Liberty

CHAPTER FOUR

Nooreem Habib was a modern Egyptian woman. She had spent much of her youth in England, where she attended private school. Her father was a progressive — he sent her to an academically challenging school for girls, where, among other things, she learned a great deal about computers.

Just before graduation the headmistress had called her in for a private interview. “Miss Habib, you have a fine mind and have been an outstanding student. What do you plan to do with your life?”

“Return home to Egypt,” she explained. “Marry an acceptable man. This is what my father wishes me to do.”

“You have crossed a great cultural divide in the last few years,” the headmistress observed. “Will the life that you describe be enough?”

“It is what my father wishes.”

“There are those in the Arab world who feel that murder in the name of Allah is their holy duty. Do you feel that way?”

“No,” Nooreem Habib said curtly and forcefully. “Those people pervert Islam. They are enemies of the human race.”

They talked for several hours, not as student and headmistress, but as two adult women. The upshot was that the lady gave her a telephone number. “If you ever feel that you know something that you must share, call that number.”

Her father had an account at Walney’s and had done business with Abdul Abn Saad from time to time, so when she wanted a real job, she got one at the bank. In the back office. As a bookkeeper, making meticulous entries in huge, bound ledgers. She felt like a clerk in the illustrations of one of the Dickens books, wearing the eyeshade, writing all day … The only thing she lacked was a stool. And she needed one.

Then last year Walney’s got around to purchasing computers. Soon Nooreem Habib was heavily involved in making the transition from ledgers to computerized records. She was intellectually challenged for the first time since leaving school, and she enjoyed it immensely.

She remembered that she had the telephone number six months into the computer project. When the bank’s cash flows and wire transfers were sorted electronically, patterns emerged. Nooreem Habib was a very bright woman, and she recognized the patterns for what they were. Walney’s was transferring money around the globe for terrorist organizations. Knowingly or unknowingly. Instinctively she knew not to discuss her observations at the bank, but she called the number that the headmistress had given her four years earlier.

One day a woman passed her a Minox camera and six rolls of film in a bus on the streets of Cairo. A note inside the camera told her where and how to leave the film after it was exposed. She used the camera to photograph computer printouts, then wrapped the exposed film roll in a candy wrapper and left it behind the toilet paper dispenser in the ladies’ room.

Nooreem had never heard the name Janos Ilin, had never seen him, and didn’t know her contact, the person who serviced her drop. The fact she knew nothing to tell if she were caught was not lost upon her.

Sometimes she wondered who received the financial information that came from the bank records. The British, she supposed, MI-5. Whoever they were, they were enemies of the terrorists, as she was.

She had only one roll of film left, certainly not enough for the vast mountain of transactions that she thought needed to be sorted through for the patterns that she knew were there. Today in a quiet moment she began downloading critical files onto a compact disk. She filled the CD with file after file until the computer said it was full. Only then did she remove it from the computer.

Later that morning when she went to the rest room, she took the CD along and tucked it into the space behind the toilet paper dispenser.

The morning after his ride with the president, Jake Grafton broke the news of his assignment to Toad Tarkington when he arrived at the office. Jake had already been there for an hour.

“You’re kidding!” Toad exclaimed. “Find the bombs?”

“I have got an interview in a half hour with the director of the CIA, and an hour later, the director of the FBI. I suspect that half my time is going to be spent in meetings with people from all over government, so that means you are in charge of getting the work done.”

“Whew!” Toad said, still trying to come to grips with Jake’s — and his — new assignment. “Where do we start?”

“With office space and a staff. And computers and a budget. I want people working tomorrow morning.”

“Who?”

“You and Tommy Carmellini for starters.” He looked at his watch. “The first thing, I think, is to find out what everyone knows about the hunt for the bombs. And what the FBI is doing about Mr. Doyle.”

“I thought you said the president just asked you to find the weapons?”

“He did. Presumably the FBI will take care of friend Doyle, but I’ve got this feeling. Ilin linked the bombs and Doyle together, if only by discussing them both in the same conversation. The commander in chief gave me a lot of authority, so I’m going to use it.”

“Why not?” Toad muttered. He was beginning to see the dimensions of this mess. “You’re going to be out there on the tightrope all by yourself, aren’t you?” he demanded. “Without a net.”

“Oh, no. You’re going to be right there beside me, shipmate, all the way across. If we make it, we’ll probably get adjoining cells in some ritzy federal penitentiary.”

“There’s a happy thought,” Toad said without enthusiasm.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency was a tall, portly man, almost bald, named Avery Edmond DeGarmo. He and Jake had crossed swords before. His round, jowly features wore a frown as Jake entered his office, which Jake knew from past experience to be DeGarmo’s usual expression. He looked like a man who rarely heard good news.

This morning the director had the president’s letter on his desk. Jake knew because he had been kept waiting in the reception area while DeGarmo called the White House, confirming the authenticity of the letter.

“At it again, I see, Grafton,” DeGarmo said testily.

“At what again, Mr. DeGarmo?”

“Charging off to save the republic.”

“I didn’t ask for this assignment.”

DeGarmo made a rude noise.

“I would think that you would welcome all the help you can get to find those missing Russian warheads.”

“Amateurs mucking up the water won’t help much,” DeGarmo snapped. “If I thought they would, I’d have called Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Jake was losing his patience. He and DeGarmo had first butted heads a year ago when USS America was hijacked and Jake assisted in the investigation. DeGarmo apparently thought that the less the public knew of the inner workings of the intelligence bureaucracies, the better. Certainly better for the bureaucrats, Jake reflected. “The president appointed me, and we’re both stuck with it,” he said dryly. “I’d like a look this afternoon at everything this agency knows about the weapons and where they might be. I want to see every file.”

“I guessed as much.”

“I want a personal commitment from you to actively assist in my investigation.”

“Are you implying that I would do less than my duty?”

“I’ve been ordered to find those weapons. I intend to do just that. You can help in every way possible, or I’ll run right over you, Mr. Director, and leave you bleeding in the road. The choice is yours.”

Avery Edmond DeGarmo’s finger shot out as he leaned across his desk toward Jake. “I was appointed to this post by the president of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. You will get all the cooperation this agency can give you, I promise you that. And if you screw up, Admiral, I guarantee that you will never hold another position of trust in the United States government as long as you live.”

Jake Grafton stood. “If we don’t find those warheads,” he said evenly, “there may not be a United States government.”

Before DeGarmo could respond, Jake walked out of his office.

In the outer office, Jake retrieved his hat from the coffee table and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t handled that interview well. Off to a fine start, he thought.

Toad had rounded up a car and driver for Jake, so he rode to the FBI building in style. After credentials checks and a trip through a metal detector, he was led through long halls and into elevators. Eventually he ended up in the director’s office.

The director was Myron A. Emerick, who had spent his career in the FBI. He was, as Jake knew, the insider’s insider, a man who had ruthlessly worked the system to get to the top.

Emerick was waiting at the door to shake Jake’s hand when he came in, then seated his guest in a black leather chair. “Good to meet you, Admiral. I’ve heard your name many times through the years.” He took a seat on a leather couch to Jake’s left. It was an intimate setting, yet Jake had to turn his head about forty-five degrees to talk to the director. Jake got out of his chair and turned it so that it faced Emerick, then sat down in it again.

Emerick’s executive assistant sat to the director’s left with a legal pad on his knee and a pen in his hand. Two other men were there, Emerick’s top two deputies. Jake was introduced and shook hands, then promptly forgot their names.

“I got the president’s letter this morning,” Emerick said earnestly. He was a slim, athletic man of no more than 150 pounds, balding on top, with the rest of his hair cut very short. The top of his head was as tan as his face and hands. Today he was wearing an expensive dark suit and a yellow silk tie. Jake suspected that Emerick worked out — racquetball, probably — every day of his life. A photo of his wife and college-age children was displayed prominently on his desk.

“ … The FBI will do everything in its power to cooperate, Admiral,” Emerick was saying, “rest assured of that. Still, as an attorney and official of this government, I think it important to warn you of the minefield you are apparently about to enter.”

“At the order of the president,” Jake said carefully.

“Ben Franklin was the man who pointed out that those who trade liberty for security end up with neither.”

“I appreciate that truth, sir. I am not a fascist.”

“I am not implying anything of the kind. As I understand it, reading between the lines, you are going to ride roughshod over the privacy safeguards carefully erected in American society over the centuries for the admirable purpose of catching wild-eyed terrorists. Is that a fair characterization?”

“Something like that,” Jake acknowledged.

“Regardless of what the judges say, the right against self-incrimination is designed to protect the guilty, not the innocent. Nor is the right of privacy intended to protect people with nothing to hide — it, too, protects the guilty, all those people who break the law or violate social mores by lying on resumes, loan applications, or financial documents, having secret or homosexual affairs, enjoying pornography, cheating on their income tax, using illegal drugs, doing all manner of little things they don’t want their spouses or neighbors or the church or the police to find out about. The world is full of guilty people, Admiral, and they’ll burn you and the president at the stake if you misuse what you learn.”

“That’s terrific, sir. I’ll wear my asbestos longhandles, the ones with the flap in back. Obviously I wanted to meet you, let you know who I am, but the one concrete thing I hoped to accomplish this morning is find out what the intelligence committee and the FBI plan to do about Richard Doyle. As you will recall, he was the CIA officer named by Janos Ilin as the Russian spy.”

A strange look crossed Emerick’s face. “Haven’t you heard? We’re investigating his disappearance.”

Jake was stunned. “Disappearance?”

“Disappeared last Friday night. Drove off in the family minivan while the wife was showing a house — she’s in real estate — and the kids were at a high school football game, and he hasn’t been heard from since. His wife called us about five the next morning. She was pretty upset. His minivan was found parked behind a bankrupt fast-food joint in Tysons Corner.”

Jake shook his head to clear it. “Any sign of violence?”

“Not so far. The forensic people are going over the van. Right now it looks as if he merely parked his vehicle there, locked it, and left.”

“And you don’t know where he went?”

“We don’t know — that is correct.”

“Money?”

“Doyle’s wife said he didn’t have over forty dollars cash on him. She saw his wallet when he gave her a twenty just before she left. Doyle has written no checks and hasn’t visited a cash machine. We’ve canceled his credit cards, even though no one has tried to use them. His wife is really frantic — either she’s an Academy Award-winning actress, or she really doesn’t know where he went or why.”

“His passport?”

“Canceled. We’ve done all the routine things. Every policeman in the country is looking for Doyle. So far, false alarms only.”

“Does DeGarmo know about Doyle?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I had an interview with him an hour ago, and he never mentioned the guy’s name.”

“Maybe he assumed you already knew.”

“Maybes don’t cut it anymore,” Jake growled, and shifted his weight in his seat. “So what about Doyle’s office?”

“We’re going through his desk, his files, his computer. His wife gave us permission to search their house. She also let us borrow the family computer so we can look at the hard drive.”

“Any way to find out if he’s in Russia?”

“If he’s there he didn’t go on his own passport. I promise you that.”

“Friday night?”

“That’s right.”

“About twenty-eight hours after I met Ilin in New York.” Jake took a deep breath. “I want to know the name of every person in the United States government who knew that Friday night that Ilin had mentioned Doyle’s name. The list couldn’t be that long.”

“We’re investigating. I asked for that list on Monday. As soon as I get it I’ll send you a copy.”

Jake nodded. “Okay,” he said, “let’s talk about terrorists and nuclear weapons.”

An hour later, when Jake left, Myron Emerick dismissed his executive assistant and waved his hand at his deputies, Hob Tulik and Robert Pobowski. He seated himself behind his desk; they took the chairs immediately in front of it.

“You didn’t tell him about the suspected terrorist cells we’re tracking.”

“He didn’t ask,” Emerick answered curtly. “The bureau got caught with its pants down by the September eleventh terror strike. It isn’t going to happen again.”

Emerick had a limited number of agents. Those agents still had all the usual federal crimes to investigate, plus security investigations and counterespionage duties, all of which had now taken a backseat to the hunt for possible terrorists. God knew there were enough of them. The United States had been scattering student visas around the Arab nations for many years, and the INS had no way to track the students once they were in the country. Tens of thousands of tourists arrived daily at the nation’s airports. Illegal aliens walked across the Mexican and Canadian borders daily, and like the tourists and students, disappeared into the American maelstrom. Finding those on terrorist missions was akin to cleaning the Augean stables, a task for Hercules. Then cases had to be built, ones that would justify arrests and prosecutions.

Like every military branch and law enforcement organization in the country, the FBI’s responsibilities exceeded its assets. Emerick and his deputies had risen to the top because they had learned through the years to pick the responsibility that was the most important to the bureau’s clients — the public, press, and Congress — and work the system to get visible results. Arrests got made and the charges stuck — i.e., those arrested were successfully prosecuted. And the FBI got the credit.

Now Emerick told his colleagues, “J. Edgar Hoover didn’t build the bureau by doing the work and letting local police make the collar. We investigate, build the cases, and we bust’em. The world hasn’t changed that much — if Grafton gets the credit, the bureau is going down the ceramic convenience.”

Tulik nodded. “We don’t catch’em, the press and Congress are going to start asking, Do we really need an FBI?”

“They’re asking it now,” Pobowski said sourly. “Did you see this morning’s Wall Street Journal?”

“We have a job and we’re going to do it,” Emerick said. “The friggin’ politicians can send Grafton to chase anyone they want, but the FBI will still be here when he’s whacking little white balls around some golf course.”

The two lieutenants nodded. Emerick was preaching to the choir.

“Four nukes are coming in,” Emerick continued, all business now. “That’s our working thesis. The people who are going to receive the weapons are already here and making plans. What are we getting, Hob, sixty, eighty calls a day about possible terrorists?”

“Yes, sir. At least that. Usually more. They’re seeing them in every convenience store and motel.”

Emerick nodded. “Police work one-oh-one: we have to sort out the good leads and follow up. I want these sons of bitches found before the bombs arrive. Sit on ‘em, wire’em up, wiretap, infiltrate, whatever we have to do. Then we arrest them with the bombs. In their possession! Shoot videotapes to give to the press. I want the bastards red-handed and sewed up tight. No asshole lawyers are going to get’em off. Understand?”

Pobowski and Tulik did. The bureau was going to get the credit, not Jake Grafton or his collection of amateurs. They believed body and soul that the nation needed the FBI; by God, it wasn’t going to die on their watch.

Just before lunch that day Tommy Carmellini’s department head called him into his office. “Tommy, I hope you aren’t too busy just now because the folks at the antiterrorism task force have asked for you by name. They’ve got the priority, so you’re going. They said they’d like to have you tomorrow morning. It’ll be temporary duty; they didn’t say when you’ll be back.”

Carmellini was used to temporary assignments. Some days it seemed as if half the people in government wanted bugs planted or someone burgled. He took a deep breath, discussed who might run his branch while he was gone. The department head agreed that Carmellini’s assistant could run things for a while.

As he stood up to leave, Carmellini asked, “Who called from the task force, sir? I didn’t know that I was on Rolodexes over there.”

The boss consulted his notes. “A naval officer, a rear admiral named Grafton.”

Uh-oh, Carmellini thought. He knew Jake Grafton. The navy didn’t use him to push paper. Oh, he was a nice enough guy, but he was always up to his eyeballs in the smelly stuff.

He found Grafton in the basement of one of the newer buildings on the CIA campus, installed in an SCIF, which was a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a cage designed to prevent electronic emissions from leaving the area. Toad Tarkington and a secretary, just assigned, were cleaning up the space and supervising the arrival of office furniture.

“Hey, Toad,” Carmellini said, looking around at the mess.

“How are you?” Toad responded.

“Hanging left today. How about you?”

“Just hanging. These boxes are full of office supplies. Grab one.”

They had most of it stowed when Jake Grafton came in. He was in whites and looked tired, Carmellini noted. He waved Tommy and Toad into a vacant cubbyhole and closed the door.

“Okay, guys,” he said, and proceeded to tell them everything he knew about the bombs and his new assignment. He also filled them in on the disappearance of Richard Doyle. “I don’t know that Doyle and the bombs are related, but there is no way in the world that Doyle’s disappearance is not related to Ilin’s tip. Twenty-eight hours after Ilin pronounced his name, he’s gone.”

“Off to Russia?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the FBI will come up with something — they’re investigating.”

“How’d your meeting with the FBI director go?” Toad asked.

“He told me frankly that good intentions don’t mean shit in this town.”

“Hell, Admiral,” scoffed Tommy Carmellini, “I could have told you that.”

“Your boss, DeGarmo—”

“Ah, you mean the great Avery Edmond. Known affectionately among the troops — or as they refer to them in the executive suite, the little people — as ‘A. E. DeG.’ That’s the way he signs his initials. He’s a truly sick man. A mind that twisted would make a shrink’s career if he could get his hands on him.”

“Sick or not, Avery Edmond doesn’t like amateurs.”

“I’ve never really fit in here at Langley,” Carmellini said dejectedly. “I don’t have the professional career outlook to be a good spook. Alas, I, too, am a loathsome amateur. My heart is pure.”

Tarkington made a retching noise.

“Can a missile warhead be made into a bomb?” Carmellini asked.

Jake thought about what he wanted to say before he spoke. “If the right expert works on it, I assume that he could rig up a wiring harness, timers, batteries, all of it. The person who could rig it to work as advertised would be a weapons professional, an expert.”

“What about taking the plutonium out of the warheads, using it as a pollutant with some kind of conventional explosive, like a truckload of fertilizer?” Toad asked. “Is that possible?”

Jake sagged in his chair. “Plutonium is the deadliest substance known to man. Anyone who cracked a warhead would need a clean room, body suits, containment devices for the plutonium, scrubbers, all of that. They’d have to have a well-equipped lab or they would be dead within minutes after they got to the plutonium. If they mishandled the stuff, it could go critical on them right in their hands.”

“Probably be dead of radiation poisoning if they didn’t do all the work in lead vaults,” Carmellini suggested.

Jake took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “If I were doing it, I’d be afraid to crack the warheads. Why bother? Packing conventional explosives around a warhead and setting it off would result in a conventional explosion that would spray microscopic bits of plutonium over a huge area, a dirty bomb. The harder the wind was blowing when it went off, the worse the contamination would be. It’d be nearly impossible to clean up. The half-life of plutonium is something on the order of a quarter of a million years. It would be the worst ecological disaster in the history of the world.”

Carmellini whistled softly. “A dirty bomb or a nuclear explosion.”

“Those are the options.”

“Two hundred kilotons apiece,” Toad said softly.

“Right.”

“Sweet Jesus!”

“This assignment is going to be like charging hell with a bucket of water,” Tommy Carmellini remarked. “This would be a great time for me to ask for a transfer to Australia. You know, I hear the beaches there are all topless and the women love Americans.”

“Less fallout there,” Toad observed. “But if I were you, I’d buy a ticket to Mars.”

“Man, if I could put the fare on my American Express card, you could color me gone.”

When Tommy Carmellini unlocked his apartment door and carried in his small bag of groceries — a six-pack of beer, a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese — he didn’t immediately turn on the lights. He walked to the kitchen and flipped on the light in there. He helped himself to a beer from the six-pack, then stowed his purchases in the refrigerator.

With beer in hand, Carmellini walked out into the living room and turned on the floor lamp by the couch. As he stood sipping the beer, he sensed something was wrong. He froze. Listened.

His eyes roamed the room. Then it hit him. Things were slightly out of position, as if they had been moved. This lamp he had just flipped on was two inches closer to the wall than usual — the circle on the carpet gave away the position change.

Someone had been here. Or was still here.

The apartment was not large. In seconds he verified that the bedroom, bath, and closets were empty.

Things were subtly adrift in the bedroom, too. His books, his clothes, the shoes in the bottom of the closet … everything had been stirred slightly.

Carmellini went into every room, inspected everything.

Nothing appeared to be missing. The windows were intact and closed.

He went back to the apartment door, inspected the lock carefully. They had either used a key or picked the lock.

He finished the beer and sat on the couch in the living room, staring at the blank television screen. What was here that anyone would want?

No money, no drugs, no classified documents … He owned a computer, a sound system, and a television, and all three items were still sitting in plain sight. He went into the nook he used as an office and went through all the drawers of the desk. Files, piles of paper, letters, bank statements, bills, all of it was apparently there, although all of it had been pawed through.

Carmellini remembered the pistol in his sock drawer … he went into the bedroom and looked. Yep, it was still there, along with a box of ammunition. Shirts, suits, underwear, jeans … everything seemed to be there, yet the closets and drawers were not as neat as he left them — he was certain of that. His CIA ID card and building pass were in his pocket, as was his wallet containing his credit cards and driver’s license.

Had someone bugged the apartment? If so, why, for Lord’s sake?

He didn’t look for bugs. Tommy Carmellini spent a significant fraction of his working life planting bugs in other people’s homes, cars, and places of business, and he knew how devilishly difficult properly planted bugs were to discover. It was possible that the bugger was an amateur, or incompetent, or both. Or perhaps the bugger wanted him to know the bugs were there.

The second possibility was more likely. The person who planted the bugs wanted him to search and find some. Eventually he would abandon the search, concluding that he had found all the bugs, which would not be the case. Carmellini occasionally used that technique himself on paranoid subjects.

So who would want to know what Tommy Carmellini said in his own apartment? He had friends in occasionally to watch football or play poker, and several times a woman had spent the night … but Lordy, who would want to listen to that?

It was a mystery, he decided. He turned on the television and flipped the channels, looking for a ball game.

The following evening Tommy Carmellini took a sensitive electronic device home from Langley. He had borrowed it from a man in another division who owed him a favor, so no record had been made of the loan. As he removed it from its case and tested the battery, he again wondered why anyone would want to bug his apartment. What could be said here that would be of interest to anyone?

True, he had been a thief in his younger days. He and a friend had taught themselves the finer points of burglary and safecracking. They had stolen diamonds, then fenced them to a jeweler who recut them and sold them from his store. The jeweler had been a piece of work, advertising that he went to Antwerp and bought diamonds wholesale and sold them cheaper than his competition because he cut out the middleman. And he did go to Antwerp and buy diamonds. And Carmellini and his friend provided more diamonds, cheaper ones than the diamond merchants in Belgium.

Then Carmellini’s friend was busted and sold him to the feds. Carmellini had been in his last year of law school then. Fortunately the feds offered a deal — if he would work for the CIA, they wouldn’t prosecute. It was, as they say, an offer he couldn’t refuse. He was still with the CIA in charge of a branch that specialized in breaking and entering, mostly in foreign countries and, even though it was illegal, occasionally in this country when the FBI requested expert assistance.

The heck of it was he enjoyed his work. He liked the challenges of burglary when he was stealing diamonds and he enjoyed cracking safes around the world to photograph the contents now. He was paid a reasonable salary and enjoyed the travel. Of course, he had thought of resigning from the CIA and getting back into burglary … and one of these days he might.

Tonight he used the wand, which was an antenna, to look for the telltale energy that microphones emit. He quickly found two, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. He left them right where he found them.

He turned off the sweep gear and repacked it in its case. He would return it to his friend in a few days.

Carmellini opened a beer from the refrigerator and stood gazing out the window as he sipped it. Four nuclear weapons. Missing.

Jake Grafton, he decided, would not have bugged this apartment. He had worked with the admiral before and felt certain Grafton trusted him. If Grafton didn’t, he wouldn’t have asked for him by name or included him in brainstorming sessions. On the other hand, Jake Grafton was nobody’s fool. Maybe …

Augh! He was overthinking this. He had worked with the spooks in the labyrinth too long — he was starting to think like them.

Whoever planted those bugs wants something, he decided. They expect to hear something on the bugs that they want to know.

Carmellini went back to the kitchen and tossed a TV dinner in the microwave. When it was warm, he took it to the living room and turned on the television. He flipped channels until he found a ball game.

I hope they like basketball, he thought, and attacked his dinner. He didn’t think about basketball, however; he thought about bombs.