The Art of War: A Novel (20 page)

“Great. Shoot.”

“The files are counterintelligence files. Zoe Kerry was on a team working them out of San Francisco. One of the two dead men was suspected of espionage. For the Chinese. Kerry said he tried to kill her, so she had to kill him in self-defense. The other man she shot, six weeks later, was a supposed onlooker who tried to intervene violently in the attempted arrest of a spy. Why he did that is anyone’s guess. The alleged spy got away.”

“Any follow-up by the FBI?”

“The usual routine suspension and investigation, which cleared her on both of the shootings for lack of evidence. There was no proof that they were anything but what she said they were.”

“You read the files. What do you think?”

Silence. After a moment, Sarah Houston said, “No witnesses, no conflicting stories from fellow agents, none of the usual friction. Maybe it went down the way Kerry said, maybe it didn’t.”

“Chinese spies?”

“Yep.”

“Thank you, Sarah. I’m going to request that your agency transfer you to the CIA. How do you feel about that?”

More silence. “Are you giving me a choice?”

“Nope. A heads-up. I need your skills over here.”

“I’m not going to have to work with Carmellini again, am I?” Sarah and Tommy had been a number but had broken up a couple of years back, for the second or third time.

“I’ll try to keep him busy somewhere else in the building.”

“When?”

“Next week, if the paperwork sails on through.”

“I’ll be holding my breath.” She hung up on him.

*   *   *

When he found out that the president was not aboard Air Force One when it crashed, Chong had a bad moment. The big money was for popping the big banana, not for whacking his staff and a few reporters.

Damn, they should have gotten him as he flew
into
Denver! He was on the plane
then
!

As he thought about it, Chong realized that the president missing the plane was just one of those illogical, unpredictable twists that life throws at people with appalling regularity. The real question was, would the client pay off anyway? After all, Chong and the guys had done the work and taken the risk. The job was to crash the plane, and they had accomplished that feat. It wasn’t Chong’s fault if Whosis huddled in a secret plotting session with his political allies and sent the plane on without him.

Chong thought about every aspect of the hit, looked at it from every angle, as he drove through the Rockies to Utah. He changed cars in the long-term parking lot at the Salt Lake City airport. He drove out of the lot in a Mazda he had parked there two weeks ago and spent the night in a ski resort in Alta, where he had a reservation. The season was just getting started, the desk clerk who checked him in explained. Some man-made snow, but it wasn’t very good.

Chong smiled and said he would make out. He thought the authorities would be looking for a running man, so he didn’t run.

He ate well, watched television news morning and evening and skied for a couple of hours each day. Real snow was falling, and fast. The skiing got better.

The fifth day, he hit the interstate heading north into Idaho, and from there drove for Seattle. Spent another night in a sixty-nine-dollar room in Walla Walla, Washington, and had another good meal, a New York strip, at a local steakhouse.

He was feeling pretty good about the getaway. He listened to radio news every hour on the hour as he drove. The authorities were keeping their cards close to their vest. The burned-out van was being examined by forensic experts, but the findings were not being released. The FBI had figured out that a drone equipped with some kind of EMP weapon was the most probable cause of the Air Force One crash. What other information they had, the authorities weren’t saying. The attorney general, however, was promising that those behind the attack would be apprehended and brought to justice if it took the entire assets of the Justice Department to do it.

Between news broadcasts, Chong listened to syndicated talk shows, all of which had conservative hosts who lambasted the administration over domestic and foreign policy and hammered the president over his vacations at taxpayer expense. They also lamented the tragedy of the deaths of the people on the plane. Reporters had been busy. They had human interest vignettes on many of the victims. Each host seemed to have his own idea about who might be behind the attack, but they kept their speculations generalized, no doubt to skirt the libel laws. Chong did learn that two separate Islamic jihadist groups had claimed responsibility.

After three days on the road, Chong rolled into Seattle. It was raining lightly, as usual. After a comfortable night in a hotel, he drove to Sea-Tac Airport and parked in the long-term lot.

The car he had parked here he had purchased two months ago for cash from a guy who had an ad in the newspaper. It still had the old license plate on it. A green Chevy with fairly high miles, it was dirty as Chong walked up to it. Tires still good. He unlocked it, threw his small bag in the backseat and got in. He picked up the passenger-side mat and felt around.

Yes, the credential case was still there. He pulled it out, checked to ensure he wasn’t being watched, then opened it. The passport and driver’s license were there, along with a thousand dollars in cash. The passport and driver’s license were real enough, but the name was not Chong’s.

He put the case in his inside pocket and automatically took another look around.

Dum te dum. Chong inserted the key into the ignition and twisted it.

The bomb under the hood contained six sticks of dynamite, more than enough to blow the front end of the vehicle to smithereens and drive enough dashboard pieces and engine parts aft into Chong to kill him instantly. He never felt a thing as bits of flying windshield glass, plastic and metal flayed his face to the bone. The cars parked nearby were heavily damaged by the blast.

The fireball rose spectacularly as bits and pieces rained down on parked cars for a hundred yards in every direction.

Fish was two blocks away at a bar when he felt the concussion and saw the rising cloud, which spread into a glowing minimushroom in the wet gray sky. He looked at his watch and took another sip of beer.

The man beside him, who had supplied the dynamite and detonator and pointed out the green Chevy, said, “You are very good at what you do.”

Fish glanced at him and sipped the last of his beer. “Our mutual friend said you would wire the money immediately. By the close of business today.”

“The money will be there.”

“It had better. I know where you live, and of course, so does our mutual friend.” Fish scrutinized the man’s face. Apparently satisfied, he rose from the table and walked out of the bar. He didn’t look back.

The Chinese agent took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He felt nervous around Fish. The man wasn’t normal. Of course, any man who made his living killing people would, by definition, not be “normal.” But great missions made it necessary to use many different kinds of people.

Fish would not betray him: He knew that. Nor would he betray Fish. He was what the American law would classify as a “co-conspirator” and would be equally as guilty as Fish. That fact was his protection from Fish, the reason the assassin didn’t kill him after he collected his money.

Of course, Fish had no knowledge of why the man in the green Chevy had to die. The Chinese agent had been very careful not to even hint about the reason for the hit, nor did Fish ask. The reason, he suspected, was because Fish wasn’t curious. The assassin just didn’t care.

He reviewed the operation again. Chong’s preparations had been carefully watched. The dynamite and detonator were stolen, so a chemical trace would reveal nothing. The capacitor and wires were equally untraceable. Fish had left no fingerprints. The explosion and resulting fire had taken care of any stray DNA Fish might have left in the car.

All in all, a clean hit. All the men who had brought down Air Force One were dead. The FBI would soon hit a wall that prevented them from going any further on their trail.

The man signaled the waiter for another glass of wine and through the window watched the smoke rising from Sea-Tac’s long-term parking lot. Chong had been an assassin, too. Such men usually ended badly.

Perhaps when this was over, something could be done about Fish. As insurance.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

—George S. Patton

Thanksgiving was at the Graftons’, with all the trimmings. Turkey and ham, stuffing and gravy and corn, with pumpkin pie with ice cream and Cool Whip for dessert. I ate until I thought I would pop. I visited with Grafton’s daughter, Amy, and her husband, Peter, and cooed over the grandbaby. I drank a bit too much red wine, then retired to the guest room to watch some football. Fell asleep during the game.

Life does go on, even when you think the world has stopped spinning.

The next day, Friday, Grafton called me into his office and motioned me toward a chair.

He passed me three small brown envelopes. I opened one. It contained six X-rays of someone’s mouth. “The forensic examiner got these,” Grafton explained, “from the guys in the burned van. Dental experts say these teeth were worked on by Russian dentists.”

“Far be it from me to dispute the experts. So where does that get us?”

“These may have been the drone operators who crashed Air Force One.”

“May?”

“That is as good as we’re going to get. Russians.”

“So what do the Russian spooks say about all this?”

Grafton leaned back in his chair and propped a foot up on an open lower desk drawer. “The Russian embassy is promising complete, total cooperation. Which means nothing. I suspect that in a week or two or three, they will send a note to State saying, ‘Sorry about that. We can’t identify them.’”

“Okay.”

“In any event, I think a back-door approach might be worthwhile. Janos Ilin, the number two in the SVR, wants to meet me in Zurich. I can’t go. I want you to meet with him, listen to what he has to say. We not only want to know who these people are or were, we want to know all about their associates and the men who controlled them.” The SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Rasvedki) was the Russian foreign intelligence service, the bureaucratic successor to the foreign intelligence arm of the Soviet-era KGB.

I didn’t ask him how he learned that Ilin wanted to talk to him. I figured the less I knew about the machinations of the top level of the international intelligence business, the better. What I didn’t know I couldn’t tell, hint at or testify about. Ignorance may not be bliss, but they can’t convict you for it.

I had met Ilin before. He was a tall, rangy Russian dude whose extreme competence erased whatever doubts you might have had about how good the SVR really was. I kinda suspected he was almost as smart, capable and ruthless as Jake Grafton, but without the admiral’s scruples. Grafton and Ilin had crossed paths several times in the past. The problem was, for Ilin, that his bosses didn’t know about many of his extracurricular activities. It went without saying that Grafton expected me to use every wit I had to ensure that Ilin’s little secrets remained his little secrets. Knowing Grafton, he might say it anyway.

“When do I leave?”

“Tomorrow morning. Go see about airplane tickets and a hotel.”

“Fake passport?”

“Yes.”

“Where and when do I meet Ilin?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Off I trotted to the ID office. The agency maintains thousands of fake identities for moments like this, with real credit cards, addresses, driver’s licenses and the other paper bits that prove we are real people. All I needed was an identity that would withstand a quick check, not one I would have to live with. My new name was Harold W. Cass from Indianapolis, Indiana. The W. stood for Wallace. I hated the name Harold and decided if necessary I would be Wally to my new friends.

From there I went to the travel office. Zurich, Switzerland. Air reservations and hotel for Harold W. Cass. Maybe if I had to wait a few days for Ilin, I could ski down an Alp.

Fool that I was, I remember thinking,
At last! An easy job for a change. A nice hotel, a comfy bed, good food, toilet paper … aah. All with Uncle Sugar’s dollars. God bless American taxpayers.

*   *   *

Saturday morning when I dropped Grafton at Langley, I went over to my place and closed up the joint for a couple of weeks. I packed some winter clothes and debated about my ski boots, which I hadn’t worn in years. Decided to rent some in Switzerland. Ditto skis.

When I got back to Langley, I went to the travel office, picked up my tickets and some expense account money, then zipped over to the director’s office.

I had to wait to see Grafton. He was up to his eyeballs in it.

“Any message for Ilin?”

“I would take it as a personal favor if he could give us anything to help on the identity of the men who dropped Air Force One. Anything.”

Grafton tugged at an earlobe. “You’ll meet one of Ilin’s private agents. I don’t think she’s SVR. I think she’s a volunteer working solely for Ilin. As you know, he runs his own little intelligence network. I don’t think the SVR knows about that. If they did, Ilin would be dead.”

The hair on the back of my neck prickled as he talked and I felt a sudden flash of heat. “Her?” I managed. It came out a whisper.

“Yep. Her. Anna Modin.”

That name didn’t just ring a bell—it exploded in my head. A few years ago I had been desperately in love with Anna Modin. Then she disappeared. Several weeks later I received one postcard. Hadn’t heard from her since. Obviously, Jake Grafton had. He knew where she was. Or the CIA did, which was the same thing since Grafton was now running it.

I sat thinking about things while Grafton busied himself with paper on his desk. Finally I blurted, “I don’t want to do this.”

He glanced up. “You know her and she trusts you. She was Ilin’s choice as a go-between.”

“Find someone else. I don’t want to go.”

He looked me squarely in the eyes. “I didn’t ask you to go. I told you to.”