Edge (38 page)

Though the nickname of the group was anglicized to the name of the farm implement, in fact it came from the Israeli Defense Force's name for assassination—in Hebrew,
sikul memukad,
which means “focused foiling.”

“My associate found you've been a target before.”

“Corte, everybody in Sickle was permanently targeted. Because of what we did. There were never any operations, though. Just surveillance. That report is five years old.” She continued, “Yes, I'm sure I have enemies. But there wasn't a shred of intelligence that suggested I'd have any information that somebody wanted—certainly nothing that would justify hiring a lifter like Henry Loving.”

The past . . .

I said, “You've been in touch with your people? How?” I'd monitored their phone use.

“I have another phone,” she said. “It's untraceable. Believe me, it's untraceable.”

“You uploaded the pictures to them on it—the ones from Maree's computer?”

Her eyes took in her purse, where I supposed the very fancy, shielded device rested. Now I understood why she kept the handbag so close. “I transferred them, yes. Everything went encrypted through a half dozen proxies. There won't even be bulges in the Internet traffic in the area here. The system takes care of that.”

My immediate impression was that, despite the trauma of being caught, Joanne was more comfortable now, more at peace. She'd been living a lie for a long time. At least she wouldn't have the burden of carting around that secret anymore. I understood too that you don't hook up with organizations that run operations like Sickle unless the work is at least partly in your blood. She'd undoubtedly been a good wife and stepmother but I wasn't sure I believed her denials that she was so eager to give up her clandestine side. I knew how I'd feel if I had to abandon the job of being a shepherd. It would have destroyed something within me.

“All right, you tell me there're no leads. But it's my job to keep you and your family alive. I want to know exactly what your people have focused on.”

“Every case I worked is closed. All the principals were either abducted and resettled . . . or zeroed,” she said, using a verb that I'd heard from time to time if my principal was in a similar line of work. It had become popular among the Mossad. They liked to use shorthand they thought was American.

Zero . . .

“The only assignment with a residual actor was my last one. In the deli. He was a friend of the deli
owners we targeted. He was a minor player. A liaison and runner basically. . . . He was cleared years ago.”

“Tell me about him anyway.”

“The couple were collecting and selling nuclear arms intelligence. This man put them in contact with a few government contractors and people in helpful positions, academics. He delivered some files and software to them. That was it. When they were zeroed he panicked and went completely straight, gave us names. We monitored him for years. Then took him off the list.”

“Name?”

“That I can't do, Corte.”

“Surveillance on him yesterday and today?”

“Yes. Nothing puts him together with Loving.”

I considered what she'd told me. I considered the dwindling leads in the case that might reveal the primary who'd hired Henry Loving. Alone, I stepped into the back, enclosed porch of the house, gesturing Tony Barr and Lyle Ahmad to join me.

“We have a situation.”

I gave them the news about Joanne. I explained that she was what in our organization would be called point control officer, running a small tactical team. In her case, though, she wasn't protecting lives but eliminating them.

Lyle Ahmad took the news as unemotionally as I would have expected, as if I'd told him the stock market had dropped a few points or a baseball team score was tied in the third. The reaction of Freddy's FBI agent was different. Tony Barr's face flashed with anger. “She didn't tell us?” he whispered. He was undoubtedly used to suspects who regularly
lied. But this deception was from somebody he was risking his life to protect.

This meeting, though, wasn't to debate the sin of our principal; it was to consider how the new information affected our protection strategy. I said, “She's positive she isn't the target. But I think for the time being we have to assume she is and that the primary who hired Loving could be funded with big money and has the support of significant foreign interests.” I reminded the two men about the helicopter at Carter's house near the Potomac.

Ahmad said, “So it's possible they could use a chopper for a tactical assault, not just extraction.”

“Wouldn't be surprised,” I told him.

Barr said, “We should liaise with local air traffic control.”

“Good idea, and shift to sixty percent outside patrol. And look up, a lot. Lyle, run the perimeter now.”

He punched the door code and stepped outside.

Barr and I returned. Joanne was in the living room, looking into the hallway toward the closed bedroom door.

“The director of your group,” I said. “The same one you worked for back then?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to him.”

She gave a resigned nod. She understood it was useless to argue. Which it was.

We walked into the den. She took her own phone from her purse. She set it on my desk and hit
SPEAKER
then a speed-dial button. Although today's scrambled phones no longer sound like a fax
machine, I imagined I heard a clatter as there was a click, and a voice rose from the black box in front of us. “This is Williams.”

“It's me,” Joanne said. There was a momentary pause while, presumably, some electronics verified that this was her voice. “On speaker.”

“On speaker,” Williams grumbled. “That says a lot.”

Meaning that we'd figured it all out.

“Yessir.”

I identified myself and explained that I was in charge of the protection detail for the Kesslers.

Williams of the elusive first name said, “I know who you are. I figured it was just a matter of time. Somebody's been tickling our servers.”

I was certainly angry at the withholding of the information about her prior career but I recalled my mantra about defining goals and coming up with efficient solutions. There might be a time for recrimination but the task now was to keep the Kesslers safe and to find the primary who had hired Loving. So I said, “I need all the details on this man who was involved in Joanne's last case.”

A pause on the other end, which might have been a reaction to my request. Or it might have arisen because the woman in question wasn't Joanne to him but Lily Hawthorne.

“There is absolutely no shred of evidence that he's involved. Or anybody else that Joanne came in contact with. We've been monitoring the situation from the beginning.”

“Even so, I want the name.”

“I can't do that.”

I said firmly, “I hope you understand that I have
a job to do. Part of that is assessing threats on my own. I can't just take your word for it.”

“Part of my job is keeping matters like this very, very private.”

“I know that,” I said slowly.

And let my threat register and spread. Public announcements can often be a very effective edge.

Williams sighed. “His name is Aslan Zagaev. He is a Chechnyan Muslim. Naturalized as part of the plea deal.”

“You've been monitoring him. Where is he?”

“At the moment? At home in Alexandria.”

“What're his details?”

“Owns a half dozen carpet stores. A restaurant. My people have been through everything, Corte. I mean everything. Com profiles, banking accounts, travel records, corporate holdings, investments, family, brother and sisters, associates. Nothing. He's absolutely clean.”

“Chechnyan Muslim. Does he go to the Middle East?”

“Yes. On business to buy rugs. But we don't have GPS around his neck. The folks he was dealing with here, the couple in the deli? They were Pakistani, not Arabs. And recently? No phone calls in the past two weeks. Routine at his office hasn't been affected, best as we can tell. Christ, Corte, we're taking this seriously. We know what we're doing.”

I asked, “Could he be deep cover, a sleeper?”

Williams asked, “After six years? They don't really work that way.” He said this with some authority. “Besides, sleepers don't volunteer at the Georgetown Islamic Youth Center. Or go near anyplace
with the
I
word in it. He'd be at Presbyterian bake sales.”

“You have no other actors it could be?”

“That's right.”

Presumably because they were dead.

I said, “I want the names of your security man and analyst on Zagaev.”

“Corte, what could Lily . . . what could
Joanne
possibly know that he'd have any interest in, after all these years?”

The answer seemed obvious to me. “She knows where to find you, doesn't she?”

AFTER WE DISCONNECTED,
Joanne stood for a long moment looking toward the hallway that led to the closed bedroom door behind which her husband undoubtedly was fuming.

She took several steps down the hall and then stopped and returned to the couch.

I called Williams's case analyst. The director had given him the okay to talk to me—about the Joanne Kessler security matter only, of course, not about the Sickle part—and I got addresses and phone numbers and corporate information about Aslan Zagaev and his businesses. He told me that neither he or the security officer Williams had ordered into the field on Saturday morning had found anything linking Zagaev to Loving, confirming what Joanne and Williams had stated.

I thought, Well, obviously he's not going to be making incriminating calls from those phones. Did they even think about prepaid mobiles? There were limits as to how much digging Williams's people could do, sure, but these were basic elements of tradecraft.

I disconnected, called Claire duBois and explained the situation to her. “Drop everything
and start running background on Zagaev,” I told her. “I want everything.”

“Shoe size to what's on his TiVo,” she said.

“Family, employees, family
of
his employees, travel records. Concentrate on the past couple of days, then go on from there. Any connection to Loving, anything that
could be
a connection to Loving.”

I then asked her to transfer me to Aaron Ellis. I briefed him and he coughed a surprised laugh. “Joanne?”

“Seems so. At least Ryan's cases haven't led us anywhere. There's one actor still around from her past. We're going to follow up on it.”

“But Westerfield called, all excited about some D.C. police scandal. He was saying you thought that that was why Ryan was targeted. Some senior official in the department or city hall hired Loving.”

“I'd just as soon he kept thinking that, Aaron.”

Silence for a moment. “Corte . . . you mean the police scandal's fake too?”

“Not fake. It was a valid theory.”

“Was.”

“Correct.”

“But by the time you suggested to Westerfield it was a possibility, you knew it wasn't?”

“Aaron, just try to keep him off me for a while.”

“I'll do the best I can.”

Finally, I called and briefed Freddy about Joanne's deception.

The jokey facade was gone. “Why the fuck didn't the bitch tell us? She didn't have an inkling this whole tidal wave of crap might have something to do with the fact she was an assassin?”

“I don't think they like to use that word.”

“I care?”

“This Williams—”

“Just for the record,” Freddy grunted, “he's not as clever as he thinks he is. Or would like to be. A bunch of us know about him and his Sickle band of brothers . . . and sisters, I guess. We thought it was more dirty tricks. But, when you think about it, shooting somebody in the head is about as dirty as it gets. How're you handling it?”

“Claire's doing homework.” I debated. “I'll need some warrants. She'll get you the details. Who and where.”

“All right, will do.” Then he asked, “What's Zagaev's game, you think?”

“I don't know. Williams said sleepers don't work that way. But it works that way if it works.”

“Now, that's quotable, son.”

“Think about it. Williams cleared him five, six years ago. They drop surveillance. That leaves him free to hire Loving to snatch Joanne and get all kinds of information. That sounds like a pretty successful sleeper cell to me. He isn't exactly dripping guilt but it's all we've got.”

“That's my second fastest man theory.”

“The second . . . what?” I asked.

“You know how fast you have to be to outrun a bear, Corte?”

I was watching Joanne stare out the window. “How fast?”

“Just a little faster than the guy with you.” Freddy seemed to be waiting. When I didn't say anything he said, “I mean that Zagaev doesn't have to be a
perfect
suspect. He just has to be good enough.”

“I'll have Claire call you with what she's learned.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER
Claire duBois called with information about Aslan Zagaev. This was perhaps a new record for her.

“I sent Freddy everything,” she explained. “He's getting the warrants now.”

“Good. Brief me.”

“He was born outside of Grozny, came over here to study at American University when he was twenty-two. He did postgrad work at MIT and came back to the D.C. area. He started to spend some time at a radical mosque in our hometown, Alexandria. He broke with them—he wasn't religious enough, apparently—but what he was good at was being an entrepreneur. With his science background and connections he made on Embassy Row and among government contractors, he found there was a market—selling trade secrets.”