The first one to react was Hunt. He didn’t say anything out loud, but Triggs could tell by his body language that his mind was racing, probably wondering why she was sending him to Switzerland instead of Turkey. Once she was certain that everybody had read the file twice, she said, “Prior to the ambush, I had Max working round the clock trying to figure out how the Turkish authorities found out about Paramilitary Operations Officer Charlie Henican’s location. Fewer than ten people were aware of his whereabouts and of his mission.”
“Any luck?” Hunt asked.
“Yes and no,” Triggs said. “As of early this morning, Pike and Crawford have taken over the search for the leak. They’re presently going through every bit of intel we have. Isn’t that right, Mr. Pike?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pike said in his baritone voice. “We’re making progress.”
“Good to know,” Triggs said. Director Helms would be pleased. The agency didn’t need another Aldrich Ames. The sooner Pike and Crawford found out who had either leaked a sensitive operation or, perhaps worse, hacked into CIA communications, the better. “As far as Henican’s current location—”
Before she could continue, Harriet Jacobs jumped in. “Is it possible that Charlie simply got hit by a bus and is now in a hospital?”
“We now know this isn’t the case. What you’ll see happened four days ago in Istanbul.”
Triggs pointed a remote at a television and pressed a button. The screen swirled with colors and then cleared into a view of two dark SUVs. Six men, all of them heavily armed and dressed in black battle dress uniforms, were in the process of climbing out of the SUVs and entering the lobby of a small hotel.
Triggs fast-forwarded a few seconds and said, “This is more or less four minutes later.”
The six men were seen exiting the hotel. But this time they had one more person with them.
Charlie Henican.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CIA headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Hunt heard Harriet Jacobs gasp at the sight of Charlie Henican being led out of the Istanbul hotel. He, too, was relieved to see that his friend was still alive.
At least he was four days ago, he thought, keeping his emotions in check.
“Do we know who these people are?” he asked. “How did we get this video?”
Triggs paused the video. “These men are Maroon Berets,” she said. “They’re bad news.”
“Why are they bad news?” Colleen Crawford asked.
Hunt answered the intelligence researcher’s question. “The Maroon Berets are Turkey’s best of the best. They wouldn’t get deployed into Istanbul to arrest someone unless they’d received intel that this person represented a threat to their national security. Common criminals get arrested by regular police officers. Terrorists—or spies, for that matter—get the Maroon Berets.”
“Pierce is right,” Triggs said. “But now that I know who took him, the State Department will be able to apply some pressure. Unofficially.”
“Unofficially?” Hunt asked. “What does that even mean?”
“It means exactly that, Pierce,” she said. “I’ve collected many IOUs at the State Department over the years. They have to tread carefully; we weren’t supposed to be there.”
Triggs was protecting her ass, but Hunt didn’t blame her. At least she was trying to get Henican back.
“Understood,” he said. “But again, how did we get this video? And who took it?”
“We found it on Instagram,” she said.
“I’m not following,” Jacobs said. “How did Charlie end up on Instagram?”
“The videographer is a twenty-one-year-old student at Istanbul University. We don’t know why she was there in the first place, but we can only assume that the arrival of two SUVs full of armed men isn’t a daily occurrence in this neighborhood.
“Anyway,” Triggs continued, “one of our methods of searching for Henican was to look online for specific keywords and hashtags. The student used the hashtags HotelNiles and Istanbul when she posted her video on Instagram. These keywords had been programmed into our algorithm.”
Hunt wished she’d posted her video right after taking it instead of waiting days to do so. “How did you establish that the men taking him were Maroon Berets?” he asked.
“That was the easy part,” Triggs said. “We cross-referenced the license plates to our database and found out that they belonged to a shell company. This shell company is explicitly used by the Maroon Berets for the purpose of conducting black or covert operations within Turkey.”
“And we’re sure about this?” Hunt pressed.
“We are,” Triggs said dryly. “The intel is good. Understood?”
Hunt took a moment to examine Triggs. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail. She had wide-spaced brown eyes that were tired, but it was the shadows beneath them that he noticed more. She had been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours, and it showed.
“So what’s the plan?” Jacobs asked, showing signs of desperation. “We’re not going to Turkey to get Charlie, but I read in the file that you’re sending us to Switzerland? What the hell?”
Hunt knew Henican and Jacobs were close. Very close, even. He suspected that the two of them shared more than just a professional interest in each other.
“As I said earlier, my friends at the State Department are taking the lead in Turkey,” Triggs replied. “This is a tricky situation that will require finesse—”
“I can do finesse,” Hunt said, trying to lighten the mood. He failed miserably.
Triggs shot him a dirty look. Hunt raised both hands and retreated deeper into his seat.
“The failed coup is still fresh on many people’s minds,” Triggs continued, her gaze still on Hunt. “It had devastating effects on the country’s political sphere, and the same could be said about the rest of Turkish society. I’m not sure if you’re all aware, but controversial arrests continue to happen daily. Over eighty thousand people have been arrested for links to terror organizations, and more than one hundred and thirty thousand have been purged from the public service sector. The path the Turkish government chose to follow since the failed coup has created a rift between their country and ours.”
“That rings true for all of Turkey’s Western allies,” Hunt mentioned. “We’re not the only country having issues with them. If I remember correctly, the European Commission pulled no punches when they documented the Turkish authorities’ human rights infringements during the purge.”
Triggs nodded. “That’s correct, but when it came to military collaboration, the United States was the country hit the hardest.”
“How so?” Jacobs asked.
“Because for over a decade, we had built robust relationships with many senior military officers in the Turkish armed forces. Unfortunately, many of those generals were arrested within days of the failed coup. Several of them are now serving life terms in prison.”
Hunt grunted, not satisfied with the explanation. In his mind, the structured chaos in Turkey was the perfect environment for a small team of operators to be clandestinely inserted with a high degree of success. He was about to say so to Triggs, but Jacobs beat him to the punch.