Point of Contact

74

Rhodes shut the burner phone and tossed it on his desk. Zvezdev hadn’t picked up in two days. The fat bastard was hanging him out to dry.

Rhodes pulled the Kimber .380 from his wall safe and checked the magazine, then set it carefully on his desk next to the phone. He pulled out his legal passport, and a counterfeit one he’d purchased a week ago, just in case the whole thing went sideways. You don’t have a plan until you have a plan to escape, his father had taught him. Of course, that was in regard to fieldwork, but it was proving damn useful today.

It suddenly occurred to him that he wouldn’t see his son grow up — at least, not for the next several years. But then again, his own father had been absent for most of his childhood, and he’d made out all right. Fatherhood, like most things in life, was overrated. The little nipper would be just fine.

His wife? Well, a pretty girl for sure, but just another piece of ass. He was glad to be getting rid of her — for as little as she put out, she ran up a lot of bills. A twinge of guilt crept across his conscience. She’d have to file for bankruptcy, of course, and would undoubtedly lose the house. She might even have to get a job, poor thing. He couldn’t pay child support, let alone alimony. His bank accounts were drained, his trust fund depleted, and all of the offshore money he’d invested in his bet against Dalfan stock was gone now.

And in an hour, he would be, too.

But then again, she was screwing her Pilates instructor. A smile crept across his face as he imagined her shock when she finally figured out that he had fled the country and left her holding the bag.

Rhodes startled as the library door swung open. He turned around.

“Jack? What are you doing here — my God, son. What happened to you?”

Jack Ryan, Jr., stepped up to Rhodes’s desk, his battered face as grim as death. His left forearm was in a cast, and his hands were badly bruised and scraped.

“Surprised, Senator?”

“I thought you were in Singapore.”

“I was. So was Paul.”

Rhodes glanced over Jack’s broad shoulder. “Where is he?”

“Dead.”

Rhodes blanched. “Dead?”

“Don’t play games, Wes. You called me and warned me he was in ‘hot water,’ remember?”

Rhodes had, in fact, forgotten that he’d called Jack in a panic. Stupid. He took the measure of his merciless eyes. No point in lying to him now.

Rhodes fell into his chair behind his desk, and stared out of the wide bay window across the snow-covered lawn. “I really didn’t mean for that to happen.” Rhodes’s imperious voice faded to a whisper.

“He took out three North Korean RGB agents single-handedly, saving my ass, and Lian’s.”

Rhodes sat up. “North Koreans?”

“You should know. You sent them.”

Rhodes shook his head. “No. I didn’t send anybody.”

“At least one of us made it back.”

“Thank God, Jack. I couldn’t bear the thought—”

“Just tell me one thing. Why in the hell would you want to crash the world economy?”

Rhodes scowled in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

“The USB drive?”

“It was a software program to crash Dalfan stock. I was using it to place a bet against it and cash in.” The light turned on in Rhodes’s eyes. “At least, that’s what I was told.”

“Bullshit. But even if you’re not lying, you got Paul killed to turn a dirty buck.”

“I swear I didn’t mean to.” Rhodes’s face darkened. “Did Paul ever tell you how he and I knew each other?”

“No.”

“Take a seat. I’d like to tell you.”

“You don’t have the time.”

“Please. For Paul’s sake. I want you to know the kind of man he was.”

“Make it quick.”

“Paul and I were together in Sofia, Bulgaria, back in the eighties. We both worked for the Company.”

“I gathered as much.”

“I was on the fast track — born and bred for it, right? Well, I was posted in Berlin until I got busted out of that assignment and demoted to Sofia—”

“Busted for what?”

“The ambassador’s wife.” Rhodes couldn’t suppress a smile. “At his home. In flagrante delicto.”

Asshole, Jack thought. “You need to finish this.”

“So instead of getting fired outright, I was posted to Sofia — a nod to my father, who was still a man of some influence back then. I was warned that it was my one and only chance to redeem myself — a way to work my way back up from the minor leagues. Truth was, I was never really that good at field craft — especially at recruiting local talent — and I was under a lot of pressure to succeed. The one Bulgarian source I managed to develop was a man in the CSS—”

“Who?”

Rhodes read Jack’s face again. A lie now was a risk, but burning Zvezdev would be even riskier. “Doesn’t matter. Probably not his real name, anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes. So I worked out an arrangement with this contact. He was desperate for computer chips, which I provided, and I was desperate for intel, especially on KGB activities in the region, which he fed me at regular intervals. The only problem was that the intel was weak, and not very interesting to Langley. My COS put a lot of pressure on me to up the ante or kiss my career good-bye.”

“Where did you get them?”

“My official cover at the embassy was the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service. I had access to department money, and I knew someone in Silicon Valley who supplied them to me through a shell company.”

“And your COS approved of this?”

“He had no idea about it.”

“Then you were breaking the law.”

“Sure, but I didn’t care. I was desperate.”

“You were selling high tech to our enemies.”

“Trading, not selling. And not all that high tech — CPUs for personal computers, mostly. It was a calculated risk. My Bulgarian contact couldn’t get enough of them. Of course, it was actually the East Germans that wanted them, and the bastard I was giving them to was actually selling them to the Germans. Making a killing doing it, too. I didn’t care. I just needed the intel he was giving me, and when my chief threatened to ship me back to the States and kill my career, I confronted my contact. Told him I knew he was selling those chips to Berlin for a profit, and that he’d be shot by his KGB handlers if they knew what he was up to. I told him if he didn’t help me to pull off a really big score, I’d not only cut off his chip supply, I’d turn him in to Moscow.”

“Where did Paul come into all of this?”

“About a week after I confronted my contact, I received a very late call. My Bulgarian friend was on the other end, very excited and scared at the same time. He promised me the biggest intelligence coup of my career — maybe anybody’s. He said he had a high-level defector who wanted to come over. The only problem, it had to be done within the next two hours. And to come alone.”

Jack frowned. “Sounds like a setup. Why did you believe him?”

“Because he was all about the shekels. He said it would cost me twenty thousand dollars. He knew I couldn’t raise that amount of cash on such short notice, but we’d done business together, and he told me he trusted me to get it to him within the week. It sounded legit, so we set a place and time for the meet.”

Jack checked his watch. “You’ve got about a minute, at most.”

“For what?”

A look fell over Jack’s face. It chilled Rhodes to the bone.

“So, where was I? Oh, yes. Paul. Truth is, I hardly knew him. I think we met once or twice at some interminable staff meeting. We were both with the Company, but he was just an accountant working in a shabby little office in the basement. Well, when I got the call that set the meet, I scrambled downstairs to the basement to grab keys for an old Lada we used for undercover work. The locker where the keys were kept was just outside Paul’s office, and there he was, burning the midnight oil, and—”

Rhodes glanced out the window. Two black SUVs pulled up to the curb. Doors opened. Men and women in coats and armored vests marked FBI scrambled out. Rhodes stood, leaning on his desk, panic on his face.

“Jack—”

“What?”

“There must be a way.”

“Afraid not.”

Rhodes’s eyes flitted to his desk for an instant. Jack followed his gaze. The Kimber .380 was only inches from Rhodes’s manicured hands.

Jack slid his coat jacket back, revealing a pistol on his hip. “I’m begging you. Pick it up.”

“I think not.”

“Coward. Pick it up.”

Rhodes took a step back from his desk, palms up. “I can’t shoot you, Jack. I need you.”

“Need me? What for?”

“You’re my insurance. This whole affair — you’re up to your eyeballs in it. So is your father. Defense contractors? Spies? North Koreans? Your father would never risk the scandal. It would ruin his administration. Call him. Call this whole thing off, now, before it’s too late.”

Two FBI agents marched into the study. One of them held a sheaf of papers in one hand. “Senator Rhodes?”

“Jack? Trust me, this can all go away. Make the call.”

Jack shook his head and smiled. “You really don’t know my dad, do you? He called the attorney general himself.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I was hoping I could save the taxpayers a few dollars.”

“Weston Rhodes, this is a warrant for your arrest.” The FBI agent tossed it on the desk as the other agent approached Rhodes with a pair of handcuffs. “You have the right to remain silent.”