Free The Third Coincidence by David Bishop

stimulating.

    chapter 15

    Some say it’s foreign terrorists. Others say American extremists. To vote your opinion, visit the Internet site shown on the bottom of your screen.
    —All News Network, June 8

    Jack left home early enough to catch a glimpse through the trees of the sunrise glistening off the Potomac River, the sheet of moving water broken here and there by small whitecaps.
    Last night he had endured another attack of insomnia. When he was on assignment, sleeping was like being trapped in a fighter jet doing an endless roll. Last night he had watched one of his favorite movies from his collection of film noir: Humphrey Bogart’s great characterization of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon . Throughout the movie his mind had wrestled with the unan- swerable: could the man who had called about Rachel be the man they were hunting? Nothing factual connected them. His instinct did. If the caller was the killer, it meant that assassinations weren’t enough. The killer wanted to play. This was a new piece of the pro- file, and Jack needed to tell his squad and warn Rachel.
    The sun was filtering through the surrounding trees when Jack pulled into the CIA lot. When he arrived this early, he rarely saw anyone other than Lana and Zaro Kindar. The Kindars provided cof- fee service in the CIA’s New Headquarters Building that comprised
    1.1 million of the CIA’s total 2.5 million square feet secreted within the trees in the Langley neighborhood of McLean, Virginia.
    66 David M. Bishop

    In the late 1980s, after Saddam Hussein’s forces killed their three sons, Lana and Zaro took jobs working as housekeepers to high of- ficials in Iraq’s Republican Guard. In that job the Kindars secretly passed on information and documents they could copy to an Amer- ican agent, Jack McCall. The afternoon before McCall and his squad were to be extracted from Iraq, the Kindars were arrested and taken to a small military camp near Tikrit, north of Baghdad. Jack had taken a few men, including Colin Stewart and with the support of the Kurdish Underground, fought their way in to free the Kindars. After their return, General Crook helped Jack walk Lana and Zaro through immigration. And Harriet Miller, the CIA director, had them employed as independent contractors to provide the coffee service in the nonhighly classified sectors.
    The CIA’s facilities staff met Jack at the door to his squad room. He explained the layout he wanted, the conference table at the far end, with a six-foot marking board on the wall next to the table’s long side, covering the rest of that wall with pin board. He would ask Rachel to set up half the pin board as a bulletin section with pic- tures and particulars on the sitting justices and Fed governors. With the other half developed as a graveyard section holding the pictures and information on each of the victims, and the details of the deaths. Desks were to be put at the end near the door, and in the space between a couch, some occasional chairs, and the food and bever- age area that becomes essential once an investigation takes on a 24/7
    life of its own.
    About the time the facilities people left, the Kindars arrived to set them up with fresh coffee, snacks, and fill the refrigerator with sodas and bottled water. They even put a bowl of red apples and green seedless grapes on the conference table.
    By early afternoon the furnishings were in place, and the in- stallers had assured Jack that the computers and other high-tech goodies were ready for use.
    At four the members of Jack’s squad started coming in. Millet
    the third coincidence 67

    arrived, still grumbling about not being able to work at home. Jack had talked him into working at the CIA, in part, by going along with Millet’s request to name their squad room the Bullpen. Jack imme- diately took to the name, feeling the connotation of the word cap- tured the independence and solidarity he wanted his team to feel.
    Millet headed