PROLOGUE
The asset sensed trouble, both a threat to his operation and a threat to himself, and it immediately occurred to him that he was screwed.
The American had been trained through decades of fieldwork to miss nothing, to question everything. While most people lived in a world of black and white, he saw shades of gray, and he knew how to navigate his way through them. It had kept him alive thus far, but he did not yet know if he’d identified tonight’s problem in time for his training to save him now.
It was a small thing, but to the asset it was unmistakable. Simply put: his target’s mannerisms were all wrong for a wanted man.
This target had tradecraft. Just like the asset, both of them had spent most of their lives doing this shit. The target would know to have his head on a swivel; it would be second nature by now, and the fact that the fifty-five-year-old American moved through the market street stalls alone this warm Caracas evening, idly looking over handmade leather goods and wall art, without a care as to what was going on around him, meant to the asset that this just might be an attempt to lure him into a trap.
The asset did not overreact in the face of this danger. Instead he turned slightly to his left, ending the foot-follow, and strolled lazily into an alley, leaving the throngs of marketgoers behind. He feigned nonchalance, but all his senses were on fire, his mind racing, secure only in the knowledge that he needed to get the fuck out of here.
Now.
He only picked up his pace when he was out of sight of the market.
This was the time for action, not reflection, but as he moved quietly alone through the dark, the asset still couldn’t help but wonder what had gone wrong. How the hell did he get made? He was new to Caracas; this wasn’t his turf, but still he was confident in his abilities to blend in with the crowd, any crowd.
But clearly he was blown, nothing else made any sense, and his only objective now was to minimize the damage to the overall op by contacting his masters as soon as he was clear.
He was fifty yards away from his rented Toyota Hilux, just down Calle Cecillio Acosta, on the far side of the heavily trafficked street, and he knew that by climbing into his vehicle and pulling a U-turn he could be on the Francisco Fajardo Highway in just minutes.
The asset thought he was home free.
He was not.
Eight men, Venezuelans by the look of them, government goons by the smell. These weren’t cops. No, from the weight of their bearing and their obvious confidence, the asset took them for state security. They had that air of authority, that posture of coordination, and their sharp eyes locked onto him as they closed the distance in the alleyway.
He didn’t see guns, but there would be guns. The asset knew that no one in this situation would approach him without a firearm.
The American could have drawn his own weapon; he kept a 9-millimeter Walther PPQ inside his waistband, but this wasn’t that kind of an op. He could throw some fists if things got rough, but he wasn’t going to start shooting Venezuelan spooks.
Not because he gave a shit if any of them lived or died, really. These dudes were government thugs of a dirty regime. But he couldn’t shoot them because he knew he’d be strung up by his masters if he turned this into a bloodbath. The gun was under his shirt to handle unavoidable street crime, not to create international incidents.
The asset didn’t speak much Spanish, so his words were in English when he got close enough to the men, who were now blocking his path in the alley. “All right, boys, what’s on tonight’s agenda?”
One of the hard-eyed plainclothed men walked up to him, his hands empty and out to his sides, and when he got within striking distance, he threw a right cross.
The American asset read it all the way. He ducked under it and then came up behind the swing, pounding the man in the right kidney with a powerful left hook that dropped the Venezuelan to the ground like a sack of wet sand.
Another man had moved forward; he swung a stainless steel telescoping baton, but the American spun away from the movement, sidestepped the blow, and hammered this man with an uppercut into his jaw.
But the others had taken the opportunity to close in, and they were on him before he could reload for his next punch. They came with fists, feet, and knees, and then small saps and more batons. The asset gave as good as he got, for a moment anyway, dropping a third man and momentarily stunning a fourth with an elbow to an eye socket, but a metal truncheon from nowhere took him in the back of the neck. The American fell to the ground, covered his head, rolled into the fetal position, and did all he could to weather the blows.
They had him, he knew it, and as far as he was concerned, he deserved to get his ass kicked for somehow fucking this up.
The American never lost consciousness—he was a tough bastard—but he did lose track of time. After the pounding he was hooded and thrown into the back of a car, dragged and frogmarched and all but carried into a building with steel doors that clanged shut with a sound that told him he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
He was no longer an asset. Now he was a prisoner.
He was pushed into a room, another door shut behind him, and then his hood was removed. Four men forced him into a chair with iron cuffs built into the armrests, and they locked him down.
A tough-looking younger member of the roll-up crew grabbed a bottle of water from a shelf, opened it, and poured it over the top of the American’s head, washing away a little sweat and blood but annoying the prisoner just the same.
His ribs hurt, the back of his head was cut, and both his eyes had been blackened, but his thick, muscular body seemed to remain intact, and for this he was glad.
The prisoner just sat there while the water and blood ran off him, and then a grizzled older man stepped in front of him and knelt down.
In English the man said, “You don’t speak Spanish, do you?”
The asset shook his head.
“You have been detained by SEBIN. You will only insult me if you deny knowing who we are.”
The prisoner did know SEBIN, but he had no problem insulting this guy, so he denied it. “Never heard of you. I’m a tourist. Is this how you treat visitors down here?” He was playing cool, but it was an act. SEBIN was Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia de Nacional, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, both the FBI and CIA of Venezuela, and if the American harbored any doubts about his predicament before, now he knew for certain he was fucked.
He spit blood on the floor and said, “Why don’t you tell me why you arrested me for walking down the street of your lovely country?” He was playing dumb, and it occurred to him he’d probably be playing dumb for a very long time.
But before anyone replied to his question, the door across the room opened and a man entered from a dark hallway. As he stepped into the light over the chair, the prisoner recognized the figure.
Clark Drummond. The target he’d been tailing through the market.
Drummond was fifty-five, a computer scientist and software engineer at the National Security Agency. Or he had been, anyway, before he disappeared one year earlier. A boating accident, or that was the quite reasonable assumption made when his twenty-six-foot Sea Ray power craft was found bobbing capsized in the Chesapeake Bay after a thunderstorm.
But here he was. Low-profile in Venezuela, obviously supported by the local intelligence service, and brazen enough to walk right in here among them like he was running this whole damn country.
Drummond sat down in a chair in front of the prisoner and flashed a smug smile across his face. “You must be incredibly confused right now.”
“You think?” the prisoner said. “Are you from the State Department? These assholes just came out of nowhere and started beating the shit out of—”
“Save it,” Drummond said with a little smile. “You know I’m not consular affairs. You know who I am and . . . unfortunately for you, I know who you are.”
The prisoner did not respond, but his mind was racing nonetheless. Never change your story. No matter what, never change your story.
“I also know who sent you,” Drummond continued. “The Agency somehow found out I’m still alive, and I had been hoping to avoid that.” He put his hands on his knees and sat upright. “They’ll send another asset down here. Hell, they’ll probably send a rendition team at this point. Whatever. SEBIN will roll up the next batch of CIA, just like you got rolled.” He grinned even more broadly now; his confidence seemed genuine to the American in front of him. “Matthew Hanley can keep trying, but he will never drag me home in chains.”
The prisoner cocked his head. Play dumb, stay dumb. “Who’s Matthew Hanley?”
Clark Drummond rolled his eyes as his smile faded. “You’re a bit of a bore, aren’t you? Hanley runs CIA ops and . . . obviously . . . Hanley runs you. Or he did anyway. You won’t be running anywhere any time soon.”
Clark Drummond stood, then started for the door, but turned back. “He didn’t tell you what I have, did he?”
The prisoner did not respond.
“He didn’t tell you I left the U.S. last year with tools that made me all but rendition proof. When you showed up on cameras in my neighborhood, I saw you myself, and SEBIN was alerted. They were on your ass within hours.”
The prisoner hid his anger well. He hadn’t been told that the man he’d been sent to find was in possession of the means to easily identify him. That would have been useful information, to be sure, and he would have conducted his surveillance differently had he known.
But still, he said nothing, because nothing he could say would matter. He was destined for a dank and nasty Venezuelan prison cell; the rest was just noise.
Drummond continued to the exit, but he stopped in the doorway and again turned back around to the shackled American. “Hanley fucked you, Hightower. You never stood a chance.”
The steel door slammed shut a moment later, and Zack Hightower’s shoulders and head slumped forward. He was a beaten man. He had no idea how it had happened, but he was a beaten man.