To Free a Spy (44 page)

“You can acquire the materials I will need without raising suspicion. And you may wish to suggest a target. I will consider your suggestion but it must have the potential for great destruction of life, disruption of orderly process and psychological impact. It will be better if it is part of the government.”

Seth didn’t want to spend any more time at the safe house. He gave Ana cash for the materials he needed, including a box-truck with a hydraulic lift that lowered from the back of the truck to the ground. She would use the truck to haul the supplies and Seth would use it later in his operation. Ana agreed to come up with a list of targets. They arranged for their next phone contact and left the safe house separately.

Three days later they met at a new place. Ana left the materials she had acquired for Seth in the truck, which she had parked in a remote area of a shopping center far from any structures where it might invite suspicion. When Seth asked for her suggested targets she named several. At the top of the list was the Justice Department, whom she told Seth was most responsible for her wrong conviction. Seth wanted to know the number of workers at each potential target, their level of importance in the government, the probable effect of their loss on the operations of government and on the psyche of the citizenry. Those were the criteria he’d use in selecting his target.

* * *

Seth found the truck. When he drove onto the street a gray Chevrolet Suburban was following him but it soon turned off. A black sedan took its place but it also went another direction.
Paranoia
, Seth thought.
I have been lucky too long and now I am getting paranoid.
He drove a circuitous route and an hour later ended up at his motel, an extended-stay type that provided maid service only on request. He drove the truck around to the rear of the building and backed it up to his ground-floor room. Over the next three hours he moved the supplies into the room, waiting between trips until no one was in the parking lot to see him.

Enabled by the credentials Ana had secured for him in the name of Ahmed Ahmed with the assistance of Tot Templeton, Seth landed a full-time job with D.C. Private Select Services, the firm that provided maintenance and repair for several federal facilities, including the Department of Justice building. The personal interview that preceded hiring wasn’t easy. Seth’s very presence created anxiety if not fear in anyone near him. That persona was legendary and he had never done anything to soften the impact. But he had to work up a non-threatening act so he would be hired by a prospective employer.

Ana had helped him with the employment application and told him to name Templeton at State as a reference. He received the security clearance DCPSS required within a week and they put him to work the next day. Every night when he returned to his motel he worked on the bomb until two in the morning and got up at six to go to work. It took him thirty-three days to complete his masterpiece, working in his off-duty hours.

It was a Sunday night and the area at the rear of the motel was deserted and dark. He removed the door and plate glass window from his room and rigged a series of pulleys and rope. This mechanical assist made it possible for him to inch the bomb across the floor to the lift gate. He then raised the lift gate to the level of the truck floor and slid the explosive into the truck using the pulley system again. He leaned against the inside wall of the box truck for a moment while he caught his breath. He imagined the carnage, and wished for a moment he could share it with someone.

His plan wasn’t original. The same thing had been done in the United States more than once. And this wouldn’t come close to the eleventh of September achievement. But none of the previous operations were carried out by one man working alone. Fumio Yoshida, the Japanese he’d made arrangements for, worked only with Petrevich and his two underlings but failed. This time the credit would go to Seth. Unlike others, he would escape to strike again. He would be the force dominating the news now, the object of endless, exhausting, futile searches worldwide. The mention of his name would from this day forward create a quickening of the pulse. He would be the new symbol of justice in the Middle East, the icon of fear in America. The replacement symbol for bin Laden, who had lost his life because of complacency and carelessness.

Seth had studied structural design at the German university he attended and knew how and where to place explosives for greatest results. During his DCPSS service trips to the Justice building, he surreptitiously took photos and made sketches of the visible structural components in the basement. Soon he had enough data to determine where to park the box truck for maximum effectiveness. Partial devastation of the building was his minimum expectation but total collapse was not impossible. He’d observed and memorized the security procedures and the names of the guards who inspected the vehicles entering the Justice compound. He involved Ana as little as possible and never told her he had selected the Justice building, or when the attack would take place, consistent with the extreme caution that had kept him alive for so long.

* * *

On the long-prepared-for Monday morning, Seth was awakened by his iPhone alarm after an hour of sleep. He’d killed the lights around three-thirty that morning when he was sure the bomb and his plan were firmly in place, but his mind ran wild with thoughts of the excitement that awaited him. Now he shaved his face clean and put on a fresh DCPSS khaki shirt and inspected himself in the mirror. He wore a plain white tee shirt under his uniform shirt.

He had just one more thing to do. When he was two blocks from the Justice Department building he stopped in a loading zone, left the engine running, unlocked the cargo door of the truck, raised it enough to slide under and set the timer for ten minutes. As he started to jump down he thought of the traffic, or maybe a delay at the guard station before he was cleared to drive under the building. Seconds clicked away as he stood there debating with himself. On the other hand he didn’t want to allow time for the bomb to be discovered and disarmed after he parked the truck in place. He reset the timer to thirteen minutes and synchronized his wristwatch so he could monitor the countdown precisely. Seconds were critical. He jammed the large padlock shut.

Now back in the flow of traffic, he rehearsed everything one last time:
What to say to the security guard. Exactly where to leave the truck. His escape route. And don’t attract attention by running.
He patted the Uzi under his right thigh. He wouldn’t need it after he got inside and would leave it in the truck with documentation showing his real name, Seth, by which the intelligence agencies of the world knew him, before walking away and disappearing from the building. The adrenaline was flowing. If it wasn’t already famous enough, the name Seth would soon be cemented among the most feared and despised names in the world. But among his brothers he would be proudly spoken of in the most revered terms.

He was a little relieved when he saw that the guard at the delivery entrance this morning was one he recognized. Their schedules changed from time to time. Seth’s truck was third in line and he’d already used up almost eight of his thirteen minutes. He had five minutes to clear the checkpoint, park the truck and get out of the building. Perfect. When he got to the gatepost he told the guard, “The company truck got a broken axle, Larry. I must use this rental until repairs are made.” He was confident Larry would pass him through as usual without inspecting his cargo.

Larry nodded his understanding. “Gotta put her in the computer, though, Ahmed. It’ll be just a minute.
Hey! You shaved your beard!”

“Yeah, my girlfriend, she wanted me to.”

Seth drummed his watch. Three minutes and two seconds to go. He glanced at the hydraulic concrete barrier ahead of him that would recede into the floor when he was cleared for entry.

At a minute and thirty seconds, Seth looked over to see if Larry was almost finished checking him in, and something moving in the truck’s mirror caught his eye.
Black helmets. Black uniforms!
Assault weapons!
He spun his head around to the other mirror. There too! Larry had disappeared.

Seth jumped out and wildly sprayed his Uzi as he ran. He was two steps from the truck when his right leg collapsed in burning pain, then something ripped through his neck and he stumbled to the ground. As light faded from his eyes he knew he was dying, but at least the bomb would blow before anyone could disarm it. His name would mean something to the world forever.

* * *

It was mid-morning when a direct line to Cross rang in the Oval Office. “Yes?”

“Warfield.”

“How did it go?”

“It’s over. Two FBI agents are wounded but they’ll be okay. Had emergency medical standing by.”

“The bomb…”

“Eight seconds to spare.”

“Seth?”

“Under heavy guard at a hospital. Took a couple hits. He’ll live, though.”

“And your Ms. Koronis?”

“FBI’s picking her up now. I think they had an agent in every tree on her block for the last month.”

“I want her brought here.”

“To the White House?”

“Right here to the Oval Office. I want you here, too, Cam.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

Warfield was sitting with Cross in the Oval Office when Paula buzzed and said the FBI had arrived with Ana.

“Send her in.”

“Alone, sir?”

“The agents can wait at the door.”

Paula ushered Ana inside the great office. She caught Warfield with a glance and arced her eyebrows over an eye-roll on her way out.

Cross rose, walked around his desk and waited for a moment as Ana tried to pull herself together. “Ms. Koronis, I don’t know where to begin what I have to say to you.”

“I, I, uh, please excuse my appearance,” she said. “I had no idea I’d be coming here. It’s been…”

“I know. I know,” Cross said, putting his arm around her shoulder. “I’m very sorry for what has happened. I wish it could have been different. But I must tell you the United States, and I’m speaking for myself personally as well, we owe you. We owe you an apology for the time you spent in prison. For robbing you of your good name, your freedom. The anguish you’ve suffered. And we owe you our gratitude for the service you provided in bringing Seth down. The tapes. The risk you took.”

“The tapes?
You’ve
heard the tapes?”

“Read the transcripts. Cam brought them in yesterday. The phone taps. The wires you wore at the safe house. You’re good.”

“He’s my own flesh and blood.” She’d lost her composure and was crying softly. “It wasn’t easy to, to…but I couldn’t have lived with myself unless I at least tried.”

“It had to be tough,” Cross said.

Ana nodded and dabbed her eyes. “Cam Warfield made it possible. Without his planning, I don’t know…I couldn’t have pulled it off.”

“Now tell me what I can do for you,” Cross said.

She was thoughtful for a long moment. “My life,” she said. “All I want is to get my life back. I have to do that for myself.”

* * *

When Ana left, Warfield shook his head. “She’s taken some hits. Prison. Austin. Her brother.”

“Austin. Biggest disappointment of my life, too. We were like brothers.”

“He’s paying the price now,” Warfield said.

* * *

The following Saturday evening Warfield and Fleming DeGrande picked Ana up at her townhouse and the three of them went out to dinner. They had avoided being seen together during the operation. They were into their second drink when Fleming asked the obvious question.

“What now, Ana, now that you’re beyond this, uh,
detour
?”

“I’m going to organize myself to start writing my book.”

“You’re doing a book about all of this?” Warfield said, his eyebrows rising. “I see it now. Guess who’s going to be the bad guy,” he said, smiling.

“Cam, you know I don’t blame you for what happened. Forget that. But I’m not writing about this mess, anyway. I’ve been planning this thriller for years and I’m not putting it off any longer. I’ve saved up enough international intrigue from my legal work for State to do a dozen spy novels. Austin gave me a lot more stuff, talking about operations at the Agency. I made notes from time to time and put them in a safe at the office—at least until my trial. Wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked them up, but nothing had been touched.”

Warfield said, only half-jokingly, “It could get you another trip to the courthouse.”

“Don’t worry. No one will recognize the source material when I get through mixing everything up and changing the names.”

After the shoot-out at
Justice, the press began to look at the sordid mini-dramas that led up to it. Someone was leaking information to reporters and most of it was accurate. Although Warfield disliked leaks and the fact that nothing could ever be kept private in Washington, he was not unhappy about this one. To
Washington Post
reporter Bob Roberts, Quinn became a personal crusade. He began his research as far back as Quinn’s work on the New Jersey gambling legislation and his political success that followed. He reconstructed the evening of Quinn’s roast and Karly Amarson’s murder, only some of which was speculation on his part.

When Roberts reported the deal Fullwood made with Senator Abercrombie the Senate launched an investigation, and by the time it got under way, the General Services Administration notified Abercrombie’s real estate firm, as landlord for the FBI office in Taylorville, that it was terminating the lease.

The GSA fired its man who had conspired with Abercrombie and the FBI arrested him. Abercrombie received the bad news about the lease cancellation from his sister, who called him at his office in Washington late one afternoon. She also told him the banks were initiating foreclosure proceedings. Abercrombie’s staffers found him dead in his office the next morning. There was no note. At first it was reported as a heart attack but the autopsy revealed an extreme overdose of Seconal.

Fullwood continued his denials right up to the beginning of the Senate hearing, when he was asked whether he and Abercrombie ever had a conversation in which the Senate’s termination of Lone Elm and the FBI’s leasing of office space from Abercrombie were linked in any way.