End of Secrets Read online

Her affiliation with the present slipped momentarily. Time scoped, refocusing like a giant lens. Over the past few years, and especially with the ATLANTIS case, her identity had morphed to the point that it was no longer definable, even to her. Who was she? Perhaps this had started much earlier than her career in the intelligence community. Who was the infant girl in the photo? This was what she knew: she was a disavowed clandestine agent of the US government. She was an American, born elsewhere, a daughter of someone else’s making, an ex-fiancée to an earnest and loving man who had been killed because of his links to her.

  She drifted back into the present one layer of awareness at a time, hearing first the distant waves and the call of seagulls, and then a motorbike on the road, and finally, the window curtain in front of her, flapping in a breeze.

  Who was the infant girl in the photo?

  It had taken a thirty-year journey before she had arrived here to really ask herself that question. She would start over now. And this time she would do a better job of keeping track of the answer.

  A few days later, Kera took a trip to the city and picked up a copy of the New York Times, which she had been monitoring online in short snatches of time she stole on the hotel’s tired, shared computer. Exchanging cash for the paper in a small kiosk on a dusty commercial street, she thought that her father would be proud that they still lived in a world where news was printed on broadsheets and distributed to faraway news shops not unlike his own. He would be less proud of the story on page one that began in a narrow column beneath the fold. FORMER INTELLIGENCE ASSETS INVESTIGATED FOR TREASON, it said. And then her name, right there in the lead paragraph. Though she’d already read it online, it seemed more consequential in print.

  Kera Mersal, a former CIA analyst, and James Carr, a former employee of the NSA (who goes by the name J. D. Jones), are wanted for questioning as federal authorities struggle to learn more about the widening ONE scandal that has rocked both Wall Street and the global intelligence community.

  Investigators say they now believe Mersal and Carr were behind the massive leak of classified documents published to the website Gnos.is by an anonymous source last week. A CIA official with knowledge of the investigation said that the leaked documents, which at first appeared to implicate the agency in the scandal, were in fact fabricated and planted by Mersal and Carr on behalf of Russian and Chinese intelligence organizations in an attempt to shift the balance of power in global espionage circles. Such charges, if brought, would amount to treason under US law and would ratchet up tensions between Washington and Beijing and Moscow.

  The CIA maintains that their involvement with ONE was a carefully planned strategy to infiltrate the corporation and learn about their illegal practices of collecting and selling detailed information on US citizens to foreign agencies. The CIA operation, the agency claims, was badly damaged by Mersal’s and Carr’s actions. Mersal and Carr are reportedly at large.

  Meanwhile, experts predict that the crippled media giant, ONE, which was first at the center of the scandal, is spiraling toward bankruptcy.

  Kera sat on the balcony of her hotel room overlooking the beach. She read the article again and again, folding the irrelevant half of the paper back on itself to prevent interference from the breeze that occasionally blew a ribbon of hair across her face. This was another reason she’d come to the tiny Central American country: to wait and see what she was facing. Now she knew. It was part of the game, she thought. It was the agency’s way of trying to get her and Jones to resurface on their own and defend themselves.

  She sat in silence, thinking, as the sun cooled and dropped toward the line of the Pacific. Finally, she spread out the newspaper on the small balcony table.

  Then she got out a pen.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Langley, Virginia

  Lionel Bright was having one of the worst weeks in his career. Six days earlier, his boss, the director of the CIA, had learned on CNN that the agency’s most highly classified black operation, Hawk, had gone under. On the list of career low points, having an operation get botched this spectacularly was second only to having an agent killed in action. And that was without it being the lead story coming out of every media outlet in the world.

  In subsequent meetings throughout the week, Bright had sat and listened to his team and the FBI investigators as they tried to piece together what had happened—and what they were going to do to clean up the mess. The Feds had not permitted him to talk yet with Gabby, who was being held in a federal prison in downtown Manhattan. But Bright’s team had sent word to her through her lawyers that the agency had a crisis management plan that would work if she played along. Bright wished to God they didn’t need her so badly to save their own asses; he’d have been content to see her serve real prison time. If anyone deserved to be thrown under the bus, it was Gabby, not Kera.

  He’d been furious when he read Gabby’s statement, which the agency had written for her and in which she claimed that Kera and Jones had sabotaged the well-intentioned Hawk operation on behalf of Russian and Chinese interests. On its face, given the detailed evidence that had been leaked, that story seemed preposterous to Bright, though it had become less and less so each day the media gave it legs and as long as Kera remained silent.

  Since she’d left her duties at Langley for the Hawk assignment in New York, Kera and Bright had communicated only twice—once when he’d approached her in New York after her postcard and e-mail warning, and then when he’d left her an unreturned phone message days after her fiancé’s death. He had not heard from her since their discussion in the diner.

  Until now. Just this afternoon he’d received a sealed manila envelope that had come by courier. There was no return address. Thinking little of it, he cut into one end with his letter opener and pulled out the contents. When he saw that it was a newspaper, he forgot everything else.

  He sat down to study the broadsheet closely. It was a Tuesday New York Times from the previous week, the edition that had prominently displayed the story about Kera and Jones facing possible charges of treason. At first there was nothing else notable about the newspaper. But after he turned carefully through a few pages, he saw it. He checked a few more pages to confirm the pattern.

  He reached for a pen. On every page of the newspaper, he found two ink dots—one in the vertical margin and one in the horizontal margin. Imagining that the dots were points on two perpendicular axes, he followed them until they bisected on a word somewhere within the copy. Advancing in order from page A1 to page A6, he located the word marked on each page and wrote it down on the back of the envelope. When he was finished, he walked to the window of his office and stood there awhile with a complex smile on his face, part pride, part sadness, and part fear. He’d burn the newspaper and the note in a minute. But for now, for just a little while longer, he wanted them to exist.

  Her decoded message said: Have you figured it out yet?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The process of writing a novel requires a suspiciously disciplined person to sit for hours alone, daily, for a year or more, trying to put into words a bunch of stuff he’s cooked up in his head. Turning that document into a coherent, enjoyable, publishable book requires the patience, wisdom, and generosity of dozens of people who go well out of their way to offer support and expertise. The following people were crucial in pushing me to make this novel far better than I could have done alone.

  Chris is my daily source of support, encouragement, and happiness. And I do mean daily. He goes above and beyond the call of duty in accommodating my writing schedule, and his presence keeps me sane and productive. He also happens to be the love of my life, and on that front I can’t imagine being any more fortunate.

  I lucked into the most supportive family any human being—and especially a writer—could hope for. Mom and Dad, thank you for your endless support and for sharing in the ups and downs of seeing this through. Kelly and Gretchen, thanks not only for your kind words of encouragement, but also for being so eager to
read an early draft and give incredibly useful feedback.

  It is not putting too sentimental a spin on it to say that my friends are like my second family. Their support is sincere, their good humor is life-giving, and their talents at their own creative and professional pursuits are inspiring. They’ll likely all be household names before I will. Jon Bergman, Eric Brassard, Phil Buiser, Zac Hug, Max Miller, and Marc Valera were particularly helpful in coaching this book along and helping me get it across the finish line.

  I’m extraordinarily grateful for Anh Schluep and the rest of the Thomas & Mercer team at Amazon Publishing, as well as Terry Goodman and Jessica Poore, for their passion, professionalism, and for taking a chance on me. Rebecca Brinson copyedited this thing with an impossibly sharp eye; the English language and I are in debt to her for that. And finally, I want to acknowledge David Downing, my brilliant editor, whose wisdom and patience helped me transform the final drafts of this book. Readers will never know the full significance of David’s guidance—which, I think, is the point. But it’s a shame that the best editors are inherently underappreciated by readers. Take my word for it, dear reader, David has done you all a great favor in the immense value he added to this book.

  SOURCES

  If I were a clandestine agent of the US government and had acquired firsthand knowledge of actions and details similar to those portrayed in this book, I would be forbidden from acknowledging that here or anywhere else. So assuming I’m not, I’ll confess to relying upon a wide array of sources that I found invaluable in my research for this book. The most influential were The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford; You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier; Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman; and Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman. These books are all highly readable, and I recommend them if you have further interest in grappling with the evolving roles of privacy, technology, and conscientious discourse in our culture.

  Finally, it is incumbent on me to acknowledge that many readers will recognize in this book key plot devices inspired by Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. Those similarities are as intentional as the differences.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2013 Vanessa Hansen

  A native of Alaska, Ryan Quinn was an NCAA champion and an all-American athlete (skiing) while at the University of Utah. He worked for five years in New York’s book-publishing industry before moving to Los Angeles, where he writes and trains for marathons. Quinn’s first novel, The Fall, was an award-winning finalist for the 2013 International Book Awards. For more, please visit ryanquinnbooks.com.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication Page

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SOURCES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR