Before Davenport could pursue this line of thought any further, Goren broke into the conversation. "Orange lightning," he announced. We turned to look at him. "What we saw… must have been something on fire, maybe a boat or a plane. Can we get more information?"
"We can't risk contacting anyone else," Smith added, in a authoritative voice that got my hackles up. He wasn't in charge here, Whitefield was. But Whitefield's not here, I remembered with a pang of worry.
"Hold on." Timkowski interrupted the incipient argument and adjusted a few dials. "This is 121.5 MHz, the liferaft distress beacon frequency… if there's a liferaft anywhere near us, we should hear them on this."
We listened. At first there was silence, then a regular, repetitive pinging sound that set my teeth on edge. Timkowski nodded. "That's a distress beacon." He retuned the listening gear, and managed to pick up the Coast Guard frequency again. We heard the same voices as before, obviously the Coast Guard air control tower and whoever they'd been speaking to before.
"…Did you see the wreckage? Over."
"We did see what must be the site of the crash… near the coastline… the aircraft must have caught fire… we did pick up a distress beacon signal, so some of them probably got out. We couldn't get near… the wind is too fierce and visibility is too low. Over."
"Will try to raise the Army base nearby. Over."
"Good luck. Tell them to hurry, the weather is too poor… them to have any chance of survival if they're in the water long…"
The signal cut out – they must have flown out of range – and there followed one of those endless seconds in which you can almost hear the thinking going on.
"So, an aircraft crashed nearby, in the sea," Davenport said, rapidly putting together what we'd heard. I remembered that his real job title, when he wasn't being a liaison officer, was 'Intelligence Analyst'. "Probably quite a big one to judge by those two orange flashes, I would guess that was the fuel tanks, maybe the electrical storm caused a fire onboard. Probably not a jet though, it would have been bigger, plus jets tend to sink too quickly for anyone to get out. We're picking up a distress beacon, so some of them must have got out… unless that liferaft was from Shorokogat's boat…"
"I think I'd have picked that up before now," Timkowski contributed.
"So, there's a liferaft out there somewhere. For a plane with two fuel tanks, I'd say it would hold between eight to twenty people, maybe more, can't be sure, and it must be nearby if we're picking up the signal…"
Suddenly, Goren turned and dashed across to the window. He studied the view rapidly. "Do we have any binoculars, anything like that?"
"On the shelf next to your head," Timkowski contributed. I noticed that Smith gave him a poisonous look. He was obviously still determined to continue the pissing contest. Goren grabbed the binoculars and studied the sea. "There… I think there…" Davenport & I stared where he was pointing. We passed the binoculars round, and we could both see what Goren had seen first; two very small red lights, winking against the dark grey sea. He had sharp eyes.
"Does anyone know if the tide is going in or out?" Goren asked. We looked at him. "If it's going in… they'll be washed towards us."
"We need to get out there," I said suddenly. "They'll need our help… what can we do?"
"Do?" Smith repeated words, and we all turned to look at him. His face was set and his tone was utterly implacable. "We're not going to do anything. We are not risking blowing our cover and that of this installation. I am going to look for Whitefield, and you are going to stay here."
The atmosphere in the room went from tense to supercharged. I looked around the room, and was suddenly very aware that I was not only the only female in the room, but the smallest and weakest person there. And probably the only one not armed. Timkowski was silent and morose, and I remembered that Smith was effectively his boss. Davenport looked at me and shrugged, somewhat apologetically. I remember the exact same shrug from the Jeep on the way up here, along with the words which accompanied it. "It's not my problem." And Goren? Was apparently nowhere to be seen.
I locked eyes with Smith, and my first thought, crazily, was that I'd got it wrong when I'd compared him to a lizard. A basilisk would have been more like it. Those were eyes that truly did not care that people would die if we didn't help them. I could see Smith's thought processes, familiar to me from several previous encounters with his type of mind, although never in this type of situation. He was thinking that the possible loss of intelligence if the cover of the listening post was blown might lead to the loss of more lives than the people from the plane. I could understand that point of view, but believed he was wrong about blowing our cover. I adopted my most reasonable tone of voice, and took a deep breath.
"We're here under cover. As far as anyone knows, we're US Army, out on a training mission, taking cover in this old abandoned building. We lock the surveillance gear in one of these rooms, bring the survivors – if there are any – up here, ship them down to the base. We keep our cover and this listening post's, the Army gets good publicity, and everyone goes home happy. And alive." I couldn't risk breaking eye contact with Smith, but thought I saw a very faint nod from Davenport in my peripheral vision.
Smith shook his head once. "It's too big a risk. I am the most senior person here, I'm CIA, and this is a CIA listening post. We are not risking it, and that's my last word on the subject. If you value your career, I suggest that that should be yours." He glared back, and I had to force myself to stand my ground. This situation could get very bad, very quickly. As a senior CIA man, Smith did have clout, and connections within a great many agencies, Interpol included. If he chose to exercise it, I could be about to find myself back at the bottom of the pile, stuck in the office, translating conversations between Ukrainian civil servants. Assuming I still had a job left to go back to… I was only too aware that Whitefield had been gone for a very long time, and was trying to repress the panicky thought, What the hell's happened to him? For all we knew, he'd fallen down the cliff outside in the dark…
I thought about Davenport's words earlier. They say drowning's an awful way to go… well, fuck it. Having a career isn't the only important thing in the world. I met Smith's eyes with all the force I could muster, and prepared to go down fighting…
"It's not my last word," rumbled a deep voice from somewhere behind my left shoulder. How the hell did someone that big move that quietly? Goren rematerialised from wherever he'd been hiding, and stood by my side. Which made me look extremely small, but I appreciated the support. Smith switched his glower from me to Goren, who ignored it completely.
"When Davenport and I came on this operation," (out of the corner of my eye I saw Davenport suddenly look very alert) "we agreed to do so… with Interpol in charge. I never agreed to take orders from the CIA."
"Maybe not," Smith conceded. "But that doesn't alter my point. I'm responsible for this listening post, and the most senior person here. We're not risking it."
"No… you're not risking it. We can." Goren and Smith had locked eyes, and I sensed that they had taken an powerful dislike to each other. It was more than just this disagreement; I sensed somehow that each instinctively hated the other's whole approach to the situation. This was not going well.
"Do you know how valuable some of the intelligence we get from here is?" Smith asked, urgently. "We could be risking more lives than there are in that liferaft. We're not doing it."
"We could be… if we couldn't hide the fact that it's a listening post. But we can, and we should."
"You have no idea what you're involved with," Smith spat, openly revealing the contempt I'd sensed from him before for all of us. I'd seen it in the meeting earlier, the way he'd looked at us… I'd seen it before. Not all the CIA were like him by any means, but he was one of the worst of a certain type they seemed to attract, the ones who believed that they, and they alone, should be trusted with intelligence and the right to make decisions based on it. The ones who liked being above the law.
Goren glowered at Smith with such force that I took a step away from him. They'd both drawn themselves up to their full height and tensed their muscles, each instinctively trying to make himself look bigger. Goren was winning that contest, hands down, but I guessed that Smith was not defeated, not by a long shot. Goren bellowed at Smith, and if he'd used that tone of voice to me at that volume I'd have dropped dead on the spot.
"You have no idea what you're talking about. Shorokogat is dead, this whole operation's a bust… Your job may not involve protecting the innocent. Mine does. You are stopping me from doing it. Now get out of the way."
Smith's face darkened, and I could see his hand twitching, as if he were restraining himself from reaching for his gun. This could be about to get very, very ugly, and I could see that Davenport thought so too, he'd got to his feet and was hovering, watching both of them carefully. And at that point, Whitefield stomped back into the room, dripping water everywhere but otherwise apparently unharmed. I'd never been so glad to see someone in my life. (I found out later from him that he'd been stuck in the Jeep all this time, unable to get out and risk crossing back to us until the gusts of wind died down.)
"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE!" Whitefield yelled so loudly that all five of us jumped and turned round. He'd been an Army sergeant in a former career, and still had the voice of command when he chose to use it. He advanced into the room, scowling and shaking his head to get the water off. He planted himself between Goren & Smith, glaring at all of us. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or petrified.
"Detective Goren is being…" Smith began.
"Shut up, I didn't ask your opinion, and I get to decide who does the talking," Whitefield declared, with such force that Smith shut up and took a step back. Goren opened his mouth… "I didn't ask your opinion either. Ms Tovitz, what is going on here?"
This was it. Keeping my voice as calm as I could (no mean feat), I swiftly summarised everything, from us picking up the Coast Guard's transmissions, to the liferaft outside, to Davenport's to the debate between myself, Goren & Smith. I did my best to present my argument that we could carry out a rescue without blowing our cover if we were careful, then fell silent and hoped very hard. You could have heard a pin drop as we stared at Whitefield, who thought very fast. Then he looked up, face determined.
"I agree with you and Goren." I felt rather than saw Smith stiffen. Whitefield glowered at him again. "Mr Smith. You are going to stay here, secure the surveillance equipment and stand guard over it. I don't want you to move from this building, I don't want you to do anything except ensure that no-one who isn't one of us gets anywhere near it, or even suspect it exists. If you screw up, I will see to it that you spend the rest of what passes for your career in Iraq reviewing the intelligence received from camel drivers that Bin Laden is in hiding in the desert there, and checking it out in person."
He dismissed Smith and turned to the rest of us. "Right. I'm going to go and raise help from the base." He forestalled any comment by adding "No-one else has the authority to ask for more troops and equipment and we're going to need it; there's not enough room in the Jeeps to transport more than a few people. I'll take a radio and a Jeep and drive back down the road in case they need to speak to me in person to authorise releasing the resources. I was beginning to get a signal earlier; the storm is dying down so you should be able to contact me once you have some idea of how many there are. Timkowski, Davenport, you're going to help Detective Goren and Ms Tovitz. Timkowski, you've been here before, you show them the way down to the beach… everyone, try not to break any legs, we don't need more casualties. Goren, you're in charge since you seem so determined to do this."
For a very brief second, I would have sworn I saw a brief Huh? expression cross Goren's face. Only for a second, then his face became resolute. I tried frantically to remember the First Aid course I'd done a year ago, and suddenly realised the difficulty of the task ahead of us, and how pitifully inadequate we were probably going to be for it. But we were the only ones who could do anything.
"Anyone got any questions?" Whitefield asked, slowly making eye contact with all of us. "No? Everyone knows what they're doing?" We nodded, including Smith, whose expression had gone back to being unreadable. I sensed that he was slightly mollified by Whitefield's leaving him in charge of the building and the equipment, but made a mental note to avoid antagonising him further.
"Good. Keep in touch with me, I'm going to set off now." Whitefield turned.
"Wait," Goren forestalled him. "We need… we're going to need the First Aid kits from the Jeeps."
"There's another one in the building… I'll go get it," Timkowski volunteered. We all looked at each other, and then, as one, at Goren, who took a deep breath.
"Yes. You get that one, the three of us will get the kits from the Jeeps, then we'll go down together and see what we can do. Let's get moving."
As I ran out into the howling storm and made it over to the Jeeps behind Goren, Timkowski & Davenport, I could hear the thumps from inside of Smith beginning to dismantle and store away the surveillance gear. Behind us, Whitefield roared off in the second Jeep, leaving behind its First Aid kit plus some bottles of water and food bars we'd found inside. The four of us split up the supplies between us, shoving them into our fatigues jacket pockets and strapping on the First Aid kits, which thankfully were designed to be carried with straps slung across the body, leaving our arms and legs free. We looked at each other, and then at Goren, who showed no signs of fear or worry. I envied him his equilibrium, and felt very young, very inexperienced, and very far out of my depth.
We looked out over the cliff. In front of us, the wet, slippery, path down stretched out, not so much a clear footpath as the least steep and jagged parts of a maze of rocks that led down to the beach below. I squinted out, just managing to make out the faint lights of the liferaft far below. I pictured trying to guide injured people up the treacherous rock, and then forced myself not to. We could solve that problem nearer the time.
"Everyone ready?" Goren asked, yelling to make himself heard over the howling wind and rain. Thankfully, the thunder and lightening seemed to have stopped for now.
We nodded. "Timkowski, you know the way?"
The CIA man nodded, shivering slightly. We were already drenched through and cold.
"Then let's go."
I shouldered my First Aid kit and followed Goren's back down the path, nearly spraining my ankle on a rock that turned under my foot. In front of me, the path stretched out and down. Black, slippery, and shadowy in the eerie stormlight. I took another deep breath, and hoped very, very hard that I could make it through the next few hours.