“Barry, it’s Chase. I just met with Sargon. I need you to send a car for me. I’m at the Twisted Sister Tavern in Peckham.”
“I saw the money move. Are we happy?”
“We are. The source of the leak is Kaitlyn Connors. The spy is her lesbian lover.”
I expected a sharp inhalation of breath, followed by a clever comment and a heartfelt attaboy. I got silence instead. When the CIA’s London station chief finally spoke, his tone was terse. “The car is on its way. Talk to no one before you get here.”
5
The Red Line
BARRY WAS WAITING FOR ME when I arrived in the underground garage of the sail-covered twelve-story billion-dollar cube that was the new U.S. Embassy. The London CIA station chief even stepped between the two beefy Marines to open my door.
“Welcome back.” His hand was out, but not to shake. The palm was up.
I handed him the manila envelope we’d just bought for two million pounds.
Langley’s senior local officer didn’t lead me upstairs to the CIA floor. He took me to the so-called walk-in room we used when outsiders showed up on the embassy doorstep claiming to have valuable information. Nobody was waiting there, but someone was certainly watching from behind the big mirror, either in person or through the hidden camera. By selecting this room, Barry was sending me a message.
It wasn’t good.
An open laptop on the desk displayed a familiar dictation program. It would record my voice and convert it into a transcript. An operations report.
Barry made a point of tossing the unopened manila envelope into a burn bag before sitting down. It would come out later, of course, but again a message had been delivered. “Take me through everything that’s happened since yesterday’s report. You know the drill.”
I did. I’d done this for a decade in espionage hotspots all over the world. And since this particular assignment hadn’t required me to bunk down with the enemy, I’d been filing reports on a daily basis.
“This is Agent Zachary Chase, speaking from the U.S. Embassy in London. Having made contact with Ernesto Sargon, I arranged to purchase draft copies of U.S. negotiating strategies for several post-Brexit US-UK agreements. I went to the meet at an abandoned warehouse in Peckham at 2200. I arrived without bag, weapon, watch, phone, or other electronic device, as instructed. Nothing but memorized banking information. I was met by Sargon’s enforcer, whom he later identified as Bobby.
“During the pat-down, Bobby clubbed me on the back of my head. I lost consciousness. I woke up approximately twenty minutes later in a small room.” I continued through the story without interruption while Barry watched with barely blinking eyes from across the interrogation table. I concluded, as I did daily, “End of report.”
Barry closed the laptop, but didn’t respond immediately, or even after an appropriate pause. This convinced me that someone was speaking in his ear. The ambassador or the CIA’s deputy director for operations were my best guess, given Barry’s seniority and the sensitive nature of our discussion.
“Sargon didn’t verbally identify the woman?” Barry finally asked.
So that was it. They didn’t want to embarrass the ambassador. The president probably had him in mind for a higher appointment. “There was no need. The images were clear.”
“That’s a no?”
“It’s a no.”
Again there was an unnatural pause. “How long between the time you regained consciousness and the time you watched the video?”
“A few minutes.”
“Well, that explains it, Agent Chase. Nobody will fault you for failing to see clearly so soon after suffering a traumatic brain injury.”
Whoa! Looked like the light at the end of my two-month tunnel was actually an accelerating train. “My vision was fine. My thinking was coherent. I clearly saw Kaitlyn Connors, Ambassador Connors’ wife.”
Barry did not look happy.
“She has an identifying mark,” I added. I was about to describe the mismatched shapes of her areolae when Barry held up a halting hand and another man chimed in.
“We’re quite certain that you did not see Mrs. Connors.” The voice on the speaker was not that of the ambassador or the deputy director. It was the director himself. “You should amend your report accordingly.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Well, actually, sadly, I could. The agency had become increasingly political over the past decade. Either that, or I had simply gained a clearer view of the summit as I rose through the ranks. “If the leak isn’t identified, the operation is a failure. That’s two months of my life and two million pounds of taxpayers’ money down the drain.”
“We’ll get the money back. And I can assure you that your career will not be derailed. You’ll be at the front of the line for the next suitable chief of station slot.”
Wow! There it was in blood-red script. The demarcation line. The start of the proverbial slippery slope. Sad as the circumstance was, I was fortunate to have it presented so clearly. Usually they sucked you over to the dark side with shades of gray. This was about to get ugly. For me. “I can’t falsify a report.”
The director had the predictable retort ready. He’d dangled the carrot, now out came the stick. “I believe loss of judgment is another sign of brain damage. We can’t have damaged agents in the field—or behind a desk for that matter.”
“Look, Chase,” Barry said. “We’re asking you to acknowledge the possibility that you didn’t see what you think you saw, on account of your head injury.”
I felt another brick slip from the foundation of my life. Given my economics degree from Princeton, the financial sector would have welcomed me with open arms and a wide wallet. But instead of cashing in on my new diploma, I’d chosen to risk life and limb for a significantly smaller paycheck but a much greater cause.
I’d been at it for ten years now, happily until today.
The truth was, I prized adventure over money and prioritized country over self. Patriotism meant more to me than pinning a flag on my lapel. It meant living by a time-honored code of conduct and a consistent set of values. Even when inconvenient. Among people who believed and acted the same. My values hadn’t changed since graduation, but management’s attitude surely had.
“What you do with my report is up to you. You are free to ignore any part of it that you consider questionable. And I’m certainly not going to repeat what I saw. But I’m also not going to lie about an operation on the record, even if that lie is just a lie of omission.”
“Well, then we have a problem,” Barry said.
6
Trouble in Paradise
Six months later
San Diego, California
DAVID HUME rested his cheek atop the casket of his oldest friend. His oldest friend. The irony inherent in that statement and this situation sent a fresh stream of tears down his cheek and onto the polished mahogany. Eric George Curtis Mark—the man with four first names, the extraordinary cellular biologist who had been his first hire and the second Eos employee to experience halted aging—was dead.
“Are you going to be okay?” Allison D’Angelo asked while placing a tender hand upon his shoulder.
David responded without rising. “I’ll be fine.”
“It’s just that you’ve been standing here a really long time.”
David didn’t reply.
“I never thought we’d be here either. None of us did. The death of an Immortal is… unexpected. And Eric’s is so tragic.”