Honour Among Thieves (15 page)

Over
the years, Butterworth had served the Cavalli family well. Meetings had been
arranged with politicians at a moment’s notice, words were dropped in the ears
of trade officials from someone thought to be well placed in Washington, and
the odd piece of inside information had been passed on, ensuring that
Butterworth’s income was commensurate with his own high opinion of his true
worth.

As
he lay awake that night thinking about the proposition, he also came to the
conclusion that Cavalli couldn’t take the next step without him, and more
important, his role in the deception would probably be obvious within minutes
of the theft being discovered, in which case he could end up spending the rest
of his life in Leavenworth. Against that possibility he had to weigh the fact
that he was fifty-seven years old, had only three years to go before
retirement, and a third wife who was suing him for a divorce he couldn’t afford.
Butterworth no longer dreamed of promotion. He was now simply trying to come to
terms with the fact that he was probably going to have to spend the rest of his
life alone, eking out some sort of existence on a meagre government pension.

Cavalli
was also aware of these facts, and the offer of a million dollars – a hundred
thousand the day he signed up, a further nine hundred thousand on the day the
exchange took place – and a first-class ticket to any country on earth, almost
convinced Butterworth that he should agree to Cavalli’s proposition.

But
it was Maria who tilted the balance in Cavalli’s favour.

At
a trade conference in Brazil the previous year, Butterworth had met a local
girl who answered most of his questions during the day and the rest of them at
night. He’d phoned her the morning after Cavalli’s first approach. Maria seemed
pleased to hear from him, a pleasure which became more vocal when she learned
that he’d be leaving the service and, having come into ‘a reasonable
inheritance’, was thinking of settling down somewhere abroad.

The
President’s Special Assistant joined the team the following day.

He
had spent most of the hundred thousand dollars by the end of the week, clearing
his debts and getting up to date with his first two wives’ alimony. With only a
few thousand left, there was now nothing to do but commit himself
wholeheartedly to the plan. He didn’t give a moment’s thought to changing his
mind, because he knew he could never hope to repay the money. He hadn’t
forgotten that the man he had replaced on Cavalli’s payroll had once neglected
to repay a far smaller sum after making certain promises. Once had been enough:
Cavalli’s father had had him buried under the World Trade Center when he’d
failed to secure the promised contract for the building. A similar departure
did not appeal to Butterworth.

The
phone rang on Butterworth’s desk, as he had predicted, in under two minutes,
but he allowed it to continue ringing for some time before he picked it up. His
temporary secretary announced that there was a Mr Marshall on the line and
asked if he wanted to take the call.

‘Yes,
thank you, Miss Daniels.’

‘Mr
Butterworth?’ enquired a voice.

‘Speaking.’

‘This
is Calder Marshall over at the National Archives. I understand you phoned while
I was in a meeting. Sorry I wasn’t available.’

‘No
problem, Mr Marshall. It’s just that I wondered if it would be possible for you
to drop by to the White House. There’s a private matter I’d like to discuss
with you.’

‘Of
course, Mr Butterworth. What time would be convenient?’

‘I’m
up to my eyes the rest of this week,’ Butterworth said, looking down at the
blank pages in his diary, ‘but the President’s away at the beginning of next
week, so perhaps we could schedule something for then?’

There
was a pause which Butterworth assumed meant Marshall was checking his diary.
‘Would Tuesday, 10 a.m. suit you?’ the Archivist eventually asked.,

‘Let
me check my other diary,’ said Butterworth, staring into space. ‘Yes, that
looks fine. I have another appointment at 10.30, but I’m confident we’ll have
covered everything I need to go over with you by then. Perhaps you would be
kind enough to come to the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance of the Old Executive
Office building. There’ll be someone there to meet you and after you’ve cleared
security they’ll bring you up to my office.’

‘The
Pennsylvania Avenue entrance,’ said Marshall. ‘Of course.’

‘Thank
you, Mr Marshall. I look forward to seeing you next Tuesday at ten o’clock,’
said Butterworth before replacing the receiver.

The
President’s Special Assistant smiled as he dialled Cavalli’s private number.

Scott
promised Dexter Hutchins he would be around when Dexter’s son came to Yale for
his admission inter ... view.

‘He’s
allowing me to tag along,’ said Dexter, ‘which will give me a chance to bring
you up to date on our little problem with the Israelis. And I may even have
found something to tempt you.’

‘Dexter,
if you’re hoping that I’ll get your son into Yale in exchange for a field job,
I think I ought to let you know I have absolutely no influence with the
Admissions Office.’ Dexter’s laugh crackled down the phone. ‘But I’ll still be
happy to show you both over the place and give the boy any help I can.’

Dexter
Jr could not have turned out to be more like his father: five foot ten, heavily
built, a perpetual five o’clock shadow and the same habit of calling everything
that moved ‘sir’. When, after an hour strolling round the grounds, he left his
father for his interview with the head of the Admissions Office, the Professor
of Constitutional Law took the Deputy Director of the CIA back to his rooms.

Even
before the door was closed, Dexter had lit up a cigar. After a few puffs he
said, ‘Have you been able to make any sense of the coded message sent by our
operative in Beirut?’

‘Only
that everyone who joins the intelligence community has some strange personal
reason for wanting to do so. In my case, it’s because of my father and a Boy
Scout determination to balance the books morally. In the case of Hannah Kopec,
Saddam Hussein wipes out her family, so she immediately offers her talents to
Mossad. With that powerful a motive, I wouldn’t want to cross her path.’

‘But
that’s exactly what I’m hoping you will do,’ said Dexter. ‘You’re always saying
you want to be tested in the field. Well, this could be your opportunity.’

‘Am
I hearing you properly?’

‘Yale’s
spring term is about to end, right?’

‘Yes.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of work to do.’

‘Oh,
I see. A happy amateur, twelve times a year when it suits you, but the moment
you might have to get your hands dirty. ..’

‘I
didn’t say that.’

‘Well
then, hear me out. First, we know Hannah Kopec was one of eight girls selected
from a hundred to go to London for six months to study Arabic. This followed a
year’s intensive physical course at Herzliyah, where they covered the usual
self-defence, fieldcraft and surveillance work. The reports on her were
excellent. Second, a chat with her host’s wife at Sainsbury’s in Camden Town,
wherever the hell that is, and we discover that she left suddenly, despite the
fact that she was almost certainly meant to return to Israel as part of the
team that was working on the assassination of Saddam. That’s when we lose sight
of her. Then we get one of those breaks that only come from good detective work.
One of our agents who works at Heathrow spots her in duty free, when she’s
buying some cheap perfume.

‘After
she boards a plane for the Lebanon he phones our man in Beirut, who shadows her
from the moment she arrives. Not that easy, I might add. We lost her for
several hours. Then, out of nowhere, up she pops again, but this time as Karima
Saib, who Baghdad are under the impression is on her way to Paris as second
secretary to the Ambassador. Meanwhile, the real Miss Saib is abducted at
Beirut airport and is now being held at a safe house somewhere across the
border on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.’

‘Where’s
all this leading, Dexter?’

‘Patience,
Professor,’ he said, relighting the stub of his cigar, which hadn’t been
glowing for several minutes. ‘Not all of us are born with your academic
acuity.’

‘Get
on with it,’ said Scott with a smile, ‘because my academic acuity hasn’t been
stretched yet.’

‘Now
I come to a bit you’re going to enjoy. Hannah Kopec has not been placed in the
Iraqi Interest Section of the Jordanian Embassy in Paris to spy.’

‘Then
why bother to put her there in the first place? In any case, how can you be
certain?’ asked Scott.

‘Because
the Mossad agent in Paris – how shall I put it? – does a little work for us on
the side, and he hasn’t even been informed of her existence.’

Scott
scowled. ‘So why has the girl been placed in the embassy?’

‘We
don’t know, but we sure as hell would like to find out. We think Rabin can’t
give the go-ahead to strike Saddam while Kopec is still in France, so the least
we need to know is when she’s expected back in Israel. And that’s where you
come in.’

‘But
we must have a man in Paris already.’ ‘Several, actually, but every one of them
is known by Mossad at a hundred paces, and, I suspect, even by the Iraqis at
ten. So, if Hannah Kopec is in Paris without the Mossad sleeper knowing, I’d
like you to be in Paris without our people knowing. That is, if you feel you
can spare the time away from Susan Anderson.’

‘She
broke away from me the day her boyfriend returned from his conference. I don’t
know what it is I do to women. She called me last week to tell me they’re
getting married next month.’

‘All
the more reason for you to go to Paris.’

‘On
a wild goose chase.’

‘This
goose may just be about to lay us a golden egg, and in any case, I don’t want
to read about another brilliant Israeli coup on the front page of the New York
Times and then have to explain to the President why the CIA knew nothing about
it.’

‘But
where would I even start?’

‘In
your own time, you try to make contact with her. Tell her you’re the Mossad
agent in Paris.’

‘But
she would never believe...’

‘Why
not? She doesn’t know who the agent is, only hat there is one. Scott, I need to
know...’

The
door swung open and Dexter Jr came in.

‘How
did it go?’ asked his father. The young man walked across the room and slumped
into an armchair, but did not utter a word. That bad, eh son?’

‘Mr
Marshall, how nice to meet you,’ said Butterworth, thrusting out his hand to
greet the Archivist of the United States.

‘It’s
nice to meet you, too, Mr Butterworth,’ Calder Marshall replied nervously.

‘Good
of you to find the time to come over,’ said Butterworth. ‘Do have a seat.’

Butterworth
had booked the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing for their meeting. It had taken
a lot of persuading of a particularly officious secretary who knew Mr
Butterworth’s station in life only too well. She reluctantly agreed to release
the room for thirty minutes, and then only because he was seeing the Archivist
of the United States. She also agreed to his second request, as the President
would be out of town that day. The Special Assistant had placed himself at the
top of a table that usually seated twenty-four, and beckoned Mr Marshall to be
seated on his right, facing Tade Stykal’s portrait of Theodore Roosevelt on
Horseback.

The
Archivist must have been a shade over six foot, and as thin as most women half
his age would have liked to be. He was almost bald except for a semicircle of
grey tufts around the base of his skull. He wore an ill-fitting suit that
looked as if it normally experienced outings only on a Sunday morning. From his
file, Butterworth knew the Archivist was younger than himself, but he vainly
felt that if they had been seen together, no one would have believed it.

He
must have been born middle-aged, thought Butterworth, but the Special Assistant
had no such disparaging thoughts about the quality of the man’s mind. After a
magna cum laude at Duke University, Marshall had written a book on the history
of the Bill of Rights that was now considered to be the standard text for every
undergraduate studying American history. It had made him a small fortune – not
that one could have guessed it by the way he dressed, thought Butterworth.

On
the table in front of him was a file stamped ‘Confidential’, and above that the
name ‘Calder Marshall’ in bold letters. Despite the fact that the Archivist was
wearing horn-rimmed glasses with thick lenses, Butterworth felt he could hardly
have missed it.

Butterworth
paused before he began a speech he’d prepared every bit as assiduously as the
President had his inauguration address. Marshall sat, fingers intertwined,
nervously waiting for Butterworth to proceed.

‘You
have, over the past sixteen years,’ began the Special Assistant, ‘made several
requests for the President to visit the National Archives.’ Butterworth was
pleased to observe that Marshall was looking hopeful. ‘And, indeed, this
particular President wishes to accept your invitation.’ Mr Marshall’s smile
broadened. ‘To that end, in our weekly meeting, President Clinton asked me to
convey a private message to you, which he hoped you would understand must be in
the strictest confidence.’