The Rule of Nine (22 page)

T
he second he got off the phone with Madriani, Thorpe grabbed his jacket and was out the door. One agent held the elevator for him while another waited for them in a car down in the garage. Thorpe was pressed for time, and what he was dealing with couldn't wait.

It was Victor Soyev, a Russian arms merchant who had been arrested in Los Angeles. The FBI had received an anonymous tip as to Soyev's whereabouts and had taken him into custody at LAX just as he was getting ready to jump on a flight to Asia. Immediately, they hustled him off to Washington on a government jet.

For two days agents had been moving him around, from one location to another, trying to keep him out of the news and away from the clutches of defense lawyers. If the honchos at the Justice Department found out, Thorpe would be looking for a new job.

Based on the anonymous tip, the FBI checked Soyev's voice against the NSA voiceprints from the telephone conversation between North Korea and Cuba. The Russian's voice was a match. Soyev's was the voice on the North Korean end of the conversation. He was one of the operatives moving the massive thermobaric device
that got grounded in Thailand. Thorpe wanted answers, and he wanted them before Soyev had a chance to lawyer up.

The problem was the constantly changing rules for interrogation laid down by the White House. The guidelines were as clear as mud, and designed with enough political wiggle room so that members of Congress and the White House could run for cover and point the finger at underlings the minute anything went wrong. Everything was on a case-by-case basis. The minute Thorpe told the White House he had Soyev and what the case involved, the Russian would be put in a holding pattern, and the FBI would be told not to question him until a decision had been made by a higher authority as to the process to be used.

It was fashionable to quote Truman as to where the buck stopped, but in reality, every White House since had become increasingly expert in the art of plausible deniability. And every one of them could spin like a weather vane when it came to the blame game.

For the moment, Soyev was in a hotel room six blocks from FBI headquarters. Transported in a blacked-out van and taken up to the room in a service elevator with a hood over his head, the Russian had no idea what city he was in. He would be in the hotel for no more than two hours before they moved him again. Interrogation was captured on multichannel microphones and video in case they missed something the first time through. At night they held him in a safe house just across the Maryland state line, where questioning continued. Thorpe would devour the interrogation transcripts each morning.

So far Soyev wasn't giving up much. He denied that he was ever in North Korea. He claimed he was a Moscow businessman dealing in heavy industrial equipment. He demanded to see the nearest Russian consul, and when that failed, he asked for a lawyer.

Thorpe had his people giving Soyev only the best when it came to food and drink. They would give him Stolichnaya vodka whenever he asked for it. It was available only through one importer in
the States. The agents told him if he wanted a lawyer they would get one, but that if they did, Soyev would have to be locked up in a federal facility pending trial, and the booze and steaks would all go away. The Russian withdrew his request for a lawyer. Thorpe knew he couldn't keep the movable feast going forever. He was running out of time.

When Thorpe arrived at the hotel that afternoon, interrogation had already started. The room had been sanitized to remove everything that might tell Soyev where he was. The curtains were pulled and only a single light from a lamp illuminated the room.

It was the third time Soyev had seen Thorpe, though the two men had never talked. All questioning was conducted through a set of three interrogators. But the Russian seemed to know that Thorpe was someone important. Like a bitch in heat, he could smell an alpha male.

“Mr. Soyev, why don't you tell us what we want to know?” said the interrogator. “We have the tape and the transcript of your telephone conversation from Pyongyang to Cuba. We know that it was your voice coming from North Korea based on voiceprint identification.”

“So you say,” said Soyev. “And I tell you I have never been to North Korea. Check my passport if you don't believe me.”

“We are well aware that an arms merchant of your stature can avoid the normal processes of customs and immigration in places like North Korea. Let's stop playing games. Tell us who the man was on the other end of the telephone conversation. The man in Cuba.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I am a Russian citizen and I demand to see the Russian consul. Also I would like a drink if you don't mind. I'm getting thirsty. How long is this going to go on? I am very tired. As you know, I haven't been able to sleep in two days. You keep waking me up every few minutes to ask more questions.”

The interrogator nodded toward one of the other agents, who
immediately opened an attaché case and came up with the bottle of Stolichnaya.

“I hope you have ice?” said Soyev.

“Stop,” said Thorpe. “Enough.” Thorpe reached over and flipped on the switch for the overhead lights in the room.

Soyev looked at him, squinted, and shaded his eyes.

“Mr. Soyev, I am Zeb Thorpe, executive assistant director for the National Security Branch of the FBI. We've carried on with this as long as we can and I'm putting an end to it right now. Upon leaving here, you're going to be transported to a federal detention facility for maximum-security prisoners. You will be charged with numerous crimes, including violation of international weapons embargoes, terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism, and arms smuggling for starters. I'm sure that there will be superseding indictments with other charges that will be added in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say that there will be enough charges and convictions that you are almost certain to spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary in this country. That is, unless one of these thermobaric devices that you're dealing in goes off in a major metropolitan area, killing a number of people, in which case we will be seeking the death penalty. Do you understand?”

Soyev just looked. He didn't say a word.

“There will be no more vodka and no more rich meals. Now, the only way you are going to change any of these circumstances is by cooperating with us. And to do that, you have a very brief window of opportunity. You see, your compadre, your comrade, the man on the other end of that telephone conversation with you, the one in Cuba…”

Soyev followed every word.

“…  he not only ratted you out and turned you in …”

Soyev's brow furrowed, and his eyes turned to little slits.

“…  he is also, I assume, operating on some kind of a timetable, a schedule,” said Thorpe. “That means that the minute he uses any of the weapons that you shipped to him, the window of oppor
tunity for you to cut a deal with me is going to come down on the back of your neck just like a sharp blade. That means that you will be charged as an accomplice with any and all of his deeds. You will be subject to the same penalties as he is. Since he did you the favor of landing you here, why don't you do the same for him?” Thorpe stood there, looking straight at the Russian.

“You know this?” asked Soyev.

“As a matter of fact, we do. The phone call that gave us your name and flight number came into our field office in Los Angeles. It was taped. Voiceprint analysis confirms that the voice on that telephone conversation is the same voice as that from Cuba during your telephone conversation from North Korea.”

“Shit!” said Soyev. “Bastard never paid me. Second half of money.”

Thorpe was lying. The call fingering the Russian was placed to the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, at the airport. And it wasn't taped.

“Who is he?” said Thorpe.

“If I knew, believe me, I would tell you,” said Soyev. “I don't know his name. I call him Chief. He calls me Tonto, but he never uses the name. Whenever I call, he knows my voice.”

“You've never met him?”

“No. This is not unusual,” said the Russian. “I never meet most of my customers. Just voices on the phone.”

“And the money?” says Thorpe. “I assume he paid you something. How? An overseas numbered account?”

Soyev nods.

“I need the name of your bank and the number of your account,” said Thorpe.

“Fat chance.” Soyev laughed. “Next you're going to tell me you have a bridge you wish to sell me.”

“We won't touch the funds,” said Thorpe.

“And for this what do I have, your word?” said Soyev.

“I need the number. With your account number I can have the
Treasury Department turn the screws on the bank and trace his last wire transfer back to his bank and his account number. With that number we may get a name.”

“If we are going to be doing this, I need to talk to a lawyer,” said Soyev.

“While you're conferring with your lawyer, he could be setting off one of the devices. How many are there?” asked Thorpe.

Soyev sat back in the chair and folded his arms. “What kind of a deal do I get? Life in prison does not sound like bottom line to me,” said Soyev.

“Do you know what he was doing with the bombs? Do you have any information on targets? If you know, now is the time to tell us. Afterward it's going to be too late.”

“I know nothing about that,” said Soyev. “All I did was obtain items he asked for. He tells me nothing about anything else.”

Thorpe turned to one of the interrogators. “Gimme the transcript of the telephone conversation, Pyongyang to Cuba.”

The agent went to his briefcase, found it, and handed it to Thorpe. Thorpe flipped a few pages. “Here it is. You talk about ‘the big guy' and ‘the kid'—Fat Man and Little Boy, is that correct?”

Soyev looked at him but didn't say anything.

“I'm going to assume that it is. You told the man in Cuba that ‘the kid' will take a later flight. Meaning that the smaller of the two devices was not on the Russian plane that was forced down in Thailand.” He looked at Soyev. “So I'm assuming it was shipped some other way?”

Soyev was now refusing to make eye contact.

“That means that the ‘Fat Man,' or ‘big guy,' was the one we found on the plane in Bangkok. But then you go on to volunteer to your compatriot, to your coconspirator in Cuba, and I quote, ‘the man has a brother.' Look at me when I'm talking to you!” Thorpe shouted at him.

The Russian's head and eyes jerked to the right to engage Thorpe.

“That means there was a replacement for the ‘Fat Man,' doesn't it? Doesn't it?”

Soyev didn't want to, but he nodded, almost by reflex.

“Has that device been delivered?” asked Thorpe.

This time Soyev nodded more deliberately.

“Where did you deliver them?” said Thorpe.

“I want to talk to a lawyer,” said Soyev.

“Later,” said Thorpe. “Right now you talk to me.”

“All I know is that one of them was shipped to New York. The other I don't know about because it was transshipped. I delivered it to Havana. From there I don't know.”

“New York?” said Thorpe. “Where? Did you have an address?”

“It was a bonded warehouse on the docks. It was to be picked up.”

“Which one of the devices went to New York?”

“The replacement,” said Soyev.

“Fat Man? The big one?” asked Thorpe.

Soyev nodded.

Shit, thought Thorpe.

“And you have no idea what the target is?”

“I don't know that there is a target. People buy munitions for all kinds of things.”

“You don't need a lawyer. You're doing fine on your own,” said Thorpe. “He never mentioned a possible target? Think!”

Soyev paused for a moment, if for no other reason than to make it look good. “No. As I say, I have no idea what he was going to do with any of this equipment.”

“What equipment?” said Thorpe. “You sold him two bombs. According to my experts, these things are just half a step down from nuclear devices.”

“No. No. They are wrong,” said Soyev. “I have never dealt in nuclear materials or any weapons of mass destruction.”

“I see. You're a merchant of death with moral standards, is that it… ?”

Before Soyev could answer, Thorpe said, “Are you going to give me the number for your overseas account or not?”

“Not until I talk to my lawyer,” said Soyev.

“Yeah, and by the time he gets through, the account won't exist because he'll clean it out for his retainer. Take him away. Lock him up, and get him a lawyer. And make sure the court knows he can afford to pay for his own. If he's going to kill a bunch of taxpayers, the least we can do is make sure they don't have to pay for his legal defense.”

T
he flight time from Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico, is listed as two hours and forty-three minutes. Today's flight takes us more than three hours. According to the pilot, we have been bucking heavy headwinds all the way.

We sit three abreast in the center section, Joselyn between Herman and me, and we look over her shoulder at a photo of the Hotel Belgica in Ponce on Joselyn's laptop. She found the Web site and downloaded it to a file before we left the airport in Miami.

The hotel is two stories, something from the plantation period of the last century. It has an upscale ambience, even from the outside, pastel masonry with white trim, arched windows, and green wrought-iron railings. There are awnings over all of the windows as well as the main entrance on the ground floor. The building could pass for one of the better establishments on Royal Street in New Orleans.

“Looks like a nice place,” says Joselyn. “Too bad we can't stay there.”

“Can't take the chance,” says Herman. “Not if Thorn's there. All we need is for him to recognize you.”

That Thorn may be there is a long shot, but it's the only lead we have. We have to assume that he penned the note with the hotel's telephone number for a reason. Either he or someone he is dealing with is staying there.

Joselyn has also downloaded a map of the town of Ponce onto her computer. It looks like a vacation spot with an abundance of hotels and cultural exhibits, and a sizable port facility. There is a museum of art, and a central plaza with a cathedral as well as a number of tourist sites, mostly eco tours and snorkeling according to the information on the computer.

“Where we stayin'?” says Herman.

“I booked us at a small hotel downtown, not far from the Belgica,” I tell him. “I reserved a car at the airport. When we land I'll get the car, you guys can get the luggage, and we'll meet out in front.”

“I have to make a phone call,” says Joselyn. “I need to contact my office, let them know I'm alive.”

“I'll grab the luggage,” says Herman.

A half hour later we're on the ground, inside the terminal. “Catch you guys later. Out front at the curb.” I point.

“I've got to go to the ladies' room,” says Joselyn. “I only have the one checked bag.”

“I got it,” says Herman.

I walk toward the rental-car counter and Joselyn heads the other way.

Just inside the door to the ladies' room, Joselyn stops, reaches into her purse, and pulls out her cell phone. She turns it on, punches in a name, and highlights it when it comes up on the screen. She hits the green button and places the call. It rings three times before it is answered by a familiar voice.

“Hello, Joselyn here. Is your boss in? I need to talk to him. Tell him it's urgent.” She waits on the line, tapping her pointed high heel on the floor nervously as she holds the phone to her ear. She glances under the stalls to make sure no one is within earshot.

“Hello. Thanks for taking my call. I don't have much time. I'm in Puerto Rico at the airport…

“I know. I know. I didn't know myself that I was coming down here until late yesterday. Unfortunately, I haven't had a moment alone since then to make the call, not during the day when I could reach you. And I didn't want to commit any of this to an e-mail or a text message…”

She listens for a moment as he agrees that texting or e-mail would be unwise.

“Listen, we've got a problem. Remember the lawyer I told you about and our last conversation about Thorn? You wanted me to keep you informed …

“Yes, well, the lawyer's been nosing around with the FBI. I'm not sure exactly what he told them or how much they believe, but he's managed to track Thorn to a hotel in a small town called Ponce in Puerto Rico.”

She listens to the voice on the other end.

“Yes, that's what I said. There are the two of them, Madriani and his investigator, a man named Herman Diggs. They were armed, but they're not any longer. I don't think Madriani got the FBI to follow through, but I'm not sure. That's why I'm calling you, to give you a heads-up.”

She listens for a moment.

“I'm not sure what he knows,” says Joselyn. “But he may be about to find out, and it could get pretty hairy. Do you understand?” She listens again.

“Exactly. That's why I called,” she says. “I would like you to take care of it. A single phone call from you would do it.”

Joselyn listens for a moment. She gets the reply she was hoping for. “Good. Then I'll leave it in your hands. You'll take care of it…?”

“Good. I can't stay on the line. They're gonna start wondering where I am. I'll call you when I know more. Take care.” She pushes
the red button, drops the phone in her purse, and heads back out to the luggage-claim area.

 

There was a reason Thorn had picked the ancient Boeing 727-100C, and strangely, it wasn't because of the price of the plane. The old rear trijet design had everything he needed.

Dating to the early 1960s, the 727-100C included an internal auxiliary power unit for starting its own engines on the ground. This eliminated the need for a heavy external power source on the remote runway in Puerto Rico.

The “C” designation meant it was convertible and could be used for either freight or passengers depending on how the interior of the plane was configured. It had a large freight door on the forward left-hand side of the fuselage that could be used or not, depending on whether the air carrier was flying passengers, freight, or a combination of the two.

The 727 had been the workhorse for most U.S. domestic short-haul flights during the 1960s and '70s because it required very little ground maintenance. Its wing design incorporated leading-edge flaps that gave the plane greater lift, allowing it to remain stable in flight at low speeds. For all of these reasons it could service smaller cities with shorter runways, resulting in one of the plane's most distinctive features, the built-in drop-down ramp, or airstair, near the tail section of the plane. For Thorn, this was critical.

The drop-down stairs were lowered from under the rear belly and allowed passengers to get off the plane without the need of roll-up steps or a connecting jetway. Some airlines came to love it when they discovered that passengers could be de-planed from the front while cleaning crews could climb on board from the lowered airstairs at the rear, thereby shortening the turnaround time.

But this love affair came to an abrupt end in 1971 because of
one man, a ghost who called himself Dan Cooper. An early aviation hijacker, Cooper waylaid a Northwest flight claiming he had a bomb in his carry-on luggage. He demanded and got $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills along with four parachutes. Cooper used one of the parachutes to make the leap into criminal history by jumping from the steps of the rear drop-down ramp at ten thousand feet with the flaps lowered to reduce speed. He was never seen again.

Some claimed that he died in the jump or soon thereafter, either in the snowy mountains of the northwest or by drowning in one of the many rivers in the area. Others claimed they had seen him since. The FBI was still looking for him. Like Jacob Waltz and the “Lost Dutchman Mine,” D. B. Cooper had acquired the status of a myth.

For this reason he was one of Thorn's heroes. Cooper left two enduring monuments to his brief criminal career. The scanning of all carry-on luggage for bombs and weapons, and another that was linked to his name, the so-called Cooper Vane.

This morning Thorn was busy at the airfield in Puerto Rico removing the old Cooper Vane from the tail section of his plane. The vane was a deceptively simple mechanical device. Federal law required its installation on all commercial planes with rear airstairs after Cooper's crime.

The vane consisted of an oval-shaped control surface that stuck out from the underbelly of the plane like an oversize Ping-Pong paddle. This was connected to a rectangular steel plate on a pivoting bolt that was spring-loaded. When the plane was on the ground, the paddle remained perpendicular to the fuselage, its flat edges facing the front and rear of the plane. But in flight, when air speed hit the forward face of the paddle, it would turn parallel to the fuselage, pivoting the steel plate with it. The plate acted like a gate latch, preventing the airstairs from being lowered in flight.

The ability to lower the airstairs in flight was critical to Thorn's plan. Hence the vane had to come off.

While Thorn worked on this, his ace welder was busy working
on the rear ramp itself. He used an arc welder to fix two heavy steel rails, one along each side of the ramp, about six inches above each step. These steel rails had been prefabricated and had a slight curve, higher at each end and lower in the middle. Affixed to each of the two rails were heavy steel rollers, four on each side.

Thorn drilled out the post pivot on the Cooper Vane and removed the steel plate. Then he patched over the hole with an aluminum panel, sealing it with a special epoxy to ensure that the patch wouldn't leak when the plane was pressurized. He then turned his attention to the next task, the bomb—Little Boy, still resting in its wooden crate.

Thorn had done considerable research before settling on the plane and the type of ordnance to be used. One of the most insightful pieces of literature, strange as it might seem because it was so dated, was a postwar analysis based on captured classified documents from the Japanese of their attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thorn was particularly impressed with the detailed analysis regarding the destruction of the USS
Arizona
.

The Japanese bomb that did the job was about eight hundred pounds, less than half the weight of Thorn's device. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't an aerial bomb at all. It was a modified naval artillery shell, armor piercing, with a box-fin stabilizer attached to the tail and a delay fuse added to the nose. The Japanese were an entire generation ahead of any other warfaring nation in their conception of how to retread old ordnance with new technology.

When it hit the ship, it sliced through the top weather deck of solid teak. It then passed through two armor-plated lower decks, each one four inches thick, before it came to rest in the forward magazine of the battleship. There it exploded, igniting almost a million pounds of gunpowder used to fire shells from the ship's fourteen-inch guns. The blast melted iron bulkheads and literally lifted the ship out of the water.

For the Japanese bombardier who dropped it, it was a lucky
shot. Thorn couldn't afford to rely on luck. He would compensate for this with a combination of laser-guidance systems and advanced control surfaces that would dramatically increase the glide ratio of the ordnance he was using. Like the Japanese, he would marry old technology to new.

The answer was the Paveway, a series of laser-guided add-ons made by Texas Instruments, Raytheon, and a number of other corporations starting in the 1960s. The various versions included large tail-fin assemblies and nose-cone attachments with laser seekers. These could be attached to any dumb iron gravity bomb, transforming it into a precision-guided system with a glide ratio in some instances exceeding fifteen nautical miles.

The defensive perimeter around the target was twice this range, thirty nautical miles. But the government had already compromised this protective zone by their demonstrated and repeated indecision regarding the rules of engagement. Thorn was well aware of these incidents, one of which had involved a state governor whose pilot drifted into the protection zone through ignorance.

It's what always happened when the airspace over a target was too often inhabited by people of power and influence. It was one thing to shoot down a planeload of three or four hundred taxpayers. It was another to shoot down one of the privileged political class flying in their ego-containered government jets. The pattern had been set to hold their fire and try to escort the violator to the nearest airport where their ass could be gently hauled off in a limousine of state to the nearest five-star hotel.

To Thorn, this was invariably the case. The defensive systems and the people operating them seldom failed. But the pampered powerful whose minds were focused on their own wealth, comfort, and continued power could sabotage anything, and almost always did.