Author: James R. Hannibal
Category: Thriller
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Eddie let out a quiet whimper. “Twelve hundred dollars.”
“For a backpack?”
“It’s real leather.”
Somewhere, watching through the instructor feed, a judge must have decided the mock explosive had done its job. The steel door swung inward with a long, awkward creak. The two crossed the circle of light and pushed inside.
“Whoa,” Eddie said, smoking backpack hanging from his right hand.
The Sanctum.
Weapon ready, Talia peered over a polished green rail. Five levels of arched mahogany galleries and light green pillars descended below them, all the way to a bottom floor made of the same stone. The balcony walkways each formed a different shape—hexagon, pentagon, square, and triangle.
Eddie slipped his tactical vest over his head. “If we were in a video game, this would be the palace of the final boss. Is that . . . jade?”
“Someone at the CIA has a flare for the dramatic.” Talia shook her head. “And no regard for the taxpayers.” On the floor at the bottom of the chamber, she saw an old, worn briefcase with the letters CEMP painted sloppily on the side. “The target is down there. Out in the open.”
“Then let’s grab it.” Eddie made for the nearest stairwell.
Talia caught his arm. “Wait. This is too easy.”
“Tell that to Scott, Hannah, and Kayla.”
“Think about it. The case must be guarded. Maybe they’re hiding beneath the balcony.”
Eddie produced the second charge. “So drop this baby down the disturbing green well. Boom. Problem solved.”
“We can’t. Those guards are just doing their job. No collateral damage, Eddie.” Talia’s pain flared again. She winced, but she gritted her teeth and waved off the offered explosive, starting toward the stairs.
She expected a surprise around every corner, but found none. The jade floor at the bottom level remained quiet and empty. The briefcase called to her from the center.
“Perhaps that’s it.” Eddie panned his SIG from left to right. “Inside the case we’ll find a message. ‘Congratulations. You win.’”
His suggestion didn’t sound right. Talia still had to get her team, bodies and all, to the bridge. But in the moment, she saw no obstacles. She walked out across the floor, reaching for the briefcase.
Thunk.
Talia heard the spit of the suppressor and wheeled in time to see Eddie drop to the floor, a red blotch on his chest.
No. No, no, no. She dodged the bullet she knew was coming and made a grab for the case, but her hand fell short.
Thunk.
The impact of a Simunition round slamming into the small of her back only added to the pain. Talia spun. The room around her spun as well.
Amid the slow pitch and tilt of the jade floor and the mahogany arches, the fake Borov grinned, covering her with a silenced Stechkin pistol. “It appears I’ve caught intruders within the Sanctum.”
He wasn’t talking to Talia.
Mary Jordan, chief of the CIA’s Russian Eastern European Division and the woman who had recruited Talia two years before, walked deliberately to the center of the room and picked up the case. She wore a submachine gun slung at her side, a twin to those carried by the guards. “You’re tenacious, Talia. But you still failed.” She cocked her head, squinting a little. “And by the way, when the opposing force shoots you, you’re supposed to fall. Rules are rules.”
She raised the gun and opened fire.
Chapter
three
THE POTOMAC RIVER
EAST OF THE GEORGETOWN BOATHOUSE
DO YOU WANT to change the world, Miss Inger?
Sweat beaded on Talia’s forehead. A drop of it trickled down her neck behind dark hair threaded into a tight ponytail. With rhythmic cadence, she lifted her oars out of the water, compressed her body against the stop, and dropped them in again for one angry pull after another. The racing shell surged against the current.
After the humiliation of the exercise, sleep had not been an option. Talia had retreated to the Potomac. Most of her classmates at Georgetown had been transplants, but Washington, DC, was Talia’s home, and when the world turned against her, she always ran to the river.
Talia closed her eyes, trying and failing to block out overlapping visions of Mary Jordan. One moment the CIA officer was standing over her with a Kalashnikov. The next, she was seated on a sunlit bench on Georgetown University’s Healy Lawn the day the two had met, smiling and looking so much like the woman Talia had always wanted to be—fierce, in command, unstoppable. Talia saw every detail of both moments, the curse of an eidetic memory.
Another pull against the current. Another breath.
“Do you want to change the world, Miss Inger?” Jordan, the picture of power chic in an Armani skirt suit, had laid a file between them on the wooden bench. “We’ve had our eye on you, a scholarship kid rising out of the foster care system to the top of her class, a force to be reckoned with in women’s crew.” The CIA officer had lifted her Wayfarers, concern clouding her eyes. “Your file says you submitted an application to the FBI—that you want to make a difference. You can do that at the CIA, Talia, on a global scale.”
A force to be reckoned with. Jordan had honed in on the one thing Talia wanted—needed—to be after a life in foster care. And from that moment, Talia became her disciple. Jordan guided her course selections and placed her in the intern program at the State Department. But there was a catch. Talia had to withdraw her application to the FBI. She also had to turn down several lucrative corporate offers. They didn’t matter. The Agency became her only goal.
The sweat came in rivulets, gliding down the back of Talia’s neck. Her breathing grew more labored, but she kept up her rhythm—compress, drive, compress, drive—approaching the twenty-degree bend at the Three Sisters islands. Her quads and shoulders burned. Her chest and back ached. The phantom pain in her side had subsided, making room for the bruises left by Jordan’s Simunition rounds.
“You gave up the high ground.” Jordan had pulled Talia up from the Sanctum floor and walked her to an elevator. The green fluorescents gave both their faces a sickly hue. “You broke the cardinal rule,” she said as the doors closed. “What were you thinking? I taught you better.”
The scull dug a shallow curve through the water as Talia made the quarter turn at the Three Sisters. Another half mile to go. Her paddles left a pair of swirling circles each time she pulled them from the water. Talia broke her rhythm to wipe her eyes, blurry from sweat and tears.
“The high ground is everything.” Jordan pounded her fist into her hand. “When you run an operation, you do whatever it takes to maintain the advantage. You mine every resource until you hit bedrock. You leverage your tech. You get an edge and you keep it.”
“The instructors failed our tech. We had no options.”
“Don’t give me that. Gupta offered you two options, upstaging you on the review tapes. You could have hacked the compound network or dropped the charge into the Sanctum and killed everyone on the bottom floor.”
“But killing innocent guards wasn’t the job.”
“The job was to complete the mission.” Jordan looked her in the eyes. “We serve a greater good. And sometimes that responsibility mandates a broken rule. Sometimes it demands a sacrifice.”
Talia had seen a coldness in her gaze then—a coldness she didn’t know if she could emulate. Maybe she wasn’t a young Jordan after all.
When the elevator doors opened, Jordan had walked briskly out onto the empty streets, leaving Talia behind. “You failed, sweetie. I was wrong about you, and you’re out. Tough luck.”
The two-mile marker at Windy Run flashed by, and Talia let up, allowing her blades to skim the surface for balance. Her legs and arms shook. She had poured everything, all the anger and fear, into the river. Dipping an oar, she brought the shell about for the drift back to the boathouse and then dropped her head to her knees and sobbed.
A dog tag slipped from Talia’s shirt,
hanging from her neck by a silver chain. She clutched it to her chest. In her memories of her father, there had been a second tag and a cross made of bronze nails as well, but they had been lost by the mortuary after the accident. At least, that’s what Talia assumed. She had been only seven years old.
He was the reason she always came back to the river. Looking up through her tears, Talia could see him there, at the shore, with a little girl standing next to him in red rubber galoshes. He whispered in the little girl’s ear. So this line came up empty, Natalia. Cast another and things will look better. Remember who is in control.
She let out a bitter laugh. The one in control had stolen him from her. Now Jordan had betrayed her too.
Talia caught movement at the boathouse and dried her eyes. The last thing she needed was for a stranger to see her crying. But the waiting figure was no stranger. As Talia guided the shell alongside the dock, Mary Jordan reached down to help her out of the boat.
“Good morning. Let’s talk.”
Chapter
four
THE POTOMAC RIVER
GEORGETOWN BOATHOUSE
TALIA SWUNG AN OAR onto the dock, forcing Jordan back. “I don’t need your help.”
The CIA officer nodded as Talia pressed herself up to a crouch in the boat, perfectly balanced, and stepped onto the dock. “No, I guess you don’t. Not with this, anyway.”
The statement was obvious bait, but Talia made no retort. Her patience for games had run out. She had failed. She didn’t have to play anymore. She hauled the thirty-pound shell out of the water and again forced Jordan to hop out of the way, swinging the boat around to lay it on the wash rack.
“Do you know the problem with winners?” Jordan dodged a ribbon of soapy water as Talia slapped a sponge against the hull. “The team captains and the valedictorians, the state champions and the triple threats—that’s what we get at the Farm. That’s what I was, and that’s what you were.”
That’s what you were. Past tense. Talia dipped the sponge into the bucket and drew it out, slinging the water. She didn’t take precise aim at the Armani skirt, but she made no effort to avoid it, either.
“Failure,” Jordan said, once Talia had made it clear she would not be goaded into conversation. “Failure is what’s missing from a winner’s résumé, and the need for failure is the reason I had the Farm pull out all the stops for your final exam. I created a Kobayashi Maru, as Gupta so elegantly noted.”
The shock of her blatant admission shook Talia out of her silence. “So you set us up.” She wrung out the sponge, wishing it was Jordan’s neck. “You had no right.”
“Oh, Talia. You and I and all the other alphas who find their way to the Farm spend so much time at the top that we forget what failure feels like.” She removed her sunglasses and wiped off the mist from Talia’s passive-aggressive cleaning. “What kind of operative does that produce?”
“You’re forgetting Windsor—my silver at nationals.”
Jordan took on a look of mock sympathy. “Oh no. Boo-hoo Barbie got second place.” She frowned. “I’m talking about the instructive power of a gut-wrenching, life-altering defeat. Total failure, Talia. That’s what every upcoming officer needs.” Jordan stopped the sponge with a hand on Talia’s. “And that’s exactly what I told the review board an hour ago, while I was fighting for your future.”
“My . . . future?” Hope bloomed.
“I’m here with an opportunity.”
Hope faded. An opportunity—not a graduation certificate. Jordan had brought her a consolation prize.
Talia yanked her hand away and carried her bucket into the boathouse to exchange it for a hose and sprayer.
Jordan called to her from the dock. “Ask yourself why I came down on you so hard. Maybe I care. Maybe I’ve learned over the years that a blade reforged from broken pieces is always stronger than the original.”
Talia stopped, listening.
“When you’re ready to talk, you know where to find me.” Jordan’s voice grew distant. “But don’t wait too long. Some doors don’t stay open forever.”
By the time Talia emerged into sunlight again, dragging the hose, her mentor had gone.
TALIA’S SHOWER STARTED SLOW and finished quickly as the steam carried off some of the bitterness, leaving room for reflection. Jordan had promised an opportunity. She had spoken of Talia’s future. What if the door to the CIA remained open?
She hurried across the road to the campus with hair still damp from the shower, feeling the coolness of the April morning. Her phone buzzed as she approached Healy Lawn. Talia frowned at the caller ID and, with a quick tap, rejected the call.
“What part of my speech brought you back?” Jordan sat with her legs crossed on the same bench where the two had met three years earlier.
“The part you left out.” Talia slid a strand of wet hair back over her ear as she sat beside her. “You said you fought for me with the board. How did they answer?”
“Kayla’s in.” Jordan managed to avoid the question. “Linguists with her level of skill are hard to come by. Scott and Hannah”—she winced—“they were already low on points. To be honest, Hannah was always destined for the analysts’ floor, and Scott was always destined to be the assistant manager at Joe’s Burgers in Chestertown.”
“And Eddie?”
Jordan smiled. “Don’t you want to know your own status?”
How could this woman manipulate her so easily? “Yes.”
“Okay then.” Jordan laid a manila folder down on the bench. “Here it is.”
“Is that—?”
“Your first posting.”
Moscow Station. Talia reached for the folder. She deserved Moscow. She had fought for every point at the Farm to earn Moscow.
Jordan dropped a knuckle to keep her from picking it up. “It’s not Moscow.”
“But—”
Jordan cocked her head.
“I failed the final. I gave up the high ground.”
Once Jordan removed her knuckle, Talia was slow in picking up the folder. A part of her didn’t want to face it. If not Moscow, where? Greenland? The Sudan? Or worse. Cleveland. She opened the folder and read the heading. “This is . . . here, in Washington.” She looked up at Jordan. “I’ve been assigned to your division.”
A positive amid all the disappointment. Under Jordan’s leadership, the Russian Eastern European Division of the Directorate of Operations had built a sterling reputation. Jordan had a flare for getting REED’s people to the right locations at the right time with all the right information. “You won’t be working directly under me.” Jordan rested an elbow on the back of the bench. “Not yet. But REED is a great place to cut your teeth. It’s not Moscow, but it’s a foot in the door.”
The two stood. Jordan glanced at Talia’s purse. “You rejected a call as you were walking up. Who was it?”
“No one. No one important.”
“This is a critical year for you. You don’t have time for relationships.”
“I know. It wasn’t a guy.”
“Good.” Jordan inclined her head in the general direction of Langley. “Now get over there. Getting riddled with bullets doesn’t buy you a day off, not in my house. And, Talia”—Jordan lowered the Wayfarers to the bridge of her nose—“welcome to the Clandestine Service.”
Chapter
five
GEORGETOWN
WASHINGTON, DC
A WELL-DRESSED GENTLEMAN sat in the refined comfort of a nineteenth-century town house near the Georgetown campus, gazing out through its third-floor windows and sipping his favorite tea—Earl Gray with a dash of milk.
He watched the young woman walk away from her rendezvous with Mary Jordan. A camera, rotating on an automated gimbal, tracked the subject’s progress until she passed beyond the weathered concrete blocks of the university library. With its track lost, the camera stopped rotating and bowed its lens, defeated.
“Don’t worry, my friend.” The man lifted the device and laid it i
n the custom foam cutout of a carrying case. “You did your job well, as always.”
After securing the camera, he pressed a laser microphone into the foam beside it, chuckling to himself. Both tools fit into a case smaller than a child’s lunch box, but the gentleman remembered a time when a listening device alone required a backpack worthy of an Everest Sherpa. Those were the days of parabolic microphones.
Today he had shone a pen-size laser beam on the iron leg of a park bench to capture the voices of the two women. Vibrations imperceptible to the human eye returned to the transmitter-receiver, where a tablet computer transformed them into crystal-clear, real-time playback. Easy and inexpensive.
The gentleman made a tsk noise with his tongue and unfolded the tablet’s detachable keyboard. The girl was new to the game, but Jordan should have been more cautious. Then again, for this meet, the CIA officer had chosen a noisy closed campus with brick buildings on three sides. How could she have anticipated an adversary willing to take out a quarter-of-a-million-dollar lease on a nearby residence in hopes of catching a single conversation?
The well-dressed gentleman allowed himself a grin.
Sipping his tea, he selected three segments of video and dropped them into a shared folder for his employer to review, then folded up the keyboard. Before he could shut off the tablet, a chat window popped open. A line of text appeared under the username ICRON11.
Files received. Your analysis?
What did his employer expect him to say? The man closed his eyes for a heartbeat, took an additional fifteen to pour his third cup of tea, adding the milk first, and typed an answer.
She is in. Just as you desired.
The reply came back sharp and quick.
I desired none of this.
The gentleman had touched a nerve, as intended. Despite more than one heated discussion, he still felt his employer was rushing into this. He frowned at the screen.
Are you certain you are ready for her?
The chat window closed on its own, ending the conversation.