Jim DeFelice - Threat Level Black

Finally, Chin Yop got up to go to the restroom. Dr. Park said something to him as he pushed away the chair.

“Don’t leave me alone with these women,” whispered the CIA translator from the team van, two blocks away.

Chin Yop said something in return; Fisher assumed it was a lewd suggestion, because the translator, a woman, didn’t immediately supply the line.

“All right,” said Madison, pointing to the screen. “Let’s do it.”

“No. I think we ought to wait,” said Fisher.

“What?”

“I think we ought to wait.”

“Screw that,” said Madison. He brought his arm to his mouth and spoke into his mike. “Go,” he told his people.

Fisher shook his head.

The CIA officer with the brooch said “Good evening” in Russian-the words sounded a bit like “Duh breeze there”-giving the signal to exit. Mathers jumped to her feet and grabbed Dr. Park. He pushed her away but got up, starting to walk toward the back. The other CIA agent inside the restaurant loomed at the left, corralling him. One of the patrons yelled something.

Then both the audio and visual feeds died.

“Shit,” said Fisher, jumping from the car.

Dr. Park felt his head spin as the man pushed him toward the door.

The Americans were trying to help him escape-surely they were trying to help him escape. But the woman and the man who had approached him had spoken Russian. Where were they taking him?

Dr. Park took a step toward the back when the man from the other table grabbed him. He whispered something that Dr. Park didn’t understand.

He thought it was Russian, yet it seemed almost Korean.

Dr. Park was being pushed toward the front. He tried to grab Ms. Kung, but she was sliding away, running toward the exit.

What was going on?

The door flew open. Dr. Park tried to push against the large man but it was no use; he felt himself thrown out into the street.

“Nyet,” he said, the only Russian he knew. “No! Help!” he shouted in Korean.

Where were the Americans?

“Come with us,” said the short woman, Mathers.

She was speaking English.

Suddenly, Dr. Park understood: They were all Americans. He started to run.

A police car sped around the corner. Two men got out and began shouting, reaching for their weapons. Dr. Park threw himself to the ground.

Fisher got to the corner just as a pair of Russian police cars, one marked, one unmarked, arrived. Two policemen were in the street, guns drawn.

The American FBI agent pulled out the Beretta that Madison had supplied. As the Russian police grabbed at Kung, Fisher fired, making sure he hit the man square in the chest, where he was protected by his bulletproof vest.

The other policeman fired back, missing. The CIA backup team finally got its act together, firing a barrage of tear-gas canisters that sent the policemen retreating across the street. Fisher, choking, grabbed Kung and dragged her away, then went back for Dr. Park. His eyes blurred with the gas; he grabbed a figure in front of him and pulled backward, his whole body burning with the thick gas. His eyes clamped themselves shut.

“Go, let’s go!” Madison shouted.

Fisher managed to crack open one eye and saw that he’d taken Mathers, not the Korean scientist. Cursing, he let go of her and started back toward the restaurant.

Madison grabbed him. “No! The police are coming,” he shouted. “We have to leave. Now!”

Fisher hesitated just long enough to hear a fresh hail of bullets hitting the concrete a few yards away.

“All right,” he said, heading back around the corner where a van was waiting, eyes and nose raw with the gas.

“You okay?” asked Madison as they sped away.

“Yeah,” said Fisher. “But I really hate tearjerkers.”

Faud Daraghmeh closed the book and got up from the small table where he had been reading. He could hear his landlady’s television downstairs as he went to the kitchen. The old woman would be dozing in her chair by now, no doubt dreaming of the grandchildren she never saw. She talked of them often to him, with the fondness that he thought his great-aunt must use when she spoke of him.

It was a weakness, one of many. Faud took the teapot from the stove and began to fill it. The imam had warned him; the worst temptations were the subtle ones, the almost silent callings of slothfulness and indecision.

But his path was set. He had completed the most difficult job more than a month earlier. Now he only waited for the next set of instructions. Whatever they were, he would be ready. Faith must win out over temptation.

He turned off the water and placed the teapot on the stove.

In the aftermath of an operation, there are always several perspectives on its conduct and outcome. Often there is an inverse relationship between proximity to the operation and the opinion thereof: While those who had been at the scene might consider that things had gone decently under the circumstances, those several times removed might opine that lousy was a more appropriate adjective.

And then there was the opinion of Fisher’s boss.

“A fiasco. Utter and complete.”

“I wouldn’t call it utter,” said Fisher, speaking from the protection of the American embassy in Ukraine, where he’d been spirited after the fallout from the operation.

“What would you call it?”

“Something other than utter. I’ve never really understood what utter meant.”

“You’re a screwup, Fisher. Whatever you touch screws up. You’re lucky the ambassador got you out of Moscow; I’d drop a dime on you myself.”

Fisher hadn’t heard the expression drop a dime since his days as a nugget agent investigating the Mob. It had a nostalgic feel which he couldn’t help but admire.

According to both the NSA and the CIA, the Russians believed that they had broken up a robbery by a group of mafiya, a story supported by the versions of the incident supplied by Dr. Park and his security agent bodyguard. The Korean government had apparently accepted that explanation. But Fisher wasn’t about to point that out to Hunter, who clearly wasn’t in the mood to accept anything short of ritual suicide as an apology for the mission’s failure. For some reason known only to Hunter, the fact that the CIA had taken over the project failed to mollify him; he considered a screwup a screwup. Fisher thought this an unusually altruistic opinion for one so committed to advancing in government service.

“You’re off the case, Fisher,” said Hunter.

“What a shock,” said Fisher.

“I’m not putting up with your sarcastic back talk any longer.”

“Does that mean I can hang up?”

Hunter was silent. Fisher thought he heard him murmuring to himself. It sounded as if he was counting to ten, though Fisher knew for a fact that Hunter couldn’t count that high.

“Homeland Security has requested you be assigned to them,” said Hunter finally. “I’m granting their request.”

“What?”

“Work with Macklin on his task force.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I don’t kid, Fisher.”

“Where exactly am I supposed to report?”

“Macklin is up in New York somewhere. Use your alleged detecting skills and find him,” said Hunter. “I swear, Fisher, if it were up to me, you’d be on a Coast Guard cutter in the Bering Strait, guarding icebergs.”

Roughly twenty hours later Fisher arrived at National Airport in Washington, D.C., bedraggled, grouchy, and in need of a shave-pretty much top form for any special agent. Technically he was off duty, en route to the special Homeland Security-DIA task force in the New York Metropolitan area. But Justice took no holiday. So he wasn’t surprised to find her screaming when he walked through the lobby at National Airport.