Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

When the fallout came, it came quickly and later than Conner thought it might. Conner was sitting with Lieutenant Preston in the Istanbul airport, where they were to part at last at the conclusion of Conner's contract, when Conner saw his handler standing off from the departure area and looking at him intently. As soon as it was obvious Conner saw him, almost doing a double take, the handler gestured toward a men's room. Conner's gaze turned to the men's room to see that another man he recognized was standing by the door to the john, dressed as a cleaner. It seemed this was a ploy all U.S. intelligence agencies like to employ. He had a mop and bucket beside him, and Conner caught on that the man would close off the rest room as soon as Conner and his handler entered it.

"I'm going to the men's room before we board," Conner said, standing.

"Good idea. I was about to suggest that. I'll go with you," Preston answered, also standing.

"It's OK, I can go alone," Conner countered. But then it was obvious that Preston wouldn't let him go alone. It was equally obvious then too that Preston and his people weren't going to let Conner simply fly away from here. He was ticketed for Frankfurt, although after they'd cleared through airport security, Preston had taken Conner's ticket back from him. He wasn't going anywhere until and unless Preston let him. They were close to calling boarding. There was no reason for Preston to stick close to him now. Preston had said he was ticketed for a later flight going someplace else. He didn't say where.

Preston reiterated that he was going to the men's room too. And, despite Conner saying he wanted to go alone, Preston was closely following him.

As they entered the men's room, Conner's handler having preceded them, Conner sensed the agent posed as a cleaner blocking off the door in their wake.

Preston didn't know what hit him. He was down on the ground, a bullet from a silencer having made a third eye for him, and the handler was dragging the body into a stall.

"You didn't have to do that. They were letting me go," Conner said, angrily when the handler came out of the stall.

"Of course I had to do that. They weren't going to let you go. Preston was going to kill you before you got on that plane. Probably was going to bring you in here and off you while everyone else was boarding."

Conner decided to let it go. "You managed to locate the site? They call it H003."

"Yes. The transmitter in your tooth filling worked a charm. The installation is in Kazakhstan, near a village called Chelor. We're already well on our way to tracing the secret agreements back to the Agency. Did you manage to find out anything else? Anything on the prisoners?"

Conner hesitated just a few seconds too long in answering and the indecision in his face showed. The handler's face set hard and he lifted the gun he'd used to kill Preston and pointed it at Conner. "You know who some of the inmates are, don't you? Tell me who you saw there."

"Shouldn't we leave first?" Conner asked. "Are you booked on the flight to Frankfurt too? I could talk to you on the flight."

"You could talk to me now," the handler said, his voice menacing. Then a surprised look shot across his face and he toppled to the floor, a knife sticking out of his back.

"Jamal," Conner exclaimed, seeing the figure of the man materializing behind the falling handler.

"Shhh, there's a back door to the restroom," Jamal hissed. "Come away with me, we can be gone from here before the others come looking for their man. This man wasn't going to let you leave here alive. They just didn't want to kill you any closer to their operations. Did you find any of our comrades where you were taken?"

"Yes," Conner answered the man from the Mideast terrorist unit Conner had been secretly working with as a sleeper in the States for years. "Some of the Yemeni leaders are still alive; the prison is near a village called Chelor in Kazakhstan. But I will tell you all when we're away from here."

He would tell them all, of course. Their cause was his as well. But he would dribble the information out slowly to maximize his chances of survival. If he'd learned anything from this operation, it was to trust no one fully.