In the Crosshairs

7

Sir Geoffrey Cornwell relaxed in a lawn chair that sagged in the shape of his butt. The warm sun baked on his face while his wife, Lady Patricia, puttered nearby in a patch of flowers. She could have had the gardener perform that chore, but Pat delighted in helping the earth come to life again in springtime, after the frosts, and she was thinning her perennials. Beside her lay a pyramid of fifty bulbs that needed to be planted today, and those Gladioli acidantera didn’t care that she was rich. If her ladyship wanted their gorgeous summer flowers, she needed to get them into the ground.

Kyle had arrived the night before, in time for a family dinner with these two people who were his surrogate parents. They had known one another for years. The gods of fate had gambled freely with Kyle’s life until he got a winning hand with the Cornwells. Merely being around them was a calming balm. He threw a pebble at a duck in the pond and missed.

“Quite a conundrum, my boy,” opined Sir Jeff. “You and this Nicky Marks fellow being tied together in two attacks on different continents.” Kyle had laid out the situation in a late-night session with them, then let them sleep on it before having any real discussion.

“So the bad man is after you personally? It has to be you, doesn’t it?” added Pat.

“I don’t know.” He threw at the duck again, skipping the rock past its tail. The bird quacked annoyance. “It’s too early in the game, Pat. I don’t have enough information.”

“It cannot be a coincidence,” Sir Jeff observed.

“No. Maybe I killed somebody’s cousin at some point back in the day and they’re out for revenge. A lot of people hold grudges against me.”

“Sit down and stop molesting our livestock, Kyle.” Lady Patricia shook her dirt-scabbed trowel at him, put it down, and lit a long, thin cigar. “We haven’t seen a thing on the news or in the papers about either of these incidents.”

“Different stories in Mexico and Germany. Nobody has tied them together yet.”

She was cross-legged on the grass. “Our poor Coastie. That was a beastly thing to do. She and Mickey were a wonderful pair. I called her yesterday and we had a long talk. She’s not very steady yet.”

Sir Jeff nodded. “In her condition, are you seriously considering bringing her to work? She may be too fragile.”

“I think I’ll need help that nobody knows about. I’ll make up my mind after I see her. Fragile, she ain’t. You know that.”

Lady Patricia released a stream of smoke. “Oh, poof. You can’t make that decision to keep her out of things, Kyle. If trouble begins, and you’re involved, she’ll want to be right there, and you know it.”

“Only time will tell,” he said, lowering his voice to mock a television reporter. “When this is done, I’ll send her packing over here for you to take on holiday. Out on the boat, maybe. Go shopping. Woman stuff.”

“There’s a leak in the CIA?” Sir Jeff interrupted. “Of course there is. So who benefits from this? There are a lot easier ways to take you off the board than by concocting some complex scheme involving the Central Intelligence Agency. You may be the link, Kyle, but it might be bigger than you.”

“Again, I don’t know enough yet.”

Sir Jeff had a frosty glass of lemonade. “What’s the one thing the CIA, or any intelligence service, truly fears?”

“Losing its secrecy. Inner workings coming to light. Outsiders getting a look at what it’s doing and planning,” Kyle replied. “They even warned me that someday this might come before a congressional hearing. None of us want that.”

“So there you go, my boy. Perhaps the question should be not who has the most to gain but who has the most to lose. And why? Isn’t that interesting?”

Kyle nodded. He had first met Sir Jeff and Lady Pat years ago when he was a Marine Corps sergeant and Jeff was a medically retired colonel in the British Special Air Services. Sir Jeff used his savings to start a weapons-development business, and the U.S. Marines lent him their best shooter to develop a world-class sniper rifle. They had warmed to each other right away, and created the Excalibur, the best of its kind in the world. After that first success, Excalibur Enterprises never looked back.

That seemed so long ago now. Sir Jeff had found that he was even better in the business world than he had been as a commando, and the company had grown and expanded until it became a major player in the weapons game. And he had brought Kyle along for the ride, persuading the Marines to allow him to borrow the young marine whenever his special experience was needed, which was often. That closeness eventually led to Kyle’s becoming the executive vice president of a huge enterprise, leaving the Marines, and becoming heir apparent to Sir Jeff, with an obscene salary and benefits program.

The flip side and hidden fuel behind the success was that the Pentagon and the British government, the CIA and MI6 were able to cloak many delicate operations behind a front that was willingly supplied by Excalibur. Somewhere along the way, the aging British couple formally adopted Kyle Swanson, who had grown up as an orphan in the States, to be the child they never had.

Like all families, they had disagreements, the major one being that Kyle wasn’t yet married. Lady Pat wanted grandchildren, and Sir Jeff wanted whatever she wanted. Coastie had once been a candidate, and, as Lady Pat often reminded Kyle, it was his own fault that she got away.

“Tell me more about this Gibson fellow?” Sir Jeff brought the conversation back to life. “Can you work with him?”

Kyle shrugged. “I have no real choice in that. He seems capable enough, and the Berlin incident proved that he has balls.”

“Watch your language, dear. The ducks are listening.” Lady Pat smiled. “You were lucky that Mr. Gibson was there.”

“No such thing as luck, my dear.” Sir Jeff finished off the lemonade, put his feet up on a garden bench, and closed his eyes. “Check him out thoroughly, Kyle. Your life may depend on it.”

The Prince was not a prince at all, in the traditional sense of the word. His father was a king in name only, and neither of them carried a drop of royal blood. Others had bestowed the title on him, and he kept it because he liked it.

He was alone in a booth at Joe’s Stone Crab in Washington, pondering the next move in protecting his drug kingdom, a vast enterprise that extended from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the refineries in Mexico, and, finally, into the noses and veins of willing American customers. It was very profitable. It was also powerful, which was why he was at one of the favorite restaurants of the men and women who ran the nation’s capital. This place was a fund-raising heaven, allowing political figures to wheedle campaign donations while enjoying excellent food.

He spotted Congresswoman Veronica Keenan the instant she entered. Tall, dark-haired, and attractive, the freshman legislator was trolling for support and her aides had set her up with the moneyman waiting in a private booth. She hated begging, but it was the name of the game. It took a lot of cash to stay in office, to which she had only recently been appointed upon the death of her husband, who had held the seat for three terms. The campaigning never stopped; she had a lot of bills to pay, including thousands of dollars in dues to her political party.

A waiter escorted her to the table, and she followed with a confident walk. She extended a hand and a high-wattage smile. “Mr. Prince, a great pleasure to meet you.” She measured Harold Prince carefully. A mane of thick black hair was swept low across the forehead like a rock star from the eighties. The teeth sparkled. Glasses with tinted lenses kept his eyes in a bit of shadow. There was a small flesh-colored Band-Aid on his cheek that drew her eyes away from his other features. He was in his thirties and was totally unremarkable in any way. Wig, caps, dark glasses. Phony, she thought.

Prince welcomed her, and when a bottle of wine appeared at the table they each had a glass and the waiter poured and withdrew. He had seen this dance hundreds of times; members of Congress did not come to Joe’s just for the food.

They clinked glasses, and Veronica Keenan said in a low voice, “Let’s get the nasty part of this meeting out of the way, Mr. Prince, then we can have a nicer chat. I appreciate your generous donation to my campaign.”

The Prince had a delivery service take an envelope to her office that morning. In it were a check for $9,999 and the supporting paperwork to show where it came from. Donations below $10,000 didn’t draw close scrutiny. “Congresswoman, my firm admires your work and we are happy to support you.”

“The people of my district thank you, sir. As do my party and I. Every little bit helps.” Ten grand wasn’t big league enough to buy special favors. The congresswoman could probably find that much money in the cushions of her office sofa after an important lobbyist visited. She thought that Prince was smart enough to know that. It was enough to get a lunch.

The Prince smiled. “I know. I know. It isn’t much,” he said. “It is a gesture of goodwill and gives me this chance to have your ear for a moment. “It is information, not cash, that I bring to your table today.”

Veronica Keenan suddenly grew attentive. The handsome man had undergone a change of expression and his eyes had sharpened. Behind those shaded lenses, she couldn’t see their actual color. The waiter came back and took their orders, then left again, not wanting to witness whatever was about to be discussed.

“You want to be a crusader, Congresswoman, but you have not yet been able to grab an issue that will vault you into the limelight. That is the assessment of my friends, at least.”

“That is candid, rude, and wrong,” she sniffed, taking a sip of white wine. “My work is forcing the big pharmaceutical companies to make major concessions in the pricing of their drugs.”

The Prince laughed softly. “Sure. No matter what you do, those companies will not be hurt, because America is a nation of pillheads and cocaine freaks, and you, madam, have no real clout.”

She inhaled and let the air out slowly. “Fuck you,” she whispered, her eyes flashing with anger. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Just a new friend who would like to give you that breakthrough moment to put you on the Sunday shows for a year. God knows you’ll need the help if you want a second term.”

“How dare you talk to a member of Congress like that!” She was growing a bit worried. Mr. Prince wasn’t bowing to her power in Washington.

“Let me be quite frank about this, Congresswoman. You are a flea. You were appointed to your seat when your husband died, never elected. You represent the Third District of Nebraska, some sixty-five thousand square miles of nothing, and it sprawls over three-fourths of the state. Challengers are lining up in your own party to bring you back home.”

She didn’t answer, just moved her wineglass around on the napkin.

“The one thing you have in your favor, the reason I’m here, is that you’re considered harmless enough to have become the lowest-ranking minority member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A rubber stamp for others to use. That is where I want you to consider your efforts.”

“I cannot and will not discuss anything concerning that committee, Mr. Prince. For you to suggest such a thing to me is enough for a felony charge. You vastly underrate my status.” That was a lie. Her colleagues had made certain from the start that the new girl at the Capitol understood that she was only one of four hundred and thirty-five members of the House of Representatives, which was only half of Congress, which, in turn, was only one-third of the United States government. A very little fish.

The Prince smiled genially and waved away the rancor. “I would ask nothing of the kind. It’s just that something has come to my attention. What you do with the information is up to you.”

The food began to arrive, an appetizer of the famous stone-crab claws. The conversation stayed on hold while they ate, and resumed again over coffee.

“What, exactly, is it that you do, Mr. Prince? I’m still unclear on that.”

“I have a number of businesses involved with international commerce, Congresswoman. I run around checking on them, and I learn quite a bit that’s never on the record.” It was a non-answer, and he looked around the dining room as if he were concerned about being overheard. “Here’s what I have for you. Once again, something has gone wrong inside the CIA, and they’re covering it up. As a person of power, you can bring it to light.”

“What?” She was interested. Mr. Prince may be useful after all.

“There was an attack recently on the funeral of a Mexican military officer who had been killed during a botched drug raid. It was a CIA mission using foreign troops.”

She leaned back against the cushion, taking her coffee. “I remember something about that. Tragic, but so what?”

The Prince knew she was hooked. He explained how there were three CIA connections in the Mexican atrocity, which made her raise her eyebrows. Then he added the Berlin ambush, which also had three CIA links, with two of them having been involved in Mexico.

“They haven’t reported the one in Germany to us yet,” she observed, warming to the idea of knowing something that was being kept under wraps.

“In both cases, the attacker was a known CIA assassin by the name of Nicky Marks. Also, in both cases, another CIA hard case, name of Kyle Swanson, was the possible target.”

“What about these other men you mentioned — the late Colonel Castillo and Luke Gibson?”

“Both were also on the agency’s payroll. As I understand it, they were not directly involved. This is between Marks and Swanson. Marks is a very bad guy, but this Kyle Swanson is equally dangerous and just as dirty. My guess is that they might be rivals in drug trafficking on the CIA dime.”

“It does sound like more than a coincidence.” She finished off her coffee and put the cup down. “How do you know all this, when I don’t?”

The Prince laughed aloud. “I have to protect my sources, ma’am. Anyway, there it is. You run with it however you choose. Something is about to hit the fan over at Langley, and your committee might want to keep an eye on things. Put yourself on the map, Congresswoman. Get ahead of the curve. You can be a player.”

She wished she could see his eyes. “I must get back to the office now,” she replied. “Thank you for your kind donation, and for a delicious lunch.”

“My duty as a patriot, ma’am. I doubt that we will meet again, but I will be in touch. Best of luck.”

When she left the restaurant on Fifteenth Street Northwest, Veronica Keenan believed that her chances for reelection were a lot brighter than they were an hour ago.