Palace of Treason

36

Nate and Benford sat alone in the secure conference room in the new Washington Field Office of the FBI in northwest Washington, DC. Benford had complained about having to drive downtown to Swampoodle, the long-forgotten name of the nearby nineteenth-century Irish shantytown razed to build Union Station. Benford further noted that the WFO relocation from gritty Buzzard Point on the Potomac was a requirement so that the FEEB cowboys would be closer to the Government Accountability Office, which was diagonally across G Street from the new field office.

Benford had worked closely with the Bureau for years and disliked them generally, but he had a few close FEEBish friends, like Chief of Foreign Counterintelligence Division Charles Montgomery, with whom they were to meet. As they were waiting, an annoying, mustached special agent known to Benford stuck his head into the room.

“The spooks are in the house,” he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. Benford looked at him with an expression of distaste. The FEEB had bushy hair and a mustache that looked like a basting brush.

“McGaffin,” said Benford. “Why aren’t you on a stakeout? Aren’t there still bank robbers roaming the capital?”

“It’s under control,” said McGaffin. “What’re you guys doing down here?”

Benford looked significantly at Nate.

“There’s new intelligence from Moscow that the Center is running a mole inside the FBI and we have come to submit a request to the FISA court to review your personal Internet use profile. I personally expect to find materials both puerile and prurient.”

McGaffin shook his head, said, “Speak English,” and withdrew.

Benford again looked meaningfully at Nate. “And perhaps you now understand my misgivings in coming here to partner with these white-collar G-men,” said Benford.

Nate shook his head. “We’ve got one shot to bust up Zarubina’s meeting and identify TRITON,” he said. “If these guys have an idea, we should listen.”

Special agent Montgomery came into the room, walked around the table, and shook Benford’s and Nate’s hands. He was fifty, slim with premature white hair, half-frame glasses at the end of his nose, and gray cop’s eyes that missed nothing.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Montgomery, sitting on the other side of the conference table. “Still getting over jet lag. London conference went on forever.” He rubbed his face.

“But at least there’s the British cuisine,” said Benford.

“Yeah,” said Montgomery. “I’d never heard of haggis before. Scottish, not British. Ate a plate before our hosts in MI5 told me it was innards wrapped in sheep’s stomach. I’m serving Rocky Mountain oysters next time they come here.”

“I always assumed testicles — whether bovine or other — were a favorite on the FBI cafeteria menu,” said Benford.

“Simon, the Brits would call you a ‘prannock,’” said Montgomery, deadpan, opening a file folder. “That’s an objectionable person.”

“May we proceed?” Benford said. Montgomery nodded. He was one of a few FBI officers who knew about the TRITON case.

“Look, we’ve discussed this. Zarubina is meeting your boy sometime in the next seven days,” said Montgomery. “We’ve stayed off her butt at your request so she won’t see coverage and abort.” Montgomery had argued that the FCI surveillance team — called the Gs — could cover Zarubina without spooking her. “I still think we can take her,” said Montgomery.

Nate shook his head. “Charles, we can’t take the chance. Your guys are good, but if Zarubina sees anything on the street, she’s aborts the meeting, and the Russians switch handlers to an anonymous illegals officer we’ll never be able to identify.”

Montgomery rubbed his face. “Well, that’s what I want to talk to you guys about. We have an ace,” said Montgomery, flipping a sheet of paper. “We know the Russian meeting site is in Meridian Hill Park.”

“A thin advantage,” said Nate. “The SVR will be looking very carefully at the park for days in advance, especially during the nighttime hours before the meeting. They’re going to see a big team staked out, no matter how good they are. A squelch break on a radio, someone with binoculars, it’s unavoidable.”

“Okay, I’ll accept that, but I’ve been thinking about a solution,” said Montgomery. “We have two guys on the Gs. They’ve bounced around a little—”

“Bounced around, meaning what?” said Benford.

“Different jobs,” said Montgomery.

“Why?” said Benford.

“They have authority issues,” said Montgomery, folding his hands together on the table.

“Meaning what?” said Benford.

“Meaning they speak their minds,” said Montgomery.

“As in…,” said Benford.

“As in telling their supervisors to pound sand,” said Montgomery.

“And you want to saddle us with these unstable Gemini twins in a critical operation that could cost an agent’s life exactly why?” said Benford.

“Because I believe they are the best street operators I’ve seen in twenty-five years,” said Montgomery. “If Zarubina is a clairvoyant witch on the bricks, Fileppo and Proctor are warlocks.”

Benford looked over at Nate, who nodded slightly. “The three of us in the park, no one else, no radios, we bag TRITON before he can talk to Zarubina,” said Nate.

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Montgomery. “Put the three of you in loincloths and give you blowguns. Might work.”

Benford shifted in his seat, thinking. “When can we meet these warlocks of yours?” he said.

“They’re waiting outside,” said Montgomery, and went to the conference room door.

Fileppo and Proctor came in and sat on either side of Montgomery. Both were dressed casually in jeans and Clarks low-top desert boots. The one on the left wore a plain black sweatshirt, the other a zip-necked fleece pullover.

“This is Donnie Fileppo and Lew Proctor,” said Montgomery. Nate reached over the table and shook their hands. Both had serious grips. Nate estimated that Donnie Fileppo was around twenty-five, with close-cropped brown hair, a high forehead, and eyes that flicked from face to face. Lew Proctor was slightly older, with laugh lines around his eyes and a buzz cut. They both sat slumped in their chairs and looked with feigned disinterest at the CIA men.

“So it’s Donnie and Lew?” asked Benford.

“Yeah, his full name is Donatello,” said Proctor, leaning forward to look around Montgomery at Fileppo. He kept his features serious, but his eyes laughed. “It’s mostly a girl’s name in Italy.” Fileppo did not look at Proctor.

“Have you guys ever worked solo surveillance?” said Nate. “We have a big problem and we need two foot soldiers to help me cover a park downtown.”

“What park?” said Fileppo.

“Who against?” said Proctor.

“You don’t need to know until we consent to your participation,” said Benford. Nate didn’t look at him, but recognized the tone: Vintage Benford being disagreeable to test his interlocutor. Fileppo shrugged.

“We can’t help you with your scary-big problem if we don’t know the frigging target and park,” said Proctor. Montgomery shifted in his seat.

“Special Agent Montgomery said you guys are pretty good on the street,” said Nate.

“Good enough,” said Fileppo. “What street you come up on?”

“Moscow,” said Nate.

Proctor nodded.

“That’s why this is so important,” said Nate. “It has to go right or someone dies in Moscow.”

“Not to mention that a fucker American traitor working for fucking Moscow gets away with it for a fucking long time,” said Benford.

“We fucking can’t have that, can we, Donatello?” said Proctor.

Nate went out on the street with Fileppo and Proctor. Montgomery had not exaggerated: They were smooth, fast, physically conditioned, used barely noticeable hand signals, and could change their profiles with the flip of a hoodie or the change of a jacket to its shucked-inside-out material. Fileppo even did parkour — urban freerunning. He could run at a twelve-foot wall, take two steps on the bricks as if walking up it, and leap the rest of the way to the top.

Dinner breaks were instructive: Neither man drank during duty hours. After-hours beers were limited to two. Conversation was raucous and profane, but Nate recognized the ticks of top surveillance pros who worked well together: They finished each other’s sentences, looked over the other’s shoulder, and signaled something of interest by a minute jerk of the chin. They knew what the other was going to do before he did it. Nate ran them along Connecticut Avenue — their backyard — and it was like watching two Cape hunting dogs work in tandem. They covered practice rabbits — unsuspecting civilians — up close, then dropped back, anticipated turns, and got ahead of them or followed from across the street. They supported each other flawlessly.

Fileppo used his baby face to get past doormen. Proctor could play the downtown urban courier and roam freely through office buildings. Both could read mail in eleven-point type upside down on receptionists’ desks. They were rogues, pirates, Visigoths. After two days Nate told Benford it was okay — the three of them were going to cover Meridian Hill Park for the next five consecutive nights.

The park was a twelve-acre wooded hill in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, two and a half miles north of the White House. Set on a steep hill, the park had twisting pathways, statuary, and graceful cement stairways. The centerpiece of the park was a two-hundred-foot Italianate cascading fountain with thirteen descending basins — each bowl filled and then emptied into progressively larger bowls, increasing from five to twelve feet wide — eventually flowing into a graceful curved reservoir at the bottom. Top to bottom the decline in elevation was a mild terraced drop of fifty feet. Broad cement aggregate stairways ascended on either side to meet at an upper pool and columned terrace at the top of the cascade.

Nate, Fileppo, and Proctor split up and covered the upper level of the park — a grassy mall bordered by linden trees — then rotated to case the lower level, including the cascade. They couldn’t know whether the Russians had people periodically out, security scouting, so the plan was then to exit the park separately and walk two blocks past stately row houses on W Street to a sandwich shop called Fast Gourmet. Nate looked for Fileppo and Proctor as he walked over, but they were nowhere in sight. They were playing with the CIA guy with the Moscow creds, to show him they could.

Fast Gourmet was a modest shop with display case, counter, and two tables in the back of the cashier’s building in a gas station on the corner of W and Fourteenth Streets. Fileppo was already inside ordering three Chivito sandwiches on soft rolls. Proctor walked in two minutes later. No one talked while they waited for their food. Nate had not exactly bonded with the two FBI guys, but they shared an unspoken collegial regard for one another — they recognized skills and appreciated fellow top pros.

“It’s going to be the terrace at the top of the cascade,” said Proctor finally, sitting at one of the little tables. “Two entrances on the west side off Sixteenth, still lots of foliage.”

“Definitely,” said Fileppo, pulling up a chair. “It’s the only logical place. Forget the upper mall. The terrace is screened from above by the wall, and you can see all the way down to W Street. Nothing’s coming up those stairs unobserved.” Nate was looking dubiously at his Chivito, piled high with grilled steak, cheese, boiled egg, and marinated onions, and oozing an unidentified sauce.

“Escabeche,” said Fileppo, following Nate’s look. “The onions are marinated in vinegar.”

“From Uruguay,” said Proctor. “Best in DC.”

Nate took a bite and had to confess that it was magnificent. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Okay,” he said, “you’re Zarubina. How do you come in? Where do you put your CS, your countersurveillance? From what direction is TRITON coming?”

“Russians like to control the meeting site. It’s their MO,” said Proctor. “She’ll pop in by one of the side stairs to the upper terrace and watch our boy come up one of the stairways either side of the cascade.”

“If she brings CS, they’re going to be in the trees, and in the park above the fountain,” said Fileppo. “They’re going to be watching outward for a big team, for cars and radios. They’re there to call an abort and to protect their old lady.”

“She’s supposed to be unreal on the street,” said Nate.

Fileppo and Proctor looked at each other. “We’re unreal,” said Fileppo, and Proctor nodded. They put down their sandwiches and bumped fists.

“Jesus, before you guys move in together, tell me how we set up on this site,” said Nate.

He got two blank looks from Fileppo and Proctor, which lasted a noticeable three seconds. “Here’s our gut feel, tell us what you think,” said Proctor. “Donnie and I will be at the bottom of the cascade. We move around separately, screening behind the reflecting pool, the balustrades, hedges, and walls. If it’s before ten, there’s gonna be some casuals in the park. If it’s after ten, the Russians will have to deal with park police making sure the place is empty.”

“And if your mole-man is on those stairs going up, we’ll rush him before he gets halfway,” said Fileppo.

“How are we going to know a guy on the stairs is mole-man?” asked Nate, watching these two work out the details.

“Hundred percent Zarubina uses a simple safety signal — flick a lighter, take off a scarf, put a white paper sack on the railing,” said Proctor. “Positive signal, something he can see even in the dark. She’ll be telling us when he comes.”

“And that’s when we stick him,” said Fileppo. “No way the two of them are gonna say one word to each other, much less pass anything.”

“Yeah, Donnie gets spun up during takedowns. But you’re going to wait for me, right?” said Proctor to Donnie.

“I don’t get ‘spun up,’” said Fileppo. “Where do you get that shit?”

“You always do,” said Proctor.

Jesus, they sound like an old married couple, thought Nate as he concentrated on his sandwich.

“Okay, you guys are down below,” said Nate, “and I want to be right up Zarubina’s ass, real close. Any ideas?” He was okay with asking these experts their opinion: Nate’s specialty was detecting and defeating hostile surveillance; these guys were surveillance and it would pay to listen to them.

“There’s only one place,” said Fileppo. “The wall of the upper terrace behind the upper pool has three deep alcoves with a candle jet fountain in each — you know the fluffy columns of water about three feet high. You gotta stand in ankle-deep water at night, but with dark clothes, squatting behind the bubbles, and the noise of all the water — fountains, cascades, basins — you’re invisible. You just gotta wade across the upper pool and you’re right behind her.”

“Maybe wear a pair of Wellingtons, knee-high rubber boots,” said Proctor.

“I scare her shitless coming out of the dark, speaking polite Russian and not letting her leave,” said Nate. “You guys put flex cuffs on dickhead, then you hit the button and call everybody in, right?” said Nate. Benford and Montgomery had arranged for a dozen Washington metro police units, three FBI vehicles, a van, and an ambulance would be in holding positions in a ring four blocks away from the park. On receiving an electronic signal from Proctor’s SHRAPNEL message unit — essentially an encrypted pager developed by CIA — they would light up Columbia Heights. No other radios, cell phones, or electronics — the Russians listened as well as watched.

TRITON would be arrested. Zarubina, with her diplomatic immunity, would be courteously detained until the Russian Consul from the embassy could spring her. Per the well-known Cold War drill, he would serenely maintain that the portly spy had been walking in the park to take the night air. Then he doubtless would rave about fascist American police procedures. A PNG expulsion — persona non grata — would follow and Zarubina would return to the bosom of the Rodina to answer questions from a pair of blue eyes over a mouth pursed in annoyance.

And Dominika would avoid the cellars yet again, thought Nate. She would be safe.

Stack a soft roll with thin slices of caramelized, grilled flank steak, melt mozzarella over the meat under the broiler, then add boiled ham, fried pancetta, diced green olives, sliced hard-boiled egg, thin-sliced onion marinated in vinegar and sugar, lettuce, tomato, and aioli. Cut the sandwich on the bias and serve.