Exile Hunter
Exile Hunter
A Novel
by Preston Fleming
This eBook is a work of fiction. Names characters, places, and
incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,
living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014
by Preston Fleming
All rights
reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form of by any means, or stored in a database or
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
ISBN-10: 0-982-959486
ISBN-13:
978-0-9829594-8-0
Table of Contents
Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act.
The
Talmud
SEPTEMBER, THURSDAY, WEST BEIRUT
Warren Linder stepped
from the taxi onto the cobbled side street, felt the glaring heat of
the midday sun, and nearly fell on the ice. Not sheet ice, for this
was September in Beirut, but a layer of discarded ice cubes that some
restaurant sous-chef had poured onto the curb. Seizing the taxi door
with both hands, Linder regained his balance quickly, but for all his
hardheaded worldliness, he had developed a superstitious streak of
late and, rather than curse at the proximate cause of his near fall,
pondered whether it might have a deeper meaning. And in that moment
he wished he had never left his flat in the Cypriot resort town of
Limassol, a mere hour’s flight away, where he had spent the
previous night after a week on the road.
While he imagined
himself back on his fourth floor balcony overlooking Akrotiri Bay,
the taxi driver fetched his bags from the trunk, deposited them on
the sidewalk, and awaited payment. Linder refocused in time to pull a
wad of Lebanese banknotes from his jacket breast pocket and pay the
jovial driver, adding a generous tip and a few words of appreciation.
Only then did he notice
his reflection in the polished car window. The sight unnerved him: he
looked every bit as dissipated as he felt. The dark circles under his
bloodshot, puffy eyes, the gray streaks infiltrating his hair and
whisker stubble, the furrows in his forehead and cheeks: these were
all products of the past two years.
Though he exercised
most days, ate reasonably well when he could, and made an effort to
catch enough sleep and cut back on the booze, Linder knew his
38-year-old body had logged more than its share of mileage and stress
during his dozen years of government service. He was nearing the end
of his rope: the proof of it was in the mirror, and in the
nightmares, and in the need for more and more alcohol to stave off
his dread.
All at once he felt a
powerful urge to pitch it all and board the next ferry to Larnaca
and, from there, another boat to Turkey and then a bus or taxi to
some obscure seaside or mountain village in Greece or the Balkans
where he could buy time and figure out how to give his life a radical
makeover.
He turned and called
out to the driver.
“Is there still a
daily ferry from Beirut to Cyprus these days?”
“Not daily, not
weekly,
siidi
. To go by sea, you must hire a boat and a
captain. Best to find them at Jounieh or Kaslik. Shall I take you?”
Linder hesitated.
“And to Syria? The
same?”
“There are ships for
carrying goods to Latakia, but none for the people.”
“Too bad. Maybe
another time, then,” Linder replied, noticing the middle-aged
doorman who had come to fetch his luggage. With a parting nod to the
driver, Warren Linder followed the doorman and his bags into the
lobby of the Hotel Cavalier.
The desk clerk was an
unctuous twenty-something Lebanese with a receding hairline and ample
paunch, likely the product of some European hotel-management school
or apprenticeship, one of the generation of prematurely aged young
fogeys who were rebuilding the new commercial city-state of Beirut
from the ashes of its most recent conflagration. Linder greeted the
clerk in French and handed him the alias passport that he
occasionally used for the kind of undercover work that had brought
him to Beirut. The clerk gave him a professional once-over, then
proceeded to check him in.
As Linder pulled out
his wallet, full of credit cards and IDs under his current alias, the
urge to flee gripped him once more, and he wondered whether he had
enough cash and credit in his two hands, right now, today, to vanish
from sight. No, came the answer; it was impossible. Even if he took
cash advances from all the credit cards before leaving Beirut, he
would not get very far. Without having planned further ahead, he
would likely be caught within days.
This sudden feeling of
dread and unease puzzled him. Usually, he loved being on the road and
arriving in a new city. Though he sometimes dreamed fondly of having
a real home, of putting down roots somewhere with a wife and family,
each time he returned to his flat in Limassol, or Basel, or London
before that, or even Cleveland to visit his parents and sister,
within days of arriving he would daydream of being on the road again.
The problem with being
a self-starter and overachiever was that he could never quite bring
himself to slow down. He felt rather like a shark that needed to
constantly move to survive. The analogy was apt, not only because of
the work he did, but also because it was true in a physical sense.
His muscular, heavy-boned physique was so lean that he could
literally lie flat on the bottom of a swimming pool without rising.
From adolescence on, he had come to hate swimming because if he
failed to swim fast, he sank.
After completing the
check-in procedure, Linder took the self-service elevator to the
hotel’s top floor and found his mini-suite at the end of the hall.
It was as spacious and well appointed as the operations assistant at
Beirut Base had described by email, with a view of the shimmering
Mediterranean across a vast array of red-tiled roofs. Linder placed
his suitcase on the folding luggage rack, opened it to retrieve his
toiletries kit, and retired to the bathroom to freshen up after his
travels. When he returned to the sitting room, he opened a tall
bottle of sparkling mineral water, poured himself a glass, and downed
it in a single draft. Next, he pulled out a tourist map of Beirut and
had barely spread it across the coffee table when he heard a sharp
rap at the door.
Quickly Linder refolded
the map and closed his suitcase before walking quietly to the door.
Through the peephole, he saw a familiar face, and, without
hesitation, opened the door to let in Neil Denniston. Both men waited
for the door to close before speaking.
Denniston, a gangling,
narrow-shouldered figure dressed in dark tropical wool dress trousers
and a tailored striped shirt unbuttoned to the breast bone, wore a
confident grin as he offered his hand to Linder. His lush crop of
flaxen hair had thinned on top since Linder had last seen him three
summers before, and his deep-set eyes and thin-lipped mouth were
surrounded by a few new wrinkles, but otherwise, Denniston looked
much the same as he did a decade ago when the two men had worked
together on a CIA-led counterterrorist team, also in Beirut.
Five years later, both
left the Agency to join the newly formed Department of State Security
at a time when nearly all American troops and intelligence operatives
were being brought home for good. As with Vietnam-era
counterinsurgency experts two generations earlier, Arabic-speaking
counterterrorist officers now glutted the market as they filed
through the crowded halls of the Pentagon and CIA Headquarters,
searching in vain for onward assignments.
Then, as now, Denniston
was always on the alert for career-advancing opportunities, always
the first to pursue the next big thing, always hustling close friends
and associates to team up with him on his next gig. And Denniston was
nothing if not persuasive. He had a deceptively languid manner,
speaking slowly and softly in a Kentucky Gentleman drawl that charmed
many into underestimating his shrewdness and force of will.
Similarly, by maintaining eye contact and lavishing praise, he made
others feel as if there was no one else in the world he would rather
talk to. Women, particularly the more vacuous ones, tended to find
Denniston irresistible. In an earlier era, Linder could easily
picture his friend as a Mississippi riverboat gambler or a Florida
land swindler or a New Orleans pimp.
Denniston’s personal
qualities, Linder was certain, perfectly matched CIA’s recruiting
profile for new clandestine operations officers, a profile that dated
back to the World War II Office of Strategic Services and was refined
continuously by way of sophisticated psychological testing
techniques. The same recruiting profile, Linder believed, described
the constellation of character traits commonly found among loan
sharks, Wall Street bond salesmen, drug pushers, Ponzi schemers,
plaintiff lawyers, used car salesmen, and other borderline
sociopaths.
Such charm, craftiness,
and determination were largely the reason why Denniston was now
Branch Chief for North Africa and the Near East in the DSS’s Émigré
Division. Of course, his Unionist Party membership had also played a
role, but joining the Party before the President-for-Life’s final
election was just one more example of his friend’s unusual
foresight and tactical genius. When he and Denniston were fraternity
brothers at Kenyon and Linder coached him through one exam after
another, Linder would never have imagined that one day Denniston’s
career would outshine his.
Linder took Denniston’s
outstretched hand and gave it a hearty shake before pouring his guest
a tumbler of sparkling water.
“Sorry, I don’t
have anything stronger,” Linder said as he handed over the glass.
“No ice, either.”
“You can send up for
something if you want. They have an excellent bar here,” Denniston
offered.
“Yes, I remember.”
“Of course,”
Denniston responded. “You were stationed here, too, in those days.
I keep forgetting. It seems like another lifetime.”
Linder poured himself
another glass of water and took a seat across the coffee table from
Denniston. This time he would not let Denniston suck him into another
drinking bout. If Denniston wanted to booze it up, he could visit the
bar alone.
“At the risk of being
abrupt, Neil, I’d like to ask you a question I didn’t want to put
in official email traffic. What exactly do you and Bednarski want
from me in this operation? My understanding is that your target is
one of the rebel leaders who looted the downtown banks during the
Battle of Cleveland, and that your objective is to render him back to
the States. But don’t you already have an inside man to set this
up? Why do you need me?”
“Actually, the only
inside man right now is you,” Denniston replied with his usual
self-assurance. “Our plan is to introduce you as an insurgent
leader from one of the western restricted zones. Your funding request
will be of a scale that requires our target’s approval, since he
decides on all major funding requests to his particular war chest.”
“So you want me to go
to him as Mormon Joe Tanner?” Linder asked. “Has your man met
Tanner before?”
“Not yet, but we’ve
had a couple of our European-based assets vouch for you. And there’s
one other step involved. You see, before you can get to our primary
target, you’ll have to make your pitch to his go-between.”
Linder shook his head
in distaste. “Does Headquarters know about this? Frankly, Neil,
this is starting to sound like something you cooked up on your way
over here.”
“Oh, they know all
right—in broad terms, of course,” Denniston responded, full of
his usual bravado. “The thing is, the old man is cagey and easily
spooked. That’s why we wanted somebody with demonstrated abilities
in dealing with insurgent types, so we can reach our man on the first
try. In short, we wanted the best undercover operator around, and
that’s you.”
Linder had heard the
pitch before: Denniston was in over his head and needed someone to
bail him out.
“If you’re
resorting to flattery, there must be a catch. What is it? Whose
signoff are you missing?”