To Free a Spy (38 page)

“I’ll try to help.”

“Ever work for the CIA director?”

“Quinn?”

“Yes.”

There was silence for a few moments, then, “Maybe we could meet.”

“Breakfast tomorrow morning.”

* * *

Warfield arrived first and chose a corner booth and watched the action behind the counter. At five-thirty in the morning Waffle Houses around the country are preparing the service workers of the world for the day with hot coffee, pecan waffles, bacon and eggs, grits and their favorite music on the jukebox. To Warfield, it was something to watch. The waitresses barking orders one after another and the cook keeping track in his head of every order in the house. Warfield wondered how they kept it straight.

Randall Coffman was thirty-one and had been with the Agency for nine years. Graduated fifth in his class at Spelman College in Atlanta with a major in government and minor in criminal science. He had been quarterback and senior-year captain of the football team and active in the Spelman chapter of SIP, Statesmanship in Politics. Coffman denied any interest in running for political office, but he’d always been awed by the vision of the founding fathers. Now he’d come to loathe the double-speak, the legal bribery and so many other examples of what he considered depravation and moral prostitution in Washington. Warfield had gleaned that information off Coffman’s personal Web page after they talked on the phone last night and decided the guy was pretty gutsy to publish some parts of it.

At six-two and two-hundred pounds, Coffman was in good shape and well-groomed. He wore creased khakis and a navy knit shirt.

“Knew you from your pictures on TV,” he said with a wide smile of healthy white teeth.

After a few minutes of sizing each other up and weighing the prospects of the Redskins at Dallas, Coffman beat Warfield to the point. “Quinn in trouble?” There wasn’t much chance of a conversation being overheard in the Waffle House either.

Warfield shook his head. “Special project.”

Coffman nodded and smiled. “I’m cool with that.”

“You were on his security detail?”

Coffman nodded again.

“He leave you guys behind a lot?”

Coffman shrugged. “At times.”

“And you protested.”

“And how did you know that?”

“Tell me about it.”

Coffman took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’d seen it happen now and then…before I was in a
position
to protest. It was okay with me before I was put in charge of his detail. At that time it wasn’t my place to call him on it.”

“Talk to Quinn about it when you became in charge?”

“First couple of times, no. It was an hour or two here and there. He’d say where he was going, we’d shadow him from a respectable distance, stay out of his way. I always knew where he was. No big deal.”

“And then?”

Coffman looked out the window. His lips pulled tight and his eyes glassed over a little. “I’m telling you this because I’m still stinging from the transfer. And because I think I know the kind of guy you are. But I’ll deny saying it so don’t quote me…unless you’re wired. You wired?” His facial expression said he was only half joking.

“We’re on the same team, Randall.”

“Quinn was in New York couple days. Just finished making a speech at a breakfast conference one morning. It was early, around eight. Said he had some private business to take care of and would be back in time for a meeting scheduled for noon the next day. I’m saying to myself,
the next day?
He didn’t want a tail—nobody was to follow him. Told me to cover for him. That’s more than twenty-four hours he’s gonna be invisible. I figured he was visiting a lady friend, maybe, because of the sly little grin he gave me.”

“You complied?”

Coffman nodded. “Big mistake. Murphy’s Law or somebody’s…you know, if something can go wrong, it will. Sure enough, my supervisor checks in with me. I lied to him. Told him Quinn was in his room, had the flu, didn’t want to be disturbed for any reason.” Coffman looked into his coffee mug. “You can’t imagine how I hated myself for doing that.”

“I think I can.”

“So when Quinn came back the next morning I confronted him, respectfully. Told him I wouldn’t be a party to that again. That turned out to be my last day on his security detail. At least he didn’t fire me.”

“Who knows about this?”

“The overnight? No one. Didn’t even tell my supervisor. Quinn may have, I wouldn’t know, but no one ever said another word to me about that night.”

The waitress brought more coffee. The two men sat without speaking for a minute.

Then Warfield said, “You happen to remember the date?”

“
Remember!
It was the longest twenty-four hours of my life and I’ll
never
forget it. The man whose life I was responsible for was out of touch. It was last year, April 22nd.”

* * *

Warfield returned to his office perplexed. If all of this didn’t cause him to wonder about Austin Quinn, it damn well did nothing to clear him. But that seemed to make Warfield more reluctant to believe it. Maybe he was afraid to learn it was Quinn. The CIA director might be arrogant, cocky, demanding, but it was unfathomable that he was disloyal to his country. Warfield found himself wanting to walk away from it, leave it where it was, let someone else find it out if it was true. But no man with an ounce of grit would let it lie.

He called the White House travel office and asked for flight schedules from New York to Paris. Someone named Tammy took his call.

“Most flights depart late afternoon or early evening from JFK and arrive in Paris the next morning, Paris time. That okay?”

“So if I need to leave New York around ten in the morning and be back by seven the following morning?”

“No, sir. That wouldn’t be possible.”

“One other question. Would those schedules have been different in April last year?”

“I’ll have to check. Please hold.” Two minutes later, she was back on the line and said none of the New York to Paris schedules had changed since then by more than an hour. “Anything else, sir?”

Warfield checked his notes. It looked like this cleared up any question of Quinn meeting with Seth in Paris on that night. He was relieved. “No, that’s it.”

Tammy caught Warfield before he hung up. “Oh, sir, I just thought of this: I don’t suppose you want to consider the new Oberon. No one here ever uses it but I think it does meet your scheduling requirements.”

The Oberon!
Of course. “What’s the schedule for the Oberon?” he asked.

“Depart New York JFK at ten o’clock a.m., arrive Charles DeGaulle seven-thirty that evening.”

“Every day?”

“Seven days a week, sir.”

“And return?”

“Leave DeGaulle at ten a.m. and arrive JFK at seven-forty-five a.m. same day as departure. Isn’t that amazing?”

Warfield hung up after asking Tammy to repeat the Oberon schedule to be sure he heard it right. It
was
amazing, all right, and it meant Quinn could have completed his speech on the morning of 22 April, flown the Oberon to Paris to avoid leaving a trail flying on a government plane, met with Seth and returned to New York in time for a noon speech on the twenty-third. Again, not proof,
but it was possible.

He called Paula and asked her to get the passenger lists for the Oberon on 22 and 23 April. That night he called Randy Coffman and they met at the Waffle House again. This time they sat in Warfield’s car instead of going inside.

“What’s up now, Colonel?”

“Ever know Quinn’s aliases?”

Coffman chuckled.
“Mad dog!”
he said.

“
Mad dog?
”

“That’s how I remembered the aliases. Melvin A. Davis and Donald O. Goodwin. He had credentials for both. Driver’s licenses, credit cards, passports, Social Security numbers, home addresses. You know, the works. Using aliases isn’t necessarily unusual, of course.”

* * *

Next morning, Paula brought in the Oberon passenger lists. “I should get a medal for this one.” She turned to leave and looked back. “Watch out for Veronica, Cameo.”

Hurricane Veronica had strengthened overnight but was almost stationary seventy miles from land due east of Washington. Forecasters now believed she would begin to track to the north and west today, and had issued warnings for the coastal areas of Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. The D.C. area was already soaked and torrential rain was expected to continue. The National Weather Service and Homeland Security were hyping the potential danger to not only coastal areas but far inland as well. It was possible that Veronica would prove to be the biggest and most devastating storm in U.S. records.

Warfield blew Paula a kiss and slashed open the envelope. There were two Davises on the twenty-second, but no Melvin. He flipped to the Gs and there his eyes froze.
Goodwin Donald O!
He thrashed through the names for 23 April and found the name there too. Warfield felt blood rushing to his head. Donald O. Goodwin flew the Oberon to Paris on 22 April and was back in New York at seven-forty-five on the morning of the twenty-third. Anyone taking those flights could have made the speeches Quinn made in New York on those two days.

Warfield drew a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. Ten minutes later he called Quinn’s office and left a message with his assistant that he would be in his office at the White House until six that afternoon if Quinn wanted to talk about his trip to Paris last year on 22 April. Warfield knew it was about to get ugly.

Quinn stood in Warfield’s
White House office doorway at five-fifty that afternoon. The director had a habit of fidgeting with the cuffs of his shirt until they peeked out beyond the end of his coat sleeves. He leaned against the door frame and looked down at Warfield seated behind his desk. “Had some other business here, Warfield, and remembered you invited me to drop by your office. What’s on your mind?”

Warfield knew how the man must have felt about being there. The two were not in the same galaxy in terms of political power or prestige, nor had they ever been close enough in personal terms to set rank aside, yet Warfield had called the meeting. Quinn could have demanded an alternate setting or ignored Warfield’s message altogether. By stopping at the doorway he at least remained on neutral ground, and he made a point of saying he was there because he had other business at the White House—not because of Warfield’s call. Warfield knew better. The Paris reference had done its job.

“There are a couple of things I wanted to mention to you in private,” Warfield said.

“Let’s hear ’em.”

Warfield had decided to get Quinn’s reaction to the Swope news first.

“It’s about Helen Swope.”

“
Swope
? What about Helen Swope?”

“I got a call from Joe Morgan, the U.S. attorney. Said Swope’s got a lawyer and plans to retract her testimony. Morgan thinks she may have been the target of tampering at Ana’s trial.” Warfield was careful to present this to Quinn neutrally.

“Tampering!”
Quinn maintained a blank expression.

“Could mean a new trial for her. God only knows what else will come out of it. Morgan’s meeting with Swope and her attorney tomorrow. If Swope is believable, Morgan plans to take it to Ana and Judge Hartrampf.”

Quinn became pensive. After a period of silence, he said, “You also said something about Paris?”

Warfield nodded. “Yeah, the trip Donald O. Goodwin took to Paris last year. Twenty-second of April to be exact.”

Quinn’s cognition was subtle but Warfield caught it. After a couple of seconds, Quinn cocked his head again and said, “I travel a lot, Warfield. Sometimes to Paris, even. I lose track of places and dates but what the hell difference does it make to you, anyway? I don’t answer to you or to anyone else. Snooping around on my travels part of your assignment? I don’t get you, Warfield.”

Warfield was calm. “Nothing like that, Austin. Came up in my mole hunt. Twenty-second April was the date of the Seth meeting.”

“Screw you, Warfield, I was in New York when that…” Quinn stopped mid-sentence.

Warfield had him!

Quinn reddened, then turned his eyes down the hallway. After a few seconds, he stepped inside the room and closed the door. “Know why I came here, Warfield? I came here to put a stop to this. You can bet hell will go out of business before I ever explain one second of my time to you. Who do you think you are, you son of a bitch, looking over the shoulder of the director of central intelligence. Without Cross, you’re a serial number buried in the hollows of an outdated army database somewhere, a farm boy come to town, a career army bootlick. I wonder how much brass you sucked up to on the way up—all the way up to colonel, too, huh Warfield? Couldn’t quite climb that hill to general, could you? I advised you to get off this project of yours when we were in the car, but now it’s you or me and I’ll tell Cross that. Got any doubt about how that’s going to turn out?”

Warfield didn’t say anything. He maintained eye contact with Quinn, and waited.

Quinn finally spoke, having spent some of his emotion. With hoarse voice, he said, “I know it
looks
bad, Warfield, but it’s certainly not that way. Who else knows about it?”

“No one at this moment. But that will change tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Like I said, Morgan wants to meet with Swope, her lawyer, and me. Then he’ll see Ana.”

“And you’ll say what?”

“Put yourself in my shoes. What would you say?”

Quinn withdrew again. After a moment he leaned closer to Warfield, presented a strained smile and addressed him with newfound warmth. “Look, Cam, this Paris trip is nothing like you’re suggesting, but if it gets out it’ll be a problem—not only for me but for Cross, the administration. You and I go back too far for this to come between us. Those things I said a minute ago, I lost control, that was just my frustration boiling over. Don’t hold that against me. We could work something out before you see Morgan tomorrow, just between us.”

Warfield looked at Quinn. Groveling didn’t become this man who was used to taking what he wanted without asking.