Chapter 4
Omar settled back against the butter-soft leather and swiveled his chair around to look at Trent, sprawled in the matching seat across the aisle, and Jake, stretched out on the sofa that ran along the starboard side of the cabin.
“This is nice,” Omar said, rubbing a hand over the burled wood armrest. “Very nice. But I was wondering why you didn’t ask Squirrel to arrange a flight for us.”
He could have called in a favor from Squirrel, and Squirrel would have delivered.
Jake looked up from his laptop and shook his head. “This thing is getting messier and uglier by the minute. I’m not bringing this kind of trouble to Squirrel’s door if I can help it.”
Omar nodded. “Makes sense.”
That was the kind of guy Jake was.
“Whose plane is this anyway?” Trent asked, kicking his boots up on the creamy white leather ottoman.
Jake’s eyes followed his dirty boots but he didn’t tell him to lower his feet. “Ryan got it for us.”
“Yeah, you said. Whose plane is it?”
“Sometimes it’s better not to know.” Jake left it at that.
Omar wasn’t about to push. If Jake wanted them in the dark about their benefactor, there was a good reason.
Judging by the Gulfstream’s cabin, whoever owned it had serious money and serious connections. The interior was all cream leather, polished wood, and brushed metal accents. Omar counted twelve seats, a full galley, and a private sleeping compartment in the back.
“You think they’ll be okay?” Trent asked, his casual tone not matching the tension in his jaw.
There was no doubt who they were.
“Olivia can handle herself,” Jake said. “And Marielle’s proved she’s no slouch in the field.”
“I’m not worried about their skills,” Trent said. “I’m worried about what Cal knows, and how many steps ahead of us he is.”
The temperature in the cabin seemed to drop ten degrees.
Omar leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Exactly how much access did McCloud have?”
McCloud was Potomac’s Operations Director. But Omar wasn’t entirely sure what the job entailed. Probably by design.
Jake closed his laptop. “He had access to everything related to field operations, across all departments—tech, equipment, logistics, all of it. He knows the covcom frequencies, the safe house locations, our extraction protocols. He built the deployment architecture. If McCloud turned, he could hand over our entire playbook.”
“So every agent in the field right now is operating naked,” Omar said, his stomach sour.
“That’s the crux of it.” Jake dragged his hands through his hair. “Anyone, anywhere, could be exposed at any time.”
Trent’s expression was unreadable, but a vein in his neck pulsed ominously. He stood and paced the aisle between the seats like a trapped cat.
Omar cracked his knuckles, thinking.
“Ryan’s on it,” Jake reminded them. “He’s combing through Cal’s communications, his financials, everything. We’ll find him.”
“And then?” Omar asked.
“And then we’ll lean on him until he gives up everything he knows,” Jake vowed.
Jake’s phone buzzed against the table. He glanced at the screen.
“Speak of the lawyer.”
He put the call on speaker.
“Tell us something good,” Jake said.
“I wish I could.” Ryan’s voice was tight. “Did you know Cal has a son?”
“He never mentioned a family to me,” Jake said. He looked at Omar and Trent, who shook their heads. “The consensus is no.”
“That’s not shocking,” Ryan said. “They’re estranged. Cal and the mom divorced when Jackson was two; the ex-wife lives in Colorado.”
“Where’s this going, Ry?” Omar and Ryan had been friends since elementary school, and Omar knew how to rein in his thoroughness when it veered toward verbosity.
“Jackson McCloud is doing thirty years federal time for securities fraud and money laundering related to some cryptocurrency exchange he launched.”
“Thirty years for white collar crime?” Omar was surprised. He was no lawyer, but even he knew white collar criminals usually did months, not years, in minimum security camps.
“When you defraud customers to the tune of three hundred and fifty million dollars, you don’t tend to get a light sentence.”
“How’s this relate to Cal? You said they’re estranged.” Trent shook his head.
“They are, but guess who got a Presidential pardon just two weeks ago?”
“Jackson McCloud,” Jake said grimly.
“Right, and this is a fine distinction, but it was a blanket pardon, not a commutation of the sentence and not a pardon after Jackson served his time.”
“In English?” Omar asked.
“The President wiped the slate clean, and Jackson was released after serving seventeen months of a thirty-year sentence.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Trent suggested.
“The Vice President’s Office lobbied hard for the pardon. The President might have granted it, but VP Hampton was the driving force.”
Jake sighed. “Have Jackson and his father been in contact since his release?”
“No. Not for lack of trying. Cal called him eleven times last week. Jackson doesn’t appear to have picked up or returned any of the calls.”
“Damned kids, so ungrateful,” Trent snarked. “You sell out your colleagues and your country to get them sprung from the slammer, and they still won’t answer your calls.”
Jake and Ryan laughed bitterly. Omar didn’t.
A headache bloomed behind his eyes, a vice tightening around his skull. He pressed his fingers into his temples. “So what’s the theory? The VP killed Langley’s operation to extract Hanna, but they still wanted her intel?”
“To bury it, probably,” Ryan said.
“Then Hampton learned the CIA contracted the job out to us and got nervous. He couldn’t control a PMC the way he could a federal agency,” Jake pieced it together.
“Until he found an in through McCloud’s kid,” Trent finished.
“It’s just a theory,” Ryan warned, ever the lawyer.
“But it hangs together,” Omar said through gritted teeth.
“It does.”
“Good work, Ryan. Any leads on McCloud’s current location?” Jake asked.
“Still working on it.”
“Let us know when something pops.”
“Will do. I’ll pick you up at BWI. With luck, I’ll have an update.”
Jake and Trent were energized by the new development.
Omar forced himself to match their energy. “So Hampton used McCloud to monitor us in case we upset the delicate balance he had with the Mahmouds and Samuel Ayari.”
“And when you and Marielle took Hanna off the yacht, it set off alarm bells in Tunis and DC,” Trent said.
Omar ran a hand over his face. “Are we sure staying in the biggest suite in the most exclusive hotel in Paris with an international superstar is a good idea for Marielle and Liv given all these unknowns? That’s an awfully high profile cover.
And does it really make sense to send Chelsea and Leilah into that? ”
“It makes sense for Poppy’s cover,” Jake said.
“She operates out in the open. Poppy told me Josephine Baker used to go into the restroom at parties with Nazi officers, write notes about their conversations on scraps of paper, and pin them to her bra. She pulled it off because she was Josephine Baker, and nobody was going to strip search her. Nobody would suspect Poppy of being an intelligence officer. Hell, you didn’t. ”
Omar and Trent exchanged a careful look. Maybe she’s not.
“How much do you know about Poppy Jones’s background aside from what she’s told you?” Trent asked Jake.
He rattled off her bio like a living, breathing Wikipedia page.
“Twenty-six-year-old pop star with three platinum albums and four Grammys. Poppy Louise Michaels was born in Calgary. Her father, an officer with the RCMP, was killed in the line of duty when she was twelve. Her mother remarried two years later to a Canadian diplomat, Evan Jones, who adopted Poppy. She spent her teenage years bouncing around embassies in Europe, Asia, South America.”
“Perfect cover for recruitment,” Omar said.
“Exactly.”
“So she could be legit,” Trent said.
“Or she could be working with the Tunisians.” Jake played devil’s advocate. “Trying to get to Hanna to silence her.”
“If that’s the case, Olivia and Marielle will sniff her out,” Trent declared with enviable conviction.
Would they?
Omar sank lower into his seat. His head pounded, a relentless throb that matched his heartbeat. He closed his eyes and tried the breathing exercises his counselor had taught him.
It didn’t help.
Jake appeared beside him with a bottle of water and a packet of ibuprofen. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
“You good?”
“I will be.”
Would he?