The Red Cell by André Gallo (the top 100 crime novels of all time TXT) 📕

operations than ever through his Red Cell. But we better head up,” Nortsen said as he looked at his watch and finished his coffee.

As they headed to the elevator, he asked, “But what about you? Why did you join the CIA?”

“Well, I had a choice. Most of my classmates at Johns Hopkins went to work for oil companies in the Middle East. Money or do something for my country? Plus, the excitement, of course. And I wanted to meet interesting people who also wanted to make a difference.”

“Well, you came to the right place. Although not everyone in the agency likes him because he is not a CIA staffer, Steve is one of the more interesting people you are likely to meet. Several intelligence awards in return for saving the lives of thousands of people in the Middle East and our country’s cyber infrastructure.”

Steve Church’s office was next to the National Security Council on the third floor. As advertised, it was modest in size and the several chairs that had been brought in for this meeting made it appear even smaller. Kristen was surprised high-ranking officials were squeezed into so many cubbyholes. She supposed proximity to power made up for the lack of space.

They were among the first to arrive and Nortsen introduced Kristen. “Always happy to meet one of Tom’s protégés,” Church said. “I believe trainees usually spend a couple of months at an overseas station before their permanent assignment. Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know yet,” Kristen said.”

“We’re going to lose her to the European Division,” Nortsen interjected, “but I’ll make sure we get her back.”

The room quickly filled up with officials from other intelligence community organizations and Steve gave the group a quick summary of the previous day’s excitement. Kristen looked around the room sizing up the individuals at the center of American intelligence but her eyes rested on the speaker. Steve stood about six feet one, was fit-looking, had short brown hair, brown eyes, and an easy smile. He exuded confidence, vitality, and the sense any goal was within his grasp. Trust, she decided; she trusted him. And he wasn’t bad-looking, either in an unselfconscious way.

“How do we know those two guys were Iranians?” someone who identified himself as Defense Intelligence Agency asked.

“Interesting question,” Steve replied. “Mary Margaret, do you want to take that one?”              “About a week ago, we at NSA intercepted an Iranian message, which in hindsight should have warned us this hit team was in the Washington area,” a well-dressed, blonde, middle-aged woman said. “Its target, which they referred to as Satan’s Spy, we now know was Steve. However, the message was not processed quickly enough. And it only makes complete sense after the fact.”

“Satan’s Spy?” an Army colonel asked.

“When we were making a run for the coast with Iranian security close behind, my name was outted to the Iranian media and they gave me a nickname,” Steve said with a grin.

According to Kristen’s office colleagues, the other half of the “we” was Church’s partner and girlfriend, Kella Hastings, a French girl with a bizarre background. Born of a North African desert tribe and later adopted by an American diplomat and his French wife, Steve and Kella had met at a diplomatic reception in Paris. They later had been recruited by the agency to gather operational intelligence on a radical Muslim leader, whom Steve had met while studying in Brussels. They had eventually stopped the Jihadist from pulverizing several Middle East capitals with a captured Israeli space gun in an effort to turn the clock back to the time of the Caliphate. Kristen wondered if Kella was still in the picture.

Kristen’s conjectures were interrupted when Vice President Harry Baxter, a bald, heavy-set man, entered the room.

“You get yourself in the damndest situations, Steve,” said Baxter. “And now that you’ve killed them both, we can’t interrogate them.”

“Iranians are notoriously bad drivers, Mr. Vice President,” Steve said. “They killed themselves. But I agree they would have been a source of valuable intelligence. They were obviously members of the Quds Force, Iran’s equivalent of SMERSH, the old Soviet assassination unit.”

Kristen knew Baxter was said to often act like a bull in a china shop but was also a man who got things done.

“I spoke to CIA director LaFont this morning,” Baxter said. “She’s going to initiate a Covert Finding. We need to get more aggressive with these thugs who come to our country to kill our officials.”

“A lethal finding?” Steve asked.

“You bet your ass. Are there any other kinds?” Baxter chuckled.

Steve smiled. “Game on.”

2. Fairfax County, Virginia

The CIA recruiter, “Just call me Bob,” had first interviewed Um in a rented office a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. He seemed friendly, as a recruiter should be. He said he served in Iraq and showed off his few words of Arabic, as they both laughed at his accent. Three weeks later, she responded to his invitation for a second interview, this time in Northern Virginia.

As Um followed Bob’s directions, her heart beat faster than normal. She steered her used red Mustang into a parking lot dominated by a twelve-story office building, turned again, and stopped in front of a lowered white barrier across the entrance to a side lot. The secondary lot was not visible from the street, nor did her GPS acknowledge the presence of the red brick building she could now see beyond the guardhouse. A uniformed Federal Protective Service officer in his late twenties emerged. He examined her Mustang then studied her face a moment before smiling. She wondered if the sports car was too high profile.

About to enter a CIA building for the first time, she was tense. She replayed Ahmed’s words, “Stay calm, think of the beach in Beirut, the water skiers, the kids playing in the sand, the ice cream peddlers ...