Chapter 19
ClearWater Headquarters
Washington DC
Claire's family watched this quietly. After a moment the one with the glasses got up and put a water bottle on the table next to her. "That girl cries more than anyone else I know." He said with a thick, Brooklyn accent. "How the hell she doesn't dehydrate..."
"Tea." The youngest male said. "Do you have any idea how much tea she drinks?"
"Introductions?" Rossi asked.
"Of course." Michael replied. "Please, sit. We're not standing on formality today. Although I will say that nothing said today should in any way be construed as any form of confession on the behalf of ClearWater or it's board of directors or..."
"Can we cut the corporate crap, please?" Glasses asked.
Michael stopped short. "Bite me." He said after a moment. Then he started with introductions, starting with the BAU. "I believe you know Claire and my wife Rebecca. This is my older brother Zeke." That would be Glasses. "And my younger brother Ben." That would be the young, urbane one who waved.
"Aren't we missing two siblings?" Emily asked.
"Off on other assignments." Michael replied.
"Do those assignments include hiding Ali Bailey?" Morgan asked.
"One of them." Michael replied. "When she was being held she was exposed to a specific drug cocktail. She's fine now, but it takes up to a month to completely clear the system. The DIA would literally kill to get the details of that cocktail so until she can clear a blood test she's better off where they can't find her."
"What are you going to do with her after?" JJ asked.
"Take her some place safe where her parents can find her. If you want to pick her up at that time we can arrange that. Once they see that her blood work is clear the DIA will leave her alone."
"You didn't return the survivor from Poland."
"She was from an orphanage; she didn't have a family to return to. She'd also been held longer and had more issues to deal with. My sister and brother-in-law have adopted her and are getting her the help she needs."
"I thought they were broken up?"
Michael smiled. "We contract communication services between deployed military personnel and their dependents."
"Nice."
"The point is that Ali is doing just fine." Zeke said. "Our collective apologies to her family and everyone else but she's staying there for the next three weeks, more or less, until it's safe for her to go home." Michael might be the COO of ClearWater, but Zeke was the leader here. "Okay, full disclosure, we're runaways, not traitors. So to try to avoid talking about details not safe to talk about, how about you go first. You said you know what we were doing in Merced and DeKalb?"
It was time to fish or cut bait. Hotch laid out the case they had so far. "We believe we're looking at four distinct groups or teams." He said. "Team 1 consists of an Israeli asset who stole a secret from the government there and sold it to the highest bidder, someone in the Russian mob."
"Yeah." Zeke said. He put a file up on the screen and started passing copies around. "Okay, history time. I assume you know about Dr. Zamir."
"Dr. Zamir?" Spencer asked. By now he and Claire had joined the others at the table. They were short a chair, but she was quite comfortable in his lap. "You mean General Zamir?"
"Yeah. He got doctorates from the University of Berlin before the war. Physics, Chemistry and an MD in Psychology."
Spencer considered this. "How old was he?"
"About the same age you were when you started."
"Oh crap." JJ said.
"Yeah." Zeke agreed. "The Old Man ran the assassins program for decades. And not just Kidon, his pet project was something called Operation Abraham's Ram, a step above the usual. And just so you know, you don't want anyone to know you know that."
"Because it involves children." Emily said.
"Yeah. They'd rather give up the nuclear codes."
"Abraham's Ram as in Abraham Zamir?" Rossi asked. "A group loyal to him personally?"
"Yeah, but he named it for a bible verse." Zeke replied. "Genesis 22:13."
"And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son." Spencer quoted. "His son being Isaac, the father of the Jewish people."
"Yeah, that's the one."
"Based on the symbolism and that we know that this involves children I assume the meaning is that he was sacrificing those children for the safety of the country."
Zeke gave Spencer a sour look. "Yeah, well, no one ever asked the Ram if he wanted to die."
"So he started training his people when they were kids." Morgan said.
"Yeah." Michael carried on. "Originally just four, volunteered by their families, with full disclosure about what was going to happen, and family involvement. The problem was that the government wanted more. They wanted him to work with orphans. He refused so they went behind his back to his assistant."
"Dr. David Hafiz." Rebecca was at the head of the table, she started passing out the copies of the file. "MD in psychiatry, PhD in Chemistry, certifiably insane."
"From what we can tell he's a sadist." Zeke rejoined the table. "With a side of rapist. But you would likely be a better judge of the specifics then we would. About two years ago the Old Man figured out what was going on behind his back. He did what it took to take over again and put a termination order out on Hafitz. Hafitz wisely got in the wind."
"Unfortunately he took the Old Man's how-to book with him." Michael took over again. "And he sold his services to this man, Sergey Chernikov. You were right about the Russian Mob bit."
"So Hafitz is trying to make assassins for Chernikov in exchange for protection?" Emily.
"Near as we can tell." Zeke replied. "Also because he enjoys torturing girls."
"Why girls and not boys?" Morgan asked.
"Because he's a sick fucking bastard." Rebecca replied. "It works just as well on boys."
"The point is that it's a win-win for the bad guys all around." Zeke said.
"Okay, so that's team 1." Morgan said. "Team 2 is you guys. You're trying to stop the Unsubs while keeping the secret out of the hands of the DIA."
"Exactly." Zeke replied. "At this point only three men know the secret Hafitz is carrying, him, Zamir and Daniel. Daniel happens to believe that involving children in anything other than being children is extremely immoral. And Zamir is 98, he's not doing anything with it anymore."
"Which leaves Hafiz." JJ said. "But if Daniel isn't planning to use this then why are you all fighting this so hard?"
Spencer curled his arm around Claire's waist to hold her closer. "Given the timing, the skill set and the history I suspect they're Hafitz's first victims."