Free Tier One Wild by Dalton Fury Page A

took the man’s hand and shook it. “Nice to see you. Meriwether, is it?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Yes.” Marris, suddenly aware that much of the paperwork in front of him was highly confidential, began stacking the sheets as if he were about to leave.
    “Can I buy you another coffee?” the American asked.
    “Oh … thank you, but I need to get back to work. Um … I am sorry. Bruges is a bit of a blur. I can’t say I remember meeting you. What do you do?”
    “Much the same as yourself, at the moment. In fact, I’d love a couple minutes of your time to chat about a topic of mutual interest. Maybe we could step over to the lounge?” Just off the courtyard was a dark room full of cushions and low tables. Here men sat in the dimness and smoked from hookahs and drank tea and coffee.
    “Why?” asked Renny Marris, on guard now.
    “Please. I’d appreciate a quick word.” The man stood, beckoned Marris to follow.
    By the time they had settled into the tobacco-scented cushions in the dimly lit long and narrow lounge, the Canadian weapons expert had determined he had not, in fact, met this man in Bruges. He had also decided that this was no chance meeting. This man would be some sort of American agent—CIA or military intelligence or something along those lines.
    He groaned inwardly. He had few hard and fast rules, but he had made one, an ironclad oath to himself that he would have neither contact with nor connections to the American government.
    The CIA had been running around Libya on the same mission as Marris and his team for the past several months. They had had some successes, successes Marris chalked up to the easy-picking variety. But in this work the CIA had ruffled more than a few feathers along the way.
    Marris had worked around CIA and other intelligence agencies in all the places in which he’d plied his trade for the past thirty years and, as far as the Canadian peacenik was concerned, American intelligence was an enemy who, for their own benefit, occasionally worked toward the same goal as did the good guys.
    Marris asked the man in front of him, “Why don’t you just tell me who you are?”
    The young man said, “I read your article last month in Foreign Policy . Very interesting.”
    Marris adopted a skeptical, slightly sarcastic tone. “Would you like my autograph? No? I asked who you are.”
    The American’s comfortable smile dropped off. “I’m with the U.S. Embassy.”
    Renny Marris did not blink. “You are CIA.”
    The black man did not blink, either. Instead he just repeated, “With the embassy.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Associates of mine are big fans of yours.”
    Renny clutched the strap of his bag tighter. “I am certainly not doing what I do so that I can generate fans in American intelligence. The proliferation of U.S. weapons is tenfold more harmful to the world than these Libyan arms.”
    “Agree to disagree,” said the American, displaying no outward reaction to the insult. “Look. I’m not here to tell you about everyone who loves your work. I’m here to tell you about a few who do not.”
    “Who?”
    “The JSO guys you have been tracking.”
    “How do you know who I am tracking? Do you have spies in my operation?”
    “We have feelers in their organization, same as you. And we have learned something recently. They know about your investigation, and they know you are close to identifying their leadership. That puts you in the crosshairs.”
    “And?”
    “We want to help you out of the crosshairs.”
    Marris laughed, a touch of anger along with it. “I do not need a babysitter from the CIA watching over me. And I certainly am not going to be recruited by you. You want to control conventional weaponry so that you will have the biggest guns on the block. That isn’t peace. That is force. That is domination. I work for the good of all mankind, which means I don’t work with or for America.”
    “‘The good of all mankind’?” The American chuckled and