Andrew Britton: The Operative

Maybe it was a sign from God. The weather was ugly to suit the job he and Muloni had arrived to manage.

He drew hard on the cigarette as he watched the progress of the charcoal Mercedes. He was glad, at least, that the CSIS was the one who had made the nab. So far, the Canadians were proving more cooperative than some of Washington’s other “allies,” who insisted on follow-through and quid pro quo and complicated every mission threefold. It was tough to be clandestine when you had a half dozen agents trying to be inconspicuous, instead of one who actually was.

A woman came up behind him.

“How’s the room?” he asked without turning.

“Fine. Clean.” There was something in the clipped tone of her voice he didn’t like. Perhaps he’d thanked God too soon. “What’s wrong, Agent Muloni?”

“Your question.”

“You lost me.”

“The question should be, ‘What’s right?’ The answer-nothing. I just got word that our plans have been modified.”

Bishop slowly turned to face the African American woman, saw the cell phone in her hand. “Got word from whom?”

“Someone we can’t just ignore, like we’d usually do,” she said. She wobbled the phone. “Our consul general here called me directly. Seems that two high-level CSIS officials paid him a visit in the middle of the night.”

“Official, or did they creep through a window?”

“All on the up-and-up,” she said. “They insisted that the Mounties accompany Veil to her destination.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am so serious.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the CSIS were one unit until 1984. Since then, there had been very few jurisdictional battles because the responsibilities were clearly defined: the CSIS collected intelligence, while the RCMP acted on it. This job was what Bishop’s people called a fence straddler.

Bishop snapped his cigarette butt to the ground. Why give up smoking at all? He’d only have to start again when crap like this came down the chute. “He told them it would compromise security, having extra targets?”

“Yes,” the woman replied. “He said that the Canadians were intransigent. They told him that if we wanted their prisoner, we’d have to trust their guys.”

“It’s not about trust, for Christ’s sake. It’s about numbers.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said.

Bishop shook his head. “Not a good precedent.”

“I’m not happy, and word is the prime minister isn’t thrilled, either,” she said. “If something goes wrong, he doesn’t want to catch any blowback.”

“But the Mounties want to share the glory if everything goes right-”

“When,” she said firmly.

It took a moment for him to understand. “ When everything goes right,” he corrected himself.

Jessica Muloni smiled. He regarded the woman’s big brown eyes. There was nothing about them to suggest that her calm had been ruffled by the unexpected turn of events. She did not in any way fit the stereotypical mold of a cold CIA field operative. She was warm and easygoing. There was something about her that made you trust her, not just personally but professionally, a combination of her relaxed confidence and poise. Plain, thin, her natural brown hair cut functionally short, she wore almost no makeup and shapeless clothes, giving her a subdued, relaxed appearance. In her case, looks were somewhat deceptive, however. According to her file, she was easygoing until someone displayed the kind of dangerous incompetence that frontline personnel could not afford. Whether Jessica’s takedown was a physical assault, a psychological strike, or any combination thereof, witnesses reported it was a frightening thing to behold.

“Listen,” she said. “Let’s give them some leeway here. The CSIS found her, the Mounties snatched her from the school, and the Canadians are letting us circumvent their deportation laws without squawking.”

“Without squawking too much,” Bishop corrected her.

“Fine,” she agreed. “Look, there are legitimate concerns, and the brain trust here feels they need to have hands-on, so it’s not technically a turnover. Seems they read File four-oh-four-one-one in the ASD.”

The ASD-the Archive Sharing Database-employed by the FBI, the CSIS, Britain’s MI5, Interpol, and twenty-four other agencies, had a different name in Washington: Ass So Demolished, from the number of times the United States got screwed in that exchange program. Not that he didn’t see the Canadians’ point. Bishop had been part of that operation in 2001, at Bromma Airport in Stockholm, when Egyptian asylum seekers Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery were turned back by Sweden at the request of the FBI, which had Middle Eastern resources to protect. The file contained a detailed explanation of the diplomatic maneuvering that took place to make it seem like a Swedish decision in response to concerns voiced by Cairo, and not a decision cooked up in Washington. Even so, Sweden took a lot of heat for having failed to let the United Nations Human Rights Council study the case before taking unilateral action. It wasn’t just Swedish neutrality that took a hit, but the country’s reputation for independent action. Canadian authorities would accept the first, not the second.

“Are we expected to fly all three to Pakistan?” Bishop asked.

“No. Just two of them,” she said.

“Well, there’s a blessing,” Bishop said cynically. Two sets of regionally trained eyes on the worldly Pakistani operatives, a gaggle of suspicious Pakistani eyes on the territorial Canadians, fewer eyes on the package. “You cleared them?”

She wriggled the phone again. “They’re clean. Uninspiring but stainless.”

He produced a weary, resigned sigh and shifted his attention back to the vehicle. There was no point arguing over the stipulation if the diplomats had consented to it. No point, and no time. It was times like this that made him want to become a green badger-the nickname for former Bureau personnel who joined private industry to handle security in global hot spots. The stress was high, but the bureaucracies were thinner and the pay was better. And frankly, it was easier to protect a region or a city or just a business with international outlets, instead of the whole damn world.

Bishop watched as the Mercedes eased to a halt and the stocky driver exited. A moment later a second man in civilian clothes slid from the backseat, followed by a blond woman in a leather jacket and jeans who emerged from the opposite side and then turned to lean back in, reaching to unclip the prisoner’s seat belt.

Muloni took pictures of each individual with her cell phone. She tapped a six-digit code on the keypad. Facial recognition software from the Company’s sophisticated XApps database compared the images with the JPEGs she’d been sent. The password she’d used was phone specific; without it, the app would not function.

She showed the results to Bishop. The images all matched. They had no reason to prevent the Canadians from sticking around.

Bishop and Muloni had already been ID’d at the outside gate. Still, he thought, the first Mountie to emerge from the car should have done a backup check. All it would have taken for ringers to get through and cut them down was one bribed guard.

Bishop’s eyes narrowed as a fourth party, the notorious killer Veil, emerged from the vehicle. She had been named in at least a dozen attacks, from pinpoint assassinations to RPG attacks. Her hands were cuffed behind her back; her ankles shackled; the second plainclothesman helped to steady her on her feet. She wore a short black skirt over a wine-colored blouse that drew Bishop’s attention to her figure for longer than he hoped anyone had noticed. Her beige slip-on sneakers didn’t match the rest of her clothes: the Mounties had removed whatever shoes or boots she was wearing when she was bagged to make it easier for her to walk in restraints.