Inside Out

52

Washington, D.C.

Fred Archer rubbed his eyes, afraid he might fall asleep at the wheel. He hadn't had more than a catnap in the last forty hours, and now it was closing on midnight. He figured he could sleep at least five hours.

Upon arriving back in D.C. from Ward Field that afternoon, he had met with his director and the attorney general. The director had told the A.G. that he had every confidence Archer would get the Rook-Ward murders solved in a matter of days-that Archer was the only man who could get the evidence to charge Sam Manelli with new counts of conspiracy to commit murder. The attorney general had stressed the importance of putting it to bed immediately and insuring that Manelli's impending release was a very short one. Although neither his director nor the A.G. had said so, the meeting's purpose was to let Archer know that either he would accomplish their goal with all due haste or he would find himself in some dismal place like the Fargo office, wearing heated socks to discourage frostbite.

The long absences from his family, which Fred's job demanded, had taken the standard toll on his personal life. His wife, his three children, and even his dog had become strangers a long time before Fred's wife finally filed for divorce. In the first months after the divorce Fred had made an effort to visit his children, but they seemed to like it better when he didn't. Fred had stopped visiting altogether, which allowed him to work even longer hours than before-without the guilt his wife had always heaped on him.

He parked his Bucar, a silver Crown Victoria, a block from the brownstone where he rented a shabby studio apartment in the rear of the main house over a narrow garage. He parked in a loading zone-not caring if he got a citation this time.

He unlocked the gate and walked along the side of the house, his soles scratching the cement driveway. As he slid the key into the door to his apartment he heard the click of a cigarette lighter behind him. He had his hand on his duty weapon before he recognized the man whose face was illuminated by the flame. “Jesus, Fifteen!”

Half of the man's face was deeply burned. The man he knew only as Fifteen was a shadowy member of the espionage community. Fifteen was in his late forties and always dressed in loose-fitting outfits, which Archer figured covered a badly scarred body. He wore cotton gloves, an obvious wig, had a single eyebrow, and his nose looked as though it had been created by unskilled surgeons.

“Jumpy from the long hours?” Only half of his mouth moved when he spoke.

“Come in,” Archer said, cheerily.

Archer had first met Fifteen only after a dozen phone calls over a three-year span. He had given Archer golden evidence, which had allowed Fred to break eight high-profile cases, making him look like a brilliant investigator. It was after they had established a relationship that Archer had finally met the burned man. The fruits of their relationship had taken Archer from being an obscure agent in Seattle to a position on his director's speed dial and a coveted office in the Hoover Building. Archer carried a blue ID, which held a top secret access number, the same one as those given to deputy directors.

Fred was excited that Fifteen was carrying a nine-by-twelve manila envelope and suppressed an urge to snatch it away. For the sake of ceremony, Fred went straight to his kitchenette and poured two fingers of Glenlivet in two glasses, added ice, and, after putting in a drinking straw, set that glass of scotch on the coffee table before his guest. The good half of Fifteen's face smiled. “Thank you, Fred.”

Fred sat down in the chair opposite and tried his best to ignore the envelope in Fifteen's lap.

“Fred,” Fifteen said after he had taken a pensive sip of his scotch, “I have in my possession something I believe will be of great interest to you.” When he tapped the envelope in his lap, ash from his cigarette fell onto it.

“Anything you have is always of interest to me.”

“This concerns the incident on Rook Island.”

For a second, even though he knew Fifteen was hot-wired into the CIA, NSA, and other covert intelligence sources Fred could only imagine, he was stunned at the speed with which Fifteen had acquired information on a fresh investigation.

Fifteen handed the envelope to Archer. “It contains the identifications related to the four sets of fingerprints you sent out to all branches of the military, Interpol, and CIA.”

The four deceased UNSUBs' fingerprints had been run against millions of prints in the FBI's computer and had all come back unknown, baffling Archer. He was certain the four were ex-Special Forces-everything indicated it.

Archer's hands trembled as he opened the envelope, which contained a typed document and eight photographs. Archer hastily thumbed through them. The first four showed sharp-featured, hard-eyed skinhead soldiers wearing what had to be Soviet military uniforms. The other four were surveillance pictures, one taken of each of the same four men while they were in public. He recognized the men as being the corpses.

Fifteen crushed out his cigarette and placed the butt into a tin he kept in his pocket. “Those four men are absolutely your Rook Island killers. They were Russian ex-soldiers who have been under surveillance since they came into the country ten days ago. They slipped the CIA watchers and resurfaced on Rook Island. We figured that they were up to something. Now we know what that something was.”

Archer knew that if the CIA conducted surveillance on subjects inside the United States, they were obliged by law to involve the appropriate federal agency and step back, since CIA operations on American soil were illegal. The CIA, being the creature it was, didn't always comply. Like most intelligence agencies, the CIA lived to collect information but was reluctant to share it unless it would result in a net gain. If the agency had been tracking four men they suspected were up to no good, then hadn't alerted the FBI, that would be bad enough. But the fact that the same men had slipped their watchers to murder six sailors, six United States marshals, two Justice Department pilots, a federal attorney, and a protected witness made such an admission impossible at this point. He figured that it was sensible for the CIA to have Fifteen now make the information available to the FBI so they didn't have to admit their involvement. It was a win-win deal for the CIA because they could still take credit for identifying the Russians without getting a black mark for their failure to bring in the FBI.

Fifteen took a sip from the straw. “You could compare the prints yourself, but for the unfortunate fact that their bodies were somehow misidentified and misplaced. Chunks and ash by now.”

Archer knew Fifteen well enough to believe that the “accidental” cremations would prove to be true, but he didn't see the reasoning behind it.

“What about the others?”

“Others?”

“There were more than the four. There were at least eight, maybe more. I have a sketch of an old man with a malformed pupil who was their leader.”

“The sketch is worthless. This old man is merely a figment of a young boy's imagination.” Fifteen straightened in the chair. “I'll give you the other four because I know how important it is to your investigation. The Russian Mafia is a problem that concerns us all, and of course the remaining troops have to be accounted for, which they will.”

Archer couldn't afford to press his benefactor for details. What Fifteen said was how it was, period. Archer knew that asking questions was pointless. Fifteen told Fred only what he wanted to, when he decided the time was right.

“Let me see what I can do. You have there Sam Manelli's connection to the killers-picture-perfect proof that he hired them to do what they did. His Russian pals made them available to him and that evidence will be forthcoming”

“The A.G. expects me to close this yesterday,” Archer said, belaboring the irony of the statement.

“No problem.” Fifteen reached into his jacket and handed Archer a folded search warrant. “Judge Paul Horn issued this. Have a team of FBI agents in New Orleans serve it. It will yield proof that the killers were working for Manelli.”

“Enough to convict him?”

“Enough proof for the world, if not enough to actually convict him. That, you and I will take care of shortly.”

“I don't know what to say,” Archer replied, as he read the warrant.

“One hand washes the other, Fred. Is there anything else?”

“Just one more thing. We have to figure out how Manelli's hitters found out where Devlin was. I'm sure there was someone on the inside of WITSEC, probably inside the detail.”

“Obviously, there was an inside person,” Fifteen told Archer. “Someone in WITSEC got the intelligence out. You'll need proof of that. So, of all the likely candidates, whom do you most suspect?”

“The supervising deputy, WITSEC inspector Gregory Nations, is the most logical.”

“Let me see what I can scrounge up. If he was linked to Sam Manelli, I will get you evidence of it, financial records of payoffs for motive-he had ample opportunity. Is Sunday night soon enough?”

“Of course,” Fred said, his excitement barely under control.

“In return for assisting you in putting this disaster to bed, I may need a few small favors from you… when the time is right.”

“What sort of favors?”

“Nothing at all, really. In order to help you effectively, I need to stay involved.”

“Involved?”

“You'll need to keep me in your loop.”

Archer was taken aback. Fifteen had never requested such a thing and if Archer was caught at it, he would be dead in the water. This changed the face of their relationship to what was technically espionage. “Well,” Archer said, swallowing hard. “I don't know how I can do that.”

Fifteen reached down and picked up the envelope and its contents. “If you can't, I'll understand, Fred. But of course, someone else might end up with the case who does know. I'm sure you can function just as well in the future without my help. It's your decision.”

It was a decision Fred Archer had no trouble making.