Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

“Thank you, Madame Director,” said Yao.

“I look forward to welcoming you home when you are done.”

Yao smiled. “I look forward to coming home when I’m done.”

36

They had run out of coffee in the safe house, and John Clark found this wholly unacceptable. After the shootout, Sam, Ding, and Dom were all out this morning tailing a Sharps employee named Bridgeforth, and Clark decided he had time to run out to a coffee shop to grab a cup. As far as he was concerned, he would have just gone into the first 7-Eleven, or whatever the little bodegas around here were called—he didn’t need anything more fancy than a hot jolt of caffeine—but the closest place to him was actually right next door to his condo building down at street level, so he stepped in there.

Within ten seconds he turned to step back out, the place was too damn crowded, but there were already four college-age kids behind him in a line that blocked the exit, so with a sigh he decided to stick it out and wait his turn.

The crowd was heavy, even at nine forty-five in the morning when most of these young people should have been, at least as far as Clark was concerned, at work. The establishment was far too trendy for Clark’s taste; he was the oldest patron in sight by at least a quarter-century, and when he scanned the large menu handwritten in chalk on a board on the wall, he saw this roaster—the joint was even too pretentious to call itself a coffee shop—served every imaginable permutation of beans and teas and soy and foam. He rolled his eyes at the seemingly never-ending options of syrups and caramels and cookie bits and protein powders that could be added to the drink.

As he waited in line he had every intention of asking the waifish pixie behind the counter with the pin through her septum if he could, by any slim chance, purchase a regular goddamned cup of coffee, but fortunately for all involved, he had time to kill, and he spent the time rereading the choices of sixty or seventy drinks on the board. To his relief, on his second scan of the menu he finally saw that the establishment would be able to accommodate his outlandish request for a simple cup of black joe.

His transaction went smoothly, he even calmed a bit and bought himself a multigrain bagel, and he sat down at a small bistro table in the back. There was a New York Times on the seat next to him, so he picked it up and began looking at the front page.

President Ryan was taking heat from the Times for his stance on North Korea. Clark didn’t have to turn to the editorial section to see this; the invective came through in a front-page above-the-fold “straight news” piece. The procedural vote next week was going to be tight, and the Times reported on North Korea’s promises to use its bank accounts to help its citizenry. The North Koreans said any restriction on their ability to do this would starve innocent civilians.

The Times was pushing a “trust but verify” line, giving the DPRK the room it needed to handle its banking affairs so it could spend the hard currency in its overseas bank accounts, with the caveat that Western accounting inspectors spot-check more financial transactions to make sure the DPRK wasn’t earning offshore monies via drugs or counterfeiting or illegal weapons sales.

Clark rolled his eyes. He was no accountant himself, but he sure knew assholes, and this made him an expert on Choi. He knew without reservation the lunatic kid running North Korea couldn’t be trusted to open his accounting ledgers to inspectors.

If the UN Sanctions Committee vote failed, then Choi would keep his worldwide criminal enterprises operating; and either he would give the UN cooked books to look through or else he would rope-a-dope them with obfuscations and delays, and it would be half a decade before the UN would pronounce him in violation of the agreement and do anything about it.

And in five years Choi could have the ICBM he was after, and when that happened, the UN wouldn’t do a damn thing to stop him ever again.

Clark tossed the paper on the table in frustration, and then looked up quickly when he realized a man was seating himself right in front of him at his little two-top.

The man had wavy blond hair streaked with gray, a ruddy complexion, and a big grin on his face.

Well, shit, Clark said to himself.

It was Duke Sharps.

Clark showed no surprise, and he said nothing, he just gazed at the man in front of him with eyes that were too cold to read.

Sharps kept his smile wide. Clark was pretty sure he was looking at veneers, and the man’s blue double-breasted blazer and striped shirt made him look to John like he should have been sitting on a yacht in Palm Beach instead of in a hipster coffee shop in Manhattan.

Duke said, “John Clark. It has been one hell of a long while. How are you, brother?” He extended a hand and Clark reluctantly shook it.

He was waiting for the man’s pitch or threat, whichever way Sharps was going to play it. Sharps, however, was in no rush.

“When and where was the last time we ran into one another? It was after I left the Bureau. You were at Rainbow. Was it over in the UK?”

“What can I do for you, Sharps?”

“Right to the chase? Not going to waste my time, I see. I respect that.” Sharps picked up the copy of the Times and pointed to the article Clark had just been reading. “A blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. No big fan of the Times , but they are right on this one. North Korea isn’t the bad guy here. They have as much right to interact in the marketplace as any other country. As long as they are not proliferating weapons, how dare Jack fucking Ryan tell them where they can put their money and how they can spend it?”

Clark snorted a little. “When did you become a card-carrying member of the Fair Play for the DPRK Committee?” Clark’s reference was to Lee Harvey Oswald. He had worked for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization that protested the U.S. government’s heavy-handed tactics over the communist island.

Sharps chuckled. After a moment he said, “I’m in the right on this one, Clark, but my high school debate team days are long behind me. I’m not going to try to convince you.” He leaned forward on his elbows. His smile dissipated. “An associate of mine mentioned he happened to notice a known colleague of yours down in Turtle Bay yesterday. I guess it could have been a coincidence, but it got me thinking. You’re an old fox like I am, and you know there is no such thing as a chance encounter. I snooped into your colleague, which led me to you. My man was on the job, and this leads me to believe you are on the job in some capacity as well. You aren’t with the Agency anymore, not even as a training cadre, so I’m guessing you’re doing contract work for someone.”

Sharps leaned closer. “Maybe some people are still scared of you. You’re an old snake eater, after all. But as far as I’m concerned, the operative word is ‘old.’”

Clark was not a snake eater, old or otherwise. That was an archaic term used for Green Berets, U.S. Army Special Forces, and Clark had been a Navy SEAL. He didn’t expect Sharps to know the difference, and he didn’t bother to correct him.

The sixty-year-old Sharps said, “I sit before you as a professional courtesy. I am here to kindly ask you to pack up your op and take your gang of washed-up boys down to Penn Station and put them, along with yourself, back on a train for D.C. You’re out of your element here. My guys and your guys keep bumping into one another . . . and somebody is going to get themselves hurt.”

Clark’s jaw tensed, clamping down tight to keep from saying what he wanted to say. He knew he had to take whatever Sharps dished out as a short-term tactical defeat. Sharps had somehow compromised his operation, and this was a terrible blow, but Clark identified something quickly. Sharps had misidentified what Clark’s operation was all about. He clearly thought Clark was working some sort of counterintelligence contract job for one of the foreign embassies or UN delegations. This would have been highly illegal, but Sharps wasn’t objecting on moral or legal grounds. No, his quarrel with Clark was that he thought Clark was trying to protect one of the delegates Sharps and Riley had been targeting.