The seller said he was selling the car cheap because he’d lost his copy of the title, but he assured Court it wasn’t stolen. It would be a tremendous understatement to say Court was skeptical in nature, but in this case he actually believed the man, because he saw from the listing the car had been for sale for over a month, and he knew police trolled Craigslist looking for stolen vehicles.
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.
This was Travers’s favorite pub and he was a regular here, but he drank alone now. A couple of mates had sat with him for the first round, but they had to push off because the next day was Monday and, after all, who really hung out sipping whiskey till closing time on a Sunday night?
Chris Travers did, because he didn’t work a nine-to-five job. For large swaths of the year he was on the clock 24/7, and for other sizable chunks of the year he was in training and away from home. But for a few precious weeks here and there he was free from training, off from deployment, and on his own to do whatever the hell he wanted to do with his time.
And this evening he was determined to take advantage of one of the all-too-rare respites.
He held the whiskey up to the little light hanging over the bar of the Irish pub to appreciate the amber color, and while he did this he looked out the window into the night. By force of habit, he always kept an eye open. Even here, in the States.
He was surprised to see trash blowing down 19th Street. There had been only the lightest breeze when Travers headed out to the pub hours earlier, so he’d not bothered to dress for warmth — he’d just thrown on a flannel shirt and khaki pants, and boat shoes with no socks. Suddenly he found himself regretting his rare moment of poor preparation.
He’d not thought twice about making the six-block walk down here from his apartment to the Irish Whiskey, because Chris Travers had braved elements a hell of a lot more severe than a D.C. spring. His mind took him back to a mountain in Pakistan where he’d once spent three days in temperatures below zero; he’d handled that without a second thought. Granted, at the time he’d been under fire from Taliban snipers, so he had bigger fish to fry than catching a chill, but still, he told himself, tonight’s ten-minute hump back to his apartment would be no big deal.
Travers had joined the army out of high school, served two years in straight-legged infantry and, with that, three tours of Iraq. He then earned his way into the Green Berets, spending three more years in 7th Special Forces Group. From there he left the military and went straight into the CIA, found his way to SAD Ground Branch, and, with his paramilitary unit, he had deployed all over the world for the past ten years.
This had been a life well spent, but he had a long-term plan for his life ahead, too. He’d earned his private and commercial pilot’s licenses along the way and, he told himself, once he got too old or too beat-up for the shooting and scooting life, he’d stay with the Agency, flying spooks and techs all over the world as a pilot for Air Branch.