were nearly empty. The attendant presented him a pass, no money up front. The same deal transpired at the club, he recalled. The bartender indicated his booth on the way in, waitresses and dancers steering clear of the table, as if they were on standing orders not to disturb.
Simply put, it felt wrong.
No black op warring against the shadows of evil in the world, he was grateful nonetheless he’d brought the Beretta 92-F from his think tank, shouldered now beneath his suit jacket.
He glanced around, avoiding anything other than a passing scan at the collective object of desire onstage. It was a mixed pack of hyenas, blue and white collar, probably a few crack hoodlums on the prowl. No one made eye contact with him, and that was the only plus he could find. Problem was, if the bartender had a clue as to his identity…
He was a church-going family man with a wife and two teenaged daughters. He would be forced into retirement, disgraced, even divorce could be in the cards if the situation took a bad turn.
He spotted the man in glasses and a dark cashmere coat descending the short flight of steps, recognizable enough after two recent stints on the Sunday morning talking head circuit. Sizing him up, Brolinsky found it hard to believe the man had the President’s ear, one of three “invisibles” who had personally engineered the unofficial Special Countermeasure Task Force. An aide to two former officials so high up the chain at the NSA, and now part of the President’s inner circle—rumor had it their word on worldwide intelligence operations could have been carved in stone—and Michael Rubin struck him as nondescript. He had a bald shiny pate, thick eyewear and a face so scrubbed it glistened for a moment as he passed through the stage lights. Brolinsky suddenly thought of him as the Pink Man.
“You look distressed. You don’t like my choice of meeting places?” Rubin said in greeting.
Brolinsky watched as the Pink Man claimed a seat, slid closer to him in the booth. There was something in the small dark eyes he didn’t trust, but couldn’t decide what exactly. Arrogance? Deceit and treachery forged on the anvil of jealous guarding of national secrets? Or was he reaching to find a dark side, gather up his own ammo to use against the man’s character in the event his own might be assassinated?
“There’s a lot to be distressed about these days,” he told the Pink Man.
“So it seems.”
“You come here often?” he asked, thinking Rubin looked more the type to get his voyeur kicks off the Internet.
The Pink Man smiled. “Is this where I’m supposed to check you for a wire? Not that it would matter, since we both know our people can make a minimike or recorder look like a simple quarter or belt buckle.”
“You want to frisk me like some common criminal? Makes me wonder what’s to hide,” Brolinsky said.
“Your tone and look tell me you seem to think there is. The tipoff, however, was your three attempted calls to reach someone besides a flunky in the National Security Council the past few hours—as in an urgent message for the national security adviser. You should have contacted our people at the White House first, that would have been the prudent course of action in these ‘times of distress.’”
“By your people, you mean Durham or Griswald.”
“That would have been the more professional route.”
“I’m not one of you.”
Rubin ignored the remark, said, “The Man just ripped everyone within earshot a new one. Intelligence operatives are being burned by this country’s worst enemies, as I’m sure you know, the belief being these leaks are coming straight from key upper-echelon White House staff.”
“They are,” Brolinsky stated flatly.
“Do tell. Then my assumption about you was correct. Very well. Whatever it is you’re trying to tell me—and I think I know where you’re headed—I wouldn’t make too much noise about what’s happened overseas. I’m sure you can understand the delicate political nature such recent mishaps could create.”
“You want to keep it from the press.”
“The President wants to, no, he needs to keep it under the White House roof. There’s a larger situation at stake.”
“Really?” Brolinsky scanned the crowd, finding it hard to believe they were ready to launch full-bore into a chat about national security in such a public dump, then figured between the grinding rock and roll and the howling banshees anything short of a shouting match might be safe.
“We have complete privacy, I assure you,” Rubin stated. “Feel free to lay out this urgency of yours.”
“There are occasions I am required to report directly, in person, to either the President or the national security adviser.”
“I’m aware of that. As I’m aware you’re aware of who I am.”
“Then I assume you’ve heard about Amman.”
“The CIA Storm Tracking Station. Four operators and the team leader’s wife found shot dead. Lured from the embassy over what appears to have been a fabricated emergency regarding her husband.”
“Bad news travels fast.”
The Pink Man sighed. “Your point?”
“We’re looking at dead bodies of American intelligence operatives turning up all over the map—two incidents—or mishaps, as you put it—happening in less than a week.”
“You’re referring to Turkey.”
Brolinsky grunted. “Throw in two NSA and a CIA operative gunned down, same MO in Istanbul and Ankara, apparently—though nothing about him seems verifiable—the same military attaché who headed embassy security in Turkey vanishing off the face of the earth after both incidents. Well, it doesn’t take much to see a pattern emerging.”
Rubin chuckled. “So, you’re running around, armed with conspiracy theories, itching to tell senior White House officials, or the President himself, the sky is falling.”
“It’s beginning to shake out as more than a theory. He calls himself Locklin, but no one seems to know who he works for. You know the type, buried so deep off-the-books the man doesn’t even have a Social Security number. A freelancer owned and armed by various intelligence agencies to do the really dirty work. The ultimate deniable expendable. A little digging, a fact here, an educated guess there, a few matters are becoming clearer to me by the hour.”
Rubin laid on a patronizing tone. “Please, don’t waste my time with rumor and speculation. Please, tell me you have real hard intelligence to back you up—or I walk.”
“Contacts in and beyond the normal channels. Plus, maybe you’ve heard, we’re in the great new age of sharing information, mutual cooperation and so forth between various alphabet soup agencies. The gist of it, I’m being told the same ghost story where this Locklin is concerned.”
“Perhaps whatever you heard is just a story.”
“I suspect someone with major league clout, real close to the President, managed to land what amounts to little more than an assassin in the laps of both embassies to smoke out these operatives.”
“To
