Full Circuit
by Gary Clifton
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
“What is this crap really about, Mr. St....?”
“St. Croix. Uh, you know the government, Ms. Madsen; you must be a person of great importance. Perhaps they’re worried that someone else is traveling on your passport. Truthfully, I don’t know.” The lie sounded palatable enough to him. Truth was, he had no idea who or what she might be.
She opened a small purse and repaired her lipstick.
“Where are you headed, Ms. Madsen?”
“Are... or were?” She rolled the lovely eyes toward the ceiling. “If that’s any of your business.”
“Look, miss, I’m only the messenger, trying to make small talk until they straighten out whatever is twisting their panties in a wad. I have no handle on your itinerary or your business in general. I don’t even know what your job is.”
She fiddled with the purse. The edge of a smart phone appeared briefly inside. “You’re a poor liar, Mr. St., uh...?”
“St Croix.”
“I’m a linguist, also with the DOD. Headed down to Columbia. Part of the war effort, you know.”
He knew all right. The U.S.-Mexican Eastern Federation had been at war throughout most of his life, although they’d learned long ago not to lob nuclear weapons back and forth. Hiring personnel like St. Croix to selectively kill a few opponents from time to time was far more civilized and cost-effective.
St. Croix noted that she, as had he, used the standard in-house designation common in the CIA as first-line identification: a generic reference to the Department of Defense as “DOD.” In his eyes, they had covertly clarified that both were associated with Langley, unless she was some sort of operative for another player.
He knew that from that inside that connection, assignments, importance, and hierarchy differed sharply. He had no way to gauge her importance but, if Langley was willing to detain her with the threat of returning her to the States, he knew to tread lightly. He did not want, under any circumstances and in some fool way — Langley to return him to the States.
He was moderately surprised when she laid on a coat of slather. “You’re a very attractive man.” She studied his face. “Would we have time for a few minutes alone? Like, does that door lock?” She pointed her slender chin.
St Croix, always the womanizer, snapped to attention. No way this broad was seriously coming on to him in a cubbyhole of Benito Juarez International Airport. He snapped a glance at the lovely, exposed portion of leg. What the hell, he could find more women than he could handle in Mexico City. What he really would like to see was the file she had pilfered from Langley. “Well... uh, let’s visit a minute first. I’m really very sorry to interrupt your travel this way.”
The blue eyes held his. “Can I see those credentials again, please?”
He slid the leather case across the table.
She studied his photograph and the printed information declaring him as a Special Investigator with the Department of Defense. She tossed the creds back on the table, then asked a question universally forbidden in Langley nomenclature.
“How long have you worked for Langley, Nathan?”
The inquiry was one never to be answered or even acknowledged.
“I’m with the Department of Defense, Ms. Madsen. Not sure what you mean by ‘Langley’.” Such was the mania for security, he’d never uttered “CIA” aloud before. He studied her pampered face carefully.
“Look, St. Croix, I know what you are: a Langley flunky clean-up man. Not qualified to become a real agent. Only a contractor who they caught in a bind and banished down here to Hopeless Land. To avoid life in some Godawful place with no zip code, you do what they tell you. Can we lock the door now for a half hour of R&R before I have to move on?”
Astonished, he stammered. “Uh...I don’t think you’re going anywhere. They told me to detain you. Something about a file you absconded with.”
“Then why don’t we relax? I like your style.”
Transfixed, he could only sit stupefied as she unsnapped the top two buttons on her blouse, revealing a wealth of soft skin. Again she glanced at the door. St. Croix stood, fumbling in his coat pocket for the handcuffs.
A man who lives years in the shadow of death tends to lose the raw edge of fear of nearly anything. He was not totally panicked when she pulled an innocuous tube of lipstick from her bag, but he recognized it instantly.
She had managed to penetrate airline security with one of the latest model composite pistols built as an exact clone of a tube of lipstick. It operated by firing a burst of supercharged heat, and no metallic cartridge was necessary. Hence, the best screening equipment couldn’t find it.
“You’re not the only soul trapped in Langley’s web, Mr. St. Croix,” She managed a thin smile as she pointed the tiny weapon in his direction.
Nathan St. Croix had not survived in his turbulent world by ignorance or failure to take action when necessary. In a move he’d practiced many times, he flipped the table upward toward her, his hand carrying through to grasp at the weapon in his rear waist band.
His reaction was picture-perfect. In a half second, he’d take care of this cheeky chick, then deal with that total ass Chadsey. He could handle this.
Then the silent, pencil sized burst of blue flame zipped across the table and blew his heart into shreds. Stepping around the partially overturned table, she reached down and put another burst into his forehead.
Nathan St. Croix, man-killer, survivor, ladies’ man, sprawled on the cement floor in a widening pool of crimson, his sightless eyes fixed on a point in eternity far above the ceiling.
She slid the weapon back into her bra, dug in her purse, selected two passports, then straightened herself.
She stepped over St. Croix’s body. “Sorry, buddy. You gotta know it was only business. It’s gonna take more than some busted-ass contractor to finish me.”
No one gave her a second look — or so it seemed — as she strolled down the airport concourse, found the Mexicali Airline desk and booked a flight to Columbia. She moved to an isolated area and dialed her cellular.
“Trapdoor,” Chadsey rasped into the phone.
“You know who this is, jackass. This dork you sent to take me out missed. Yeah, he’s deader than hell. Where do you get off, making a move on me? I don’t give a damn if they’re listening, and don’t give me that honey/lovey talk. I thought you might really have cared for me, but now baby, sleep tight. I know where to find you.”
“Nighthawk, wait—”
Snapping off the phone, she glanced at her watch. She should be in Bogata in less than three hours. With any luck she’d have cocktails and dinner at La Tartine that evening, perhaps take in the opera later. Aleksei was scheduled in on the redeye. After a tumble in the sack with that Russian stud, she looked forward to seeing his reaction when she informed him the price of the file was a million. If they balked, she’d contact Beijing first thing tomorrow.
* * *
At Langley, five floors below ground, Chadsey, a furtive little man with a sparse comb-over, sat hunched over a desk in a small cubicle indistinguishable in a long row of identical desks occupied by many others similarly bent over their small empires. A flashing signal on his console read: Ultra Scan locked on.
He smiled. “Good, gooood. They’ll never penetrate that stupid woman’s call.” He reached for his console. As he dialed, he leaned up sufficiently to shield his desk from the overheard security camera.
He spoke into his headset. “Is it raining in Bogata, Gearbox?”
“Hello, Trapdoor. Actually it rained yesterday.”
“Gearbox, we have a situation which requires an expedite correction, code seven red.”
“Wow! Send me a photo and some location info and it’s done.”
“Blonde female, attractive, traveling as Angela Madsen, scheduled to arrive this afternoon on Mexicali flight 242. Repeat, expedite. Sending her picture as we speak. Wait until she claims her luggage. She’ll have a brown folder marked ‘top secret, JX-7.’ Seize it after you’ve corrected her. Do not read it, and our agent will pick it up tomorrow. Repeat, do not read the file.”
They broke the connection. “Don’t read the file, indeed,” Gearbox, a dark-skinned, bearded man muttered. “Think again, you desk-bound weasel.”
Chadsey slouched back over the desk. A few key entries and any record of Boxcar and Nighthawk was gone, not that they had ever existed to begin with in Langley-speak. He studied the computer photo of Gearbox in Bogata, held his fingers over the keyboard, then shrugged and flicked off the machine. Once he’d recovered the folder, he would, at his leisure, remove Gearbox from the equation. He had all the time in the world.
And to think: that dopey chick, Madeline had actually thought she could get over on him. He leaned back in his squeaky chair, hand clasped behind his skinny neck. Damn, nothing makes a man feel more like a man than raw power.
* * *
One story above him, two nondescript men who looked like file clerks sat in a closed office, staring at a computer screen with Chadsey’s face framed in the center.
“He’s a desk officer in section Blue 24 Alpha,” one of the men said. “Handles Level-4 Alpha corrections for the whole sector. Know him?”
“No, but Signals reported he let the backup file on Project JX-7 get stolen by one of his clerks, one he was apparently sleeping with. He’s actually programmed an unauthorized scrambler into his system. Signals defeated it, of course. From files and the telephone call we just monitored, he’s overdue for reassessment.”
The first man punched numbers into a desktop console. “Hey, Thumbnail, this is Sweeper-Delta. Is it raining over there in D.C.?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Sending you a photograph and file of a rotten egg. Needs correction by midnight, this date. Code name Trapdoor, street name is Chadsey.”
He clicked off the transmitter and winked at the other man. “Chadsey’s history. We gotta find a replacement for that ham-handed halfwit. I’ll handle the files purge. You punch up Personnel files and see if you can find a replacement who can handle a more manageable version of Chadsey’s rotten function. We let this happen again and it’s both our asses.”
Copyright © 2023 by Gary Clifton
