Plausible Denial (5 page)

The
DDO stopped and shook his head. “You’re going to have to figure that one out
for yourself, but I’ll give you a couple of resources to help you come up with
a plan. The first is a guy down in the Florida Keys. He’s done some good work
for me in the past. Bill Barker’s his name. He’s a bit of a rogue. An arms
dealer who’s always working on the fringes of the law. But he knows his shit.
He’ll fix you up with whatever you need in the way of weapons and get them
safely delivered to Thailand. He’s also a chemist. Knows everything there is to
know about poisons. He can advise you on what you need to put into Khun Ut’s
shipments. I’m thinking something that will make people who shoot up really,
really sick. Kind of like Eldest Son.”

Mac
said, “What if the stuff we put in kills someone? Like Project Eldest Son.”

“Collateral
damage…can’t help it. That’s something we may have to struggle with.”

“Okay,
we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. But what about
access?”   

“You’re
going to have to be real careful with this one, Mac. There can be no connection
to the Agency at all. That said, you’re going to need a way to get access to
Khun Ut’s heroin in order to sabotage it. And I’ve given it a lot of thought. I
don’t see any way around it, so I’m going to put you in touch with our ACOB in
Chiang Mai, Charly Blackburn. You may even remember her. She says she met you
in Bangkok a couple of years ago. She was stationed there when you visited from
Hong Kong to attend some sort of a narcotics conference.”

“Of
course, I remember her well. Real smart gal. Eurasian. Very pretty. An expert
on the Golden Triangle heroin trade.”

“That’s
Charly all right. I knew you’d never forget a beautiful face like that. Anyway,
I named her the new acting chief in Chiang Mai after Sadosky was killed. She’s
a little young for the job, but I think she’s up to it. Real bright and no one
in the DDO knows more about that part of the world than she does. Speaks fluent
Thai too, which is a big plus. Her mother was Thai. Dad was an Air Force
officer. Bombardier on a B-52 out of U-Tapao, if memory serves. I hate to
create a link to the Agency, but you’re going to need some support. She’ll be
your contact in country—funnel intel to you. She’s also got an asset who might
be able to help get you access to Khun Ut’s heroin shipments. Guard that connection
with your life. She’s totally loyal and reliable, the only other CIA employee
who knows about you and me. That also makes her the weakest link in our little
daisy chain, so be careful about meeting with her.” 

They
reached the foot of the bridge and Rothmann stopped, reached into a pocket of
his computer case, pulled out an envelope and handed it to MacMurphy. “This
contains contact instructions for Barker and Blackburn. Note that Barker only
knows me as an arms buyer named Tom Willet. It’s important we keep it that way.
I vouched for you and told him you would be contacting him, so your bona fides
is established, but I didn’t give him a name. I assume you’ll use an alias with
him and, for that matter, for anything you do in Thailand. There’s also a cell
phone number you can use to reach me in an emergency. It’s an untraceable
throwaway phone. I suggest you get a similar phone. Make sure it’s an
international quad-band, so we can reach each other in an emergency.”

“Okay,
boss, I’ll be in touch.” They hugged each other warmly and said their goodbyes.
MacMurphy watched the big man walk over the old Roman bridge, limping slightly
with his signature swagger, On the other side of the bridge, Rothmann hailed a
taxi, entered awkwardly and disappeard into the late afternoon traffic.

MacMurphy
had his instructions, and funding for the operation was understood. It would
come out of the stash sitting in MacMurphy’s alias bank account in Bern. There
would be no traceable connections back to the CIA. There would be total
deniability.

Chapter Ten

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

W
hen
Harry Stephan MacMurphy had separated from the CIA after thirteen years of service
as an operations officer, he did two things right away. He moved to Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida, and he rented a suite of offices on the eighth floor of a
towering glass building overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway on Las Olas
Boulevard. The sign he hung on the door read, “Global Strategic Reporting.”

He
financed GSR with the money he had taken from the Chinese embassy during his
last gig with the CIA. Access to the account could only be gained by a U.S.
citizen named Frederick Martin, and MacMurphy had the alias U.S. passport to
show he was Martin.

Now
he had a mission.

Chapter Eleven

M
acMurphy,
Maggie Moore, and James “Culler” Santos sat huddled around a small marble
conference table in the GSR offices. One wall of the conference room was glass
from ceiling to floor; the view offered the sparkling Intracoastal Waterway,
sprinkled with white yachts and marinas, and the office buildings and
condominiums lining historic Las Olas Boulevard. Beyond spread the expansive
blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

MacMurphy,
dressed casually in jeans and a white, short-sleeved, button down shirt which
accentuated his deep, Florida tan, was winding up his briefing on his meeting
with the DDO in Suze-la-Rousse two days earlier.

“So
that’s about it. We’ve been given wide parameters to complete this job. Even Ed
Rothmann doesn’t know exactly how to accomplish it. He just gave us the goal
and told us to run with it.”

“How
is this arms dealer down in the Keys going to fit in?” asked Santos in his
slow, South Boston drawl. “We can find enough weapons in Northern Thailand to
start a revolution. What do we need him for?”

Santos
was a brute of a man. Not tall, he stood only about five foot seven or eight,
but he weighed in at a solid two hundred pounds. Although he looked like a
brawling lumberjack, he possessed two engineering degrees from MIT and was one
of the CIA’s best upcoming audio technicians until the fiasco in Paris left him
and MacMurphy without jobs. He was wearing a dark polo shirt that accentuated
his muscular frame.

“I
was thinking the same thing,” said Maggie, twiddling her pencil and leaning
back in her chair. She was a career CIA officer “of a certain age,” recently
retired as one of the highest ranking women in the clandestine service. She had
known and mentored MacMurphy almost since the day he entered the Agency. When
Rothmann told Mac she had retired and was living in South Florida, Mac
immediately contacted her and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. She sat at
the head of the table, looking at them sternly through pale, wolf gray eyes
over steel granny glasses. “If we bring him in on this, won’t it just be one
more person to worry about?”

MacMurphy
flexed muscular arms behind his head, trying to relieve the tension in his
shoulders and neck. “Right. You’re both right. If we decide to use Bill Barker,
he’ll have to be compartmented from the rest of the operation. I agree we
probably don’t need him for guns and such, but it might be more convenient and
secure if we don’t have to go running all over Northern Thailand looking for
illegal weapons. We certainly can’t take them with us on the plane, and I
wouldn’t think about attempting any mission in the Golden Triangle without
being armed like a Navy Seal.”

“I
guess the point here is that if Ed Rothmann thinks it’s a good idea, then it
probably is,” said Santos. He massaged his temples
and swiveled his
chair to face Mac. “We don’t need to tell him much, and Rothmann has already
set everything up with him. And we can pay him in cash. He only needs to know
that we need certain equipment to be delivered securely in Thailand. And he’s
got the connections to do that, right?”

“Yeah,
that’s about it,” said MacMurphy. “But there’s also the question of the way we
sabotage the heroin. In Project Eldest Son, they substituted gun power for high
explosive, so the guns would blow up when fired. The DDO is thinking along
those same lines for this operation. That’s part of the reason he wants us to
see Bill Barker. Barker’s also a chemist, and the DDO believes he’ll be able to
give us something to put into the heroin. We’re going to have to explain this
to him. That’s a problem.”

 Maggie
looked up at the ceiling, brought her hands up to her head and ran long, thin
fingers through her graying, unruly auburn hair. She peered at them over her
glasses. “Wait a minute, guys. Hold on. Yes, there is a problem here. When the
AK-47s exploded and made the bad guys eat the bolts, it was a good thing for
our troops because it killed enemies. But let’s not kid ourselves. We’re talking
poison here, whether it makes the users sick or kills them, and I don’t know
how we’re going to control that. The users are going to be the victims, not
Khun Ut or any of his merry men. That’s troubling to me. A lot. That’s a
problem.”

“Good
point,” said Santos. He leaned forward thoughtfully and drummed his large
fingers on the conference table. “There’s an ethical question here,
particularly if we end up killing some innocent person… But I’d like to point
out that heroin users aren’t exactly saints. It isn’t like they’re innocent
kids puffing on a little pot, or some slick yuppie snorting a little cocaine in
his Beemer with some hot little cutie. We’re talking heroin here. People who
use that shit are hard core druggies. They’re shooting up in the ghettos before
they go out and rape and pillage the world. So I say, screw them. What’s the
difference if we kill a couple of those worthless bastards?”

“Okay,
okay, Culler, we get it,” said Maggie, “We all know how you got your nickname.
‘Culler,’ the guy who wants to ‘cull’ the world of undesirables. Eliminate all
the assholes and the world will be a better place. Right?”

“Yep.
And it’s true, too. He leaned back in his chair, satisfied that he had made his
point, and then continued to pontificate. “And furthermore, that’s the root
problem with us Americans. We’re always so damned concerned about collateral
damage. That’s why we’re losing the war on terrorism. We’re afraid to bomb the
little fuckers when we have them dead in our sights because we might kill a couple
kids or women along with the bad guys. Hell, do you think the Israelis worry
about that shit? No way. They just pull the trigger when they get one of the
bastards in their crosshairs and worry about the little kiddies and moms
later.” 

MacMurphy
chuckled. “Okay Culler, we know how you feel, but Maggie’s right. We do have a
bit of a conundrum here. But at this point we don’t really know if it’s even
going to present a problem. So let’s just get all of our facts together and
decide what we will do and what we won’t do later. I’m all for heading down
south to the Keys tomorrow. We’ll know a hell of a lot more after we meet with
Bill Barker. What do you say?”

Culler
nodded and Maggie said, “Fine, but I’ll do some checking before you head on
down there. I’ll run the databases and see what I can come up with concerning
his background. Then we can regroup and discuss it some more before you leave.”

Chapter Twelve

T
he
following morning Mac and Culler did their regular workout at the Ultima Fitness
Center a block away from their office. Culler, beast that he was, worked out
exclusively on the heavy weights, while Mac stretched, did a fast three-mile
run along the quay bordering the Intracoastal Waterway, and finished up with
light weights and some vicious beating on the heavy bag. 

Mac
had been a champion wrestler at Oklahoma State University and had been studying
karate and mixed martial arts since he was three years old. His father, an
amateur boxer and tough Marine gunnery sergeant, had pushed Mac hard ever since
he was big enough to stand.

After
their workout they returned to the office to check in with Maggie who was busy
getting the weekly “CounterThreat” newsletter out to GSR’s ever-growing client
subscription base. It was a particularly important issue this week because it
highlighted growing unrest and a deteriorating security situation in Algeria
and Morocco, two places where GSR had an active client interest.

In
the nine months since their departure from the Agency, the three of them had
built a growing and somewhat lucrative small business. They published a weekly
subscription “CounterThreat” newsletter which profiled the security situations
in selected countries around the world and kept its corporate clients up to
date on the world’s hotspots—where they could go, where they shouldn’t go, and
what precautions to take if they must go. They also offered international
consulting services—business intelligence and due diligence investigations for
individual clients in the corporate sector.

They
had hired two employees to work exclusively for GSR, a bright, recent college
grad named Christy White as a receptionist and a middle-aged, bookish
ex-journalist named Wilber Millstone to do the writing. Neither of them had a
clue about the other, more clandestine, activities that Maggie, Culler and Mac
were about to undertake. GSR, like the CIA, worked on a strict “need to know”
compartmented policy.

The
three former CIA officers jokingly called the undercover embedded company
within GSR, “CIA Inc.”

The
trio gathered in MacMurphy’s office and Culler
shut the door.

Maggie
said, “I called Bill Barker on the blind line and made an appointment for you
guys for later today. He sounds like a friendly guy and responded immediately
when I mentioned the name Tom Willet. He said he was expecting our call and has
assembled some gear he thinks you might need. I didn’t go into it with him, but
it sounds like the DDO may have already tipped him off about where you’re
going.”