End of Enemies (21 page)

Langley

Pleasantries exchanged and coffee poured, Dick Mason said, “Senator, George tells me you have some questions regarding SYMMETRY.”

“Ever the diplomat, your Mr. Coates,” Smith replied. “Grave reservations would be the more appropriate phrase. And I'll tell you this, Director Mason: Before we're through here, I'll have answers.”

The other attendees, Coates, Sylvia Albrecht, and Senator Dean, shifted nervously in their chairs as Mason and Smith faced one another across the table.

Though Mason had never considered Smith a handsome man by any stretch of the imagination, today the senator had underdone himself; red-eyed, hair askew, and jacket rumpled, he looked like he had just come off a three-day binge, which, Mason reminded himself, was a distinct possibility.

“You've reviewed our report, I assume?” Mason said.

“And found it lacking. I'm looking for the truth, not rhetoric.”

“What else do you want to know?”

Smith flipped open his legal pad and read off a list of questions: names of terrorist groups Marcus's network had penetrated, particularly those in Lebanon; the network's communication protocols; what, if any, side-lobe product had been uncovered by the network. …

George was right,
Mason thought. Smith was far out of bounds. Such details were beyond even the DCI's purview.

Mason's first instinct was to be suspicious, but regardless of his personal dislike for the man, Smith's handling of IOC matters had thus far been beyond reproach. Herb Smith a traitor? Mason didn't buy it. The man was a grade-A son of a bitch, but he wouldn't sell out his country. So what, then? Mason wondered.

“How long have you been chairman of the IOC, Senator?” Mason asked.

“You know very well how long. Four years.”

“In all that time have we ever given you these kinds of operational details?”

“Damn it, don't patronize me! Your agency's history of withholding information is well-documented. You don't like us shining the light on you and your pet projects; it makes you scurry for the corners.”

“I'm sorry you feel—”

“You're perfectly happy keeping your secrets and playing your games. You've wasted millions of dollars and a man's life on this fiasco, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it.”

“Senator, there are reasons for withholding certain details—”

“To cover your collective asses. Yes, I—”

“It's called compartmentalization and need-to-know. The theory behind—”

“I don't need a lecture, Mason.”

“I think you do. Operations are compartmentalized so damage to one part doesn't spread. And need-to-know is just that: If you don't need access to classified information, you don't get it. Period. Even I'm not privy to the particulars of all ongoing ops.”

“Including SYMMETRY?”

“Including SYMMETRY.”

Smith grinned, shook his head. “Looks like I just found one of the problems. Do you even know what's going on in your own agency, Mason? Maybe this fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg. I wonder what else I might find with some digging?”

“You haven't been listening, Senator.”

“Oh, I've been listening—maybe too well, and it's got you worried. All of a sudden you're finding yourself up against somebody who doesn't buy your spook-speak bullshit!”

Senator Dean laid a hand on Smith's forearm. “Herb, why don't we—”

“No!
No, goddamn it! I've listened to this double-talk for too long.” He jutted his finger across the table. “I've watched you people dance in the dark and play your games long enough. The president has given you people too much power, and this SYMMETRY disaster proves it. You haven't got the slightest idea of the concept of accountability to the public you serve. Well, guess what? That's about to change. Starting now. Starting with you answering my questions!”

Smith's left eye twitched. He dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Are you feeling all right, Senator?” asked Sylvia Albrecht.

“I'm fine! I'm waiting, Mason.”

“Senator, since you've been so frank with us, I feel obliged to do the same. I don't care—even remotely—about your impressions of this agency. I'm proud of our accomplishments, and I stand behind every project we've undertaken during my tenure.”

“That's very moving, but you still haven't answered my questions.”

“And I don't intend to. Everything you need to know is in that briefing folder.”

“That's not good enough. I want—”

“Senator, I don't pretend to understand politics, and I have no desire to. I'm not sure where this agenda of yours is coming from, but I suggest you drop it. You're playing a dangerous game.”

Smith blanched. “You can't talk to me like that.”

“I just did. Now, if that's all—”

Smith pounded the table. “No, that's not all, you son of a bitch!”

Senator Dean blurted, “Jesus, Herb!—”

“Shut up! Mason, you—”

The DO stood up. “This meeting is over. George, Senator Smith is leaving; let's get him an escort. Senator Dean, it's been a pleasure.”

Smith bolted up. “I'm not going anywhere! You can't … can't …” His face flushed. He plopped down in his seat, gasping.

“Senator?” Mason asked.

Smith waved him away. “I'm fine …” he croaked.

Mason said, “George, call Medical.”

Seven floors below Mason's office, Latham hung up the phone and turned to the other team members. “He just deplaned in Heathrow. They've got him.”

Vorsalov was now under the watchful eyes of MI-5, the British counterpart to the FBI. If the world's intelligence services were to hold Olympic contests, Latham was convinced MI-5 would come out the undisputed champion of mobile ground surveillance. Vorsalov wouldn't be able to use the toilet without eyes on him.

“How long before his connection?” asked Randal.

“Forty minutes.”

“Plenty of time for something to go wrong,” muttered Art Stucky.

“Nothing will go wrong,” Latham said. He hadn't liked Stucky upon their first meeting four years ago and liked him even less now. He was a narrow-minded bigot and generally an asshole. Latham had encountered enough sociopaths to recognize their aura, and Stucky was steeped in it.

“You
hope
nothing goes wrong,” Stucky replied.

“He's not going anywhere.”

“Always the bright side, eh, Charlie?”

Paul Randal asked, “Did he come in on the Karnovsky passport?”

“Yep.”

“Surprised he hasn't switched.”

“Me, too. If he's going to do it, Heathrow's his last chance.”

“Does MI-5 know that?” Stucky asked.

“They wrote the book on this, Art,” Latham said.

“Right. Nobody tighter-assed than the Limeys.”

Latham began reviewing his mental checklist. They had eight hours from the time Vorsalov boarded at Heathrow until he touched down in New York. As of two hours ago, Harry Owen and the New York FO were putting the finishing touches on the surveillance net. The machinery was in place. Now they waited.

Why had the Russian come back? he wondered. The man knew how badly they wanted him, so what could be worth it? Whatever it was, Latham wasn't about to question his good fortune.

Aside from the details of Vorsalov's itinerary, the most interesting piece of information from the FIS's Larnaca team was their description of his contact aboard the ferry. Though far from a positive match, it sounded like the unidentified Arab from Khartoum. Latham played the scenario in his head: The Arab, based in Beirut, hires Vorsalov and Fayyad in Khartoum; Vorsalov's travel is related to the job. But in what way? And where was Fayyad now? The most obvious answer was also the most frightening: the United States. Again, Latham found himself asking the same question: What had drawn Fayyad here only weeks after the Delta bombing?

“Come on—” Latham chanted, staring at the phone.

“Come on. …”

Only minutes before, he'd gotten the call: Somewhere in the expanse of Heathrow airport MI-5 had lost Vorsalov. “Quite embarrassing, Charlie,” the contact said, “but it seems we've mislaid your package.”

“You what?”

“Not to worry, he'll turn up.”

“Damn it, Roger, how—”

“Oh, he's slick, that one. Did a bit of dry cleaning in a lift. A quick turn to loose our close-in boys, then a slip out the back door of a gift shop. No worry. He won't get away again. …”

Latham checked his watch: ten minutes before Vorsalov's flight boarded.

The secure phone trilled. Latham grabbed it. “Latham here.”

It was Roger. “You're back in the game, Charlie. He's smart and fast, your boy. Made it all the way to another concourse before we spotted him. He'd done a quick change in a bathroom: heel lift, doffed his coat, picked up a cap. He's first rate. Professional, I assume. Ivan?”

“Yes. Semiretired.”

“It shows. Anyway, he's boarded a BA flight with a different passport. I'll fax the details straightaway.”

“Where's he headed?”

“Montreal. He touches down in seven hours.”

Somehow Latham had known Vorsalov wasn't going to make it easy. Rule 26 in the professional spy's handbook was: “Always assume you're under surveillance and behave accordingly. Change your route, change your destination, do whatever it takes to shake up the opposition.”

Now they had seven hours to regroup, get the Canadians into the loop, and organize a net that would not only track Vorsalov but also hand him off at the border without so much as a hiccup.

“Apologies for the scare,” said Roger. “Anything else we can do for you?”

“No. Thanks, Roger, I owe you.” Latham hung up and turned to Stucky. “Art, you'd best get your boss down here. Paul, get on the horn to the RCMP in Quebec.”

Japan

Tanner doused the Range Rover's headlights and coasted to a stop in the tree line. He and Cahil sat still, waiting for their eyes to adjust and listening to the jungle's symphony of squawks and buzzes.

“Gotta love the jungle,” Cahil whispered, slapping a mosquito.

“Amen.” Like the water, jungle was darkness; jungle was cover.

They got out, shouldered their rucksacks, and started down the trail. In a few minutes, they reached the outskirts of Mitsu's village. In the distance, a dog barked, then went silent. As if on cue, Mitsu appeared on the trail before them.

“You are late,” he whispered, smiling.

Cahil mussed his hair. “You're early, scout.”

“You have the boat?” Tanner asked.

“Yes. Come.”

After a few hundred yards, the boy stopped at the crest of an embankment; through the foliage came the sound of gurgling water. Tanner's flashlight beam illuminated the nose of a skiff.

Mitsu said, “Shall I come with you?”

“No, wait here. We need you to hold the fort.” Mitsu frowned, confused. “Keep this place safe while we're gone,” Tanner added.

Mitsu smiled. “I will hold the fort.”

“If anyone comes around, stay out of sight. I'll want a report when I get back.”

Mitsu nodded solemnly and saluted.

Tanner half-expected company tonight. Earlier that afternoon, Cahil had returned to the dive shop to exchange a defective regulator. When he came out, one of Takagi's security trucks was sitting across the street. They followed him, but he was able to shake them on the way back to the hotel.

“So they know we've got dive gear,” Tanner said.

“Sorry, bud. I screwed up.”

“Forget it. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Now what?”

“Now it gets interesting. They'll probably assume we're going for the shipyard.”

“Or Ohira's mystery X-mark off the village. If there's anything to it, that is.”

The previous few days had dragged by as they waited for the weather to improve. It gave Briggs plenty of time to ponder the strange course DORSAL had taken.

Truth be told, he was surprised Mason had given them the week. Ohira's investigation appeared to be a tangent: a pair of mystery ships, one of which had skulked away into the night, “sold” to a company on whose board Takagi secretly sat; the other a floating fortress packed with advanced electronics gear. And what of the mysterious X-marks-the-spot chart with which Ohira had seemed obsessed? Was it all connected, and if so, how? Tanner couldn't shake the feeling there were larger, unseen forces at work.

He'd experienced the same sensation before and had come to trust it. In special ops this was called the k-check, or kinesthetic check. It was intuition, plain and simple, and he was a believer, not only because he'd seen it work but because he'd seen the effects of ignoring it.

With DORSAL, he felt as though invisible pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. He suspected Mason was withholding something. For Ohira to be working so far outside DORSAL's mission without their knowledge seemed impossible.

None of that mattered, he decided. He would see this through to the end. Unprofessional though it was, he felt his hatred for Hiromasa Takagi growing. Takagi had Ohira executed, tried to do the same to him, and was likely up to his neck in black-market arms dealing. Those things alone made him easy to loathe.

They loaded the skiff and began pushing their way through the mangrove roots. Above their heads, the canopy shook and squawked with night birds. Soon they heard the roar of waves and the jungle thinned. When the water reached their chest, they climbed aboard, and Cahil began rowing.

“Once more unto the breech,” Bear murmured, working at the oars.

Cahil was, in Tanner's opinion, the most unlikely Shakespeare aficionado on earth. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” Briggs countered.

With Cahil following his steering orders, Tanner matched fixes from Ohira's chart against landmarks onshore until he felt they were in position. He called a halt and tossed out the anchor. “We should be right on top.”

“The question being, of what?” Cahil said, shrugging on his scuba tank.

With Briggs in the lead, they followed the anchor rope to the bottom.

Their flashlights cut narrow arcs through the black water. When Tanner's fingers finally touched the sand, his depth gauge read forty-two feet. To their right, lost in the darkness, lay the hundred-meter curve where the seabed dropped away into the depths. Divers called it the “deep black.” He felt that familiar prickle of anticipation and fear.

Cahil stopped beside him. They inspected one another's gear, exchanged thumbs-up signs, hooked themselves to the twenty-foot buddy line, and started out.

The current was negligible so they moved quickly, skimming over coral and rock formations teeming with fish. Here and there crabs skittered over the sand. Momentarily caught in Tanner's beam, a moray eel stared at them with its doll's eyes, then snaked back into its cave.

They reached the end of the first 100-meter leg. Tanner set himself and signaled Bear to make the swing north.

Now the terrain began to change. Open sand gave way to low ridges blanketed with sea grass. Briggs felt an almost immediate increase in the water temperature as well, then remembered the same warm current from his previous dive. It came from the oyster beds, Mitsu had said. They must be close by.

He was skimming low over a ridge when he dropped his flashlight. It bounced off a clump of coral and dropped into a crevice. He signaled Cahil to stop and went after it.

Sea grass billowed over the opening, partially obscuring the beam. He reached for it, fell short, and reached again. Suddenly the rocks crumbled and he fell headfirst into the hole. The edge of his mask struck a rock. Water gushed into his eyes. He fell into the blackness.

The line went taut. He jerked to a stop. He swung free for a moment, then cleared his mask, groped around, and pulled himself to the ledge. He felt two rapid tugs on the line: Cahil questioning. Tanner tugged back the
okay
signal. The flashlight lay a few feet away. He retrieved it and looked about.

This was no crevice, he realized, not even a cave in the strict sense. The sea grass had formed a canopy over what appeared to be a ravine. Rising above him, the rock lip disappeared in a forest of sea grass.

He gave the line three short jerks, and a few seconds later, Cahil dropped through the canopy and hovered beside him.
What
?
he mouthed.

Tanner pointed. Ahead, the ravine sloped into the darkness.

Cahil nodded, and they started forward.

The darkness absorbed all but a sliver of light from their flashlights. Fish swirled around them and up along the ravine's walls.

A pillar of rock loomed in their path. Tanner played his beam over it, saw nothing unusual, and kept going. He stopped suddenly, backpedaled, and finned closer to the rock. Something was there, a dull glint in the stone. Using his knife, he chiseled at the rock until he'd cleared away a patch.

Heart pounding, he waved Cahil over and gestured for him to hover beside the rock.
What for
?
Bear mouthed.

Scale.
Just do it.

Tanner backpedaled and looked again. There was no mistake.

This was no rock. It was a propeller.

They had traveled fifty feet when Briggs noticed the walls widening. His depth gauge read seventy-six feet, thirty feet below the seabed proper. He checked his watch: thirteen minutes of air left. If they went much deeper, they would have to make a decompression stop.

Ahead, Cahil was shining his flashlight along the curve of the hull where it met the sand. However it had come to be here, the vessel's hull was tightly wedged in the ravine, with only a couple feet of clearance between it and the rock walls.

Cahil finned up along the hull and disappeared. Tanner followed. He found Cahil standing on a steel platform. He gestured with his flashlight:
Look
!

Tanner saw the three vertical, polelike structures behind him, but the shapes didn't register. He shrugged.
What
?

Cahil tapped two fingers on his face mask:
Look closely
!

Bear traced his light along the curve of the railing, then up the three poles. Now Briggs was seeing it. He backed up, looked again. Suddenly everything snapped into focus: the vessel's narrow beam, the cigar-shaped hull, the tapered screw blade …

Cahil was standing on the bridge of a submarine.