One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [92]
“Yes, sir. I have it.”
“Don’t test me on this. If you value your mission, you won’t push me. I will see Hale and Wolffe or you’ll cease operations.”
Standish slammed the phone down. When I get control of that unit, he’ll be out greeting people at Walmart.
Done with the Taskforce, he turned his attention to the next problem: dealing with the CIA station in Belize. He couldn’t call the station directly because they weren’t in his chain of command and wouldn’t have a clue who he was. He would have to do it through the Latin America Division in the headquarters at Langley. Luckily, he knew the chief of LA and could use him to clamp down on Belize. All he had to do was control the conversation correctly. Satisfied with his strategy, he picked up the phone and dialed the chief of LA on his gray line, a direct secure connection into the CIA.
56
“Holy shit! What’re you doing down here?” I said.
After giving me a handshake and an embrace, Kurt verbally poked me, saying, “Well, I’ve got nothing better to do than chase phantom Prometheus cables. It’s what I do on my off-time.”
I got out, “Sir—” before he cut me off with a hand.
“Just kidding. How’re you doing?”
I figured the question held more than it seemed, and that he wasn’t asking how I was doing this morning. I answered truthfully, “Well, honestly, sir, I’m doing better now than I was a week ago.”
“Still blocking punches with your face, huh?”
I smiled and touched the cut above my eye. “Long story, sir.” Turning to Jennifer, I continued. “This is Jennifer Cahill. She’s the reason I’m down here, and also the one who figured out what’s going on.”
He greeted Jennifer politely, then said, “Okay, how about letting me in on the secret.”
I laid out the whole story, with the exception of the discovery of the e-mail addresses. After the bullshit shenanigans, I didn’t trust Eric as far as I could throw him. There was no telling what the station here would do with that information.
After about an hour of give and take, Kurt got to the bottom line. “Given your lack of ability to do anything, I get the Prometheus alert, but, really, is there any proof that such a weapon exists? What do you want me to do now?”
I had known that was coming and, in reality, agreed with his skepticism. “Sir, I’m with you. I’ve been struggling with the whole Mayan WMD thing since this started. Whether that weapon is real or not is an open question. In my mind, what’s not a question is that two intelligent terrorists with multiple passports believe it’s there, and are trying to get it to kill as many people as possible.”
“Okay. I can see that. Sounds like something that’s happening all over the world every five seconds. Why bring us in? You know this isn’t what we do.”
“I didn’t intend for you guys to fly down here to see me. I just wanted to talk to the chief of station. Sorry, but I played the only card I had. I think someone needs to check this out, to see if something strange happened on an expedition in the Petén region. If not, no harm. If so, investigate further.”
Kurt looked at Eric, who said, “That makes sense to me. It’s very little work to run this to ground. I’ll give the station in Guatemala a call and have them check it out.”
Kurt thanked him for the support, then asked George if there was anything else they were missing.
George said, “No, Pike’s right. Let the station get some assets on the ground. We’ll figure this out pretty quickly.”
Satisfied, Kurt wrapped up the meeting. He told us to come on back at nine the next morning to see where we stood. I walked with him out the door, stopping to allow him to retrieve his cell phone from the cubicles outside the station spaces. Since the cell phones could be used as eavesdropping devices, they weren’t allowed inside any secure government facility.
Turning on his phone, Kurt said, “Well, I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass. I don’t think there’s much chance of some secret Mayan weapon being out there, but since we’re here, might as well play the hand.