Mind Games

Chapter 13

See Chapter 1 for disclaimer

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Weak, stupid, sleazy. Charlie sat quietly in the back seat of Jean Clemenceau's black Ford Expedition, his arms crossed around his middle, and stared at the foreign landscape. After a good hour and a half of travel, they had left the main highway, and were now on gravel road, winding through swamp. Although it was light on the road, the trees that flanked it were huge and dense, hung with gray Spanish moss that floated eerily from the branches. Under the canopy of branches, it was dark, gloomy; the view coincided neatly with the way that Charlie felt.

The fact was; he'd been shaken to his core by the events of the night before. He'd decided yesterday that this was no longer an exciting adventure; it had been bordering on tedious, frustrating. After last night, it was far worse. The job had gone from tedious to soul-sucking. He no longer wanted to be here – he longed for home, to retreat and lick the wounds inflicted on his psyche. It was horrible enough to think of the coke, the night with Charlotte – to see the look on his brother's face had made it all worse. Don despised him - he was sure of it. Weak, stupid, sleazy. Those had to be the words running through his brother's head.

There was nothing he could do, however - nothing he could do now except to finish the job, because then, at least, he could show that he had the guts and integrity to complete the task he'd accepted. That task was the whole reason he'd compromised his principles, and he would finish it, or die trying. Charlie's only chance of redeeming himself – within his own mind, and with Don - was to take down Montreaux and whoever else was behind this. Otherwise, he would have sold his soul for nothing.

He closed his eyes; he could still feel the pressure of his brother's gentle squeeze in the hotel hallway, saw the concern in Don's eyes. It had looked real; maybe it was. It had to be, he thought to himself, as he reflected back over the many little indicators over the last few years that had made him think that they were finally getting closer. Don hadn't been undercover in those moments; he had no reason to obscure his true reactions. The recent distance between them had to be a product of their current situation – at least, that's what Charlie told himself. Getting closer to Don, gaining his respect – those were some of Charlie's biggest reasons for taking this assignment. He couldn't believe that their relationship had never existed, or worse yet, was being broken by what they were going through. If he thought that, he'd never get through this. He smiled, faintly, wryly. Ian had told his brother to give him a pep talk, and in spite of Charlie knowing that, in spite of his own refusal to accept his brother's effort to do so, Don had still made him feel better. Don cared. That belief would get him through this. Don was his brother, and he cared.

The Expedition turned up yet another gravel drive, which was overhung even more darkly by trees, only broken by the occasional telephone pole. From time to time, Charlie caught glimpses of water, dark among cypress roots, and his overtired mind conjured up visions of snakes and alligators, slithering among the stagnant pools. Finally, they crossed a small bridge and Charlie realized that they were traveling onto an island. The road twisted through trees, Spanish moss caressing the vehicle like ghostly hair, until they reached a clearing. In the middle of it stood a house, a log home actually; it was large, rambling, darkened by moisture and age. Jean pulled the vehicle to a stop with a crunch of tires on gravel. Charlie slid out of the backseat and looked around him as Jean tromped to the back of the vehicle and opened the rear hatch. He gazed at the house – this would be his home for up to a week, which was his deadline for turning in the program to Montreaux.

For that, they would need to travel back to the city. Montreaux was not with them; only Jean Clemenceau and Montreaux's cousin, Pierre, had made the trip. The plan was to develop the program as quickly as possible, and return to Montreaux's estate in New Orleans to demonstrate it, and make sure it was fully integrated into Max and Mike's computer systems. There was a silver lining in this – Max and Mike would not be here looking over his shoulder; he could very possibly get a chance to dig into Montreaux's smuggling schemes.

From somewhere deep in the swamp, a scream split the air, and Charlie jumped. Pierre Montreaux smirked at him. "Nutria," he said. "They sound just like a woman, screaming. Freaked me out when I first heard them – never heard nothing like that in Canada." He handed Charlie his bag, and swept his hand. "Welcome to the swamp, man."

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At that moment, two phone calls were going out from the Washington, D.C. area, from locations only twenty miles apart.

Jack Montreaux received one of them in his study. He had just met with Don Archer and received the news that he was about to go into partnership with Blinkie, which was welcome indeed. He made sure that Don was well aware of his gratitude, and instructed him to meet with his men and begin to set up meetings with Blinkie's lieutenants. Don had just gone, and Montreaux was sitting at his desk, reflecting that the Archers had been excellent additions to his staff. He really needed to commend Ian Crocker for bringing them into the operations – in fact, he thought, a nice bonus was in order for Ian, who had proven to be indispensable.

The phone rang, and his eyes narrowed at the number. He had been dreading it, up until this morning. Now, however, he had good news – he finally had someone assigned to the task of developing the export scheme. He picked up the phone, pretending he hadn't seen the number. "Jack Montreaux."

On the other end of the line, J. Scott Marsh spoke, his voice cool, and a trifle condescending. "Jack. How's it going?"

"Merveilleux," said Montreaux, heartily. "Wonderful. I have found my consultant, and he is developing the plan as we speak."

Marsh sounded unimpressed. "And when did this happen?"

"I have been evaluating him for a week now – the name I gave you a few days ago, Charles Archer. I made my decision last night, and gave him the job this morning. He has already accepted and has been taken to a private location to work."

"You realize that you only have a week. The buyers will be in the country as of Tuesday, and we still plan to meet on Friday."

"Archer seems confident that he can do it in that amount of time, and based on another project he did for me; I think he can. As for the meeting, I am prepared. A floral delivery van will pick you and the buyers up at the location, as we discussed. I will have only the staff here at the house necessary for the demonstration. I will dispatch most of my staff for the day – there will be no chance of you or the clients being seen here, except by myself and a handful of my most trusted staff."

Marsh grunted. "Very well. I will call you on Tuesday for an update. If there is any chance of you not meeting the deadline, I need to know. It will be difficult, at best, to make sure our guests go unnoticed. I need to be able to plan in advance if they need to stay longer. And of course, any delay will not look good to them – it may make them skeptical of your ability to deliver."

"Of course," replied Montreaux easily. "And I expect that we will meet the schedule."

"Good. Until Tuesday, then."

"Au revoir, mon ami."

Montreaux hung up the phone and tented his fingers, thoughtfully. He knew, in fact, that asking Charlie Archer to come up with the detailed plan in that amount of time would be a tall order. It would need to include how the weapons equipment would arrive at loading areas, how it would be shipped, and to where, so it could be dispersed to an interim location, maybe two, then repackaged and sent to Iran. It was exceedingly complex, more complex than Montreaux's cocaine smuggling scheme, and that had taken his man a month to complete. As a starting point, Montreaux had given Charlie Archer authorization to view the cocaine import plan. It was a risk, to be sure, but he was now reasonably certain that Archer was who he said he was, and besides, he had no choice; he was running out of time. If the cocaine shipping system gave Charlie some understanding of what his organization could do, or even some ideas on how to manage the weapons logistics, then it would be well worth it.

Marsh irritated him. The man would not even be where he was, a high-ranking official in the CIA, had it not been for Montreaux's family. Their families went back years; Jack's father, Jacques, had been good friends with Joe Marsh, senior. Joseph Marsh, Jr., had been bright and ruthless, even as a child, but his chances of success in life were dim; the family had little money. Jacques Montreaux had money and connections in government, and saw to it that Joe Marsh, Jr. got an education. Along the way, Marsh, Jr. dropped the 'Joe,' and the 'Jr.' and became J. Scott Marsh – a pretentious name selection that indicated his sense of self-importance. Out of school, he went into the Department of Defense, and spent several years as an analyst in the Middle East. He developed so many contacts there that the CIA took interest, and hired him for their own analyses. Montreaux suspected that even back then Marsh was dirty, working both ways. J. Scott was eventually brought back stateside, and promoted within the CIA. He wasn't in the upper echelons of CIA management, but he was close. He was now using his inside knowledge to broker the weapons deal with a group of Iranians, for an unimaginable amount of cash.

He had approached Montreaux nearly two months ago, claiming he had information on Jack's cocaine smuggling operation, and was both complimentary and threatening. He admired Jack's system, he had told him. It would be shame if someone in the DEA caught wind of it. On the other hand, if Montreaux were willing to help his Iranian clients procure weapons manufacturing equipment, Marsh would look the other way. Not only that; he would assure that Jack would become a very rich man, indeed.

Montreaux sighed as he looked at the clock. A part of him was wishing that Marsh had never re-entered his life – if he failed at this, Marsh would retaliate somehow. The stakes were much higher – treason, if he were caught. On the other hand, the rewards were vast – Iranian oil money was apparently unlimited. There really had been only one decision Montreaux could make – and now, everything rode on the head of the somewhat peculiar young man, Charlie Archer, out in Spanish Bayou.

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The second call from the Washington area came into Colby Granger's desk at ten a.m., L.A. time. He broke into a grin at the voice. "Megan! How are you doin'?"

Her voice sounded from the headset that connected his phone to his head. "Good, Colby, how are things?"

"Aw, you know, the usual. Runnin' down the bad guys with Sinclair. How's the new career?"

"Good," she replied. "I'm actually in Washington, D.C., lobbying this week on behalf of women's correctional facilities. I'm part of a group that is meeting with some senators, trying to get more Federal aid for counseling. The counseling group I work for sent me - but the reason I'm calling is, I called Larry in Geneva yesterday, and he told me Don and Charlie are at Quantico working on some courses. I'm only a half hour away; I thought I could catch up with them and do dinner, or something."

"Yeah, I'd bet they'd like that," replied Colby, wondering what dinner in D.C. had to do with him.

"Well, the funny thing is, I called Don twice and got no answer, so I called a couple people that I know at Quantico, and they said they hadn't seen Don or Charlie; hadn't heard anything about the course. I left a couple of messages on Don's cell yesterday, but he hasn't called me back yet. I thought maybe I should check to see if they came home already."

"No, they didn't come back yet – in fact, they were supposed to be gone for at least a couple of weeks, maybe more," said Colby. "Quantico's a big place; it's possible that your contacts haven't seen them, depending on where they're working."

"Oh, well," Megan responded cheerfully. "I'll keep trying. If Don calls in for some reason, tell him to quit ignoring me and call – I'll be here for a few days yet. Tell Sinclair I said 'hi.'"

"Will do," Colby promised. "Take care." The line disconnected and he scratched his head. Now that he thought about it, Don had only called into the office once during the last week. Not that he was expected to call, but Don hated to be out of the action, and he'd left with pending cases – Colby would have bet a paycheck that Don would have been trying to tie up the loose ends from Quantico. Even David had remarked that he was surprised that Don wasn't trying to direct them from afar.

He yawned and scratched his head again. 'No great mystery, really,' he thought to himself. 'The guy's just busy.' He stretched and stood, and headed to the break room for a coffee.

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Charlie stretched and sat back and rubbed his eyes. A glance at the digital readout in the lower corner of the computer screen told him that it was 4:00 a.m.

He'd worked non-stop all afternoon, only stopping to eat with Jean Clemenceau and Pierre Montreaux. Both of them were obviously already bored; they'd played cards all afternoon, and Pierre had decided to drone on about the Montreaux family history at dinner, including the fact that Jack's grandfather and Pierre's grandfather were brothers, and Jack's great-grandfather had built the lodge that they were in now. Charlie had finally excused himself to go work, and the two men had retreated to a family room to watch satellite television; Jack had outfitted the cabin with modern amenities.

They weren't watching him closely, and that was precisely what Charlie needed. Montreaux had given him access to the main program that ran the cocaine smuggling scheme, and it turned out that very little hacking was needed to get into even the encrypted portions of the files. Montreaux was apparently bringing the cocaine in by larger ship to the international water boundary just outside the U.S. and dispersing it in smaller containers to several small fishing boats, which would meet the produce ship there. The fishing boats would travel to their home ports, small marinas in and around New Orleans, and as far away as the sleepy sun-drenched resort marinas in Orange Beach, Alabama, and Perdido Key, Florida. There, the shipments were picked up and delivered by land, mostly in seafood trucks, to the warehouses in the Garden District, where they were shuffled to Montreaux's warehouses and repacked on large produce delivery trucks, often alongside the same shipment of South American produce with which they had traveled overseas.

It was a neat set-up, but Charlie could use little of it. Small packages of cocaine bore no resemblance to large pieces of machinery, and the cocaine was coming in, not going out. He decided, however, that the basic premise would work; although they would need to break down the equipment into unrecognizable components, and reassemble it at the final destination. That meant delivering instructions, which would have to be done separately. Interestingly enough, Montreaux had told him that they would ship directly out of New Orleans, and that he expected some relief from the normal customs inspections. He hadn't said why, but Charlie suspected that Montreaux had arranged some kind of deal with someone in customs.

He had stopped at midnight; the long night before finally caught up with him, but he was up again at 3:00 a.m. and went back to work again in the silence – well, near silence; he could hear Jean Clemenceau snoring from the bedroom. From time to time, other noises would intrude; he could hear the screams of nutria outside in the dark swamp, eerily piercing the night. He was wired, immersed in the problem; at times he was so involved in the pure pleasure of working the logic, he would forget that what he was working on was illegal, dangerous, treasonous. He used the opportunity that the solitude presented to download the cocaine smuggling system onto the small flash drive in his jean jacket. When he had the export smuggling system done, he would download that, also. He glanced at the hallway that led to the bedrooms. All was quiet. He needed to try to hack into Montreaux's email, and now was the perfect opportunity.

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Don lay on the bed in the hotel room; his fingers laced under his head, and stared up at the darkness. He'd gotten little sleep the night before and had gone to bed early, but had woken at 3:30 a.m., driven awake by worry. The preceding week had flown by, leaving them little time for forward planning, and none for discussion of any kind. Even in the darkness, he was aware of the bug in the room, tucked under the leg of dresser. It had kept their conversations to a minimum at night while they were awake, and made for silence when they went to bed. There were several nights that he knew Charlie wasn't asleep; he wasn't either, but they couldn't talk because of the bug. Well, they could have made small talk, but that didn't seem to make much sense in the middle of the night when they were supposed to be sleeping, and small talk wouldn't have addressed the things that needed to be said, anyway. Instead, they lay there staring at the dark ceiling, like Don was doing now. Lying there, just wondering what was going on his brother's head, had made Don realize that he couldn't even hazard a guess, and he imagined it was the same for Charlie. They really didn't know each other, not like that. Oh, they had a good enough understanding of how the other would behave in normal times, when they were in their normal roles at home, but in situations like this? They obviously had a lot to learn.

'I have a lot to learn,' Don corrected himself, silently. He never would have guessed that Charlie would have had the guts to ingest an illegal drug, especially cocaine, even if it meant that he would compromise the mission if he didn't. And then to pull it off without being so flustered that he screwed it up while trying – well, it simply was hard to visualize. Apparently, Charlie was capable of more subterfuge than Don had imagined. The thought made him wonder how well he really knew him. What else was Charlie capable of doing? The behavior that really got to him though, wasn't the drug – it was the fact that Charlie had gone to bed with another woman. It would have been one thing if he'd simply passed out, as Ian had surmised that evening, but according to Ian, Charlotte had gone on about his brother's prowess in bed the next morning. Charlie had apparently willingly had sex with her – and that was what bothered Don.

He shouldn't be criticizing – he'd had more flings than Charlie had digits, but that truly, was the problem. It wasn't something he was necessarily proud of himself, and he'd always thought Charlie above that kind of behavior – Charlie's romantic relationships had been few, and relatively serious. The problem was, it hadn't been necessary for Charlie to do it – to sleep with her. The cocaine was another matter; Charlie had to take the drug, Montreaux had given him an ultimatum, but Montreaux hadn't ordered him to sleep with Charlotte. Charlie could have hung around for a decent interval and then gotten Ian to drive him home, instead of getting drunk on top of the coke, and screwing Montreaux's floozy.

He blinked. Had he really just thought that? He felt a little abashed at even using a phrase like that in conjunction with his brother, but hell, what had Charlie been thinking? He had a solid relationship with Amita; he had recently met her parents, and after that, it seemed that the two of them were even more committed. Don, in spite of the number of his relationships, had at least never cheated on his current significant other, and he couldn't imagine Charlie doing so. There had to be something else to it – there had to be. The Charlie he knew would never have done that – he had too much character, higher moral standards than that. Still, even if there was a good explanation, Don couldn't help but sense that his brother's moral code was being eroded; his relative innocence being tarnished, and he hated the thought. Undercover work did that to everyone to some degree, unless they had no moral code to begin with. He couldn't stand seeing it happen to Charlie.

He sighed, and ran a hand over his face. He couldn't wait until this was over; until he and Charlie were safely back home. He felt an underlying sensation of anger, and even though he knew it was generated by frustration and tension, he couldn't rid himself of it. Most of the frustration came back to Charlie - from the fact that Charlie had insisted on taking the undercover assignment to begin with, and from the way Charlie had been behaving lately. Most of the tension was due to Charlie, too – the fact that his brother was off on his own in some godforsaken swamp with two dangerous men was driving Don crazy; creating an undercurrent of anxiety that was sorely testing his patience. All of it was adding up to an almost unbearable sensation of unease, a feeling of foreboding – a feeling that something was about to explode.

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End Chapter 13

A/N: Something is about to explode. In the next few chapters, this story is going to take a very unexpected turn. I'm pretty certain that none of you will see this coming. Don't get whiplash, now.