“Then they’ll show me their gratitude via my account in the Caymans.”
“I’ll pass that along with the intelligence you brought me. But no more unannounced visits. Clear?”
The younger man looked out the window by the back kitchen door, making sure no one could see him leave. “As a bell.”
And then he was gone.
—
Thirty minutes later, J.W. climbed out of a black Yukon on Church Street NW with Big Mike Scardino at his side, and as Hasan drove off to the east through swirling snowflakes, the two men climbed the stairs of a redbrick row house twice the size of Westwood’s home just a mile and a half to the west in Georgetown.
This building was not much different from a dozen others in the row on this stretch of Church Street. The entire block had been built in the 1880s, and today some were private homes, others had been parceled out into apartments or condos, but a few were owned by foundations.
As they made it to the front porch, they walked past a gold plaque inlaid in the brick wall that read “The Raymond C. Carter Center for Trends in Peace.”
The door was held open for the two men by a security guard in a navy sweater with gold-striped epaulets.
—
In minutes Westwood was alone, ensconced in his office, his headset on his head and connected to his laptop. His laptop was equipped withFibreNet, a commercial encrypted communications system. He waited just a moment for the call to be answered on the other end.
“Yes.” A woman answered and he recognized the voice. She sounded American, her tone businesslike, as always.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Authentication?”
“Desert Wind.”
“Confirmed. My authentication is Harness.”
“Confirmed. I have preliminary information about a time-critical event.”
“Priority of the information?”
“Ultra.”
“Go ahead.”
Westwood relayed what he’d heard from Shaw about Nicaragua and a scared agent of the CIA demanding to be extracted, along with the fact that Shaw expected to have specific location and time information in the coming hours.
After the woman on the other end acknowledged that she understood, J.W. said, “Whatever measures they take down in Nicaragua, it has to happen like it was organic, not as the result of obtaining intel up here. We need this source kept safe, in play for our upcoming mission here. I mean, Nicaragua might be important to your people, but it can’t possibly be more important than our mission here.”
“I’ll relay the message, but no one takes strategic advice from you—or from me, for that matter.”
J.W. shrugged. “If they want my mission to be a success here in D.C., then they’ll do it.”
“I will pass your concerns along.” The connection ended.
Westwood took off his headset and gazed out the window. The skies looked like they had some more snow in them. Sometimes he liked to walk to work. Often he’d ride his mountain bike. But he’d take the Yukon back home this afternoon, for sure.
Drumming his fingers on his desk, he let the gravity of this moment wash over him, but only for a second.
He had committed high treason this morning, and not for the first time this year.
There had been Tunis, and there had been Addis Ababa before that. There had been Madrid, and there had been Caracas.
And now Managua.
