The Perfect Teacher Page 3

  Frank Wyrick opened the door and left.

  Chapter 6

  Abbie liked Neil's punctuality. Don't get her wrong, there were other aspects of the guy that she appreciated. His spontaneity, his nice smile, that spark in his eye, she liked it all, a lot. But she really treasured his extreme punctuality. The man was never ever tardy. If he, or they, weren't somewhere five minutes early then they were late.

  Their first date three months ago was her first time to experience his promptness. She showed up at the sushi restaurant a few minutes early and expected to be able to see how he made an entrance. Wrong. Neil beat her there. He was at the table he'd reserved for them. A glass of ice water with a slice of lime instead of a lemon was waiting for her. She recalled thinking how sweet it was that he remembered her preference for lime in her water from the first time they met.

  Abbie was engrossed in the New York Times crossword puzzle at a DC coffee shop. Next to the paper on the table were a mug of coffee and a glass of water with a lime floating. She cruised through two-thirds of the puzzle in less than an hour. Two hours later, she was hitting a wall on 11 across. She simply couldn't think of the answer. All she had to work with was an "a" second from last letter. Brain lock. The clue was not very helpful -- "Next after next."

  She was too deep into it to notice the guy a few tables over. The New York Times was folded closed on his table. He was reading a book about "Shakespeare theory." Abbie didn't notice the gentleman get up a couple of times and walk right past her table on his way over to the counter to get refills of his cup and grab a cherry danish.

  A minute after he returned to his table the last time, the gal behind the counter held up a to go cup and read the name. "Order ready for Kublai," she called out.

  Abbie was lost in thought; racking her head and scraping brain cells searching for the answer. The message from behind the counter didn't quite break through. A wink from the guy across the room to the barista got a smile and a nod.

  "Order for Kublai Khan."

  Took about a second and a half for Abbie to hear it and register. She smiled and then looked up from the paper with a chuckle. The young woman behind the counter was smiling back at her. She then nodded and directed her eyes across the room. Abbie turned her head to follow the barista's direction and there sat Neil a couple of tables over with his coffee cup raised in cheers.

  They shared a smile.

  "Hope you don't mind." He said.

  A quizzical look crossed Abbie's face.

  Neil nodded at the newspaper in front of her. "The crossword puzzle. Saw you struggling over that one for over an hour and couldn't take it any longer."

  "Kublai." She smiled.

  "Next after next. He was old Genghis' grandson."

  "Yep. Can't believe I totally forgot that."

  The following Sunday morning, Abbie was pleased to see her new gentleman friend was at the coffee shop already working on the crossword puzzle when she came in.

  Now, three months in, here was Neil at her condo door ringing the doorbell right on time, 4:15 pm on a Saturday. They'd been out on a half dozen dates, attended a couple of sporting events, toured three museums, even had brunch. This was officially a thing.

  They hadn't talked about taking it to the next level, but that was obviously on each other’s mind. Time to see if their apparent compatibility extended to the physical realm. Abbie opened the door and invited Neil in. He gave her a kiss on the cheek as he passed. He'd been over a couple of times before. Never stayed late. A true gentleman.

  They sat on the couch.

  "So what are we going to do this evening?" Abbie asked.

  She took the brave step and reached out her hand on the back of the couch. Neil recognized the courageous leap into that void of doubt and worry and potential rejection and brought his hand up onto the couch cushion between them. He took her hand into his and joined her in smiling.

  "Don't really have any plans. Just thinking dinner wherever you'd like to go." He answered. "Sound good?"

  "It does."

  "Any preferences?"

  "Maybe a few." She smiled deeper and squeezed his fingers.

  "Okay then, let's head on out." He raised his eyebrows. She didn't make any move to get up. "What are you thinking?"

  She looked down for a few seconds then back up at him. "I was just wondering about after dinner. What do we do then?" Her smile changed to one of embarrassment. Her not so subtle question caused her cheeks to redden just a tad. And Abbie didn't embarrass easily.

  Neil leaned in a little. "Aha. I believe I detect a rather important question there."

  "Just wondering." She smirked.

  "Well, I think I'll answer that question with one of my own."

  Abbie's turn to lean in a little. "Ok. Shoot."

  "What are you doing next weekend?"

  That knocked her for a second. She actually pulled back and frowned in surprise. Not the question she was expecting.

  "Umm, I don't believe I have any plans." She closed her eyes for a few moments. She smiled when she opened them. "Nope, no plans. Well, maybe I was hoping to see you at some point during the weekend."

  "Good." He added his own smirk.

  "Good that I have no plans or that I want to see you?" She squeezed those fingers a little tighter.

  "Both. Because I'd like you to see a lot of me next weekend. And, I'd like you to come away with me."

  Full surprise. Her eyes widened and eyebrows shot up. "Whoa."

  "No pressure. Totally your call if you want to come."

  A few beats passed. "Ok, first things first, where?"

  "New York." He replied.

  "City?"

  "Yep. The big apple."

  "Ok. Um-"

  "Hold up, hold up," Neil released her hand and leaned forward to put his forearms on his thighs. "I think maybe I shouldn't have asked you. Way too presumptive of me."

  "No, that's not it at all. I'm just surprised."

  Neil shook his head. "I was just thinking we were moving forward and wanted to do something special for you, with you."

  Abbie leaned forward as well and reached out to take his hand again. "Yes, I agree. That's why I was asking about later tonight after dinner. Moving forward."

  "Ok, rewind. No getaway to New York. Forget I brought it up."

  "No, wait, stop. I,"

  "No problem."

  "Please, let me finish. I'm just surprised that's all. I would love to go away with you for the weekend. Thank you for asking me."

  "So, yes."

  "Yes."

  Chapter 7

  Lance flipped the sun visor down as he turned off the two-lane highway onto the long gravel and dirt drive. The evening sun was hovering just above the tree line and hills ahead on the eastern horizon. He'd been here a couple of times before. All things being square, he'd rather not be here now.

  Only times and circumstances bordering on the truly serious brought Preacher and the others together like this nowadays. Time was, Seibel's select team of heavy hitters spent solid blocks of time in each other's company. That era was gone. If one looked close at it all, close enough to get past dozens, maybe hundreds of contributing causes, you'd most likely see Lance at the center of Seibel's apparent self-destruction.

  Recruiting young Lance into this way of life was a world-altering development for all involved. While the youngster brought with him skills that others envy and dream and pray and work and die for, he also carried in his bag of uncanny tricks the seeds that, when planted, brought forth seasons of tumultuous change. Some people are like that. They plow through everyone and everything and leave wreckage, carnage, permanent change in their wake.

  Preacher was the living, breathing incarnation of this dichotomy. An honest to goodness life-saving hero and brutal remorseless killer in one sweet little package. He hummed along to an Eagles song about shoes playing in his head as he pulled his pickup truck off the winding drive onto a small gravel parking area in front of the house. Two vehic
les were parked there.

  Lance eased out of his truck and looked around for a few moments so he could stretch his back. They already knew he was here. Two gates along the three-quarter mile driveway opened for him as he approached each. After a few breaths of clean country air, he headed up the front stairs, across the wrap-around porch and in the front door without knocking.

  They were waiting for him. Seated on the couch and side chairs were Geoffrey Seibel, Mikel Fuchs and Frank Wyrick. The three of them looked up at Preacher as he entered. Nobody rose. No one spoke. They were obviously speaking moments earlier. Preacher looked each of them in eye in turn.

  "Can I get in on this game of musical chairs?" He smiled.

  Seibel chuckled. "I'm not giving up my seat." He tapped his right knee. "Even with a new one, it's no fun getting up anymore."

  "Getting old?" Preacher smiled.

  "Already was."

  Lance turned to Fuchs. "You come in from the field or vacation?"

  "I love it all so what's the difference." His black ops mentor curved his lips into a half smile with the reply.

  "Thanks for making it. Wasn't sure you got the message." Wyrick butted in.

  Lance stepped over to the kitchen table and grabbed a chair. He brought it over to join the boys' talk circle. "So what's up?" He looked to Seibel. Their former fearless leader deferred to Wyrick.

  "It's Broley."

  Seibel chuckled again. "Good ol' Caff. One of the few guys older than me still hanging around Langley. What's he up to?"

  Wyrick leaned forward, resting forearms on thighs. He, like the others, was wearing jeans to this casual get together. "He's digging into things, really burrowing this time."

  "Into our stuff?" Fuchs asked.

  "Deep. He's asking in-depth questions about events from the past decade. He's focusing in on several cases that no one is supposed to know about."

  "Let me guess, these operations all involve one particular operative?" Fuchs asked.

  "Bingo." Wyrick touched his nose with one pointer finger and pointed at Lance with the other.

  "How many is he looking into?" Seibel asked and took a sip from his glass. Jack Daniels and water on ice.

  "Three. At least three that he has brought to me."

  "Huh," Seibel rubbed his chin. "Which ones?"

  Wyrick sat back in his chair. "Philippines and New York."

  "And?"

  Wyrick looked each of them in the eye. "Baghdad."

  Not good. No one is supposed to be able to tie Preacher to any of those.

  "What is it about Baghdad that gives you extra concern?" Seibel asked.

  "What do you mean?" Wyrick replied.

  "You hesitated. Something more to that one. Is Broley looking at something that has you worried?"

  Wyrick was old and experienced and pretty much heard and seen it all in this black ops CIA Special Activities Division game. But he definitely wasn't comfortable talking about this topic.

  Fuchs took his turn. "Is he asking questions about the players, other than boy wonder here?"

  "Ah, now that's a question." Seibel added.

  "And that's a bingo again." Wyrick nodded.

  Preacher shook his head. "I guess we could keep this guessing game going for a while, but we need to get back to musical chairs, so Frank why don't you go ahead and tell us exactly what and who Broley is asking you about?"

  Wyrick nodded at him and raised his eyebrows. "I guess that concludes our small talk. No more chit chat. Broley is looking for specific information on the lead agency operative in all three operations. At this point he has confirmed it is a male under 30. But for Baghdad, he is asking about a female operative."

  "Christ." Seibel's turn to shake his head.

  "All that is deleted, expunged. You did it yourself." A statement, not a question from Fuchs.

  "I did. Every physical, computer and digital record deleted. Triple-checked and re-visited."

  Seibel asked, "So where do we think Broley is getting his information?"

  "Humans." Lance said. "The part we can't erase so easily."

  "Yep. Even with your ominous parting directive," Wyrick said to Seibel. "There are people around Langley and DC who know bits and pieces and whispers heard in hallways or around water coolers."

  "Do we think he knows any real details? Anything solid?" Seibel wondered.

  Wyrick pondered it for a few seconds. "If I had to guess, I'd say he knows significantly more than he is sharing with me."

  The group let that sit there for a bit. Minds were working through a barrage of details that only the men gathered in the room knew. Because they were there.

  The ultimate key to Seibel's success over nearly four decades was secrecy. He shared his plans, working details, trade craft with a very small group. Most of them were in the room with him now. His one great mistake during an illustrious clandestine career was Stuart Braden. Allowing a Chinese mole deep inside his close-knit Special Activities Division operational team for more than two decades was inexcusable. But even that colossal blunder was only known by a select few within the agency.

  Seibel was, is really, the ultimate spook. He's the ghost other intelligence professionals hold in mind when they call someone a ghost. He's a living CIA legend to the small population of intelligence and government officials who know his true value to the nation. The one theme running throughout his career was secrecy.

  Operational units, hit squads, Delta teams, field assets, were only given the information they needed to perform their role in the mission. Geoffrey Seibel didn’t initiate compartmentalization as policy and procedure, but he perfected the model.

  "So what are we talking about here?" Fuchs asked. "Are we considering taking action?"

  "Guessing we're probably past consideration." Lance answered. "I believe Mr. Wyrick here called us together so that we might formulate strategy."

  Seibel chuckled and took another sip of Tennessee whiskey. "And at the end of our little weekend gathering we're going to draw straws to see who gets to put strategy into action."

  Lance chuckled in reply. "Nice way to say one of us gets to put a gun to Broley's head and decide whether or not to pull the trigger."

  "I think we all know who is the expert at that kind of stuff." Seibel raised his glass to Lance.

  Morning mist rose from the hillside below Seibel's cabin. It spiraled up to meet the day. Sunrise was still behind the hills when Lance returned from a morning run. The available light was diffused through mist and haze and leaves. As he arrived at a delightful little meadow a couple hundred yards below Seibel's place, he ran into the old man himself. Seemed the elder spymaster was waiting there for his young protégé.

  Lance bent down to put his hands on his knees a few yards from Seibel. He drew in some deep breaths. He'd pushed hard on the run. The reason for his extra effort on an early morning excursion in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains was evident a few seconds later. Out into the meadow from the same direction Lance came 20 seconds earlier jogged Fuchs. He was huffing and puffing and likely ready to blow a gasket at getting left behind by Preacher. Time was, Fuchs' pace was too much for his understudy. It appeared age was winning this ongoing race between them as much as anything.

  "You two can't seem to give it a rest. Nice crisp morning with twinkling stars and a partial moon still overhead and you two have to turn a little exercise into an all-out race." Seibel was always going to be the angry disappointed dad for his bunch. He turned to Lance, "He's got 20-plus years on you. I should hope you'd be able to beat him." And to a bent-over and heaving Fuchs, "You've got to let some things go my man. Time and gravity and youth always win."

  Fuchs didn't say a word. He just stood back up, stretched his back, took in a deep breath and burst up the hillside trail toward the cabin.

  Lance took a few steps after Fuchs when Seibel called out. "Hold up. Can we talk?"

  Preacher didn't want to. He'd been out there in the far reaches of the solar system for the past 40 mi
nutes. During the run, he worked through a variety of math and science problems. Didn't much feel like coming down from that high.

  "Please, just a few minutes." Seibel had both his hands raised like he was being held up.

  Preacher stopped and closed his eyes. He was peering down on the two of them from 500 feet. Looked like a couple of jittery shadows poised to flit away into the dark before the sun peeked over the hills to the east. During most of his morning runs nowadays, he spent the majority of the time surveying the living, changing world from above with his screwy satellite vision. It's all triangulation and visual acuity using images constantly gathered by his eyes at ground level pieced together with memorized maps and satellite imagery, but the elevated aggregate view from above was his favorite way to view the world.

  He reluctantly came back down and opened his eyes. Seibel was watching him do this little momentary disappearing act from the get-go. He knew about Lance's weird on-high satellite vision thing, but still didn't get it.

  He wasn't in the mood for a chat with Seibel. They were past all that. Preacher had no need for fatherly advice from Seibel or Wyrick or Fuchs. Still, he dropped his head and shook it. "Go ahead."

  "This Broley thing is nothing. I've got it handled. I'll call Caff and help him get all this out of his head." Seibel took a step toward Lance.

  No takers. He wasn't interested. "The new knee is good enough to let you come down the hill from the house?" Preacher pointed at Seibel's leg.

  A definite look of exacerbation flashed across the old man's face. He quickly covered it with a smile. He was willing to play by Preacher's rules to get him to engage in a private conversation. "Yes. Better than the original even. No pain at all. Won't be too long before I replace the other one. You know, the one you didn't shoot."

  Now that was more like it. Spicy.

  "Guess I should have made it easier for you and put a hole through both knees back there." That was mean.

  Seibel's turn to close his eyes. It was a reset of sorts. His mouth did a little half smile just before he exhaled. An elaborate cleansing method. Preacher had watched the old fella do it hundreds of times. When he opened his eyes, he saw himself. Preacher was copying the activity before him; contracting and releasing facial muscles to achieve an amazing replica of the older man's face.