The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) (8 page)

Candidates who achieve a passing score on the Foreign Service Officer Written Examination may, if they choose, progress to a second round of evaluation by the United States Information Agency. Candidates invited to participate in an oral assessment may travel at their own expense to Washington D. C. or a number of regional locations where the oral assessments are conducted.

From over his own shoulder, Lance watched himself read the letter that arrived in the Thursday mail. He froze the scene and looked around the tiny room; positive he’d missed something.

He watched as Lance below him immediately flipped to the next page in the packet to see the host cities for oral exams. Dallas was right there third from the top.

“Cool, Big D,” he said to no one. The date for the oral assessments in Dallas was next month on a Tuesday. He’d have to take off from school and the dealership. But that should be no problem, he expected to be well over his sales quota and missing a class or two was no big deal. He left the other pieces of mail unopened on the kitchen counter of his small and Spartan apartment and plopped down on the couch to read the letter again.

He’d half forgotten about the Foreign Service and taking the test six weeks earlier. But the idea of getting in front of others and pitting his creative talents against a bunch of educated folks intrigued him. He’d put his B.S. skills up against the best, anytime, anywhere. Reading through some of the frequently asked questions on the third sheet, he learned about the format of the oral assessment, the panel makeup and key areas he should study beforehand.

He put the letter on the coffee table and turned on the TV to catch the last half of the 10 p.m. news. His days were usually a combination of school each morning, an hour or two of studying, or at least wandering the library, and then a shift at the dealership. He was number two this year in used car sales, which really pissed off the full-time guys. It had been extra cold this afternoon and he was as surprised as the other guys to close two deals, an 86 Corolla and an 85 Mazda RX7. And best of all, both the buyers drove onto the lot asking for him by name. Referrals are gold in this business.

The female news anchor read from her teleprompter that new details were just reported on the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. A link between luggage and Libyan terrorists had those in Washington calling for immediate action against Gadhafi.

“Muammar, Muammar,” Lance muttered. “Survive a missile attack from Ronnie and now you let these pricks blow up an airplane. Not smart.”

Lance turned the volume down and leaned forward to pick up one of three road atlases sitting on the coffee table. The particular one he chose was a detailed compilation of roadways in the U.S. He thumbed through the states to T for Texas and traced his finger from the Oklahoma border southwest along Highway 75 right into downtown Dallas. He flipped the page for the close up view of the Dallas/Fort Worth. Another close-up map showed downtown Dallas, just what he was looking for. The letter listed the address of 900 East Commerce Street, looked like it was just a few hundred yards off I-35 and just west of Highway 75. Lance already knew the area, but just loved to look at maps.

“Three and a half, maybe four hours door to door, just need to pick a motel.” He started backing up Hwy 75 to areas north of town. He considered the idea of staying with his aunt in far northwest Fort Worth, but that was an hour from downtown Dallas, with little or no traffic, which wouldn’t be the case at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday.

He chose Richardson just north of the 635 Loop for his first motel location. He got up and grabbed the yellow pages from a kitchen drawer and plopped back onto the couch. Under “motels” he found the familiar Motel 6 and Best Western logos and chose Motel 6 for this one. Lance was about to pick up the phone when something caught his eye.

On the floor, under the deck chair against the wall, was a foam beer koozee. Now, the fact that a beer koozee was in the apartment was no surprise. He and his occasional guest would use the foam rubber sleeves to keep their beer cans cool out around the pool. But this particular koozee had been sitting on the armrest of a cheap white deck chair for five months without being moved. Lance hadn’t had anyone over in a long while and more to the point, he had said to himself the night before that he needed to put that thing away. As usual, he didn’t and it was sitting there on the armrest 14 hours ago when he left for school.

Two explanations he could see. Building maintenance, in the form of the nosy apartment manager, had come in for some reason, like changing out the air filter in his HVAC unit. Or someone else had been in the apartment. He knew now, it was the second explanation.

A quick scan of the room saw nothing else out of place but he stood and paced the junior apartment just to be sure. Walking into his bedroom, he saw nothing conspicuous. He opened the small door in the hall to take a look at the heating and air unit. The sticker on the metal panel holding the air filter was dated six months earlier. Lance stepped into the kitchen and could not detect anything amiss. The female anchor said sports and weather would be next and to stay tuned for more news.

“Stay tuned,” Lance said to no one. The disembodied Lance floating above watching a replay of the scene mouthed the words.

Lance couldn’t see him, but someone else was listening to the news anchor. Approximately 150 yards from where he stood in his apartment, a plain white van sat parked. The van looked like any other electrician van with a panel behind the front seats. But behind this particular screen sat contract surveillance specialist Frank Wyrick hunched over a small radio unit listening intently to the activity taking place in apartment 7C. Wyrick had been in the unit hours earlier. He had confirmed Lance’s presence at the dealership by calling and asking to speak with Mr. Priest. The receptionist put him on hold and when Lance picked up, Wyrick hung up the pay phone and drove across the street to Lance’s apartment.

While in the junior size apartment with a small kitchen, sleeper sofa, bedroom with no door and surprisingly clean bathroom for a single male tenant, he placed several small radio transmitting devices. One was inside the lid of the smoke alarm, which was conveniently located high on the wall across from the couch. Another was in the bedroom adhered to the underside of the base of a bedside lamp. The third was in the phone handset hanging on the wall. Wyrick had been successful in planting the devices, but upon leaving the unit, he bumped the thin plastic deck chair that rightly should have been out on the small balcony. In doing so, he knocked a red koozee with a radio station logo off the chair. Because it was made of foam, it made little or no sound when it landed. It was the only visible evidence of his invasion.

Wyrick wrote ‘stay tuned’ on the legal pad sitting on a small counter next to the radio unit and smiled to himself. “I am.” He said to no one.

Bugging, wiretapping or otherwise delivering clandestine obtained information via audio from a subject or group of subjects inside the borders of the United States is not normal procedure for the CIA. In fact, it is illegal. Any information gathered through such means would be spotty at best if presented in a court of law. But Wyrick wasn’t collecting evidence for use in a court case. And he was not actually an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. His contract status prevented others from tracking his activities and therefore made him and his impressive skills in undetected surveillance quite valuable.

His sought after skills had brought employment in unique, isolated and exotic locales around the world. His job had also gotten in the way of two marriages and raising two kids who were mostly grown now. Wyrick spent more time on the road sleeping in motel rooms or the backs of vans or on hillsides or in building basements than his own bed back home in Maryland.

His current contract assignment was filling in the missing pieces in the growing subject profile for one Lance Porter Priest, aka “Preacher.” Wyrick had a feeling he would be spending more time than usual on this candidate during the FSWE in September. His hunch had proven correct and he arrived back in Tulsa a few days earlier to begin planning and now executing a week of intense surveillance procedures. The secret Wyrick shared with Seibel about their young subject meant that this, all of this surveillance and investment, was not really a surprise.

Experience had shown him that one week, two at the most, was more than sufficient for candidate evals. Really, a day suffices in most cases. In 24 hours, he can usually uncover enough information to build a case for rejection. People give away their weaknesses and potential problems for the agency during private moments alone at home, at work or with their partners or families.

The candidates he is assigned to invasively inspect are not traditional personnel contestants. Wyrick hadn’t kept track of those he has seen pass this particular portion of their unbeknownst evaluation, but he knows of a few who are now in the coveted DCCO – Deep Cover Clandestine Operations. One thing he had learned during these assignments was that these are not candidates being considered for CIA office assignments or communications intel. They needed to possess certain skills and mindsets that permeated their conscious. They needed a rough edge to them.

In two days of tracking Lance, Wyrick had witnessed nothing unusual about this particular candidate. Yes, this guy is quite a bit younger than most of the others, but there were a few even younger, none under 18 of course. But 21 is still a boy in most circumstances. He had come to like this one though. Something about Priest’s character was chameleon-like which made Wyrick want to learn more. This candidate had a number of layers to him. It was evident on the surface there is more to be discovered beneath.

But getting close to college students is not an easy assignment. Many live on campus or right next door to campus and a man in his 40s hanging around college campuses can lead to police calls. Securing a maintenance or security uniform can work for short-term stakeouts. Wyrick had seen these scenarios blow up in his face on several occasions, especially since he happened to be a black man. Call it profiling or prejudice or fear; people are just naturally more suspicious of a black dude hanging around.

He turned to remote surveillance technology back in the 70s and had become something of an expert in long-distance audio monitoring. Listening devices utilizing small battery-powered transmitters which could be placed just about anywhere had become his favorite surveillance tools. Video technology improved throughout the 80s. The size of cameras was finally coming down to a manageable risk in certain situations. But still not to a level Wyrick could be comfortable placing them in dicey remote locations.

No video for this one though. Wyrick was certain he’d get what he needed by tailing Lance for a few days, planting the transmitters in his apartment and using the long-range microphone to capture the candidate’s conversations at school, and more importantly, at that used car lot.

“Used car salesman,” Wyrick muttered to no one and smiled. “Too much.” The fact that this kid basically bullshitted his way through junior high and high school and right into college and now sold used cars really cracked Wyrick up. He and the small group he worked under contract with back in Virginia all had a good laugh around a table in a roadside diner about Priest selling used cars. “Perfect!” more than one of them had said and then joined the others in a laugh.

Funny thing though, in listening to Lance via a directional microphone for three days on the lot, one thing became obvious. The damn dealership appeared to be the one place the kid didn’t lie. Just yesterday he steered a young couple away from a particular Mazda because it was making a disconcerting sound. He sold them a Nissan Sentra at a lower price, therefore a lower commission. And then there was the guy Lance had to talk out of buying a Ford pickup because it was just plain too much vehicle for him. Wyrick chalked Lance’s behavior at the dealership up to eccentricity. The kid had definitely turned out weird.

Wyrick listened to the sounds emanating from the apartment 150 yards away. He had tuned up his ears 20 years earlier sitting in an undisclosed location in Europe listening to transmissions bouncing around the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Through his experience, he was able to pick up on and discern between the slightest noises. Like Braden, who preferred to see his subjects in person instead of on video or film, Wyrick liked to hear it first-hand. He recorded everything for further analysis by others, but more than a little quality is lost when sounds are captured on tape. So he usually sits hunched over his little counter as he did now with his 1960s headphones mounted on his slightly balding head. He listened to the paper shuffling, the occasional belch and television programs viewed by this latest candidate. His listening skills allowed him to build a mental image of his subjects. He could basically “see” Lance sitting there on his couch reading and watching TV.