The Janitor and the Spy Read online

  THE JANITOR AND

  THE SPY

  The Thornhill Series

  Book I

  S W ELLENWOOD

  Copyright © 2015 S. W. Ellenwood

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1508902992

  ISBN 13: 9781508902997

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015904314

  CreateSpace Independent Pub. Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  To you, my first reader. Thanks for taking a chance on me.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1: BLOOD AND BABY WIPES

  CHAPTER 2: A CHILD’S CURIOSITY

  CHAPTER 3: THE COST OF A LIFE

  CHAPTER 4: COLD FRIENDS

  CHAPTER 5: UNEXPECTED GUESTS

  CHAPTER 6: A CIGAR AND A CIGARETTE

  CHAPTER 7: STUFFED BEARS

  CHAPTER 8: AN OLD MAN’S STORY

  CHAPTER 9: NO CRUMWELL

  CHAPTER 10: SUSHI AND THE PIMP

  CHAPTER 11: A PIMP’S TRUTH

  CHAPTER 12: GLASS FORTRESS

  CHAPTER 13: THE LOVE BOAT

  CHAPTER 14: ONE-STAR HOTEL

  CHAPTER 15: AN OLD MAN’S TRUTH

  CHAPTER 16: PAPERS FALLING

  CHAPTER 17: TRUTH AND JUSTICE

  CHAPTER 18: NO CHOICE

  CHAPTER 19: THE EIGHTH FLOOR

  CHAPTER 20: THE WHIMPERS OF A PIMP

  CHAPTER 21: THE OVEN

  CHAPTER 22: A BROKEN TILE

  CHAPTER 23: WARM MILK

  CHAPTER 24: AN OLD-FASHIONED DUEL

  CHAPTER 25: WANDERING SOULS

  CHAPTER 26: SIDETRACKED

  CHAPTER 27: AN EMPTY CABIN IN AN EMPTY FOREST

  CHAPTER 28: CHARRED MEMORIES

  CHAPTER 29: TWO SHOTS

  CHAPTER 30: THE RABBIT HOLE

  CHAPTER 31: THE PERFECT SPY

  CHAPTER 1

  BLOOD AND BABY WIPES

  Thomas Thornhill sat in the restroom stall of the Rosa Parks Transit Center in Detroit, Michigan, wiping blood and ash from his hands with a baby wipe. He took the last two wipes from the pouch and cleaned the blood off his wrists and the dirt off his dress shoes. He put the wipes in his suit pocket and opened his small suitcase, moving the bagged Walther PPK/S pistol off a set of clothes.

  The restroom door opened.

  Thornhill froze and then quietly lifted his feet off the floor. He slowly pulled a knife out of his dinner jacket and held it ready. He heard the sound of urinating across from his stall, a flush, and then footsteps going out of the bathroom. Thornhill grimaced over the fact that he’d heard no water running in the sink. However, the other man’s lack of hygiene did not deter him from his mission.

  He quickly pulled out the bag of clothes, which contained a dark-blue polo shirt and a pair of slim-fit khaki pants. A pair of Vans, also bagged, that matched his new outfit sat at the bottom of the suitcase with a pair of black dress shoes and a custom-tailored dinner suit.

  As Thornhill changed out of his dirty suit and into his new outfit, he pondered how he had ended up in this predicament. Had it begun at birth? Was it because of the absence of a real home? The lack of close friends during middle school? High school crushes? Graduating early? Interning at the NSA? Sparring with the military police? His parents’ deaths? Saying yes to Crumwell? They had all played a part, but it was when he’d deplaned in Amsterdam that it had all gone south.

  How foolish he’d been to think it would be an easy mission.

  CHAPTER 2

  A CHILD’S CURIOSITY

  It was early morning in Schiphol, Amsterdam, when Thornhill’s flight touched down at the airport. He had barely woken up when they started to descend, giving him just enough time to check whether his suitcase, stowed underneath his seat, was still secure. It contained polos, khakis, two suits, and a tablet connected to the Silence network. The single black thread woven through the suitcase’s zipper was still intact, which brought a smile to Thornhill’s face. He put on his tan suit coat and finished folding up his blanket just as the aircraft touched down. After several minutes of taxiing, the plane reached the gate. Thornhill turned on his smartphone and put in his earpiece.

  “Good morning, Mr. Smith. I hope you had a good flight,” said Mallory McArthur, Thornhill’s handler.

  Thornhill pulled his luggage out from under his seat and waited for some of the other first-class passengers to exit the plane. “It was indeed. Thank you for the advice about getting ahead of the jet lag. It’s working wonderfully so far,” he said, bidding the flight attendant farewell with a nod.

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Mallory. “You have appointments with clients at one and four today. Jones is waiting for you at Departure One.”

  “Good. I won’t be able to get the one o’clock, but I’ll make the four o’clock. Please send him my apologies.” Thornhill exited his gate and headed toward the passport control center.

  “I will. Call me if you have any questions.”

  “I will. Good-bye.” Thornhill ended the call and casually walked toward the passport control center, making his way through the crowd, which ranged from businesspeople to families of tourists. With his outfit and suitcase, he looked like a typical international businessman. He reached customs in no time and waited in line behind a family with four kids, ranging in age from nine months to thirteen years.

  The father was an average-looking man, wearing khaki shorts and white socks that had matched the color of his shoes when the shoes were new. He told his kids to hand the officer their passports. They followed his instructions well, handing their passports to the officer one at a time. The hard part was keeping them still and quiet. They were unable to contain their excitement at being in a new place with new sights and new smells.

  The mother waited on the other side of security, nursing her nine-month-old baby while many passing travelers looked at her with disgust. It seemed to make no difference to her. Five minutes later, the father finally got the rest of his family through customs, dragging away one of the boys, who couldn’t stop asking the officer questions about his job.

  “Passport?” the officer asked Thornhill with a chuckle in his voice as the family slowly made their way to the baggage claim.

  “A funny bunch,” commented Thornhill as he handed the officer his fake passport.

  “They are indeed,” said the officer as he looked over the document, comparing the picture on it to Thornhill. The faces were the same: short, thick brown hair, brown eyes under thin eyebrows, an oval head with small ears, an average face. All the legal stamps and information needed were present. The officer stamped the passport, handed it back to Thornhill, and said, “Welcome to Amsterdam.”

  “Thank you,” said Thornhill, taking his passport and heading to Departure One. He quickly passed the family, the parents still trying to corral their kids, before heading out. Thornhill spied a man in a chauffeur’s uniform who was holding a sign with John Smith on it. He was of average height, with short blond hair and dark-green eyes in a clean-shaven face.

  “Mr. Smith?” he inquired as Thornhill approached.

  “I take it you are my ride?” asked Thornhill.

  “John Jones, sir. I will if you let me, dear sir.”

  Thornhill felt a sense of relief flow through him. Jones’s response was the all-clear phrase.

  Jones left to bring the car around. Thornhill looked around at the hundreds of civilians coming and going from the Amsterdam airport. Among them, he caught a glimpse of the eldest son of the family he’d seen earlier, a thin nine-year-old boy with blue eyes and a Batman shirt. He was looking straight at Thornhill. Thornhill imagined the little boy walking up and asking him in a soft whisper, “Are you a spy?” Thornhill chuckled a litt
le on the inside at the thought of it.

  Jones drove the car up and opened the door for him. Thornhill took his seat in the back, full of excitement and energy as his first spy mission began…not knowing it would also be his last.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE COST OF A LIFE

  Thornhill got into the car, a black BMW, as Jones put his luggage in the trunk. Once in the car, Jones gave Thornhill a small nod in the rearview mirror and drove off.

  Thornhill turned on his tablet and connected to the Silence network. The FBI, CIA, and NSA logos all appeared on a dull-blue screen divided by three diagonal lines that met in the middle. Thornhill pressed the small triangle created by the merging lines in the middle of the screen. The logos vanished off to the sides, leaving the blue screen empty. Thornhill placed his hand on the screen. The tablet scanned his hand and then the tablet’s camera scanned his face. The screen changed to bright green. Removing his hand, Thornhill saw that the word “Glass” had appeared, accompanied by a female voice saying, “Welcome, Agent Thornhill.” The word was then replaced by his handler’s face, a change for the better, in Thornhill’s opinion.

  “Glad to see you made it to the car safely,” said Mallory. The blond, blue-eyed woman was wearing a light-blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  “Worried that I would get kidnapped by terrorists? Mallory, I didn’t know you cared that much.”

  “No, I was afraid that you would get lost.”

  “Your faith in me is overwhelming.”

  Mallory’s mouth betrayed a glimmer of a smile. “What faith?”

  “Ouch,” said Thornhill as he placed his hand on his heart. Jones snickered.

  “Now, can we get down to business?” asked Mallory.

  “Of course. What am I here for?”

  “In 1939, Armend and Emmalina Golay moved to America from Switzerland—same old story, seeking the American dream. Two years later, they had a son named Nils Willermus Golay.” The tablet showed an old picture of the Golay family in front of their general store in Pennsylvania: an average-looking immigrant family, dark-haired father, blond mother, and a child in the middle with large ears for a boy his age. “The Golays lived in the states until the father died of cancer in ’61. The mother returned to Switzerland with her son a year later.”

  “Sad story. I would like hear more. However, I would also like to know how this is related to the security of America or the communication channels between bureaus,” said Thornhill.

  Just then, Jones merged onto the A4 highway toward Amsterdam, getting behind a pink Fiat. As they passed the car, Thornhill did a double take to make sure it wasn’t just a trick of the light. It wasn’t. It was a pink Fiat.

  “Well, until two days ago,” Mallory continued, “Nils Golay was completely off the radar. Disappeared around ’68 until now when we received a letter from Golay claiming he was part of a covert anticommunist branch of the NSA and had been sent to Switzerland to monitor the flow of large sums of money that could potentially be used to support communist groups across the world. Several years later, he received a letter claiming his division had been liquidated.”

  “He sent us a letter? Like snail mail?” asked Thornhill.

  A scanned picture of the letter Golay received some forty-odd years ago and the letter Golay sent two days ago came up on Thornhill’s tablet.

  “Does his story check out?” asked Thornhill.

  Mallory grimaced. “Somewhat.”

  Thornhill pressed his lips together and furrowed his brow. “Somewhat? Where does it fall short?”

  “I couldn’t find any records of his employment with the NSA, but I did find that, starting a few weeks before he left for Switzerland and until two months after flying there, he was in the process of buying a house, and yet his account still had the same amount in it as it did a couple of weeks before he left. And no bank loans were taken out in his name.”

  “So, the NSA could have paid him for the travel and housing. In return for what? What was his cover?” Thornhill’s curiosity was growing.

  Mallory continued. “He was a managerial assistant at one of the largest banks in Switzerland until his disappearance. He showed no signs of activity till now.”

  Thornhill nodded as he read over the letter Nils Golay had sent to Glass. “So who was the letter addressed to? He’s using pronouns.” The letter was handwritten and asked the reader to meet Golay at the Rusland, an Amsterdam coffee shop, at eleven the next day.

  “They didn’t give me that information, but I suspect someone high up, someone that knew him,” responded Mallory.

  “Interesting.” Thornhill swiped through pictures of the coffee shop where he would be meeting Golay. The walls were a dark red except the one behind the counter, which was covered by a huge, black chalkboard, one that Thornhill would have loved as a kid. The rest of the room was set up like an ordinary coffee shop: small four-chair tables littered the main floor, and there were pairs of black leather armchairs in the corners and at the back. “So, all I need to do is talk with him and see what’s up?”

  “That’s it,” said Mallory, nodding, her ponytail swinging slightly.

  “Then why is Jones my support?” asked Thornhill in bewilderment, looking at Jones in the rearview mirror. “I could understand sending another young agent, like Oaks or Westfall, but a former marine sniper? Little overkill.” Jones chuckled. “See, he agrees with me,” said Thornhill.

  “I didn’t assign the agents. I’m just the handler. I would take it as a sign to not take this mission lightheartedly.” There was a hint of worry in Mallory’s voice. “He will cover you from a lookout point across the street.” A 3-D map of the street came up on the tablet, showing the precise position Jones would have. A small construction site on an adjoining street, coupled with the coffee shop’s wall-sized windows, gave Jones a perfect view of the coffeehouse’s interior and exterior. “You will also be armed.”

  Thornhill frowned. “With what?”

  Jones reached into a compartment between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, pulled out a black handgun, and handed it to Thornhill. It seemed to absorb the light hitting it; there was no reflection or gloss on it.

  “A regular Glock nine millimeter with optional silencer, one of the most common handguns in Europe,” said Mallory. “We retrieved it from a stash of confiscated guns in France, no strings. What makes it different is the bullets.”

  Thornhill took out the clip to study one of the bullets. The tip of the bullet wasn’t rounded like a dome, but pointed. “Armor-piercing rounds?”

  “Indeed. Each bullet costs about three hundred American dollars.”

  Thornhill’s eyes widened as he whistled. “Glad to know how much a life costs.” He carefully placed the bullet back in the clip, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it.

  “We’re here,” said Jones as they pulled up to the Mauro Mansion hotel.

  “You will be meeting Golay at the Rusland coffee shop at eleven tomorrow,” Mallory said. “We will use your smaller earpiece to keep in touch and record the conversation for analyzing and training purposes. You and Jones will log in to Silence at ten twenty tomorrow via earpiece, understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Good. Ending session. Be safe.” The tablet went black, and a young valet with red hair and blue eyes opened the car door and said in Dutch, “Welcome to the Mauro Mansion.”

  CHAPTER 4

  COLD FRIENDS

  Thornhill was already awake when his alarm went off at 7:30 a.m. He lifted himself off the soft bed and turned off the alarm clock on the nightstand beside him. A hammock chair hung from the ceiling between the bed and the window overlooking the river. Thornhill got up and opened the window. The sun reflected off the river and onto the tightly packed buildings on the far side. Reflections created waves of light upon the buildings like waves upon the beach.

  He took a deep breath of Amsterdam, a city of the young and old, where the past sat down with the future and talked about
the present at the riverside, where travelers passed through on a journey toward the older and newer cities of Europe or stayed to fulfill their fleshly desires in secret. Thornhill exhaled air back into the city, a breath not as mysterious as the city itself, though that would change.

  He closed the window, walked over to the phone, and called room service to order uitsmijter, a fried egg-and-ham breakfast with white toast, and an orange juice, pulp-free. He then proceeded to do a quick morning workout, focusing on his cardio more than anything else. When he finished at eight o’clock, he took a shower.

  He quickly cleaned his body, the average-looking body of a healthy man, a body that gave no hint that it had gone through marine physical training with flying colors, unofficially besting the record time at the hardest marine obstacle course in the world. Once done showering, he took a minute to just stand under the water, playing through the day in his head. What should he be eating when Golay came in? What should he say, and what would Golay’s response be? His thoughts were cut short when he heard a knock at the door and a young woman’s voice saying “Room service!” in Dutch.

  “Just a moment,” he shouted back in Dutch. Quickly turning off the shower, he got out, wrapped a towel around his waist, and went to the door. Opening the door revealed a young maid, black hair in a tight bun to one side of her thin, pale face. The only color she sported was dull-red lipstick and pink blush, which seemed to brighten when she saw Thornhill.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir, but here is your uitsmijter,” said the maid, avoiding eye contact as she handed him his breakfast tray.

  “It’s all right. Thank you.” Thornhill took his hands off the door and his towel to take his meal. However, he’d failed to fix his towel around his waist properly, and he felt it slipping quickly down his legs. He shoved his hip against the open doorframe to keep his towel up as he tried to use his other foot to close the door. “Give me a moment and I’ll give you a tip,” he said.

  Unfortunately, his maneuvering failed to hold up the towel, and he was exposed. The maid clearly could not stop herself from smiling while Thornhill regained his composure. She quickly turned and walked away with her cart, almost jogging, quietly chuckling her way down the hall. Thornhill pulled his towel in with his foot and closed the door with his hip. Once inside, he stood still for a minute, looking at his food and then his naked self in the mirror.