To Free a Spy (16 page)

Salim’s eyes narrowed as the memory of the blood-covered body of his younger brother in an earlier operation flashed through his mind. Seconds to go. The trembling calmed. The Russian pulled into position. Moments now, unless the guards decided to do a thorough search on the Volvo. No, they waved him on! It was time. Salim was the final barrier.

Salim had stood with his weapon cradled in his arm so he would not have to attract attention by raising it before firing. Now he placed his finger against the trigger. Before he squeezed it the nightmare he had not planned for became reality. Someone in the lane to his right recognized him.

“
Salim! What are you doing there? In that uniform?
”

* * *

Salim had little time to wonder who had recognized him and the guard wearing the dark glasses didn’t wait for an explanation. He opened fire and Salim’s head fragmented. He flew backwards, his arms and legs dancing to the automatic rifle’s deadly tune, onto the hood of a car in the other lane. All of the guards were distracted for a moment before the hydraulic barricades in each lane had been opened, and by then the Volvo was safely inside Iraq.

* * *

Minutes later Abbas received the sorry news that the mission had failed. Jalil and Zayed escaped but his long-time friend and fellow-warrior Salim was dead. He fought the tears that welled up in his eyes as he looked out onto the Paris street in front of his office. Terrorists had won the battle but they had not won the war.

* * *

Earl Fullwood sat in his corner office on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and read the report delivered to him minutes earlier. The crossing took place at Habur as expected. A Bureau operative got caught in the crossfire and was killed but the imposter guard who tried to shoot the Russian got it too. When he finished reading, he pulled out a new cigar and stuck it between his teeth. A trace of a smile hit his lips.

Fullwood dialed Paula Newnan’s number. Newnan could get him in to see Cross on short notice. Now, by God, he had a case to take to the president, and Cross had no choice but to back him. Fullwood couldn’t prove anything on Warfield, but he didn’t need to. After all, he
was
Earl Fullwood, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the greatest investigative organization in the world, and it was time to reclaim the prominence he’d lost at the hand of Cameron Warfield.

The others were standing
around in the Oval Office chatting with Cross when Warfield arrived at seven-forty-five that morning. Earl Fullwood looked away when he saw Warfield enter, so, as Warfield thought when Paula had called, the meeting was about the Habur border incident. Fullwood no doubt had asked the president for the meeting and it was about Warfield.

The only man in the room whom Warfield didn’t know walked over and introduced himself as Bill Reynolds. “I work for Quinn,” he said.

“Cam Warfield.”

“I’ve wanted to meet you. Guess I never thought it would be in the Oval Office.”

“Good to see you, Bill. Quinn coming?”

Reynolds shook his head. “Out of town.”

President Cross looked at his watch and everyone took the cue. Otto Stern, Fullwood, Bill Reynolds, the president and Warfield seated themselves around Cross’s maple table. Warfield ended up directly across from Fullwood.

Cross kicked it off. “Okay, Earl, let's get it going. What is this national security crisis?”

Fullwood looked straight at Warfield. “Well, Mr. Pres’dent, since the Kunnel is here, I’ll let him tell you. Seems like he’s maintainin’ his good record of interferin’ in the Bureau’s business.”

How in hell did this guy ever become head of the FBI?
Warfield thought. His fantasy was to grab Fullwood by his fat neck and choke the bastard until his eyes popped out, but some degree of civility was required in the presence of the president and anyway Fullwood wasn’t worth it. Why waste time and energy with that kind of ignorance and arrogance?

Warfield indicated that he wasn’t going to respond to Fullwood, and President Cross told the FBI chief to move on. Fullwood told his version of the Turkey/Iraq border incident from the day the Bureau first knew of it up to the Habur shooting incident. The Bureau had the Russian under their watch all the way from Russia, through Turkey right to the Iraqi border. Even had a man there at the border gate posing as a Turkish lieutenant. The Bureau was gathering data on the Russian so they could pick him off on his
next
run, when, according to their intelligence, he would be in possession of the stolen uranium. The John Wayne shootout, as Fullwood called it, rendered that future operation impossible. Fullwood was in full stride. He talked louder and louder, paused for drama and resumed with a quiet, “Thanks to Kunnel Warfield here, the Russian has been alerted.”

“And the consequences are…?” Cross asked.

“He’ll find another way to get that uranium to wherever it’s going in the Middle East! Forget about catchin’ him doin’ it next trip, Mr. Pres’dent. It’s a done deal for their side. It’s over.”

Warfield saw the trap Fullwood had set. Whether or not Fullwood believed the dry run story was not important: His objective was to put Warfield in a scenario that would force Cross to get rid of him. Petrevich, to Fullwood, was incidental by comparison.

Cross said to Fullwood, “Why did you think there would be no transfer on the Russian’s first trip, Earl?”

“Initial intelligence that this would be a dry run came from CIA. And as to Kunnel Warfield’s involvement, my own men dug up that information.”

Dug up
was a good way to put it, Warfield thought.

“Tell me about the CIA intelligence,” Cross said.

Fullwood twisted in his chair. “Okay, well I, uh, I don’t have all those details with me at the moment.”

Cross turned to Bill Reynolds, who told the president he’d received late notice to attend this meeting and wasn’t familiar with the details of the case. He’d research it and get back to him.

Cross looked at Warfield. “Okay, Cam. What about Habur gate.”

Warfield took a moment to decide how much to tell. Habur had been no different than the other times he’d taken life and death matters into his own hands. Sometimes you were the hero for it and sometimes the goat. Decisions like this one weren’t often so clear-cut—reliable intelligence that weapons-grade uranium was destined for a region where terrorists were supported by government and revered by zealots; deaf ears at the FBI. But the president had not authorized that specific action and Warfield wondered if he himself could land in court over it if Fullwood and Justice pushed it. That would be disastrous for Cross. So there was but one course for Warfield now. “I’m flattered the director thinks I could set up such an operation.”

“You denyin’ you were behind it?” Fullwood said.

Warfield displayed only mild irritation. “Russians could’ve set it up. How about the CIA? But whoever it was, you said your people were there at Habur that day. I informed Rachel Gilbert it was not going to be a trial run. You could have stopped it but you ignored the information I gave her. You instructed her to have no more communication with me and now you’re trying to dodge the blame.” Then Warfield looked directly into Fullwood’s eyes and dropped a bomb: “Mr. Director, it would be easy to believe you knowingly let the Russian go through with the uranium so you could serve some other agenda of yours.”

Fullwood was speechless for a moment, as his face turned crimson. Finally he said, “Last time I checked the rules, the Bureau was not takin’ orders from retired army kunnels. Who the hell are you Warfield to tell the Federal Bureau of Investigation how to run its affairs? I’ve never seen the likes of your audac’ty. But let me get this straight. You actually disputin’ our initial intelligence from CIA?”

“I am.”

Fullwood pressed. “And if you’re flatly statin’ that the uranium crossed the Iraqi border with the Russian, I suppose you got some evidence to support that.”

Glancing at his watch, Cross brought it to a halt before Warfield could answer.

Warfield was saved. He wasn’t about to reveal his collaboration with Abbas, or any other part of his involvement, but he didn’t want to lie to Cross.

“We’re getting nowhere,” Cross said. “I’ve got a press conference in a few minutes. We’ll meet here again at noon tomorrow for fifteen minutes and get to the bottom of this. I want your sources, Earl. Same for Warfield and CIA. I expect everyone to be prepared. And, Earl, I’m spending more time on your problems than on the rest of the country.”

Fullwood crammed his papers into his attaché case and left without saying anything. Stern and Reynolds, more amiable, followed. Cross cornered Warfield in the hallway. “Listen Cam, we’re in a tough spot here, you and me.”

Warfield nodded.

“I probably don’t want to know the answer to this question,” Cross said, putting his hand on Warfield’s shoulder, “but I have to ask—”

“About the attack at Habur crossing.”

“Exactly.”

Cross had saved him from answering that question in the meeting, but now he wanted to know, and Warfield wouldn’t mislead him. Not that he couldn’t lie. In the dirty business of espionage, lies, deceit and betrayal were the essence of the job. CIA and other intelligence operatives had to guard against letting this professional behavior become their personal baseline and they often failed, but Warfield had kept that part of his life—the set of skills he used to deal with the enemy—in a separate compartment from his personal values and conduct. When he answered the President’s question now, he was factual.

“I authorized it on certain conditions. Those conditions were met. The operation was carried out accordingly. Now you have to tell me if you want to know more.”

Cross understood the protection from knowledge Warfield was offering but said, “I do. Go ahead.”

“I may have gone too far, sir, but to let the Russian cross into Iraq was a risk the United States couldn’t afford, in my judgment. Given the intelligence we had—
I
had—the operation at the Habur border gate should have been almost routine—and carried out by the FBI.”

“And you notified the FBI in advance.”

“Yep, twice, and they didn’t want it.”

“But you didn’t talk to Fullwood?”

“Asked for him. He put Gilbert on me both times.”

“What did she say?”

“That they had their own sources. I think it’s possible she gave some credibility to my information but doesn’t have the balls to defend it to Fullwood. So I set up a safety net to stop the smuggler if and only if the FBI didn’t stop him before he entered Iraq.”

“You were certain there was uranium in that car?”

“There were radioactive emissions from the car and from the Russian himself when he was out of the car. I’m absolutely sure of that.”

“How did Fullwood know you were involved?”

“He’s bluffing.
Couldn’t
know.” Warfield was that certain Abbas didn’t leak it. No one else knew—except Fleming.

“What about Earl’s story that CIA was the source for the trial-run intelligence?”

“If it’s true, could mean another mole. Maybe in the CIA. Or the FBI.”

“That’s a jump, Cam. Could just be bad intelligence. It’s not a perfect world, you know.”

“If they got the dry run story from the CIA, their intel was wrong and mine was right, if you believe the Geiger-counter. So one possibility that has to be considered is that the dry run report was engineered.”

“And it couldn’t have been our boy Joplan.” Cross was thinking out loud.

“Right. It was long after Joplan’s arrest that the FBI said they received the intel from CIA. Me too.”

“What about your source?”

Warfield nodded. “I’d bet my life on him. Fact is, I have, more than once.” He told Cross of Abbas’s return to his own Iran after he graduated from MIT, and his eventual escape to Paris with his family and most of their wealth just before the religious regime took over Iran in the seventies; of his engineering firm in Paris that was a front for his operation to undermine terrorists and rogue regimes; and that Warfield and Abbas had cooperated in several operations over the years.

“CIA know him? Abbas, I mean.”

“He worked with CIA twenty years ago.”

Cross thought it over for a minute. “Look, don’t worry about this. I’ll handle Earl when we meet tomorrow. Keep your nose clean ’til then.” He patted Warfield on the back and left him standing there.

* * *

Warfield stayed over at Fleming’s that night and when he stepped out of the shower the next morning his cell phone was ringing. He grabbed the phone next to the bed as Fleming, now waking, rolled over, revealing the whiteness of her breasts in the tangle of sheets.

“Yeah,” he answered, somewhat preoccupied. Fleming was teasing him.

“Garrison here. Read this morning’s
Post
yet?”

Warfield was caught off guard. Cross didn’t place his own calls.

“Uh…no, sir.”

“Call me when you’ve read it.”

The front page showed a ten-year-old 2x3 photo of Warfield in uniform, and the headline, “Cross Assistant Foils FBI Operation in Turkey”. The story quoted “most-reliable unnamed” sources as saying Cross recruited Warfield to work behind the scenes, and that had led to Warfield’s interference in an FBI operation that compromised national security. Cross and Warfield may have operated in violation of federal law, according to the sources. Warfield was described as a forced-out army colonel who was handed a lucrative government contract to run a small training center subsidized by Congress. It went on to describe the border incident with details that could have come only from someone present at yesterday’s Oval Office meeting.

Fleming was reading over his shoulder. “Know who leaked it?”

Warfield couldn’t rule out Otto Stern or Bill Reynolds, but he put his money on Fullwood.

“Fullwood. Welcome to politics,” Warfield muttered.

Now the President would take plenty of heat, and any retaliation by Cross against Fullwood would give credibility to the story. Warfield knew he couldn’t so much as empty the president’s wastebasket now without it showing up in the news, leaving one avenue for him: He had to resign the White House post, and there was even a chance Lone Elm could be in political jeopardy if the story lingered on.