THE COCKBURN LIAISON

 

The Cockburn Liaison 

The fluorescent lights of the CIA's Langley cubicle farm hummed their eternal, soul-crushing hum. Special Agent Frank Morales, twenty-three years in the agency, fourteen of them spent listening to other people's conversations while picking his own nose, leaned back in his ergonomic chair and sighed.

The audio feed in his ears was pure static punctuated by the occasional clink of a glass and the wet cough of old men clearing their throats. The wire was on Harold Fintz, a mid-level energy executive who'd gotten cold feet about his employers' extra-curricular activities and agreed to wear a wire to a "business retreat" at some fancy hunting club in the Poconos.

So far, Fintz had captured seventeen minutes of rich men discussing the proper way to blanch asparagus and whether the 1982 Bordeaux was "drinkable or merely acceptable." Morales's soul was slowly evacuating his body through his left nostril.

He fished his personal phone out of his desk drawer, navigated his carefully encrypted VPN, and opened a website that definitely violated at least four agency policies. The video buffered. The thumbnail promised much. The loading bar crept forward at the pace of continental drift.

"Come on," Morales muttered, his finger buried deep in his right nostril now. "Come on."

The video loaded. A title card appeared: "Big Booty Judges Episode 12: The Gavel Drops."

Morales smiled. This was the good stuff.

"—absolutely certain it was him."

The voice in his ear snapped him back to reality. Fintz was speaking. Finally. Morales fumbled for his keyboard, hitting the record button, nearly dropping his phone in the process. The Big Booty Judges theme music played silently on his screen as he focused on the audio feed.

"I'm telling you, gentlemen," Fintz continued, his voice tight with barely controlled panic, "the primary sabotage was not my doing. It was him. It was Max Dick Payne."

Morales's finger froze mid-nostril.

Max Dick Payne.

The name hit him like a defibrillator to the temples. Every agent knew that name. Every agent had heard the rumors—the amnesiac assassin, the ghost with the gun, the man who supposedly couldn't remember his own mother but could remember seventeen ways to kill you with a ballpoint pen. The file on Payne was three inches thick and contained exactly zero confirmed photographs, four contradictory origin stories, and a memo from three directors ago that simply read: "If you hear this name, run in the opposite direction until you hit ocean, then keep going."

"What in the actual hell," Morales whispered, "is Max Dick Payne doing at a corporate retreat in the Poconos?"

On the video feed, a woman in a judge's robe brought down a gavel on something that was definitely not a courtroom desk. Morales muted the tab.

"—absurd," a new voice crackled through the feed. Older. Raspy. The voice of a man who'd spent sixty years telling other people what to do and forty of them smoking unfiltered cigarettes. "Max Dick Payne is a fairy tale. A boogeyman we tell junior senators to keep them in line. There's no such person."

"With respect, Mr. Hollister," Fintz said, "he's very real. And he's been working against us for months. The Dyson Amendment? That was him. The SEC investigation? Him. He's systematically dismantling everything we've built, and someone in this room gave him the information to do it."

A long pause. Morales could hear the crackle of a fireplace, the distant pop of a champagne cork. Someone was pouring more wine. The casualness of it all was somehow more terrifying than if they'd been shouting.

"That's a serious accusation, Harold," a third voice said. This one was smoother, younger, the kind of voice that had probably closed a thousand deals and ruined a thousand competitors. "You're suggesting one of us is a traitor."

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm telling you what I know. The man called himself Payne. He knew things only people in this room could have known. He mentioned—" Fintz's voice dropped to a whisper Morales could barely catch. "He mentioned the consolidation."

The word hung in the air like a grenade pin hitting marble.

Another pause. Then, the raspy voice: "Which consolidation would that be, Harold?"

"The '08 one. The one that—"

"We know what it is," the smooth voice cut in. "The question is how Payne knew about it. And why you're the one telling us."

"I'm telling you because I'm loyal! I've always been loyal! I came here to warn you, not to—"

"To warn us." The smooth voice was amused now. "How thoughtful. And you chose to deliver this warning wearing a wire?"

Morales's blood turned to slush.

On his screen, Big Booty Judges Episode 12 had progressed to a montage of particularly enthusiastic courtroom moments. He didn't notice. His entire body had gone rigid.

A commotion erupted in the audio feed. Scuffling. A sharp cry from Fintz. The sound of fabric tearing.

"Well, well," the raspy voice said, now closer to the microphone. "Look what we have here. A little transmitter. Tucked right under his armpit. Harold, Harold, Harold. Did you really think we wouldn't check? Did you really think we got to where we are by trusting men who sweat through their jackets at the mention of a primary?"

"Please," Fintz gasped. "Please, I can explain. I was coerced. The FBI—"

"The FBI," the smooth voice laughed. "Sweet Harold. The FBI's deputy director bought a yacht from my company last year. At a very reasonable price. He's not coming to save you."

Morales was already moving, reaching for his secure phone, his emergency line to the director. His fingers were shaking. Twenty-three years, and he'd never once had a subject made on his watch. Never. This was catastrophic.

On the audio, someone was crying. It might have been Fintz.

"What do we do with him?" another voice asked. This one was older, slower, sounded like it might be attached to a man who needed a nap after climbing a single flight of stairs. "We can't just let him go. He knows about the consolidation."

"We can't kill him here," the raspy voice said. "Too messy. Too many questions."

"We're at a hunting club," the sleepy voice pointed out. "People get shot at hunting clubs all the time. It's practically the point."

A murmur of agreement rippled through the room.

"All right," the smooth voice decided. "All right. Harold, you're going to go for a walk. A nice, long walk across the lawn. We're going to stand right here on the porch, and we're going to shoot clay pigeons. And if one of those pigeons happens to be you... well. Tragic accident. Terrible thing. Our deepest condolences to your family."

"You can't," Fintz whimpered. "You can't just—"

"Harold." The raspy voice was almost gentle. "We're CEOs. We can do whatever we want. That's literally the point of the job. Now start walking."

Morales listened in horror to the sound of footsteps on hardwood, then on gravel, then on grass. Fintz was sobbing now, a wet, pathetic sound that Morales had heard a hundred times in interrogation rooms but never like this. Never knowing he was the only witness.

"Frank, you there?" A voice from the adjacent cubicle. Jenkins, his supervisor. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Morales held up a hand, shushing him. The audio was too important. He had to capture everything.

On the lawn at the Poconos hunting club, Fintz was walking. His footsteps were uneven, stumbling.

"Bit to the left, Harold," the smooth voice called out. "You're drifting into the trees. We need a clear shot."

"I can't," Fintz wailed. "I can't do this."

"You can and you will. Stay still now. Just for a moment. Stay still so I can shoot you."

The shotgun blast was surprisingly quiet through the wire. A muffled thump, like someone dropping a heavy book. Then a second later, the sound of a body hitting grass.

Morales sat frozen, his hand still raised to silence Jenkins, his phone still displaying a frozen frame of a gavel-wielding woman in judicial robes.

The audio feed continued.

"Well," the sleepy voice said. "That's done. Someone want to fetch the body? We've got skeet to shoot."

"In a minute." Footsteps on grass, approaching. "Let's see what else our friend Harold was wearing."

Rustling. The sound of clothing being moved, pockets turned inside out.

"Got something here. Looks like a receiver. He wasn't just transmitting, gentlemen. He was listening too. Someone out there heard everything we just did."

Morales's stomach dropped through the floor.

"A receiver means an agent," the raspy voice said. "Someone sitting in a cubicle somewhere, eating microwave popcorn and listening to our conversation. Probably shitting himself right about now."

Laughter. Casual, unhurried laughter.

"Let's find out." A crackle, then the voice was closer, speaking directly into the microphone on Fintz's corpse. "Hello? Can you hear me? Whoever you are on the other end of this, we know you're there. Why don't you introduce yourself?"

Morales stared at his speaker. His mouth was dry. His heart was doing something arrhythmic and unpleasant.

"I said," the voice repeated, "introduce yourself. We're reasonable men. We just want to know who we're dealing with."

Jenkins was watching him now, confused. Morales shook his head violently, pointing at his ear, at the speaker, at everything and nothing.

"If you don't speak," the voice continued, "we'll assume you're hostile. And we have resources. We have people who can trace a signal faster than you can delete your browser history. We'll find you anyway. But if you cooperate, maybe we can come to an arrangement."

Morales made a decision. The wrong one, probably. Definitely. But his mouth was moving before his brain could stop it.

"Special Agent Frank Morales," he said. "Central Intelligence Agency. Langley. Cubicle 47B."

A pause on the other end. Then: "Well now. That's very cooperative of you, Special Agent Morales. See how easy that was? No one had to get hurt. Well. No one else."

More laughter.

"Morales," the smooth voice said. "Frank. Can I call you Frank? Frank, here's what's going to happen. You're going to give me your agent ID number. For verification purposes."

"Eight-seven-three-four-November-Golf."

"Lovely. And now you're going to do something for us. You're going to drive out here to the Eagle Crest Hunting Club in the Poconos. It's a lovely drive. Leaves are changing. Very scenic."

Morales swallowed. "Why would I do that?"

"Because if you don't, we'll have our people in the Bureau—and we have many—trace that signal, find your family, and have a very unpleasant conversation with them about the importance of discretion. Your mother still lives in Arlington, doesn't she, Frank? The blue house with the rose bushes?"

Morales went cold. His mother. The rose bushes he'd planted for her seventieth birthday.

"I'll be there," he said. "Two hours."

"Wonderful. We'll have the grill going. One more thing, Frank."

"Yes?"

"What's that on your phone there? The video you were watching. Sounded... interesting."

Morales looked down at his screen. Big Booty Judges Episode 12 had finished buffering and was now playing at full volume, the sounds of courtroom chaos filling his cubicle.

"Nothing," he said quickly, fumbling to close the tab. "Just... just a video."

"Uh-huh. Well, Frank, you enjoy that on your drive. And remember—stay on the road. Don't make any detours. We'll be watching."

The line went dead.

Morales sat in the sudden silence, the fluorescent hum filling the void. Jenkins was staring at him with an expression of profound confusion.

"Frank? What the hell just happened?"

Morales slowly removed his earpiece. He looked at his phone, at the frozen judge, at the gavel mid-swing. He thought about his mother's rose bushes. He thought about Max Dick Payne, a man who apparently didn't exist but had just gotten an innocent executive murdered. He thought about the Poconos in autumn, the leaves changing, the scenic drive.

"I just agreed to be eaten," he said quietly.

Jenkins blinked. "What?"

"They're going to shoot me and eat me." Morales stood, reaching for his jacket. "At a hunting club. They said they'd have the grill going."

"That's... that's insane. You're not actually going, are you?"

Morales looked at his supervisor. He thought about the eighteen years until his pension. He thought about the seventeen minutes of asparagus discussion he'd sat through. He thought about Big Booty Judges and the VPN and the nostril-picking.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I honestly don't know what I'm going to do."

From his speaker, still connected, still live, a voice drifted through:

"Hey, Bill? You want your steak rare or medium-rare? We've got a guest coming."

The laughter that followed was the worst sound Frank Morales had ever heard.

He walked toward the parking garage, each step feeling like a march toward something he couldn't name. Behind him, in cubicle 47B, his computer screen slowly dimmed, the last image a frozen judge, her gavel raised, presiding over a courtroom that would never reach a verdict.

RAMON ATILA presents

“THE COCKBURN LIAISON”

AtilA