that’s what made them so effective. They staged the Istanbul airport attack in 2016 that killed forty-eight and injured 230. They also acted as enforcers inside the caliphate and liked to crucify non-Sunni men and gang-rape unwilling women.”

  “A combination of cunning and cruel,” said Jackson softly as he flipped through a file.

  “Sounds like pure evil to me,” muttered Novak, hovering over Jackson’s shoulder so he could read the CIA action reports.

  “They are,” said Holt, and let them riffle through the files. Jackson’s face betrayed no emotion, but Novak’s was a picture book of horror. He let out a low whistle at one point.

  “So, what’s the problem?” asked Jackson, looking up and putting down a file. “They seem to fit the threat profile perfectly.”

  “True. But here’s the problem,” she said, stabbing one of the files with an index finger. “That’s the leader. He’s dead.” The two men looked surprised and Jackson picked up the file.

  “When?” asked Jackson.

  “Ten months ago. An Agency direct action team from Ground Division took him out vicinity Raqqa, Syria. Bullet in the chest and head.” She gently grabbed the file from the National Security Advisor’s hands and flipped to a page showing his corpse. The photo was dark and grainy, as if taken through night-vision goggles.

  “What did they do with the body?” asked Novak.

  “They left it. The CIA doesn’t offer hearse services.”

  Novak scowled at Holt’s jab.

  “Go on,” said Jackson.

  Holt pointed to another file. “This guy is dead too. We hired a contract kill team to assassinate him, under Title 50 authorities. That was six months ago, in September.”

  “Where did you find him?” asked Jackson.

  “FATA region, Pakistan, under ISI protection,” she said, referring to Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence, which also sheltered Osama bin Laden. “That’s why we used Apollo Outcomes rather than our own guys, to avoid escalating tensions between our countries should they become compromised. Contractors offer good plausible deniability.”

  “Makes sense,” said Jackson.

  “Wait a minute. You hired a private-sector hit team? Mercenaries?” asked Novak in a pitched tone. He had been a high-paid Washington lawyer before being appointed as the secretary of state. He had scant background in international affairs but rendered legal services to the president during the campaign, and many thought the appointment was a quid pro quo. No one knew what those services entailed. “Is that even legal?”

  “Sir, with all due respect,” she said in a tone suggesting none, “there’s a lot you don’t understand about modern war.”

  Novak was about to retort, when Jackson cut him off again. “Continue, Nancy.”

  “These next two guys were killed by the Wagner Group in North Syria in October. Our sources inside the GRU
confirmed it.”

  “You mean Russian mercenaries killed them,” said Novak.

  “Not just any mercenaries, but elite ones. The Wagner Group is Russia’s version of Apollo Outcomes,” said Holt.

  “Just not as good,” added Jackson.

  “Not by a long shot,” said Holt, grinning.

  “Tell me about the last guy. Is he dead too?” said Jackson with unease on his face.

  “Yes. He’s the guy we pulled from the rubble, but a different photo of him.”

  Both men leaned in and stared at the picture. The terrorist looked ten years younger than the body they found in the wreckage, even though the photo was less than a year old. However, it was clearly the same individual.

  “And it gets worse,” said Holt. Both men’s mouths hung open.

  “Worse?” said Novak.

  “What does that mean?” said Jackson, sitting upright.

  “He didn’t die here. The first autopsy was done in the field and didn’t show much. However, the second one revealed he died weeks ago, and his body was preserved through refrigeration, around forty below Celsius. We found cold damage and slight body decay. Apparently, he was not immediately frozen after death but ripened along the way.”

  “Where did he die?” asked Novak, sitting back down and stowing his reading glasses in his breast pocket.

  “We don’t know, but it wasn’t two days ago and it wasn’t here. Someone placed his body inside the bridge, probably in a crawlspace to protect him from the initial blast and collapse.”

  “You mean somebody wanted us to find his body,” said Novak.

  “Correct. And make erroneous deductions about who was behind the terrorist attack.”

  “A false flag operation. I don’t like where this is heading,” said Jackson in a dark tone. “Nancy, do you have a new theory? Be careful and be precise.”

  “Yes. These men did not do it,” she said, gesturing to the files on the desk. “This terrorist cell was dead months before the bridge attack, making it impossible for them to be behind the VP’s assassination. Rather, the actual perpetrator is framing them. Meanwhile, we’re burning precious time and resources chasing down fake leads and alienating allies like Saudi Arabia.”

  “You’re saying this whole thing is a setup?” said Novak, sinking deeper into his chair. “The political fallout with Riyadh could be significant.”

  “Affirmative,” said Holt.

  “Well, shit,” said Novak.

  Jackson sat in thought, and finally asked, “Then who did it?”

  “We don’t know,” replied Holt.

  “No theories?” asked Novak.

  “None,” she said in a grave manner. “No country would do it because it risks war, and they know we would eventually figure it out and retaliate. No terrorist group could do it, other than the Islamic State, and we just ruled them out. I doubt organized crime could pull it off. Even if they could, why would they? It would risk much yet gain little. I’m not sure who is left.” She tapped a foot as she thought. “I don’t know who did this, or why.”

  They sat motionless in information shell shock as they pondered the implications. Jackson broke the silence. “Whoever did this is very, very good.”

  “And very, very dangerous,” added Novak.

  “Now you understand why I came to you in person,” she said, and he nodded.

  “But surely someone this good would know that we’d eventually connect the dots and realize the dead guy was a setup. It doesn’t buy them much time,” said Novak.

  “Jan, the deception wasn’t for us,” replied Holt. “It was for the press. ‘Fool the media and fool America’ is what the terrorists say. But it’s what the Russians do.”

  “Nancy, who else knows about this?” asked Jackson.

  “Some of my staff, but it’s code-word classified and the information won’t go anywhere. Among the principals, no one knows. Just us three.”

  “Good,” he said, staring at the files on the desk. Holt and Novak sat quietly, awaiting Jackson’s decision. After a few minutes, he leaned forward and picked up the phone. “Convene a principals meeting of the National Security Council. Immediately.”

  Chapter 9

  Deep in the bowels of the Hoover Building, Lin sat across from her boss. The conversation was not going well.

  “Radical Islamic terrorists are not behind the bridge attack because they’re simply not that good. Everyone knows it but no one wants to say it,” said Lin.

  “Say what exactly?” asked her boss, exasperated. He had slept in his office last night and the lack of rest was showing. His eyes were beset within dark circles and what little hair remained on his head stuck out as if attacked by static electricity.

  “That it’s not terrorists! It’s a false flag operation. It’s Russia. Moscow killed all those people and framed terrorists to get us off their scent. Deceit is their way of war. They manufacture the fog of war and then step through it. It’s how they stole the Crimea, interfered with our elections, and now assassinated the VP—who they thought was POTUS. The Kremlin is framing terrorists to get away with murder. Literally.”

  He sighed, wanting to scream at her but too exhausted to do so. It was the third time she had pushed her Russia conspiracy theory, and he was determined it would be the last. The FBI had terrorists to catch and had no time to waste on unsubstantiated hunches by a junior analyst.

  Correction. Failing junior analyst, he thought. His own boss had formally counseled him about anger management issues and told him to become a better mentor to young agents. But they’re so stupid these days, he thought. Still, he had to make the effort, something his boss had made excruciatingly clear. Lordy, give me patience, he thought.

  “Lin, listen to me. Carefully. The entire interagency is throwing its full weight into finding these terrorists. People with clearances and pay grades way above yours know things you do not. For example, the terrorists have grown more sophisticated in the past year, and they have the means, motive, and opportunity to execute the bridge attack. We are confirming leads everywhere. We even found a dead terrorist at the scene of the crime—”

  “The Russian’s could have arranged it,” interrupted Lin. “Easily.”

  Her boss grimaced and looked up at the ceiling while clenching fists. Perhaps he’s looking for divine patience, she thought, and could see a vein pulsating on his right temple. He was about to blow.

  “No. The Russians could not,” he said finally, combating his temper. “Anyway, why would they? Why risk World War III? They have better ways to attack us than assassinating the vice president. Admit it.”

  Lin folded her arms, trying to think of a good response. None came.

  “There is no Russia angle. Got it? No more bullshit about Moscow out of you.”

  “But—”

  “There is no ‘but’!” he interrupted, pounding the desk with a hammy fist. “We have fourteen thousand agents looking for terrorists, everyone except you. Fall in line, Lin, or forfeit your badge and gun. Final warning!” he said, thinking, Screw my boss.

  Lin left his office fuming and sank back into her desk chair. Jason gave her the I-told-you-so look, but she held up a hand in protest. “I don’t want to hear it, Jason. Not now.”

  “So-o-o-o-o, how’d it go?” he asked with a sardonic smile.

  “Not well.”

  Jason shot the I-told-you-so look again and she turned away. “Lin, everyone is pretty convinced it’s terrorists. Especially the director. So are the CIA and the other fifteen intelligence agencies. Maybe you should think so too.”

  “A bad idea embraced by millions of people is still a bad idea.”

  “Lin, there was a terrorist’s body on-site. It’s conclusive.”

  “No, it’s deceptive. The Kremlin staged it.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Think about it, Jason,” she said, swiveling her chair to face him. “Russia has been killing terrorists in Syria for years. Putting a dead one on ice and the
n planting him inside the bridge would be easy for the FSB,” she said.

  “It would be damned hard for the FSB or GRU or anyone to import a frozen terrorist,” he said, laughing at the idea.

  “Don’t underestimate the Russians.”

  Jason groaned, equal parts pity and incredulity. “You know you would be a rising star in the Bureau if you just had patience for the rules.”

  “Jason, don’t give me that bureaucratic bullshit. We have a country to save, and we’re losing precious time. We should be tracking leads on Russia, before they evaporate.” Lin’s voice turned angry, tired of being ignored.

  “Jen . . .” said Jason in a soothing tone, trying to calm her.

  “The Kremlin sometimes uses Russian organized crime as a fifth column. I know because I worked on the Russian Organized Crime Task Force before I was exiled here. The bratva can procure tons of dynamite, no problem. Import a dead terrorist?” She let out a “Ha!” that startled a nearby agent. “Too easy. They can smuggle in anything from anywhere and bribe anyone. Terrorists can’t do that.”

  Jason leaned back, closing his eyes. “Jen, do one for the team and stop thinking. Last time you did, we both got in big trouble. The boss reamed you for . . . how did he put it? . . . ‘Girl gone rogue!’ Then I got chewed out for letting you go. As if I was your babysitter!”

  Silence.

  “Jen. Jen?”

  More silence. He cautiously opened one eye.

  She was gone.

  Chapter 10

  I was entranced by the mystical chords of Hovhaness’s symphony “Mysterious Mountain” when my spell was broken by turbulence. The Gulfstream IV jet bucked through the wind shear as we initiated our descent. I looked out the large oval window but saw little. The moonlight only revealed light and dark splotches below us, indicating trees and farmland. Small clusters of amber lights indicated the occasional human settlement.

  I had spent the last twelve hours in the air, and all my money, too. The charter jet business was run by air pirates, as far as I was concerned, but discretion is expensive. Plus, my itinerary involved heaps of “transaction fees” or bribes to bypass normal formalities. I had to empty out my black bank account in Cyprus, a holdover from my days at Apollo Outcomes. Program managers like myself received dark money for random operational expenses, and I had squirreled some away in several offshore accounts.