Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

“You have his files on this?”

“I made you copies of all the stuff he passed to me.

He was working on a Pentagon source trying to obtain the names of every civilian driver involved in the secret convoy attacked in Iraq so he could interview them.

That’s where I was helping him by running expensive data searches.”

Morrow passed a tattered legal-size file folder to

Graham.

“Corporal Graham. I know this is all crazy. Ray was an eccentric. A lot of the stories he chased were over the top and I know he’d stretched the truth before they forced him out. Tragically, that’s all true.

“For that reason, I didn’t take this to anyone in our newsroom, or, for that matter, anyone inside the Beltway. They’d laugh it off because it was Ray. And I didn’t want people knowing that I’d been helping him with bureau resources. Because of my personal situa tion, I just can’t afford to get caught up in Ray’s world, you know?”

“I understand.”

“I know it’s all nuts and it may not mean much. But Ray was my friend and I figured I owed his memory something, that I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t pass it to somebody. I believe Ray would want that. I hope you understand.”

“I do.”

“Thank you. And good luck.”

After Morrow left, Graham ordered another coffee and flipped through Ray Tarver’s file.

He stopped when he saw one handwritten note.

Blue Rose Creek-possibly in California-keep checking.

Romania-Ukraine border

“Again.”

The prisoner’s head was thrust into a steel tub of ice water and held there.

He was naked, on his knees on the cold hard floor.

At eight seconds without oxygen he struggled against his bindings, leather straps used to restrain the criminally insane.

At twelve seconds he bucked.

His interrogator was seated comfortably nearby, waiting. She was known only as “the Colonel.” A woman in her forties, who spoke six languages and was expert in interrogation techniques used by the Stasi, the CIA, Mossad and the SS.

Was her background Israeli, or German? Some guessed her as a Pole.

At sixteen seconds, she nodded to the handlers, who were contractors, and the prisoner’s head was pulled from the bucket. He gorged on air, his limp body trem bling. He had not been allowed sleep in four days. He’d been forced to stand naked in a cell while being drenched periodically with frigid water.

His condition was failing fast. He could not stand without being supported. As a military doctor checked his vital signs, the Colonel stood and drew her face near to the prisoner’s.

“Is there an operation underway?”

He was known as Issa al-Issa, a key operative, in visible in the world. Issa was an alias he had employed for longer than he should have. He may have been a former police official from the U.A.E. It was never de termined. Months of intelligence work led to his clan destine midnight abduction from an apartment for immigrant workers in Kuwait City. He’d been hand cuffed, and a sack was tied over his head before he was deposited into a private Gulfstream jet.

He was first flown to Jordan, then Nicosia. Then he was flown to a region established by Byzan tines where the Danube flowed in the Black Sea. Then he was driven in the trunk of a car to Building #S-9846.

A building once used by the KGB to harvest infor mation.

A building that did not exist.

In fact, for official purposes, neither did Issa al-Issa.

He was a ghost prisoner.

“Is there an operation underway, Issa?”

The doctor turned to the Colonel and shook his head. Issa’s condition had deteriorated, reaching a critical point. The Colonel nodded to the handlers to release him.

He crumbled to the floor, able to rest for the first time in one hundred hours.

As he lay there trembling, she bent over him. “What more can you tell me before you die, Issa?”

She waited with the full knowledge she would not receive an answer.

With an animallike groan the prisoner expelled a massive breath.

Then he was still.

The doctor knelt beside him and checked his heart, his eyes, waiting, listening, rechecking before pro nouncing the man deceased.

“Take care of it,” she told the handlers.

Swiftly and efficiently they moved Issa al-Issa’s corpse into a body bag. Then they carried it outside the building and deep into the dense forest, to the grave the prisoner had been forced to dig on the first day of his arrival.

As the handlers buried Issa al-Issa, the Colonel remained in Building #S-9846 and flipped through her logged notes. Issa had been one of the hardest inter views she’d ever conducted. She’d failed to extract as much as she’d hoped from him.

But what she had was vital.

She reached for her satellite phone.

She dialed the number for her contact at the embassy.

Issa’s information could prove valuable to some gov ernments, perhaps enough to warrant a significant amount of cash.

Vatican City

In the moments before sunrise, the pope stood alone at the window of the papal apartment in the top floor of the Apostolic Palace.

He watched twilight paint the Basilica, Bernini’s colonnade and St. Peter’s Square in pale blues and purple as a few police officers strolled the empty, silent piazza.

Weariness settled more heavily than usual on him because of his troubled sleep. Again, he had struggled to determine the meaning of his distraction.

It was the dream.

First light dawned.

He left the window for his private chapel and a session of private prayer. He prayed for the world’s troubles and for the personal requests sent to him. The ten-year-old boy from El Salvador who had lost his family in the recent earthquake; the grief-stricken widow in Belfast afraid of losing her faith after the death of her husband; even for the little Swiss girl who had lost her kitten and included a photo and a little map, “so God will know where to look.”

He smiled at that one.

After prayers, he celebrated Mass with a small group then ate breakfast with a few invited guests, a delegation of nuns from Brazil. Then he went to his private office to study his draft texts for his upcoming visit to the U.S. They concerned the environment, human reproduction, abortion, the sanctity of family, the erosion of the numbers of priests and the role of women in the church.

But in a far corner of his mind he thought of the dream.

At midmorning he held a series of scheduled audi ences in the public part of the papal apartment. They were followed by lunch with a number of newly arrived diplomats posted to Rome and the Holy See, from the Netherlands, France, Japan, India and Chile.

Later, he returned to his office and opened the locked pouch that had arrived from the Secretariat of State. It contained secret correspondence with world leaders and other important documents, such as a highly clas sified note pertaining to security for the U.S. visit.

The note was written by the U.S. Secret Service, with an attached analysis by the chief of papal security for the trip. It outlined a number of ongoing threats, sus pected sources, analysis, probability of success and ongoing counteraction.

Such analysis was done for all foreign trips.

The pope stroked his chin at the underlined portions, requesting that he wear “specially designed body armor” during all public events of his seven-city visit.

“Intelligence indicates the strong likelihood that an attack will be attempted to gain instant and world wide impact.”

Such threats were common and some were carried out.

The pope considered the recent and past history of attempted papal assassinations, including the shooting of John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square.