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special
black ops force that surreptitiously brought havoc and
death to its enemies, the damn fool’s actions had loosed the
Sleeping Dogs, awakened them so to speak.
    The irony of the analogy
amused Christie, but the sound came out more like a snort than a
laugh. The cleverest, most dangerous men on earth had faked their
deaths once before. If the Bureau wanted—no, needed—a fairy tale
ending, it could have it. But Christie knew better. Brendan Whelan
was alive. Somewhere. But where? It was a big planet and the man
could be hiding anywhere on it. Christie had worried with that
issue for months, and then it had come to him. He knew from
Whelan’s old military file that he had been born in Ireland.
Christie wasn’t sure why, but he sensed that was the place to
search. His next problem was trying to figure out how to gather
relevant information without quitting his job and traveling to
Ireland. Then he remembered his friend at INTERPOL Washington. He invented the story about the OCDETF investigating a drug lord with Irish
ties.
    While there were no current
photographs of Whelan, Christie had access to the likeness a Bureau
sketch artist had drawn during the Harold Case investigation. It
was based on an old photograph from Whelan’s military record.
Christie knew it was a good likeness because he unknowingly had sat
next to Whelan on a cross-country flight. For quite a while he had
thought Whelan purposely had done it to mock him, but finally
accepted that it was simply a weird coincidence. He had contacted
his friend at INTERPOL Washington, spun his OCDETF story, and asked
him to liaison with INTERPOL National
Central Bureau for Ireland. He had provided the sketch of
Whelan.
    Several weeks had passed,
tonight an email had arrived while he was at the bar with
Burkhardt. His friend in Washington had something for him. Christie
wasn’t worried about using the Bureau’s facilities for these
purposes. He believed the demands of his FBI duties had contributed
significantly to the failure of his marriage. In a real sense, the
Bureau owed him. Big Time. Besides, these activities would appear
to be a normal part of his responsibilities as cochair of OCDETF. Neither was he
concerned that Wojakowski would catch him in this deceptive
behavior. Not that she wouldn’t love to, he thought. But he knew
that she didn’t have the time, or cleverness for that matter, to
check with anyone at OCDETF to see if it
actually was investigating a drug trafficker with Irish
connections. He was comfortable that the plausibility of the story
was cover enough.
    He keyed in the code and entered the ultra
secure chat room. It had been designed and was maintained by a
group of techno-wizards the Bureau and INTERPOL had lured away from
NSA. A member of the INTERPOL Washington staff could reserve it. A
code would then be randomly generated which could be distributed by
the member to whoever was to participate. No one else could access
the room during that period, and the context of the conversation
automatically was destroyed when the reserving member exited the
room.
    His friend was waiting for him, and welcomed
him to the chat room. “Hi, Mitch, good to ‘see’ you.”
    “ Thanks, you too.” Christie
got right to the point. “What do you have for me?”
    “ This turned out to be a
bit more challenging than I might have imagined.”
    “ How so?”
    “ An Garda
Síochána , the Irish National Police,
seemed fully cooperative at first. Guess they weren’t too happy
that some drug-dealing bastard might be operating from their
shores. Then, for no apparent reason, they backed off and said
there were too many matters on their plate and they didn’t have the
manpower to get involved in this.”
    “ You think that was
legit?”
    “ Apparently not. This morning I got a call from a guy with the
Irish cops. Wouldn’t give me his name. Said the guy you’re looking
for had connections with An Garda
Síochána .”
    “ No shit.” Christie