True Faith and Allegiance

Midas and Chavez spoke in unison: “The fucking new guy.”

Jack mumbled as he sat down in a captain’s chair facing Midas, “I should have joined the military just to learn all the kick-ass lingo.”

Midas replied, “I could talk to some people for you, get you right into boot camp.”

Jack said, “Oh, no. That ship has sailed. I serve my country as one of Gerry Hendley’s boys. Gulfstreams all the way.”

The three operators talked about the job ahead. Chavez confirmed their surveillance on Alexandru Dalca would start slow and soft while they determined what sort of countersurveillance capabilities, if any, he had. If he was just a crook stealing data and selling it to bad actors out there, he might be relatively unprotected.

If, on the other hand, he was actually working on behalf of a state actor or even the Islamic State, it stood to reason there would be those with some skills in identifying surveillance with a vested interest in keeping Dalca alive and out of the hands of the Americans.

Either way, Chavez, Ryan, and Jankowski told themselves, they had to be ready for anything.

Country closed the cabin door and within minutes the G550 took off over the Potomac River to the south. It climbed right past Jack’s apartment and the Hendley Associates building in Alexandria, then banked to the east to begin its long route to Europe.

51

Alexandru Dalca woke, covered in sweat. He sat up in bed, listened for any sound that might have startled him, then remembered the dream.

He lowered back into his pillow, amazed, because he never dreamed.

He was being chased, someone was close on his heels, and it was his fault. Some miscalculation, some failure to levy the consequences of his actions with the reward, something he had done, somewhere along the line, had led to his imminent demise by an unseen powerful force closing behind him.

In the dream he was a kid on the streets again, alone and afraid, through urban sprawl, then through desert. The dream wasn’t focused on the details, but on the reasons for the chase. Dalca was in the wrong, his life’s misfortune was his fault, no one else’s, and he had nowhere left to hide.

All he could do was run like hell.

And as he looked at the ceiling of his dark penthouse apartment, through the fog of vapor from his steaming, sweaty face, he realized: That was no dream. That was his subconscious creating a premonition, and he needed to heed it.

When the Seychelles Group left ARTD, they’d been no more convinced they were in the clear than when they walked in. Mr. Peng and his three grim-faced goons weren’t buying what Dalca was selling, Dalca could tell by their words and their demeanor.

He’d spent the last two days at work telling himself he was fine, and the night sitting in his apartment working on the next set of targets for the ISIS guys telling himself the same thing. But falling asleep lowered his defenses, and his true thoughts burst through his veneer of forced confidence.

The Chinese were suspicious, and they would act on their suspicions soon.

And that meant… Alex Dalca was fucked.

But only if he sat around Bucharest and made himself a stationary target.

He’d checked over his secure offshore bank accounts before going to bed. He had $11 million in the bank, virtually all of it from the ISIS guys, and tomorrow they would be sending another $3 million for the three high-value targets he’d been working on tonight. Dalca didn’t have all the targeting information for them, he’d need to return to ARTD to work through the SF-86 files located on the air-gapped computer to get more information. This meant if he made a run for it now, without going in to work for another day, he’d never get that money.

But now he had to ask himself if the three million was worth it.

After a time, he wiped away sweat, and he spoke aloud. “Three million, for one more day’s work? Of course it’s worth it.”

Dalca’s subconscious thought the jig was up, but his rational, conscious brain was always the one in control, and this told him he retained his mastery of the situation, at least for now. The Seychelles Group had nothing on him, if they came after him it wouldn’t be in the next day, and in those precious twenty-four hours he would get all the intelligence he needed from the files to make the three million.

He finally went back to sleep, and immediately returned to his dream.

When he woke up again, less than an hour later, he looked at the ceiling once more in a cold sweat, and he spoke aloud.

“Fuck it.”

Eleven million was good enough, a damn sight better than fourteen million in a bank and his body in some Chinese torture chamber. Yes, it was time to run, now, and to hell with the extra three million dollars.

But he could not run now. He had to go talk to a man first, and he could not do this before the workday began tomorrow, so he lay there wide awake, afraid to go back to sleep and return to a dream state that would remind him that, somehow, he had failed to anticipate the Chinese figuring out his game.