23. Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter twenty-three
Sam looked at the handset on her office phone.
A sculpted eyebrow arched. She stood in her cubicle, on the quiet floor, heart still gently pounding from her confrontation with Kearns.
Due to the nature of the work at CIA, cell phones aren’t supposed to be used inside the building.
Calls in and out came over encrypted landlines.
And the landlines had redundancies for their redundancies.
They didn’t normally fail. In fact, they hardly ever failed.
A quick glance at the lights across the top of the encrypted unit told her she had a good connection.
With a sigh, Sam pressed down on the connector, lifted her finger and heard three tell-tale beeps that signaled an outside line available.
It was possible Trevor was having cell problems, but not likely. Belgrade is a modern city and he could not have gotten very far from the airport before she dialed. That meant he was still in the city proper. That meant cell service.
A more likely solution, and what Sam already knew to be true, is that Trevor had read the situation rightly and stalled for time.
He was a smart boy—man, Sam reminded herself.
He was a young man—and he knew if he came back from Serbia empty handed, both he and Sam would be in hot water.
They might both find themselves in the unemployment line.
But that’s not exactly true, a little voice at the back of Sam’s mind said. Poor old Trevor might be out of a job, but not you. Oh no. You’ve leverage. You’ve got insurance.
Sam had spent three years working inside Israeli covert operations.
She had the most valuable bargaining chip of all in this business, intelligence.
Her first three weeks back at CIA had been spent in lengthy debriefs about her time in the Middle East. Sam hadn’t held back.
She’d given information freely, but three years is a long time.
She still had plenty of secrets banging around inside her brain, plenty of operational details she could provide. Names, dates. Sam had leverage.
And what about poor Trevor?
Sam would walk into the Deputy Director’s office tomorrow morning ready for a thorough tongue lashing, but she didn’t have any real fear of being fired. In fact, after walking out of Kearns’s office, and giving herself some time to calm down, she realized the most likely solution was a transfer.
A transfer could be good or bad. A double-edged sword, as it were. Likely the DDI would transfer her someplace unpleasant, but at the very least she’d no longer be working under Kearns. Every cloud has a silver lining.
Not Trevor though. Trevor would take it on the proverbial chin.
Had Sam played fast and loose with the poor kid’s career?
Trevor was just getting started with CIA.
He’d graduated the Farm just a few short months ago.
The Serbian desk was his first posting. He’d barely gotten his feet wet.
He didn’t have time to collect any intel, or put any juicy secrets in the vault.
One of the really unfortunate truths to working at a place like the Company, is that the longer someone stayed, the more job security they had.
Not because they were necessarily good at their work, but because they’d been collecting valuable secrets, secrets the U.S.
government didn’t want dragged into the light.
That’s how career bureaucrats like Kearns spend a lifetime shining leather seats with their ample backsides.
They’d been at it so long, no one wanted to fire them.
Too much chance they’d get sore feelings and go to work for the enemy.
Can’t have that. Easier to put them in a cushy office and let them push paper.
Sam hit redial. The call went straight to voice mail with a pleasant little message telling her that the caller she was trying to reach was not available at the moment. She was welcome to leave a name and a message.
Sam jammed down on the disconnect, a little harder this time, and dialed again.
“Come on, Trevor. Pick up.”
It went to voicemail again. Sam sighed. She’d taken chances, rolled weighted dice, because somewhere in the back of her mind she had known she was safe. She’d never stopped to think about Trevor. He had a puppy crush on Sam. She knew it and she’d taken advantage of that fact.
She’d likely scuttled Trevor’s job in the process.
Kearns’s office door opened and she stomped her way across the floor to the bank of elevators, a designer leather handbag clamped firmly under one pudgy arm, without even bothering to glance in Sam’s direction.
Sam watched her step onto the elevator. When the doors rolled shut, Sam let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She decided to put on a pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night.