Liberty (5 page)
Authors: Stephen Coonts
Yet now her hands shook all the time.
Anna Modin stood, straightened her skirt, checked her reflection in the glass of the window, then went down the corridor to the women's room. She pushed open the door and went inside. No one was there.
She paused at the sink, studied the room in the mirror, then turned and scrutinized every square inch, looking for any changes to the room since her last visit two weeks ago. There seemed to be none.
She entered the stall and removed her jacket, which she laid across the toilet paper dispenser. Then she rearranged her clothing and sat down.
She glanced at the ceiling, at the walls in front of her. Everything looked as before.
Finally she reached for toilet paper. Keeping the jacket over her hand, she reached into the hole behind the dispenser, felt with two fingers. Nothing thereâthe drop was empty.
The rest of the day passed doing routine paperwork. She waited and waited for the ax to fall, and it didn't. The waitingâthat was the life of a spy. Waiting, always tense, always pretending, always trying to project a calm one didn't feel.
When she finally left the office that evening, she didn't look back.
In the days that followed Jake's interview with Coke Twilley and Sonny Tran he heard no more about Ilin's missing weapons, nor did anyone whisper Richard Doyle's name.
Jake's job as military liaison to the antiterrorism task force consisted mostly of coordinating the use of the military in roles that couldn't be performed by civil agencies of the government. He spent long hours on the telephone talking to various commands throughout the country and to the civilians, to whom he had to explain precisely what the military could and couldn't do.
Jake's job as military liaison to the antiterrorism task force consisted mostly of coordinating the use of the military in roles that couldn't be performed by civil agencies of the government. He spent long hours on the telephone talking to various commands throughout the country and to the civilians, to whom he had to explain precisely what the military could and couldn't do.
Commander Toad Tarkington was also there, of course, working the phones alongside his boss. Jake was too busy to worry about the bombs, so Toad worried for both of them. “Do you think maybe you should have another talk with Coke?” he asked hopefully. “Maybe find out what's going on?”
Jake shook his head and pushed a button on his phone to answer a waiting call. An hour later, during a momentary lull, Toad suggested, “Wha'daya think about arranging another meet with Ilin, see if he's heard anything else?”
“There's nothing we can do, Toad.”
“Goddamn, Admiral, the world is on the brink of the abyss. You and I are the only two sane people on the planet who know about it, and I've got my doubts about you.”
Grafton chuckled and started to reply to that bon mot, but the telephone rang, so he answered it. Whatever he was going to say to Toad was never said, because when he finally hung up the phone he was thinking about something else, then finally he forgot it altogether.
On Thursday evening the telephone rang at Jake's apartment. The voice on the other end of the line was that of the deputy chief of naval operations. After a muttered greeting, the admiral said, “An hour from now, at nine, be waiting downstairs in front of your building. You jog, don't you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wear jogging shorts, tennis shoes. Do you have a distinctive sweatshirt with a college logo or something?”
Jake had to think for a moment. “Slick Willie's.”
“What's that?”
“A whorehouse in Nevada, sir.”
The admiral chuckled dryly. “Wear that. Nine o'clock, down front.”
“Want to tell me what this is about, Admiral?”
“Somebody wants to meet you.”
So Jake dressed in his jogging duds, stood in front of the building feeling like an idiot as light traffic rolled through the Roslyn neighborhood and a light Thursday evening crowd strolled by, heading to or from the Metro or to get a coffee drink.
A large black sedan with dark windows pulled up to the curb about a minute before nine. A sedan stopped in the street in front of it, and another sedan pulled in behind. A fit man in his early thirties wearing a sports coat got out of the front passenger seat and opened the rear door. Then he motioned to Jake.
Jake walked over and climbed inâthe man shut the door firmly and got back into the car.
“Rear Admiral Grafton,” the man sitting beside Jake said as the car pulled away from the curb. “It's a pleasure.” He held out his hand.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Jake Grafton said, and shook hands with the president of the United States.
“Cool shirt,” the president said, and nodded to the Secret Service agent behind the wheel, who put the car in motion.
“It's a pleasure meeting you, Admiral,” the president continued. “I've heard a lot about you.”
Jake tried to think of an appropriate response. This was the first and only president he had ever met. He seemed like an okay guy, but after all ⦠“Heard a lot about you too, sir,” he muttered, and felt like an idiot.
“Tell me about your meeting with Janos Ilin last week. I've read the CIA's summary, but I want to hear it firsthand.”
Jake covered it all, who Ilin was, explained how he and his wife had met Ilin about a year ago when the Russian
was assigned to the military liaison team for the SuperAegis antiballistic-missile defense system. He mentioned the FBI's surveillance efforts to ensure Ilin wasn't followed to the meet in New York, then carefully related the substance of the conversation, the revelation that a Russian general had sold four missile warheads to the Sword of Islam, and the name of the CIA officer that Ilin said was a Russian spy, Richard Doyle.
was assigned to the military liaison team for the SuperAegis antiballistic-missile defense system. He mentioned the FBI's surveillance efforts to ensure Ilin wasn't followed to the meet in New York, then carefully related the substance of the conversation, the revelation that a Russian general had sold four missile warheads to the Sword of Islam, and the name of the CIA officer that Ilin said was a Russian spy, Richard Doyle.
“Four nuclear warheads with two-hundred-kiloton yields,” the president said softly to himself. He took a deep breath. “Do you think Ilin was lying?”
“When he told me about the missing weapons I thought he was telling the truth. It had the right ⦔ Jake rubbed his fingers together as he searched for the proper word “ ⦠the right feel, I suppose you could say. Since then I've gone over and over it in my mind, weighing it. For the life of me, I can't see what the Russians would gain by telling us a lie like that. The story isn't one I would want told if I were them. It makes them look like incompetents, criminal incompetents who can't control rogue generalsâand if the story is true, that is precisely what they are.
“Was Ilin spilling the beans on his own responsibility or was he playing a role? I don't know the answer to that one. Ilin always struck me as a man with his own agenda. On the other hand, I doubt that he would have made lieutenant general in the KGB or SVR or whatever they call it this week if his superiors had the slightest doubts about his loyalty or judgment. That said, judging abstract qualities like loyalty or honor is always difficult.”
“Russians have been defecting from positions of trust since the communists took power way back when,” the president observed.
“In any event,” Jake continued, “it seems to me we must take a hard, careful look at Richard Doyle. I can't see what Ilin or the Russians would gain by defaming an innocent CIA officer. If it's a gambit, I don't see how it helps them. A lie like that would be a dangerous precedent.
On the other hand, if Doyle is indeed spying for the Russians and the weapons story is a lie, giving him to us may be a way to make the lie plausible.”
On the other hand, if Doyle is indeed spying for the Russians and the weapons story is a lie, giving him to us may be a way to make the lie plausible.”
“Yes,” the president said. “I see that.”
Jake rubbed his head, then said, “The heck of it is that I'm not an intelligence professional. I'm an ex-attack pilot shuffling paper and telephone calls.”
“I'm not an intelligence professional either,” the president said matter-of-factly. “But the buck stops here.”
“Seems to me,” Jake remarked, “that the mistake here would be to overthink this. We should proceedâcautiously of courseâon the assumption that Ilin was telling the truth and see where that takes us. If we ever discover that he was lying, then we can reevaluate.”
“I agree.”
“Until we are absolutely convinced that no weapons left Russia, we should pull out all the stops to find those four. I don't think we have any choice here, Mr. President.”
“Nor do I,” the president said, and looked at his hands. He made a face, then looked out the window at monumental Washington. “The terrorists' attacks laid bare some of the problems that the American political system has been unable to solve for the last thirty or forty years. Since the end of World War Two we've needed a secure place to store all our nuclear waste, and we still don't have one. No one wants the dump near them, so the stuff is sitting in cans in poorly guarded warehouses all over America.” He held up a finger.
“We have an estimated six million illegal aliens in the country and no effective way to track or get rid of them. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has just twenty-two hundred people to find, process, and deport illegals. It's unbelievable, yet nothing has been done to fix this mess because many industries want cheap labor and everyone feels sorry for the illegals, many of whom were starving in Third World sewers.” Another finger went up.
“Then there is the FBI, which is supposed to build
cases for federal prosecutors and catch spies and terrorists. There are exactly eleven thousand one hundred forty-three FBI agents. That's all of them, counting the director.” He flipped fingers up as he ticked agencies off. “The CIA is still watching to see if the Russians are going to start World War Three. The Customs Service is so overwhelmed and undermanned that they merely do spot checks of shipments coming into the country. The DEA has been fighting and losing the war on drugs for a generation.”
cases for federal prosecutors and catch spies and terrorists. There are exactly eleven thousand one hundred forty-three FBI agents. That's all of them, counting the director.” He flipped fingers up as he ticked agencies off. “The CIA is still watching to see if the Russians are going to start World War Three. The Customs Service is so overwhelmed and undermanned that they merely do spot checks of shipments coming into the country. The DEA has been fighting and losing the war on drugs for a generation.”
“Democracies are messy,” Jake remarked when the president paused for air.
“Aren't they ever!” The president made a chopping gesture. “The hell of it is that the bureaucracies are what governments have to work with to protect human lives. Every bureaucracy has its rules and regulations, rivers of forms and reports and memos and correspondence, in- and out-baskets, federal holidays, people sick or on vacation, plus the usual cast of feudists, fatheads, fools, fanatics, hotshots, incompetents, tattletales, suck-ups, backstabbers ⦠and a few dedicated people who do all the real work.
“The challenge is to put all the information from all these bureaucracies together and use it in a timely manner. That is what I want you to do. You must mesh the information from everywhere and prevent future mass murders.” The president's eyes flicked over Jake's face. “I've been talking to the folks at the Pentagon; they tell me that you are the man I want. They say you've got good judgment and common sense and you get results.”
Jake was surprised. He hadn't heard that the White House had been asking questions. He kept his mouth shut as the president continued:
“I want you to find the weapons. On paper you'll be operating inside the antiterrorism task force, but you are on your own. Put together an independent covert team to find the weapons. Get people and supplies from wherever you need them. Find the weapons before they explode.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The bad guys have kicked us in the teeth,” the president said as he looked out the windows of the limo at the government buildings lining the boulevards. “Should never have happened. Thousands murdered, tens of thousands of lives maimed ⦠the shock waves are still ricocheting around America and will be for years to come. The America you and I grew up in is changing. Our freedoms ⦔ The president passed a hand in front of his face. “In any event, it's not going to happen again. Never
again!
You understand me?”
again!
You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
The president took a deep breath as he collected himself. “We've got to get better, we're going to get better. We're going to overhaul the CIA, the FBI, the INS, change the priorities. We're going to emphasize HUMINT. We're going to use all the tools we can lay hands on to prevent American citizens from being murdered by criminal fanatics. We must go after our enemies wherever they are, whoever they are, without regard to national borders or political connections or Supreme Court decisions or the rules of criminal procedure or the Code of Federal Regulations or the federal holiday schedule.
We've
got to find these people before they hurt us.”
We've
got to find these people before they hurt us.”
“All our enemies aren't in Kandahar,” Jake said. “Janos Ilin remarked on that fact, and it struck me as critical.”
“I think we understand each other,” the president said, meeting Jake's eyes and measuring him.
“To do what you want me to do I'm going to have to put together some kind of computer center,” Jake said slowly. “Everyone in today's world leaves tracksâelectronic tracks on government and nongovernment computer databases. Credit card receipts, bank records, insurance bills, car rental contracts, airline reservations, hotel bills, utility bills, telephone records, e-mails, Web-surfing recordsâeveryone's life is on computers, a tidbit here, a fact there, a shadow in that corner. In Germany in the 1970s the police used computers to pull together all the information in the various databases that existed then to fight
the Red Army Faction and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They got'em. And because they did it overtly, the German people rebelled. The threat didn't justify the invasion of privacy. Yet today it isn't just murder and kidnapping, it's nuclear weapons, airliners full of passengers used as kamikaze bombers, murder of the innocent on a grand scale.”
the Red Army Faction and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They got'em. And because they did it overtly, the German people rebelled. The threat didn't justify the invasion of privacy. Yet today it isn't just murder and kidnapping, it's nuclear weapons, airliners full of passengers used as kamikaze bombers, murder of the innocent on a grand scale.”
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