Bodyguard of Lies

CHAPTER 5

The man had been in the tree line for four hours, since well before dawn. It was cold in Vermont, especially at this elevation, but he wore heavy clothing underneath his white camouflaged Gore-Tex pants and parka. There had been no sign of life in the cabin. The information he'd received had listed a pickup truck as current mode of transportation for the owner of the cabin, but there was nothing parked outside.

There were tire tracks. As near as the man could tell from his position, they had been made before last night's light snowfall.

He scanned the cabin with the thermal scope one more time, picking up no heat sources. Still, he took no chances as he moved forward. He kept his silenced submachine gun at the ready as he crept to the cabin. It took him forty minutes of stealthy crawling to make it to the back wall. He waited there another fifteen, listening. Nothing.

He entered via a window, watching carefully for tripwires. He hated jobs like this, checking on another professional.

But there were no traps. The interior was empty except for an old double bed. There wasn't even any food in the cabinets. He began his search, top to bottom, in a clockwise direction as he'd been taught and as he'd taught others. If there was anything hidden in the cabin, he knew he'd find it. After several hours he came to the conclusion that the place had been swept, and, most interestingly, swept by a professional.

Finally he paused at the small window and looked at the small mound of frozen dirt. He walked outside. Sighing, he pulled the head of a pick out of the backpack he wore and slid it onto the wooden handle that had been tied on the side of the pack.

Leaning the pick against his leg, he pulled out a pack of gum. Methodically, he unwrapped one stick, rolled it into a tight log and popped it into his mouth. He was careful to push the wrapper deep into his pocket and seal the Velcro flap before retrieving the pick.

He took off the parka. He was in good shape despite being in his mid-fifties. He had sandy hair, lightly tinged with gray and a bland face, one that would never be noticed in a crowd.

He began digging, eventually stripping down to his t-shirt as the work progressed. The dirt was like concrete for the first two feet, grudgingly chipping away. Then the going got easier. Eventually he got to the frozen body. He carefully brushed dirt away from the corpse. It was wrapped in a camouflage poncho liner. He peeled the liner away and looked at the face. The cold had preserved it. He stared at it for a minute, remembering other times he had seen that face, alive.

With great difficulty, he checked the corpse's clothes, going through the pockets. The only thing he found were a few strands of dark hair on the man's clothes. He peeled one loose and put it in a plastic bag, inside his backpack.

Satisfied, the man stood in the grave, straddling the corpse. He pulled a specially modified satellite phone out of his backpack and punched in a number. The signal was up-linked to a military MILSTAR satellite, frequency hopped and scrambled and then broadcast on a tight beam down to a receiver at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, and then relayed to the bunker below ground.

"Yes?" a strangely mechanical voice asked.

"Anthony Gant is buried here, Mister Nero." The man’s accent was English, filtered by years of living in the States.

"You've confirmed this?"

"I'm standing on top of his body."

"How long has he been dead, Mister Bailey?"

Bailey looked at the body. "Hard to tell. He's been in the ground for a while, but it's cold up here."

Even through the cipher scrambling Bailey picked up the sarcasm in the voice that rasped at him — no one else might have, but Bailey had known Nero for many decades. "More than a day? Less than a week? A month? A year? Since the Second World War?"

"I'd say about a week."

"Cause of death?"

What am I, Bailey thought, a pathologist? But he kept his tongue. "I can't tell."

There was a spate of coughing, and then the voice came back. "Is there a bullet hole in his forehead? Did he die violently?"

Bailey clenched his teeth, more from the cold than his superior’s harsh words. The corpse looked gaunt, as if it had suffered a terrible disease. Bailey knelt down, tucking the phone under his chin. He lifted the body up, ignoring the cracking noise it made as it broke contact with the ground underneath. "No sign of violence. Looks like he was sick. He's wasted away. I'd say he weighed less than one-twenty pounds when he died."

There was a pause as Nero digested that information, then his rough voice came back. "Did you find the videotape?"

"No."

"You searched thoroughly?"

"Yes."

"Then we will have to assume whoever buried him has the object in question or at least knows where Mister Gant hid it. Any clue as to that person’s identity?”

“I would assume it is the woman from Berlin — Neeley.”

“All right. That's all."

"What do you want me to do with the body?" Bailey asked.

"Rebury him. We will let Mister Gant go in peace. We owe him that at least and his brother would expect us to." The phone crackled with what sounded like coughing before the voice came back. “Miss Neeley is another matter.”

Bailey looked at the large pile of earth and shrugged. “Anything else?”

“Rebury him and return here.” The phone went dead.

Bailey folded the phone, put it away and returned to his work.

Over six hundred miles away, three hundred feet underground at Fort Meade, a wrinkled hand cut off the speakerphone that had been connected to Bailey. The hand then retrieved a burning cigarette and brought it to his lips.

The other man in the room watched as filaments of smoke escaped through the permanent tracheotomy in Mr. Nero's throat. The fingers that reached up to cover the hole were gnarled with age and tinged with nicotine. The face was hidden in the shadows, the three lights tilted toward the visitor. The tracheotomy was something that had gone into place when Nero had been out of action for several critical months prior to the 9-11 disasters.

When the cigarette was done, Mr. Nero capped the hole in his throat and reached for the hand-held voice box that substituted for his larynx. Nero's voice through the wand was harsh and crackly.

"As we suspected, Mister Anthony Gant is no longer with us. There is no sign of the object you are concerned with and we do have to assume that someone was with Gant at his death due to the fact that he was given a proper burial."

The other man finally spoke. "Then we must act."

Nero placed the fingers of his free hand along the side of his face. "Senator, I understand you are concerned, but premature action might upset the balance we have so delicately maintained all these years and bring about that which you most fear. Gant did nothing to upset things all these years; I do believe the chances are his legacy will do nothing either."

The most powerful man on Capitol Hill shifted in his seat, trying to restrain his anger and concern. "I wouldn't have to be afraid of the past if we had terminated everyone who was involved in the incident and collected all their various objects of blackmail."

"Does everyone include you?" Nero asked.

"Don't get smart with me, Nero. I'm going to be nominated by the party. This couldn’t have come at a worse time. I've got all sorts of Congressional Staffers from the other party sniffing around, looking for dirt."

"Nothing has happened," Nero noted, "other than Mister Gant expiring, for which you should be grateful. If you wait long enough, this will most likely go away as the others die natural deaths also and their secrets die with them."

“Including you?” Collins snapped.

“Including me,” Nero acknowledged. “Everyone has their time. I’ve been living on borrowed time for decades. The difference between me and you is that I am aware of it.”

“What does that mean?” Collins demanded.

“You know so little,” Nero said.

Collins didn’t take the bait. "We don't know where Gant's videotape or the plans and contracts are. We don't know how the others are going to react to his death. I can't afford to sit around and have this hanging over my head. And remember, there are others besides me who were involved in this. A lot of powerful people who never agreed with the way you handled this."

"The way I've handled it has been successful so far," Nero said. “Every action has a reaction, even if it takes decades for that reaction to occur. The CIA has a term — blowback. I assume since you’re on the Select Intelligence Committee, you’ve heard of it.”

“When weapons we’ve sold end up getting used against us,” Collins said.

Nero nodded. “I like to think in larger terms than simply weapons. The world is changing. As is apparent now that our enemies take different forms. Therefore we must take different forms.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Collins demanded, confused by the change in directions.

Nero ignored the questions. "I recommend we do nothing until something happens to force our hand.”

Collins stood. "I'm not going with your recommendation. I want the others terminated and I want everything collected like it should have been years ago."

"Are you ordering me to do this?" Nero asked.

"Yes."

"You don't quite have that power."

"I speak for those who do and you know who they are," Collins hissed.

“You also understand my mandate,” Nero said. “I am to do as ordered as long as it is in the best interests of the country.”

“We — ” Collins thumped his chest — “the politicians are elected to determine exactly that.”

“In most cases that is true,” Nero said, “which is why the Cellar takes action only infrequently. However, political squabbling between the parties might not be in the best interests of the country.”

“You went along with the initial mission,” Collins noted.

“The mission was recovery of damaging material,” Nero said.

“The recovery turned out to be a disaster,” Collins said.

“Everyone knows what happened in Mogadishu,” Nero said. “They even made a movie about it.”

“But people don’t know the real reason it happened.”

“The fake reason was real enough,” Nero said. “Or else I would not have allowed the mission. The failure had nothing to do with the fake or real mission. That was the vagaries of battle.”

“Damn you Nero.” Collins fought to get under control. “At the time the material recovered wasn’t that big of a deal,” Collins said. “Recent events have changed that. Regardless, you’re involved.”

Nero’s wand made a scratching noise that might have been laughter. “I am always involved.”

“Just do what I told you to,” Collins snapped.

Nero regarded the other man, dressed in his finely cut suit for several moments.

“If you don’t act, I’ll get the Agency involved,” the Senator threatened.

A gargling sound came out of the wand. It took the Senator a few moments before he realized it was indeed laughter. Nero inclined his head. "As you wish."

Collins stalked out of the office. It was only when he was in the elevator heading toward the surface that he realized Nero had never really answered him.