Washington, D.C.: Monday 26 October 7:00 A.M. local time
General Gerald T. Boyd was halfway through his morning workout routine in one of the Pentagon’s weight rooms when a slim, half-Asian colonel in his early forties sat down on the bench beside him.
Boyd braced his forearm on his thigh and curled the dumbbell up in a slow, controlled motion, his attention all for his breathing and the careful execution of form. Only then did he glance over at Colonel Sam Lee, noting the officer’s bloodshot eyes, the slack jaw of a man roused urgently and too early from his sleep.
“You have something for me?” said Boyd.
A computer geek, the Colonel had been assigned to the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency for the past two years. It was a plum position for a man close to putting in his twenty years; from here, he’d be able to walk into any one of a number of high paying jobs with the private sector when he retired. And he owed it all to Gerald T. Boyd.
“Not as much as I’d hoped,” said Colonel Lee. He was a small man, with short-cropped dark hair and the gentle features of his parents, who had fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.
Boyd watched his own bicep flex and relax, flex and relax. “There’s a problem?”
Lee reached for a fifteen-pound dumbbell. “This Guinness woman is the problem. I started by looking at her passport file.”
“And?” Boyd didn’t really care how Lee got the necessary information on October Guinness, as long as he got it—and was careful to cover his tracks.
“Turns out she’s in the Navy.”
Boyd frowned. “The Navy?”
“An ensign. I thought it would be a piece of cake, accessing her files.”
Boyd waited.
Lee cast a quick glance around and leaned in closer. “Instead, that’s when everything went to shit. The Navy doesn’t have her file.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s been detailed to the CIA.”
“That’s a problem?”
“I don’t know what she’s doing, but whatever it is, it’s a deep dark secret. Special Access shit.”
“So why is she in Russia?”
“I don’t know.”
Boyd switched the dumbbell to his left hand. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it one damned bit. But all he said was, “I need for you to stay on this. I want to know exactly who she is, and why she’s involved.”
A muscle twitched beside the other man’s small mouth. “I’m afraid I may have already stumbled across a trip wire.”
Boyd pushed to his feet and dropped the dumbbell on the rack. “I’ll take care of the Agency. Just get me the information I need.”
Sam Lee glanced down at the dumbbell in his hand, then up again, his shoulders drooping with fatigue and a touch of fear. “Yes, sir.”