Exile Hunter (8 page)

Giving up on the door,
he returned to the cot and sat to review his circumstances. First,
the dream. It had been frightening, to be sure, but its content and
images were refreshingly different from those in his usual
nightmares. In those, the persons he had targeted over the years for
assassination or capture had reproached him bitterly for having
marked them for ruin, holding their pale and forlorn faces close to
his.

In this dream, no
victims accosted him or barred his way. Though the way forward seemed
perilous, it lay open to him if he dared force his way through. The
problem, of course, was that the dream offered him no other choice.
When and if it recurred, he would face this personal valley of the
shadow of death again and again.

A few moments later, he
heard a crackling overhead like the static from an amplifier and
looked up at the ceiling. Just above the door, he spotted a built-in
loudspeaker and surmised that the unit might also contain a
microphone or video camera.

“Anybody there?” he
called out as he examined the speaker more closely.

No answer.

“Anybody? Nobody?”
he called louder. “Hey! Come on, how about opening the door?”

Still no answer.

He retrieved the water
bottle and drank half of it at one draught. He still felt nauseous,
but the throbbing at his temple and the ache in his knee pushed the
nausea far enough into the background for him to notice his hunger.
He broke off a piece of pita bread and held it to his nose. It was
stiff and dry but smelled okay, so he ate it.

He chewed slowly on the
bread while his thoughts moved on. His physical discomfort was a
tangible reminder that he had somehow been rendered unconscious and
removed forcibly from Philip Eaton’s flat. Whatever prompted
Bednarski and Denniston to order the capture of Eaton and his family,
his cover as Joe Tanner was irretrievably blown and it was unlikely
he would be cleared to resume undercover work against rebel exiles
any time soon. It seemed he would be returning to the States, after
all.

The next question was
how badly the Department’s effort against the rebel exiles had been
compromised by the way the operation against Eaton had ended, and
more pointedly, how much damage this would likely do to his career.
Without a doubt, various regulations and procedures existed to cover
situations like this, but in Linder’s experience, such rules were
usually applied after the fact to justify whatever decision the
bosses had already chosen to reach.

Certain favorite sons,
often those with strong Party credentials, were sometimes let off
scot-free or with a nominal slap on the wrist. Employees with
reputations as black sheep, mavericks, or lone wolves usually had the
book thrown at them. And in his own case, Linder had a pretty good
idea of how Headquarters would see things. Unless Denniston or
Bednarski came to his rescue, he would be cast as the scapegoat and
thrown to the wolves.

Linder scolded himself
for not having listened to his inner voice that had warned him not to
come to Beirut. Even after his arrival, he might have found a pretext
to shirk his role in the operation. It wouldn’t have required him
to disappear completely, as in his persistent fantasy. All it would
have required was to stay out of action long enough for Denniston and
Bednarski to find a replacement.

All at once Linder felt
a wave of stomach-churning anxiety sweep over him as his thoughts
turned to Patricia Kendall and her daughter. Had they also been
gassed and brought unconscious to a cell like this, perhaps a few
doors away? After having not seen Patricia for two decades, what
could it possibly mean that their utterly improbable meeting had come
to such an end?

Linder strained his
ears for sounds from the corridor. Nothing. That did not surprise
him, as this was not some Hollywood dungeon or third-world fingernail
factory, where the screams of torture victims echoed through the
corridors to terrorize would-be enemies of the state. This was a
temporary holding facility of thoroughly modern design, an isolation
ward of sorts designed to preserve detainees and their information
for orderly intelligence exploitation. If Patricia, her daughter, her
father, and her husband were here, each would be kept apart from the
other and interrogated one by one.

Linder’s thoughts
turned next to the words he would use if and when he saw Patricia
again, whether now, at Philip Eaton’s trial, or after sentencing.
The DSS would expect him to testify against her father and Roger, to
be sure. If he refused, it could be the end of him. Yet if he took
the witness stand and sent them to the camps, it would destroy his
last shred of self-respect. Linder raised his hands and covered his
eyes with his cupped palms. Of all the rebel exiles to be sent after,
why did they have to sic him on Philip Eaton?

Overwhelmed by a rush
of conflicting emotions, Linder lay back on the cot to clear his
mind. A few minutes later, he heard footsteps outside and then the
grating of a key in a lock.

The door opened. It was
Neil Denniston, wearing a crisply pressed beige suit and a cheerful
smile. Was it morning already or were they trying to disorient him?
Behind Denniston stood a brawny pair of Marine Security Guards in
desert camouflage fatigues, each armed with a truncheon containing a
built-in canister of pepper spray.

“May I come in?”
Denniston asked.

“I’d rather come
out,” Linder replied.

“Sorry. Can’t do
that. If you’ll step back, I’ll come inside and explain.”

“You do that. And
you’d better make it a damned good one.”

Denniston walked past
Linder and nodded to the Marines, who stepped back and rolled the
sliding door shut.

“Where am I?”

“At the Embassy,”
Denniston replied.

“Why the cell?”

“Listen, I can
imagine what you must be thinking,” Denniston answered, observing
Linder carefully. “You must have a million questions. If you’ll
be patient, I’m sure we can work things out. But for the moment, I
think it will be better if you stay here with the other detainees.”

Linder remained silent.

“The problem is,”
Denniston went on, “we couldn’t tell you about our backup plan
before you met with Kendall because we didn’t want that knowledge
to color your approach to him. And, right now, despite whatever
suspicions he and Eaton may have about you after being taken into
custody, we want it to look like you’re in just as much trouble as
they are.”

“Are they all here in
the Embassy?”

“All four, including
the two females,” Denniston answered.

“But why? Eaton was
ready to turn himself in, for God’s sake. All he wanted from us was
to leave his family alone.”

“Yeah, we heard what
he told you,” Denniston replied coolly. “We’ve played back the
audio a dozen times. But Eaton’s no fool. If we had let him out of
sight for even a minute, the whole gang would have slipped the noose.
Once it was clear that your cover was blown, we had to move in.”

“But what for?”
Linder persisted. “Eaton’s money is nearly gone. He was ready to
retire.”

“You don’t really
believe that, do you?”

But Linder did. In his
decade of undercover work among foreign terrorists and domestic
insurgents, he had developed a finely tuned sense of whom to believe
and when. This was difficult to accept among the deskbound staff
wallahs at Headquarters and do-nothing drones in the larger DSS bases
abroad, for whom the only good insurgent was a dead one. But, as he
should have known from the outset, the country’s bedrock
presumption of innocence had died the moment the DSS was born.

So why, he asked
himself, had he assured the old man that he would go to bat for him?
Linder could not form a clear answer. He might have known better, but
had done it anyway.

Denniston used the
momentary break in conversation to reach into his breast pocket and
pull out a multi-page typed document.

“Here,” he said,
presenting the document to Linder. “We’ll need you to sign this
before the detainees begin their interrogation.”

Linder scanned it
rapidly. It was a criminal confession that admitted to a broad range
of subversive activities. He leafed forward to the end, where he
found an appendix listing the names of nearly every exile contact he
had reported to Headquarters over the past year. He returned to the
signature page, where his name was shown both as Joseph Tanner and as
Warren Linder.

“You’ve got my true
name in there, you nitwit. Take it out and print a new one.”

Linder tore the paper
in half, then doubled it and tore it again before handing the pieces
back to Denniston.

“Now why would you do
a thing like that?” Denniston asked as if he had been insulted. “We
need your signature both ways: in true name and in alias. It’s not
what you think it is.”

“The hell it isn’t.
Don’t take me for an idiot. Now get out of here and don’t come
back till you’re ready to set me free.”

Denniston clenched his
teeth, turned abruptly to face the steel door, and pounded his fist
on it three times to be released.

* * *

Linder spent the next
two hours pacing back and forth along the narrow passage beside his
cot. What had happened was unfair, he thought. How could his career
have come to this after so many years of dues paying and risk taking
to distinguish himself from the fakers, four-flushers, and wannabes?
How could he not have seen it coming? Or had he?

In his tiny cell in the
bowels of the American Embassy, Warren Linder had to acknowledge that
the Department of State Security did not value his services as highly
as he had believed. The powerful and prestigious institution with
which he had cast his lot now seemed to consider him expendable. And
the man he had thought was his colleague and friend, rather than risk
disfavor with those higher up, appeared ready to sell him down the
river to preserve the DSS’s illusion of infallibility. Only
individuals made mistakes, not institutions, and if any mistakes were
made, they were not going to be Denniston’s.

Linder was at heart an
individualist who believed in free will and rejected determinism and
its derivative notion of victimhood. To feel sorry for himself and
play the victim, while consistent with Unionist doctrine, was beneath
his dignity. He was a professional intelligence officer, a highly
trained predator and a charter member of the Big Boys Club who was
well aware that he had committed more sins than any mortal could
atone for in a lifetime. If his personal worldview made any sense, he
understood that he would likely be held accountable for at least some
of those misdeeds one day, and perhaps that time had come.

But to be held to
account by scoundrels like Denniston and Bednarski offended his sense
of natural order. How could one expect to extract truth or justice
from distortions and mistruths concocted by professional liars?
Perhaps because he did not know the answer and he sensed an
inconsistency or two in his reasoning, his head began to ache and he
decided to lie down again. An hour or more later, he awoke to the
sound of footsteps in the corridor.

This time, when the
door rolled open, his visitor was Bob Bednarski. The man’s eyes
were bloodshot, his hair disheveled, and the armpits of his shirt
stained with perspiration. Linder guessed that he had been working
non-stop since the events at Eaton’s apartment. Linder smelled
alcohol on his breath and in his acrid sweat.

“That was the lamest
undercover performance I’ve ever heard!” Bednarski exploded the
moment the cell door clanged shut. “You rolled over at Eaton’s
first objection! You didn’t even make an effort! Do you realize
that, by botching your meeting with Eaton, you’ve compromised the
Department’s entire campaign against Eaton’s network of offshore
financiers? And by forcing us to move in and grab Eaton and his
family, you’ve also stirred up a diplomatic incident with the
Lebanese government?”

As Bednarski spoke,
flecks of spittle spewed from his mouth, his face turned crimson, and
his dull red eyes bulged from their sockets. He had never seen
Bednarski so close to hysteria. It was true that Linder had taken an
unorthodox tack by not refuting Eaton’s suspicions of Joe Tanner’s
story, and one could argue that he had implicitly admitted to being
connected with the DSS, but the admission had been essential to
eliciting Eaton’s surrender offer.

No matter how Linder
looked at it, Denniston’s and Bednarski’s reasons for storming
the apartment, seizing everyone in it, and continuing to hold Linder
captive did not add up. The stated goal of the operation had been to
neutralize Eaton as an insurgent financier and seize his assets.
Rather than allow Linder to persuade Eaton to surrender and return
those assets voluntarily, Denniston and Bednarski had taken it upon
themselves to grab him. So, whose fault was it now that Eaton’s
money still eluded their grasp? And what could possibly justify their
locking him up beneath the Embassy and pressuring him to sign a false
confession?

“It seems to me that
the choice to take Eaton by force and piss off the Lebanese was all
yours, Bob,” Linder replied evenly. “So why blame me? And what’s
up with the phony confession? Listen, you can shout at me till you’re
blue in the face, but I won’t lift a finger for you until I get out
of here.”

Linder’s measured
response seemed to check Bednarski. The Base Chief’s posture and
facial expression relaxed palpably before he resumed speaking.

“Wrong as usual,
Linder,” the chief replied. “Once you admitted a government
connection and offered to go to bat for Eaton, we had no choice but
to seize the lot of you. If we hadn’t, they would have bolted and
we would have lost the chance to block their funding for the
insurgency. Unfortunately, some neighbors saw our team enter the
building in Lebanese uniforms and come back out carrying victims on
stretchers.”