An Affair of Deceit Read Online Free PDF Page B

As far as we know, Kral kidnapped Mason and is holding him hostage.”
    “Then why just take him? Why kill the British and French agents but take the American alive?”
    Riley had no idea, but he could proffer a reasonable hypothesis. “The British and French agents were paramilitary guys brought in to arrest Kral. Their sole mission objective was to take Kral into custody, so when they were ambushed, they must have fought to the last man. If I know Mason, he likely hunkered down once the shooting started.”
    “He
is
a fucking coward.”
    “He’s a survivor, and he’s not stupid,” Riley insisted. He’d pored over Mason’s file—the small part of it that was open to them for review, at least—and had come to the conclusion that Mason was one of the agency’s best men. Terrible father and husband, but an awfully good intelligence officer, one who’d procured more well-placed spies over the course of his long career than any other officer on record. Mason had a cockroach’s talent for staying alive in dangerous situations, too. “I’m sure he was armed, but he was outgunned. They took him alive because he was the only one on our side still breathing when the bullets stopped flying. Then maybe Kral decided to interrogate him before killing him. It could be that simple.”
    “Nothing is that simple with Mason. We still don’t know why he abandoned his China post. That was a good gig—he had to start from scratch when he got to Europe. No contacts. Nothing.”
    “He didn’t abandon it. He was reassigned.”
    “He abandoned his family.”
    That much was true. Mason could have taken his wife and child with him on his post to Europe. He’d been stationed in Prague for a while; families were welcome in the Czech Republiccapital’s embassy, where Mason had been quartered under diplomatic cover. “We can’t be sure of anything. We still don’t have access to his whole file.”
    “And we never will. But I don’t need to see a full file to know when something’s suspicious.”
    “Everything’s suspicious to you.” Riley had known Greene since college, and he was used to having this sort of discussion with him by now. He seemed like a conspiracy crackpot sometimes, but the crazy thing was that he was often right. He wouldn’t be under thirty-five and running his own counterintelligence team otherwise. Because Greene was the best in the world at ferreting out moles and leaks, Riley had learned to tolerate a certain amount of nuttiness from his best friend. “Have you made any progress with getting his older records opened?”
    “Nope. I don’t even know where he was born.” Greene sighed. “He has friends in high places. They’re doing everything they can to keep him out of the China mole investigation, but I promise you, I will not back down. Someone is sneaking the PRC top-level intel, and I will find out who it is.”
    “Absolutely.” On that, finally, Riley could agree wholeheartedly. “But about the French ambush. Have you talked to the two people who escaped the slaughter? One was CIA, and the other British, right? With their Serious Organized Crime Agency?”
    “Yeah, SOCA. Their guy is Oliver McCrea. Our girl is Evangeline Quill.”
    “Never heard of her.”
    “Me neither.” Greene barked a hard laugh. “Took me three goddamned days to convince everyone that CI has a right to know this shit.”
    Riley murmured sympathetically, having heard that type of complaint many times before. Greene hated the way everyone else in the agency tried to shut their unit out of investigations, but counterintelligence was basically an internal affairs squad and thus rightly feared.
    “Anyway, neither McCrea nor Quill was in the caravan headed to Marseille, where Kral was going to be held until he could be prosecuted,” Greene said. “They left a few minutes after the rest of the team did, and came upon the carnage. They picked the two guys who seemed the least dead and did CPR until help showed up.