Page 13

Present day: Boston…

“Mizzay!” Del yelled from his office.

Damn. Mizzay had known the summons was coming. And for what she was asking, she deserved the boss’s censure. Not just for the request, but because her head hadn’t been in the game at SOS for the last few days; being derailed by the nervous anticipation chewing at her brain over where, exactly, she’d be at this time next week.

But Mizzay owed Del a full explanation. Hell, she’d owed him one since the day he’d hired her, but she’d put it off, hoping to fully cement her place in the hearts of Del and his operatives before she spilled everything about herself…

Uh. No . Actually she was chicken-shit. That’s why she’d prevaricated for the four and a half years since she’d been hired.

Maybe…?

No. It was time.

And she’d leave it up to Del to tell the rest of the guys her story. She’d let him do that because she believed in the integrity of everyone she currently worked with. Implicitly. And that was saying something. There were certainly factions with whom she’d been affiliated in the past, who didn’t, and would never deserve that kind of trust.

“Coming, boss,” she clipped out, quickly rerouting any incoming calls to the answering service. She didn’t want any potential clients hanging up, and she didn’t know how long this was going to take.

Her soft heels made no noise on the floor as she strode her way down the hall to the first door on the right. She knocked, but it was only perfunctory because the portal was ajar and Del had summoned her. So, after her expected warning signal, she walked in and closed the door behind her.

Del was scowling, and his wonky eyebrow was dancing. Not a good sign.

“You want to tell me why you need next week off?” he barked, tapping her written request that lay on the desk under his fingers. “You just took two weeks, Mizzay. One when Rory was sick, and one when we closed the office over Christmas. Not that I’d begrudge you time, but we’re slammed here. You know that.”

“Can I sit down?” Mizzay asked calmly. Not that she was feeling tranquil, but she needed to keep a rein on her nervousness lest she break down altogether. Which would probably freak Del right the hell out considering the take-charge attitude she usually espoused.

“Of course,” he replied, his face screwing up in consternation.

Yeah. This was unusual behavior for her. She was normally the one who had all her shit, and everybody else’s, completely together.

She took a chair opposite him.

“You want to know whatz up. Right?” Her Brooklyn accent generally came into play more acutely in two instances. One, when she was completely comfortable, and two, when she was nervous. This was definitely a nervous situation.

Early on in her career, she’d learned to cover up her accent completely, but because of her phenomenal comfort levels with her fellow SOS operatives, she never had a problem allowing it to seep out these days. Still, she’d refocus and clean things up right now. This was serious business.

“That would be nice.” Del sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. Geeze. Was he as nervous as she was about what she was about to tell him? Maybe so. And he had a point.

Mizzay started. “Do you remember just over four years ago, right after you hired me, I requested an emergency week of vacation? Then two years after that I needed another?”

“I do,” he responded. “Because other than when Rory is sick, you rarely asked for any personal days.”

“That’s right. But it was imperative I have those particular times, and you never questioned why.”

Now that Mizzay had made up her mind to talk, she felt a little more settled.

Del shrugged. “It wasn’t any of my business. You do your work here better than anyone I could possibly have hired, so I’m always glad to accommodate… when I can,” he emphasized, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I know that. And I’m grateful,” she acknowledged.

Indeed, Del was the best boss she’d ever had, and that was saying a lot.

“But there are things about me you don’t know. And I need to fill you in because I have a feeling I’m going to need help from you and the team soon.”

She had Del’s undivided attention now. He moved from his self-protective stance, to lean his elbows contemplatively on his desk.

“First of all,” Mizzay started, “thank you for hiring me when so many of my past records had to stay redacted,” she started. “You had to be curious, but you never pried.”

“The references you supplied were more than enough, so I took a chance.” He shrugged.

“I appreciate that. But still, you took a huge leap of faith, not knowing everything about me.” She sucked in a huge breath. “It’s time, however, for that to be remedied.”

“Mizzay. I’ve always known you’re doing…more than just working for us. You don’t have to—”

“Yes. I do. At least to the extent that I can. There are still a few things I’m not at liberty to divulge, but I think you’ll get the gist of my…position.”

Del studied her face for a moment and must have seen what he was looking for, because he gave her a nod.

“I’ll begin with my younger years.” She nodded to herself for courage. “I was what most people call a ‘child prodigy’.” Mizzay could see that she’d already sparked Del’s imagination. “I graduated from high school at fifteen, finished my undergrad degree with a double major in political science and mathematics at nineteen, then enlisted in the Army where I went through officer training and became a second lieutenant.”

Del couldn’t hold his tongue. “That seems damned ambitious, and also like a pretty specific path to have taken. But…you didn’t continue with the military. What happened?”

“This is where things get a little complicated. And classified,” she revealed, “but I’ll give you as much detail as I’m allowed.”

He raised a brow and she continued.

“For my first assignment, I was put in charge of a platoon stationed in South Sudan.”

Del groaned. “Right. I know how foreign deployments go, even if they’re not in a hot spot like Iraq or Afghanistan. I did my time in South America.”

Mizzay had known that, but Del’s assumption needed one small correction.

“Uh, South Sudan actually was a hot spot at the time. It was 2011.”

“Say no more,” Del acknowledged with a sage snap of his chin. “Regime change. Civil unrest. It was purported to be its own kind of hell.”

“It was,” Mizzay agreed. “But at the time, our higher-ups weren’t letting us know the full extent of it.”

Del grunted. “That’s par for the course. It’s just like command not to give boots on the ground the entirety of their intel.”

“You’re telling me,” Mizzay huffed. “And in this case, we were ordered by HQ to tackle what we thought were a few easy tasks. One of which was to get the UN peacekeeping office packed up and moved to the city of Juba which had become the new seat of power.”

Damn. Mizzay felt a trickle of sweat roll down between her shoulder blades. Recalling this was harder than she’d thought. It still hurt, fourteen years later, that she’d lost five good men.

“I sent a squad of six from our platoon to oversee that task, and…all but one died.”

Del shook his head, his mouth turning down. “I’m so sorry, Mizzay. I know what it’s like to lose teammates.”

“You do, but—forgive my impertinence—in this instance, I was the one in charge. I was the one who sent those young men to their deaths.”

“You know it’s bullshit to blame yourself,” Del clipped, not backing off. “I’m sure you’ve been through hours of therapy for it. But it clearly wasn’t your fault. I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of whoever didn’t give you all the details regarding the extraction, and those who were behind the attack.”

Mizzay chose not to recognize any words of forgiveness, as she’d likewise eschewed any since the incident took place. She hauled in another long breath, instead. “Which brings me to the rest of my story. One of my men did survive. I’ll call him Mr. X.”

Right. She wouldn’t name names. Yet. She and Smalley had spent far too long protecting Cobble’s whereabouts. And even though Del was completely trustworthy, things somehow managed to leak out, so details needed to remain under wraps. “When Mr. X was recovering in the hospital, there was an attempt on his life.”

A line formed between Del’s snarky brows. “Why?”

“Exactly what we worked on for a long time to find out,” she admitted.

“Your man was fine, though?” Del asked.

“He was, and still is,” Mizzay revealed. “But he’s been in hiding for fourteen years.”

Mizzay hated that they still hadn’t climbed the ladder of who, and how many people other than Veegal were involved in everything they’d painstakingly uncovered. They had their suspicions, and had worked them for years, but the people they were after were smart and slippery.

“Fourteen years?” Del’s voice cracked.

“Yeah. I know,” Mizzay acknowledged. “It’s been far too long. But we’re getting closer,” she said with resolve.

She’d made a hell of a dent in things when she’d discovered the CIA operative who’d been on-the-take, but nothing since. Every time she thought they were honing in on the finish, the evidence they uncovered seemed to disappear into smoke, and people who they suspected of being in the chain of command, died. It was a game of three steps forward, two steps back.

“And who is ‘we’ ?” Del asked, picking apart her dialogue.

“The ‘we’ I mentioned?” she coughed. “You actually know the people I’m working with.”

“I do?”

“Uh, huh. Director Baskins and Chuck Smalley.”

She might just as well have smacked Del with a two-by-four with how stunned he looked.

“S…Smalley? And Baskins? As in the FBI agents I met while working our last case?” he marveled, clicking his tongue against his teeth. “Of course, I understood you knew them, but…you’re still involved with the bureau?”

“To a point,” Mizzay confirmed, although she wouldn’t mention Chuck’s familial connection to Cobble. Del, being the astute operative he was, would uncover Cobble’s identity fairly quickly if he had that information. “But I’m getting ahead of myself,” she told him. “First, I need to give you my entire career history, then you’ll understand the present-day situation better.”

Del looked completely intrigued by this time, and it gave Mizzay enough confidence to continue.

“I met Smalley in that South Sudan hospital right after the attempt on Mr. X’s life. Chuck was already working for the FBI at that time, but he had fingers in a lot of pies because his job with the bureau was as liaison between numerous federal agencies. Embassy folks. CIA. That gave him some very important connections.”

Del nodded, and Mizzay continued.

“He immediately understood that the ambushes in both the peacekeeping office and the hospital were professionally orchestrated. And when we got certain intel back from a half-assed investigation that HQ performed, we realized that Mr. X would continue to be in danger. So, with our suspicions, my agreement, and Chuck’s contacts, my career as an Army-lifer went into the dumpster.”

“You gave up what you’d worked toward to solve this problem that had been thrown in your lap.”

“That, and to keep Mr. X safe,” Mizzay confirmed.

“So, where did you go from there?” Del asked.

Mizzay shook her head. Her moves thereafter were even difficult for her to fathom.

“I still don’t know how Chuck separated me from the Army, but he managed it. Then he got me a job with the CIA. At the time the agency had top-secret offices in the US Embassy in Juba, which is right where I needed to be.”

“And your Mr. X?”

“Smalley had him declared dead, then smuggled him out of the country. He had the FBI put him in protective custody in the States. But we’re skipping ahead of ourselves here. I need to finish the first part of the story before we get to the rest.”

“Sorry,” Del apologized. “Go ahead.”

“I worked with the CIA for two years, uncovering a few of the minor players in the plot that we, by that time, knew was centered on gold smuggling. It’s a huge problem in the Sudan region because everything to do with natural resources is so unregulated.”

As Cobble had regained his memories, he’d been able to reveal that the word “gold” had been mentioned several times during the ambush, and it hadn’t taken much, after that, to find out there was a huge amount of smuggling money being made by dishonest factions.

Del nodded his understanding. Mizzay knew that in South America, Del had most likely butted up against some of the same problems.

“Unfortunately, every time we went to bring any of those lower-level smugglers in, we found them dead. Which as far as I was concerned, indicated that we had an informant in our ranks. All my hard work, and it was undermined at every turn. So, after gleaning all I could with the CIA, and discovering that the smuggling had long tendrils that reached back to the US, Smalley got me a job in the National Security Division of the DOJ to continue digging on the home front.”

“Impressive.” Del steepled his fingers, still absorbed in her narrative.

“I was employed strictly by the DOJ for five years, working every angle I could; finding that classified information there also trickled to the wrong people. Then I switched employment to join the FBI, undercover, for a stint of two and a half years while I was actually still working for the DOJ.”

“Wow,” Del whistled. “Then… Wait. You came to us five years ago,” Del pondered. “Are you still with the DOJ?”

“No. I severed all ties with them when they decided to, at least on the books, close the case,” she said, wryly. “It had been nine years at that point, and the higher-ups had every reason to want to divert manpower to more current endeavors, but there was still the safety of Mr. X to consider. So between my bosses—Baskins and Cavateral—and me, I was given my walking papers, but clandestinely, they kept me on Mr. X’s security detail, and read in one or two additional trusted agents to keep digging into what had turned into a very deep hole.”

“Explain,” Del requested.

“Going backward, it turns out that Mr. X—when his memory of the UN attack began to come back—knew a lot about what had happened that day. He remembered the insurgents finding and taking some documents pertinent to the gold smuggling, and he saw faces. In specific, the face of the man in charge. It was enough so that man, fronting the group, thought Mr. X—once it was determined he’d live—was too much of a danger to leave blowing in the wind. Which meant they had to kill him. An attempt was made at the hospital, but Smalley and I were able to thwart it. After that, we—Smalley and I—knew Mr. X needed to be hidden until such time as the case wrapped up and he could testify.

“Smalley took all the proper steps. He put Mr. X into what was considered a safe-house, complete with a new ID and an FBI constructed background. We both figured Mr. X would be okay. But that wasn’t the case. Within weeks, there was another attack on his life.”

“What the fuck?”

“Exactly what Smalley wondered. Mr. X himself was able to obstruct that attempt, then Chuck moved Mr. X again.”

“There was a third attempt?” Del guessed.

“Bingo. It was then Smalley knew there had to be a leak in the FBI, so the next time Mr. X was hidden, only Smalley and a few trusted agents knew where he’d been stashed.”

“Don’t tell me. The efforts to kill your informant didn’t stop.”

“They did not. And Smalley had no clue who he could really trust at that point besides me. That’s when he set me up with a job at the DOJ, so I could live stateside and help him out. After that third try at getting to Mr. X, we moved the man to a location only the two of us knew about.”

“And?” Del probed, totally into the story by now.

“And we found that whoever is at the top of the gold-smuggling food chain in the US, has the resources to track a lot of things; our phones, our movements, our correspondence. And Mr. X was found again.” She sighed. “Therefore, the job of hiding him had to go completely off the books, and I alone relocated Mr. X nine and a half years ago. Even Chuck didn’t know, for quite some time, where I had stashed him.

“Hence, Mr. X had been safe for a long time, but then circumstances I can’t discuss made it necessary for me to move him again. I remain vigilant, and with an abundance of caution, I still move Mr. X every two years to a new location.”

“And that’s why you need next week off,” Del surmised. “It’s time to relocate your witness again.”

“Exactly.”