Inside Out

75

“You are on the fifth floor,” Fifteen told Winter as they stood near the elevator. “Herman Hoffman, our host, is known as the Dean of Shadow because he oversaw the CIA's post-World War Two dark operations. After the Bay of Pigs, he realized there would always be politicians around to muck things up, so there needed to be an independent organization that could operate under the radar, a constant force presence in an ever-changing world. He developed the psychological testing that insured a steady source of talent, drawn from the pool of civilians applying for admission to the armed forces. Mostly he wanted men and women who, but for a few minor flaws, might have been great additions to the Special Forces.”

“Like psychopathic personality disorder?”

Fifteen frowned. “A cheap jab, Winter. He wanted intelligent, motivated individuals who would dedicate their lives to a larger picture-be loyal to their controllers knowing only that their jobs were necessary without being in the loop with the decision-makers. Every armed forces recruit takes a battery of tests, and those tests have questions embedded in them that set off triggers, draw our interest. Of every twenty thousand of those men and women, perhaps twenty are selected for more in-depth testing. Out of every hundred who make it through the process, one or two might make the grade. Sometimes none of them do. There are units scattered all over the world, ready to respond at a moment's notice.”

“So when Herman says kill six sailors and six deputy marshals, they just do it?”

“Yes.”

The room was furnished with a large TV, couches, tables, chairs, and a blank blackboard. A short wall separated the rec room from a kitchen, reminding Winter of a fire station.

“No windows,” Winter noted.

“This light is a blend of fluorescent and incandescent to simulate daylight. Follow me,” Fifteen said cheerfully. He led Winter back the way they had come after leaving the bedroom.

“This is the bathroom, and just here…” Fifteen opened the door beyond the bathroom. “Our ordnance room. Sorry I can't let you go in, but feel free to look.”

The room played host to stacks of machine guns, rifles, shotguns, handguns, and crates of bullets and other weapons, including grenades. There was also an open case of Semtex, the Eastern Bloc's version of plastic explosive, with about half of it missing. It was as harmless as modeling clay unless it was detonated by a nearby blast or one of the detonators stacked in a small box beside the crate.

“Very impressive,” Winter said.

“Just hardware. I'll show you what's impressive.”

Winter stood next to a garbage chute, while Fifteen opened the door at the end of the hallway. Fifteen led Winter inside. Three computers, along with assorted electronic equipment, filled a U shape of counters. On one of the computer monitors, a screen saver performed a series of optical illusions. Fifteen moved its mouse and the screen changed to show a satellite overview of a section of the Eastern Seaboard with four yellow dots on the screen.

“These are connected to CIA, FBI, and NSA supercomputers, as well as to our spy satellites.”

The man carrying the handgun came in and whispered something to Fifteen.

“I have to go upstairs for a moment. Please relax until I return. Just so you know, the phone isn't live, and the computers will not allow you access.”

“No problem,” Winter replied, bewildered.

“My man will be outside until I return.” Fifteen closed the door behind him, leaving Winter alone in the communications room.

Winter turned his attention to the computer screen. Even without names to identify the dots' locations, he knew pretty much what they signified. One of them was Washington, another Rook Island, a third was Richmond, and the fourth dot Ward Field in rural Virginia. He clicked on one and the screen went dark, the CPU turning itself off.

A stack of sixteen-by-twenty-inch photographs beside the computer caught his attention. The first one on the pile was of Rook Island. Winter's heartbeat quickened. He located the safe-house roof, tennis court, pool, beach, and trees-and the radar station beyond them. The picture had no date stamp, but the shadows told him that it was a morning shot. Obviously, these people not only could get the pictures from space, but they could get the CIA to task or aim spy satellites for them.

The next shot was of Ward Field and had been taken Friday morning, when he was there. He knew by the ruined hangar, the techs in the debris field, the FBI's tents, and because the Lear was parked in the field beside Shapiro's Gulfstream II.

The Arlington shot had been taken at night. He made out the roof and parking lots of a building he was sure he recognized as the U.S. Marshal headquarters. Winter didn't understand the significance.

The final shot in the stack was a grid of streets and the tops of buildings; he assumed, because of the river, it was probably downtown Richmond because the fourth dot had appeared on that city. He could make out cars and even a few people. The shadows and the orientation told him that it was a late-morning or late-afternoon shot. Someone had taken a grease pencil and circled what appeared to be a pay phone.

Winter was so intrigued by the pictures Fifteen had wanted him to see that he almost forgot he was in enemy territory.

An eight-by-ten photograph alone on the counter next to a printer distracted him. This was not a satellite picture, but one taken on a city street from ground level. A woman with spiky blond hair, dressed in black and wearing glasses, had been snapped as she exited a doorway, the name HOTEL GRAND etched into the glass window over the door. Despite the difference in her appearance, Winter recognized Sean immediately. He remembered the phone call to him at home the day before, the traffic noise-these people must have gotten information from the NSA, who intercepted the call and located the phone which led them to her, in Richmond.

He had to find out why they still felt a need to track Sean and convince Fifteen to call the dogs off her-unless it was too late.

He opened the door expecting to find the guard, but the hallway was empty. “Hello?” Winter called out. Nothing.

His watch told him it was 4:15. He opened the bathroom door, hoping to find the guard in there. The room was occupied, but not by the guard. Two corpses sat on the tiled floor, their backs resting against the wall. He knelt down to inspect them. Both wore ballistic vests under their coats. The emaciated men looked like winos. The closest had greasy hair and a nappy beard. His hands were callused, the fingernails caked with filth. He was dressed in new clothes, and the corner of something stuck out of his vest. Winter pulled out a foreign passport and opened it. The picture wasn't that of the corpse but showed a younger man with long hair and angular features. The name on it was Alexis Philipoff, a Russian national.

Winter slid the passport back inside the dead man's vest and hurried to the elevator. He pressed the call button. Fifteen had said he was going upstairs, but the car was rising slowly from below. The door opened and Winter got into the empty car. Before he could press a button, the door closed and started up.

When the elevator stopped, Winter stepped out into a circular foyer with granite floors, a curved faux marble wall, and an ornately carved stone arch with twin maple doors whose tops followed the curve. The domed ceiling had been painted black so that hundreds of tiny white bulbs transformed it into a quasi planetarium.

The elevator closed and started down again. Winter entered into a palatial apartment, his footsteps muted by a thick oriental rug on a polished oak floor. Paintings-classic pastorals and portraits-filled the walls. The ornate furniture looked too valuable to sit on.

“Anybody home? Fifteen?”

Winter opened the door on the far side of the room and stepped into the main hallway. The first room he came to was an office. The few papers, letters, and receipts that were scattered on the desk's surface appeared to be written in Cyrillic.

He opened the door to a bedroom that, in stark contrast to the rest of the apartment, was Japanese modern. Two life-size forms, dressed in samurai battle regalia, stood at either side of the bed. They looked like fierce insect-men, patiently awaiting the opportunity to lay waste to some invading army.

When Winter pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen, he was suddenly face-to-face with a man seated at the table, who was staring straight at him-or more likely into the fires of hell. “Ah, just great,” Winter groaned.

Based on George Williams's description, the white-blond crew cut and the wrist encircled by a barbed-wire tattoo indicated that the corpse at the table was the old man's helicopter pilot, Ralph. Someone had garroted him using a length of wire, some of which was still deeply embedded in the open slit in his throat.

A dinner plate between his forearms held in its center a single human eye with its malformed keyhole pupil positioned so it stared up at Winter.

Lying on a folded napkin beside the plate like a utensil was Winter's Walther PP. He lifted it and sniffed the barrel to discover it had been fired recently. Reflexively, he put the pistol into his jacket pocket. A fresh coating of blood mixed with what was surely brain tissue, bits of white hair, and bone decorated the wall behind one of the kitchen chairs like an abstract painting.

If Winter was found in the building, the FBI could easily draw the conclusion that he was involved with them through their scapegoat, Greg Nations. Anything he said would be meaningless, and Fifteen's threat against his family meant he couldn't defend himself with the truth without endangering them. The realization that he had been set up built a fire in the pit of Winter's stomach. It made sense-the Russian passport, the weapons, all pointed to a facility used by mercenaries. Even though the corpses in the bathroom obviously weren't the men listed in their passports, he knew the bodies would match them before he was hauled off to jail. But the corpses' Kevlar vests made no sense.

Winter peered out into the service hall, looking for the missing body that had left the wall splashed with gore. The reinforced door to a rear stairwell was dead-bolted, its key removed.

Back in the kitchen, Winter noticed blood smeared on the handle of the refrigerator, more on the floor in front of it. Winter opened the door and found Herman Hoffman's dead body again basing his assumption on George's knowledge. The old man had been crammed like a Peruvian mummy inside the commercial-size refrigerator, a small bullet hole in his forehead-undoubtedly fired from the Walther now in Winter's pocket. A printed note read, Curiosity killed the cat.

There would be no FBI arresting him. There were several pale blocks of Semtex in the old man's lap, and a red indicator light blinked on a detonator. He understood that opening the refrigerator door had armed the device.

In Winter's experience, real-life bombs set by professionals didn't have illuminated panels of numbers counting down to the explosion like in movies. There was enough explosive packed into the Sub-Zero, and on the floor below, to erase the building, to destroy all of the evidence except for things like torsos, passports placed inside body armor, guns, and badges like his own.

Fifteen intended to solve everybody's problems at once.