Hidden Order

CHAPTER 60

“What the hell was that?” Bill Wise asked as Ryan and McGee rushed to the hotel room window.

Ryan got there first. “It sounded like an explosion.”

“It sure as hell felt like one,” McGee added.

They could see an enormous, roiling fireball climbing up into the night sky. The shock wave had been so powerful, it had almost blown out their windows, and as best they could tell, they were a good four or five blocks away. Moments later, the sound of emergency vehicles racing to the scene began to fill the air.

“I hope that wasn’t a bomb,” said Wise. “That’s the last thing Boston needs. We should check it out.”

“No way,” replied McGee. “If it was a bomb, there could be a secondary waiting to go off as first responders get there. Besides, it’s not our problem.”

“Give it time,” Ryan stated as they stood looking out the window. “You’d be surprised how fast problems metastasize when Tom Cushing is around.”

“Speaking of Cushing,” Wise replied, “can we finalize everything now that we’re here?”

After interrogating Samuel, Wise had contacted Reed Carlton, who showed up with two rather large men and a female operative named Sloane. Samuel had admitted that he had a second target — a former Swim Club doctor named Jim Gage. While Sloane and one of the men were dispatched to take Gage into protective custody, Wise warned Carlton about Samuel and provided detailed instructions for where and how he should be held. He then shared what they had learned from the interrogation.

One of the most significant elements, but hardly the most surprising, was that Phil Durkin had held on to several covert programs after the Agency had ordered them shut down. He would go through the steps of firing everyone and closing up shop, but then he’d go back out and rehire the personnel he wanted while he shoved each operation further into the shadows, taking them all full black.

Through some untraceable funding source, he had managed to keep everything afloat and operational. Those who didn’t know anything figured Durkin was providing plausible deniability for his superiors. No one knew exactly how many programs he was overseeing, but the whisper on the black-ops side was that he had cobbled together his own shadow agency.

Bill Wise didn’t know how much of what Samuel shared was actual fact and how much was office gossip. Nevertheless, RUMINT, or rumor intelligence, was something any good operative was expected to be attuned to.

Another significant piece of intelligence was that Ryan’s old team was still active and still being led by a man named Tom Cushing. Samuel admitted to having conducted a handful of operations for them.

According to Samuel, Phil Durkin liked the way Cushing operated and had elevated his status in the black-ops community, feeding him more and more assignments and entrusting him with more and more responsibilities.

Cushing, though, wasn’t Bill Wise’s concern, at least he hadn’t thought so until he asked Samuel if he knew anything about what was going on in Boston. That was when Ryan had stiffened.

When the interrogation was complete, Wise had asked to speak to her privately. When he confronted her, Ryan admitted that she and McGee had traced Cushing, along with two other team members, there. Now that they had arrived in Boston, Wise wanted to know how they were going to nail them.

Ryan stepped away from the window and pulled a large envelope from her bag. “We’re going to nail them with this.”

Wise looked at her. “I don’t follow.”

“You know the old line, how do you eat an elephant?”

“One bite at a time.”

“Correct,” Ryan replied. “One of the last bites of our elephant is going to be Phil Durkin. Before we get to Durkin, we have to go through Tom Cushing.”

Wise interrupted her. “At this point, though, I want Cushing more than I do Durkin. If Cushing is behind these murders and he’s using a killer from Swim Club to do it, we need them stopped ASAP.”

“As long as we take Cushing alive, that’s all I care about. I need answers out of him to take to the Jordanians.”

“My team is going to want answers out of him, too,” said Wise, referring to Carlton, Harvath, and their client, the Federal Reserve. “I don’t think it’s an accident that our paths have crossed.”

McGee chuckled as he turned away from the window. “It’s lucky for you that they did. If we hadn’t shown up, Samuel would be picking his teeth with your bones right about now.”

“For which I am eternally grateful. Now, how are we going to handle Cushing?”

“That’s where the banking records come in,” said Ryan as she walked over to the couch with her envelope and sat down. “I don’t know what it was like when you were there, but the CIA is terrible when it comes to funding their people in the field. They’re always months in arrears and it can really screw things up. You learn early on that robbing Peter to pay Paul is the only way to keep your sources funded. Some intel people have been forced into fronting their own personal money just to make sure things get paid on time and they don’t lose assets.”

“So?”

“So, this thinking gets pretty ingrained. Once you have a steady flow of funds, particularly if it comes through a front organization, there’s this kind of fuck the Agency mentality that surfaces. You never stick your hand in your own pocket again. In fact, you may even start putting your hand in the Agency’s pocket.

“Cushing was very strict about stealing. It wasn’t allowed. Setting up hotel and airline mileage accounts, though, was considered an acceptable perk. The idea being that throughout the year, they could build up enough points with which to take personal trips in their off time.”

“Assuming they travel under their real names.”

Ryan smiled. “They do. And not only that, but two of Cushing’s team, Vaccaro and Stark, checked into their hotel here in Boston using their Hands for Peace corporate credit cards.”

“What about Cushing himself?”

“He’s there, too. Trust me. He’s just more compulsive about covering his trail.”

“You were talking about eating the elephant one bite at a time. I assume that means you want to start with Vaccaro and Stark, then?”

“Yup,” she said, holding up the envelope. “And you’re going to help.”