The Red Syndrome (48 page)

"And you agreed."

"I was torn. I was afraid for my mother's life and also for my own."

"Did you discuss the blackmail with Baird?"

"Yes."

"And what did he say?"

"Obviously he said I should do what the callers asked. I didn't know he
was one of them. You must believe me, I was looking for a way out, and
in fact I told them very little about Dan's work."

"Little," I snorted. "Kidnapping, torture and imprisonment, barely
escaping death: If that's little, I'd hate to see what a lot means to her." Hodson and David didn't comment, and of course Laura and the interrogator couldn't hear me.

Laura said, "I need to go to the bathroom." The interrogator buzzed,
and a female agent entered the room and took Laura with her.

"Zhukov killed two birds with one stone," Hodson said. "By using
Baird to lure Laura with genuine information about a rival gang, he both
eliminated a rival group in Brooklyn and gained surreptitious access to
law enforcement. He needed that badly to install an early-warning
system in case the task force investigation came close to him."

"I can understand that he used Laura through Baird to eliminate a rival
gang, but how could he possibly have known that Laura would be
assigned to a task force investigating him?" asked David.

"He didn't," Hodson answered. "He was just looking for Homeland
Security info that could help in his business and stifle the competition.
But he saw an opportunity when Laura told Baird about the task force."

"It's bullshit," I said. "Unless Zhukov had an independent source, there
was no way he could have guessed that he was being targeted. You also
assume that Baird Black worked for Zhukov. But that's what Laura says,
and she is a proven liar. I think there's more to this matter than we know.
Zhukov may have had additional motives."

There was a sudden silence in the room.

I continued. "I'd squeeze Laura and Zhukov on that. Something's missing
here. Obviously I don't believe Laura's claim that she gave little information
to her blackmailers. I think she's guilty of big-time treason. It wasn't just the
information she gave them - she actively obstructed my work."

"Why did you suspect her?" asked Hodson.

"A few things about her made me feel uneasy, but I didn't add them up
at first," I said. "I ignored the rule Trust all men, but cut the cards. She was
a woman and I was interested in her. I admit it. What more can I say? I
made a judgment error. I think she's lying now about volunteering for the
task force. In my experience, it doesn't usually happen that way, particularly given her status as a rookie. You get assigned, and that's it. Typically
they send more senior agents, so she must have lobbied hard for the
assignment."

"For your information," said Hodson, "there were three other Homeland Security agents in the task force. You're right, though, she made
many efforts to be assigned. But back to your suspicions. Please be more
specific."

Eric and Brian entered the room apologizing for being late. I acknowledged Brian with a nod but ignored Eric.

I continued, "There was a much bigger concern that came too late for
me to do anything about it."

"What do you mean?" asked David.

"I had plenty of time to think and reconstruct the chain of events that
brought me down while I was a prisoner. Frankly, I should have listened
to my instincts rather than automatically trust a co-worker."

"Or obeying your hormones," said Eric. I gave him a cold look.

I told them about Laura's unsuccessful attempt to get me off track
through Professor Klebanov. "He may have been working for the opposition. Come to think of it, he may not even be a genuine professor."

"Of course he was in with her," said Eric. "He was a real professor, but
not Laura's. He once worked for Zhukov as a private English tutor, and
was hired to get you off track." Eric continued, "When Laura left your
apartment telling you she was going out to smoke a cigarette, she called
Baird Black and told him about the coded messages you'd obtained. Black
called her back ten minutes later and told her to return to your apartment, pretend to cooperate with you in breaking the code, but in fact stall
you, and then suggest enlisting Klebanov. In the meanwhile Black called
Klebanov and instructed him to pose as Laura's professor."

"I guess Klebanov sang," I said.

Eric smiled. I continued. "I think Laura did it to put me off track and
convince me that the encoded messages were garbage and not genuine, so
that I wouldn't even bother sending them to NSA, who could break it in
microseconds. I didn't rely on Klebanov's tables because they were bad. I
cracked the code independently."

"They didn't know you'd be that persistent," Eric responded. "So they
failed in their effort to convince you that the messages were garbage, and
they went to plan B, which was to stall you long enough to alert the Slaves of Allah to the impending investigation, give them time to go
under or leave the country. That's why Fazal vanished."

I told them about the phone conversations I'd had with Laura. "When
I called her from the Seychelles, she asked me if I was still in Virginia.
Even at the time that was suspicious."

Eric didn't seem to get it. "What's the significance?"

"I never told her I was going to Virginia."

He weighed the information. "Do you think you were followed there?"

"No. I called her from a pay phone at the club in Camp Peary." I looked
at Brian apologetically. "I know you told me not to use the phone, I'm sorry."

He didn't react, but after all, I was the one who'd paid the price for my
mistake.

"Did you talk to her from Virginia?"

"No. There was no answer, so I left a short message on her voice mail,
just sending my regards; nothing else."

"Her machine couldn't have recorded the calling number and tied you
to Virginia," said Eric. "The pay phones in the Company installations
have their caller ID blocked. There must have been another way for her
to find out where you were calling from."

"How stupid of me," I admitted. "I called her again from the Newport
News-Williamsburg airport just before boarding to go to London and
Victoria. Again I got her voice mail, so I didn't leave a message. But the
caller ID of that pay phone probably wasn't blocked, and her phone captured the number even though I'd hung up. Then while I was in the
Seychelles I called her again, using the satellite phone. This time we
spoke and I told her I was in the Seychelles. I should have never trusted
that bitch with any information," I said bitterly.

I told them how Laura came to meet me in Marseilles and her sudden
appearance at the Excelsior while I was having breakfast, although I'd
never told her where I was staying; all she knew about my hotel accommodations was my initial stay at the Promenade. I'd planned to leave her
a note that I was moving to the Excelsior, but in the end I didn't, instead
simply waiting for her at the Promenade. Only Eric, Brian, and Martin
of the CIA knew about my new hotel reservations.

Eric didn't move a muscle.

"Did Laura say what she did with the miniature video camera?"

Brian smiled. "She said that she tried to understand how it worked, but
couldn't get a signal."

"Of course she couldn't," said Eric. "The signal is civision, an enciphered television signal. Since the broadcast from the camera to the
recorder is wireless, all television sets within a perimeter of three hundred
feet could show what was going on in your room unless we encrypted the
signal. Professional labs have the deciphering software."

"After finding out I was in the Seychelles, did she send Zhukov's thugs
there as well?"

"Yes, but they never made it."

"You mean they lost their way, or what?"

"They were arrested at Heathrow after an X-ray machine discovered
concealed weapons in their luggage. What worried us was the type of
ammunition they were trying to smuggle."

"What was it?" I had a right to know how they were planning to kill me.

"Assassins' bullets with a plastic sabot over them to prevent the marking
of the bullet by the pistol barrel, making ballistic identification extremely
difficult."

"If they're such professionals, how were they caught?"

"Even professionals make mistakes," he said, giving me a snide look.
"They wrapped the weapons in an X-ray-masking container, and as an
added precaution had a baggage handler remove their luggage from the
conveyor belt that led to the X-ray machine and put it back at the other
end of the machine. What they didn't know was that the baggage handler was already under surveillance by the British police in connection
with drug smuggling, and he was caught on video removing the baggage
from the belt. He was arrested and so were Zhukov's assassins, who were
already seated in the plane waiting for takeoff."

"So nobody was after me in the Seychelles?" I asked. Then the shadow
I thought I saw was just in my imagination.

"Sort of. When Zhukov heard about the arrest of his men in
London, as plan B he called a Seychelles private investigator to trace you and see what you were doing until he could arrange to send over
another team."

"A private investigator? I saw some poorly trained man follow me just
before I left the Seychelles. But I dry-cleaned him."

Through the double mirror we saw that the agent had returned with
Laura, and the interrogation continued.

"You know that Baird was working for Zhukov, and both were helping
a terrorist organization. Didn't you have any qualms about helping terrorists plan an attack on the U.S.?"

"I did no such thing," said Laura quickly. "I had a romance with a man,
and was blackmailed. At the beginning I didn't know he had any connection to Zhukov. When I was in France, Baird showed up all of a sudden.
Only then did I realize that there was a connection."

"How did you learn that?"

"Baird told me he was a member of Zhukov's organization, but claimed
his relationship with me was originally unrelated to Zhukov. He said that
only after Zhukov discovered Baird was dating me did he tell Baird to use
me for information. I agreed with Baird that my cooperation would be
limited to Dan Gordon's activities, meaning his efforts to discover the
source of the money, while withholding any information on the bioattack. We never told Zhukov that Dan Gordon and Neil McMillan were
the same person. Zhukov met only a McMillan, not a Gordon."

"That's bullshit," I muttered. "Zhukov didn't need that information
anyway. In Germany I met Igor as Gordon, the attack on me was as
Gordon. Then I appear as McMillan, and Baird must have given him my
real name-courtesy of Laura, who knew both names." I wished the interrogator could have heard me. But Hodson made a note of my comment.

"I never met Zhukov," continued Laura. "All my contacts were with
Baird. But maybe Zhukov also wanted to distance himself from the
Slaves of Allah and save his own skin. So he wanted to know what Dan
was doing, what his plans were, what information he was able to gather
that could put him at risk, and then ..." Laura paused.

"Then what?"

"Eliminate Gordon."

"How do you know that?"

"Baird told me."

"When?"

"While we were in France and I told him I wanted out."

Hodson turned to me. "What Laura doesn't know is that Zhukov confessed that when his plan to have his men kill you in the Seychelles was
botched, he suspected that he was under surveillance and wanted to distance himself from a direct hit on you. So he outsourced the job of eliminating you to the Slaves of Allah, keeping one huge card up his sleeve.

"He had two good reasons to want you dead. Your testimony as a key
witness against him, and your findings in Germany, could send him to a
federal prison for many years. But a much better reason from his perspective was his fear of the Slaves of Allah."

"What was the card he withheld from them?"

"The fact that you were Dan Gordon, a U.S. agent. He told them you
were Neil McMillan."

"Why?"

"Not to protect you. He was afraid of the consequences. Telling the
Slaves of Allah about Neil McMillan, an asset-protection expert who
after the fact is suspected as an outside informer of the CIA, is one thing,
but let the Slaves of Allah discover that Zhukov knew the truth about
your identity early on was negligence of a kind that could have cost him
his life."

"Why?" I asked although I knew the answer.

"Because if Neil McMillan - a sleazeball from the Seychelles -
betrays Zhukov and then reports to the CIA, it's not necessarily Zhukov's
fault, but to fall for a U.S. government sting operation would be just too
much for the Slaves of Allah to swallow. Not only because Zhukov was
careless in moving their money and in agreeing to meet you, but because
he would become a significant security risk for the Slaves of Allah if he
were arrested. He might plea-bargain, spill too much information about
the Slaves of Allah. So Zhukov just told them half the truth about who
you were, hoping it'd be enough for them to take care of Neil McMillan."

"Then why didn't the Slaves of Allah kill me? They had plenty of opportunities while I was their prisoner. Did Zhukov's check bounce?" I
asked sardonically.

"No. They didn't take orders from Zhukov. For them he was just a service
provider, a subcontractor to launder money. When he told them about your
skills, they thought they'd have a better use for you than as a dead body."

"Using me as their asset protector?"

"Exactly. They didn't know your true identity, and Zhukov certainly
wasn't going to tell them. Funny enough, we've come full circle. The
whole idea was to use Zhukov to infiltrate the Slaves of Allah, and as it
turned out they actually wanted you to do the job."

"Cutting out the middleman is a Middle Eastern custom," I said.