“Hey, Joe, haven’t seen you for a while.” Bill Copeland looked up from a fax he was studying.
“That’s because you pantywaists stay here in your bunker and only venture out as far as the OGA bar. Never see you outside the bubble where the real action is.” Chronister grinned. “What’s up with all the new faces around here?”
“The Agency has everyone on thirty-day rotations, sixty on rare occasions. As if this place weren’t impossible enough for our kind of work. Try recruiting an agent when you can’t go anywhere without half a platoon of security guards around you. Now if somehow you’re lucky enough to snag one, you have to hand him off in a few weeks to some new guy fresh from Langley. And the agent’s supposed to trust the stranger with his life. If I were an Iraqi, I’d never spy for us. Splendid system.”
Chronister snorted. “Yeah, the big boys on the seventh floor keep setting up dumb-ass regs like that and I can’t help but think the Agency’s not going to be around much longer-between that and General Smillie’s Force Zulu muscling in.”
“That thought has crossed everyone’s mind,” Copeland said as he continued reading the fax.
“Anything interesting going on? I head Black Management nabbed a French spook among the tangos in OPERATION RIVERBED a couple days ago. Fucking French.”
“Take a look at this. Looks like Paris has another one messing around in our business.” Copeland handed him the papers he was reading.
“You got a debriefing document from the interrogation already?”
“Low pain threshold. I hear he’s being questioned at Far’Falastin in Damascus.”
“Those Syrian bastards are tops,” Chronister said as he skimmed the report.
“It gets more interesting. Skip ahead to the description of another agent here in Baghdad. Seems Paris is very interested in CIA ties with Rubicon.” Copeland turned to his computer screen while Chronister read.
Chronister sat down and stared at the page, his mouth agape. “Holy fuck. The spook’s talking about SHANGRI-LA.”
Copeland quit reading his e-mail and turned around. “Are you read into SHANGRI-LA? I’ve never heard of it.”
“And you still haven’t. Whoever didn’t sanitize it out of the report is going to get reamed so hard he’ll never sit down again.” Chronister flipped the pages, moving his lips, talking to himself. He needed more information fast. Official channels would take forever and even worse, would demand a ream of paperwork. He needed Copeland to take a few shortcuts for him. “I need you to check on someone for me. He fits the description more or less of the agent we’re looking for and he knows everything this guy said. He could be the spy. Get NSA intercepts-everything you can.”
“I’m not counterespionage.”
“Live a little. You nail this fucker and I promise you’ll get an EPA for your personnel file.” Chronister counted on the allure of an Exceptional Performance Award. He wanted to get to bed and he didn’t want to get caught up all morning dogging the bureaucracy when he could use Copeland, the paper pit bull. “Sure ups your chances of retiring a GS-15.”
“I am retired.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“Eight months ago. I went to work for a body shop-Lyon Group. They lease me back to the Agency to do my old job for thirty thousand more.” He tapped a green ID badge clipped to his shirt.
“Whatever.” Chronister handed Copeland back the report. “Nabbing that fucking mole will make you a legend when you get back to Langley. Legends get good parking spaces-even if they are contractors.”
As Chronister walked into his apartment, the aroma of hot coffee greeted him but the coffee pot was empty and Jackie was perched at the table, churning out more sketches. The walls, refrigerator and every other goddamn surface were now covered with drawings of Hunter Stone. Everything had been going so well with SHANGRI-LA before that Force Zulu bastard had come along. He had gotten used to keeping regular office hours and he had even come up with a brilliant work-around for his marital problems, using Rubicon’s connections with the tangos to arrange for death doing him and the missus part. The fucker Stone had not only rescued his wife, but he was keeping him up all night and now, when he finally got a few hours at home, the SOB haunted him, mocking him from his own kitchen cabinets.
Chronister picked up the empty coffee pot. “Hey, what’s with the coffee? Couldn’t you have saved me some?”
Jackie sat at the kitchen table in the same white bathrobe she hadn’t taken off since she came back. She didn’t look up from her latest tribute to the wonder boy-Stone holding a small lamb with an adoring Iraqi family surrounding him.
“This is really getting to be too much. You haven’t even gotten dressed. And you’re obsessed with this motherfucker.” He pointed at a picture of Stone.
“Ray saved my life. Did you find out anything about him for me?” Jackie stood and emptied the coffee grounds into the garbage.
“Now how would I ever do that? Oil execs don’t have access to that kind of information.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve had enough of your game. Oil execs don’t sneak out in the middle of the night, except to visit a mistress. You don’t come home smelling of women. You smell of blood.”
“I do not.”
“You drip with blood.” Jackie filled the Mr. Coffee with water, then threw a half dozen scoops of Folgers into the white paper filter. “I’m not going to argue with you. I know you’re a spy and I really don’t understand why you go to all the trouble of hiding it from me. At first I thought it was to protect me, then I thought it was to protect your cover, and then I finally understood you get some kind of a sick thrill from toying with me, from tricking me into living a lie along with you. Well not anymore. It’s over.”
“You’re not making sense. You can’t leave me. I’ve explained to you about that.” Chronister shoved a slice of white bread into the toaster. When he had first gone deep undercover as a Rubicon oil executive, he had quickly realized that he stood out without a spouse. At the time she had been fun, but it didn’t take too long for the isolation of Iraq to change that and make him realize he had gone a little too far for the project. “Go see that embassy shrink and stop it with these goddamn drawings.” He grabbed a handful of sketches lying on the cabinet, wadded them up, then tossed them into the garbage.
“No!” Jackie sprang toward the trash and scooped out the crumpled papers. He watched in disgust as she brushed coffee grinds from them, then sat down at the table crying as she tried to smooth out the coffee-stained pictures.
“Look at you. You’re a fucking nutcase. No one’s ever going to believe anything you tell them about me. And you know something else, you better give up on your fantasy boyfriend because he ain’t coming back.”
“You know where Ray is?” Jackie looked up, her eyes wide. “You’ve got to save him.”
“Save him? You’re fucking kidding, right?” Chronister laughed and tore down drawings taped to the kitchen cabinets. “I’m taking him to one of my favorite places tomorrow where I plan on taking the gloves off for a man-to-man chat.”
“No!” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“You gonna stop me? You can’t even get dressed.” He walked around the room, ripping sketches of Stone from the wall. Jackie trailed behind him, pleading. He reached for a drawing of Stone saving Jackie and she grabbed his arm, screeching something at him, but he didn’t listen.
“Ain’t gonna happen, baby. He’s not going to save you now. No one can.” He shredded the drawing, the pieces fluttering to the floor. Jackie got down on her hands and knees and crawled around collecting them.