The Holy Bullet Part 14

The ferry ride was no added relief for James Phelps. Three and a half hours of travel had left his seat numb.

The breeze was a little chilly, but that didn't matter. The sky was clear and full of stars, which he admired, since people rarely look at the stars in the sky unless they are astronomers, amateur or professional. He'd felt absorbed into the forces of the universe for some time. Rafael was talking to the captain of the boat inside the tiny pilothouse. In the darkness he could make out the lights dotting the coast of Dover, the beginning of the British Empire. He had all the ingredients for feeling at peace with his G.o.d, but he was uneasy. Rafael was a man of mystery and didn't confide in him; that was obvious. Otherwise he would have told him about the bodies they transported in the van. At least they sleep the sleep of the just.

They hadn't exchanged a word since the service station in Antwerp, but Phelps had worked out his own plot, hundreds of guesses and theories, trying to understand even the smallest part of the puzzle. Still, he only managed to feel his seat get more numb as each mile went by. They had entered France and covered the north coast to Calais at high speed, where this ferry waited for them. Everything very well organized and Phelps, as always, a spectator involved in the plot but completely outside the plan.

"Enough," he heard himself say in the emptiness.

He reached decisively into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out his cell phone. He had a right to have the latest technology, unless it was a cor rupter. It had advantages when used with sense and moderation, like everything. He ran through the list of numbers for the name of the person he wanted to call. As soon as he found it, he pressed the green b.u.t.ton that began the call. He glanced over at the bridge where Rafael continued a friendly conversation with the captain, who apparently was an acquaintance.

"I'm still completely in the dark," he said the second someone answered the phone. "I don't know anything. They ordered me to accompany him, but he doesn't open his mouth about anything. It's difficult like this. If he doesn't talk, I think Monsignor has a duty to inform and alert me." He gave the said Monsignor an opportunity to accept the suggestion. It might seem by the decisive tone of voice that Phelps had had enough, since it would never cross his mind to give orders to anyone, let alone a monsignor. "Yes, of course. I beg your pardon, but I've been in the dark since we left Rome." Pause. "It was not my intention," he excused himself submissively. "I beg your pardon, but please understand, we are carrying corpses with us. You have to agree that is not normal. I'm not used to-" He was interrupted on the other end of the line. "You heard right, Monsignor. Bodies. According to what I know, an English couple." A new pause. Surely he had p.r.i.c.ked the curiosity of the prelate. "In the English Channel on the way to Dover."

He felt a painless pressure on the back of his hand that made him open it, involuntarily, and release the cell phone into another hand, Rafael's. He hadn't heard him come up.

"How dare you?" cried Phelps, reddening. He couldn't tolerate this man anymore. He hadn't the least respect for people or for age, which surely deserves dignity.

Rafael threw the phone out in an arc that was lost in the darkness of the night. It fell into the waters of the channel, causing an inaudible splash confused with the noise of water thrown up by the prow of the ferry.

"Are you crazy? How dare you?" Phelps was possessed, looking at the water where the voice of the monsignor had just drowned.

Rafael looked at him with that indifference characteristic of his style. He said nothing, unaffected by his companion's anger.

"I . . . I . . . I . . ." Phelps insisted in his shocked litany.

He regained his customary calmness. His reproaches dried up quickly before his tongue was tired. The flush of fury would certainly be worth seeing, if the light was favorable, since even a gentleman like Phelps has the right to be carried away by pa.s.sion by an insult like this. Or no? It was a cell phone, his own, and he was in the middle of a conversation. There could be no greater insult.

Rafael put a hand on Phelps's shoulder and looked him in the eye seriously. "Turn the other cheek," he said. "Turn the other cheek." He returned to the bridge to resume his conversation with the captain.

Exactly fourteen minutes later, Rafael was sitting behind the wheel of the Mercedes van again, and Phelps, silent, in the pa.s.senger seat, prepared to continue on to the unknown destination, unknown at least to all the Phelpses of the world.

Phelps consulted his watch, which Rafael hadn't yet thrown overboard, or in this case out the window. It was still on Roman time, an hour ahead of old Albion, an easy calculation. It was 3:03 in the morning. The night was half over, as was his anger. If things continued like this, he was going to lose respect for his calling, dishonor Almighty G.o.d the Father, and slap this Rafael in the face . . . or maybe it would be better not to start down that road. Surrept.i.tiously he prayed his bad thoughts away. It was incredible what this man managed to arouse in him. The road in front was deserted, marked by the light poles on the sides. Only the noise of the van's engine disturbed the harmony of the night.

"When are you going to stop treating me like a puppet?" he asked finally in a calm tone to try to get some information in another way, although it was clear nothing mattered to this man driving the Mercedes.

"I'm not treating you like a puppet," Rafael answered without taking his eyes off the road.

"No?" For a moment he lost his self-control, and this negative reply left his lips louder than he intended. He continued to appeal to calm to reunite his efforts and take back control of his body and spirit. "I don't know where we're going or who the corpses are we're transporting or what's going to happen to them. It's a sacrilege, you ought to know, to profane corpses in this way. They deserve eternal rest." He enumerated with his fingers, remembering not to raise his voice. How could Rafael maintain that cool posture? That was another thought that went through his mind and upset his serenity. It was irritating. "You had the gall to throw my phone in the channel." Here his voice began to change. Simply remembering brought back his anger. "I can't tolerate this situation any longer." He vented his feelings. "I feel lost, I don't know what I'm doing here . . . I want to help, don't get me wrong, but I don't know how." He sighed. "If you want to know the truth, I feel like a prisoner. I'm in your custody, and I don't know why, or what punishment awaits me."

A sudden slamming on of brakes scared away Phelps's thoughts and left him shaking with anxiety. The van stayed perfectly stopped in place.

"What's going on?" Phelps asked, his instincts awake, looking around on all sides.

Rafael was imperturbable and calm.

"Is something happening?" Phelps wanted to know, unable to make out anything out of the normal.

"I'm waiting," Rafael declared.

"Waiting for what?"

"For you to get out of the van."

Phelps stared at Rafael in astonishment.

"You want me to get out of the van?"

"No. It's you who feels like a prisoner. I'm showing you that you can go whenever you consider it convenient."

The two men looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Rafael was not a man to leave things unresolved. When there were doubts, he preferred to clarify some and leave others to develop further. The message he wanted Phelps to get was that this mission would go on with or without him.

"Keep going," Phelps decided.

"Is that your wish?" Rafael pressured him, since that would ensure that the problem remained resolved.

"Go on," Phelps repeated.

The Mercedes accelerated in the direction of London. The tension in the cab of the van had disappeared.

"You'll know at the proper time why you're with me. Only then will I tell you what you have to do. As far as the rest, it's better you not know, for your own safety."

"Why so much secrecy?"

"It's not my part to explain all the ins and outs of the operation."

"But what's all this for? Are we following something or someone?"

Rafael left Phelps's question hanging, a suspenseful pause to arouse his curiosity, common to all master manipulators.

A phone call broke the silence. It could only be Rafael's cell phone, since Phelps's lay on the bottom of the channel. Rafael looked at his watch, and, for the first time, Phelps saw him show doubt. Whoever it was had some effect on him.

"Yes." He finally paid attention.

Sixty-one seconds pa.s.sed in which he didn't p.r.o.nounce one word, but his indifferent att.i.tude abandoned him. His frown revealed his tension. He's human after all He's human after all, Phelps thought.

"You don't have more information?" Rafael asked over the phone. He listened to the reply. "I know who can help us. I'll take care of it . . . if we're still on time." He disconnected the phone. Phone conversations between people like this are always as brief as possible.

Something had disturbed Rafael; his indifference seemed to have vanished. His mind was an engine working at high speed. Even Phelps could understand that.

"You didn't finish telling me," Phelps interrupted when he thought enough time had pa.s.sed. "Are we following someone?"

"John Paul the Second," Rafael answered dryly.

"What?"

29.

This bedroom community on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., can influence everything that happens in the world. It's like a vital organ of society that, if functioning badly, can cause great problems. We are speaking of Langley, Virginia, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. Here is where intelligence information is gathered from all over the world and presented to the political powers of Washington, when justified.

Invented or trustworthy, fictional or real, the truth is that the confidential reports that go out from here have the power to start wars where they don't yet exist, suppress any political movement, here or on foreign soil, or modify the routine of thousands of people at a specific point on the globe, only because, according to preliminary studies, it could benefit the American economy.

Nevertheless, after sixty years, the company was beginning a new era. Other inst.i.tutions, in particular the NSA, the National Security Agency, for many years called the No Such Agency, uses technology that always reaches farther and faster than the human resources the CIA relies on, contributing to its decline and even discredit. Besides, machines are always more trustworthy. The age of spies has changed suddenly and without warning.

The night shift has just come on, and that irritated the a.s.sistant subdirector since it meant extra hours, the sacrifice of family time again, the third time that week. For Harvey Littel, country came before anything else, and perhaps this explained the elevated rate of divorce among those working in this branch, though not yet in his case.

He'd covered a lot of miles through these corridors. He punched in at seven in the morning. The sun hadn't yet risen, and now he returned crossing them toward the elevator to the east wing. His thirty-minute run every morning before coming to work gave him an enviable physique that enabled him, at fifty-three, to endure the daily pressure to which he was subjected as a.s.sistant subdirector.

Harvey Littel's function could be explained fairly simply. He carried out all the dirty work for the subdirector, who could present it to the director as his own work, or, if Harvey Littel, by some chance, screwed up, everything could go to h.e.l.l, but only one head would roll . . . his.

He glanced at the windows that reflected the darkness of the night, noting how he'd spent one more day unable to take advantage of the sun. At five in the afternoon, he'd told his wife, Lindy, not to count on him for supper.

"Harvey, it's the third time this week," she complained as soon as she was able to get to the phone, out of breath. Harvey didn't even need to tell her why he was calling. "See if your boss will let you off. This is what happens when your husband does more than everyone else." She continued to complain, more with herself than with him, speaking faster. She was a lonely woman, now that the children had gone their own ways. She believed her husband was too busy with his work in the computer store where he was head of the sales department. Lindy couldn't figure out why her husband thought he was saving the world every day. Nor did Harvey imagine that her protests over his not showing up for dinner were made from on top of the bed, his bed, where she'd been romping at five in the afternoon with her lover, Stephen Baldwin, who, by chance, happened to look like the famous one, and who, by another coincidence, also worked at the agency, in the commissary. Stephen Baldwin was at Harvey Littel's house at five in the afternoon every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, without realizing that Lindy's husband was the a.s.sistant subdirector of the CIA.

Once in the elevator, Littel swiped his card with level-two clearance and punched in the code a.s.signed to him. The elevator read the order and began to descend to the second bas.e.m.e.nt floor, buried well underground, where they waited for him. These clearances went from the lowest grade, six, to one, and controlled the security and information each individual could access inside the building and in other branches around the territory. The security system was able to monitor in detail the work of everyone a.s.sociated with the agency. So, if it was necessary, it would be possible to consult the dates and know that Harvey Littel descended in elevator number twelve to the second bas.e.m.e.nt floor at twenty-three hours, forty-five minutes, and twelve seconds today. The cards a.s.signed to the employees not only cut off access to cla.s.sified information, but also the entrance of all whose card didn't permit access. If anyone inattentively tried to enter where he shouldn't, he'd see the door stay closed, the elevator immobile, and would be called soon to Internal Security to explain himself.

But these are the house rules, of little interest to most mortals, and only serve to entertain us while the elevator takes Harvey Littel to his floor.

A soft braking came before a male voice announced the obvious, "Door opening." Harvey went down the dark hall, with hidden sensors that turned on fluorescent lights as he walked with a firm, energetic pace.

After turning once to the left and twice to the right, he came out into another hallway, narrower, with a bluish light and a door at the end. Harvey swiped his card through the scanner on the wall and entered the code. Once he was on the other side, the door closed behind him, separating one world from another.

The light created an eerie atmosphere, as if transporting the pa.s.sersby to another dimension. Several doors ran along both sides, all closed. The one Harvey Littel wanted was the third on the right side. He pa.s.sed his card through the scanner. It was surely one of the movements he performed most often during the day, facilitating access to places he wanted to go. The door opened as soon as he entered the code, and, taking a deep breath, he went in. There were seven people inside awaiting him.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he greeted them, his tone appropriate to his professional role.

Almost everyone got up from around the large rectangular table the partic.i.p.ants barely filled. Only the old colonel, Stuart Garrison, didn't. Not because of the born arrogance that made him insufferable but because of the wheelchair in which he sat. These were the wounds of war that remain for life, received, as he never tired of telling, in March of 2003, on the outskirts of Nasiriyah, during the second Gulf War, when the allied forces were marching at top speed through Iraqi territory on the way to Baghdad. A rocket launched by some Shiite fighter at the Humvee in which he was riding took away from him any capacity for movement from his waist down, affecting his s.e.xual ability, as well, although nothing affected his strong character. That act of terrorism earned Colonel Stuart Garrison the Medal of Valor. In colorful terms the report said that Stuart Garrison, trapped in what remained of the frame of the twisted Humvee, was able to destroy the menacing fighter about to give the coup de grace with another rocket. A sure shot to the head of the insurgent saved the lives of the six occupants of the vehicle, although one didn't survive his wounds and died on the way to the field hospital, after waiting five hours for a rescue team. What the report didn't mention was that the shot killed a teenager less than fifteen years old whose action was revenge for the allies annihilating his innocent family. These were the atrocities of war, implacable for both sides. Once removed from the battlefield, Stuart Garrison was invited to join the agency because of his privileged contacts in the Middle East, making him the most imbecilic, arrogant, and deficient man in the CIA-words not spoken out loud by those who knew him.

Having explained the trivia of why some get promoted and others not, let's move on to the rest of the group in hierarchical order. They were seated three on each side, leaving the head of the table for the a.s.sistant subdirector, Harvey Littel. If the subdirector or director had been here in person, they would have been at the head. On the right side, from the point of view of the a.s.sistant subdirector, we have Colonel Stuart Garrison, responsible for communications with the Middle East and Russia, followed by Wally Johnson, lieutenant colonel, liaison with the U.S. Army, intrepid and proud, some forty years old, although still in p.u.b.erty in regard to military careers. Across from them, Sebastian Ford, diplomatic attache, politician by profession, one of those who seem to have excellent judgment, but, when you squeeze their words, seem to have no juice, nothing there. He was the demagogue who connected the department with the president, always prepared to sacrifice anyone for the good of his career . . . and, of course, national security. The others were not important enough to name, since they have little relevance for the unfolding of our story. But let's not forget the woman who wasn't seated at the table. She was next to the wall, behind Harvey Littel with a notebook ready to take her frenetic notes. She was Priscilla Thomason, Harvey's secretary.

"Have we managed to connect already?" Littel asked no one in particular.

"Yes," someone responded.

"Good. Barnes?" He spoke into the phone in front of him. There was no answer.

"Barnes?" he tried again.

The same response.

Littel raised the earpiece to his ear. He dropped it immediately.

"We've been disconnected. Put it through again," he ordered.

He was surprised when no one moved.

"Are you waiting for me to do it?" He was irritated by such a lack of zeal and picked up the phone again.

"Dr. Littel," Priscilla called from behind him, getting up. At least someone was attentive. "The connection has been made, but . . ." She lowered her eyes.

"But?" Littel urged her.

"He's hung up." Stuart Garrison finished the sentence.

"He's hung up?" His expression showed amazement. He thought for a few seconds. "And you've tried to reconnect?"

"Several times," the a.s.sistant standing by his side told him. "He's not answering."

Now Littel understood the pensive mood when he entered. His mind seethed with theories and possibilities. Barnes had disconnected the direct, secure line that connected London and Langley. This was a serious breach of protocol, with the risk of disciplinary action and possible dismissal, if it couldn't be justified. Barnes lost his temper easily, nothing was ever good with him, but from that to jeopardizing his service record through his own actions was a big step. He was active, highly esteemed, a true pack mule who took on an entire continent and the outskirts of another two. This couldn't be. Something must have happened to make Barnes disconnect. Something serious. Unless . . .

"Has anyone called the Center of Operations?" He a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of a leader. There was hope.

"No," Stuart replied.

"It didn't cross our minds. Geoffrey Barnes's conduct is very serious," Sebastian Ford added. "I'll have to tell the president about this." He seemed to have difficulty opening his mouth to utter these words. His hair plastered with gel, a pen in hand, held vertically, his back stiff, he seemed conscious of each gesture, each word as well. Everything was calculated. The politician in true form.

"He wouldn't be able to answer if the building has fallen on top of him, for example," Littel argued. "Call the Center of Operations."

The diplomatic attache's threat irritated him. He'd sold out, a self-proclaimed patriot who didn't even know the story of the founding fathers. If there was anyone Littel would put his hand in the fire for, it was Barnes. He'd have a plausible justification . . . there was no doubt.

Priscilla took the telephone and pressed four numbers. The beeps resounded in the office from the speaker, while everyone watched apprehensively. Finally they heard a static noise that preceded the connection and a nervous voice, probably because of where the call was coming from. They didn't receive a call from the "cave" every day.

"Staughton." More like a question than an identification.

"Good evening, Agent Staughton," Littel greeted him affably. "This is Harvey Littel. I'm sure you've heard of me . . ."

"Yes . . . yes, sir," Staughton replied quickly. His discomfort was audible.

"I'm going to get directly to the point, Agent Staughton. I need to speak, urgently, with your superior, Geoffrey Barnes." His manner was serious now.

"Well, I'm not with him, but . . ." he stumbled, excusing himself.

"Do me a favor. Look for him."

"Of course," Staughton answered respectfully. "I'll call you back in five minutes." Again more question than statement.

"No, no, Agent Staughton. You don't understand me. I want you to look for him now. Now. Understood?"

The silence proved that Staughton didn't expect that order. If he had known the large audience listening to him, he would have buried his head in the sand. They all listened attentively to Staughton's panting breath. If his eardrums weren't ringing with the beating of his heart, he might have heard the sighs from thousands of miles away.

"Agent Staughton, are you listening to me?" Littel pressed on. Time was wasting.

The answer came ten seconds later, when Littel was about to repeat the question.