Sleep rarely comes easily to an undercover agent. For Jake Kruse it never did. Even supposedly routine assignments came with their own brand of tension, the need to be constantly “on guard” and a nagging “what if” uncertainty about being exposed—caught in the open—with no cavalry riding to the rescue.
Jake’s key to survival and success was an innate ability to keep track of the “who am I?” question—and his skill at projecting that persona every waking minute, even while in church, which he would be missing this morning. He had to believe in himself and in the person he was portraying, and be so comfortable in his character that every response in every situation came naturally—and appear believable to the criminals he was deceiving.
Living two lives at once requires extraordinary self-confidence. It means never becoming complacent. The consummate undercover agent lives like a spy in enemy territory—and lives to tell the story. Jake Kruse knew he was very good at living by his wits. But he also went regularly to the range and practiced putting ten rounds into an eight-inch circle at twenty-five yards—just in case.
Despite a restless night’s sleep, Jake hopped out of bed when the alarm went off at six thirty. He grabbed his workout clothes and hit the trails. Running cleared his head but it also brought immediate goal-oriented satisfaction, something undercover work seldom did.
With UC assignments, significant accomplishments could be weeks, months, maybe even years down the road. On two particular assignments Jake never knew the final results, nor would he ever. On both occasions he was tasked with compromising foreign dignitaries working in the United States. Though much of his undercover work was secret, at least until the indictments were unsealed, on both of these missions he was required to sign nondisclosure agreements preventing him from ever discussing the targets or the nature of the assignment. He was successful both times in “neutralizing” the subjects.
In one instance, he set up an embassy official in such a way that his government would have killed the diplomat had the foreign power learned of his dealings with an American undercover agent. Jake assumed the short, squat, swarthy individual was on the FBI’s payroll singing dutifully about Middle Eastern affairs, grateful to be alive. In the other assignment, one of the three targets would never sing again, and Jake could only assume the two remaining subjects were used in a never-disclosed spy swap.
Jake pushed himself this morning, aiming for a six-minute-mile pace. But throughout the run, a question kept nagging: Who is behind the Park kidnapping?
He intentionally arrived early for the meeting at the Koffee Kombine on Ventura Boulevard. The place was open—a counterintuitive location for clandestine encounters. The patio was nearly empty—yet perfect. The church crowd would be joining them soon, but the participants in this morning’s meeting had a clear view of others approaching. The ambient noise from the street traffic prevented surreptitious monitoring of their conversation.
When he could, Jake always chose locations like this for conferences with colleagues—and his criminal co-conspirators. He reconnoitered entries and exits in advance—and knew where to look and what to look for. It gave him a measure of certainty in situations that could quickly get out of control—far preferable to exchanging information in a “brush pass” at a supermarket vegetable stand. From experience he knew the more obvious he was, the less obvious he would appear.
He ordered coffee and was reading the Times sports section when Trey Bennett pulled up to the curb in his silver Ford Fusion. Jake watched over the top of the newspaper as Trey threw the FBI radio microphone over the rearview mirror and hopped out of the vehicle. The hanging mike was a common sign to meter maids and patrol cars to extend “professional courtesy” and not ticket an illegally parked government vehicle. Even on Sunday these meters needed feeding.
Trey walked into the patio but before he could sit, Jake looked up at his friend and said quietly, “Please don’t ever do that again when you are coming to a meeting with me.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t hang your mike. Here’s a quarter. I know all agents are cheap but you just signaled everyone—the good, the bad, and the ugly—that you’re a cop. I’d like to maintain some semblance of secrecy. It might just keep me alive.” Jake flipped him the quarter and Trey sheepishly retreated to the car, pulled his mike, and pumped the quarter into the meter.
When Trey returned he apologized.
“Don’t be sorry, be cautious.”
“Yeah, like meeting you in broad daylight on the busiest surface street in the Valley is cautious.”
“Hey, if you want to do the paperwork to rent a motel room for every meet, that’s fine with me. I thought you’d appreciate I’m only sticking you with coffee, but we can do the Ritz any time.”
“A bit testy this morning, aren’t we?” said Trey, trying to lighten the moment.
“Screw you and the horse you rode in on,” said Jake without the hint of a smile.
The waitress approached and both men quieted. She topped off Jake’s cup and filled Bennett’s when he said he wasn’t ordering breakfast.
Trey took a long sip of the coffee, then said, “That plate you grabbed from the car as you arrived at Park’s house last night comes back to Sharaz Ali al-Sattar.”
“Am I supposed to know him?” asked Jake.
“Only if you follow Iranian TV. He runs Iranian International Television, which has production facilities in Hollywood. From everything I could find in our files, the entire operation is funded by Tehran.”
“No way.”
“Yeah,” said Bennett. “I haven’t had time to listen or watch the playback of all you recorded with Park last night, but has he given you any clue that he is engaged with any Iranians or Mideasterners?”
Jake thought for a moment and said, “Not a word. But if Park’s involved with the Iranian community here in L.A., that would be a stunner. It’s way out of our lane, but it looks to me like the Iranians dropped off the charts last year after they closed that interim nuclear weapons deal in Geneva.”
“You’re right about that,” said Trey. “Crime stats on Persian perps are way down from a year ago. Some ayatollah must have issued a fatwa to knock off the wife beatings LAPD would report and the clandestine caviar and illicit pistachio imports CBP used to catch.”
Jake was still thinking about the car leaving Park’s place as he and Tommy arrived. “What does Bill Holodnak say? Does he have any calls between Park and this Iranian we saw leaving his place last night?”
“Nothing.”
“Park must be communicating by means we aren’t monitoring,” Jake said. “That has me concerned. I don’t like going in blind and deaf. Can we get the judge who issued the wires warrant to broaden the fishing license?”
“I’ll try,” Trey said as he made a note in his iPhone.
“That could be important,” Jake said. “There is no doubt in my mind the dead guy at Park’s last night was Middle Eastern. He could have been Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi, whatever. But Park is convinced it has to be someone with connections to the Korean underworld. He has some ideas but wasn’t interested in sharing them with me last night. Have you seen any forensics to ID the dead guy?”
“That’s going to take days if we get it at all,” Trey replied. Then, consulting the notes he had made on his phone, he continued, “Here’s what the medical examiner’s office told me this morning: There was no ID on the corpse. Initial assessment, large trapezius muscles, indicative of carrying a military backpack and/or wearing an armored vest. Dental work appears to be Middle Eastern or south European—gold, not amalgam. Stomach contents, were—”
“Stop!” said Jake, holding up his hand. “I’m not interested in what he had for breakfast. Just let me know if we figure out who the guy was.”
“Got it.” Trey continued, “Listen, it will come as no shock to you but you didn’t make any new friends last night with the ASAC.”
Jake leaned back in his seat. “Yeah, like I’m inviting him over for Monday Night Football. Do they study to be that stupid or is it genetic? The guy’s an idiot.”
Trey took another sip of his coffee, then said cautiously, knowing the messenger might get caught in the cross fire, “He wants to send you back to Quantico for an emergency psych assessment.”
Jake laughed derisively. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Trey shook his head. “I’m serious. He told Rachel to set it up ASAP.”
Every six months undercover agents are subjected to a psychological assessment designed to determine if they are on the brink of a breakdown or total collapse. The stresses are real and the testing can sometimes identify symptoms of a “breakdown” before the agent and his handler appreciate its existence. Jake had sat through far too many semiannual evaluations and somehow managed to win almost every session on the couch. He’d win this one, too, but the timing couldn’t be worse.
Jake lowered his voice to what those who knew him best described as his “Dirty Harry” level: “This is nuts. I’m in the middle of what may be an international criminal conspiracy, a triple homicide, and a double kidnapping and he wants to yank me?”
Trey looked around the patio, motioned for him to lean across the table, and said, “Jake, I know he’s an idiot, but he’s an ASAC idiot. You can’t just jump in a guy’s face like you did last night and expect to walk away, especially in front of witnesses. He has to take a stand; otherwise he looks weak.”
Jake shook his head and mouthed the words as if shouting but whispered, “He is weak. I’ve seen too many like him since joining the Bureau. One more overeducated bureaucrat who hides behind the manual. Keep ’em off the streets and let the real agents do the work.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, but part of my job is to keep you on the street and away from Headquarters and shrinks, especially in a fast-moving case like this one. I’m on your side, Spider-Man, but you’re making it tough.”
Jake lowered his head. His contempt for administrators plagued him at the most inopportune times . . . usually in the middle of an investigation. He knew Trey was right. “You got my back?”
“You know I do. Just stay off the high ground for a day or two.”
Jake smiled, nodded, and said, “Deal. As long as you promise not to hang your mike when we’re meeting.”
“Works for me,” replied Trey. “Just don’t answer your phone unless it’s me or the bad guys.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” Jake nodded to the waitress, who refilled their cups.
When she left the patio, Jake took a sip and asked, “What’s really going on with the Park kidnapping? Are we behind it?”
“Jake, you can’t really believe that?”
I watched Hafner and the spook last night. There’s more to this than anyone is telling me. And now Hafner wants me back east for a psych eval, which will take me out of play for at least three days.”
“You watch way too much TV. Don’t go paranoid on me. Next thing you’ll tell me is Hafner’s an agent for the Trilateral Commission and he’s really running the world from the basement of the World Bank.”
“Is he?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Trey paused, a little too long, conspiratorial thoughts beginning to surface. “How the hell would I know? If I asked him and he told me the truth, he’d have to kill me. Then where would you be?”
Jake held his look for a pregnant moment before a smile surfaced. “There’s a reason why it’s a secret society.”
“You aren’t cleared for the secret handshake,” said Trey, dismissing the conspiracy theory and somewhat relieved his agent wasn’t going there, either.
Jake turned serious. “But I am cleared. It’s my butt out there, not yours and certainly not Hafner’s. I need to be cut in on what’s really going on—in the depths where I can’t see. It is, after all, my ass that’s on the line.”
“Jake, it’s need-to-know. I’m up for my five-year security evaluation and they’re putting everyone on the box.”
“Take a Darvon the morning of the polygraph,” said Jake.
“Does that work?” said Trey, surprised there might be a way to beat the polygraph exam.
“No, but you’ll be more relaxed when they tell you you failed.”
“Come on, Jake. Don’t ask me. Just continue to march and keep me updated as you go.”
Jake shook his head, almost in disbelief. “Well, I need to know and I need to know yesterday.”
Trey said nothing.
“I can’t believe you’re siding with management,” said Jake, a comment reminiscent of the grade-school barb “You throw like a girl.”
Street senses prevailed. Trey looked around before responding. “The Agency says Park’s a North Korean IO. They believe he has access to millions in Supernotes and will probably use them for the ransom.”
Jake nodded. “I guess it makes sense the DPRK has intelligence officers operating in L.A. Their entire government is a criminal enterprise, so why wouldn’t someone profiting from its contraband be connected back to Pyongyang? This gets more interesting by the minute.”
As the waitress approached and refilled their coffee cups, both men quieted until she left.
Trey lowered his voice. “A ransom payoff in Supernotes doesn’t cost anyone anything. It just floods our economy with more bad paper. But that’s not all. It turns out NSA didn’t know it in ‘real time,’ but they picked up overhears about the kidnapping . . . before it went down—”
“Before it went down!” interrupted Jake.
Trey shook his head slowly. “Kidnapping is a predicated word. They couldn’t trace the calls because they were prepaid disposable phones.”
“So we let Jenny and the little girl get kidnapped.”
“This is way above my pay grade and yours. But it looks to me as though the folks in Washington and Hafner thought this might force Park to use the Supernotes for the ransom.”
“I don’t believe this,” said Jake, shaking his head. “Three people were killed and we could have prevented it!”
“It’s not that simple. Nobody thought anyone would get killed. They didn’t know the ‘who,’ the ‘where,’ or the ‘when’ of the kidnapping until after it all went down. That’s because of the incredible volume of information NSA collects. It’s like trying to get a spoonful of water while standing under Niagara Falls.
“Everything I just told you apparently became evident in the past twenty-four hours. If we warned Park about the kidnapping, he would know we were on to him. This whole North Korean issue is important.”
“More important than a life?”
Trey didn’t hesitate with an answer. “Yeah, Jake. Even innocent people get caught in the cross fire, but maybe preventing North Korea from playing a key role in a nuclear holocaust is more important than some Asian gangbangers getting clipped.”
Jake calmed. He didn’t want to get into a moral-equivalency argument with Trey since he knew firsthand what it was like to put other people’s lives on the line. He had to do that in combat as a Marine—and nobody has pleasant memories of those times.
“So whose phones did we pick up on Park’s wiretap?”
“That’s the other thing. It wasn’t on our warrant for Park. It was a call from Lebanon to a ‘throwaway’ cell phone in L.A.”
“What?”
“It was a short call, but NSA is certain the conversation was about the Park kidnapping.”
Jake rubbed his eyes, trying to sort out all he was hearing. “How are we playing the kidnapping?”
“Again, we’re in a box. Park never reported it and if we go to him he’ll know either we’ve got the house wired or we have someone on the inside. From where I stand that someone looks like the gringo sitting across from me.”
“But we have to do something. Trey, we can’t let this little girl and the daughter get killed. They really are the innocents in all this.”
“I know. We talked about it last night after you left. Rachel thinks you should try to convince Park to call us but is leaving the final decision up to you. For some reason she trusts your judgment,” said Trey with a slight smile.
“I was just getting ready to say how much I really think she is a great supervisor with tremendous instincts.”
“Don’t let your ego get in the way of the investigation,” said Trey, still smiling.
Jake shook his head after taking a sip of coffee. “I don’t think trying to convince Park to call the Bureau is the right move. If we bet wrong, I’m out. I think the better road is to stay close, within his wingspan, and be available for him.”
“You might be right.”
“I hope I am.”
“I hope we are,” said Trey, who took a final sip of his coffee. “I don’t want any of this to come back to bite you or me.”
“We’re okay. Thanks for cutting me in. We’re going to get this done, but I may decide the front office doesn’t need to know the how or the where.”
“Jake, one other thing: don’t go toe-to-toe with Hafner. He’s got suck at Headquarters; tread lightly or you might find yourself in Adak, working security clearances for government contractors.”