State of Siege

SEVENTEEN

The short-lived but legendary Office of Strategic Services was formed in June of 1942. Under the leadership of World War I hero William Joseph “Wild Bill” Donovan, the OSS was responsible for collecting military intelligence. After the war, in 1946, President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group, which was chartered to gather foreign intelligence pertaining to national security. A year later, the National Security Act renamed the CIG the Central Intelligence Agency. The act also broadened the scope of the CIA charter to allow it to conduct counterintelligence activities.

Thirty-two-year-old Annabelle “Ani” Hampton had always enjoyed being a spy. There were so many mental and emotional levels to it, so many sensations. There was danger and there was reward proportionate to the danger. There was a sense of being invisible or, if you were caught, of being more naked than naked. There was a feeling of having power over others, of risking punishment and death. There was also a great deal of planning involved, of positioning yourself just so, of patience, of catching someone in the right frame of mind, of seducing emotionally and sometimes physically.

It was, in fact, a lot like sex only better, she thought. In spying, if you grew tired of someone you could have them killed. Not that she ever had. Not yet, anyway.

Ani had enjoyed being a spy because she’d always been a loner. Other children had no curiosity. She did. As a child, she liked to find out where squirrels made their homes or watch birds as they laid their eggs or, depending on her mood, help wild rabbits escape from red foxes or help red foxes snare the hares. She liked to eavesdrop on her father’s pinochle games or on her grandmother’s teas or on her older brother’s dates. She even made a journal of the news she picked up while spying on her family. Which neighbor was “a prick.” Which aunt was “a bitch on wheels.” Which mother-in-law “should learn to keep her mouth shut.” Ani’s mother once found the journal and took it away, but that was all right. Ani had been smart enough to keep a duplicate book.

Ani’s parents, Al and Ginny, had owned a women’s clothing store in Roanoke, Virginia. Ani used to work at Hampton’s Fashions after school and on weekends. Whenever possible, she would study everything about the people who came in to browse. She attempted to hear what they were saying, tried to guess what they were going to look at based on how they were dressed or how well they spoke. And then she moved in to make the sale. If she’d been careful and smart, she got it. Usually, she was.

The spying ended when her parents’s store went bankrupt, driven out of business by larger discount chains. Her parents were forced to go to work for one of those chains. But Ani’s fascination with understanding and then carefully manipulating people did not die. She won a full scholarship to Georgetown University in Washington. She majored in political science and minored in Asian affairs since, at the time, it looked like Japan and the Pacific Rim were going to be the hot spots of the twenty-first century. Though her parents’ own hopes had died, Ani never saw them prouder than when she graduated from college summa cum laude. That was when she set herself a goal to make them prouder still. Ani resolved that she would not only become a CIA agent, but before she was forty years old, she would be running the agency.

Upon graduating, the slender, five-foot-ten-inch-tall blonde applied to the CIA. She was hired — partly because of her exemplary academic record and partly, she later learned, because equal opportunity guidelines found the notoriously chauvinistic agency short on women. The reasons didn’t matter then. Ani was in. Officially, she served as a visa consultant in a succession of U.S. embassies in Asia. Unofficially, she used her downtime to develop contacts in the government and military. Dissatisfied officials and officers. Men and women who were hurt by the Asian financial collapse of the mid-1990s. People who might be persuaded to provide information for money.

Ani was singularly effective as a CIA recruiter. Ironically, she found that her greatest asset was not her knowledge of Asian culture or government. It wasn’t even the fact that she’d seen her parents lose their slice of the American Dream and knew how to talk to people who felt disconnected. Her greatest asset was her ability to remain emotionally uninvolved with her recruits. There had been times when it was necessary to sacrifice people for information, and she had not hesitated to do so. She understood from school, from life, from reading history, that people were the coin of governments and armies and that you couldn’t be afraid to spend them. In a way, it was no different from telling women they’d looked good in coats or slacks or blouses when she knew they didn’t. The store needed their money, and she was determined to get it.

Unfortunately, Ani found that talent and drive weren’t enough. When she accomplished what she’d been sent abroad to do, the young woman wasn’t given a promotion or higher security clearance. Now the antifemale bias mattered: The good jobs went to her male colleagues. Ani was sent to Seoul to collect data submitted by the contacts she’d established. Most of it was transmitted electronically, and she was not even involved in interpreting what came in. That was done by ELINT teams back at Company headquarters. After six months of sitting at a computer, working as an intel shuffler, she asked to be transferred to Washington. Instead, she was transferred to New York. As an intel shuffler.

Because of her overseas experience, Ani had been sent to work at the Doyle Shipping Agency. The CIA front operated from the shell office on the fourth floor of 866 United Nations Plaza. Their mission was to spy on key United Nations officials. The DSA consisted of a small reception area with a secretary — who was off today, since it was Saturday — an office for field office director David Battat, and another office for Ani. There was also a small office for the two floaters who were shared by this office and another in the financial district. The floaters trailed diplomats who were suspected of trying to meet with spies or prospective spies in this country. The office also stocked arms, from guns to C-4, which could be used by the floaters or carried to agents abroad in diplomatic pouches. Ani’s small, East River-view office was really the heart of the operation. It was filled with fake DSA files, books of shipping schedules and tax regulations, along with a computer linked to high-tech equipment locked in a broom closet at the end of the small corridor.

Ani’s job was to monitor the activities of key United Nations personnel. She did this by using bugs developed by the CIA’s research and sciences group and being field-tested in the UN for the first time—“to work the bugs out,” as Battat had put it. The bugs were literally mechanical bugs the size of a large beetle. Made of titanium and extremely lightweight piezoelectric ceramics — materials that caused very little drain on the batteries, allowing them to run for years without being recalled — the bugs are electronically attuned to the voice of a subject. After being set loose inside a building, they required no further maintenance. The fleet, six-legged devices could reach any point in the building within twenty minutes and followed their individual targets by moving behind walls and through air ducts; hooklike feet allowed them to travel vertically along most surfaces. The voices were transmitted from the bugs to the receiver attachment to Ani’s computer, which was nicknamed “the hive.” Ani typically listened to the broadcast with headphones to keep out extraneous office and street noises.

Seven mobile bugs inside the United Nations complex enabled the CIA to eavesdrop on influential ambassadors as well as on the secretary-general. Because all the bugs operated on the same very narrow audio frequency, Ani could only access one at a time. She was able to shuttle between them using the computer. The bugs also contained sound generators that emitted an ultrasonic ping once every few seconds. The pulse was designed to frighten potential predators. At two million dollars apiece, the CIA did not want the bugs to be eaten by hungry bats or other insect eaters.

Though Ani deeply resented the transfer and the grunt work she was doing, there were three bright spots. First, though the work tended to be uneventful, she was spying as clandestinely as possible. The voyeur in her enjoyed that. Second, her superior spent most of his time in Washington or at the CIA office at the American embassy in Moscow — which was where he was now — so she effectively ran this small office. And finally, being held back by the “Chauvinists Institute of America” had reminded her that whether you’re selling women’s clothes or selling information, you have to find ways of making yourself happy. Since coming to New York, she had developed an appreciation for art and music, for fine restaurants and elegant clothes, for good living and pampering herself. For the first time in her life, she had been setting goals that had nothing to do with her career or making someone proud. It felt good.

Very good.

Ani listened closely to the meeting. Disappointments aside, this situation required very close monitoring. And though the bugged conversation was being recorded, her superior would want a concise but comprehensive summary of what was being said.

It was interesting to know people only from their voices. Ani had come to listen for inflection, pauses, speed much more than she did in face-to-face conversation. Finding out about the different people had been fun, especially Mala Chatterjee, who was one of only two women on Ani’s roster. More than half of Ani’s time was spent with the secretary-general. The New Delhi native was the forty-three-year-old daughter of Sujit Chatterjee, one of the most successful motion picture producers in India. An attorney who had achieved dazzling victories in the cause of human rights, Mala Chatterjee had worked as a consultant with the Centre for International Peacebuilding in London before accepting a post as deputy special representative of the secretary-general on human rights in Geneva. She moved to New York in 1997 to serve as undersecretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs. Her appointment as secretary-general was motivated as much by politics and a TV-friendly appearance as by her credentials. It came at a time when nuclear tensions between India and Pakistan were rising. The Indians were so proud of the appointment that even when the freshly appointed Ms. Chatterjee went to Islamabad and made overtures to Pakistan regarding disarmament, Indians supported her. This, despite a front-page editorial in Pakistan’s English-language newspaper, Dawn, which chided New Delhi for “blinking cravenly in the face of annihilation.”

Secretary-General Chatterjee’s brief United Nations career had been one of confronting problems personally, head-on, relying on her intelligence and charismatic personality to defuse situations. That was what made this moment so exciting. Ani was not unaware of the lives at stake or unmoved by their plight. But over the past few months, she’d gotten to feel as though Chatterjee was a close friend and respected colleague. Ani was extremely curious to see how the secretary-general was going to handle this. As soon as the CIA had been alerted to the hostage situation, Ani ascertained that none of the delegates with bugs had been present in the Security Council chambers.

Chatterjee was meeting with Deputy Secretary-General Takahara of Japan, two undersecretary-generals, and her security chief in the large conference room off her private office. The deputy secretary-general of administration and head of personnel was also present. He and his staff were on the phones, updating governments whose delegates were among the hostages. Chatterjee’s aide, Enzo Donati, was there as well.

There had been very little talk about actually paying the ransom. Even if the sum could be collected, which was doubtful, the secretary-general would be powerless to deliver it. In 1973, the United Nations had established a policy for dealing with ransom demands if UN personnel were kidnapped. The Security Council had proposed, and the General Assembly had agreed by the requisite two-thirds vote, that in the event of an abduction, the affected nation or nations would be responsible for pursuing their own national policy. The United Nations would become involved only as negotiators.

So far, only one of the nations involved, France, had agreed to contribute to the ransom demand. The other countries either couldn’t commit without formal authorization or had a policy of not negotiating with terrorists. The United States, whose delegate, Flora Meriwether, was among the hostages, refused to pay the ransom but agreed to participate if a dialogue were opened with the terrorists. Chatterjee and her staff agreed to check in again with the affected nations when the deadline had passed.

The immediate problem that needed a quick resolution was who would be responsible for making decisions in the crisis. If only tourists were being held, then the Military Staff Committee of Colonel Rick Mott would have had sole jurisdiction. But that wasn’t the case. According to the charter, decisions affecting the Security Council could only be made by the Security Council or the General Assembly. Since Security Council President Stanislaw Zintel of Poland was among the hostages, and since the General Assembly could not be convened, Chatterjee decided that as the leader of the General Assembly, the secretary-general should decide what moves and initiatives should be taken.

Ani suspected that was the first time in the history of the United Nations that an action had not been decided by vote. And it had taken a woman to do it, of course.

That decided, Mott advised the officials that most of the UN police had been pulled from the perimeter and gathered around the Security Council chamber. He briefed them about the possibility of staging an assault by UN forces or with the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit, which had volunteered personnel.

“We can’t work out any kind of military response plan until we have a better idea about what’s going on in there,” Mott said. “I’ve got two officers listening in through the double doors in the Trusteeship Council chambers. Unfortunately, the terrorists set up motion detectors in the corridors that access the media, so we can’t go up there. They’ve also disabled the security cameras in the council chambers. Efforts are being made to look into the chambers using wire-thin fiber-optic lenses. We’re going to use manual drills to punch two small holes through the floor in closets beneath the room. Unfortunately, we won’t have visuals until well past the ninety-minute deadline. We’ve used an uplink to send copies of the surveillance camera videos of the killers to Interpol offices in London, Paris, Madrid, and Bonn, as well as to law-enforcement agencies in Japan, Moscow, and Mexico City. We’re hoping that something about the attack may be similar to what agents there may have seen before.”

“The question is, will they really execute one of the hostages?” asked Secretary-General Chatterjee.

“I believe they will,” Mott said.

“Based on what intelligence?” someone asked. Ani didn’t recognize his voice or his accent.

“My own intelligence,” Mott replied. Based on the way he said “intelligence,” Ani could picture him pointing to his own head in frustration. “The terrorists have nothing to lose by killing again.”

“Then what are our options prior to the deadline?” the secretary-general asked.

“Militarily?” Mott asked. “My people are willing to go in without visuals, if they have to.”

“Is your team ready for an operation like that?” the secretary-general asked.

Ani could have answered that question. The Military Staff strike force was not ready for action. They’d never been field-tested and they were understaffed. If one or two key people went down, there were no reserves. The problem was that along with the rest of the UN secretariat staff, the MS unit had been cut by 25 percent over the past few years. Moreover, the ablest people went into the private sector, such as corporate security and law enforcement, where pay and the opportunities for promotion were better.

“We’re prepared to go in and end the standoff,” Mott said. “But I have to be honest, ma’am. If we enter the chambers with the intention of removing the terrorists, there is a very strong likelihood of losses not just of my team members, but among panicked delegates and children.”

“We can’t risk that,” Secretary-General Chatterjee said.

“Our chances would certainly be better if we waited for reconnaissance,” Mott admitted.

“What about using tear gas against the terrorists?” asked Deputy Secretary-General Takahara.

“The Security Council is a very large room,” Mott said. “Because of that, it would take at least seventy seconds to deliver gas through the ventilation system, slightly less time by opening the doors and hurling in grenades. Either way, that would give the terrorists time to put on gas masks, if they have them, to shoot out the two windows to dilute the effectiveness of the gas, to kill the hostages when they realize what’s happening, or to move to another locale with the hostages as shields. If they possess poison gas as they’ve said, my guess is that they probably do have masks.”

“They’re going to kill all the hostages anyway,” said one of the undersecretaries-general. Ani believed that it might be Fernando Campos of Portugal, one of the few militants who had the secretary-general’s ear. “At least if we go in now, we may be able to save some of them.”

There was some loud murmuring around the table. Secretary-General Chatterjee quieted it and returned the floor to Mott.

“My recommendation, again, is that we wait until we have some images from the chamber,” Mott concluded. “Just so we know where the enemy and the hostages are.”

“The additional time as well as your pictures will be bought with the lives of delegates,” said the man Ani thought was Undersecretary-General Campos. “I say we go in and end this matter.”

Chatterjee tabled the military side of the discussion and asked if Mott had any other ideas. The colonel said that thought had also been given to shutting off the air and electricity in the Security Council chambers or of turning up the air-conditioning to make the terrorists uncomfortable. But he and the Military Staff Committee had decided that those actions would be more provocative than useful. He said that as yet they hadn’t come up with anything else.

There was a short silence. Ani noted that the final half-hour mark had come and gone. She had a strong feeling what Chatterjee was going to do: just what she always did.

“Although I’m sympathetic to what Colonel Mott and Undersecretary-General Campos have suggested, we cannot give the terrorists what they want,” Chatterjee said at last, her husky voice lower than usual. “But a serious gesture must be made to acknowledge their status.”

“Their status?” Colonel Mott asked.

“Yes,” Chatterjee said.

“Such as what, ma’am?” Mott demanded. “They’re ruthless killers—”

“Colonel, this is not the time to express our indignation,” Chatterjee said. “Since we cannot give the terrorists what they want, we must offer them what we have.”

“Which is?” Mott asked.

“Our humility.”

“Good Christ,” Mott muttered.

“This is not your former SEALs command,” Chatterjee said sternly. “We shall ‘seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement—’ ”

“I know the charter, ma’am,” Mott said. “But it wasn’t written for this kind of situation.”

“Then we will adapt it,” she said. “The sentiment is correct. We must acknowledge that these people have the power to kill or release our delegates and children. Perhaps bowing to them will gain us time and trust.”

“It certainly won’t gain us their respect,” Mott said.

“I disagree, Colonel Mott,” Takahara said. “Submission has been known to placate terrorists. But I am curious, Madam Secretary-General. How do you intend to bow?”

Takahara always surprised Ani. Throughout history, Japanese leaders had never been comfortable with conciliation — unless they were pretending to want peace while preparing for war. Takahara was not like that. He was a genuinely pacifistic man.

“I’ll go to the terrorists,” Chatterjee said. “I’ll express our interest in helping them and request time to arrange an opportunity for them to address their requests directly to the nations involved.”

“You’re inviting a siege,” Mott declared.

“I prefer that to a bloodbath,” said Chatterjee. “Besides, we must secure one thing at a time. If we can achieve a postponement of the deadline, perhaps we will be able to find the means to defuse the situation.”

“May I remind you,” said Takahara, “the killers indicated that no communication would be acknowledged other than word that the money and transportation were theirs.”

“It doesn’t matter if they acknowledge,” Chatterjee said. “Only that they listen.”

“Oh, they’ll acknowledge, all right,” Mott said. “With gunfire. These monsters shot their way into the Security Council. They’ve got nothing to lose by shooting a few people more.”

“Gentlemen,” said Chatterjee, “we can’t pay the ransom, and I will not permit an attack on the council chamber.” It was obvious to Ani that the secretary-general was growing frustrated. “We are supposed to be the finest diplomats in the world and, at present, we have no options other than diplomacy. Colonel Mott, will you accompany me to the Security Council?”

“Of course,” the officer said.

He sounded relieved. Chatterjee was smart going out with a soldier at her side. Speak softly, and carry a big stick.

Ani heard coughs and the sound of chairs being moved. She glanced at her computer clock. The secretary-general had a little over seven minutes until the deadline. That was just enough time to get to the Security Council chamber. The bug would arrive shortly thereafter. Ani removed her headphones and turned to the phone to call David Battat. The line was secure, run through an advanced TAC-SAT 5 unit inside the desk.

The phone beeped as she reached for it. She picked up the receiver. It was Battat.

“You’re there,” Battat said.

“I’m here,” Ani said. “Canceled my hot date and came over as soon as this broke.”

“Good girl,” the forty-two-year-old Atlanta native said.

Ani’s fingers went white around the phone. Battat wasn’t as bad as some of the others, and she didn’t think he meant to be demeaning. It was just something he’d gotten used to in the spy-club-for-men.

“The attack just broke on the news here,” Battat said. “God, I wish I were there. What’s happening?”

The young woman told her superior what Secretary-General Chatterjee was planning. After listening to the plan, Battat sighed.

“The terrorists are gonna waste the Swede,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Ani replied. “Chatterjee is pretty good at this.”

“Diplomacy was invented to powder tyrants’ behinds, and I’ve never seen it work for very long,” Battat said. “Which is one of the reasons I’m calling. A former Company man named Bob Herbert phoned about twenty minutes ago. He’s with the National Crisis Management Center and needs a place for his SWAT team to crash. If they get a go-ahead from above, they may make a move to get the kids out. The boys up here have no problem with them using DSA as long as they keep our noses out of it. You should expect a General Mike Rodgers, Colonel Brett August, and party in about ninety minutes.”

“Yes sir,” she said.

Ani hung up and waited before returning to her headphones. The news about the NCMC team was a surprise, and it took her a moment to process it. She had been monitoring Secretary-General Chatterjee’s conversations for three hours. No mention had been made of military action by the United States. She couldn’t believe that the United States would ever become involved militarily in an action at the United Nations compound.

But if it were true, at least she would be here to watch it unfold. Maybe she could have a hand in organizing the attack plan.

Under ordinary circumstances, it was energizing to be at the center of what the CIA euphemistically called “an event,” especially when there was a “counterevent” in the offing. But these were not ordinary circumstances.

Ani looked at the computer monitor. There was a detailed blueprint of the United Nations along with icons representing the presence of all the bugs. She watched the progress of the bug following Chatterjee. It would catch up to her in less than a minute.

She slipped the headphones back on. These were not ordinary circumstances because there was a group of people inside the United Nations — a group depending on her to monitor everything the secretary-general said and planned. A group that had nothing to do with the CIA. The group was led by a man she had met while she was looking for new recruits in Cambodia. A man who had been a CIA operative in Bulgaria and who, like her, had become disenchanted with the way the Company treated him. A man who had spent several years making international contacts of his own, though not to help him gather intelligence. A man who didn’t care about a person’s sex or nationality, only about his or her ability.

That was why Ani had come to the office at seven o’clock. She had not come after the attack began, as she’d told Battat. She’d come here because she wanted to be in place before the attack. She would make sure that if Georgiev contacted her on his secure phone, she would be able to give him any intel he needed. She was also monitoring the account in Zurich. As soon as the money was there, she’d disburse it to a dozen other accounts internationally, then erase the trail. Investigators would never find it.

Georgiev’s success would be her success. And her success would be her parents’ success. With her share of the two hundred and fifty million dollars, her parents would finally be able to realize the American Dream.

The irony was, Battat had actually been wrong on two counts. Ani Hampton was not a girl. But even if she were, she would not be what he had called her: a “good girl.”

She was an exceptional one.