The beginning of my years with the CIA intersected with the final months of a paramilitary operations officer who was just about to retire. Julian had introduced us in the back room of a London pub. The room, which was closed off to the public, was basically a private bar hidden within a bar, a safe refuge for US and British intelligence officials and the occasional operative.
The CIA officer’s name was Charles, but he was a “call me Charlie” kind of guy. At least around alcohol. After my first night of drinking with him, I was no longer Dylan. I was Dill.
Charlie liked to tell stories. Mostly great ones. Some surely embellished. He’d spent years in Honduras, training rebel forces to fight the Sandinista government. He’d seen a lot of messed-up stuff. Done a lot of messed-up stuff, too. All in the name of a philosophy as old as the Roman empire. Victory always comes at a cost.
I remember the last time I saw Charlie, not that I realized in the moment that it would be my last time with him. I think maybe he knew, though. That’s why at the end of the night he pulled me aside for something other than another one of his stories. It was advice. Except when someone tells you something that you can remember word for word more than twenty years later, it’s no longer merely advice. It’s a mantra.
Charlie wasn’t privy to the specifics of my mission in London at the time, but he knew I was young. Untested. And perhaps a bit unnerved by the inherent risk of my newfound profession.
“To doubt is human,” he told me, with a heavy arm around my shoulder. “Doubting is healthy. But only before the beginning of a mission and after the very end. Anytime in between, doubt is your worst enemy. It’s a trap. A Trojan horse. A self-inflicted fatal wound. In the middle of a mission, doubt only belongs to the dead.”
Charlie was at least six bourbons deep when he told me that, but he spoke every syllable crystal clear. “Whatever happened to Charlie?” I asked Julian, years later.
Julian didn’t know. No one did. I suspect that was by design. Charlie and his pension disappeared off the grid. In a related story, there are more than one hundred thousand islands in the world.
“Wish me luck,” whispered Tracy as he approached room 1106 of the Roxy Hotel. From the stairwell by the eleventh floor, I could hear him perfectly through my headset. The stairwell door didn’t have a window, but I had the visual feed on my cell courtesy of Tracy’s glasses.
“You don’t need luck. You’ve got this,” I told him. “No doubt.”
The bearded businessman sitting in the lobby with his laptop, otherwise known as Julian, was our spotter. He was the only one of us that neither Brunetti nor Laszlo would recognize.
Brunetti had arrived first with his plus-one per the arrangement, although he of course was cheating and actually brought two henchmen with him. The second one remained in the lobby and tried to look as inconspicuous as a six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound man possibly can. In other words, not very well.
Anyone else would’ve panicked on seeing Brunetti show up without the painting, but not Julian. He assumed as much. Only after Brunetti checked in and went to his randomly assigned room to make sure there was no surprise waiting for him did his first henchman reappear in the lobby, exit the hotel briefly, and return with an oversized portfolio case.
Minutes later, Brunetti gave the signal to Tracy by texting him with the room number. Tracy then texted Laszlo. To keep his “Switzerland” efforts intact, Tracy was to arrive second, in the middle, before the Hungarian delegation.
“It’s Bill D’Alexander,” said Tracy, immediately announcing himself after knocking on room 1106.
Brunetti’s guy let him in. Tracy had switched to thermal mode on the glasses before the door opened so we knew immediately.
“Pistol, right hip,” whispered Julian.
“I see it,” I said.
Tracy walked through a foyer, past a dining area, and into a spacious living room. Brunetti was about to pocket fifty million, so the least he could do was spring for a suite.
“Hello, Bill,” said Brunetti. “How are you?”
“That depends,” answered Tracy. “Are you going to make me strip again?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Are you sure? I wore nicer boxers just for the occasion.”
“What you can do for me,” said Brunetti, “is spread your arms out wide so Matthew here can see if you’re ticklish.”
Tracy obliged, allowing a guy who seemed way too big for the name Matthew to give him a good old-fashioned pat down. Matthew gave his boss a nod. Clean.
Except Brunetti was now giving Tracy a strange sort of stare. “There’s something different about you,” he said.
Tracy didn’t hesitate. “I already told you about the boxers,” he joked.
It was as if Brunetti couldn’t hear him. Or didn’t want to. “Your face,” he said. “What’s different?”
“I got a haircut yesterday?”
“No. That’s not it.” Brunetti snapped his fingers, the reason coming to him. He pointed at Tracy. “Glasses. You weren’t wearing glasses when we met.”
“Easy now,” I whispered to Tracy.
“I wasn’t wearing these? Are you sure?” asked Tracy.
“I’m positive.”
“Then I was wearing my contacts. No need for glasses.”
Brunetti nodded. “They’re nice,” he said. “Those frames. Who makes them?”
Oh, shit.
“Don’t lie,” I whispered. “Tell him you don’t know.”
I’d already done the math in my head. Four seconds to reach the door of the suite. One second to shoot the lock. Another second to take down left-handed Matthew before he can reach for the holster on his right hip.
Julian was suddenly in my ear. He could isolate his channel so it was just me who could hear him. “I know what you’re thinking, mate, but not yet,” he said. “Hold tight.”
I watched as Tracy glanced at Matthew before answering Brunetti. “I don’t know who makes them,” he said. “I barely even remember where I got them. I think it was one of those chains, like Pearle Vision, or something.”
“They usually put the name of the maker on the inside of one of the arms,” said Brunetti. He reached his hand out. “Here, let me see them for a second.”