The Art of War

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When he came out of the hospital room, Jake Grafton found four men wearing casual clothes and light jackets standing in the hallway. They were covert operators from the agency: Travis Clay, Willis Coffey, Doc Gordon and Pablo Martinez. All had pistols in holsters hidden under their jackets.

“How is he?” Coffey asked.

“Has a concussion, some contusions, cuts and scrapes, a light burn and some memory loss. Doctor said nothing is broken or smashed. They want to observe him for a few days.”

The four men nodded grimly. They all had worked with Carmellini on various occasions.

“So how about two of you on watch outside the door day and night. Twelve-hour shifts, staggered. No one but hospital personnel with the appropriate badges with photo ID goes through the door. If they take him out, one of you accompanies him and the other waits in the room. I told the doctor to arrange to have meals brought up to you from the cafeteria.”

They nodded.

Jake took a paper from his pocket and handed each of them a sheet. It was a photo from a computer printer. “Study this photo and keep the paper in your pocket. It’s from the video cameras at Dulles. Tommy recognized this guy there last week, chased him and had him in hand when the police interfered. The guy escaped. It’s just possible this guy is the dude who tried to bomb my place and did bomb Tommy’s. If it is him, he’s a killer. I’d like him alive and able to talk, but don’t take any chances. He’s undoubtedly armed. If you have to shoot him, kill him.”

They all nodded again.

“He’s a little under six feet, Tommy said. White man, and fit.”

“We have a name?”

“Not the one his mother gave him.”

More nods.

“Call me anytime if you have any trouble. You have my cell number. If anything goes wrong. Anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can visit him a little, one at a time, when the doctor says it’s okay, but he needs rest.”

“Yeah.”

As Jake came out of the elevator in the lobby, he met Willie Varner coming in.

Varner recognized him.

“Let’s chat,” Jake said, and led him into the lobby and gestured to chairs. “How’d you learn about this?”

“Man, it was in the mornin’ paper.”

Grafton sighed.

“His girl really got it, huh?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Same guy who tried to bomb you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.”

Willie ran his hand through his hair. “Damn,” he said softly. “He called me from London. Said he was gonna get married.” Willie sighed, remembering. “Never heard him so happy. And it all turned to shit.”

Grafton described Tommy’s physical condition. “He’ll be out of here in a few days. No visitors.”

“Man, the same asshole could walk in here and waste him.”

“I have some men upstairs.”

“Okay.” Willie nodded his head and wiped his eyes. “Really tough shit for Tommy, man.”

“He told me he mailed you an envelope from London. When it comes, call me. Don’t open it. I’ll send a man to get it.”

“Okay. You know I’m still watchin’ the video from your place from time to time. If anythin’ happens, I can’t call Tommy. Want me to call you?”

“Yes. If you can’t get me, call nine-one-one.”

“He really gonna be okay?”

“The doctor is hopeful. So am I.”

Willie cussed a bit, then stood up, and they walked out of the hospital together.

When Grafton stuck out his hand in the parking lot to shake, Willie Varner seized it and gave it a pump. “You better find that bomber motherfucker soon,” he advised. “If Tommy gets to him before you do, there won’t be enough left of him to make a little dog’s breakfast. Tommy’s a good guy, and something like that wouldn’t be good for his soul.”

When he got back to Langley, Jake Grafton found Zoe Kerry waiting for him.

“Carmellini’s place was blown up with a dynamite bomb. Four sticks, at least.”

“What else?”

“The FBI is working it, Admiral. There’s a security camera in the lobby, but it’s on a twenty-four-hour loop. We took it and sent it to the lab, but…”

“What about that dude Tommy tackled at Dulles last week?”

“We’re working that angle. Getting some resistance from Homeland. What their problem is I don’t know.”

“Tomazic?”

“No further information.”

Grafton thanked her and sent her on her way. Then he had the receptionist call Sarah Houston. When she came into his office fifteen minutes later, he asked, “What have you got?”

“How is Tommy?”

She seated herself near the corner of Grafton’s desk and put her file folders on her lap.

“Alive, with a concussion and cuts and bruises. A few days before they discharge him.” Grafton eyed Tommy’s former girlfriend. “No visitors, the doctor said.”

Sarah nodded. “I didn’t know he had a fiancée.”

“They just decided to get married. He brought her back from Switzerland. He asked her to marry him once before, years ago, and she refused. She said yes this time. Came home with him and got blown up. Murdered. Sometimes life hands you a shit sandwich.”

She didn’t say anything to that, merely glanced at the files in her lap.

“What do you have?” Grafton asked, all business.

“The Chinese have indeed been into the navy’s computer systems. I’ve got a report here. It will take a while to read.” She passed it across.

“Anything jump out at you?” he asked as he glanced through it.

“I think the Russians have been in there, too. The systems are structurally weak.”

“Terrific.”

“They don’t seem to have cracked the heavily encrypted stuff. Both powers have been into the low-grade stuff, such as ship schedules, port visits, that kind of thing.”

“Okay.”

“The thing I found a bit hard to understand — the navy has every carrier in the Atlantic Fleet scheduled into Norfolk over Christmas. They did the same thing two years ago during a budget battle with Congress.”

“All of them?”

“Yep. All five of the battle groups. Some of the escorts will go to other ports on the East Coast, but the carriers will all go to Norfolk.”

“Unbelievable,” Grafton muttered. He didn’t bother to tell Sarah he already knew of the navy’s op plans for the carriers over the holidays.

“The navy has some light maintenance scheduled for the ships,” she continued, “and they are apparently going to be generous with Christmas leave for the sailors. The ships will be there through New Year’s, at least.”

“Five carriers,” Grafton mused, playing with a pencil while he scanned the report. “What else?”

“I’m recording phone calls on those numbers you gave me. You are treading on dangerous ground, Admiral.”

“Anything interesting?”

“The White House staffers about lost it when the president’s plane went down. That came as a huge shock to them.”

“Did to me, too.”

“They keep asking each other, ‘What’s happening?’”

Grafton used the eraser on his pencil to rub his head. After a moment he asked, “This guy Tommy tried to catch at the airport and you got the photo of, where is that?”

Sarah Houston said, “Homeland Security called the FBI off.”

“Really?”

“Really. A couple of calls on that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Grafton collected his thoughts. “I think someone told Homeland Security that I sent Tommy to Switzerland. He was thoroughly searched at Dulles when he came back. He said he got the impression they were looking for something. That suggests the possibility of a leak in this agency.”

She stared.

“I want you to get the cell phone numbers of all my staff and start recording their calls. And Zoe Kerry, the FBI liaison officer. If someone in this building is leaking classified information to other government agencies, I want to know about it as soon as possible.”

“Why not just give that to the security people?”

“Because I don’t trust them either,” Jake said softly. His gray eyes pinned Sarah. “Someone murdered the previous director, Mario Tomazic, and as it stands, the motive could have come from within this building.”

“I needn’t remind you that evidence acquired through illegal means can’t be used in court.”

“You got that right. You don’t need to remind me.”

“Just saying.” She stared back into those gray eyes, not the least intimidated.

“This isn’t the Department of Justice, Sarah. It’s the Central Intelligence Agency. We don’t do prosecutions.”

“Your responsibility.”

“Absolutely. You are goddamned right.” His voice rose. “The president appointed me, and I’m going to do my duty as I see it, come hell or high water. If the president or Congress or the FBI doesn’t like it, they can do whatever they want with it. I didn’t ask for this job, but I’m going to do my damnedest to do it to the best of my ability.” His roar came down to merely loud. “If some son of a bitch is passing classified information to anyone not authorized to have it, I’ll cut out the bastard’s heart and eat it for breakfast. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

His voice dropped to a conversational volume. “People are being murdered. Anna Modin was merely the latest. Tommy Carmellini was the one they wanted. Someone is doing this shit. There must be a reason. Give me a glimpse. A glimmer. Something there that shouldn’t be. A word, a tone of voice, a hint. Anything.”

Sarah had been fanged by Jake Grafton before, so this latest episode didn’t raise her blood pressure. “Okay,” she said evenly.

“I’ll keep this report. You get these other people on the computer and record those phone calls. Listen to them. Anybody says anything suspicious, you bring it here as fast as humanly possible, or sooner. Got it?”

“I do have it, Admiral.”

“Get cracking.”

Sarah Houston left. Grafton stared at the door after she closed it.

Then he consulted his private telephone list and dialed a call. After he went through a switchboard and an executive assistant, he got the CNO, Admiral Cart McKiernan, on the line.

“Jake, how’s everything?”

“Just fine, sir. I’m calling about those five Atlantic Fleet carriers that you have scheduled to be in Norfolk over the Christmas holidays.”

“Okay.”

“Who at the White House told you to schedule them that way?”

“Didn’t even go through SECDEF’s office. I got a call from some White House weenie. President’s orders, he said.”

“Which weenie?”

“Frank Harless. He’s some sort of ass kisser or cigarette lighter or political guru over there. About a month ago.”

“You sure it was him?”

“Yep. Told me if I didn’t like it I could talk to Al Grantham.”

“Did you?”

“Hell, yes. Told that son of a bitch that putting all those ships in one port was a really stupid idea. Asked him if he’d ever heard of Pearl Harbor.”

“And…”

“And he told me that the order came from the president. I asked for it in writing.”

“What did he say?”

“The subtle bastard asked if I wanted to retire early.”

“Thanks, Cart.”

“Yeah. You hear anything, anything at all, and I’ll keep those ships at sea or dock them somewhere else. They didn’t put it in writing. You know as well as I do that if anything goes wrong, they’ll either flatly deny that they gave me an order or say that they merely suggested a course of action and expected me to use my best professional judgment. If anything goes wrong, it’ll be the navy’s fault. None of the mud or blood is going to stick to them. I’ve been there before and so have you. Fuck Grantham. And fuck the president. He can have a piece of my ass at the country club if he can catch my golf cart.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Any time, Jake. Don’t be a stranger.”

Lying in that hospital bed staring at the ceiling was the hardest thing I have ever done. The nurses and doctors came and went occasionally, took vital signs and said nice things. Every few hours one of the guys in the hall popped in, to stay only a few minutes. I had served with them all someplace and liked all four of them. They were guys like me, good on action and no great shakes with words. They tried to say comforting things, but nothing helped.

Anna was dead and I was just going to have to live with it. She didn’t deserve to die that way, but what victim of insane, random violence does? With no evidence, I was sure that the Dumpster diver dude had fixed up the bomb in my dresser, the same way he had rigged up one to kill Jake Grafton.

If only I had been more careful. If only I had … checked the dresser myself? Then I’d be dead and Anna would still be alive.

The guilt ate at me. If-onlys are a poison that can kill you as dead as arsenic. They rob you of the will to live and destroy your ability to cope with life. At some point, all of us have to let go of what-might-have-been and go on down the road of life, wherever it might lead.

I wasn’t ready yet. Anna’s memory was still too vivid.

I wanted to get out of this damned bed as soon as possible and make some funeral arrangements. I was thinking about that when I realized that I didn’t even know who her parents were, or where they were. Didn’t know if they were even alive. If she had brothers or sisters. Maybe Grafton could get word to Janos Ilin somehow and he could see that they were told. They deserved to know. But he had probably already thought of that. Grafton was that kind of guy.

I also felt sorry for myself. That, and my guilt, made me feel like a real shit. If I got angry enough, maybe I’d pop an artery in my brain and stroke out. Dying right now or crippling myself wouldn’t do. I had a score to settle with that bombing son of a bitch.

So I tried to calm down. The second morning I was conscious, I turned on the television. Problems overseas, problems here, the White House press secretary answering questions about the investigation into the Air Force One shootdown … I could feel my blood pressure rising, so I turned off the idiot tube.

Lay there in the bed thinking about Anna. And what might have been.

Oh God, why her?

When Willie Varner got the envelope from London in his mail and called Jake Grafton, the admiral climbed in his executive sedan with his bodyguards and went to get it himself.

“How’s Tommy?” Willie asked.

“Doing okay, the doctors tell me. A couple more days. They think he can have short visits. If you want to go over to the hospital and visit for ten minutes or so, go ahead.”

“By God, I will.”

“They’re going to have a psychologist visit him. You can expect that he’s mired up to his eyeballs in post-traumatic stress. And guilt. Anna got it and he didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Willie Varner said and nodded vigorously. “That’s Tommy.”

“That’s everybody in his situation,” Jake shot back. “We’re all human.”

“Most of us, anyway,” Willie replied. “Not that bomber bastard. He’s a fuckin’ animal.”

Riding back to Langley in the backseat of his executive sedan, Jake put on his reading glasses and opened the envelope. All that was in it was a folded map, which appeared to have been printed off a computer display. When he unfolded it, the sheet was about eighteen inches by eighteen. A map of the Norfolk, Virginia, area. At the center was Naval Base Norfolk. On the carrier pier was a dot. Surrounding the dot were concentric circles, five of them. Here and there were Chinese-language symbols.

Jake Grafton sat looking at the map. After a while he folded it back up and inserted it back in its envelope.

He thought about the possibilities. A: The map was real, put together in China. B: The map was fake, made by the Russians to slander the Chinese. C: The map was fake, drawn God knows where, and the number of people who might have made it was legion.

Assuming the map was made in China, what did it mean?

When he got back to Langley, Grafton had three Chinese-language experts come to his office. He duplicated the map, then had them translate the characters and mark them on his copy. The original went into an envelope that he stamped TOP SECRET.

He was studying the copy and its English translations when Harley Merritt came in for his daily appointment.

Jake handed the deputy director the map and said, “What do you think of this?”

Merritt pulled his glasses down from his forehead and began looking. After a while he said, “What is this and where did you get it?”

Jake told him.

“Holy shit,” Merritt said.

“I want you to take the original”—Jake passed him the envelope stamped TOP SECRET—“to the forensics lab. I want to know if this was made in China. Have them do an analysis of the paper and ink and the Chinese-language symbols. It looks like a computer print-off, but see what the wizards can learn. I want everything they can tell me. Everything. Then call the air force and navy and get some nuclear weapons experts over here. If that dot represents a nuclear explosion, I want them to estimate the explosive power of the weapon.”

“Sure,” Merritt said, fingering the envelope and duplicate.

“Keep the circle of people who know about this as small as possible.”

Merritt nodded. Then he asked, “What are you going to do with this?”

“Nothing until the forensic and weapons experts have their say.”

“Okay.”

“Even if the map is a Chinese product, it can’t tell us if this represents a contingency plan or an event that is going to happen.”

“I understand.”

“Our military makes war plans all the time. China’s probably does, too.”

They left it there.

“Our in-house investigation of reasons for Tomazic’s murder is complete,” Merritt told his boss. “Nothing. I am writing a report that I’ll pass along when it is finalized, but there isn’t anything worth mentioning in it.”

Grafton nodded.

“If he was murdered, the motive isn’t here at Langley,” Merritt continued. “I’m convinced of that, and I put it in writing.”

They moved on to other subjects. An hour after he arrived, Merritt left. Jake Grafton went back to studying the map. A retired navy attack pilot, Jake Grafton knew a lot about nuclear weapons. If this map represented the kill-and-damage zone of a nuclear explosion, the explosive power of the warhead would depend on whether it was detonated as an airburst or surface burst. An airburst could be delivered by a plane or an ICBM, or a missile fired by a submarine. Since the warhead detonated well above the target, it could be a smaller weapon.

A surface burst would need a more powerful warhead to do the same damage … and a surface burst would be more difficult to make happen. It would require a boat or ship or submarine to steam right up to the target, represented by the dot, and detonate the weapon. Unless the weapon was already there, planted on the bed of the harbor or inside something.

Grafton put the duplicate in his desk and sent for his executive assistants. Regardless of everything else that was happening, he still had an intelligence agency to run. Anastasia Roberts and Max Hurley wanted to talk about Carmellini. “He’s doing okay. The police bomb squad and the FBI are investigating. What they’ll come up with may not help us find the bomber, or it might. We’ll see. Tommy needs peace and quiet.”

They nodded. Anastasia Roberts reported on her briefing to the White House that morning. Nothing on the possible Russian involvement in the assassination.

“Nothing from the Russian embassy?”

“No, sir.”

They started in on the paperwork.

After they left an hour later, Grafton worked silently on the paperwork for a while, then went to the cafeteria for lunch.

He found Sarah Houston there and sat down beside her with his tray.

“How’s Tommy?” she asked.

“Docs say he’ll be back to normal soon.”

“Good.”

“Whatever normal is for Carmellini. I’ve known him for years and I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Me either.”

They chatted about the news for the rest of their lunch; then Jake asked Sarah to come up to his office.

When they were there and had the door closed, Jake asked about the telephone intercepts.

“Nothing to report,” she said. “I would have called you if I heard anything.”

“Good,” he said. He opened his drawer, got out the map and handed it to her.

As she studied it he gave her his analysis. Then he said, “I know you’re busy as hell, but I want you to search our database and the navy’s to see if you can find anything suspicious about the Chinese navy.”

“There is only one of me.”

“Thank God for that.”

“What am I looking for?”

Grafton considered. If he narrowed the search too much, something important or relevant might be missed. On the other hand, a report on the activities of the entire Chinese navy would be voluminous and possibly hide the hint he wanted. If there was anything there to be found.

“Let’s just look in the Atlantic,” he said. “North and South. Make it during the last year. Everything the Chinese navy has been doing in this hemisphere. There can’t be that much.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

Lieutenant Commander Zhang had never in his life seen anything like it. From where he stood looking over the piers of the marina, he could see at least a hundred boats, all for sale. Choy Lee was translating the jabber of the salesman, who sensed he had a sucker on the hook and was in a fine mood.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “You folks surely came by at the right time. Lots of folks sell their boats in the fall because they don’t want to pay the upkeep and storage and all through the winter. So I got lots of inventory and rock bottom prices. Got the lowest prices of anybody on the Chesapeake — that’s why I sell the most boats. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you if you really want to sell your boat, bring it here. And if you want to find a hell of a value in a boat, this is the place.”

Zhang listened to all that in Chinese, eyed the man, then said to Choy, “Tell him I want a used boat with a cabin and small head, two engines, all the usual navigation gear. Plus an adequate aft platform to fish from and a built-in holding tank for our catch.”

The salesman, a heavyset man with a crew cut and an enormous gut, with jowls to match, shook his head vigorously. “I got six or eight like that,” he declared in an old-line Tidewater accent, which Choy appreciated but was way beyond Zhang’s command of the language. “All good values. All good boats. Come on, I’ll show them to you. Got the best one here in the showroom.” He took them inside.

“Now you understand,” the salesman said, “that a boat with two internal engines is going to be large and cost you a serious amount of change. This one only has one engine, but she’s only two years old and is a sweetheart. Gonna make a great boat for somebody.”

Zhang climbed up the ladder stand on the floor and went aboard. No doubt, it was a nice boat. He went below and looked at everything as Choy and the salesman chatted.

He was staring down through the open doors in the stern area at the single engine when Choy said, “This boat was repossessed by the bank when the owner couldn’t make the payments. He’ll sell it for fifty thousand dollars off the new price.”

Zhang straightened up and said, “Let’s see what else he has.”

The fifth boat the salesman showed them was the one, in a slip on the third pier surrounded by boats that were too small or too big. Some of these boats were yachts, with prices over a million dollars. These Americans were amazing. What kind of person could afford such a … small ship?

This one was a twenty-eight-and-a-half-foot Boston Whaler with a small enclosed cabin and two large Mercury outboard engines of 225 horsepower each. Zhang eyed the Supermarine radar on top of the small bridge area.

“You probably know all about Boston Whalers,” the salesman purred. “Unsinkable. You can cut ’em in half and both halves will float. Safest boat ever made, yes sirree.”

“Will he guarantee that every system in the boat works?”

“Of course,” the salesman replied after Choy put the question. “We’ll take her out in the bay and make sure every single gizmo on this whole boat works like it did when it came from the factory four years ago. GPS, radar, depth finder, bathroom facilities, kitchen stove and refrigerator, both engines, the works. If something don’t work, we’ll fix it and you’ll boat out of here like you were driving a new one. This is our business. All customers completely satisfied, yes sirree, that’s our motto. No complaints. We make things right.” He kept on with the sales patter, but Choy didn’t bother to translate it, which Zhang thought just as well.

They left the marina, which was in an inlet on the south shore of the Chesapeake, heading north. Both engines purred like kittens. Zhang was at the helm. He looked left, to the west, but didn’t see Willoughby Spit. It was too far west, hidden behind a head of land. He looked at the radar, ran the range out to maximum and saw the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the Eastern Shore, ships, the shape of the shoreline. He brought the range in, played with the gain, brought it in to five miles, adjusted the gain again … It was a nice unit.

He ran the boat flat out on the step with the engines singing and a big wake pouring out behind, then at cruise speed, still on the step, maneuvering tightly. The boat responded like a racehorse. She heeled and ran and bucked the waves as the wind blew whitecaps on the bay and low clouds scudded overhead.

After an hour they turned back for the marina. Just a few miles out, the salesman leaned over the scope and pointed out the radar reflectors on pilings that marked the entrance to the inlet.

Zhang haggled and got the salesman to come down ten thousand dollars on the price. He had plenty of funds in his American bank account, but he didn’t want the salesman bragging to his friends that a couple of Chinese fools paid the asking price, thereby calling unnecessary attention to Choy and himself.

Zhang played hard to sell. He had Choy demand another ten thousand off the price. When they didn’t get it, they left. They came back an hour later, after lunch, and the salesman made free pier space part of the deal.

“You can keep her here at a berth through the winter, if you want, or let us haul her out and put her in storage for spring, whatever you wish. But you will have to have her out of here by May. We’ll need our pier space for inventory.”

Zhang agreed to all that and signed a paper that Choy Lee approved. Actually he signed a stack of papers, contracts, all printed in four copies. Then he wrote a check on his bank for the whole amount plus sales taxes.

When the salesman heard Zhang wanted to pay cash, before he had the documents prepared, his eyes widened. “Don’t get many folks in here who don’t wanta finance, ’less of course they’re in the drug business. By chance, you guys ain’t bringin’ in shit, are ya?”

He laughed at his own wit, heartily, with his big gut pumping up and down. Choy Lee smiled thinly and didn’t bother to translate for Zhang. American humor is an acquired taste, he thought.