The Art of War

CHAPTER TWELVE

Thanksgiving was at the Graftons’, with all the trimmings. Turkey and ham, stuffing and gravy and corn, with pumpkin pie with ice cream and Cool Whip for dessert. I ate until I thought I would pop. I visited with Grafton’s daughter, Amy, and her husband, Peter, and cooed over the grandbaby. I drank a bit too much red wine, then retired to the guest room to watch some football. Fell asleep during the game.

Life does go on, even when you think the world has stopped spinning.

The next day, Friday, Grafton called me into his office and motioned me toward a chair.

He passed me three small brown envelopes. I opened one. It contained six X-rays of someone’s mouth. “The forensic examiner got these,” Grafton explained, “from the guys in the burned van. Dental experts say these teeth were worked on by Russian dentists.”

“Far be it from me to dispute the experts. So where does that get us?”

“These may have been the drone operators who crashed Air Force One.”

“May?”

“That is as good as we’re going to get. Russians.”

“So what do the Russian spooks say about all this?”

Grafton leaned back in his chair and propped a foot up on an open lower desk drawer. “The Russian embassy is promising complete, total cooperation. Which means nothing. I suspect that in a week or two or three, they will send a note to State saying, ‘Sorry about that. We can’t identify them.’”

“Okay.”

“In any event, I think a back-door approach might be worthwhile. Janos Ilin, the number two in the SVR, wants to meet me in Zurich. I can’t go. I want you to meet with him, listen to what he has to say. We not only want to know who these people are or were, we want to know all about their associates and the men who controlled them.” The SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Rasvedki) was the Russian foreign intelligence service, the bureaucratic successor to the foreign intelligence arm of the Soviet-era KGB.

I didn’t ask him how he learned that Ilin wanted to talk to him. I figured the less I knew about the machinations of the top level of the international intelligence business, the better. What I didn’t know I couldn’t tell, hint at or testify about. Ignorance may not be bliss, but they can’t convict you for it.

I had met Ilin before. He was a tall, rangy Russian dude whose extreme competence erased whatever doubts you might have had about how good the SVR really was. I kinda suspected he was almost as smart, capable and ruthless as Jake Grafton, but without the admiral’s scruples. Grafton and Ilin had crossed paths several times in the past. The problem was, for Ilin, that his bosses didn’t know about many of his extracurricular activities. It went without saying that Grafton expected me to use every wit I had to ensure that Ilin’s little secrets remained his little secrets. Knowing Grafton, he might say it anyway.

“When do I leave?”

“Tomorrow morning. Go see about airplane tickets and a hotel.”

“Fake passport?”

“Yes.”

“Where and when do I meet Ilin?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Off I trotted to the ID office. The agency maintains thousands of fake identities for moments like this, with real credit cards, addresses, driver’s licenses and the other paper bits that prove we are real people. All I needed was an identity that would withstand a quick check, not one I would have to live with. My new name was Harold W. Cass from Indianapolis, Indiana. The W. stood for Wallace. I hated the name Harold and decided if necessary I would be Wally to my new friends.

From there I went to the travel office. Zurich, Switzerland. Air reservations and hotel for Harold W. Cass. Maybe if I had to wait a few days for Ilin, I could ski down an Alp.

Fool that I was, I remember thinking, At last! An easy job for a change. A nice hotel, a comfy bed, good food, toilet paper … aah. All with Uncle Sugar’s dollars. God bless American taxpayers.

Saturday morning when I dropped Grafton at Langley, I went over to my place and closed up the joint for a couple of weeks. I packed some winter clothes and debated about my ski boots, which I hadn’t worn in years. Decided to rent some in Switzerland. Ditto skis.

When I got back to Langley, I went to the travel office, picked up my tickets and some expense account money, then zipped over to the director’s office.

I had to wait to see Grafton. He was up to his eyeballs in it.

“Any message for Ilin?”

“I would take it as a personal favor if he could give us anything to help on the identity of the men who dropped Air Force One. Anything.”

Grafton tugged at an earlobe. “You’ll meet one of Ilin’s private agents. I don’t think she’s SVR. I think she’s a volunteer working solely for Ilin. As you know, he runs his own little intelligence network. I don’t think the SVR knows about that. If they did, Ilin would be dead.”

The hair on the back of my neck prickled as he talked and I felt a sudden flash of heat. “Her?” I managed. It came out a whisper.

“Yep. Her. Anna Modin.”

That name didn’t just ring a bell — it exploded in my head. A few years ago I had been desperately in love with Anna Modin. Then she disappeared. Several weeks later I received one postcard. Hadn’t heard from her since. Obviously, Jake Grafton had. He knew where she was. Or the CIA did, which was the same thing since Grafton was now running it.

I sat thinking about things while Grafton busied himself with paper on his desk. Finally I blurted, “I don’t want to do this.”

He glanced up. “You know her and she trusts you. She was Ilin’s choice as a go-between.”

“Find someone else. I don’t want to go.”

He looked me squarely in the eyes. “I didn’t ask you to go. I told you to.”

I started to say something I would regret, and managed to choke it off before it hit the air.

“Make sure no one follows you or sees you meeting Modin or Ilin.”

So this was secret agent shit. If it cost Anna her life, I was going to be partly responsible. I counted to ten. Then I counted ten more. Finally I nodded.

Grafton’s face softened. “Tommy, this is the life Anna Modin has chosen. She knows the risks as well as you do. Probably better. Keep your eyes and ears open and your brain working. I hope Ilin will tell us something that his government wouldn’t share in the ordinary course of business. It’s a possibility, anyway.”

I nodded again.

“You will write nothing down, commit everything to memory and ask any questions you think apropos. Then come home.”

“Where do I meet Anna?”

“I don’t know. She works at a bank.” He named it. “Devise an approach that ensures no one observes you meeting her. She will tell you how to meet Ilin or take you to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any questions?”

“Nope.”

“Get gone. I have work to do.”

I closed the door behind me.

I parked my car in the lot and walked into the Dulles Airport terminal three hours before flight time. With the endless security lines at Dulles and the mobs of people, you must plan for the worst. After my morning interview with Grafton, it would have been a damned bitter pill to tell him I missed my flight because I wasn’t a professional. Screw that. I was going to be on that plane if I had to ride in a wheel well.

I checked my luggage and got a boarding pass, then headed for the security line with my little carry-on. There was a bookstore on the way, so I glanced at my watch, saw I had a few minutes and decided to buy something to read on the plane. I didn’t need to sit on that damn flying bus for eight hours thinking about Anna Modin.

I grabbed the latest Stephen Hunter paperback and a copy of the Washington Examiner and The Washington Post, both of which had big spreads about the progress of the investigation into the crash of Air Force One. I queued up behind a fat lady, waited while she paid for two handfuls of candy and chips with a debit card, then paid cash for my loot, waited for the clerk to bag it and headed for the door.

That’s when a man walking by in the corridor caught my eye. It was him! The Dumpster diver! Sure as shooting. Amazing! Of all the millions of people in the Washington area … Well, people get in car wrecks every day; you just don’t know when it will be your day.

He was pulling a little overnight bag, one like mine. Strolling along at a good pace at a ninety-degree angle going to my right. I could see his head moving back and forth, eyes scanning.

Decent dark slacks, leather shoes, a gray jacket. Wearing sunglasses indoors. No hat. I was only twenty feet behind him as he stepped on the escalator; I waited for someone to get on in front of me, then stepped on. Down we went to the luggage carousels.

He went over to number 18 and stood where he could watch the people gathering around. I stayed back, put a pillar between us, and tried to keep an eye on him by watching his reflection in the lost luggage window behind him. The thought occurred to me that guys who ride airplanes hither and yon don’t often pay their bills by collecting tin cans from other people’s trash and selling them by the pound.

My mind was racing. I would like to see what car he got into, get the license number. With that, assuming the car wasn’t stolen, he was toast. The FBI could investigate him until they got sick of it. Of course, getting a squint at his ID would be even better. Assuming it wasn’t fake.

I was weighing it, trying to decide what to do, when I risked a glance around the pole. He wasn’t there!

I ran my eyes over the crowd. Found him, on the other side of the carousel. He had moved, and he was scanning the crowd. I took a step back … and he spotted me. Looked right at me. Our eyes met for just a second, but he recognized me. I saw it on his face.

He began moving. Heading for the tunnel that led to the pickup area. I abandoned my overnight bag, book and newspapers and went after him. Decided to take him down and look at his ID. It wasn’t a conscious thought, but it was there. He was my meat.

He walked quickly, strode. Passed families and couples and singles pulling luggage. He was quick, so I broke into a trot. He disappeared down the tunnel.

I ran.

People kept getting in front of me. I dodged and juked like an NFL tailback. Hit one guy and went sprawling. Got up and charged on into the tunnel that went under the passenger drop-off area. Saw my guy limned against the light going out. I gave it all I had.

He was running along the sidewalk toward the taxi stand when I emerged. I charged toward him.

He stopped and grabbed a policeman. Pointed at me. I was running full tilt toward them and wasn’t hard to spot.

The cop stepped in front of me and I took him out with a good stiff-arm and kept going. My guy was fifty feet in front of me and losing the race. I was going to get that son of a bitch. No way could he have a weapon after the unemployables of Homeland Security had searched and X-rayed him. I was six inches taller, thirty pounds heavier and a whole hell of a lot meaner than he was. I was going to put him in the hospital.

I slowly overhauled him on the sidewalk. Our audience was people in dashikis, Orthodox Jews, Muslims in head rags and Hindu women wearing spots, plus the drivers of the cars loading them and their stuff. I’ll say this for the bastard — he could run. He was shoving people out of the way, which sort of cleared a path for me.

He veered into traffic and dodged a car that I went over by leaping on the hood. Then I had him. Tackled him. With him on his stomach, I gave him a kidney punch that would have felled an ox. The air went out of him and he went limp.

I was dragging him erect when the cops got me. There were four of them, and they had night-sticks and Mace. They grabbed arms and legs and put me on the ground. Four against one isn’t fair. I think there were four, but there may have been a dozen. One of them popped me across the right kidney with that stick, and that about did it for me. I struggled to breathe as they slammed my face against the concrete.

They rolled me over, a cop on each limb. “Hold still, you bastard, or you’re going straight to the hospital.”

I stopped struggling and tried to talk. “I’m a CIA officer chasing a suspected bomber. Don’t let him—”

One of them punched me in the stomach. Then they rolled me over and cuffed me while one of them helped himself to my wallet.

When they finally pulled me erect, the Dumpster diver wasn’t in sight. That’s when I remembered that I was Wally Cass from Indianapolis. They had a lockup in the basement of the terminal, and that’s where they took me.

“You want to make a phone call, Cass, before we slam the door behind you and throw away the key?”

“Yeah.”

I called the director’s office. Needless to say, I got the receptionist, ol’ tight-lips Jennifer. “This is Carmellini. Is Grafton there?”

“More Russian plans for world domination?”

“No, trifle. Let me talk to the boss.”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“Tell him I got arrested at Dulles. I’ll hold.”

After a while I heard his voice. “Arrested?” he said.

I started to explain, and got about halfway through it when Grafton started to laugh. Actually it was a snicker. Or chuckle. He was snorting and trying to choke it off.

“I’m in the dungeon at Dulles, asshole,” I roared. “Get someone over here to get me out.” I slammed the phone down.

“Who was that you were talking to?” the cop watching me asked.

“The director of the CIA.”

“Right.” He raised an eyebrow. “We get guys like you ten times a week. You may be King Shit in Indianapolis, Cass, but you’re just mouse shit here. Empty your pockets, turn them inside out and give me your belt and shoelaces.”

As I did so, he added, “If you had a lick of sense, you’d have called a lawyer.”

I settled into my own private cell. The place smelled of disinfectant and urine, the eau de jour of all the lockups I have ever been in. Willie Varner would toss his cookies after one good sniff. My back hurt like hell.

I’d been in there an hour when a grizzled sergeant with a scarred face came for me. “You really are a spook!” he said in amazement.

“Did the president call?”

“Your assistant director dropped by.”

“May his tribe increase.”

“You wouldn’t have been arrested if you hadn’t—”

“And you are really a bunch of damn fools. If you had bothered to ask why I was chasing someone, you might have made a significant arrest. As it is, he made a clean getaway. Congratulations. The next assassination in DC, I hope you bastards choke on it.”

That certainly wasn’t a nice thing to say. Maybe they didn’t deserve it, but I was kinda pissed by then.

“The man running from me left a carry-on somewhere,” I told the sergeant. “If you paragons of law enforcement get your act together, maybe you can find it. And my stuff. And maybe I can spot him on the videotape of people in the terminal.”

Fish stood behind a car in the long-term parking lot, a huge affair of a hundred or so acres, packed with cars, and tried to catch his breath. The big man, some kind of athlete, running him down, and he didn’t have a weapon. Just off the plane with no way to defend himself against a man six inches taller and thirty or forty pounds heavier who ran like a deer. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that face — the square jaw, the look — and he knew ice-cold terror for the first time in his life. So he had run.

What to do now?

He had a car, parked somewhere in this flat monument to the air age, but they made videotapes of every license plate that went through the tollbooths. And he had driven his own car.

He tried to calm down and list his options. Time was pressing. Soon the man who chased him would get the police interested and they would start searching this lot. He had to be gone by then. Being gone meant wheels, since Dulles was twenty-five miles from downtown Washington.

He could steal a license plate and put it on his own car … but he didn’t have a screwdriver. He could break into someone’s car and steal that … but again, no screwdriver or pocketknife to strip the ignition wires. He could go catch a bus downtown … take a taxi … steal a police car …

A man walking toward him pulling a suitcase decided him. He let the man pass while he played with his cell phone, then, when he was twenty feet ahead, pocketed the cell phone and fell in behind him. A black guy, wearing a suit, maybe 160 or 170 pounds.

After walking another hundred yards and changing rows, the man pulled a set of keys from his pocket. Up ahead a car flashed its lights. Now it beeped. More lights flashing. The guy was playing with the fob as he walked. Some kind of midsized sedan.

Fish lengthened his stride. Came up behind the man silently and quickly as he reached his car. Grabbed the man and slammed his head against the sheet metal of the car, denting it. The man went down, dropping the keys. Fish picked them up, then opened the car door and looked inside.

Yes! The ticket to get out of the parking lot was over the visor.

He scanned around — no one watching.

Used a button on the key fob to open the trunk and lifted the man into it. Slammed the lid and looked around. No one staring or pointing or screaming.

He pushed the guy’s suitcase onto the backseat, then got into the driver’s seat and put on his seat belt. Inserted the key in the ignition. Started the car. Put it in reverse and carefully backed out of the parking space.

The car had been in the lot four days. Fish paid the lady with cash, then headed for Washington.

As he drove he thought about the man who had chased him. He recognized him — the guy who gave him a pizza when he was casing the Grafton building the day before the Internet crashed. That guy recognized him in the airport. Fish assumed the meeting had been by chance, a coincidence, one of those things.

He went over the situation again. The cops would scarf up his carry-on bag, with his fingerprints and enough DNA to trace his family tree. Maybe he could get some help to deal with that. The guy in the trunk could just stay there. He would abandon the car, wipe the steering wheel and door latch and trunk lid and walk away.

His real problem was the guy who chased him. True, he didn’t see him plant the bomb in Grafton’s apartment, but he put him there the day before. And he had chased him with mayhem on his mind. That guy … he was going to have to do something about that guy.

Fish sighed. His heart rate was back to normal. He kept his eyes on traffic and drove carefully. And thought about being scared. He had peeped into the pit and didn’t like what he saw.

My flight to Switzerland left without me. When it pushed back, I was still in the airport cops’ office looking at videotapes. And I found him. By six o’clock that evening, we had reviewed enough videotapes to determine that our John Doe had flown in on a flight from Seattle. The airline provided the passenger list, and we sat staring at it. Which one was he?

I tried to decide why our Dumpster diver didn’t exit the secure area down the escalator to the baggage carousels, and concluded that he had probably missed the sign. I knew the Dulles terminal intimately since I was in and out of there at least six times a year, so that was a mistake I wouldn’t make. These things happen to people unfamiliar with the terminal. Tourists from the provinces drop dead at Dulles every day when their bladders burst because they can’t find a restroom.

Armed with his photo, the airport cops went to interview the airline personnel. One policeman sheepishly turned over the bag with my book and newspaper, and my carry-on, all of which were rescued by some family from Scranton on their way home from France. The Dumpster diver’s carry-on wasn’t found. Someone had probably helped himself. Or herself. Washington is that kind of town.

I called Jake Grafton on his cell. He listened until I ran down and said, “Schedule another flight. If they won’t bump someone for tomorrow’s, call me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nice try, Tommy.”

“Thanks.”

I went to the head to pee and didn’t see blood. The cop who used a stick on my kidney would be disappointed. I had used my fist on the Dumpster man: I hoped he was pissing red.

The FBI was there taking custody of the tape with the face of our friendly suspected bomber on it when I left the terminal. I limped out to the long-term lot, rescued my Benz and went home to my closed-up apartment. Fixed myself a frozen dinner and a tall bourbon and thought about things. My back ached and my face was slightly swollen, bruised and abraded from intimate contact with a street. There was a ripped place in my shirt, which had a few spots of blood on it. My blood. My trousers and sport coat were ruined. I looked like a sailor after a Saturday night drunk.

About nine that night I called the airline and got myself on tomorrow’s flight to Switzerland. There were several empty seats, the lady on the phone said. She had a nice voice.

“Are you on business or vacation?” she asked.

“Vacation,” I lied.

“Have you ever been to Switzerland before?” she chirped.

“Yes.” That was the truth. I tell it occasionally for variety.

“It’s a gorgeous country — I’m sure you know that. You’re going to have a wonderful vacation.”

“I’m thinking of quitting my job and moving there,” I said. “I know a thing or two about U.S. tax laws. Some bank might hire me as a consultant.”

After we finished our tête-à-tête, I filled up a freezer bag with ice for my back and poured myself another drink. Found myself thinking about Anna Modin.

That evening Choy Lee and Zhang Ping ate at the Chans’ Chinese restaurant. Choy ate there several times a week. The menu was in Chinese characters and English, which was a touch for the locals who were looking for something “authentic.” The cuisine actually tasted similar to real Chinese fare, or close enough if you were Chinese and missing home badly. The owner, Sally’s father, spoke a bit of Cantonese and stopped to talk to Choy and Zhang. The waiters were Americans, black and white, and didn’t speak a word of the language. Choy chatted them up, drew out their stories and gave extravagant tips. That worried Zhang, but Choy waved it away. “This is America,” he said, and moved on to another subject.

Zhang regarded the restaurant people with open suspicion. Oh, he knew people had been bailing out of China for several centuries in search of a better life elsewhere, but for a patriot like Zhang, that fact, and those people, rankled. China was their heritage, who they were. And they had deserted.

It was just another little irritant about life in America. Not speaking the language, Zhang felt like a stranger all the time, and that disconcerted him. It also made him underestimate the acuity of the people he met, which was a grave mistake for a clandestine agent. He never gave it a thought.

All Zhang had to do was hold on, make sure the Americans didn’t find the bomb, or if they did, start the countdown and run for it. This countdown — the experts assured him that he had twenty-four hours to leave the area after he initiated the detonation signal with a radio transmitter. Zhang didn’t believe it. If he had been running the operation, the explosion would happen immediately after the capacitor charged, which took half a minute. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t.

If it didn’t, keep on fighting. If it did … well, life had been a helluva trip.

When they were eating, Sally came from the kitchen and sat down beside Choy. Of course he introduced Zhang, his “cousin.” Through Choy, Zhang gave his cover story in answer to friendly, innocent questions. There was no way out of it. She chatted some; then Choy said in English to Sally, “Could I pick you up tonight when you get off work?”

“Of course,” she said. She bussed Choy on the cheek, and went back to the kitchen.

Zhang didn’t know what had been said, but he had seen the glow on Sally’s face. That was a woman in love.

When they finished dinner, Choy chatted up Sally’s father, complimenting him extravagantly, and tipped the waiter, a skinny black man, the same way. Zhang climbed back into the SUV and told Choy to drop him at his building, which was fine with Choy, because he looked at his watch.

“What did you say to Miss Chan?”

“That I’d pick her up when she got off work.”

Zhang nodded. That explained her look. She and Choy were going to be lovers tonight.

When Choy was out of sight, Zhang climbed into his pickup truck and drove to the overlook near the entrance to the tunnel that led under the estuary. It was dark by then, no stars or moon, with a good breeze down the bay.

There was a carrier in. Zhang used binoculars to study the lights of the carrier tied to the pier. She was a huge ship. Over a thousand feet long, ninety-five thousand tons displacement. She was lit up as if it were Chinese New Year.

He scanned the water that he could see. No boats moving. Nothing that was not the same as it always was. But there should be a harbor patrol boat. Zhang waited. Twenty minutes later it came down the Elizabeth River into view. Moving slowly with a spotlight playing about on the water.

Tomorrow, he would buy a laptop computer that he could use to download the triggering algorithm from the Internet. He would wait another week and buy a boat. He would need Choy’s help with both purchases. If the man became suspicious, he would have to be terminated. To be on the safe side, he would also need to kill Sally Chan. Since they were lovers, Choy had perhaps told her things he shouldn’t. If he disappeared, she might go to the authorities.

After he killed Choy, Zhang would be on his own. Zhang sat in the darkness with his binoculars watching the carrier and thinking about how he would accomplish his mission without Choy Lee.