The syndicate spy, p.1
The Syndicate Spy, page 1
PRAISE FOR
THE SYNDICATE SPY
“Realistic details, based on the author’s own experiences as a spy, propel this powerful story of Juliet’s quest to find and neutralize the terrorist responsible for her father’s death and too many others. Memorable characters, twists and turns, and international settings keep you racing to the shocking conclusion. It’s a gripping story with an empowering message. Juliet is a bad ass!”
—Kaira Rouda, USA Today and Amazon Charts best-selling author
“Written with the authority of John le Carré and the pace of Tom Clancy, The Syndicate Spy is the 21st-century espionage thriller. Butler reveals the rapidly changing geopolitical world with modern characters and stunning power.”
—Hayden R. Smith, author of Cambridge University Press’s Carolina’s Golden Fields
“Breathtaking and inspiring. Rarely do I see two women portrayed as the protagonists in spy novels, and Butler does a superb job of developing Juliet and Mariam into the heroines that they are. Uniquely qualified to bring realistic details, Butler masterfully mixes tradecraft with the backdrop of the Middle East, making the reader feel as if they are in the middle of the action. The Syndicate Spy is a brilliant first novel, and I cannot wait to see more.”
—Tracy Walder, former CIA, FBI agent and author of The Unexpected Spy
“The Syndicate Spy is the female-forward spy thriller that we’ve been waiting for! With exciting new storylines and protagonists updated to fit modern political challenges and dilemmas, Brittany Butler takes us on an adventure. Butler is a new author who is uniquely qualified to spin a gripping plot about spies, targeting, and secret operations. The Syndicate Spy will grip and fascinate you!”
—Michele Rigby Assad, former CIA operative and author of Breaking Cover
“A fascinating tale of two female spies and their harrowing journey to accomplish a seemingly impossible mission. Filled with great attention to detail and captivating characters, Brittany Butler has crafted a brilliant homage to the courage and bravery of women in the proverbial ‘man’s world.’”
—Holli Fawcett Clayton, author of Somewhere Above It All
“As a first-time fiction author, I am familiar with the challenges of creating believable characters and an exciting plot. Butler has flawlessly executed both of those aspects with Juliet Arroway’s heart-pounding mission.”
—Robbie Bach, former Chief XBox Officer and author of The Wilkes Insurrection
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press
Austin, Texas
www.gbgpress.com
Copyright © 2023 Brittany Butler
All rights reserved.
Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.
Distributed by Greenleaf Book Group
For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Greenleaf Book Group at PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.
Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group and Kim Lance
Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group and Kim Lance
Cover images: ©iStockphoto/Berke Nart Acarel and ©Shutterstock/Alex Linch
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
Print ISBN: 979-8-88645-024-8
eBook ISBN: 979-8-88645-025-5
To offset the number of trees consumed in the printing of our books, Greenleaf donates a portion of the proceeds from each printing to the Arbor Day Foundation. Greenleaf Book Group has replaced over 50,000 trees since 2007.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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First Edition
Contents
Praise for The Syndicate Spy
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
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5
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my husband, Matt, who has never for one moment doubted me or this story. Thank you for loving me with an intensity that has set me free.
“I PREFERRED TO LIVE AS THE MASTER OF MEN, NOT THEIR SERVANT.”
—NABAWIYYA MUSA (EGYPT, 1938)
1
JULY 28
DAMASCUS, SYRIA
Bathed in sweat, with their M4 rifles aimed, Juliet Arroway and her teammate emerged from the shadows and made their way toward Abu Hassan’s compound. It was well past midnight, but the late July air in Damascus was thick with heat, laced with the smell of rusted copper.
A destroyed couch, a ruined sink, and other bits of rubble littered the front lawn of al-Alfatih chief Abu Hassan’s safe house, where he planned and directed all terrorist activities. A Syndicate reconnaissance drone groaned overhead, surveying the operation from high above, and a silvery moon illuminated the night sky, negating the need for night vision goggles. With a tightness in her throat, Juliet sidestepped a box of dust-covered clothes that spilled out onto the gritty driveway.
She met the eyes of her teammate, Mariam al-Saud, who seemed to be sharp with the same adrenaline Juliet felt crackling through her own veins. As a former Army ranger turned Syndicate spy, charged with hunting energy terrorists, Juliet was used to the spike in blood pressure, the sense of danger that made her pulse visible in her throat. But tonight felt different—off, somehow—as though she could sense that things had already gone horribly wrong.
We are not the first ones here, Juliet’s eyes said to Mariam. After nearly two years of working together as part of the Syndicate—a conglomerate of allied intelligence agencies charged with hunting energy terrorists—both women had learned to communicate through deliberate looks and minimal gestures. With a wary glance, Mariam nodded her agreement and inclined her head toward an abandoned house across from Abu Hassan’s safe house. If they caught Abu Hassan and learned the identity of the al-Alfatih operatives before they deployed, they could stop the next terrorist attack.
But they hadn’t.
Juliet’s stomach tightened at the possibility of another attack on a country’s alternative energy site, or a bombing at the next Climate Summit as she and Mariam shuffled across the dust-packed street. The search for al-Alfatih’s chief was like a hunt for a ghost; an empty apartment in Riyadh, a shelled-out base in Irbil.
Juliet thought of her source meetings in Amman, rethinking every step since. Source code name HALFFOOTE had provided two phone numbers for Abu Hassan’s deputy, Tariq. But after the Syndicate intercepted Tariq’s phone calls and conducted voice analysis, the Syndicate concluded that the phones belonged to Abu Hassan himself. And after geospatial analysts looked at Abu Hassan’s call activity, those phones had led them directly to Abu Hassan’s safe house in Damascus. If they could catch Abu Hassan, they could learn the identity of the al-Alfatih operatives during debriefings before the next terrorist attack.
But if Abu Hassan had advance warning of the Syndicate’s raid, they were likely too late to catch the operatives before they deployed. Juliet shoved away the thought, trying to focus on the task at hand—but the possibility that they had already failed in their mission beat down on her heart like a drum.
Heat rose in her face as they entered the compound across from Abu Hassan’s safe house. Once inside the compound, both women crept quickly toward a window someone had hastily covered in plywood. They crouched beneath it, where a fractured mirror lay on the ground beside Juliet and she caught her reflection—her father’s angular nose and light gray eyes, both of which she felt had marked her as a daughter of the conflict that had shaped a generation. She was a little girl when the energy war began—after the world depleted their oil reserves and al-Alfatih terrorists started attacking alternative energy sites. But it was not until her father, wanting to maintain peace, joined the Syndicate that her world then changed forever.
Juliet pulled her blond hair to one side, unruly as per usual, gone wavy from the heat and humidity.
“Someone must have warned him.” She used the butt of her gun to pry open the window. With a pop and a crack, the plywood came unhinged, and dust thickened the air.
“Impossible.” Mariam passed a bottle of water to Juliet. “His phone pinged just moments before.”
Juliet took a sharp swig of water and gazed across the street, where signs of the energy war abounded: remnants of shattered lives littered the city’s crumbling streets, their belongings cooked into mud pies by the bubbling sun. Sweat pebbled on Juliet’s upper lip as
“Please use aerial asset to reconfirm target’s location.”
“On it,” said Christine, a geospatial analyst who specialized in geo-locating targets using cell phones and other electronic devices.
Distant gunfire cracked the silence and Juliet pinched the skin at her throat. David Barany, the Syndicate’s operational chief, had tried to warn her that al-Alfatih might have more superior satellite detection. The possibility of Abu Hassan having advance warning of the Syndicate’s military raid gnawed at her as she squinted at his safe house across the street, in search of signs that their mission had been compromised. But the road was quiet and empty, lined with partially shelled-out homes—remnants of an energy war that had lasted two decades.
“Maybe he’s using some sort of scrambling device to throw us off,” Mariam suggested.
“If al-Alfatih has better technology than the Syndicate, then we really are screwed.”
“I still don’t understand how Abu Hassan bent the minds of Saudi men and convinced them to destroy the largest commercial-scale solar panel company in the Persian Gulf,” Mariam said. Her face had grown thoughtful as she paused to touch the Muslim prayer beads on her right hand. “Can’t they see through his political motives?”
Juliet could tell that Mariam saw the pain of her people as her own. Despite Mariam’s role as a Syndicate source and ally, she carried that same irrational feeling that most intelligence officers seemed to possess—that they were somehow responsible for the outcome of a war.
“And he found a way to inspire French men and women to do the same,” Juliet added, her voice softening as she stared down at her phone, waiting for the Syndicate to reconfirm Abu Hassan’s location. HALFFOOTE had said that al-Alfatih’s next target was Paris, but without having any identifying information on the operatives themselves, what hope did they have of preventing the next attack?
Mariam gasped. “Look!”
Juliet’s eyes snapped up as a trickle of light drained from the back window of Abu Hassan’s safe house.
“Even if he isn’t in there,” Juliet said, meeting Mariam’s almond-shaped eyes as she slung her rifle strap over her shoulder, “there could be cell phones, computers, something that could give us more intel on the identity of the operatives.”
Mariam got up and brushed the soot from her cargo pants. “I don’t want to go back to David Barany empty-handed, not if what the source in Amman said was true.”
Juliet straightened, anxiety snagging at her mind at the mention of David. He had taken a huge gamble in supporting the Abu Hassan operation in Damascus when most of the Syndicate’s leadership in Paris had said the risk was too great. More than ten Syndicate intel officers had already been lost on the failed raids in Riyadh and Irbil.
Juliet gave Mariam a pained look. “Any chance you have a backup plan if this all goes to hell?”
“Don’t I always?” Mariam winked at her. “I have a source that can meet with us when we return to Paris. He used to be an al-Alfatih sympathizer, but he has since seen the error in his ways.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
Juliet let out a breath. As the only daughter of King Ibn al-Saud, it was no surprise that Mariam easily maintained a vast subnetwork of spies. But since that relationship had soured over recent months, Juliet often wondered whether that access might falter.
“Ready?” Mariam asked.
Juliet nodded. Feeling the familiar burn of adrenaline bubbling through her, she crept across the street toward Abu Hassan’s safe house with Mariam following closely behind. Juliet’s pulse thrashed within her ears as they eased along the backside of the mud-walled compound. Bending down on one knee, she used a red-pointed laser to etch a woman-sized circle into the compound wall. With a barely audible thump, the circle dropped into Mariam’s gloved hands, and she met Juliet’s face with a smile that showed bright white against her olive skin.
Both women squeezed through the opening.
Inside Abu Hassan’s compound, the air was stifling—dark, hot, and filled with the acrid smell of blood and unwashed bodies. Juliet’s eyes watered and her stomach lurched, but there was no one in sight. The electricity flickered off and on, casting an eerie yellow light down a peeling plastered wall. Somewhere behind the compound a generator buzzed and sputtered, struggling for life.
It was strange. While at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, never once had Juliet and Mariam’s professors mentioned the possibility of joining the intelligence community. Yet here they were, ambling down dark narrow passageways, readying themselves for the possibility of death. Perhaps it was then that Juliet first recognized Mariam’s defiance, that she was bold enough to stand up against al-Alfatih’s brutal tactics despite the threat they posed to her personally, as well as to her country and family. It was one thing for Juliet, an American, to go up against terrorists who threatened the stability of alternative energy—she operated clandestinely, while her family remained unknown and unthreatened within the relative safety of US borders. But for Mariam, this life meant constant death threats and severed family ties. What drove that kind of recklessness and courage?
When they reached the end of the hallway, a soft murmur of voices lit Juliet’s inner ear. Then, a faint cry. Children’s cries. With her pulse thumping wildly in her head, Juliet locked eyes with Mariam. After four years as an Army Special Forces operative and five with the Syndicate, she had learned about the unpredictability of a military raid, how an IED—improvised explosive device—missile, or grenade could thump down in her path and lay waste not just to a mission, but to their lives. Somehow, these risks were easier to bear because Juliet was a combatant. But al-Alfatih’s lack of respect for civilians iced the blood within her veins. With clammy fingers stretched out over the closed door, Juliet breathed deep and tried to brace herself for what awaited her inside. Mariam came beside her and, after getting a nod from Juliet, shoved open the door with the toe of her boot.
Inside there were two young children, a boy, and a girl, around six years old. With wild, pain-filled eyes, they sat hunched over a woman’s battered body, crying. Juliet tasted the sharp tang of disgust and she lowered her gun.
Dirty mattresses lined the walls to guard against shelling. A jewel-toned rug splattered with crimson footprints covered the dirt floor. She caught Mariam’s eye, and they moved slowly toward the children.
Crouching down to be face-to-face with the children, Mariam began to speak in soft Arabic. The young girl was blank faced, her hairline matted with a thin layer of blood. Mariam pulled a cloth from her pocket and began to gingerly dab at the girl’s wound while she spoke in soothing tones. The young girl responded with a barely audible gasp followed by a few strained words.
“What happened?” Juliet asked. Her Arabic only allowed her to pick up on: they killed her.
“That woman,” Mariam swallowed down a thickness in her throat as her eyes quickly moved over the body on the floor, “was their mother. She says that some men came for her father, and he fled before they could take him.”
“Bastard,” Juliet muttered under her breath. She gave the young boy a tight-lipped smile and patted his thick tangle of hair. “It’s going to be OK, buddy; we’ll get you out of here.” She knew that he could not understand her but hoped he could feel her sympathy.
Mariam sighed. “Let’s see if there’s anything of use in here and get them out.”
Juliet nodded and scanned the room while still talking over her shoulder. “Odds are Abu Hassan took anything we could use to track down the operatives in France.”
“But if he left in a hurry … Hey, look.” Mariam nodded toward the other side of the room.
Next to a dilapidated orange sofa was a small file cabinet covered in a thin layer of mattress stuffing. Mariam muttered something reassuring to the children in Arabic and then joined Juliet.
Mariam leaned down, dusted off the mattress stuffing, and tried to pry the file cabinet loose. “Locked.”
Juliet smiled and brought out the laser she had used to burn through the compound wall to now burn a hole in the lock. Inside the file cabinet, there was a smattering of old pornographic DVDs, documents, and iPads.
