Tuesday morning
October 11 — 5:11 a.m. EST
Harkers Island, North Carolina
“What are you thinking?” the Mister asked.
Alex turned to look at him. He held out a ceramic mug full of dark coffee and fresh cream. She looked into his face. As intelligence operators, he and Mammy had lived under so many names that “real” names didn’t mean much. Everyone who knew this man personally, including his children, called him the “Mister” to his beloved wife’s “Mammy.” He moved the cup, and she took it.
“I’m not sure,” Alex said. “Everything. Nothing.”
She lifted a shoulder in a kind of shrug.
“Jesse here?” the Mister asked.
Alex shook her head. She hadn’t seen Jesse since the garden at the Pentagon. She’d gotten up this morning to see if she could call him. He did not appear. She missed him in a deep, private way that even she could not understand. Rather than say anything, she took a long drink of her coffee.
“Everything and nothing?” the Mister asked.
“One day, not so many years ago, I was a Sergeant on Charlie’s team,” Alex said. “I know that you know this, but my team was just finishing up. We had six more months together before Charlie retired.”
“Didn’t think you’d be here in five years?” the Mister asked.
“That’s an understatement,” Alex said with a wry grin.
“Humor me,” the Mister said. “Where did you think you’d be?”
“I wasn’t sure. I had a lot of offers,” Alex said with a nod. “I had been approached by every intelligence agency in the US and most of Europe. I thought I’d have my own biological children, at least two, maybe three; John wanted somewhere between five and fifteen children. I figured we’d probably live in Washington, DC. Maybe I’d work for Dad or for Congress’s intelligence committee.”
“Would you still be a field agent?” the Mister asked.
“It’s in my blood,” Alex said. “At the very least, I figured I’d teach, maybe at Fort Carson. Certainly at Fort Bragg. I’d been asked no fewer than ten times.”
The Mister nodded. He leaned back in his chair and drank his coffee. Alex followed his lead. They sat in quiet companionship with the pre-dawn.
“You were wanted,” the Mister said. He looked into his empty cup and scowled. “Needed.”
“I couldn’t imagine that would ever end,” Alex said. “Why would it? I kept up with new technology, stayed on top of changes in the military and the intelligence world; plus, mostly everyone liked me.”
She turned her head to look at him. His eyes spoke of his sorrow and concern for her. He got up just as Grady came out with an insulated pot. Without saying a word, Grady gave the pot to his father and retreated into the house. The Mister poured Alex another cup of coffee and one for himself. They fell into the morning silence again. After a while, the Mister sighed.
“It is hard to understand how you could go from being the most important asset in US intelligence to someone not worthy of a pension,” the Mister said.
“You heard the tapes,” Alex said.
“Watched them,” the Mister said. “Those from the Pentagon and everything from the Chinook.”
He turned to look at Alex.
“Why do you suppose he threw up?” the Mister asked.
“I’m not sure he didn’t fake the whole thing to lull us into thinking he was a human being,” Alex said.
“That occurred to me, as well,” the Mister said. “Turns out there’s a video camera in your toilet. Have you seen that?”
With the cup to her lips, she shook her head.
“And?” Alex asked after swallowing.
“He definitely threw up,” the Mister said. “He clutched himself. He rocked back and forth for a full minute and twenty-three seconds. I checked. Then, as if it never happened, he washed his face and left the toilet.”
“That is weird,” Alex said. “I was sitting with him and didn’t pick up any emotion from him. Certainly not that kind of extreme emotion.”
“Admiral Ingram is a complicated man,” the Mister said. “Any ideas about who he ‘promised’?”
“To watch the videos?” Alex shook her head. “Nathan’s mother comes to mind, but it’s more likely just part of pretending not to be a psychopath. My guess is that if we figure out who his father was, we’ll find a psychopath.”
“So cynical.” The Mister shook his head. “You surprise me.”
“Just growing up, sir,” Alex said.
The Mister laughed. Grinning, Alex looked out into their fall garden. A wooden screen door slapped against the frame of the side door when Mammy’s daughter came out of the kitchen. She fussed with an mp3 player as she sauntered in the direction of the chicken coop. After a moment, she began to sing “Glory, Glory.” They watched her for a moment before turning back to the garden.
“Why do you suppose he threw up?” Alex asked.
“The cynic in me thinks like you do,” the Mister said. “I have a nagging thought, or maybe it’s wishful thinking, that he’s playing a part. He was fast-tracked to Admiral. He doesn’t really have the field experience to be in charge of Spec Ops. A lot of high-ranking people have expressed concern about his lack of battle experience — both in the field and as a leader. Then, there’s the fact that the Admiral supported Ingram as his replacement.”
“That’s what gets me,” Alex said. “If the Admiral thought I was full of shit or should retire, why didn’t he tell me himself? I’ve had numerous private conversations with him this year. At each one, he indicated he supported me and the team one hundred percent. He could have easily told me to retire or that I had lost my mind or . . .”
Alex shook her head.
“Feels like a betrayal,” the Mister said with a nod.
“I don’t want to think it,” Alex said, “but I keep finding knives in my back.”
“Have you spoken to the Admiral?” the Mister asked.
“I’ve tried,” Alex said with a shrug. “On the way here.”
“And?” the Mister asked.
“He was in a meeting with Admiral Ingram,” Alex said.
She twisted in her seat to pull an imaginary knife out of her back. He shook his head at her antics.
“He didn’t call when he was done with the meeting?” the Mister asked. Alex shook her head. “I see what you mean.”
The wooden screen from the side door slapped against the frame when Cliff, Zack’s co-pilot, came out. He jogged toward the barn.
“Hey!” Mammy’s youngest son ran out after him.
The screen door banged again. The young men laughed their way toward the barn. Alex and the Mister watched them until the barn door shut.
“Cows?” Alex asked.
“Two. Need milking,” the Mister said. He cleared his throat. “We were each assigned our tasks this morning.”
“Oh? Am I your task?” Alex asked.
“I have been assigned the task of asking you what you want to do,” the Mister said.
“About?” Alex asked.
“You know, I taught your father that trick,” the Mister said with a grin.
“You taught my father which trick?” Alex asked.
She grinned when the Mister laughed. Mammy’s daughter walked back toward the kitchen carrying a basket full of eggs. Singing softly, Mammy’s daughter nodded to them before she went into the kitchen.
“She has a lovely voice,” Alex said.
“And a singing scholarship to Yale,” the Mister said.
“Under what name?” Alex asked.
“What a funny question. Why do you ask?” the Mister grinned.
Alex laughed. He turned his head to look at her.
“You should know that the Air Force Chief is screaming about Zack and Cliff’s resignation. He pitched a fit in Admiral Ingram’s office last night. Zack’s agreed to spend the rest of the year on a U-2. He’s supposed to leave tonight. Cliff has refused reassignment. He’s out.”
Alex raised her eyebrows with interest.
“Did you know Cliff was loaded?” the Mister asked.
Alex nodded.
“I didn’t expect him just to quit,” Alex said. “He’s young and has a whole career ahead of him.”
“He told Mammy that he had never planned to be career military,” the Mister said. “But when Zack picked him, and then he was on the Fey Team, he decided to stay. Now, given the chance, the, uh, ‘Kid’ has things he wants to do with his life.”
“Like what?” Alex asked.
“Climb mountains, I think,” the Mister said. “I didn’t hear the whole thing. He did say that he would have stayed as long as you needed him. He will return if you ever asked.”
“He’s a good kid,” Alex said.
She squinted at the garden and wondered if she should tell the Mister about Cliff’s relationship with his daughter. Deciding against it, she gave the Mister a slight smile. They fell silent while they watched the morning again. Alex shifted in her seat.
“I don’t know,” Alex said.
“You don’t know what?” the Mister asked.
“What I want to do,” Alex said. “I don’t know.”
The Mister grinned. Alex reached out and touched his arm. He turned his head to look at her.
“Listen,” Alex said in a low voice. “Except for Joseph, every single person I’ve worked with five years ago has been killed in some horrific and violent way — all of my Fey Special Forces teammates, Jesse, The Boy Scout . . . They came for Colonel Gordon, my parents . . .”
“Sergeant Flagg,” the Mister said.
“Heath,” Alex said. “Raz, Max, Troy, me again and again.”
She nodded and removed her hand from his arm.
“I keep thinking,” Alex said in a stronger voice, “if we had quit before . . . even one hour before, the guys would still be alive, and maybe I . . .”
She sniffed as if to suck her words back into her mouth. The Mister watched her face.
“What if this is our moment?” Alex asked after a moment.
“What do you mean?” the Mister asked.
“What do I mean?” Alex said to herself. She scowled and collected her thoughts. “Um.”
She scowled again and looked at the Mister for a moment. Making a decision to be honest, she nodded.
“Something was wrong with Charlie the last six months or so that we were together as a team,” Alex said. “Maybe longer. Certainly, it got worse when Joseph left for paternity leave. Even he noticed it.”
“Who noticed it?” the Mister asked.
“Joseph,” Alex said. She sighed. Under her breath, she added, “What am I saying?”
She fell silent while she thought it through.
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what Charlie knew, what made him so anxious,” Alex said. “Not a ton of time, nor have I ever asked Raz or anyone else to look into it, although I suppose I could do that now. I’ve just . . . When the opportunity has presented itself, I’ve looked, asked, thought about it, read, asked people . . .”
She looked at the Mister.
“I read Charlie’s journals, for example,” Alex said. “We don’t have all of them, but I have a few.”
“And?”
“There’s no mention of anything unusual,” Alex said. “Nothing. Yet, he was weird our last year.”
“You’ve said before that you thought it was The Boy Scout,” the Mister said.
“Sure,” Alex said. “And that’s as likely as anything else.”
“But?”
“What did Charlie know?” Alex asked. “Was Charlie retiring because he was pushed out? After today, that’s probably a better question. Did they give him the opportunity they’re giving me? You know, retire now or we’ll . . . I don’t know what. Or did they just kill everyone? Save the tax payers from having to pay our pensions.”
“What?” Surprised, the Mister leaned forward in his rocking chair to look at her.
Alex responded by nodding.
“Maybe Charlie was supposed to retire earlier,” Alex said. “Charlene doesn’t know if the military pushed Charlie out; I’ve asked. She did say that she was surprised when he brought up the idea of retiring. He loved his work and our team. He’d talked about continuing in the military for another ten years or more. He was healthy and well-liked by his command. Charlene said that the idea of retirement came out of the blue, but Charlie was prone to change directions in his life on a moment’s notice. So . . . I mean, Charlene wasn’t surprised by his change of heart. They’d certainly talked about retiring over the years. So why should I make a fuss about it? I just wonder . . .”
Alex stretched her neck from side to side.
“Is this your moment?” the Mister asked.
“Are we signing our death warrants by continuing?” Alex asked.
The Mister squinted at her, and she nodded.
“This has this eerie feeling of synchronicity here” Alex said.
“Certainly,” the Mister nodded. “Could Admiral Ingram simply be correct? You’re over-qualified for the jobs, and hostage retrieval is a job for the CIA and the Navy SEALs.”
Alex shook her head.
“What?” the Mister asked.
“When I started, a civilian had to get visas to go into most problem countries,” Alex said. “Truthfully, the only people who traveled to dangerous places were people who traveled for work. Some, like you, were in intelligence. But plenty of people worked for oil companies or news outlets or were missionaries — Catholic priests, Mormons, Evangelicals. Most of the time, the news agencies, certainly the oil companies, even religious organizations, kept track of their people. If someone disappeared, I could track their visas and their last communication with their employer and friends. Even the hired killers. I could track them by their travel arrangements.”
“Or visa,” the Mister said with a nod.
“Exactly,” Alex said. “There were . . . anomalies, but most of the time, I knew where to start. But now? Any random person can buy a ticket to the middle of you-name-it war to report for their blog, or to research their yet-unwritten-but-sure-to-be-a-bestselling novel, or to meet up with their secret lover they met on Facebook, or join a not-yet-known terrorist faction. And, they can make these plans on any random library computer or an untraceable Internet café or . . .”
Alex shrugged.
“The work is much harder than it was when I started,” Alex said. “Dad said it was like that when he was tracking guys in prisoner-of-war camps in Asia. But then . . .”
“You knew who was there and mostly who they worked for,” the Mister said with a nod.
“In the past, there were reasons people were held hostage,” Alex said. “In Iran, they worked for the consulate. In Vietnam, they were mostly soldiers or intelligence assets or both.”
The Mister nodded.
“Now, random people get randomly captured by random bad guys with a grudge, or, worse, for-profit kidnappers. Hostage taking is big business all over the world, not just in the places you’d expect it. Families don’t know what to do, so they pay huge ransoms to try to get them back.”
“Which almost always ensures the hostage will be killed,” the Mister said.
“Exactly,” Alex said. “Just this year, I begged this one family not to pay the ransom. They paid. Their relative was murdered. We arrived the same day to pick him up. Who gets blamed?”
The Mister pointed to Alex.
“Exactly. More than once, we dug someone out of hell, and you know what they do as soon as they have the resources to do so? They return to the place they were captured!” Alex said. “One guy was an insurance agent. I asked him what the hell he was doing. You know what he told me? His post about being in a North Korean work camp got a lot of hits on his blog. Hits on a blog! Not anything that might possibly make some modicum of sense, but hits on a blog?”
“And you know the first thing his parents did when he was released?” Alex asked.
The Mister shook his head.
“They went on television blaming the US government for not getting him out sooner,” Alex said. “Like it’s my fault that her son wanted hits on his blog. If her son wanted a pony, would that be my fault, too?”
The Mister gave her an ironic smile.
“So no, it’s not right that the SEALs and the CIA can work out hostage issues,” Alex said. “At the very least, they need a dedicated team of professionals.”
“Or ten,” the Mister said.
“The CIA is computers and data analysts now,” Alex nodded. “They don’t have people in the field to develop the relationships needed . . .”
“To even start the process,” the Mister said.
“I said to Ingram, ‘Don’t take it out on the hostages.’” Alex shook her head. “I mean, what will happen to hostages when we stop working? You remember what happened to Leena?”
“She was just one of the cases while you were recovering,” the Mister said. “The others were just as bad.”
Alex shook her head. She looked away from him for a moment before sighing.
“I’m kind of ranting,” Alex said. “Sorry. It’s always true with dinosaurs. We can’t see our own obsolescence. We fight tooth and nail to defend our relevance when life has already passed us by.”
“You’re not a dinosaur,” the Mister said. “Your assessment is accurate.”
“Yes, but what’s abundantly clear is that I no longer matter in the scheme of things,” Alex said.
“I understand why you say that; it’s just not accurate,” the Mister said. He looked at her and then looked out across the yard. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. “I guess my question is: Who would want there to be more hostages? Who benefits from more brutality exacted on ridiculous US citizens?”
“That’s kind of paranoid,” Alex said.
“Humor me,” the Mister said.
“You mean if there was a conspiracy?” Alex asked. “You know I don’t like conspiracies.”
“Humor me,” the Mister repeated.
“Let’s see,” Alex said. “Who would benefit from the Fey Team not working? Certainly not hostages. Or the honest tourists who happen to wander into the path of terrorists. Or . . .”
“If you had to say . . .?” the Mister lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
“Military contractors, maybe, soldiers for hire,” Alex said. “They can convince multinational corporations to pay through the nose for protection or possibly hostage retrieval. And . . .”
She turned to look at him.
“Military-industrial complex,” Alex said. “Suppliers, gun makers, munitions, even media companies. Really, anyone who profits from soldiers-on-the-ground war. Images of brutalized citizens often turn reluctant voters into firm supporters of the military. Even just one or two citizens held hostage or murdered in some public way could put pressure our government to enter into another no-win, never-ending conflict.”
“Now, you know who Admiral Ingram might be working for,” the Mister said. “The top .01% of the wealthiest people in the world.”
“Is he?” Alex asked.
“What about those who want to see the world burn?” the Mister asked.
Feeling dejected, Alex shook her head and looked at the garden. The warming morning air held a heavy quality that added to her sense of hopelessness.
“I haven’t heard that he’s working for anyone,” the Mister said in an attempt to get the conversation back on track. “I just have this . . . suspicion, unsubstantiated feeling, I guess.”
Alex looked at him with raised eyebrows. They sat in silent awe of the rising sun.
“Have you spoken with the President?” the Mister asked.
“We touched base last night briefly,” Alex said. “He’s fighting with Congress over some bill or another. They also have a visiting dignitary.”
“Right, there is a state dinner this week,” the Mister said.
“We were supposed to guard it,” Alex said. “I’m sure some SEAL Team has taken our place.”
“If you wanted to, you probably still could guard it,” the Mister said.
Alex gave him an indifferent shrug.
“I’m supposed to work out with the President at lunch today,” Alex said.
“That should be interesting,” the Mister said with an exaggerated cough perfected over decades of chain smoking.
Feeling someone near, they turned to look. Mammy was standing in the doorway. For most of Alex’s life, Mammy had been a large woman, similar to the movie character whose name she’d taken. In preparation for retirement, Mammy lost well over a hundred pounds. Standing on the porch, Mammy was curvy, fit, and gorgeous. Alex’s eyes slid over to look at the Mister. He was shockingly fit and trim as well. She grinned at his pretense of still smoking.
“Breakfast is ready,” Mammy said. “You remember the rules?”
“No shop talk at meals,” Alex said.
“That’s right,” Mammy said. “Can you do that?”
Mammy looked at the Mister and then at Alex. She gave Alex a big smile.
“Come on, girl,” Mammy said. “You’re skin and bones again.”
Mammy put her arm around Alex to navigate her into the house for breakfast.
F