Page 140 of One Minute Out

“So, Matt, when you gave me that impassioned plea for me to drop this pipeline thing and haul ass back home so that Zoya wouldn’t die alone in some shit-stained hellhole, it had less to do with Zoya and more to do with you trying to protect international criminals so they could continue to feed you intel product.”

“If I say yes, are you going to show up at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night?”

I don’t answer him, but I get the reference. I did come to him one rainy night for a chat, and it was clear he did not appreciate the intrusion.

After my silence, Hanley adds, “People in the real world aren’t like you, Court old buddy. The rest of us, we take orders. We work to the best of our ability to satisfy the wishes of our higher-ups. I’ve got bosses I listen to and respect, unlike you, out there just winging it, dancing to your own music playing in your goofy head. Music nobody hears but you.”

“You’re stacking your metaphors, Matt.”

“Let me help you understand, then. I’m saying this. I was told the man at the center of this—”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know his name. I just know his code name.”

“The DDO doesn’t know the name of an intelligence asset? Bullshit.”

“He’s the one who’s kept it hidden. He came to us originally, a walk-in, and he set protocols in place to where we can’t easily identify him.”

“All right,” I say. “People in the Balkan pipeline call him the Director.”

“Okay, fine. The Director, he works with us, and the intel product he generates takes precedence over whatever side business he may or may not be involved in.”

“Side business? For God’s sake, Matt! He’s running a massive international sex slavery ring; this isn’t a fucking chain of Pinkberrys!”

The rest of the cabin around me is dead silent.

I believe Hanley to be a good man, despite how he treats me sometimes, and he wouldn’t want to be part of a scheme to ruin the lives of thousands of young women and girls. But still, his devotion to his duties is stronger than his moral compass, because he says, “I truly hope that sex slavery operation gets shut down. But it can’t be shut down by stopping the Director. He’s proven himself too important to America’s national interests.”

“How the fuck so, Matt?”

“He’s doing something we need him to keep doing.”

I’m not the sharpest tack, but I’ve been in this game a long time, so I had been suspecting this all along.

“This is about international banking. I know the Consortium has money laundering down to an art form. He’s working with other entities. Terror groups, rogue states, weapons proliferators. And he’s passing that info on to you.”

“Can neither confirm nor deny,” he says.

I’ve known Matt ten years, and when he says this, he is one hundred percent confirming, not denying.

I say, “But... you do understand he’s only playing ball so you guys will run interference for him while he conducts criminal activity, right? Every country I’ve been in over the last week is full of government personnel either working for him outright, supporting his efforts in some way, or covering for him. I’m sure he pays out millions of dollars to those who can be bought off, and he gives vital information to those who cannot.”

Hanley sighs again. I imagine he’s recirculated more air in whatever room he’s in than the HVAC system has in the last ten minutes. He says, “That’s how this works. That’s how any intelligence operation works. Court, you know better than anybody how to play this game! You work with the biggest shitheads on the planet so you can go after some other big shithead. That’s your own business model, is it not?”

I don’t answer this, because I hate it when he’s right.

“Isn’t it?” he shouts again.

It’s quiet for ten seconds, until Zack breaks the still. “Six, I love the sound you make when you shut the fuck up.”

Hanley speaks again. “And here you are, telling me the right thing for me to do is to roll up the Director and give up vital national interests: intel on terror groups, opposition dictators, warlords, drug cartels. Sorry, Court, I love you, man, but you need to get off your goddamned high horse. What the Agency does on a large scale, you do on a small scale.”

Again, I sit quietly.

But he keeps going. “That time you dealt with the biggest cartel in Sinaloa... Remind me, did you bring them down, or did you use their resources to help you bring down someone else?”

He has a point. A strong point. An unassailable point. But I’m not in a conciliatory mood.

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