Jack Coughlin - An Act of Treason

He popped the shirt knot twice, but without enthusiasm, just to keep the rats on their toes and awake and alert and fearful. He spoke to them. “There was this one time, guys, talk about being bored, I crawled into an abandoned building about six hundred yards from the actual home of this dude who was the big leader of a rebel force in an African country. Can’t tell you which one. Sorry about that, but it’s classified. Stayed there forty-eight hours, clicking away pictures with my Nikonos and narrating on the radio about who came, who left, their tendencies, how much security they had, when they slept, you guys know, the usual stuff. The guy thought he was safe, but I was living in his front yard…”

There was a sound outside the door, and Swanson stopped his conversation with the rodents. He had been expecting it, sooner or later, so his heart did not go into overdrive. With a squeal of metal, the grate at the bottom of the door slid open, and a plastic plate with some food and tea was passed through. The bluish green light in that brief moment was from the fluorescent lights in the long hall, which told him nothing. The grate was left open, so he was expected to eat and return the plate, two beverage containers, and plastic fork.

None of the rats had a watch. He had asked them. Now his jailers had provided the start of a feeding pattern, allowing his internal time to click to zero. Swanson began counting seconds, adjusting his thoughts to let the silent little metronome in his brain begin twitching back and forth on such a regular basis that he could do two things at once. When he picked up the plate to determine which meal of the day it was, he gave a soft laugh. No problem; it was breakfast, of a sort. The imam had been at work again, determined that Swanson would have familiar food, and Kyle thought that might have been a mistake. Instead of a regular large Pakistani breakfast, the cook had tried to prepare an American meal. Swanson had been given runny scrambled eggs, a couple of slices of charred toast slathered with honey, and a cup of sweet black tea and milk. No matter. This was survival, and he ate it all, while at the same time using a prong of the plastic fork to punch a little hole in his shirt. Then he pushed the plastic and paper back through the hole. Someone picked it up and closed the grate.

Darkness again, only this time with a difference. He worked on his timeline, his boring, tedious, glorious timeline. More than just a count, it gave him something to do, something to think about to keep his psyche engaged. The count was already up to almost ten minutes, piling higher second by second. The strike had been at evening prayers on Tuesday, so this was Wednesday morning, breakfast time. Sixty seconds to a minute. Three thousand six hundred seconds to an hour.

Swanson’s fingers had already widened the hole he had punctured in the tunic, and when the hour mark passed, he made a small rip along one edge. The shirt was now a physical clock. He could keep time, counting down to the next feeding time. It was a routine that he could do for days if necessary.

He leaned back against the wall with a sigh, gently touching the rip. One hour. There was no such thing as an indefinite mission. Each operation had an end time, and a purpose. This didn’t.

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

C RISP MORNING LIGHT SLANTEDthrough the blinds covering the bullet- and soundproof windows in the private interview room on the second floor of the CIA headquarters. Despite the glare, the faces of the three investigators on the Agent Lauren Carson case were dark, betraying their emotions. Jack Pathurst, the internal investigator from the Office of Security, had a muscle twitching in his jaw. Mia Kim from Finance had a pursed mouth, as if she had eaten something sour. Team leader Mel Langdon of the Department of Operations adjusted his rimless glasses and looked over the report one more time.

“She has not returned to her home since our meeting yesterday?” Langdon asked Pathurst.

“No.” He did not say that there was nothing for her to return to. His searchers had torn the place apart-stripped out the insulation in the attic and pulled up the floorboards, sliced apart the stuffed furniture, tore down cabinets, and took out drains. In the wall of the bedroom, behind the headboard of the bed, they had found a half million dollars in cash, along with a gun and a fake passport. Pathurst edged close to the table and propped his elbows on it, resting his chin on his fists and just staring at the others for a few moments. “She has to know that we found her hidden stash, so she won’t be going back.” Jack Pathurst enjoyed his job. “I am afraid we fucked this up.”

Langdon exhaled heavily. “And all you found was a plastic trash bag filled with money, a gun, and fake ID? That was a little convenient, don’t you think? Carson was trained as a CIA agent, and you believe she would leave her getaway pack where you could find it so easily?”

“The point is, Mel, that we did find it. And we’re still looking through her personal records. If she has more out there, we will get that, too.”

Mia Kim cleared her throat before speaking. “We also discovered that bank account in Argentina that we traced directly back to Agent Carson. There is no question about the identity of the person who has sole access to it. It belongs to her.”

Pathurst asked, “How much is in it?”

“Another half million, plus or minus,” Kim said.

“That’s another fact, Mel. Not a guess.”

“And also pretty easy to find. Sloppy work, and Agent Carson is not a sloppy person.”

Langdon was gliding through the motions, certain that this was going to be off of his desk soon and over to the lawyers for prosecution. He wanted to be right before passing it along. No blowback. “Nevertheless, just what you have uncovered thus far gives us enough to throw the book at her. Her career here is over, and she probably is facing a prison term. She has to know that.”

“Agreed,” said Pathurst. “The sooner we arrest her, the better.”

Langdon did not want to take the final step. “Jack, I have been conducting internal investigations for many years, and we have to be careful. I’m not ready to file charges.”

“Mel, dammit, we are CIA and we don’t have to file anything! I say we should pick her up right away. Carson knows what can happen, just how deep we can make someone disappear. Faced with a grind of enhanced interrogation at some third world hellhole, she’ll fold in a minute.”

Mia Kim broke in. One hand rested on the arm of her chair, and she was gently tapping the table with her other fingers. Nervous energy. “Jack, I also don’t like sudden gifts from the angels when doing an investigation: sacks of money and phony bank accounts. We should have had to unravel a lot more fronts and dodges before getting to that point. No doubt that she is involved in something, but we don’t know what, or whether she knows anything about it.”

Jack Pathurst examined them both with curiosity rather than alarm. The normal reaction should have at least been some outrage, but Langdon and Kim were dithering. “All the more reason to get her in here. I have agents checking area hotels and motels because she had to spend the night somewhere. I need your permission before asking for police help. We can have every cop on the streets looking for her within an hour.”

“That risks going public,” Langdon said. “Not a good idea.”

“Mel, I can get this girl. She’s just a beauty queen, not a real field agent. She is out there on her own and without resources. I will get her and throw her down a well until she tells us what we need to know. There is no downside to snapping up one of our own agents. I don’t understand why you are hesitating.”