Spyware by R. J. Pineiro

Author:R. J. Pineiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

37

Vanishing Act

Nothing beat having insight into someone’s head when it came to guessing what that person might have done based on recent events. And as he sat in a dark corner of the briefing room on the fifth floor of the headquarters of the Politie Antwerpen, the Antwerp Police, Donald Bane felt more convinced of that belief.

The chief of police, an old acquaintance from Bane’s days as a young operative in Europe during the final days of the Cold War, interviewed the third air traffic controller in the past two hours regarding the loss of a Cessna Skylane a week ago during a routine practice flight.

The official report at the CIA Antwerp Station stated that Mac Savage had used one of his fake CIA identities to rent the aircraft, which he had planned to use to escape the country. Unfortunately, the use of the alias didn’t float up to the CIA until a day later, long after Savage had crashed in poor visibility into the English Channel two miles from shore.

Bane had been diligent in dispatching this official version to his superiors in Washington to get them off his back while he probed the matter further.

Routine practice flight my ass, Bane thought, well aware of Savage’s pilot skills as well as his CIA training in the art of deception.

The best way for people to stop looking for you is to make them believe that you are already dead.

And what better way than to crash a plane into the English Channel?

As the police chief questioned the ATC officer, a plump woman in her early forties with a thick Flemish accent, Bane was already asking himself the next logical question.

Where did you go, Mac?

Before answering that, Bane’s mind replayed the words Savage had conveyed to Barnes at the Maritime Museum.

I have apparently stumbled onto something bigger than either one of us can imagine. Bypass the chain of command and contact Bane in Langley directly. Tell him there is a conspiracy in the High Diamond Council. Bockstael was investigating missing diamonds in Africa and wanted to retain my services to help him dig.

Bane frowned.

Where would Mac Savage go to dig?

Twenty minutes later, Bane stepped out of the police station and into a light drizzle. He fast walked to a waiting sedan, driven by Tom Barnes. A former apprentice of Bane and Savage, Barnes was now the most senior member of the CIA staff in Antwerp, and acting station chief. Bane was holding the carrot of full appointment as CIA station chief in front of the forty-something senior officer as insurance to get him to keep this probe quiet while feeding Washington the story about Savage’s airplane accident while trying to flee Belgium.

Bane frowned when staring at the front page of the Gazet van Antwerpen, the city’s main newspaper, depicting a picture of Hal Lancaster, a U.S. diplomat robbed and killed in the National Maritime Museum. Bane actually had not really needed to use the station chief carrot to gain his subordinate’s cooperation. Lancaster’s

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