The Good Traitor (16 page)

L
ANGLEY

“That’s her?” Bright asked. H
e’d
expected a disguise, of course, but this was impressive. He wasn’t confident h
e’d
have registered the woman on-screen as Kera if h
e’d
passed her on the street.

“Yes, sir,” the young analyst said, tempering his excitement as he cued up a chain of clips on adjacent screens. After Kera Mersal and J. D. Jones had first gone missing, a team had been assembled for the sole purpose of tracking them down. Embarrassingly, aside from the morning Kera had approached Bright outside his house, an incident h
e’d
kept to himself, the call this morning from the FBI director about the Vasser-Mersal rendezvous had been their only concrete lead. “She enters the hotel lobby at 1813 hours. Here she is five minutes later up on the ninth floor. She hangs out in view of the elevators there until Vasser and her boyfriend arrive. Then she just sort of wanders for a bit.”

“Tell me you can see them make contact.”

“Not exactly. But it’s close enough. Here. At 1920 hours Vasser gets up to use the ladies. And . . . here. See, Mersal follows her.”

Bright watched the screens, squinting at the female figure striding into the ladies’ room. It was her, all right. He recognized her not so much from her face, which was obscured and heavily made up, but from her tradecraft. Her positions in the room, the way she stood at ninety-degree angles from the surveillance cameras, her detached expression that hid her watchful eyes.

“And then, six minutes later, Mersal emerges and goes straight for the stairwell. This is our last look at her.” The grainy perimeter camera had captured a female figure exiting the stairwell door onto the sidewalk and then walking calmly out of frame.

“What have we got on the alias?”

“Nina Salazar. A credit card in that name paid for the gala tickets, a hotel room, and a rental car, which was abandoned at the valet stand across the street. Beyond those transactions, ‘Nina Salazar’ exists only on paper.”

Bright couldn’t suppress a thin smile. Kera knew exactly the methods they would use to look for her, and she knew exactly how to thwart them. Of course she did—that’s what the
y’d
trained her to do.

Bright returned to his office only to have his assistant confirm that none of the afternoon’s back-to-back meetings had been canceled. He trudged off to the first one, which was interrupted ten minutes later by one of the junior case agents who worked under Henry Liu. The young man was breathless from the dash up the stairs from the ops center.

“Sorry, sir,” he told Bright in the hallway. “You said you wanted to know right away if we picked up anything unusual with Angela Vasser.”

What Bright had actually said was that he wanted Vasser tailed until the
y’d
figured out a way to get a face-to-face meeting with her. Vasser was not only the last person to talk to Ambassador Rodgers but also now the last person they knew of who had spoken to Kera Mersal. Bright had to get to her, even if it meant surprising her in a ladies’ room himself.

He entered the ops center hopeful that he was about to hear one of two things—a viable plan for approaching Vasser, or another sighting of Kera. He realized quickly that neither was likely.

“Lionel, there you are,” Liu said. “I’m not sure what to make of this.”

“What happened?” Bright felt his stomach clench in anticipation of bad news.

“Well, we’re not sure, actually. Look at this.” More surveillance footage. The feed came from a Department of Transportation traffic cam mounted over a busy Georgetown intersection. “OK, so this is Vasser over here,” Liu said, pointing to a tall black woman waiting at the crosswalk. The angle wasn’t great because the camera was aimed at the vehicle traffic, but near the edge of the picture Bright could clearly see Vasser, head down, waiting for the walk signal. “Now, just watch what happens.”

Bright watched with his arms folded over his stomach. He jerked upright in surprise when Vasser stepped off the curb and was nearly clipped by an SUV that had sped into the frame from off camera. He raised his eyebrows at Liu, who nodded for him to keep watching. Vasser, apparently unharmed, was in a reclined position on the sidewalk, resting on her elbows. Bright was distracted just then by a surge of action elsewhere on-screen. Vehicles converged on the intersection all at once; several of them collided. Bright leaned toward the screen, trying to make sense of it. Movement from Vasser’s quadrant returned his attention there, just in time to see her dive forward into the street. A motorcycle entered the picture just as suddenly, and—was that what he thought it was? Two flashes from the weapon, and then the bike swerved but couldn’t avoid making contact—hard—with a parked car.

“Was she hit?”

“We don’t think so. No hospitals are treating gunshot wounds.”

“When did this happen?”

“About forty-five minutes ago.”

“Where is she now?”

Liu shook his head. “The team covering her condo is trying to figure that out. District Police and the FBI are on it too.”

“She left the scene?” Bright looked back to the spot on the screen where Vasser had disappeared underneath a vehicle. Between that spot and the edge of the frame were two disorganized rows of cars. Had she crawled out of sight and then fled? “She didn’t go home?”

“Apparently not, sir.”

“Back it up. I want to watch it again.” The analyst working the touch-screen keypad obliged and Bright studied the scene, this time anticipating the motorcycle. He watched Vasser dive out of sight just before the bike slammed into the stopped vehicle. “Hold on. What’s he doing right there? The shooter?”

“Trashing his equipment, apparently, before he takes off on foot.”

“What equipment?”

“It might be too early to say, but the Feds called in a cyber team. They won’t know more until they get the bike into the lab, but the agent I talked to said the thing was rigged like a cell tower on two wheels.”

Bright went still inside and out. He was staring at the frozen image of the perpetrator, who was bringing the butt of his handgun down hard against the contents of the open saddle box. Bright noted the large antenna mounted behind the bike’s seat and the computer bag slung across the perp’s chest.

“The traffic signals,” Bright whispered. He hadn’t noticed the first time around because h
e’d
been distracted by the shooting—and also because the surveillance video was in black and white. But even without color it was clear that the bottom light on each of the signals was illuminated.

“That’s right,” Liu said. “They all turned green right before Vasser was attacked. We’re already in contact with DOT. Their grid was hacked.”

C
APITOL
H
ILL

Mid-adagio movement of Haydn’s Concerto no. 2 in D Major, op. 101,
Senator Larry Wrightmont received a text message. He checked it discreetly.

M
EET ME ON THE ROOF
.

At intermission, the senator excused himself from his wife and the couple they had come with and, grumbling, made his way to the Kennedy Center’s roof terrace. Rick Altman was leaning on the railing, gazing out at the dark Potomac.

“This sneaking up on me has to stop,” Wrightmont said to the defense contractor.

“Would you rather we discuss it on the phone? Or maybe I could just swing by your office or house?” When the senator didn’t reply, Altman dropped the sarcasm. “What are you hearing?”

“You know damn well I can’t talk about what I’m hearing.”

The truth was that what he was hearing was insane. The FBI had prepared a classified report for the members of the Select Committee on Intelligence that contained exactly everything that was being reported on CNN. It characterized the Georgetown incident involving Angela Vasser as chaotic and troublesome. The shooter’s identity and motive were both unknown. The FBI’s cyberlab confirmed that servers at the Department of Transportation had been accessed by an outside party, who had orchestrated the traffic-signal chaos that preceded the shooting. The FBI had not, however, been able to recover any identifying data from the shooter’s damaged and abandoned equipment. If the shooter was foreign, h
e’d
disguised it well. He was clearly a professional. But what sort? That question had sparked a hot debate. Most agents working the case believed that the DOT hack pointed to the work of a professional cyberterrorist and not, as other agents argued, a professional hit man, given the two errant close-range shots.

The classified report prepared for Senator Wrightmont’s committee claimed that Angela Vasser had survived the attack, though she had apparently vanished. The NSA had used GPS tracking on her phone to guide the FBI to a Georgetown street corner, where they dug the abandoned device out of a trash can. This fact had inspired a mountain of loose speculation from investigators who, under pressure to provide answers to people like Senator Wrightmont, began to shovel paranoid bullshit into the void created by the lack of an intelligible narrative built on real evidence.

“You know what I think?” Altman said, challenging the senator with unblinking eyes. “I think the only thing you know that the rest of us don’t is just how far the FBI is from having a clue about what’s going on. This case is pandemonium. It’s fraught with incompetence. And”—he paused to let the senator hang on his words—“it’s overdue for some leadership. Are we on the same page, Senator?”

Wrightmont shook his head. He didn’t like Altman’s attitude. “I was clear about my reservations. I won’t risk getting on the wrong side of this.”

“The wrong side of this? Jesus, Larry, she’s on the run. What else do you need? Either you take ahold of this thing, or you’re just another asshole bitching about what a shitshow it all is. I need to know now that we’re on the same page. Senator?”

A commercial jet banked through the airspace above the winding Potomac and then swung toward Reagan National. “Yes,” Wrightmont said finally. “All right.”

“Then we’ll go ahead, as discussed. Is that your recommendation?”

“It’s your goddamn plan, Rick. I told you, no matter what, I’m not getting my hands dirty.”

“I understand, Senator. But your nomination to head the NSA moves to the front of the line if we get out in front of this. If we don’t, you face a reelection campaign. You’re looking at losing a primary to someone who thinks his great-grandparents had pet dinosaurs. Are you willing to leave your career in the hands of the good primary voters of Montana? All I need is assurance from you that you’ll take leadership on the Hill to get our surveillance bill passed.” The vote on the surveillance bill—which, if it passed, would free up hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on private defense contractors like Altman’s company—would be brought to the Senate floor within weeks. “Once you’ve moved into Fort Meade, we can talk more about our ongoing business together.” Another pause. “Shall we move forward, then?”

This was repulsive, Wrightmont thought. On the other hand, though, he had encountered few decisions in life that were so crystal clear in their distribution of costs and benefits.

“Your guy at NSA has access to her files?”

“He does, and he’s already made me a copy of them. Took him a couple of minutes out of his day. And Larry, wait till you see this shit. This woman—”

“No, don’t tell me. The less I know, the better. You have a journalist willing to cover it?”

“Willing? This story’s huge. It will launch his career.”

Wrightmont turned from the view. Intermission was over; he had to get back to the chamber music. “All right, nail her. I’ll take care of the surveillance bill. And Rick? Don’t fuck this up.”

N
ORTHERN
V
IRGINIA

A cab from the city rounded the corner, cautious, as if intimidated by the idyllic suburban streets, and then turned into the parking lot of a ten-field recreational soccer and baseball complex. The tall black woman paid in cash, just as sh
e’d
promised the driver she would. H
e’d
been more than a little reluctant to take her twenty-five miles out of the city, but sh
e’d
shown him the bills and h
e’d
shrugged and programmed the GPS.

The cab sped away and the woman looked around, orienting herself. The parking lot was only half-full. Behind her, from the direction sh
e’d
come, was a quiet residential neighborhood. Leafy green woods surrounded the sports complex in every other direction. Through the trees on one side, she caught glimpses of cyclists and joggers on a path.

She was relieved to see right away how clear the instructions had been. She began walking, past the baseball fields and out to the farthest soccer field, where a children’s game was in progress. Bursts of affirmation rose in shouts from the sidelines. She stood on the outer edge of the field, a ways off from the nearest cluster of parents, and waited.

Kera Mersal watched from the protection of the woods more than a hundred meters away. Sh
e’d
spent several days casing the complex, learning the patterns of the players, parents, referees, and grounds workers who came and went from the fields. And now, ever since sh
e’d
received the call from Angela Vasser on a new burner phone sh
e’d
purchased and activated for this sole purpose, sh
e’d
been circling the wooded perimeter of the complex, searching for any changes in those patterns. She detected none. No strange vans or SUVs with tinted windows. No fluctuation in the pedestrian traffic on the adjacent bike path. No loiterers or bird-watchers or generic maintenance crews.

She watched Vasser for twenty minutes and carefully reviewed in her mind everything the woman had told her.

The burner had rung the afternoon following her approach in the hotel ladies’ room—much sooner than Kera had expected. When she answered, Vasser said, “I’ve done a terrible thing,” by which she meant that sh
e’d
gone to the FBI and discussed the conversation sh
e’d
had with Kera. She was blunt about what sh
e’d
told them—that Kera had approached her, claiming the ambassador’s death had been a hit and that Vasser might also be in danger. Vasser apologized to Kera for going to the Feds; the night before it had seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

But now the situation had changed. Someone had tried to kill her. And Kera was the only one who had warned her about that.

“How did you know I was in danger?” Vasser had asked after she summarized her conversation with the FBI director. It sounded like an accusation.

“Listen to me. This is very important. Did you tell them how to contact me?”

“The note you gave me? No. I didn’t tell anyone about that, not even Ben. It hasn’t left my possession.”

Kera had to make a decision: to believe Vasser, or to walk away and not risk drawing half of the intelligence community onto her trail. Talking about it over the phone wasn’t helping.

“Where are you now?” sh
e’d
asked. “No, wait, don’t tell me. Are you safe? Are you alone?”

Vasser indicated that she was.

“And no one knows you’re calling me from that phone? There are no cameras around you?”

“No. I got away after the shooting. There’s no one here. No cameras.”

“What about your own phone?”

“I threw it away, like you said.”

“Where?”

“A block or so from the shooting. I followed all of your directions.”

“Good.” Kera gave her the address and instructions for what to do when she arrived at the sports complex. She detected reluctance in the silence that came over the line.

“How did you know about the gunman?” Vasser demanded. “Who was he?”

“I don’t know who he was or who sent him,” Kera said.

“Then how did you know I was a target?”

“I can’t explain that over the phone. There isn’t time.”

“Then I won’t meet you,” Vasser said. It sounded as though she meant it. Kera leapt at the opportunity to test her.

“Very well,” Kera said. Almost immediately, she regretted it. After all this trouble, sh
e’d
practically opened the door for Vasser to simply walk away—with no plan to reestablish contact. She shut her eyes, listening for the line to be disconnected. But after a pause, Vasser reversed herself and said she was getting in a cab.

Though better than the alternative, that outcome came with its own set of red flags. Vasser’s willingness to meet her left open the possibility that the Feds had enlisted Vasser to lead them to Kera. Could they have put a plan like that together in less than an afternoon—including the bizarre hit man on the motorcycle? Kera doubted it, but it was still a possibility. She would have felt safer had Vasser seemed genuinely tempted to back out of the meeting.

Each side scored a goal, and Vasser applauded the kids on both occasions. But Kera knew the diplomat wasn’t really watching the game. Her eyes shifted constantly; she fidgeted with her arms. Kera eventually became confident that an immediate ambush was not in the works, and retracing her steps to the bike path, she circled around to a point where she could come up behind Vasser from the woods.

Vasser heard her approach and turned, wild-eyed, her nerves still on edge after being shot at. Fear melted to relief when she recognized Kera. They stood side by side for a moment, two alleged traitors watching kids chase after a soccer ball.

“Were you followed?” Kera asked.

“No.”

Kera believed her. Ducking surveillance was a habit picked up by anyone who worked in an overseas embassy. But believing Vasser and trusting her were two different things.

Kera pulled out a radio frequency signal detector sh
e’d
purchased for $300 cash at a Best Buy in Reston near Dulles. The handheld sweep unit was about the size of an iPhone with a short, walkie-talkie-like antenna. Vasser eyed it with a mix of fear and suspicion.

“Look at me,” Kera said. “Like we’re just chatting.” She aligned herself so that Vasser’s body shielded Kera’s hands from any of the soccer fans who might have glanced at them across the field. Then she turned the dial on the device and let it fall at Vasser’s feet, as if by accident. She bent over and, working slowly up the diplomat’s legs and then torso, watched the device. The bars on the frequency display did not fluctuate. She put the device away, satisfied that Vasser had nothing on her person that could transmit RF signals.

“What happened in Georgetown?” Kera asked. Sh
e’d
read about the incident online, but the details were vague and didn’t add up to a narrative that satisfied her common sense.

“The lights all turned green.”

“I know that. Tell me about the shooter.”

“When the traffic jammed, a man appeared on the motorcycle. He came straight for me.” Her fear consolidated this time into suspicion and she glared at Kera. “You knew it would happen.”

Kera shook her head. “I didn’t. I told you what I knew—that the ambassador’s plane going down was no accident, and that whoever brought down the plane expected you to be on board.” What she didn’t spell out for Vasser was the pattern that had emerged: a plane, elevators, and now traffic lights.

“What do you want with me?” Vasser asked.

The final whistle had been blown on the field and young soccer players were starting to be led by their parents back to the parking lot.

“Let’s go somewhere more private. I have a safe place where we can talk.”

Between the sports complex and the sweeping Potomac, which marked the state line between Virginia and Maryland, Algonkian Regional Park—on the Virginia side—provided dozens of acres of woods, a golf course, a picnic pavilion, and a low-grade water park. The road into the park ended at a string of cottages tucked into the woods along the riverbank. Kera had rented one of these for the week under the name Laura Perez, the skeleton identity sh
e’d
created to get back into the States. Sh
e’d
paid in cash after explaining to the reservations employee that spotty travel in Central America, on account of missionary work, had resulted in the temporary suspension of her credit cards.

Vasser sat down on the couch at Kera’s invitation. Large picture windows dominated the living room, overlooking the Potomac as it rolled by, slow and brown. Kera took the easy chair, which, when she faced Vasser and glanced out the window behind her across the room, provided a view of the narrow road that led to the cabin. The road was still.

Vasser noticed the small television and asked if they could turn it on. Without her phone, sh
e’d
lost all connection to the world. She wanted to know if any new footage had emerged that showed her leaving the scene in Georgetown, or if there was any word on the identity of her attacker. Kera tuned the flat-screen to CNN and sat back for a few minutes to let Vasser watch. She was impatient to question the diplomat, but she could tell Vasser would be distracted until she knew something more about what was going on. After several minutes spent churning through the day’s other news stories and a commercial break, Vasser got what she was waiting for: the network replayed the only images it had of the incident—the DOT surveillance footage—while an anchor explained that the shooter had escaped on foot and had yet to be identified. Kera watched Vasser squint at the corner of the screen. The commotion with the motorcycle was visible, but the vantage wasn’t good enough to provide any useful detail. At a commercial break, Vasser looked away, shaking her head. Kera muted the television.

“You’re not going to find what you’re looking for on that surveillance clip,” Kera said, nodding at the screen but watching Vasser. “The answer is back in China.”

“You would know, I suppose,” Vasser said, her gaze suddenly piercing and accusatory.

Kera shook her head. “You and I are in the same boat—”

“Bullshit. You exposed classified files and fled. I don’t have any idea how I got here. Don’t try to tell me our situations are the same.”

Kera clenched her jaw until the pain became a distraction. Clearly, appealing to Vasser’s reason by offering help wasn’t going to work. She had to take a harder line. “How we got here doesn’t really matter. The fact is, our government considers both of us traitors. So does the press. If you’re in denial, you can hold out for the official charges to be filed, but it’s obvious they’re eager to try you for treason, aiding the enemy, mishandling classified documents—should I go on?”

“There isn’t proof of any of that. I’ll be cleared.”

“There are e-mails. There are missed flights. There are affairs with private contractors who have worked for China.” Vasser tried to jump in with a protest, but Kera held up a hand to cut her off. “I’m just telling you what they’ll say. I know you didn’t write those e-mails. And I know that if you didn’t have your country’s best interests in mind, you wouldn’t have gone straight to the Feds after hearing from me.”