“Then we retaliate. And the Russians get involved. And then the Chinese. And Israel gets attacked. And we go to bat for them,” said Robie.
“Then it’s all over,” said Reel. “As in apocalyptic over.”
Marks put a shaky hand to her face. “This can’t be happening.”
“If it is one of them, which?” said Reel.
“In some ways it doesn’t matter,” said Robie. “We can get into Iran and North Korea, maybe. But we won’t be able to get out. Syria was hard enough and Syria is not in the same league as those two. North Korea might as well be another planet.”
Marks said, “North Korea is another planet. But to get to that target we have to have rock-solid inside people at the very top. How did that happen without my being aware of it? Intel like that doesn’t occur overnight.”
“You haven’t been on the job that long,” said Robie. “It might have happened before you got here. DiCarlo wasn’t on the job long enough to see that through either.”
“That’s true,” said Marks.
“But the DD before her, Jim Gelder, was,” noted Robie, as he glanced at Reel.
Reel looked away. She said, “Gelder could have been involved in something like that. He didn’t just push the edges, he obliterated them. Taking down one of those guys, he would’ve seen it as his crowning glory, even if it did lead to Armageddon.” She paused and added, “He already tried something like that once. Guy’s just full of surprises. Too bad he’s dead. We might want to kill him all over again.”
Robie looked at Marks. “So how exactly does this go down? We’re tasked to commit a hit on a target that is clearly illegal? How do we do that? I’m not going to be left holding the bag on something like that.”
Reel said, “We’ve sat through our psych evals and they keep pounding away at us on one thing: Will we follow orders or will we make up our own? So you tell us, DD, what do we do if that order comes down?”
Marks started to say something but then stopped. Finally, she blurted out, “God help me, Jessica, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Chapter
23
EVAN TUCKER STARED DOWN AT the secure email he had read about a dozen times now. And still his mind could not process what it was seeing.
Lloyd Carson found murdered in hotel in Romania. Robbery believed to be motive.
Tucker looked down at his hands, which were shaking. He tried to type a response but couldn’t manage it. He rose from his desk, crossed his office at Langley, poured himself a glass of water, and drank it down. He poured another and accidentally splashed some of it down his shirt and tie.
He sat back down and peered at the screen. Part of him was hoping that the email had somehow disappeared, or had never been there, only a delusional by-product of his overly stressed mind.
But there it was. Lloyd Carson, an envoy from Britain to North Korea, had been found murdered. Robbery suspected because his wallet, jewelry, passport, and cell phone had been taken.
His cell phone.
Tucker made a call and ordered that something be done immediately. It was.
Another email soon fell into his in-box and he clicked it open.
He thought he might be physically sick.
What he was looking at was a list of phone calls made and received by Carson in the hours leading up to his death.
The last one had been placed in the wee hours of the morning in Bucharest. It had been placed to a phone number in North Korea. A very special number that only a handful of people had. The question was, had Carson placed that call? Or had someone else? Like the person who had murdered him?
He sent a secure communication at the very top level of secrecy. He did not expect an answer back immediately, and he tried to focus on other work, but found that impossible. There was no other work that came close to this in terms of importance. He couldn’t wall off his mind to think of other things.
Two hours later a reply came back, and it froze him to the bone.
A call was received at that time but no one spoke on the other end.
No one spoke on the other end.
Tucker played out in his mind what had possibly happened on the ground in Romania. Carson was spooked by something and changed his travel plans on the spot. He made phone calls, all but one to British telephone numbers. One, however, was to North Korea. Whoever had killed him had recognized the country code and simply redialed that number. The person had answered the phone, thinking it was Carson calling again.
Tucker leaned his head back against his chair.
Did that mean what he thought it meant? Did it matter? He couldn’t take that chance. Their ultra-secret operation possibly had just been blown wide open.
He had to inform the president.