Three Weeks in Washington, page 43
part #3 of Titus Ray Series
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Luana
BONUS EXCERPT from Four Months in Cuba
Book IV in the Titus Ray Thriller Series
Monday, July 13
My flight from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Maceo International Airport in Santiago de Cuba lasted less than an hour.
It felt like an eternity.
For some reason, the passenger seated next to me thought I might enjoy hearing how he’d spent the previous evening sampling the nightlife of Port-au-Prince.
He was wrong about that.
When we’d boarded the aircraft, Antonio Guillermo had introduced himself as a travel agent from Havana, with a branch office in Santiago de Cuba, and I’d politely recited the legend I’d been given in my operational briefing at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, two days ago.
“I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Nacio Bandera.”
He pointed at my briefcase.
“I’m guessing your trip to Santiago is business.”
I nodded. “I’m an archivist at the Haitian National Museum. The assistant curator and I are touring Cuban museums to evaluate their collections and discuss exchanging artifacts.”
The man’s eyes glazed over as soon as I mentioned museums, and his reaction led me to believe my dull job description would cut off any further communication between the two of us.
Not so.
He asked, “Male or female?”
“Pardon?”
“Is the assistant curator male or female?”
“Juliana De Santos is definitely a female.”
“Nice. Is she on this flight?” he asked, looking around the cabin.
“No, she arrived in Santiago a few days ago.”
“I hope the two of you plan to have a little fun together while you’re in the city, take in some of the hot spots around the harbor, that sort of thing.”
“We’ll check everything out. You can be sure of that.”
After making some additional suggestions about what to see in Santiago, he spent the next forty-five minutes telling me all about the nightclubs he’d visited, the company he’d entertained, and the women he’d met on his visit to Port-au-Prince.
Now, as our plane taxied into the terminal, Guillermo once again recommended the nightlife of Santiago de Cuba, and I decided there was a possibility the man could actually provide me with some much-needed intel about one location.
“What do you know about Club Nocturno?” I asked.
He looked surprised.
“That place? It’s mainly a neighborhood bar; local talent on the weekend. When you go clubbing, you’d do better to stick to the downtown area or the harbor district. There aren’t many people in Santiago who’ve ever heard of Club Nocturno. How’d you hear about it?”
I wasn’t about to tell Guillermo the first time I’d heard about Club Nocturno had been eleven days ago during an operational briefing in Damascus, Syria. The briefing had taken place during a video conference call with the Ops Center back at Langley. That was the moment I’d learned my partner, Ben Mitchell, had disappeared after visiting the club.
Mitchell had been in Santiago de Cuba running a surveillance op on a shipment of chemical weapons the Syrian government had recently handed over to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization run by Iran. Mitchell had been working Component Two of Operation Citadel Protection, a mission tasked with preventing a sarin gas attack on Washington, D. C., and I’d been in Damascus working Component One, trying to ascertain the date of the scheduled attack.
Mitchell’s last communication with his operations officer, C. J. Salazar, had been a text message, along with a photograph. After sending the message, his Agency sat phone had flatlined, and his signal had disappeared off the Grid, leaving the Ops Center with only his GPS coordinates.
Those coordinates had pinpointed Club Nocturno as his last known location.
I repeated Guillermo’s question. “How did I hear about Club Nocturno?” I scratched my head. “I must have seen some pictures of the nightclub when I was looking up information about Santiago on the internet. I always do a little research on a city before I visit it.”
“Like I said before, you and your lady friend should probably stick to the downtown area for your entertainment. Nocturno doesn’t attract the best clientele.”
“Rough crowd?”
He nodded. “The Los Zetas drug cartel owns most of the businesses in that area, including Club Nocturno. If there’s trouble, la policía are paid to look the other way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Guillermo opened up his wallet and removed a business card. “Call me if you and Señorita De Santos would like to see some of the Cuban countryside. We have several daylong excursions into the backcountry, including a sugar mill tour. If you’d be interested in an overnight train ride to one of the region’s oldest coffee plantations, I could arrange that as well.”
I pocketed his card. “I might give you a call.”
When our plane arrived at the gate, Guillermo stood to his feet and said, “Let me be the first to welcome you to Santiago de Cuba, home of poets and revolutionaries. As the saying goes, ‘Ignore them both.’”
I always ignored poets.
Revolutionaries—not so much.
* * * *
I spotted Juliana, a Level 2 covert operative, as soon as I entered the terminal. With her fair skin and long blond hair, she was hard to miss.
Her real name was Juliana Lamar, and I’d met her in Buenos Aires when Mitchell and I had arrived in the city to interrogate a former CIA asset about Hezbollah’s plans to attack Washington.
The asset, Roberto Montilla, hadn’t been able to provide us with any useful information about the attack. However, that hadn’t been the case with Marwan Farage, a Hezbollah operative who’d shown up in Buenos Aires with plans to murder Roberto Montilla.
Juliana had prevented Marwan from placing a bullet in Roberto’s head, and later, when Ben Mitchell and I had interrogated the terrorist, we’d learned Hezbollah had assigned Marwan a major role in the attack on Washington.
At the end of his interrogation, I’d convinced Marwan to return to Damascus as my asset. As a result of his intel, the attack on Washington had been averted, and four days ago, the file on Operation Citadel Protection had been officially closed and sent to the archive.
Now, I was in Santiago de Cuba to find the missing Ben Mitchell, an operation the Agency was calling Peaceful Retrieval.
I’d been named the primary intelligence officer for Operation Peaceful Retrieval, and I’d asked Douglas Carlton, my operations officer, to assign Juliana Lamar as my partner.
After working with Juliana in Buenos Aires, I’d been so impressed with her surveillance expertise, I’d suggested she be assigned to the surveillance team headed up by Ben Mitchell—the one tasked with keeping an eye on a warehouse in Santiago de Cuba where Hezbollah was storing canisters of sarin gas.
However, her surveillance skills weren’t the only reason I’d recommended she be transferred from Buenos Aires to Cuba.
For the past seven years, she had been working for Ken Vasco, the CIA’s chief of station in Buenos Aires, and after I’d spent a few days with Vasco, I’d decided no human being should ever be subjected to that type of punishment for one year, much less seven.
Juliana met me on the other side of the security gate after the Cuban immigration official had finished scrutinizing my visa and clearing me through passport control.
The moment she walked over and greeted me, Antonio Guillermo strolled passed us wheeling a suitcase. “Nice,” he said, giving me a thumbs up and a brief wave.
Juliana, who was probably used to being ogled by disrespectful men, gave him a cold stare.
Once he’d disappeared from sight, she asked, “Friend of yours?”
“He was my seatmate. That hour-long flight from Haiti lasted several days.”
She smiled. “I’ve had plenty of those.”
She pointed to the exit door in front of us. “I’m parked out here.”
I followed Juliana out to the parking lot, where we got inside a black Hyundai SUV. As we headed south on Avenida del Puerto, she said, “If there’s anything you want to tell me about Peaceful Retrieval before our briefing, you should do it now. The Ops Center just notified me our briefing’s been moved up two hours.”
She glanced down at her watch. “Once we get to the safe house, we’ll have less than fifteen minutes before we hear from Langley.”
I pulled my Agency satellite phone out and checked my inbox. No messages.
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
“I just got the message myself. I’m sure they knew you were in transit.”
“What’s the source code for the new time schedule?”
She glanced over at me. “Are you kidding? Why would I notice something like that?”
I shrugged. “Details matter.”
She pointed to her handbag on the seat between us. “My phone’s inside. It should be the first message in my inbox.”
“No, that’s okay. I just thought if—”
“My code is 7849.”
Her actions surprised me. Most operatives were reluctant to give out their Agency code, much less allow access to their messages.
I, for one, would never have been that accommodating.
But, I’m a secretive kind of guy.
* * * *
The first message I found in Juliana’s inbox was from Walter Thompson, one of the assistant directors at the Ops Center where the day-to-day operations of the CIA were discussed, researched, and implemented.
The Center itself consisted of six Real Time Management (RTM) Centers, each one run by a director under the supervision of an operations officer.
Five of the RTM Centers could be subdivided into smaller rooms to accommodate any number of ongoing operations. However, one center was reserved exclusively for Top Secret missions.
That center was RTM Center E.
“What’s wrong?” Juliana asked.
“Nothing.”
“You looked surprised.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken. I’m always in perfect control of my emotions.”
“What’s the source code for the time change?”
“Center E.”
Juliana raised her eyebrows. “Peaceful Retrieval has a Top Secret status now?”
“Evidently.”
“Is that why you asked about the source code? Did you suspect the DDO would classify the operation as Top Secret?”
“I asked for the status change myself, but the DDO and I aren’t on the best of terms, so I didn’t think he’d approve the request.”
Juliana didn’t say anything for several seconds.
Maybe she was surprised to hear about my relationship with the DDO. Although I figured everyone at Langley knew the Deputy Director of Operations and I were at odds with each other, that might not be true for Agency employees like Juliana who’d been stationed overseas for several years.
As we pulled up to a stoplight, she asked, “Why did you request the change in status?”
I didn’t respond.
She pressed me on it. “Was it because of Ben’s father? Does Senator Mitchell know his son is missing?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“That complicates things.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“So tell me the half of it.”
I did, but only half of it.
Four Months in Cuba is available on Amazon here. You can also find out more about it on the author’s website: LuanaEhrlich.com and on TitusRayThrillers.com.
Luana Ehrlich, Three Weeks in Washington
