Infamy Page 3

  Lucy confirmed that there was more to the story this day at the White Horse. She wasn’t at liberty to reveal everything about the mission but asked the journalist if she recalled the story about the death of Ghareeb al Taizi, an ISIS leader in Syria.

  “Sure. The White House took credit for ordering the mission,” Stupenagel said. “But I’ve never been able to get much of anything out of my sources about it.”

  “That’s because very few people know anything, including the military brass,” Lucy told her. “But it wasn’t a Special Forces operation, nor did the administration know anything about it until it was over. It was one of ours, and the target wasn’t just al Taizi.”

  “I don’t understand,” Stupenagel said.

  “A few weeks before the mission, we got word that Nadya Malovo was back working for her Russian bosses and up to some mischief,” Lucy went on. “We’d been trying to find her since that little incident in Chechnya and Dagestan, but she disappeared. Then she popped up back in Moscow, not hiding at all but in the company of a Russian gangster named Ivan Nikitin. The next thing we knew, she was on the move. She got a little careless in Istanbul, and we picked up her trail; we lost it again in Damascus, but then a reliable source in Ramadi spotted her, apparently working as a bodyguard and interpreter for Nikitin. We got round-the-clock drone surveillance on her and watched her drive her boss to a compound outside a village north of Ramadi on the Syrian border. It’s the heart of ISIS country, and that alone was curious considering Russia is supposed to be helping us destroy ISIS.”

  Stupenagel shrugged. “Gangsters aren’t usually patriots. They’re trying to make a buck and don’t care who they’re dealing with so long as they can pay. Let me guess, this Russian gangster is an arms dealer?”

  Lucy nodded. “Yes, that and black-market oil. However, this particular gangster is also a former Russian general known for his brutality during the Russia-Chechnya wars—mass murders of entire villages suspected of sympathizing with Chechen separatists, men, women, and children. He was appropriately nicknamed ‘Ivan the Terrible.’ He’s not just any gangster but one with direct ties to the Kremlin.”

  Stupenagel raised her eyebrows. “Now, that’s interesting. So I take it they were meeting this al Taizi, perhaps with the approval of the Russian muckety-mucks?”

  “Yes. So Espey got the go-ahead for a raid. We wanted Malovo and al Taizi, and a chance to question Nikitin, too.”

  “But al Taizi got killed?”

  “Yep, and he wasn’t the only one. By the time our guys got to al Taizi, he and Nikitin were already dead, and so were four other men. The only one alive was Malovo. Just sitting there, cool as a cucumber.”

  Stupenagel whistled. “So much for her bodyguard duties. Who were the other guys?”

  Lucy looked at Stupenagel for a long moment, then leaned close. “You have to promise me that this doesn’t show up in a newspaper article until Espey says it’s okay.”

  Stupenagel narrowed her eyes but nodded. “Same rules. I get the exclusive and I get to put it out there first.”

  “Deal,” Lucy said, and looked around to see if anyone seemed to be watching or listening. “This is where it gets really interesting. It was easy to identify al Taizi, and one of our team members recognized Nikitin from Afghanistan.”

  “That would be Ivgeny Karchovski. . . .”

  “You said it, I didn’t. Anyway, the others took longer while we ran their photographs and fingerprints. Two of the dead guys were just foot soldiers there for security, not that they stood a chance with Malovo. The other two, however, were real somebodies: one, Farid Al Halbi, was a very wealthy businessman from Syria and tied at the hip to the Assad regime; the other, Feroze Kirmani, was one of the top agents with VAJA, the Iranian equivalent of the CIA.”

  “So let me get this straight. They’re all making nice with ISIS and al Taizi? And Malovo kills them all without breaking a sweat?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Malovo say why she killed them?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Claimed she didn’t want to die in a crossfire if her companions resisted. But to be honest, we think she intended to kill them all along.”

  “Why?”

  Another shrug. “She didn’t say much on the way back to the base in Saudi Arabia, except that she was keeping some information to herself. Maybe as a bartering chip. She did tell Espey that the men she killed were waiting for one more important player, someone representing somebody very wealthy, very powerful. Said she didn’t have a name but knows it was an American. But the guy never showed; she thinks he got tipped off about us.”

  “Anything to back that up?”

  “Well, we were supposed to be a top secret, need-to-know-basis mission, which means not many people knew what we were doing. But there was a ‘welcoming’ party when we got back to the Riyadh Air Force Base in Saudi. ‘They’ were waiting for us, and ‘they’ took everything, including Nadya Malovo.”

  Stupenagel frowned. “First, who is ‘they’? And second, I can’t believe that Espey Jaxon would sit still while some goons nabbed his goodies, especially if it involved national security.”

  “He didn’t,” Lucy replied. “In fact, there was a pretty tense standoff. Espey wasn’t giving them what they wanted, and they weren’t letting us go anywhere. So there we were sitting in a helicopter with the sun coming up on what would be a rather unpleasant 120-degree day in Saudi Arabia with neither side budging.”

  “Who blinked first?”

  “Wasn’t a matter of blinking,” Lucy said. “We got word from higher up—in fact, about as high up as you can get—that we were to stand down and turn everything over. Espey stalled as long as he could to buy time so that we could get a look at what we had, but it wasn’t enough time.”

  “So what did you see?”

  Lucy shrugged. “The documents were in Arabic, which was easy enough for me to read. Some of it might have been useful, with names and locations associated with ISIS operations. But there was a flash drive that had a number of files in it that also were in Arabic but complete gibberish, obviously encrypted. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but I did pick up one word that was used several times: sarab. It’s Arabic for ‘mirage.’ ”

  “Doesn’t seem unusual for a desert,” Stupenagel remarked.

  “Yeah, but it was repeated several times throughout a few of the files. How many times does ‘mirage’ by the normal definition come into a conversation?”

  “A code name?”

  “Maybe. But we didn’t have enough time to be certain.”

  Stupenagel frowned. “So back to my first question: Who are ‘they’ who took the stuff and Malovo?”

  “Officially, Company D, a Long Range Surveillance unit with the 148th Battalion. But apparently no one knows much about them, except that they report only to their immediate command and from there directly to the president’s national security adviser. I’m told they even bypass the Agency.”

  Stupenagel sipped her wine silently for a moment before speaking again. “This is all fascinating, and I’d love to know what’s so important about those files and documents that these ‘higher-ups’ are willing to intercede between military intelligence and an antiterrorism agency, particularly one with the sort of clout Jaxon’s apparently has. However, I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  “Well, that depends,” Lucy said. “After we got back, Espey went on the warpath and found out that Malovo was being held incommunicado at Guantánamo. He raised a stink and on the sly got her a big-shot lawyer who got her transferred to the Varick Federal Detention Center here in Manhattan. He hasn’t been allowed to see her yet, but she got him a message through her lawyer. Only one word.”

  “Let me guess. Sarab.”

  “Yep. But there’s something else, something she didn’t write down. The lawyer told us instead. He
said we needed to talk to one of the senior officers with the 148th Battalion who just so happens to be an old friend of Sam Allen,” Lucy said quietly. “Apparently they were classmates at West Point, though Sam was a couple of years older; both were Rangers, had several tours in the same places, including Vietnam. This guy also served under Sam in Iraq during the first Gulf War and then in Afghanistan after nine-eleven before getting into Long Range Surveillance.”

  Stupenagel wiped at a stray tear and cleared her throat. “What’s his name?”

  “Colonel Michael Swindells. We were hoping—”

  “Mick Swindells! Heck yeah, I know him,” Stupenagel exclaimed. “Sam, me, and Mick probably hit most of the bars from Saigon to Panama City and everything in between. Good man, better soldier, straight arrow . . . surprised he’d be involved with black ops. More of a John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon type than The Bourne Identity . . . Why doesn’t Espey give him a call?”

  “For one thing, he isn’t sure how Swindells would react,” Lucy said, “though he’ll feel better about it when I tell him what you said. But more important, all these other intelligence agencies don’t know what to make of us—they can’t get much information but know Espey has juice from somebody high up. They may be watching, and direct contact between Espey and Swindells might raise more than eyebrows.”

  Stupenagel smiled. “So you thought the personal touch from a certain charming and, I might add, outrageously gorgeous journalist might be better?”

  “A visit from an ‘old friend,’ ” Lucy said with a laugh. “We were hoping that you might at least know him because of the connection to General Allen. Drinking buddies is even better.”

  “Okay, I’ll give him a call. Got a number?” Stupenagel asked.

  “We prefer you don’t use phone lines. He’s been lying low, so he may be a little paranoid, too. But there’s a reunion picnic in Central Park for Troop D. We have reason to believe that Colonel Swindells will make an appearance there.”

  “And I’m just supposed to show up out of the blue and chat up someone I haven’t seen or spoken to in more than twenty years about some top secret information?”

  “We know it’s a stretch, but it’s what we’ve got at the moment. Besides, you’re the famous Ariadne Stupenagel, investigative journalist extraordinaire; you have more secret ways of getting information than the Kremlin, da, comrade? So what do you think?”

  Stupenagel thought about it for a moment, then chuckled. “Looks like I’m going to a picnic.”

  Which is how she found herself trying to navigate Central Park turf in high heels as she walked toward Colonel Mick Swindells and the young woman. Suddenly, the man’s frown changed to a grin. “Well, I’ll be damned if it isn’t Ariadne Stupenagel!”

  The journalist smiled right back as she crossed the last ten feet and kissed him on the cheek. “Mick Swindells, you’re still a dreamboat.”

  “Other than your eyesight, you don’t seem to have aged yourself,” Swindells said, grinning.

  “Liar, but I choose to remember that every lie contains a grain of truth,” Stupenagel said. “So thank you.”

  Swindells laughed and turned toward the young woman, who was watching them with a perplexed look on her face. “Ariadne, I’d like to introduce you to Lieutenant Sasha Swindells, my daughter.”

  “Your daughter? I didn’t know you were married.”

  “Twenty-two years ago,” Swindells replied. “Not long after the last time I saw you.”

  The young woman extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “The pleasure’s mine. I see you have your father’s eyes and that you’ve chosen to join the family business.”

  Sasha Swindells smiled. “Yes, the Army was always Dad’s first love, so I thought I’d find out why. How do you know my dad?”

  Stupenagel thought she detected a trace of bitterness in the young woman’s voice but chose to ignore it. “Well, I’m sure he’s very proud,” she said as she looked back fondly at the man she’d come to see. “We were friends a long time ago; he was best friends with someone I was very close to.”

  The smile left Mick Swindells’s face. “I still can’t believe Sam’s gone,” he said. “Best man I ever met, and I know the two of you had something special, too.”

  Stupenagel felt the grief grab her by the throat for a moment before she was able to speak. “Yes, he was quite a man. A great friend and a true hero who didn’t think twice about putting himself in danger for his country. But he didn’t expect the danger to come from within.”

  Swindells’s face flushed with anger. “No, and that’s the most dangerous kind,” he said, then tilted his head and looked quizzically at her. “So what brings you to a reunion picnic for an LRS unit? I take it you weren’t just wandering around in Central Park in four-inch heels looking for soldiers? Or does this have something to do with Sam?”

  Stupenagel nodded toward Sasha. “In a way it does. I don’t mean to be rude, but could I speak to you alone for a few minutes?”

  The younger woman patted her dad’s arm. “I can take a hint,” she said. “Are we still on for dinner—that is, unless you and your friend want that time to catch up?”

  “That would be nice and maybe some other day,” Stupenagel replied. “But I have a prior engagement with my fiancé tonight.”

  “Fiancé?” Swindells said, raising an eyebrow. “I’d like to meet the man who was able to talk Ariadne Stupenagel into matrimony. If I remember correctly, I think even Sam Allen failed to do that.”

  “He never asked,” Stupenagel said. “At least, not when sober and wearing clothes. The other times don’t count.”

  Swindells laughed and turned back to his daughter. “Pick you up at your hotel at nineteen hundred hours, Lieutenant? In the meantime, put that item I gave you in a safe place.”

  His daughter snapped to attention and saluted. “Yes, sir!”

  Swindells returned the salute. “Dismissed, then.”

  As they watched the young woman walk away, Stupenagel smiled. “Beautiful girl. Seems to be a chip off her old man’s block.”

  A funny look passed over Swindells’s face, and he nodded. “Yes, maybe a bit too much. Guarded emotionally. Her mother died when she was ten. I handled it by taking on as many hot spot tours as I could get. She was mostly raised by my mom, who lives in New Rochelle.”

  “Thus the comment about your first love,” Stupenagel said.

  Swindells nodded. “Yes, that dig was meant for me. I regret not being around for her, but there’s nothing I can do to change the past except try to see her more now. She just graduated, like Sam and me, from the Point and is visiting her grandmother before leaving for Ranger school.”

  “Like father, like daughter.”

  “Yes. She thinks she has something to prove. Being worthy of my love and all that.” Swindells’s voice caught, and he had to clear this throat before going on. “She’s always had it even if I wasn’t very good at showing it. . . . Anyway, I’m going to be teaching a special course at West Point in advanced asymmetrical warfare. The 148th Battalion was my last posting, and I just stopped by to say hi to some of the grunts who worked for me.”

  Stupenagel looked at him sideways. “I was wondering what a combat soldier like Mick Swindells was doing with a military intelligence outfit. Black ops didn’t seem to be your style.”

  Swindells shrugged. “With the force reduction in the hot zones, it was a way to stay in the action. I think field intelligence, instead of relying on high-tech surveillance, is one place where the Army has done a piss-poor job, and I wanted to be part of bringing it up to snuff. Plus, I’ve learned a few things about staying alive in the field and thought I might pass that knowledge on to some of these young men and women.”

  As he spoke, he gestured toward the gathering. Stupenagel followed his gesture and noted that a number of the attendees were look
ing at them curiously.

  “So I won’t ask how you happened to know I would be in Central Park,” Swindells said, “and why you know so much about the 148th, but do you want to let me know what this is really about?”

  Stupenagel nodded. “Ghareeb al Taizi. Or, more to the point, what happened afterward at Riyadh.”

  Swindells kept the smile on his face, but his eyes narrowed and all traces of humor disappeared. “Never heard of it.”

  “I think you have,” Stupenagel said. “And I want to know what was such a big secret that your guys and an antiterrorism agency were headed for a showdown at the O.K. Corral until someone high up ruled in your guys’ favor.”

  “One, not ‘my’ guys; that was a Company D operation and they only report to the guys at the very top, not some lowly colonel. Two, there are some things going on that I don’t necessarily agree with, but as you know, the government often keeps some information from the public.”

  “Even from other agencies?”

  Swindells shrugged. “Interagency feuds are an everyday occurrence.” He glanced at the tables and then laughed and reached out to touch her arm as if they were sharing a fond memory.

  “Granted,” Stupenagel said, “but I have reason to believe that this is more than an interagency power struggle. Someone high up didn’t want anyone to have access to whatever was on those computers and documents.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Maybe not, but what about Nadya Malovo? Does she know what she’s talking about? What about sarab, the mirage?”

  Swindells’s face tensed at the word, then he smiled stiffly and offered her his arm. “Let’s walk.” When they’d moved away from the others, he spoke again. “I want you to forget this. It’s above your pay grade and probably mine; all I can say is I’m working on something, but I’m not there yet and may never get there. You don’t know what you’re up against, so please drop it, for old times’ sake. You’re swimming in shark-infested waters.”