Blindfold Game

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

HUGH’S TEMPER WAS HOT improved by the sight of his overflowing mailbox or by the stack of message slips held down on his desk by the soapstone bear paperweight. The bear had been a gift from Sara the last Christmas they were in high school together. He wanted to pick it up and heave it through the window.

He didn’t, of course, but sitting on the impulse just pissed him off more.

There had, in fact, been no moment during which he had not been thoroughly pissed off since he woke up alone in his Anchorage hotel room yesterday morning. His admin assistant had taken one look at his face as he came in the door this morning and speech had withered on her tongue. He took a deep breath and let it out, uncapped his vente quadruple shot americano, took a big swallow to get his heart started, and began wading through the mess.

There was the usual assortment of pleas for help from agents and in formers in the field, from Tokyo to Taiwan to Ho Chi Minh City to Shanghai to Bangkok to Singapore to Calcutta. They wanted to pay off a source, they needed to verify intelligence, they had had to bribe a local official for a satellite uplink. The official had discovered who he was really dealing with and had doubled the already astronomical price. Hugh was in no mood to be generous with the hard-earned tax dollars of the American citizen this morning, and he rejected all but one request out of hand. A high-ranking Pakistani military officer had made an oblique approach to a junior officer of the American embassy at a cocktail party in Karachi, and the consul had handed the contact off to the case officer in Delhi, who had confirmed the identity of the officer in question and was recommending the agency make the officer an offer for his services. A walk-in snitch, Hugh’s favorite kind, and he e-mailed the case officer to proceed. There was too damn little in the way of human source intelligence available to the Directorate of Intelligence these days and he was willing to investigate every possible source no matter how unlikely, as these social first contacts too often proved to be. There were a dozen open cases that needed monitoring, some that needed orders issued for further action, and one that needed closing because the source had disappeared, which meant he had probably been discovered, which meant that he was either dead or in the wind. The intel the source had produced had bordered on hearsay and speculation, but he’d been on the payroll for six years, during which time he’d come up with maybe three really useful pieces of information, one concerning the sale of CBRN weapons components to North Korea, and the case officer in Shanghai had thought they ought to do something for the family. Hugh almost rejected this request, too, until he realized he was in no frame of mind to be making this kind of decision. He e-mailed the man in Shanghai and told him to do what he thought appropriate within budgetary constraints.

The phone rang. He snatched it up. “What?”

The voice on the other end said, “Sadly, that does not sound like the voice of someone who just got laid.”

Hugh’s grip tightened on the receiver. “I’m busy, Kyle. What do you want?”

There was a brief silence. “Okay, let’s start over. This is Kyle Chase, your oldest, bestest friend from when you were in diapers. Lilah and the kids are fine, thanks.”

No way was Hugh going to let Kyle lay any guilt on him. “I know that, I played horse with Eli and crazy eights with Gloria this weekend, not to mention ate large of Lilah’s pot roast.”

“It was my pot roast, actually. Lilah can’t cook worth a damn. Only bad thing I can say about her.”

Hugh didn’t say anything.

Kyle sighed. “So, did you miss her? I didn’t think her trial had finished up when I sent you over there.”

“It hadn’t. She was finishing up her testimony when I walked in.”

Kyle’s voice brightened. “So you did see her?”

Hugh hesitated.

“I knew it, I knew all you had to do was see each other and you’d both be toast. So tell me all about it and, please, don’t omit one shocking or salacious detail. I’m here for you, buddy. Go ahead. Share.”

Some of the tension went out of Hugh’s shoulders at Kyle’s determinedly sophomoric banter, and he swiveled to put his feet up on the desk and stare out the window at the aspens crowding the edge of the perfectly manicured lawn. “She had a room. We went back there. I spent the night. Next morning when I woke up, she was deja vu.” The sheets hadn’t even been warm next to him.

A long silence, and then a respectful whistle. “Man. I gotta hand it to her, that’s really cold.”

Hugh half smiled. “You don’t have to sound so admiring.”

“Yeah, but it’s got style, you know? Can’t fault our Sara for not making an impact.”

“Tell me about it.” Hugh paused. “She was happy to see me. She was at first, anyway. I don’t know what she was feeling when she woke up.”

It sounded like Kyle was rubbing his hand over his face. “How long you been married now, buddy?”

“Ten years. Like you weren’t there.”

“And how many of those years have you and Sara spent in the same town?”

“Cumulatively? About a year, total.”

“How many times you actually answered the same phone when you were home?”

This was cutting to the heart of things with a vengeance. “Twice.”

“And that probably includes that sleezy little motel down the road from the academy. Or do I mean that skanky town house in Alexandria when you were going for your doctorate and she was at Georgetown going for her master’s? The one where the roaches were bigger than the rats?”

Hugh was counting on his fingers. “No, wait, there was that apartment in D.C. Three times.”

A pause, then a sigh. “What I’m saying. You want things to change, start there.”

“What about my job?” Hugh said.

“What about hers?” Kyle said. “She always wanted the Coast Guard, ever since we were kids. Hell, she bucked both parents to get into the academy, and you followed right along, even got into Harvard so you’d be in driving distance while you were both in school. Time was you admired her guts and her determination.”

“Time was I wasn’t married to her.”

“And,” Kyle said, unheeding, “she was never going to be satisfied with shore duty. You knew going in she was going for her own ship as fast as she could, and you barely got through graduation before you married her anyway.”

The silence stretched out. “Hugh?”

Hugh sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. I knew.”

“Besides, it’s not like you aren’t a fart in a skillet your own damn self, always going three different directions at once in your job.”

“Yeah, Kyle, I think I’m going to let you go as my marriage counselor, you’re not exactly inspiring me with hope here.”

Kyle said simply, “Who else you got?”

Kyle Chase and Hugh Rincon had been two of a trio of friends born in a coastal village in south-central Alaska. The third was Sara Lange. All three of them were children of successful fishermen, and all three of them had been expected to follow in their fathers’ footsteps on the decks of their respective family vessels. All three sets of parents had been vastly disappointed, and if a childhood of getting into as much trouble as humanly possible hadn’t formed an unbreakable bond, then the joint sufferance of massive parental disapproval certainly had. Hugh laughed shortly. “No one. Apparently.”

“Not true. You’ve got me, and you’ve got Sara. You’ll always have me. Question is, will you always have Sara?”

“I’m not sure I’ve got her now.”

“Be good to find out.”

Hugh looked at his desk, piled high. “I’ve got to get back to work, Kyle.”

“Yeah. You might want to think some about that, too.”

“Tell Lilah and the kids hi.”

“Will do. And Hugh? All you have to do is figure what’s more important. Sara? Or your job?”

Kyle hung up, which was all right, because Hugh didn’t have an answer for him. His assistant, plump, perky, bright-eyed Marie, stuck her head in the door. “We ordering out for lunch, boss?”

He looked at the clock to discover that four hours had passed. “Oh. I guess.”

“The usual?” When he clearly couldn’t remember what the usual was she elaborated. “Turkey and cranberry sauce on sourdough, side salad with blue cheese, chips, and a bottle of water.”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” But Marie lingered.

He looked up. “What?”

Marie’s look admonished him for his abrupt tone. “Are you going to see her or not? She’s been waiting all morning.”

“Who’s been waiting all morning?”

“Arlene Harte.”

Hugh sat up straight. “Arlene’s here?”

Marie huffed out an impatient breath. “I left you a note.”

Hugh picked up the soapstone bear. The note, stained with coffee, was stuck to the bottom. Arlene Harte here requesting an audience with His Nibs. Marie’s neat handwriting had even made a note of the date and time, that morning, 7:55 a.m.

“Shit,” he said, and got to his feet.

Arlene was sitting in an anonymous anteroom just off of one of Langley’s equally anonymous hallways. Hugh had long thought that the idea behind the decor or lack thereof was that if the barbarians ever got inside the gates they would be incapable of finding their way through this much bland to any worthwhile target.

“I’m sorry as hell, Arlene,” he said. “I missed seeing your note until now.”

She smiled and stood up. “No problem. Finished the Sunday New York Times crossword while I was waiting.”

He took it from her. “So you did, and in ink at that, you slimeball.” They shook hands warmly. “Come on in. Coffee? Tea? Wait a minute.” He stuck his head back out the door. “Marie, make that lunch for two.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

Arlene settled herself in the chair across from his desk. “Thanks for seeing me without an appointment.”

“Anytime, Arlene, you know that.” He smiled at her. Bad mood or not, he was always very nice to Arlene. A comfortably sized blond in jeans and blazer over a white turtleneck, she looked like someone’s youthful grandmother. In truth she was anything but. Retired from the Associated Press after a thirty-year career reporting every global conflict from Vietnam on, she was spending what was commonly referred to as her golden years as a monthly columnist for Travel + Leisure. She was unmarried, without children, made her home in a one-bedroom walk-up in Georgetown, and seemed comfortable with the choices she had made in her life. She spoke French to the Paris-born and was famous for never missing three square meals a day in any war zone. It wasn’t a bad resume in the spy biz. “How’s the job?”

“They pay me to travel around the world and write about it. What’s not to like?”

He laughed. “I want to be you when I grow up.”

“So do I.”

“What brings you home, Arlene?”

She let her smile fade. “You know I was in Pattaya Beach the day of the bombing, right?”

Hugh looked at her. “Really,” he said. “I didn’t know, as it happens.”

Her mouth tightened. “I was afraid of that. I sent my report in by way of the American embassy in Bangkok. I knew when I didn’t hear from you that you’d probably never gotten it. Diplomats.” The word was an epithet.

“Squared,” Hugh said with feeling.

“That’s why I came in when I got back.” Without hurrying, Arlene unwedged an envelope from a battered leather bag on a short strap designed to hug her shoulder. Hugh had never seen her without it. He had been curious enough one day to rifle through it when she was out of the room and had excavated a reporter’s notebook, her passport, a lone Visa card, a fistful of Travel + Leisure business cards imprinted with her name, her office phone number, her cell phone number, her fax number, Marie’s phone number, Hugh’s phone number, and a Hotmail e-mail address to which Hugh had an icon on his desktop with the password already programmed in. He had just excavated a twelve-pack of Uniball gel pens with medium points when she came back into the room.

“Where’s your computer?” he had asked, and she had laughed and told him she had accounts in cybercafes from Bakwanga, Zaire, to Galahad, Alberta. “Cheaper than trying to find a tech when your computer freezes up.”

“And a lot harder to trace,” Hugh had said. “Why so many pens?”

“Two reasons. One, you can use pens for currency in a lot of third-world countries.”

“And?”

“And I might run out of ink.”

Marie brought in the sandwiches and drinks. Arlene waited for the door to close behind her before laying out a row of photographs across Hugh’s desk. They ranged from clear to indistinct, and once Hugh mentally filtered out the background noise in the way of waiters and drinkers and diners and Arlene, smiling at the camera with her curly hair frizzed into steel wool from what appeared to be a high level of humidity, they featured four men sitting at a table in front of a white sand beach with a strip of blue ocean beyond. He fished a magnifying glass out of a drawer and ran it over their faces. Two of them in particular drew his attention. “Hey?” he said, with a gathering sense of incredulity.

“Which one?” she said.

“The skinny one on the right.” He punched up a file on the computer and typed in a name. A mug shot flashed on screen. “Noortman, Jaap Junior.”

Arlene gave a satisfied nod. “Our friendly neighborhood international pirate.”

“Is-” His voice failed him. Arlene waited, her expression somewhere between expectant and joyous. “Arlene, is Fang the guy sitting on his left?”

She nodded, a grin breaking out. “I wasn’t close enough to catch the whole conversation, but I definitely heard Noortman call him Fang.”

Hugh dropped the magnifying glass and stared at her with something approaching awe. “Holy shit, Arlene. I don’t think we’ve got a photo of Fang. And we sure as hell don’t have one of the two of them together.”

“You do now.”

Hugh didn’t grudge her the satisfaction he heard in her voice. As far as she was concerned she could have retired at full pay on this one photograph alone. He took a self-indulgent moment of his own to congratulate himself once again on being smart enough to hire her.

They’d met three years ago, when Hugh had been seated at Arlene’s table at a mandatory second-banana appearance to support the director when he spoke to the National Press Club. From the subsequent conversation Hugh had deduced that writing a travel column wasn’t going to keep Arlene interested for very long. He’d asked for her card and called the next day to invite her to lunch at a small Indian restaurant, where she ordered the hottest curry on the menu. Her eyes hadn’t even teared up. Hugh had recruited her on the spot. She was one of three in his private stable of informants, all personally recruited and trained and all of whom reported directly to him.

The new big thing in the intelligence community was satellite surveillance, and much was made of the ability to read the license plate of a truck from low earth orbit. Hugh relied upon it himself every day on the job, but when it came right down to it, there simply was no substitute for the human eye, informed, trained for detail, and on the scene. He had chosen his operatives because they were multilingual and already widely traveled, with an inborn predisposition to head straight for trouble and an equally inborn lucky streak that enabled them to get out of it again with minimal damage, to themselves or their nation.

At which time they would call Hugh, or e-mail him, or show up in his waiting room, and his files on the pace of construction of nuclear weapons facilities in Iran or what Russian arms dealer was selling off surplus AK-47s in Bryansk or which Pakistani general was plotting an attack across the Pakistan-Indian border increased by another piece of information. It was almost never a vital piece in and of itself, but each piece fit into a larger puzzle whose growing picture helped him see what was going on in the world beneath the headlines on CNN. In his job he needed to know what was going to happen, not what already had. He was an analyst, a synthesizer, a spider sitting at the center of a web, recording each distant vibration of silk in an effort to predict from what direction the next threat was going to creep.

He laughed at this flight of fancy.

“What?” Arlene said, startled.

“Nothing. Sorry.” Fang and Noortman having drinks on a Thai beach with two unidentified Asians was definitely something he needed to know more about. “Go ahead,” he said with an encouraging wave. “Tell me the tale.”

Arlene folded her hands neatly in her lap and reached back for the memory of that terrible day.

She’d been in Pattaya Beach to write a column on single destination resorts going up in the area and had been wandering around in search of local color. She’d been a little over a block away from ground zero when the balloon went up. Her voice remained even and matter-of-fact, but it was clearly an upsetting memory.

Hugh made a comforting noise and nodded encouragingly.

“There were these two guys.” She pointed at the photos. “Asian for sure, Korean I’m thinking. Everyone else is screaming and feeling for where their eyes or their balls used to be, but not these two. They’re standing there, not talking to each other, not helping anyone, just taking it all in. It-” She shrugged. “They looked, I don’t know, wrong. So I followed them to a bar on the beach. Pretty soon this guy shows up.” She pointed at Fang. “Then Noortman appears, and I remembered that day we spent going through your bulletins.”

Hugh nodded again. One of the many reasons he had recruited Arlene was the fact that she literally never forgot a face, whether she saw it in person or posted on the wall of a post office.

“So, I got out my camera and told the waiter I wanted to take some pictures to send home to my grandkids. I talked to him in French and even though he informed me that my accent was odieux and my grammar horrible, hein, what could one expect of les americains after all and du moins I was trying, so he agreed to pose for a few pictures of himself so that I’d have a memento of that day on the beach at Pattaya.”

He looked at her purse. She grinned and opened it up to produce the tiniest digital camera he’d ever seen. “I’ve added to the armory.”

“So I see, and lucky for us.” He looked back at the photos. “Did you follow Fang?”

She shook her head. “That meeting looked a lot like somebody was hiring somebody else. I figured it’d be better to follow the boss. Looked to me like the boss was those two, so I followed them to Bangkok, and from there to London. They stopped in Bangkok long enough to acquire clothing and one piece of luggage each,” she added. “And before you ask, they bought their tickets through a travel agent that day, on a credit card that is paid off out of a numbered account in Riyadh. I went back and checked.”

“Yeah?” He looked again at the photographs, and at the two men with Fang and Noortman. Something nudged at his memory and he chased it down, a report in from another field agent a week, ten days before. He looked up at Arlene. “What were they doing in London?”

“Passing through.”

“Where were they headed?”

She looked a little embarrassed. “I lost them at Heathrow.”

“Come on.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“How do you mean?”

She pulled out a Visa card and held it out. “My company card was refused at the ticket counter.”

He took it automatically. “You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head.

He could feel his face getting red, the curse of his mother’s Scandinavian ancestry. He hit the intercom button with unnecessary force. “Marie? Get Arlene a new Visa card, will you? Ready for her by the time she leaves. No credit limit and no expiration date. My authorization, priority one. If you have any trouble with accounting, route it through miscellaneous operating expenses, Asian desk.”

Marie kept the books for his office and knew as well as he did that his operating expenses were maxed out, but she didn’t even consider arguing. “Okay, boss.”

“Thanks,” Arlene said. “I was able to see where they were going.”

“The Koreans? Where?”

“Moscow.”

“Moscow?” Hugh said. “Moscow, Russia?”

“It wasn’t Moscow, Idaho.”

“And this was in- What day was the bombing?”

“October fifth. Why?”

“No reason,” he said, and added with real feeling, “Dammitall, any-way.

She knew what he meant. “Yeah. I tried to bribe their names out of the ticket agent, but I must not have had enough money. She called them Smith and Jones.”

“Ha-ha,” Hugh said.

“Yeah. She tapped the photos. ”I don’t have anything to back me up here, Hugh, but I’ve got a nasty feeling about these two guys. I think they did it.“

“What?” Hugh said, but he already knew.

“I think they’re the ones who set the bomb on Soi Cowboy.”