Delivering Caliban (20 page)

Thirty-Seven

Manhattan, New York City

Tuesday 21 May, 4.15 am

The door opened and a white-faced kid peered in. Giordano thought he looked scared enough to be an intern.

‘Mr Giordano. I’m real sorry to wake you, sir –’

‘
Your job. Don’t worry about it.’ He hadn’t been asleep.

‘
Mr Krugmann would like to see you, sir.’

‘
Krugmann’s here?’ He blinked at his watch.

‘
Sir.’

The kid led him down the corridor to another small office. Krugmann sat pouchily behind a desk. He’d sacrificed his own office for Giordano and was having to make do.

‘Though you’d be home at this hour.’

‘
I’m not having you Langley boys showing me up.’ Krugmann nodded at the intern to close the door. He shoved a mug of black coffee across the desk at Giordano. ‘Just got a call. The shit’s hit the fan.’

Giordano waited.

‘Where to god damn start… Remember how the shootings of our agents up in Skylands were called in by an anonymous person calling herself a federal agent?’

‘
Barbara Berg.’

Krugmann stared. ‘How the hell’d you –? Yeah. Berg. She’s called in to her superiors here in Manhattan, saying she’s the one who called the killings in earlier, and saying she’s arrested two Company operatives on charges of attempted murder. Names of Druze and Sandford. Mean anything?’

‘No.’

‘
Both based in Richmond, it seems. Anyhow, this Berg says two other Company guys were shot dead while she was making the arrests. Laymon and James. These two are from the Philadelphia office.’

Krugmann gave it to him in as ordered a fashion as could be asked for. Berg and her partner Nakamura were following a tipoff about a missing woman in Charlottesville, VA, who’d apparently fled the scene of a double homicide. They found links to the former agent Crosby and obtained further intel from him before they were attacked by a group of what turned out to be CIA men. Subsequent evidence led them to a service station outside Philadelphia where they found four men who turned out also to be CIA, laying siege to a gunman holding the missing woman Ramirez hostage. When Berg pointed out the CIA men weren’t authorised to act on domestic soil the Company men had attacked her and her partner, and attempted to storm the service station and kill both the gunman and his hostage. Berg and her partner killed tow of the CIA men and arrested a further two. The gunman escaped with his hostage and killed the partner, Nakamura, in the process.

There was no mention in the account of John Purkiss.

Krugmann pinched his eyes shut for a long moment, massaging his forehead with the fingertips of one hand. ‘It makes no god damn sense, Ray. None at all. This Berg goes rogue for a while, calling things in anonymously, running around like Rambo killing Company guys. All supposedly after being tipped off about some missing person crap hundreds of miles away. Then she comes out of the cold to say there’s a kidnapper on the loose with a hostage.’

‘What does the Director say?’ Giordano meant the FBI Director.

‘
Nothing at the moment. He’s pissed off with us, and I can’t say I blame him. Whatever this agent of his, Berg, has done, she seems to have caught so far eight of our people in the commission of various felonies. If I were the Feebs I’d be looking for revenge, starting with keeping us as far out of the loop as possible.’

‘
They’ll have to involve us sooner or later.’

‘
Yeah. Once they’ve flushed out whatever rotten apples remain in our barrel.’ Krugmann cracked his knuckles. ‘You’ll need to get back to Langley, I believe. This doesn’t just involve New York any more.’

‘
You’re right.’ Giordano stood. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my office for some privacy. I should be getting a call from the Chief at any moment.’

‘
That you certainly will, my friend.’

*

Giordano slumped heavily in the office chair, his phone on the desk in front of him. It began buzzing immediately. He glanced at the number. The Chief.

He let it go to voicemail.

He did the same with a second call from the Chief. Then with one from Naomi.

Giordano stared at the wall, idly tracing a fine crack in the plaster from its source. He too had calls to make. Plenty of them. Ordinarily a decisive man, he didn’t in this case know where to start.

The phone sounded again, the vibration nearly sending it off the desk.

He didn’t recognise the number.

Giordano picked up the phone and hit the green button. He listened.

‘
Raymond Giordano.’ A man’s voice. Accented, though he couldn’t tell with what.

‘
Who are you?’

‘
My name is Darius Pope. Does the surname ring any bells?’

And it all made sense, like a kaleidoscopic picture shifting into focus.

Giordano waited still. The voice – the accent was English – said, ‘Tell nobody of this conversation. Be in the Board Room annex of the Holtzmann Solar head office, in the Loomis Building in Manhattan, at ten o’clock this morning. Make sure you’re there alone.’

Giordano opened his mouth to speak, and it was as if his indrawn breath prompted the man to interrupt: ‘Just so that you’re aware of what will happen if you don’t follow my instructions to the letter.’

He paused, as if to make sure he had Giordano’s full attention.

‘
I have your daughter.’

Thirty-Eight

Manhattan, New York City

Tuesday 21 May, 7.35 am

Kendrick’s footfalls echoed off the bare walls in a rhythm that started to grate on Purkiss. He was standing at the large, tall window facing eastwards, watching the red sun emerge above the distant Jersey horizon.

‘Would you stop that,’ he said.

Kendrick glared. ‘You pace.’

‘I pace. I don’t prowl.’

He could see Kendrick was getting the urge, which he usually did at this stage of an operation: the craving for chemical stimulation. Normally Purkiss looked the other way, but this time he wouldn’t. There was no question of Kendrick’s stalking the early morning New York streets, looking for a fix.

‘How long’s she been?’ said Kendrick.

‘
An hour.’

Berg had dropped them back at the abandoned office they’d used earlier when they’d been in the city the previous afternoon. She’d gone on to her headquarters to meet her boss and debrief.

They had debated it feverishly on the hundred-mile journey back to the city. This time they’d taken one car, Nakamura’s Taurus. The local cops had arrived within minutes of Pope’s disappearance, and Berg had taken control, giving them a brief summary and leaving them to convert the area into a crime scene and to take the two men Berg had arrested, Druze and Laymon, into custody. She’d liaised with the local FBI office in Philadelphia and arranged for them to escort the two men back to Manhattan for questioning. Apart from their names, which the men had acknowledged when Kendrick had found their drivers’ licences on them, they’d refused to speak without legal representation. A check on their licences confirmed they were both CIA.

Purkiss and Berg both agreed that New York was Pope’s likely destination. He’d appeared to be heading there before. It was possible, of course, that he intended to travel beyond the city and further north, but they had no way of knowing this. Pope had taken one of the cars belonging to the CIA men, but although

The debate was over how much to report in and how much to withhold. Berg had been in favour of making a full disclosure, of telling her superiors everything she knew, including about Purkiss’s involvement.

‘
This is too big for us,’ she said. ‘Multiple CIA agents operating illegally, a British spook running amuck, killing and kidnapping… it needs the whole Bureau behind it.’

‘
They’ll sideline you,’ said Purkiss.

‘
No they won’t.’

‘
They certainly will. You’ll be deemed unfit to proceed further. You’ve fired your weapon multiple times, you’ve almost been killed just as often. You watched your partner being crushed to death.’

She jerked her head round angrily, making the Taurus swerve. ‘Hey. No need to rub it in.’

‘I’m just trying to make a point. I know how organisations work. Yours, mine… they’re all the same. You’ll be thanked for bringing this serious matter to the bosses’ attention, they may even pardon you for going renegade earlier. But they’ll want to take it away from you and run it themselves.’

From the back seat Kendrick said, ‘Like the bloody Army.’

Berg said, ‘What do you suggest?’

‘
How much slack will your boss cut you? If you tell him you’ve got an informant, i.e. me, but can’t reveal my name without jeopardising the operation?’

She rocked her head. ‘Maybe.’

‘Then that’s the line you take. Tell him about Crosby, about Holtzmann Solar and the Caliban operation, about everything that’s happened. Tell him there’s an Englishman named Pope who’s kidnapped the Ramirez woman, though you don’t know why, which is the truth. Leave out the fact that Pope’s a British intelligence agent, that his father was one too, that Kendrick or I are involved.’

‘
It’ll come out in the end.’

‘
But it can’t come out now. If your Bureau learns there’s a British agent operating in a situation like this it’ll have repercussions that don’t bear thinking about. It’ll scupper our job, hinder us from finding Pope. Yes, eventually my role will become apparent, but it won’t matter so much if we’ve managed to stop Pope by then.’

She drove in silence for a full minute, her thoughts visibly churning. Then: ‘All right. I must be out of my mind.’

*

Kendrick said, ‘Should’ve worked them over.’

‘What?’ Purkiss turned from the window.

‘
Those two CIA pillocks. Back at the petrol station. We should’ve made them tell us what they knew. The coppers would have been none the wiser.’

‘
Berg wouldn’t have allowed it.’

‘
But you agree with me. You know I’m right, Purkiss.’

Purkiss turned away again. It was clear, now, that the CIA faction, the one that included the men who’d tailed him in Hamburg as well as the ones who’d shot up Crosby’s place and now the ones from the service station, didn’t want the Ramirez woman dead. If they had, Pope wouldn’t have been able to use her as a shield the way he had; they would have simply gunned her down along with Pope. That meant Ramirez was important enough for both Pope and the CIA faction to want to keep her alive.

And yes, Kendrick was right. The men they’d captured would have been able to tell them why. It was a theoretical point now, nothing more; they were in FBI custody and would
lawyer up
, as the Americans put it. The truth would come out, but probably too late to be of much practical use.

Ignoring what he’d said to Kendrick, Purkiss began to pace. He ran through what he knew.

Pope was here as a result of something his father had been involved in, something that had led to his father’s death, accidentally or otherwise. An illegal drug trial.

The trial was being conducted with the active collaboration of a black ops cell within the CIA, and under its auspices.

Pope had taken a woman captive and was taking pains to keep her alive.

At the same time a CIA black ops cell was trying to retrieve her.

Ramirez was key. And not only did Purkiss not know why, he’d also let her slip through his fingers. He’d let her be taken, just as he’d let Abby be taken, the second time permanently. And Claire...

He stopped, clenched his fists so that his nails bit deep half moons into his palms, and counted backwards. When the anger had subsided he applied himself once more to the problem.

Ramirez, who’d been a child of ten or eleven at the time of the Caliban operation, was connected with it. That meant she either held crucial knowledge about the project - highly unlikely - or she had some personal connection to somebody involved in it.

He replayed what Berg had found out about her.
US citizen by birth. Mother Honduran. Father unknown.

It was a huge risk - Berg’s superiors might have taken her phone and be monitoring her calls - but he took out his own phone and dialled her number. She answered immediately. ‘Yeah, Purkiss.’

‘
Can you talk?’

‘
On my way to you. They might tail me so I’ll have to do a few evasive moves. I’ve got a reprieve. You’re my informant and your ID’s protected for now.’

‘
Great.’

‘
And my balls are for the chop when this is over, or would be if I was a guy. What’s up?’

‘
You bringing your laptop?’

‘
Of course. Why?’

He told her.

*

‘There’s an alert out, not just for the five NYC boroughs but for all the northeastern states,’ said Berg. ‘TV stations, local and the networks. Several photos of Ramirez, though we’ve only got the one of Pope.’

She’d brought coffee in paper cups for the three of them as well as a bag of doughnuts. Her face was drawn with fatigue, but her eyes burned. They sat around the laptop at one of the desks.

‘It’s worth trying, but it’s unlikely to yield anything useful,’ Purkiss said. ‘Pope knows he’s exposed now. He’ll either go to ground, or move so quickly we won’t know what he’s got planned till it’s over.’

‘
You think it’s blackmail?’

Purkiss drank coffee, felt the caffeine blaze its way through his body. ‘Of some kind, yes. Not money. If my idea’s right, that Ramirez’s unknown father is the person Pope’s after, then he’s probably using her to flush the man out.’

‘Which suggests this is a harder man to get to than the other ones, the ones Pope killed. Jablonsky and the rest.’

‘
Right. Which in turn suggests it’s someone more senior. Somebody protected by a greater level of security. Perhaps based in Langley itself.’

Berg had set several searches running on Nina Ramirez. Schooling records, family contacts, even her immunisation schedule. Anything that might shed light on her paternity.

‘Her birth certificate records her father as unknown,’ said Berg. ‘She’s a US citizen because she was born here. Her mother was a Honduran national. But every time I try searching for details about the mother, I get
no records found
. There’s nothing about her marriage, if she ever was married, or any other kids she might have had.’

‘
They’ve been cleaned,’ Purkiss said. ‘Run through the daughter’s timeline.’

Berg brought up a document. ‘Born March tenth, 1987, Richmond, Virginia. School there all the way through, with a period of disruption when she was eleven when her mom died in a car crash. There’s no death certificate on the mom, by the way. Lived with grandmother after that, as we know. Graduated high school 2005, then university at Charlottesville.’

‘The mother died in 1998.’

‘
At the time Pope’s father was found dead. Yeah, I noticed that.’

Purkiss said, ‘Is there any way you can identify CIA personnel from that period? Staff stationed in overseas countries?’

Berg shook her head. ‘No. We keep tabs on Company staff here in the US, but their international data is tighter than a witch’s ass. I could ask my boss to go to the Director and make a direct appeal to the CIA, but it’ll take forever and the politics would be hard to get round.’

‘
There’s a quicker way,’ said Purkiss.

*

Vale rang back after an hour, one in which the shifting shadows in the office made Purkiss acutely aware of how quickly time was passing. He’d given Vale the barest outline of events – he was in New York, Pope was possibly there too and had a hostage – because he wanted him to concentrate on the task he had for him.

‘
Took a bit longer than I’d have liked,’ said Vale. ‘The records from the nineties haven’t all been fully converted to digital format yet and I had to get a couple of people to hunt down the files.’

‘
And?’

‘
The intel the Service has on the CIA’s Central American staff and activities from that time is patchy. It’s not like the eighties when everything was kicking off in Nicaragua and El Salvador. But I did manage to get the personnel records for Honduras – there’s really only one lot of information, for the capital, Tegucigalpa. Will email it across.’

It came through after a minute. Purkiss forwarded the file to Berg’s laptop. It was, as Vale had said, a personnel file for the CIA station in the Honduran capital for the years 1995 until 2005. There were dossiers attached for six or seven of the names.

The head of station from 1995 to 1999 was one Philip B. Mayhew. Berg opened the dossier. Two indistinct photos accompanied a short biography.