Noble judgment, p.11
Noble Judgment, page 11
part #9 of Jack Noble Series
She immediately distrusted him. Had seen too many guys like him come through the places she had worked. Beneath their perfect exterior lay an asshole in wait.
Beck introduced everyone and they were all seated.
Howell didn't waste time with small talk. "Got a guy we think you might want to check up on. Name of Scott Hood. He's been in Anderson for a couple years now. Charles DeCosta turned on him in order to save his own ass."
"Anderson?" Beck said as he drummed his pencil on the edge of the desk. "That's white collar Fed, right?"
Shelton said, "Yeah. If what we have is correct, he was involved in some laundering, tax schemes, and one of the guys running the counterfeit operation."
"Maybe you'll get something out of him," Howell said.
"Why are you telling us?" Clarissa said. "Why not question him yourself?"
Howell glanced at Beck, who lifted an eyebrow and nodded. Then he shifted in his chair and turned toward Clarissa. "He wouldn't speak to us. Maybe because he hates the FBI. But the most likely reason was that we couldn't offer him anything."
"And we can?" she glanced at Beck.
He nodded.
Howell said, "Hood's in extended summer camp for a long time, Agent Abbot. I'm talking almost two more decades."
"If he has the right kind of information," Beck said, "we might be able to reduce some of that time."
Howell held up his hands, and, laughing, said, "Hey, I didn't hear that."
Beck's smile looked as though it was a courtesy to the other man.
"Well, I guess we should get going." Howell wrapped his hands around the chair's arms and pushed himself up. "I'll email over everything we have on the guy, so you two can prepare."
"Send it over tonight," Beck said.
Howell and Shelton saw themselves out. Clarissa remained behind. She waited until she heard the elevator announcing it had reached the floor.
"When should we go?"
"I'll have to get it authorized, and I want to review the information. So, I'm thinking Sunday."
"Sounds good. Forward whatever they send you to me. OK?"
He nodded as she rose. She stepped into the hallway.
"Oh, Clarissa," he called out. "I almost forgot. I'm going to pick you up at seven tomorrow night."
"Seven? For what?"
"The past twenty four or so hours have been so hectic with you reviewing the DeCosta files, and us going to New York, and this meeting we just had. I wanted to take you out to celebrate your making it through training."
She said nothing.
"I hope that's OK?"
She smiled, slightly. "Sure, it's fine. I'll see you at seven tomorrow."
20
London, England.
SASHA WOKE WITH her face on her laptop's palm rest. Her right fist wrapped around her cell phone. It took all of five seconds for the fog of sleep to clear. She sat up, then tapped the menu button on her Samsung. But the screen didn't come to life.
"Damn," she muttered, searching for the charger cord. She located it. The phone still wouldn't power on. It'd take a few minutes. She diverted her attention to the computer. Fortunately, it had gone to sleep along with her and still had a half-charge on the battery.
She'd spent most of the night following up on leads. Most led to dead ends. Jack Noble had been a ghost for most of the past month. That didn't stop someone from checking on him, though. Did he know? Was it because he was getting back in the game? Or was someone after him?
She opened up the same alert program she had used in her office the day before. Overnight, while she had slept, there'd been another hit on Jack's file. This was no coincidence. Something was about to happen, and he was going to find himself in the middle of it.
A red LED burned millimeters above the Samsung's large screen. She grabbed the phone off the nightstand. As she tried to power it on, it slipped from her hands, slapping the hardwood floor. Sasha cursed again, holding her breath as she reached for the phone. Wouldn't be the first time she ruined a phone dropping it. Most cases were too bulky for her since she preferred to keep her cell in her pocket and not in a purse. In fact, rarely did she carry a bag other than the one for her laptop. Fortunately, the screen was intact, and the phone powered on. She tapped the appropriate icon, and the cell dialed the last number she had called.
"Come on, Jack," she said three times while the phone purred in her ear.
No answer.
No voicemail.
Constant ringing.
She hung up, then entered another name into the program. Riley Logan. Unfortunately, the software had limitations, and a history search would not always return a positive match if the name had not been previously monitored. The search yielded no results.
Perhaps she had his contact information in her address book. She searched through her digital memory, but found nothing. She could've sworn it had been in there. With four hundred contacts listed, it was more likely her brain was playing tricks. They'd only worked together briefly, and only because he'd turned up in London the day she met Jack the first time, at the bombing site. In order to get Bear's information, she'd have to travel to the office. A couple large gray clouds trudged across a blue sky beyond her bedroom window. Better than the day before. And with it being Saturday, a jaunt to Legoland wouldn't eat up too much time.
She tried Jack's number again.
No answer.
No voicemail.
Constant ringing.
"Christ, Jack, where are you?" She rose and tossed the phone onto her bed, then paced the length of her room, from the window to the door and back again. The process always jogged her memory.
And it didn't fail today.
Erin Carlisle.
Jack's ex and the mother of his daughter, Mia. Perhaps she had spoken to him recently, or could reach out on Sasha's behalf.
Sasha rushed to her laptop. She launched a new instance of the program, tapping on the shift key while urging the software to load quicker. Once the cursor appeared in the dialog box, she entered Erin's name. At Jack's request, she had kept tabs on Erin and Mia for him while he was away from London. If someone had accessed her information, anywhere, Sasha would know. She continued to tap on the shift key while the program cycled. A multicolored wheel spun on her screen, center of the window.
Then it stopped and returned a hit.
Someone had accessed Erin's file within the past twenty four hours.
Sasha searched through her folders until she found and opened another program. This one top secret as well, and used mostly by MI5. It searched multiple government databases and returned contact information. In addition, it allowed them to access any recent financial transactions on credit, as well as travel arrangements for a specific individual. She plugged in Erin's name and waited while the program connected to and cycled through multiple databases.
Two hits came back within thirty seconds of each other.
Sasha waited another thirty seconds for the program to finish its search and terminate operations. After, she clicked on the first item. A financial transaction. Over two thousand pounds paid to Air Europa. There was no doubt what the next item on the list was. She opened it up and found travel arrangements for Erin, her daughter Mia, and Hannah, the nanny from the States. They were departing Heathrow in ninety minutes on a trip to Tenerife.
The next program she needed wasn't installed on her computer. No one she knew at MI6 had access to it. But she knew a man that did.
Mason Sutton answered on the third ring.
"I need your help, Mason," Sasha said.
"My help," Mason said. "You know, I'm afraid this relationship has become quite one-sided and I don't see it benefiting me these days."
"I don't have time for this. I need your help." She paused, then added. "And Jack needs your help, too."
Mason's tone changed. "What's going on?"
"I've kept tabs on him since he left. Deemed it necessary, especially in light of what happened in Florida."
"Yeah, sure." Mason was aware of what had occurred when Jack got mixed up in a murder investigation that turned out to have major implications in the espionage world.
"Well, someone recently accessed Jack's files. Twice now. I've been unable to reach him. That number he gave us, you remember it?"
"Yeah."
"It just rings and rings. In fact, I'd like you to try it. Are you around another phone?"
"Yeah, hang on a sec." His cell banged against something heavy like a counter or dining table. Thirty seconds passed before Mason returned. "Same thing, Sash. No answer, only ringing."
"Christ."
"So who's accessed his information?"
"I can't tell that. But no one should be looking at him. It was quite the coordinated effort to expunge much of what could do him harm. It's very concerning that anyone would be looking into him."
"Right, well, what can I do to help?"
"Short of hop across the pond and check in on him, I need you to investigate the passenger list of an Air Europa flight to Tenerife, departing this morning."
"Tenerife? Why?"
"You remember Erin and Mia, right?"
"Of course."
"I got a hit on Erin. Then I dug into that program you MI5 chaps use, and, well, it told me they are departing from Heathrow in about ninety minutes from now."
"What's the flight information?"
Sasha read it off to him.
"OK," he said. "So, I suspect you think someone undesirable will be on that flight, yeah? Well, what I'll do is run this through ATIPLs, get the passenger list. Then I'll cross-reference those names and see who, if anyone, stands out."
"Can you do that while mobile?"
"Absolutely. Why?"
"Meet me at Heathrow," she said. "Get there as soon as you can. If your program returns anything while en route, call me."
Sasha terminated the call, then phoned a taxi service. Ten minutes, max, they told her. That'd put her at the airport in under forty.
She took a shower, cold, as there wasn't time to wait for the water to warm up. Nor did she have time to put on makeup after. She threw on a pair of worn jeans and a faded blue t-shirt. With her laptop bag and cell phone in hand, she hurried down the stairs, tossed a cold mug of coffee in the microwave and grabbed an apple and banana out of the fridge.
The taxi driver honked to let her know he was there five seconds before the microwave signaled that the coffee was ready. She emptied the contents of the scorching ceramic mug into a travel container, then exited her house.
She avoided eye contact as she slid into the rear seat, and pulled out her laptop to signal that she needn't be disturbed. The cabbie already knew her destination.
Along the way, she phoned Mason. Her end of the conversation was spoken in generalities.
"Nothing yet," he said. "I'm about ten minutes out."
As was she.
The cabbie drove on.
When they reached the airport, she paid him and exited the taxi, laptop bag and phone in hand. Inside, she made her way toward the Air Europa check-in counter. Mason waited for her there, a few feet away from the roped off maze they put travelers through prior to obtaining their boarding passes.
"Anything new?" he asked her.
"No," she said, scanning the passengers in line.
"Yeah, well, I've got something." He also searched the faces, studying each one a second before moving to the next, as though looking for someone in particular. "I had one of the guys manning a terminal at the office dig in since my mobile signal is shit today."
"And?" Sasha's heart pounded against her chest like a sledgehammer trying to take down a cinder block wall.
"No terrorists. Nobody wanted in England, or anywhere else, at least places we can check."
"Am I just being paranoid, then?"
He grabbed her wrist and led her to an empty spot in the phone bank.
"One name came back, Sasha. Former US Special Forces. Now a mercenary. Name's Jared Akers."
She searched her internal database but came up with no match. "What else?"
"He purchased his ticket in the past twelve hours."
"Oh, God. Do we have a visual reference?"
Shaking his head, Mason grabbed the back of his head and glanced down. "Working on it. So far, it's been scrubbed from any file we have access to, and given how things are looking, I didn't feel it appropriate to peer into other networks and tip them off."
"What would we be tipping them off to?"
"I'm not sure. But something doesn't feel right. Surely you understand that?"
Sasha pulled her phone out and opened a travel application.
"Who are you messaging?"
She extended the phone so he could see. "Not messaging. Getting us two tickets to Tenerife."
"What?" He leaned back and peered over the short walls of the space they occupied. "Sasha, I can't leave now."
"Just for the weekend. I've got an awful feeling about this, Mason. And I told Jack that I'd watch over his daughter while he's away. How can I face him again if something happened to her and I didn't do everything in my power to save her?"
Mason stared at her, lips drawn, slight shake of his head. Had she been so transparent that her feelings for Jack bled through in her words?
"Listen," he said. "We can call the authorities there. They can escort her."
"No, listen to me. I don't trust anyone but us to be involved in this." She finalized the transaction. "Besides, the tickets are paid for. You have to go with me now."
He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "I'm armed."
"You're MI5. They'll be honored to have you on board."
"I've got no luggage."
"You've got two hours. Their flight was full. We're on a different one."
"You don't give up, do you?"
"Never."
Mason smiled, briefly. "Why didn't Jack stay, then?"
"Who said I've given up on the idea that he'd be back?"
The two agents separated for an hour, then met again near security. An hour after that, they were seated on their flight, bound for Tenerife.
21
New York City.
JACK HAD SPENT the remainder of Friday looking over his shoulder and hopping from cab to cab before finally returning to his apartment building and entering from the rear alley. He waited inside the door for twenty minutes, where he observed the path he had taken. Then he moved to the front of the building and watched for anyone lingering amid the foot traffic. Confident that he had not been followed, Jack headed upstairs and holed up with his Beretta in his lap. He had placed a couple calls to Brandon, first to tell him about the tail near Central Park, and later to find out if Brandon had uncovered anything. Eventually, worry faded, and he'd fallen asleep on the couch.
Now, five hours later, he woke in a cold sweat, unable to shake the image of Mia and Erin plummeting thirty thousand feet into the Atlantic.
Only a dream.
He repeated the thought over and over until it turned into a mantra, and the remnants of the chilling nightmare broke apart and faded into the recesses of his mind. For thirty minutes he tried, and failed, to fall back to sleep. It wasn't so much the images that lingered, as the fact that he had to get moving in order to reach South Carolina with daylight to spare. Attempting to locate Merrick, the owner of the condo where he'd had the strange meeting, in the dark in unfamiliar territory could prove to be a problem. Best to avoid it.
Finally, Jack rose and started a pot of coffee and threw a pound of bacon into a large skillet.
As the fresh brew dripped, and pig fat sizzled, Jack placed a call to Brandon.
The man answered, sounding as though he hadn't woken yet. "I know you're a bad ass super spy and all, Jack, but some of us need to sleep. Is this important, or can I call you back in three hours?"
"Three hours? It's six now."
"Your point?"
"It's important."
"You know what I have to go through to get up, right?"
Jack pictured the guy reaching for a metal triangle suspended from his ceiling, and using it to hoist himself out of bed, his frail, lifeless legs trailing behind, weighing him down.
"Did you find anything last night?" Jack asked.
"No." Brandon hesitated, then said, "But I've got a laptop up here. Let me remote into the other system and check for you. I'll call back in fifteen, all right?"
"I can hang on."
"No, you can't, 'cause I don't want to hear your Neanderthal breathing in my ear while I'm trying to help you."
Jack laughed, then told Brandon he'd call back if he didn't hear from him by six-thirty.
He stepped back into the kitchen and pulled the pot off the warmer despite the fact the coffee still brewed. Then he flipped the bacon over and waited for the second side to cook up. Once it had, he scooped it onto a large plate, and carried it and the steaming mug outside.
Stepping onto the balcony was like passing through a soaked towel. The air temperature felt fine, cool even. But the humidity hovered in the mid-nineties already. He hadn't eaten two slices of bacon before sweat formed at his temples and hairline.
He used the vantage point and sleepy Saturday morning sidewalk to scan the area for any possible watchers. Of course, anyone out there would likely be looking up and have spotted him as he exited his apartment onto the terrace. Jack's chances of spotting them would be slim. But if he did, it'd be a race to see if he could get to them first, or if they managed to get away.
But he saw nothing. The cityscape remained silent.
Jack headed back in around six-twenty, pulling out his phone as he crossed the humidity threshold. No missed calls. Ten minutes to go until the deadline he imposed. Screw it. He called Brandon anyway.
"I still got a few minutes. And I did try calling, but you didn't answer."
"Never heard it ring. Whatever. What've you got?"
"OK, so I did a bunch of checking for you, Jack. So far, I've got nothing on you. But, your ex over there in England, someone did a huge database search on her a few hours ago."
His heart rose in his chest. Felt like it might crack a rib or two. "From where?"
