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“Now, that’s a beautiful man,” Allison gushed at the collection of photographs spread out on Marissa’s table.
“If the megalomaniac, world-domination type bastard is your thing, have at it,” she mocked her analyst.
Stuart Kwon, son of the late international model Sarina and former NKUF leader Min Kwon, was a sculpture of perfection. Tall, lean, and outfitted in the latest fashion by Armani, Marissa had to admire the man’s fashion sense. He knew how to disguise his thirst for power and revenge by hiding behind a facade of urban chicness; dark thick hair, light olive skin, high-bridged nose, generous lips and clean-shaven. His dark brown eyes with an exotic Asian tilt only added to his appeal.
“I prefer him with a bit of stubble.” Allison picked one of Stuart’s pictures where he was in a tuxedo and had obviously grown into his five o’clock shadow. “Makes him more sinister and fits his profile.”
“Sounds like you like them dark, dangerous, and deadly,” Marissa added with a laugh.
“Don’t let Viktor hear you say that,” Allison teased.
Marissa shook her head and grinned. Though she and Viktor behaved professionally at AGS and at Langley, it had not escaped anyone’s attention that they were more than just working together. Viktor would text or call her at all hours of the day. If he couldn’t get to her, he would call Allison, and at one point, he even called Yeager. Exasperated, Marissa called him and told him to “get a life.” Viktor didn’t respond—immediately. He did make sure her ass turned a pretty shade of red when they got home that night. She felt her cheeks flush.
“You’re blushing.” Allison smirked. “Baran sure must be something if the mere mention of his name could incite such a reaction.”
“Where are we on the payoffs to the families involved in the Nasir ambush?” Marissa asked, switching back to business. “Have we found a link to Rafiq Shadid or Stuart Kwon?”
“That’s a dead end. The money transfers are too diluted and laundered. There is no direct link whatsoever, and the families are not talking.”
“What other updates do we have from Damascus?”
“We’ve got assets on the ground monitoring the conflict. There are concerns that an Al-Qaeda splinter group is infiltrating the rebels and disrupting Nasir’s efforts in unifying the opposition in a peaceful manner. Nevertheless, Nasir’s party is gaining a strong support.”
“Good. We need to continue to keep a pulse on the situation, just in case it flares up again,” Marissa said. “We’ve been ordered to stand down unless there’s evidence of human rights violations.”
The Syrian government had recently submitted its intent to destroy and remove its stockpiles of chemical weapons under the approval of an international monitoring organization. This was done partly to avoid a declaration of war from the United States. With war in the Arab state looking more and more unlikely, the threat from Stuart Kwon was becominga clear and present danger. Marissa had submitted her report to Yeager, who submitted it to the CIA director. The President had been briefed, and Marissa’s team was given the go-ahead to proceed with building a case against Kwon and the NKUF. Marissa found it interesting, and a bit troubling, that her father’s shipping company, Cole Nauticals, was the main shipping company for Exetron—a Russian oil company where Kwon had a large holding. But since Exetron was, from all fronts, as clean and legitimate as a business could be, it was still a dead end.
“Anything more on Harry Matthews?”
“No. We’ve traced his access.” Allison rifled through some documents. “We do know he’d accessed the Cellar and took out some objects from Operation Smokescreen. He destroyed the paper inventory. But what was on our computer indicated some discs and a locket—jewelry belonging to Daliyah Shadid—are missing from the Cellar.”
“He probably handed the jewelry back to Rafiq.” There was no question that the attacks were personally motivated. “Yeager doesn’t want us to waste precious bandwidth on a moot point. We knew he betrayed the agency, but not enough to cause lasting damage. We’re burying this. Understand?”
There was also that elephant in the room: Marissa was waiting to get booted out of black ops because her cover had been blown by Matthews. So far, Allison had been keeping tabs on the internet—chat rooms and websites—and it appeared Rafiq had not leaked her identity. There was only one reason for this, and that was he wanted her death to be by his own machinations.
“How about the random hits on FBI and DHS agents?”
There were a total of six suspicious deaths between the two agencies in the past two weeks. One died in a bar fight, two died of muggings, and the other three perished in vehicular accidents.
“The one that concerns us is the FBI agent-in-charge ofinvestigating port security and imports,” Allison said. “Also, NSA has intercepted chatter regarding an imminent threat against the J. Edgar Hoover building.”
The FBI headquarters. Marissa felt goose bumps tingle at the base of her neck. “Do we know who’s making the threats?”
“No. It was pulled off an Al-Qaeda website.”
Marissa ran her fingers through her hair and started massaging her temples. Two weeks. Too much information to sift through and the enemy was hiding in the shadows.
“Could Rafiq be using the Al-Qaeda website to move information?” Marissa asked.
“Possible. But those sites pop up and disappear so fast, it’s hard to track.”
“Viktor is following some leads on Rafiq, but Rafiq has always been one step ahead of him. The information recovered from that mine where they held McCord is useless now,” Marissa said. “Rafiq and his men are extremely low key, but they seem to be striking with precision, and it’s annoying the hell out of me.”
“At least they haven’t attempted another strike against you,” Allison said.
“You know what’s worse, right? The not knowing?”
“Well, Viktor certainly has you well caged in. They can’t get to you.”
