Billy Fields.
May of 1992.
Sanok, Poland.
Spies have been using the 'third man' approach since the dawn of civilization. It was featured prominently in the book Card lent me – How to be a Bad Man – and it sprung to mind the moment I groped around for an answer to this problem. The objective is to make your adversaries believe there is another party involved, preferably one you know they would fear or hate – fear so they will leave you alone and hate so they might agree to work with you to deal with this greater foe. It was unwise to pair it with a cold approach, unaware as I was about their motivations and behaviors, but the kid had already agreed to this meeting.
It was now or never.
I stashed the laptop and did a little prepping, bloodying my cheeks with a sharp stone, rubbing my eyes to give the impression of exhaustion.
And I waited.
Half an hour later, a car rolled into the petrol station.
It was a dark Sudan with flashing rims and tinted windows. I leaned against a pillar, my right hand clutching my side, feigning injury and disinterest, but minding every detail. Two men exited the vehicle, both of middling height and build, with distinct European features. They wore winter gear over street clothes and heavy black boots.
When they were ten feet away, they stopped.
"You are not Harrison Belcher," one said, in a heavy Ukrainian accent. He had a small smile on his lips, as if that statement amused him.
I had worked with and against Ukrainians before, and I preferred neither. I had stepped into their world when Larry and I were in eastern Europe and found them to be relentless and brutal – and when I fought them, I matched them.
But I had a few advantages, because I knew how they were trained, and I knew they hated nothing more than ignorant Americans. I adopted the smug southern drawl of my father, making it rushed and stressed to sell the third man.
"No, that I am not. William Fields – you can call me Billy. Pleased to meet you."
"Where is Harrison Belcher?" the man asked.
Larry liked to say that soldiers from this region were trained on how to think. Boys were remade in the image of their commanders, obedient and dangerous, running with a single ideal that they were always willing to die for. But these were not soldiers. It was not their place to ask the questions, but to apprehend me and bring me to someone tailored for the job. Neither wore a scrap of clothing in common, even boots of different brands, and their guns were holstered haphazardly on their belt loops, each on a different hip.
It was a private party, then, who was interested in buying US intelligence, and not a spy working under government orders. It was someone who would pay mercenaries – goons – to do their dirty work, confident it would never come back to them no matter how messy it got.
I put my hands up, fingers spread, "I can see you two are in a hurry and, believe me, so am I, but this is not the conversation I signed up for. I was looking for a bigger fish, if you catch my meaning. You know, someone a little higher up on the totem pole, bigger pockets, maybe."
"Where is Belcher?" the second man growled, his accent regionally distinct from the first. He was fingering the gun on his hip.
"Well, for all intents and purposes, I'm Belcher. Now, before you drill me full of holes, listen up. I sent you all those messages. I took the information and put it up to sell. But you idiots – sorry, temper, temper – I mean, you… go-getters… you jumped the gun and came running out here to Poland and brought violence into this."
For a moment, I thought the second one might shoot me. He gripped his gun through its holster and gnashed his teeth. But the first one spoke sharply to him in Russian, "Wait. He is American."
"So, let me shoot this idiot," the second one responded.
I interrupted their little exchange, "I can see you have a single-minded purpose here. Should have assumed as much. Let me say it again for you, loud and clear. You've been talking to me. I took the information and put it up to bid." I let my voice raise, let the slightest sign of irritation show, "You really messed it up for me, boys. We were puttin' together a bigger deal when you showed up out here and attacked an ambassador!" I framed my face, the abrasions, with one hand. "Oh, boy, was he pissed. But forgive and forget, he says. I came out here to make a deal with your boss. I don't want to be rude, but I get paid too much to talk to two knuckle-dragging baboons!"
One of them stepped forward, drawing his gun.
A bullet sparked off the pavement in front of him. We all flinched and scanned the dark woods. It had to be Sam, but I saw no sign of him.
"I wanna see the big man with the big wallet," I said. "I can give him what he wants. I just want your boss and my boss to be friends, get some gears turning. So, you get in touch with your boss and tell him Billy Fields wants a word – and that word is gonna make us all very happy men. You have my email address. I look forward to hearing from you."
It seemed, again, that the second one wanted to shoot me, but the first one was clearly in charge. He cast a look into the woods, thinking, and then said gruffly, "We will be in touch."
When the car departed, I retrieved the laptop and waited.
Sam came from the woods, a rifle strung over his back and his whole front covered in snow. He was smiling. "We really gave them the old one-two, eh, Mikey?"
"Thanks, Sam," I said.
"What is all this?" he asked, gesturing to my face. "How did that happen? He never touched you."
"Negotiation tactic. It gives the impression that others are involved." I crouched and rubbed snow over my face, clearing the blood and leaving the scrapes pleasantly numb. "It never pays to shoot the messenger. I implied my ruthless boss was behind it."
"So, this crazy boss of yours, is he also played by you?"
"No. I was hoping you would do the honors."
Sam snorted, but seemed pleased by the offer. "Jeez, Mike. I left my acting pants at home, but I got your back. Who am I, Garret Wroth, diamond salesman and international spy? Or, maybe, Gentry Smith, mysterious and strikingly handsome string-puller with money to burn?"
"We'll work on the name."
"What's the plan here? We gonna get this guy to show, then arrest him? 'Cause I can tell you right now we have no evidence and no jurisdiction. Unless you plan on wearing a wire."
"No. I think their boss is in the States. It looks like Luca met them in a US chat room. He hired those guys, probably anonymously, to light a flame under Harrison Belcher and get him to come through on his deal. Did you hear him? He stopped his buddy from shooting me because I was American. If we can get them to meet us in the US, we can nail them for something."
"Just something?"
"Depends on what he wanted the information for."
"Either way, stealing classified information is espionage."
"Yeah, but we need to know what he wanted. It could be bigger. He could be planning a terrorist attack or trying to destabilize an election. We just found a thread here, Sam."
"Or we just found a guy looking to make a quick buck."
"Or that. But we have to be sure."
"I get it. I do." Sam cranked up the heat in the car and we headed back, taking several back roads and going out of the way to avoid being followed. "What if this guy decides to cut his losses and kill everyone involved?"
"We have to hope he wants the information enough to risk it." I put my hands over the heat vents, just realizing I was shivering. I had been standing in the snow for a while. "If we can find the boss, it'll be nice to see someone put in jail for once."
"Where do you usually see people get put?" Sam asked grimly, and then hurriedly added. "I didn't mean to imply that you… well, maybe I did… but I-"
"It's okay." His curiosity was overwhelming. He was prodding me for information, and I finally decided to give him some. "When I… capture someone, they get taken away and thrown in some black site, some hole that never sees the light of day. Sometimes they flip them for information and let them go. Sometimes… they spend the rest of their life in the dark."
Or, that was how I saw black prisons. I had never been to one, and never wanted to visit. Larry had told me horror stories of torture and isolation, of prisoners falling into depressions so profound that they went catatonic in just weeks. He liked to say that prison was a vacation compared to being a spy, and that being a spy was a walk in the park compared to being in a black site.
When I brought people in, I tried not to think about it.
Sam pulled into the safehouse, clearing his throat. His voice was softer now, sensing how tense I had become at the subject. "Do you think it's better that way?"
He was asking one of the fundamental questions of law and order, one of the biggest tests of morality. I already knew where he would stand. He believed in the justice system, in reasonable punishments for crimes. He did not support torture and he seemed to be an opponent of the death sentence in most cases – now he was asking me if I had the same views.
Sam wanted to know who I was, in a nutshell.
I had put a lot of thought into questions of morality, but never articulated them. Larry never wanted to hear about it and Card was always focused on the mission. It was all about completion to them.
And apart from the moral center of the question, it felt like there was a challenge there – are you some kind of agent of darkness? Are you really making the world a better place? Is what you do worth the cost to the people involved?
I responded carefully, "I think if everything happens in the dark, justice can be perverted. A few people decide what's right and what's wrong. But there are also monsters in the world – I've met a few, I've seen what they do."
"People, Mike. They're still people. Monsters exist in stories."
He was wrong, but I shrugged it off, "It's not my choice, anyway."
"Yeah, but your opinion matters."
"Does it?" I left the car.
Sam called in their arrival, and then said, "It does to me."
I was suddenly defensive. Why did he want to know all this about me? It didn't change the mission. We were in different worlds when it came to law and order. I was trained specifically to work around it, to be the judge, jury, and executioner, and he took his orders from a command chain. We were fundamentally different. It was not a productive conversation.
"I'm not trying to jam you up here, Mike," Sam said as they walked up the stairs. "I was just making conversation. If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine."
He was a better liar than I thought. He might have made a good spy.