“Right. Let’s return to Robert Crenshaw. What was he doing in Peshawar?”
“I don’t know. But tracking and killing Taliban is the local sport.”
“Right. And that was Mercer’s job in Afghanistan.”
Dombroski didn’t reply. Then he said, “This case may be more complex than it appears.”
“It always was.”
Again, no reply. Then, “It sounds like you’ve got a good lead. Follow it where it takes you. Chances are this Crenshaw information won’t play a role in that. But I wanted you to be aware that our friends in the Caracas embassy might have more interest in this case than they’re letting on.”
Brodie thought about everything that Dombroski had said. Nothing pissed him off more than someone else deciding what he did and didn’t need to know. But at least Dombroski was giving him something—off the record. Brodie asked, “As long as we’re outing spies, any news on my partner?”
“That was just gossip.”
Brodie did not reply.
“What do you think?”
Brodie thought back to their drinks in the hotel bar. There was something off. But nothing to go on. He said, “I trust her.”
“Good.”
“Anything else, Colonel?”
“Just learned my ex-wife remarried.”
“Congratulations.”
“I found out on Facebook. New guy’s fatter than me. I wonder if it’ll last.”
“Is he rich?”
“He’s a retired cop, into local politics.”
“Two strikes. Give it a year.”
Dombroski laughed. “You’ve got to take your turn at bat, Brodie. How are the women down there?”
“I’m focused on the case.”
“Good. Don’t spend government money in a whorehouse unless it’s information that you’re buying.”
“You’re welcome to come here and keep an eye on me.”
“No, thanks. You get all the glory. Meanwhile, share this new information about Crenshaw on a need-to-know basis.”
Meaning, It’s up to you if you want to tell Taylor. “Yes, sir. Anything further?”
“Negative further.”
The protocol was that the superior had the last word, so Brodie hung up and looked out at the view from the balcony. There were very few lights on in the city below and it was hard to tell where Caracas ended and the mountains began.
Every case, from petty theft to murder, is a nexus of people, places, motives, and interests. This case was more complex than most, but it was still made up of the same essential parts. He had a fugitive who was, in addition to being a potential head case, a highly trained member of an elite unit who had been operating for years in a vast Black Ops war without end. The motive for his initial crime—desertion—was a mystery. But he had managed to kill his Taliban captors and escape imprisonment. If he’d then returned to a U.S. military base, that might have been viewed as a heroic act that could mitigate his initial desertion. But instead he had desecrated the bodies of the dead—a crime in both U.S. military and international law—and turned his back on his career and his country. Why?
And now this guy Crenshaw… tortured and killed. As a CIA officer in Kabul, Crenshaw would likely have coordinated and worked with JSOC and its special operators on the ground, including Delta Force.
CIA. JSOC. Kabul. Peshawar.
Caracas.
This was the piece that didn’t fit, the non sequitur in the unwritten story of Captain Kyle Mercer. Brodie looked out toward the eastern hills and Petare, to the great black wash of mountains and sky. Maybe tomorrow would bring some answers.
He went back into his room, locked his balcony door, and sat at the desk. He then installed the VPN client from Worley on his laptop and wondered if he had just given the DIA access to all of his e-mails and search history. Paranoia fed on itself.
He ran a Google search for “MBR-200,” the name of the colectivo gang that Raúl had given them. He found nothing on the gang itself, though he did discover its namesake—the revolutionary movement that Hugo Chávez had founded back in 1982 and that ultimately launched his first failed coup attempt a decade later. The “200” had been added to the name in 1983 to commemorate the two-hundredth birthday of Venezuela’s national obsession, Simón Bolívar.
History and memory ran deep here, thought Brodie. These thugs were dealing in child prostitutes and drugs, but they still wore these revolutionary tropes and signifiers like badges of honor. He thought back to the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shi’ite insurgent group in Baghdad formed during the war, which was named for a ninth-century imam who was prophesied to return in the end times. There was a real power to these associations,