A Case for Old Spies

By Gini Anding

What happens to old spies in retirement? Do they simply fade away, never to be heard from again? How do former covert agents accustomed to working clandestinely on a need-to-know basis reorganize their lives? Zach, a weapons expert and trained assassin, wondered from time to time what he was doing as deputy sheriff on Chipley Island. And then the body of a man he had thought dead for many years rolled up on the beachon his beach at Pirates Coveout of the blue.

Chipley Island is not just any island in Virginia. It is the brainchild of the body in the wetsuit. The man was second-in-command to retired U.S. Navy Adm. Jackson Lee Andrews. Together, the two men directed a top secret agency for the President, and when the group was dissolved, the admiral helped set them up on the island. Did he have an ulterior motive?

Zach and his wife Josie, known for her eidetic memory and once a courier, gather the group and together they resolve to solve the case of the mysterious body on the beach, a spy of the old school, a legendary agent, and perhaps the best spy of all time. As Josie declares, What was that old devil up to?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491726525

Gini Anding

Gini Anding earned her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. She taught at the College of William and Mary, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Kentucky. She is the author of four books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French poetry. She now divides her time between St. Augustine, Florida, and Atlanta, Georgia, and writes mysteries (Amy Page / Jean-Michel Jolivet Witness series) and cookbooks (The Amateur Gourmet).

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A CASE FOR OLD SPIES

Copyright © 2014 Gini Anding.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-2651-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2652-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903363

iUniverse rev. date: 02/27/2014

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

AFTERWORD

Chapter 1

Pirates Cove, Chipley Island, VA

Monday morning

The two men looked down at the body that had rolled up on the beach. Together they knelt down, turned it over, and removed the mask that covered the face.

He looks familiar, one said to the other. I don’t recognize him, but then again I’d swear I’ve seen him somewhere.

You’re right, his companion replied, but I can’t place him either. Surely, he’s not one of ours. Maybe we should look for an id tat? That would tell us something.

Maybe we should call Zach first? He is after all the sheriff’s deputy. I don’t know what the protocol is. We certainly don’t want to be involved. I don’t think we should remove the wetsuit. Maybe we should just carry him to another beach and let someone outside the group find him and call the authorities. We need to stay out of it.

Zach (Zachary) Warren: weapons expert; trained sniper; assassin rank; deputy sheriff on the island.

But what if he’s one of us? Don’t you think it’s odd that he turned up here on this particular beach? There’s no boat out there looking for someone lost at sea. I hate to say it but I think he purposefully swam here and then died. He couldn’t possibly be here by chance. The current would have swept him further south, missing not just this beach, but the entire island.

I’ll call Zach. I’m just glad that it’s mid-morning and the children are at school.

Okay, Tony, but first, we’d better get him off the beach and into the barn.

Good idea. You take the arms and I’ll take the feet.

Tony (Antoine) and Hank (Henri) Martine: French Gypsy twins; con men; thieves; miniature horse breeders; owners of the Wagon Wheel Ranch in Pirates Cove on Chipley Island.

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Damnation! Josie shrieked as she limped after a large blue crab down the dock. Right, go ahead, jump overboard and go back to wherever, but just know I’ll get you one of these days!

Josie (Josephine) Warren: expert tracker; grade one courier; known for eidetic memory; fluent in several languages; book illustrator; Zach’s wife.

Back in the kitchen, just as she was putting some ice on her swollen toe, her cell phone rang. I don’t care who it is, she muttered, I’m just not going to answer. I’m too mad to talk to anyone.

The phone kept ringing and ringing. It was her husband Zach.

What is it? she griped as she answered. I’m in agony. A big jimmy got out of the basket and attacked me. My toe is enormous and I hurt like hell.

I’m down at the ranch. A body turned up on the beach this morning and we are pretty sure it’s one of ours. You need to come at once.

Are you saying he has an id tat?

Yes, it’s a mermaid. The tat has two errors.

That’s impossible. It can’t be. Dammit, Zach, he’s been dead for years.

"So we thought. Anyway, just get here. Jim is on the way. I’m also going to call Elsworth, Marjorie, and Mike.

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The small group gathered in the stable. The corpse had been placed on a makeshift table, a board on two trestles. With the wetsuit removed, it was clear that the body was marked with all sorts of scars and several tattoos.

That’s the one.

You’re sure?

Oh, yes. I did it myself, replied Elsworth. I’d certainly know my work anywhere. Look at the mermaid’s tail. There! The two mistakes are in the mermaid’s tail. One scale is upside down and then there’s the tail itself. Each of you has a tattoo with two errors. We had to do something since we removed your fingerprints and the usual identifying marks are known to all agencies. Ours is obvious on purpose, the best of all ways to hide identification.

Elsworth Newton: tactician; cartographer; gadgeteer; inventor; island postmaster; owner of local used bookstore.

Well, it is a clever mark of honor, I suppose, but that doesn’t explain just what is going on, Jim remarked. I’ve never been one of you and I’ve only been involved indirectly in your ops, but I can tell you that I’ve seen this body before. I recognize a few of my sutures, but then I guess several of you on the island also bear traces of my work. Right now, all I can tell you is that your corpse has to be one of you and has had a lot of plastic surgery, very good and very expensive surgery at that. It’s no wonder that you didn’t recognize him at first.

Jim (James) Andrews: retired general surgeon; Jack’s brother and Josie’s father.

Well, Elsworth, you’re the expert, so now we know who he is, but that’s just one question answered, Zach said. The big question now is why here? What was so important that he had to come in person? Where the hell has he been for the past decade? What has he been up to? Why us?

And why not? Josie asked. First of all, he knew about this island, knew we were all here. Hell, he helped Uncle Jack set everything up. In fact, it was his idea to stash all of us here in one place and let us get on with new lives in a peaceful, friendly, out-of-the-way environment. What better place than the island where Jack had grown up. And his brother Jim? And me, Jim’s daughter and his niece? This is where we all retired to. Let’s not forget that he was Jack’s second-in-command, and as such, the one in charge of all field ops. Jack had the ideas, but our corpse had the know-how to execute them. We all worked for him at one time or another, in one mission or another, and we all carried out all sorts of assignments outside the constraints of government legalities. Only the President knew about Jack’s real job and Jack reported only to him, while our corpse reported only to Jack. That was the chain of command.

Jack (Jackson Lee) Andrews: U.S. Navy Adm., retired; director of the AIC (American International Center, the President’s top secret agency); Jim’s brother and Josie’s uncle.

You’re right, but we are retired, Hank responded. We are out of it. So we’re considered old. Used up! We are no longer covert agents working clandestinely on a need-to-know basis, although I’ve never been sure that Tony and I were real government operatives.

Yes, we were Hank, Tony interrupted. Only from Uncle Sam could we have received such generous severance pay, bought this farm and started our business. However, you are right that we’ve all been out of it for some time. We’re old, as you put it. Apparently, the next President dissolved Jack’s directorship, saying we should have been cashiered when the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended. We hung on for the rest of the century, but then we were terminated. So why did the body turn up at Pirates Cove, on our beach? Has Jack somehow kept us all in the game without our knowing it? Well, Marjorie? You’re the paper pusher and I know you keep in touch.

Marjorie smiled at the small group. Well, it’s true that I wrote all the end reports and handled the final paperwork. I established your present credentials, obtained all necessary documents, set up bank accounts and tax records, even managed to arrange citizenship in some cases. On paper, we are all golden. I can assure you that there’s no longer any trace of AIC in any of your backgrounds.

Marjorie Hunter: cipher expert; forger; author of children’s books.

Why am I not reassured? Hank asked. There is still a price on our heads in a few countries. We’ve not been to Europe since Zach got us out ten years ago. Even our clans think we are dead. We like our life here. We paid our dues and have the scars to prove it. I just can’t believe that this son-of-a-bitch chose our beach. You know it had to be deliberate. Are we all compromised? Or are my brother and I the only targets? Is this another one of Jack’s diabolical schemes? Is he that bored sitting on his yacht off the coast? Or is he the one who is compromised and therefore dragging us all into some nefarious web of his making? To protect his royal ass? Face it, people. Only Jack could have told this bastard where we are, where to land without anyone the wiser.

Calm down, the group muttered all at once.

All eyes turned to Zach, as the acknowledged leader of the group.

First, we need to stash this body. Only the seafood warehouse has a large enough freezer to handle it.

No problem, Mike replied.

Mike (Michael) Miller: bomb and demolitions expert; co-owner of the Chipley Island Seafood Plant.

That’s the second item, Josie said. First, my father needs to extract the molars. We know that we are dealing with not just an old retired spy, but with probably the best spy of all times. Chances are he was carrying something important, proof of whatever brought him here. There aren’t any papers on the body, so the document or what-have-you must be in the body, and where else would an old spy hide something but in a molar?

Son-of-a-bitch, Elsworth spoke up. Don’t tell me we are going to find microfilm in a false tooth! That is so old school.

As one, the group turned to Jim.

I see. Here I am in a room of people who are highly skilled in all sorts of clandestine activities and who have been involved in unthinkable practices from assassination to blackmail to kidnapping to fraud, who know how to use a variety of guns, assault weapons, bombs, who know all sorts of ways to dispose of an unwanted body, and yet are unable to open a corpse’s mouth and see if there is a false molar there! Better yet one that will solve the case of the mysterious body on the beach!

Fair enough, Dad, Josie said laughing. Still, you are a doctor and bound to have better knowledge of human anatomy than any of us. As you told us earlier, you’ve sown this guy up more than once.

Okay, let’s move that light so I can see better. Rigor mortis is just beginning to set in, so I best get busy opening his jaw.

Zach jumped in. If I remember correctly, rigor begins three to four hours after death, so if rigor is just beginning, then we can say he died at sunup, meaning he wanted to arrive on the island in daylight.

I agree, Marjorie said. If he did his homework about the island, he would have also known that the beach at Pirates Cove is usually deserted in the morning.

Tony nodded. Yes, that’s right. The only reason that Hank and I were on the beach this morning was to look for a necklace my daughter thinks she lost here yesterday evening when the kids were playing volleyball. Otherwise, he would have had the beach all to himself.

Yes, of course, Zach said. Then he could have buried the wetsuit and scuba gear and set off for… well, wherever. He definitely had a plan and that plan meant he had to begin with a landfall on Pirates Cove beach. Somewhere on his body, there has to be a map of some sort.

Everyone nodded in agreement. Jim broke the uneasy silence. Fortunately, when Zach called me, he told me it involved a corpse, so I did bring a kit with me.

Jim put on surgical gloves and pried open the mouth and quickly removed two false molars from the lower jaw. Then he felt around the upper jaw and extracted a partial plate.

Elsworth sighed. Of course. The old false tooth gimmick. Well, I guess it’s now my job to see what’s inside. I’ll need to take them with me and hope I still have the right tools to open them.

Surely you kept all those odd tools somewhere in that attic of yours, Josie said.

Oh, yes, but I need a place to work, a lab of sorts. I don’t know how long he’s had these teeth or who did the job. Just looking at them, I can say they weren’t made in Western Europe, so I’m going to have to be careful opening them. I’d like somewhere that is at least quasi-sterile and has bright lights. Any thoughts?

Mike spoke up. After the day’s catch has been handled, we thoroughly scrub down the plant. My guess is that we can borrow some stuff from Jim’s old office and set up a proper workspace for you. I know we have very bright lights. He’s going to the fish house anyway. Tony and Hank, find something to wrap him in and then get him into my truck. I’ll call Erik and tell him I’m coming with a very different catch from the sea.

Erik Borck: money tracker and finance expert; martial arts master; Mike’s partner in the seafood factory.

I’ll call Jack, Zach said. "I’m sure he’ll get here quickly and expect us to meet with him. Shall we say 7:00 tonight at Cousins? I guess I might as well let the rest of the gang in on this problem. Jack will take the death of the Trojan, aka Nathaniel Carlton Wickersham, personally. My gut tells me this is going to turn out to be a case for old spies.

Chapter 2

Cousins Restaurant, Chipley Island, VA

Monday evening

As Zach had predicted, retired Rear-Admiral Jackson Lee Andrews arrived on Chipley Island before the appointed time for dinner. The very fact that he hired a crew to sail his ninety-two-foot yacht from Annapolis while he and his administrative assistant, Kit Andrews, flew to Patrick Henry Airport in a chartered jet meant that he took the situation seriously. His first act was to go to the seafood plant to see the body of the man who had been at one time his most trusted lieutenant. Then he joined the group gathered in the private dining room of the marina restaurant. All were in a somber mood. The death of the legendary agent on their shore had sent a sense of disquiet to Chipley Island. While the kitchen staff, under the watchful eye of Randall and his wife April, had prepared the Admiral’s favorite meal of fish soup, crab cakes, corn on the cob, collard greens, stewed tomatoes, and hush puppies, the usual jokes, good-natured items of gossip, and banter were notably missing from the gathering. Jack had just one glass of bourbon on the rocks, while no one ordered a cocktail, a beer, or wine. Dessert was not served although April had baked Jack’s four favorite pies: pecan, apple, lemon meringue, and coconut custard. At least one of the pies would wind up on the yacht when it arrived.

Randall and April Jordan: chefs in charge of the kitchen at Cousins Restaurant.

After the dishes were cleared, Bill and Jerry quickly set the room up for a meeting. All were there except Marshall Barrow, who kept a weathered eye on the island bridge. Confined to a wheelchair after taking a bullet meant for Jack, he now passed the time taking note of the cars and trucks that crossed over from the mainland. In fact, he had become an island fixture, sitting on his porch with Candy, his Irish Setter, watching the comings and goings of island life. Randall and April provided him with his meals. Later tonight, he would enjoy a large piece of April’s deep-dish apple pie with French vanilla ice cream on top. He had already reported to Zach that nothing out of the ordinary had crossed the bridge for the past week.

Bill (William) Penrith and Jerry (Jerome) Upshaw: former CIA operatives; married to sisters Elizabeth and Mary Ann nées Andrews, nieces of Jack and Jim; co-owners of Cousins Restaurant and the island marina.

Unknown to tourists and outside patrons of the restaurant, as well as to most island residents, the large private dining room was actually a communications center. When Bill and Jerry rolled up two of the walls, they revealed several large video display screens. The third wall contained a bank of several computers. Once a week, Scraps Mason arrived on his Harley in order to check the data that had arrived from stations around the world. Periodically, he hacked into various government computers, especially those of the CIA, NCIS, FBI, and Homeland Security, making sure that the Chipley Island retired spies, as well as those who chose to live elsewhere, remained persons of no interest. After all, under the Admiral, they had undertaken top secret missions that could not be handled by official agencies, jobs no one else wanted or even dared to tackle.

Scraps (Jonathan) Mason: computer genius; owner of a bike shop in nearby Yorktown; Marjorie’s nephew; grew up on the island.

Kit walked over to one of the consoles and typed in the password, which was changed every time Scraps made a visit. The code was most often a variation of a name or just a part of a name from the Kiskiacks, a Native American tribe that had been part of the Powhatan Confederacy. When Scraps first met Kit, she was in her senior year of college and a history major. At the time, she was working on her senior honors thesis, which dealt with a study of that tribe and their life in Werowocomoco, the capital of the Indian settlement at the time of the founding of Jamestown in 1607. Scraps fell in love with both Kit and her research project, and, in homage to her, used her thesis as the basis for a system of access codes. Once, when he was explaining his system to Bill and Jerry, he compared it to the Navajo code talkers during World War II. If anyone ever discovered what was concealed in the private dining room, it was a given that they would not know how to crack the code and make sense out of weroance, yihakans, Ottahotin, etc.

Kit (Kathryn) Andrews: strategist and Jack’s administrative assistant; freelance photographer; Josie’s younger sister.

All of the screens showed the usual activity. Jack strode to the front of the room and asked Kit to pull up reports on maritime traffic in and around the island during the past forty-eight hours. Immediately, the group noticed a very small blip that had stopped moving a mile offshore around 4:00 a.m. It was probably a trawler. It remained in place for twenty-five minutes and then continued south toward Hampton Roads. Any passing ship or even