“Pierce and I could easily slip into Turkey and—”
“No,” Triggs snapped. “You’ll do no such thing. Weren’t you listening to what I just said? State is taking the lead in Turkey. I’ve made my decision.”
Hunt came to Jacobs’s rescue. “Listen, Dorothy, I’m having problems figuring out what I’m doing here. You hired me for one thing, and one thing only: to find Charlie Henican. We now have a lead, something we didn’t have twenty-four hours ago, but you don’t want us to go to Turkey to get him out?”
“It’s not that—” Triggs started, but Hunt interrupted her. He’d had enough of Triggs’s bullshit. Did she want to get Henican or not?
He grabbed the file that Triggs had given him at the start of the meeting and lifted it angrily in the air. “You don’t want us to go to Turkey, but you have this incredibly detailed plan on how to get us to Switzerland. I’m confused. What am I missing?”
“I’m sorry,” Triggs said, nodding her head in acquiescence. “I should have gotten to this sooner. I think we all got sidetracked for a minute. Believe me, Pierce, it was my intention to send you chasing after Henican. I think it’s fair to say that all of us around the table know how close you are with Charlie and that you’re the most qualified person to do it. I believe that too. I really do.”
“Then the only thing you need to do is to set me loose,” Hunt said, almost pleading.
“I can’t do that.”
Hunt heaved his bulk out of the chair, sending it thumping against the wall. “Then I think I’m done here. This was a waste of time.”
“Hear me out,” Triggs said. “You owe me that much.”
Hunt had no idea what she was talking about. He owed her nothing. In fact, the opposite was true. But out of respect for her recent loss, he sat down.
“Thank you,” she said. Then, “If you’ll allow me to explain, I think you’ll understand. If I don’t convince you of the importance of going to Switzerland, I’ll let you go back to your family. Deal?”
She looked at him expectantly. Hunt drew a long, slow breath.
“Why not?” he said. Now that Henican had been located, the only other potential operation that would justify having him here was going after Jorge Ramirez. And he was right. Triggs confirmed it when she next opened her mouth.
“We just received confirmation that Jorge Ramirez is in Switzerland. I want you to hunt him down.”
Hunt smiled. That was something worth his time. He had unfinished business with Ramirez. It had been Ramirez’s amphetamine pills that had killed his daughter Leila’s boyfriend.
“Carte blanche?” Hunt asked.
“Absolutely not. You’ll follow the ops plan.”
Hunt looked around the briefing room. Pike and Crawford weren’t CIA employees; nor was he. Jacobs was, but she was a deniable asset.
This mission is off the books, Hunt thought.
“Who knows about this?” he asked.
“The people around this table, a couple of analysts and security officers, and the director. You get in, you take out Ramirez, then you get the hell out of Switzerland.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Grand Hotel Villa Castagnola
Lugano, Switzerland
As a former paratrooper of the 993rd Special Operations Battalion of the armed forces of Venezuela, Jorge Ramirez wasn’t accustomed to making rash decisions, but he was about to. He was running out of options. And money. The last few months hadn’t been kind to him. His only protectors in Venezuela—including the former president—had been arrested and were now awaiting trial for treason and murder. Colonel Carlos Arteaga had now assumed the presidency. And Arteaga wanted his head.
Ramirez was well aware that Arteaga’s path to the top spot had been cleared by the Americans. Not only did he know it, but he could prove it too. That knowledge made him dangerous to the Americans, since it threatened Arteaga’s already-precarious position among the Venezuelan people. Hyperinflation and a dire shortage of supplies were even more rampant than they’d been under the last president. It broke Ramirez’s heart to see his country suffering, but he had done what he could.
For a while, Ramirez had aided the former president on a plan to bring cash into Venezuela by manufacturing and distributing a new type of ultra-addictive amphetamine pill. But the plan had gone awry after the drug had been rushed and several American teenagers had died. Turkey had seemed like a good place to resume his operation, but he had misjudged how much the country had changed since the attempted coup. To Ramirez’s surprise, most of his trusted contacts in the Turkish underworld hadn’t responded to his calls. In fact, only one had agreed to see him, and he had forced Ramirez to wait a full week before granting him an audience. The man, a high-ranking officer of the Turkish National Police named Doru Kazak, had encouraged Ramirez to take the few men still loyal to him and promptly leave the country. Not only wasn’t Kazak interested in what Ramirez had to sell, but he’d made it abundantly clear that this was the last time he wanted to hear from him. Before leaving, the man had nevertheless given Ramirez a lifeline.
“As a departing gift and in memory of our past successful transactions, I’m offering you a special present, my friend,” Kazak had said while pulling at his cigarette.
“You’re too generous,” Ramirez had replied.
Kazak had shaken a finger at Ramirez’s sarcasm. “Don’t begrudge me for being honest with you, Jorge. I can still change my mind.”
There was nothing Ramirez would have loved more than to break the old man’s finger and gouge out his eyes with it. Instead, he’d apologized.
“Call this number,” Kazak had said, giving Ramirez a piece of paper. “I vouch for him. The man’s always looking to buy intelligence. He’ll pay well for what you have on the Americans. I contacted him the moment I heard you were in town. He’s expecting you.”
Ramirez hadn’t recognized the number. “This isn’t an Istanbul number, is it?”
The Turk had laughed out loud. “Business isn’t as good as it used to be, I’m afraid. Istanbul has changed quite a lot since the purging of suspected disloyalists following the failed coup. To survive, I had to branch out. The number is Swiss.”
Before Ramirez had been able to thank him, Kazak had continued, “There was an American in town. I don’t think he was here for you, but in this business of ours, who really knows?”
Ramirez had nearly had a heart attack. He knew the Americans were after him, but he’d been so careful. Could they have found him? Kazak hadn’t seemed to think so, but it would be foolish of Ramirez to assume otherwise. He had to anticipate the worst-case scenario. It was a matter of survival.
“Where is he now?” Ramirez had asked.
“I said ‘was,’ didn’t I? The American’s gone,” Kazak had assured him. “I took care of him. He won’t be a bother to anyone.”
A quick look into the Turk’s hard eyes had been enough to convince Ramirez the man had been telling the truth.
“How can I thank you?”
“Don’t ever come back to Turkey.”
Cornered, Ramirez hadn’t had much choice but to reach out to Kazak’s Swiss friend. Now that the Americans had gotten his scent, they wouldn’t let go. They wanted him dead, and that complicated things immensely. Ramirez was on his own. He couldn’t reasonably expect to get any help from the cartels with which he had done business in the past. With President Reilly threatening to label them foreign terrorist organizations, very few cartels, as powerful as they were, were willing to cross the Americans nowadays. Branding the cartels terror organizations opened up the possibility that Reilly could authorize the use of US military force against them without Mexico’s sanction. Ramirez understood why the cartel leaders didn’t want to rattle the cage too much. But it left him with very little wiggle room.