Noble Sanction Read online

  “I’m fine, Papa. I was thinking to come by and visit with you. Maybe sometime next week, but I have a few things I need to take care of first.”

  He made another loud hacking noise, trying to work phlegm from his throat. “Eight years you’ve been gone. Now you want to visit? I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but don’t bring it to my doorstep, Eliška.”

  The line went dead.

  She dropped the phone on the bed and wiped tears from her eyes. He was still alive and ornery as ever, Eliška told herself. That was something. The old man had never forgiven her for walking out on him, and Eliška couldn’t very well explain why she had left. She closed her eyes, took in some air, and reached for the tablet with the target’s info.

  He was middle-age, with a wife and a teenage son. Eliška ignored that information and scrolled through the rest of his profile. P. Arthur Fellows worked for the US Secret Service and was utterly predictable in his habits. Every Thursday, he worked late, then picked up dinner at his favorite sushi restaurant before driving home. He walked the dog at eight o’clock and spent the rest of the evening on the sofa with his wife, watching television.

  Killing Fellows would be simple. He was set in his ways. Predictable people are easy to kill. Getting away with it is the hard part. Everything inside Eliška told her to forget the name P. Arthur Fellows and take the first flight out. Operating in the United States was too risky. But Bob knew where her father lived. He knew her name. He knew everything about her. She had to deal with Fellows, or Papa was a dead man.

  Chapter Three

  Eliška Cermákova walked into Sushi Gakyu on Thursday night, a redhead in a slinky green dress and heels. A generic Asian melody struggled to give the place authentic atmosphere. The tables were packed with a mix of millennials and government workers. The chef was a Japanese man of indeterminate age, slicing fish with deft flashes of a yanagi knife. P. Arthur Fellows sat at the bar, a cup of sake in front of him, along with stacks of xeroxed pages. The chef passed a plate of sushi over the glass partition and Fellows accepted with a muttered, “Arigato gozaimasu.”

  “That looks delicious,” Eliška said. She took the stool next to him and let the dress ride up her thighs. “What is it?”

  Fellows paused with a slice of fish halfway to his mouth. His eyes flashed to her thighs and made the trip north. The cold wedge slipped from his chopsticks and hit the plate with a small splat. An embarrassed smile tugged at his lips. He cleared his throat. “Yellowtail.”

  “Any good?” Eliška asked.

  “Ota makes the best sushi in town,” he said and turned back to his fish.

  Seducing a man can be deceptively hard work. Fellows thought the conversation was over. After all, what would a woman like her want with a man like him? Fellows was middle-age, balding, and going to fat. Eliška looked like she had just stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine. She said, “Do you come here often?”

  “Every Thursday,” Fellows told her as he captured another slice of fish with his sticks. His ears were turning red. “What about you?”

  “I just moved here. I’m still learning my way around the city.” She stuck out a hand. “My name is Becca.”

  “Arthur.” He put his chopsticks down and shook her hand with a slightly moist grip. Pink spots formed in his waxy cheeks. “Where are you from, Becca?”

  “Holland,” she lied.

  They were soon deep in conversation. Arthur told “Becca” a little about himself, leaving out the fact that he had a wife and son. She talked about her dream of becoming a veterinarian. At one point, she reached for the soy sauce and Fellows casually slipped the wedding band off his finger.

  The CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations, Albert Dulles, sat in a corner booth with his back to the wall. He liked to sit where he could keep one eye on the room and he saw the honeypot cozy up to the chubby accountant type. He saw the man slip off his wedding band and heard the girl laugh just a little too loud.

  Nicknamed the Wizard, four decades in the spy business had hardwired tradecraft into his brain. Alarm bells were going off inside his head as he watched the scene at the bar. The girl was obviously a pro, but the mark was all wrong. Why him? Dulles wondered. His clothes and shoes said strictly middle-class government worker in a dead-end job. There were better-dressed men in the room. And better places to pick up a john, for that matter. Why not the Waldorf or the Trinity just a few blocks away? Why troll for bottom feeders in a middling sushi joint when she could hook senators in a high-class hotel? It didn’t make sense.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Chelsea Dulles asked.

  Wizard blinked and turned his attention back to his youngest daughter. “Of course I was listening.”

  Chelsea sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. Blue eyes flashed in a stormy face. She was dressed in a conservative business suit with a starched white collar. Her dun-colored hair was cut in a shoulder-length bob. “What was I just talking about, Albert?”

  Albert. He was always Albert. Never Father or even Dad. Certainly not Daddy. Just Albert. Wizard had made a complete hash of his family life. It was no secret and not something he tried to sugarcoat. He was too old to be anything but honest with himself. His job wasn’t conducive to family life. Wizard had made peace with that fact. What he did was more important.

  He patted his coat in search of cigarettes while trying to recall the last thing he remembered hearing.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Chelsea reminded him.

  Wizard abandoned the search. “You were telling me about this David fella you’ve been seeing. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be dating a member of the Iranian government. You work for the State Department. If word of this gets out, it’s going to look bad. Your position would be compromised.”

  She shook her head. “First of all, his name is Dawoud, and I don’t recall asking your opinion. You don’t get a say in who I date. You lost that privilege a long time ago. And second, I was talking about the president rattling his saber. He can’t pull that bull-in-a-china-shop routine with the Iranians.”

  “Why not?” Wizard asked. “Seems to be working with the Norks.”

  “Iran is not North Korea,” Chelsea said. “It’s a totally different situation. We’ve been working for months to get things smoothed out over there, and it’s going to blow up in our faces if the president tries wading in like John Wayne.”

  “Sometimes a strong show of force is exactly what these countries need.”

  “Not Iran,” Chelsea shook her head. “It’s not going to work. The Iranians are a proud people.”

  “What have they got to be proud of?” Wizard asked.

  “Oh God, you sound just like him.” She closed her eyes and breathed through pursed lips. “There are factions inside the Iranian government working toward change.”

  “Like this Dawoud fella?” Dulles asked.

  “My point is”—she went on as if he hadn’t spoken—“we can’t convince the Iranians to disarm and adopt democracy if the president is threatening more bombs. Talk to him. Help him see that diplomacy is the only path forward. He listens to you.”

  “That’s a stretch,” said Wizard.

  “Fine, he listens to your boss. You need to tell him to back off. Tone down the rhetoric and let us do our job.”

  “My job is to give the president the most accurate information I have available.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You aren’t the only one with assets inside Iran,” he told her.

  Chelsea leaned in. “You have someone inside Iran? Who?”

  He shook his head. It was a small side-to-side movement, barely noticeable unless you were looking for it. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  She sat back and frowned. “Well, I don’t know what information you are getting, but my sources are good. In ten years, Iran will be the new UAE.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” Wizard said and watched the hooker as she hea
ded for the door with her john in tow.

  Chapter Four

  The job was done. P. Arthur Fellows was dead. The Secret Service agent hung in the closet with his own belt looped around his neck and his tighty-whities around his ankles. The other end of the belt was attached to the hanger rod. His face was a bloated purple radish. A swollen white tongue lolled from his open mouth.

  Eliška, dressed in a black thong and high heels, stepped back to observe her handiwork. She had used the belt to strangle him, then wrestled his dead body into the closet. It was heavy, back-breaking work. Arthur was no pixie. Sweat glistened on Eliška’s bare skin. She took a deep breath and pushed a lock of red hair out of her eyes.

  Killing was the easy part.

  Now she had to erase the evidence. She crossed to the bedside table for her purse, donned a pair of nitrile gloves, took out a thumb drive with a lightning connector and attached it to the dead man’s phone. A spinning hourglass appeared on the screen, followed by a long series of code as the hacking software cracked the phone’s encryption. Within twenty seconds, the device was unlocked and Eliška searched the web until she found an autoerotic asphyxiation website. She quickly downloaded several photos, left the website open, and tossed the phone into the closet at Fellows’s feet. That should keep the authorities from digging too deep. The investigating officers would unlock the phone, find the porn, and rule it accidental death by asphyxiation. Case closed.

  Eliška reached to the bottom of her purse and brought out a tightly folded leotard, along with alcohol swabs. She pulled on the skin-tight bodysuit and went around the hotel room, wiping down all the surfaces.

  When that was done, she made the bed, stripped out of the leotard, and donned the green dress. She paused in the entryway, fanning out the wig so it concealed her face, before letting herself out of the room.

  She hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign and made her way to the stairwell, where she used her hip against the push bar to avoid leaving fingerprints. There was still a chance the authorities would review the surveillance footage. They would see that P. Arthur Fellows had checked in with a prostitute. DC police would make a token effort to track down the girl, but even a streetwalker is smart enough to skip town when a john croaks.

  Eliška reached the ground floor, took a pair of Jackie O. sunglasses from her purse, and slipped them on before crossing the lobby. She let herself out the front door of the hotel and disappeared into the night.

  Chapter Five

  Wizard stood at his kitchen island, scanning intelligence reports and smoking his first cigarette of the day. He was dressed in a threadbare bathrobe. A plate of toast and jam sat untouched. The first gray light of morning filtered in through the curtains. The Deputy Director of Operations rarely slept and when he did, it was hardly deserving of the name. He spent most nights in his easy chair, puzzling through a tangled labyrinth of classified information. He would smoke one cigarette after another, searching for links in seemingly random events. He usually drifted off sometime after three in the morning and woke before the dawn.

  As he stood there paging through a report out of Iran, the morning edition landed on the front step with a soft thump. Wizard checked an antique Rolex on his boney wrist before shuffling to the door. A breath of cold air hit him as he stepped onto the porch.

  Dulles lived on a seven-acre plot of land in the wooded hills north of Langley. The closest neighbors were a half mile down the road. They had no idea Dulles worked for the Company or that the edge of his property was guarded by infrared cameras and state-of-the-art motion sensors. The neighbors had a nine year old little girl liked to cross the property lines in the pursuit of rabbits and frogs. She made life hell for Wizard’s security people.

  As Wizard bent down for the paper, ash drooped from his cigarette and the breeze carried it away. He scooped the paper off the porch steps and straightened up with a tired groan. Simple things like bending over were getting harder and harder.

  The neighbor drove past on his way to work. He honked once and waved. Wizard raised the newspaper in salute before shuffling back inside. He returned to the kitchen island and his uneaten toast and shook the morning edition out of its green plastic sleeve. The headline article was politics. Isn’t it always? Below the fold was a story about a Secret Service agent found dead in a hotel room, apparently the victim of accidental strangulation. Wizard’s joints might be getting old, but his eyes were sharp as ever, and he recognized the face in the picture.

  Chapter Six

  Ezra Cook and Gwendolyn Witwicky occupied a corner cubicle in the basement at Langley, where action figurines decorated the desks. A long banner near the elevators declared, “We Are Groot!” The hum of computer fans and the smell of overworked processors hung in the air, along with a whiff of cheap body spray. Several fake windows showed rolling green pastures meant to provide a sense of openness, but the denizens of the basement felt right at home under the electric blaze of high-resolution monitors.

  Witwicky wore Coke-bottle glasses. Her mousy brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was still on crutches, recovering from the car crash that had left her in the hospital with a severe concussion, two broken ribs, and a fractured shin. The computer ninjas who worked in the basement rarely got out in the field. For most, their biggest concerns were paper cuts and high cholesterol. The attempted murder had turned Gwen into a minor celebrity. She had been forced to tell the story over and over, until she was thoroughly sick of hearing herself talk. She had just finished a shortened rendition of the crash that morning, standing next to the coffee maker in the break room, and the audience had stared wide-eyed, like she had single-handedly planted the flag at Iwo Jima.

  Ezra Cook had a video gamer’s complexion, with a hooked nose and a head full of black hair that stuck up at odd angles. A pair of noise-cancelling headphones were clamped over his ears, blasting Goo Goo Muck by the Cramps. Over the last month, Ezra had carved five pounds of extra fat from his frame courtesy of karate lessons taught by a sixth-degree Shotokan black belt. He had signed up for classes after Gwen’s near miss. He was also taking his gun to the range and getting pretty good. Well, he hit the target more often than not, anyways. That was a start. Seeing Gwen clinging to life in a hospital bed had made him sick to his stomach. Worse, he hadn’t been able to do a thing about it. Ezra never wanted to feel that helpless again. More importantly, he wanted Gwen to know he could protect her.

  He glanced up from his work. The clock on the wall pointed to 11:30. Ezra checked his computer, which was synced to the atomic clock in Boulder, and found it was actually 11:32. Not even noon and his stomach was already rumbling. He used to skip breakfast and sometimes lunch. Now that he was getting some exercise, he seemed to be hungry all the time. He stretched and tugged the headphones off. “I’m starving,” he announced. “Want to head up to the cafeteria?”

  “You’re always hungry,” Gwen said. She was wearing corduroys and a Gryffindor sweater today. She looked like Hermione all grown up. She said, “And you never get any bigger. In fact, I think you’ve lost some weight. What’s your secret?”

  He grinned. “Good genes, I guess.”

  He wasn’t ready to tell Gwen about his new extracurricular activities. Just yesterday, Ezra’s sensei had announced that he was almost ready to test for his yellow belt. Ezra wanted to surprise Gwen. In his daydreams, they were having drinks after work when a couple of meatheads started harassing her. Ezra would single-handedly, and spectacularly, dispatch all three goons. His fantasies always ended at Gwen’s apartment where they both confessed their love for each other.

  “Maybe you’ve got a tapeworm,” Gwen said and reached for her crutches. “You should see a doctor.”

  “Need help?” Ezra asked.

  He always asked. She always said no.

  “I got it,” Gwen said as she levered herself out of the chair onto the crutches.

  The internal line on Ezra’s desk lit up and he reached over to press the intercom button. “Ezra Cook
speaking.”

  “Mr. Cook, this is DDO Dulles’s secretary. Is Ms. Witwicky with you?”

  “Uh …” said Ezra, wondering why the Deputy Director of Operations would be calling him. “Yeah.”

  “I’m right here,” Gwen said.

  “The Deputy Director would like to see you both in his office.”

  “Are we in some kind of trouble?” Ezra asked.

  “Report to DDO Dulles’s office right away,” the secretary said and the line went dead.

  Gwen chucked him on the arm.

  “Ow.” He rubbed his bicep.

  “What did you say that for?” Gwen asked.

  He shrugged. “Can’t hurt to ask.”

  She scowled and shook her head.

  They made their way to the elevator together. The doors closed and the car started to climb. Gwen said, “Why would the Wizard want to see us?”

  “How does he even know who we are?” A knot was forming in Ezra’s belly. He felt like a man headed to the gallows.

  “I haven’t done anything lately,” Gwen said.

  “Me neither.”

  The elevator let them out on the ground floor and they navigated the busy entryway. Ezra grabbed the door for Gwen. Boiling gray clouds gathered overhead and thunder muttered in the distance. The air felt like rain. Ezra had to go slow so Gwen could keep up. They left the New Building and crossed the grounds to the Old Building, making the shelter of the overhang as the first heavy drops landed on the sidewalk connecting the two campuses. A moment later, the skies opened up.

  “April showers bring May flowers,” Gwen said.

  “I doubt there are any flowers where we’re going.”

  They rode the elevator up to seven and passed a sea of cubicles to the inner sanctum, arguably the nerve center of the CIA: a suite of offices which house the Deputy Director of Operations (DDO), the Deputy Director of Intelligence (DDI), and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The reception area is a wide-open space with pale-blue carpet underfoot and plenty of seating. A trio of secretaries act as gatekeepers. There were no flowers, but two potted plants stood in the corners, adding a splash of color to an otherwise austere space.