The Old Man(39)
Julian had listened in silence to his briefing, but when they seemed to be about to end the meeting and leave, he said, “Why do we need the Libyans?”
Harper, the senior agent, said, “They need us. This isn’t our operation. It’s theirs, and we’re just here to help, keep it quiet, and make sure they get out. The shooters are standing in for their boss, the go-between who was supposed to receive the money years ago and pass it on to the insurgents. Two or three of his close relatives were killed when the money was stolen. It’s a tribal society, and many of the insurgents were members of his tribe, and others were members of other powerful tribes. Because he never delivered the money, the supply line dried up and the rebels were hunted down and killed. He’s been living under suspicion and resentment for all of this time. The regime lasted another twenty-five years or so after that—a whole generation—before they got rid of the bastards.”
“Why does military intelligence care? Who is this go-between guy who wants Chase killed?”
“That’s so secret it’s not even classified. It may not even be written down. Nobody has told us the name. I do know that this man has become an important asset to us. Since the regime fell, he’s become much more powerful. We need his friendship, and this is the price.”
The meeting ended, and Julian got the two Libyans settled in an apartment on the South Side of Chicago and began his search. He had guessed that the two dogs were his best way to find Chase. The dogs limited the number of places where the fugitive could rent an apartment, and even more severely limited the places where he would want to live. He would find a place in the suburbs where there were parks and safe streets where a man could walk a pair of big dogs. It had to be the kind of place where men who looked like him lived, a place where he could get groceries and things without going far. Probably he would go out mostly at night, so Julian decided night was the best time to look for him. Julian was out every night beginning at dusk, searching likely neighborhoods.
It took months, but Julian found him. His first encounter had taught him that this old man was much more formidable than he had anticipated. And the dogs weren’t just a risk to the old man, but also a way of ensuring that he couldn’t be surprised or physically overpowered. Julian had tried to explain all of this to the Libyans, but they had smirked at him. He had repeated his warnings, but they had ignored everything he said.
He had taken the Libyans to the old man’s apartment and set them loose. Now the Libyans were dead and the old man was alive and hiding somewhere out in the world. Julian was the only survivor of the failed mission. Tonight Julian would probably lose his job and his chance to rise in the intelligence world.
He thought about his job. It wasn’t even a job. It was a prolonged tryout for a job. He had thought his time out of the country would at least lead to an offer of employment with the CIA. But he’d been at it for six years, and no offer had come. Now it never would. They were holding a strategy meeting upstairs in this hotel, and he was sitting down here in the bar drinking coffee in a booth. This time the agents had told him he was keeping an eye out to be sure the secrecy and safety of the meeting weren’t compromised. Who were they even afraid of? Did they think there was actually any security issue in the Intercontinental Hotel on Michigan Avenue in Chicago? No. They were just having him babysit himself.
He wondered if they were even going to fire him. They might just never call him again. Maybe he should quit to avoid waiting for a call that would never come. All he would have to do was give them back the phone they had issued him and say, “Don’t call me again. I’m done.”
Then doubts came over him like cold waves breaking on a beach. What would he do for a living? He was twenty-six, and had not done anything officially since he was nineteen and been quietly discharged from the army. He had excellent skills, but few that had any applicability in civilian life. He had a solid record of achievements, but nearly all of his work history was classified.
He pushed the anxiety aside and thought about the night at the apartment. The two Libyans had presented themselves as skilled and subtle assassins, but they had turned out to be punks. Chase had told Julian as much—that they weren’t ready for Chase’s league. Old special ops men were like vampires. Every time a man like Chase killed another adversary, he knew something he hadn’t known before. He knew what one more fighter had done when his life depended on using his best tactic, making the right moves perfectly. Each one added another secret to his knowledge, and each one extended his life span and made him harder to kill.
Julian Carson stared at the opposite wall of his booth—the whorls and streaks in the wood—and thought about how he had gotten here. He had enlisted in the army at seventeen because it seemed like a good thing to do while he was looking for a better thing to do.
He had been brought up outside Jonesboro, Arkansas, on his parents’ vegetable farm. As he looked back on it now, he realized that farm work had made him the perfect military intelligence man. He had learned to do hard physical labor in a hot climate. He had grown up accustomed to striving to raise crops that took a long time to ripen, working on pure faith because no sign of the crops was visible at first, just dirt that he watered with his sweat. He had learned to take long shots with a rifle at running rabbits, when a missed shot might mean no meat on the dinner table until some other day, when he would see a shot he could make.
He had noticed during his time at war that most highly successful soldiers were, like him, country boys. They knew better than to fight the land or the climate. They endured them. They were also, like him, shorter than average. That part of his education had come by watching friends die. It didn’t matter how brave or how well trained, or even how smart you were if your head stuck up where all that superheated metal was flying in your direction.