The Enraged

CHAPTER 12

As was her habit, Helen Cho arrived at her office at five thirty a.m. That was a price she was happy to pay for being able to run her various organizations from the West Coast instead of back in New York or DC.

The East Coast had hurricanes and blizzards and humidity. San Francisco had earthquakes — though not nearly as often as people living elsewhere thought — and that was about it. She didn’t mind a good ground shake anyway. She’d been born in Los Angeles and had lived through more than her share of tumblers.

Between six and six thirty, while she was invariably on a call to someone in the CIA, NSA, FBI, or the Pentagon, her assistant David — who was not a fan of early mornings — would bring in hard copies of reports that had come in overnight, and place them on her desk. If she was on a conference call that only needed her presence but not her attention, she would begin perusing them. Otherwise she would wait until the call had ended.

The call this morning had been an example of the latter, a one-on-one with an assistant director at Langley. After she hung up, she buzzed David to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, and began sorting through the pile.

The first document was a status report on field operations being run directly out of her San Francisco office. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Next up was a lengthy breakdown of a mission that had finished up two days prior. There had been a couple problems on this one, but it had all worked out in the end. This was followed by reports on wiretapped conversations, shadowing operations, and asset acquisitions.

Near the bottom was a document from O & O. The DC security agency was a recent addition to her responsibilities. For years it had been run semiautonomously, which, it seemed, turned out to be a problem. The powers that be within Homeland Security suspected the agency of flagrant abuse of both authority and budget, but they needed proof, and had installed Helen to evaluate and clean up any messes. It wasn’t a task she’d been thrilled to undertake, but she also knew no one could do it better than she. So far, her biggest problem had been getting everyone at O & O to understand she was the one in charge.

As she read the report, her face hardened in anger. Here was another example of information coming to her long after it should have. According to the document, yesterday someone had broken into an apartment in Georgetown, and one of O & O’s agents had been shot trying to detain one of the intruders. Thankfully the wound had not been life threatening, but that didn’t matter. She should have been informed immediately.

Her anger almost caused her to miss the most important detail, one that resonated with her both professionally and personally — the address of the break-in.

I must be remembering incorrectly.

She checked her private contact list, glad she had not deleted the entry she was looking for. Nope, she hadn’t remembered wrong. The apartment that had been broken into — the apartment O & O had been hired to watch, for some reason — belonged to Peter.

Reading on, she saw that a tip had later come in that the intruders were using a Virginia safe house, but after another team had been dispatched to check, it turned out that though someone had been at the house, he or she or they were no longer there.

She put the file aside and buzzed David. “These reports are all from this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re sure none of these came in yesterday.”

“No, ma’am. They were all from this morning.”

“Get me Stone at O & O.” Gregory Stone was O & O’s managing director, and the biggest pain in the ass of the bunch.

Thirty seconds later, David called. “I have Mr. Stone for you.”

As soon as he hung up, Stone was on the line.

“Gregory, what the hell is going on over there?” Helen asked.

“Good morning to you, too, Helen.”

“I asked you a question.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

“I just read the report about the apartment break-in yesterday. The one where one of your men got his fingers blown off? How come I’m just hearing about this now?”

“Let me pull up the info,” Stone said, sounding as if he were doing her a big favor. She could hear him typing. “I have it here. The client requested temporary retention of the information.”

This was another of O & O’s annoying business practices. Some clients had been granted right-of-retention privileges they could invoke anytime they felt it necessary. When that happened, no one but the client would receive updates for the first twelve to twenty-four hours, depending on the operation. Helen had already sent a directive rescinding the rule, but apparently Stone had ignored it.

“I don’t care what the client requested. The retention rule is no longer valid and you know it.”

“This is a grandfathered client. Our hands were tied.”

She bit back a response, knowing things could spiral into a tangential conversation that would distract her from finding out more about what had happened at Peter’s place. After giving herself a moment to calm down, she opened the O & O client database and said, “Who’s the client?”

“Is there something specific you’re trying to find out? Maybe I could—”

“Yes. I specifically want to know who the client is.”

“If you’re unhappy with how things are—”

“Dammit, Gregory! Give me the code!”

Stone read her the client code.

Helen typed it in and the client name popped onto her screen almost instantly.

Is this some kind of joke? she thought, staring at her screen.

Darvot was as gray an organization as one could get. More than a few stories had circulated through the legitimate intelligence community about the lengths Kyle Morten, president and CEO of Darvot, and his dog Griffin would go to in helping their clients. Unfortunately, they were good at covering their tracks so it was all rumor, but Helen knew they were dirty, and Helen hated dirty.

She’d thought she’d seen it all from O & O, but this had to be the biggest example of the organization’s incompetence. No proper agency would even answer Darvot’s phone calls, and here O & O was doing potential wet work for them.

Dear God.

“Helen?” Stone said. “Helen, are you still there?”

She needed to dig into this properly so that none of it blew up in her or her superiors’ faces. She bit back the riot act she wanted to read him and said, “I’ll call you back.”