ASSUMED IDENTITY

  A CHACE HAIG MISSION

  BLAZE WARD

  KNOTTED ROAD PRESS

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  Assumed Identity

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  Also by Blaze Ward

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  ASSUMED IDENTITY

  A CHACE HAIG MISSION

  Chace stared at the face in the mirror, trying to remember what he’d looked like before. Every morning, it faded further and further from memory. Probably just as well.

  He nodded, staring at the semi-stranger nodding back. It had been the opportunity of a lifetime, to replace one of the most stories secret agents ever in the history of the Institute.

  The cost had been his face. His old life. Maybe his soul.

  Looking in the mirror in the morning, Chace often had that moment where he had to wonder if it was all worth it. Today was one of those days.

  “You will no longer be Zachary Yoxall,” she had told him. “From now on, you are Chace Haig. Your mission tomorrow will be to prove to yourself that you have truly become someone else.”

  A guy named Chace Haig. Legend in US Law Enforcement and Intelligence communities, going back decades, however shadowy. Chace was the fifth replacement for the original, all of them having undergone extensive training to assume that identity.

  And the plastic surgery. Hair already the right color and texture, now styled in a completely different manner, because the original had done it that way in the late 60s. Dark brown, slicked back with some old oily product and with a comma down over his right eyebrow.

  Already tall and lean in build, Chace had spent the last two years under a new diet regimen, until he’d actually developed a taste for some of the weird things that his predecessor had learned to eat in Japan, Okinawa, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Weird things.

  Fashion a bit off, but the Institute had made sure that the wardrobe stayed stylish and updated. Chace had never owned a custom, bespoke suit made in Hong Kong. Until now. And some of them he had inherited had been perfect fits.

  So much was he a perfect replacement for the man. All the men.

  Chace leaned back and adjusted his tie. The original had worn his college fraternity colors in the old days, before they’d moved him on to things that couldn’t identify him. Signatures, be they emotional, physical, or sartorial.

  Today, he wore a simple, medium blue paisley tie that went well with a white shirt and slate-gray pinstripes.

  “You will walk into that old life you left behind, but it will be Chace Haig,” she had explained. “Zachary Yoxall will not be present. Will not have those memories. When you are successful there, you will be ready.”

  Was he ready?

  Chace checked his expensive new watch, worth more than he’d earned last year, and nodded one last time to the stranger in the mirror.

  He had a lunch date with destiny.

  Chace Haig didn’t actually exist, since he was a secret agent with the US Government’s International Legal Research Institute. The Institute had gotten Chace reservations at one of the nicest places in D.C.

  Once upon a long time ago, the Institute had been a CIA front. Then moved to FBI when people complained about Posse Comitatus violations. Moved to DOJ after the Church Commission findings were revealed. Department of Homeland Security when that agency came into being a generation ago. Then over to Treasury when it was determined that there were too many eyes following things at DHS for a truly secret operation to be maintained over the necessary long term.

  How do you describe a CIA/FBI/MI5/MI6/Joint Service Intelligence Strike Operation to even the average bureaucrat, let alone some poor politician on The Hill? Most of them were canny, but few were actually smart. Hustlers, the lot of them.

  Worse, too many demagogues these days, busy scoring points on each other, and frequently getting publicly too close to law enforcement and intelligence secrets that could never be discussed anywhere except in the most secured rooms.

  Thus, the ultimate deep cover agent. Chace Haig. And he’d been so successful that they’d repeated him. Trained up the same way, often by the same people, or trainers trained by those folks. An incestuous little outfit that put a sharp blade in the hands of the US government, when they needed a tool other than that big fucking hammer that was DOD.

  Chace had even had to develop a most interesting vocabulary of profanity, because the original had belonged to a different world. Chauvinist, though not nearly as racist as they might have been in the old days. Functional alcoholic, considering the reserves of tolerance that Chace had been forced to develop. A specific brand of cigarettes, custom made, with four silver rings around the filter, though Chace no longer had to smoke sixty of them in any given day.

  Today, ten was pushing it. And the cigars were okay, once you developed the taste for them.

  Wasn’t like any of his predecessors had lived long enough to develop lung cancer. Only two had ever retired, and that had been medical both times. Battered too badly on some mission to safely return to the field afterwards.

  And somewhere, unknowing, a young man with a thin build and dark hair was probably finishing up an undergraduate degree at one of the elite schools. Planning on law school and maybe government work. Or politics.

  Until he might be approached by certain people and offered an alternative.

  Chace had spent the last decade in the shadows. But he’d been Zach then. Doing similar things, but rarely the craziest missions. Those do-or-die, save-the-world things that Chace Haig had handled.

  Training to become him, though, without knowing it.

  The name would go on.

  Chace entered the restaurant and nodded to the pretty blonde woman behind the lectern.

  She smiled and stood a little straighter, pulling her shoulders back, perhaps unconsciously.

  “Haig, for two,” he said simply.

  She checked her notes and deflated the slightest bit.

  “Right this way, Mr. Haig,” she said wistfully. “Your other party was early and is seated.”

  And another pretty woman, he thought carefully.

  Chace let her lead him to the table, working on a set of breathing exercises intended to focus calmness and lower his heart rate in moments of extreme stress.

  Like now.

  He saw Molly before she saw him.

  A gasp would be inappropriate, so he merely smiled.

  The same long brown hair, currently loose and wavy. Porcelain skin, as he’s learned to call it. Utterly flawless. Breathtaking beauty.

  And a decade had seasoned her from the young woman a man named Zach had once fallen in love with into a formidable journalist.

  She looked up at his approach and Chace faced the single greatest test of his new career.

  “Ms. Kingsley?” he inquired, impeccable manners to the fore awaiting her nod. “Haig. Chace Haig.”

  He got seated and a menu placed in front of him. A waitress in black appeared just as quickly.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

  Chace glanced over and noted Molly’s coffee with cream and sugar. A reliable note.

  “Sidecar,” he replied. “Two cubes of ice. Hennessy Master Blender’s Selection No. 3 if you have it. Regular Hennessy if not.”

  “I believe we do, sir,” she said, departing and leaving them alone in a restaurant having that mid-afternoon lull between folks having a late lunch and those desiring an early happy hour.

  Zach had hated alcohol. Had gotten black-out drunk a few times in high school, and largely given up the party circuit by college, instead studying and eating healthy.

  For now, he studied her face, comparing it to the perfection that memory always retains.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, Mr. Haig,” she began, pausing and frowning.

  “Yes?” Chace asked, projecting suave and polished in ways that Zach had never imagined.

  “I feel like we’ve met before,” she offered, puzzled.

  Chace chuckled and smiled.

  “I get that a lot, actually,” he deflected smoothly. “One of those faces where everyone knows a man who looks just like me. In Pittsburgh, or Miami, or Prague.”

  “Is that useful in your business, Mr. Haig?” she asked.

  “Please, call he Chace,” he told her. “Mr. Haig is my father. And no, I am not related to the former Secretary of State. At least as far as I know.”

  “Chace,” she nodded. “Is it acceptable if I record our conversation?”

  “As long as you don’t mind the occasional profanity,” Chace replied. “Spent too much time around sailors.”

  She laughed throatily and nodded.

  “Also, I will, of necessity, need to keep a few things vague,” he continued. “For all the obvious reasons. I appreciate that this is as much backgrounder as anything, but I have certain clients who might be put out to discover I was talking to a journalist.”

  “Understood,” she said, looking around quickly, then pulling her phone and placing it on the table between them and activating it. “I understand, sir, that you’re in the import/export business?”

  “Loosely,” Chace replied, falling into a role. THE role. The man he was to become. “We mostly handle obscure and exotic financing deals, working out of one of a handful of international offices for a bank chartered in Zurich. Bridging loans and investment deals on the one side. Connecting buyers and sellers from our extensive network on the other.”

  “That latter was why I hoped I might be able to pry a bit into your affairs, Chace,” she said carefully. “Some of what you do might be illegal under certain jurisdiction?”

  He shrugged, deep into his cover. Considered a cigarette, but DC required you to be outside. Maybe after lunch.

  “American politicians like to think that their laws should apply to everyone, everywhere, all the time,” he replied, just as carefully. “And, certainly banks are global these days, so they are required to operate under a varied and tangled web of issues. I specifically work with a handful that are far more boutique, if you will. Employees in the hundreds, rather than tens of thousands. Customers in the hundreds, instead of the millions. Very little of our financial activities are subject to US law. Or even the EU. The Swiss take banking privacy exceptionally seriously, so my employers will undertake certain activities only once the money has routed into another Swiss bank. At no point, do they cross that national border. And, we also steer clear of certain obviously illegal activities. Smuggling. Narcotics. That sort of thing.”

  “If someone has a need, you can fulfill it?” Molly pressed.

  “I can, for a price, find you someone, Ms. Kingsley,” Chace corrected her. “I’m really more of a talent scout than anything. Once you and another person have been introduced, I collect a small fee and walk away, ensuring privacy. And we do not talk. You’ll note that we aren’t discussing names now. Or dates. Places. Events. Deals. All are secure.”

  “Why are you allowed to exist?” she pressed, sounding more like the woman he’d once known. “Most recently, you’ve supposedly facilitated all manner of things for various Russian and Chinese oligarchs that are at best troublesome to consider.”

  He paused as the waitress delivered his sidecar. Cognac, orange liqueur, and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Two cubes, as desired. Molly sipped her coffee as he wrapped his tastebuds around the complexity of the drink. Sour, with a hint of sweetness layered all the way through.

  Chace let his face take on a conspiratorial air as he leaned closer.

  “A secret that obviously won’t surprise you?” he asked, waiting for her to nod. “American, British, French, and German oligarchs are just as fucking bad. They aren’t currently being harassed by the various governments in question for the shit they do because most of them own such organizations, sometimes in fee simple.”

  He leaned back and took another sip, letting the alcohol swirl and settle while Molly scowled at the concept, unable to argue from the look in her eyes.

  “Have you had a chance to look at the menus?” The woman was back.

  Molly panicked and grabbed hers. Chace had ignored his.

  “While she’d remembering, I’ll have the petite ribeye,” he said. “On the blue side of rare if they can manage it, but bloody in any case. Vegetables fried in extra butter. Potato as close to home fry disks as the chef can manage, with tartar sauce on the side to dip them in.”

  The woman nodded, obviously intending to commit it all to memory instead of writing. The joint had that good of a reputation, so Chace wasn’t worried. And it was a weird way to eat, but again, the originator of the name had impressed his tastes on generations of replacements now.

  “I’ll have the green salad with raspberry vinaigrette,” Molly said. “Salmon for the protein and no croutons.”

  “Excellent.”

  And they were alone again.

  He had memories of a younger couple, bearing a remarkable physical similarity, chowing down on greasy, cheesy double burgers at an all-night walk up, with boysenberry shakes and fries.

  Molly drew a breath and suppressed the growl he could see in her eyes.

  “So the oligarchs can do whatever they want?” she asked, much more civilly than he’d been expecting.

  “Bureaucrats are often able to quietly grant exceptions and variances to certain things,” he nodded, careful not to say too much here. “It’s all shit, but as long as the taxes are paid, or the right forms submitted, the fuckers have tremendous leeway. The key is that things must remain off the cover of the Times or the Post.”

  “Sunlight makes the best disinfectant,” she stated, a quote Zach might have remembered.

  “I do not disagree,” Chace nodded. “That’s part of the reason I was willing to background you on certain bits and pieces, as long as names are never mentioned. While the Russians are currently persona non grata in many places, and the government is having another Hate-China-Week, many things have not changed at all. And, honestly, the Gulf folks are usually the most fucking corrupt, when you consider what laws they pass for everyone else while somehow not applying to themselves. Though they might be in the most trouble.”

  “How so?” she asked, deflected from asking about his occasional dealings with Russians and others.

  “Electric vehicles will radically reduce the amount of oil consumed,” Chace acknowledged. “Already, renewables are putting coal stations out of business. Once someone comes up with a reliable nuclear reactor, that chops away at gas-fired generating stations. What happens to the Saudis and their friends when we don’t need their oil?”

  “What do you foresee?” she asked cogently. Perked right up, too, because some of this was long-term planning from inside another part of the Institute and related agencies.

  “Someone I respect once referred to Putin’s Russia as a gas station with a foreign policy,” Chace replied. “Most of the interventionism in the last century plus has been about oil. At some point, if we don’t need oil, do we need to be involved in the Middle East? Do we even care? Look at how most people think of Africa, uncognizant of the amount of resources that come from there. We rarely invade, generally maintaining special forces bases there and fighting quiet wars on terrorism, which is usually just propping up whichever dictator our corporate overlords demand so they can buy or steal resources they demand.”

  “You do not sound like a banker,” Molly offered, eyes boring in like she might see the man under the plastic surgery.

  “I’m not a banker,” he reminded her. “I’m a guy you call when you have a need. Something you can’t just buy from a catalog, because it’s fucking illegal somewhere. Or some asshole hates you enough to put you on one of those international watch lists. Or merely wants to try to keep you from banking with the civilized world, like most of the Russians these days. Those fuckers are just vatniks with money for the most part, anyway. Too dumb to learn the system, so they throw money at folks like me. I take a cut. They get the introduction they need to get something done. I make money. My bosses make money. The world keeps turning.”

  “And all of this happens under Swiss law?” she clarified.

  “I get paid money in Swiss Francs, which have been remarkably stable against the dollar for a long time,” he nodded. “It is my personal responsibility to transfer everything into other banks I maintain, worldwide, then handle the currency arbitrage myself. And I am not a party to subsequent deals, except when I get paid by one person to introduce them to someone else.”

  Chace leaned back and smiled, reaching for his sidecar and enjoying another sip as he watched Molly fulminate in front of him, however quietly she went about it.

  As cover identities went, it was remarkably powerful. And useful, because Chace Haig worked with the newcomers, for the most part. The Nuevo-Riche looking for entry into that closed world. Once he’d done a few deals with people, they had their own rolodex, and didn’t need a Finder.

  Or a finder’s fee. Thus, the name Chase Haig might get passed around, but rarely did any of them work with anybody for more than a few years.

  As a result, the name lived on, but the face might subtly adjust over time.

  Plus, some of the more obnoxious people Chase Haig had dealt with accidentally fell headlong into traps that ended up with them being arrested by someone. Sentenced to a long time in somebody’s concrete box, without benefit of extradition or even telephones. Fuckers usually had it coming.

  “Would you say that you qualify as an extremely high-end pimp?” Molly asked quietly.

  Chace chuckled. He’s asked the same thing, verbatim, when the depths and breadth of the role became clear during his briefings.

 

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