Full Force and Effect

30

John Clark, Ding Chavez, and Sam Driscoll had been in the city for five days before they managed to tail Sharps employee Edward Riley to the massage parlor on 29th Street. Driscoll had the eye when Riley went in, but then he continued on, walking under his umbrella up the street a few hundred yards, bought a gyro from a vendor on 3rd Avenue, and then stepped inside a covered bus stop to shield himself from the rain while he ate it. He was just within sight of the building Riley had entered, but he’d be useful only if he pulled his camera and its zoom lens from his backpack.

For now, however, he enjoyed his gyro, because he’d handed the eye off to Chavez.

Domingo Chavez approached from the other direction. He wore a suit and tie and talked into a mobile phone. He stopped inside a Duane Reade drugstore across the street from Riley’s destination, and he began looking at umbrellas at a stand. From his vantage point here he had a perfect view of the entrance to the building less than thirty yards away.

His conversation into his phone continued; it was Clark at the other end and he was back at the safe house, sitting in front of a computer and watching his men’s movements on a computerized map. Their banter was inane cover material about the perfect weather “back home” in L.A. as compared with here in New York. When Ding stopped in the pharmacy, Clark saw this on his map, and when Ding said — in a hushed voice—“across the street from my poz, basement entrance,” Clark began scanning the area on Map of the World for information.

It took just seconds to realize the location was a massage parlor. There were links to a webpage with a phone number and an offer of “Asian massage” that, without coming right out and offering sex for money, certainly implied as much by filling the webpage full of young Asian women in lingerie.

Clark was pretty sure this wasn’t the kind of place you got a referral from your doc to visit if you needed help treating a chronic sports injury.

He relayed his findings to Ding, who by then had begun browsing through other parts of the pharmacy. Ding made no reply; he just continued talking about the weather and glancing through the glass at the front of the room.

Riley left the building after just ten minutes, and on a hunch Sam stuck around while Ding trailed the target back in the direction of his car.

Five minutes after this, a nervous-looking middle-aged man in dress slacks and an open-collared dress shirt came up the steps from the exit of the building. Sam finished his gyro and reached into his backpack, from where he retrieved a Nikon with a 300-millimeter lens, and even as he snapped off a dozen pictures of the man’s face he had a feeling he knew who he was.

The man stood in the rain as if he were unaware of it while he hailed a taxi. Sam slipped his camera into his bag and headed back to the safe house.

Sharps Global Intelligence Partners’ corporate HQ was on the Upper West Side, so The Campus had secured a safe house nearby, in a sixteenth-floor condo on West 79th Street.

It was a simple three-bedroom, two-thousand-square-foot property, and the safe house itself gave the team no direct overwatch of any part of Sharps’s operation, but this wasn’t a normal surveillance. Their intentions had been simply to find any of Sharps’s operatives in the field, and track their movements and their contacts.

Their mission to prove Sharps was working with North Korea had taken on even more significance when Gerry called the team the day before and had them assemble for a conference call.

Gerry had started the conference by saying, “I’m sure you all have seen the news that there is going to be a procedural vote in the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee next week on the North Korean situation. Nine UN bureaucrats will decide if the request from the Ryan White House meets the arcane conditions to go before a full Security Council vote.

“Needless to say, the U.S. government needs this procedural vote to pass. Without it, the conduits to North Korea’s trade remain in place and they get closer and closer to buying the material and expertise they need to build the missiles they want.”

Clark asked, “If it’s just a pro forma — type vote, what’s the concern?”

“Wayne Duke Sharps is the concern. Mary Pat has heard rumors that employees from Sharps Global Intelligence Partners have been walking the halls in the United Nations, trying to get meetings between Sharps and the nine members of the Sanctions Committee.”

“Influence peddling?”

“No question about it. Foley can keep Sharps himself away from the UN people, at least during their official duties. But Sharps Partners has agents all over Manhattan. She is concerned Sharps will find a way to get to these men and women, and either buy their votes or affect the outcome in some way.”

Ding said, “So… this damn well indicates Sharps is working for the North Koreans, right?”

“Just like in Vietnam, his organization clearly is working in the interests of the North Koreans, but there is no evidence he is working for them directly. It is crucial you find exactly what Sharps and his minions are up to. But there is something more important than that. If we can find out he is working for North Korea, in any direct way whatsoever, we can have him shut down ASAP. It is treasonous to work for a foreign power.”

Sam Driscoll said, “Why doesn’t Foley just contact the FBI? They could watch over them.”

Gerry said, “The problem with Sharps’s operation always has been that they have their fingers so far in the cookie jar at FBI and CIA, they are stocked with former employees and people who are still in contact with those in the government, that there is no way the FBI can get close enough to Sharps’s operation to catch him red-handed. They’ve only got a week and a half before the vote, so they will be running around going after the committee members. They’ll have to take risks to get this done, and this creates an opportunity for you.”

After that call, Clark refined his hunt for Sharps’s operators, and within hours they were tracking Edward Riley through New York as he met with United Nations Sanctions Committee leadership. It didn’t take them any time at all to realize what was going on.

Sam’s photos of the man leaving the massage parlor in the rain were brought up on the computer. No facial-recognition software was required. There were only nine people, seven men and two women, on the Sanctions Committee, and this photo was clearly Hans Tischer, a forty-one-year-old Austrian and career UN employee at One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay.

Clark said, “Edward Riley is Sharps’s second-in-command, and he seems to be spearheading things as a director of operations. The rules vote next week is their objective. They are trying to affect the delegates on board, to get them to vote no on drafting another round of economic sanctions.”

Sam said, “We can nip this in the bud. Just let it slip to the press what Sharps is up to. That gets out and he’ll have to stop.”

Clark said, “I considered that, but the problem is, Sharps is the devil we know. There are other unscrupulous private intelligence firms in the U.S., plus there are similar companies in other countries who could operate here and stay below our radar. And above all, interested nations could do the same thing. I have no doubt the DPRK is running agents here in the city. They could be tasked with targeting the Sanctions Committee membership, and we’ll have no insight to what’s going on.

“No. We can’t tip our hand. If Sharps finds out his op is under surveillance, we will lose all the potential leverage we have in finding out how big this goes. We won’t blow Sharps unless we can prove he’s working for the North Koreans. That would put him in prison for treason.” Clark gave a sly smile. “And that couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

Ding said, “So we keep following him. If he meets with North Koreans we hit the jackpot, but if we know who he’s compromised, like this Austrian guy he just busted in the massage parlor, we can push back on them quietly, to try and pressure their vote.”

Sam had kicked off his shoes, and now he rubbed his calves. He’d been on nearly constant foot-follow surveillance for several days. “I guess we’d better get back out there. He’s in his office now, but he usually leaves around four.”

Clark stood. “No, Sam. You and Domingo stay here. It’s my turn at bat. Good news, though, Dom will be here in a couple hours to give us another pair of eyes in the hunt.”