A Raging Storm

Jones looked exhausted. The pressures from his job were clearly taking a toll. His face was becoming a road map of worry lines. There was little doubt that Jones would have had pure white hair if he weren’t bald. By contrast, Storm was still ruggedly handsome, although his body also was showing the signs of his past. Five scars in his abdomen marked where he’d been shot. There was a knife wound on his back where he’d been slashed from behind. More recently, a bullet had ice-skated across his shoulder, leaving an ugly superficial scar. Of course, the worst wounds had been delivered in Tangiers — physically and mentally.

One reason why Storm had faked his own death was because he’d quietly begun to question his own abilities after Tangiers. The couple helping him had been shot to death in front of him. He had been left for dead. Doctors couldn’t believe he’d recovered. But with his recovery had come doubts. Had he missed something? Was he somehow to blame? It was only after he had “died” — while he was alone in Montana fishing — that he had considered another possibility. Someone had betrayed him. Someone inside the agency. He had gone over every minute detail of Tangiers, over and over, and he’d reached the same conclusion each time, no matter how he twisted it. He’d walked into a trap. Storm’s first reaction had been to contact Jones and seek vengeance. But he had no proof. In Montana, he had been out of the game. What was the cost of getting back in? Now the landscape had changed. Now they’d let the fox back into the henhouse. Now he could test his hunch and expose the traitor who was responsible for the scars — both physical and mental — that he carried. If there really was a traitor, then Storm needed to unmask him. And he could only find the truth by working from the inside out.

Jones interrupted his thoughts. “You really don’t have any idea what motive Petrov or Barkovsky might have for wanting Senator Windslow dead?”

“The senator’s final words were Jedidiah knows and Midas.”

Storm let his answer hang in the air, begging for an explanation.

But Jones didn’t immediately bite. Instead, he sat in his squeaky chair and stared blankly at his young protégé. And then, after several awkward seconds, he said: “OK, I agree. It’s time for me to tell you a bit more. Only a handful of government officials here in Washington are familiar with what I am about to say. Senator Windslow was one of them and it cost him his life. It can cost your life, too. Before I go any further, I need to ask: Do you want to take that risk?”

“You seem to forget,” Storm said. “I’m already dead.”

CHAPTER FIVE

edidiah Jones walked to a wall safe with a magnetic strip that had the word “LOCKED” on it slapped across its reinforced steel door. Jones flipped over the strip so that the word “OPEN” was visible in bright red letters and punched a combination into an electronic screen that simultaneously verified his fingerprint. From the safe, he withdrew a thick red envelope marked “PROJECT MIDAS.” He shut the safe’s door, flipped the magnetic strip to “CLOSED” and double-checked to make certain the door was locked.

Returning to his chair, he wrote the name “STEVE MASON” in quotations on a log attached to the top secret file’s front. He wrote the date, the time, his own name, and then noted that he had authorized Mason to view four photographs from the file. The photos were numbered MIDAS 001, 002, 003, and 004. He asked Storm to sign the log with his pseudonym. After he did, Jones handed Storm three photographs but held one back.

“Tell me what you see in the pictures,” Jones said.