Page 56 of Need to Know

“You’ve got five minutes,” I said resignedly.

****

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Nate

I watched my father as he poured himself a second Scotch, and shook my head when he gestured to pour one for me. With a tumbler of amber liquid in hand he paced, took a swallow, and rubbed his free hand over his mouth. He was so familiar, beloved, missed, but still, this Curtis was a stranger, and I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him for what he’d done.

“Do you remember, back in 2014 oil prices collapsed, caused mainly by the Shale oil boom in the US,” he asked. I did remember this because dad had gone down the rabbit hole, concerned about the effect it would have on jobs in his industry.

“There was an oversupply,” I stated.

“Yeah, Russia asked Saudi Arabia to cut production, and, of course, they refused, which lead to increased competition in global oil markets. The CIA decided to follow their usual playbook—to meddle and destabilize matters by arranging a false flag attack which they planned to blame on Russia.”

“You’re CIA?” I accused.

“No. I’m a freelance asset. I’ll work for whichever alphabet agency needs my skills. You know what my old job was, Newt, that wasn’t a lie. I was a petrochemicals engineer, a contractor, my employment history until then was straightforward, spotless.”

“Then how did you come to work for the CIA?”

“I was approached and offered a lot of money…money that could have gotten us clean out of debt. I agreed to do one job for them, just one.”

“Did mom know?”

“You gotta understand, we were drowning in bills. I didn’t tell your mom the whole story, just that I’d gotten a six-month contract in Saudi and it would leave us financially high and dry.” I shook my head, shocked. As a self-absorbed teen I hadn’t realized our family had financial troubles. Mom never told me that things had gotten so bad that dad risked his life for a quick payday.

“The CIA used their network to arrange a job for me at a refinery in Shaybah. I was supposed to be the inside man, and secretly report on supply. At the right time I was to let the CIA operative into the facility to disrupt the supply.”

“So, what happened? Why did you fake your death?”

Curtis paused in his pacing; he came over to sit at the far end of the couch. He knocked back the last of the Scotch. Then he stared into the distance as he spoke.

“I was a fool, son, in way over my head. I wasn’t told the plan, just my part in it. When I got the signal, I met the operative and smuggled him into the facility in my trunk. He was supposed to disrupt the supply, that’s all I knew. I thought he’d mess with the electric cables, or damage tanks, maybe cause a leak. But I discovered he’d bought an incendiary device in with him. Into a god-damn oil refinery…it was madness, totally reckless. I wasn’t told that he planned blow something up. I’d never have gotten involved if I’d known what the whole plan was. I tried to reason with him, stop him from planting the device, but he punched me in the face, and ran. I tried to find him, but I lost him in the facility.”

“So, what happened?” I prompted.

“I’m not sure, probably a mixture of things…maybe the timer wasn’t long enough, or he chose a bad location for his device…didn’t give himself a good escape route. It doesn’t matter now. The bomb went off, caused a huge fireball. I was saved by diving behind a Durasteel blast-resistant barrier. I just got a few scrapes, and a little chest pain and wheezing from inhaling the hot, toxic air.”

“Shit…that was a close call,”

“Yeah! The CIA operative didn’t stand a chance. He was killed in the blast.” Curtis leaned forward to place the empty tumbler on the coffee table and winced as if he was in pain. “I didn’t even know his name.” He spoke in a faraway voice, “I was the only one rostered to be in that section of the facility on a weekend. If I wasn’t dead and an unidentifiable body was at ground zero, I’d be in the cross-hairs. Millions of dollars of damage was done and, knowing the Saudi’s, someone would pay. I got to the breathing equipment and put it on. I had cuts and scrapes and so I left my blood on my ID card and tossed it close to the fire. Then I got out through a hole blown in the boundary fence before the fire trucks arrived.” Curtis paused for a moment and turned to set his blue-eyed gaze on me, as if seeking something…comfort or forgiveness?

“How did you escape?” I asked.

Pain was still evident in his expression as he answered me. “I made it to the apartment I was renting, grabbed my go-bag, and called my handler. He got me out of there. First to the United Arab Emirates where I was given medical care and a new identity, and then on to Japan. He booked me on a twenty-day cruise from Tokyo to Seattle. I was out of the loop when the CIA leaked fake Intel that showed Russia had carried out the terrorist attack and killed a US citizen.”

I was numb with disbelief. While we were grieving his death, my father was relaxing on a fucking cruise ship! “Hang on a second. Was it you? Did you take The Misfit from our mooring in Seattle?”

He held his hands up in surrender. “Yeah, guilty! It was the only part of my old life I could take with me. I sailed her to Hawaii, changed the name. That’s where I’ve been for most of the last twelve years.” I was flabbergasted. Erik and I honeymooned on Hawaii.

“I didn’t want to hurt you Nate, you gotta believe me. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. But I was in too deep. If I turned up alive on the US mainland and returned to my family, the Saudi’s and Russian’s would know that the body at the refinery wasn’t me, it was an inside job and the US lied to the Saudi’s about the cause of the explosion. We would all be in danger.”

“Did the CIA not offer to put us into protective custody? You could have sent us a sign…a letter, an anonymous email, anything to let us know you were okay.”

“During my exfiltration, my handler asked if I wanted my family with me…start a new life somewhere else. But I couldn’t risk it! Think about it, Newt. You’d just graduated from Julliard…you wanted an acting career. Your whole life plan would have been derailed because of my fuck up! If I’d taken you all with me you couldn’t have become an actor with the level of fame you’ve got. You were all better off,” Curtis insisted.

“NO, no…that wasn’t your decision to make,” I fisted my damp hair. “Did you think we were okay with losing you? That we’d get used to it? What the fuck dad!”