Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (32 page)

“A US Navy air ambulance arrives from Singapore around ten this morning to fetch Ryder. He’s sleeping now but if you want to speak with him live, give him a call around noon your time. If he’s well enough to talk, his cell should have good reception at the airport. We’ll be transferring him in a wagon train that would make John Wayne proud.”

“I’ll make a point to call, or have him call my cell or the office whenever he’s up.”

“I’m heading over to Hogwarts to figure out what we do next with the Wild Bunch. Matthews seems to have kept his job overnight. At least, he wasn’t able to get me fired or recalled, though Lord knows he tried. So it’s 0-0 at halftime in the Death Match.”

Hecker was rambling. “Martin hasn’t been able to get us back on the docks, but it doesn’t much matter anymore. They’ve already moved that damned container, and both the
Korea Star
and
SS Bandana
sailed last night after midnight! There’s a higher power than President Thein calling the shots, and it isn’t Aung San Suu Kyi.”

It was Nolan’s turn to be surprised. “Unbelievable. They let the crew back on the
SS Bandana
, restacked the boxes and let it sail as if nothing had happened? Let’s get the Navy to board it in international waters.”

“And do what? Offload the radioactive container and put it on
their
deck? Turn the
SS Bandana
around and tow it back to port? Sink it if they don’t stop? We’re trying to get NRO to track the ship, but all the imaging capacity is currently focused on looking for debris fields in the Southern Indian Ocean. For some reason, everyone’s convinced that the plane ditched out in the middle of nowhere. There’s some guff in the press about Inmarsat using the Doppler effect to track MH370’s locational pings. I’m not buying it any more than you are.”

Hecker continued, “But even with a bird overhead, we won’t have a nonstop visual all day and will see nothing at night. The crew will have ample opportunity to dump the container undetected if that’s their goal. If, by some chance, it’s still on board when the
SS Bandana
hits Penang tomorrow evening, we’ll ask the Malaysians to let our people go over it with a Geiger counter. I’m sending Gonzalez with the DOE lead tech, a Mr. Howard, down to Penang tomorrow morning to handle the inspection.”

“What did you learn from the interrogation transcripts?”

“Nothing as of yet. After this, I’ll check. If it’s earthshaking stuff, I’ll call you. Otherwise expect a highlights email over a translation that’s likely to look like Pig Latin until one of our expatriate secretaries does a heavy edit. But that could take another day. I’m also checking out the foreigners’ medical clinics this morning.”

“If you can, look at their patient records for the last three days. Teller may have already been there.”

“Let me get on the road before the traffic turns the city into a parking lot.”

“Thanks, Sam. Take care.”

*  *  *  *  *

Charles Tecumseh Burns didn’t know what to do. Curtis Llewellyn, the flunky running the DEA, had awakened him in the middle of the night. Burns had not long ago joked that the DEA was the place for political appointees who found FEMA, the agency behind the disastrous rescue and cleanup operation after Hurricane Katrina, too challenging.

The call was beyond the pale. Llewellyn started right in on Matthews before he segued onto the topic of who the hell was the CIA to try to dictate who, where and what the DEA was doing with its people in South Asia, starting with Samuel Hecker? It took Burns three tries to break into Llewellyn’s rant to tell him he had no idea what he was talking about. Then the conversation turned ugly.

“You don’t know? Do you run the Central Intelligence Agency in Asia? Does Asia include Burma? Do you have any idea how inappropriate it is for a chief of station to secretly tape a fellow intelligence officer—?”

“Intelligence officer? Who are we talking about?” Burns had asked.

“Hecker! Sam
Hecker
! The DEA number one for Southeast and South Asia. Stationed in Rangoon. The officer some ex-CIA mercenary has been trying to kill, along with his family, for the last five days.”

“Oh, so you don’t mean
intelligence officer
, you mean
hippie buster
.” If Burns had to be awake at 4:10 in the morning, he at least wanted to enjoy it.

And so it went for another ten minutes. Burns had tired of it and eventually hung up while he was speaking—a good trick one needed in this job—and went back to bed after disabling every comms device he owned.

He logged into his email at eight o’clock and picked up the various threads ricocheting around the bureaucracy. The most recent one grabbed his attention. The DEA had enlisted Vice President Biden’s support in having Matthews recalled immediately. Lloyd Matthews might be an ambitious suck-up, but he was also reasonably capable and extremely discreet. In Burma,
discreet
was often more important than
capable
.

This had gone far enough. Burns called Llewellyn back, and they agreed that Matthews and Hecker would be in Tokyo Friday early evening for an in-person meeting with Burns and the DEA’s Asia head. Llewellyn would conference in. They’d resolve the issues without the Justice Department, FBI, NSA or Walt Disney Corp getting involved. Just lay it on the table and figure out a
modus vivendi
. In the meantime, he’d call for an interagency ceasefire in Rangoon. Matthews and embassy security would handle all aspects of the Airstrip One murder investigations. The DEA would pursue the sniper who fired on Hecker’s wife and kid, and continue to manage the ongoing nuclear contamination and cargo issues in the container port. For now, neither side was to devote any resources to tracking Robin Teller. He could wait until after Friday. He was sixty-seven years old: how far could he get?

WWIII averted, Burns hit the intercom and spoke with his secretary. “Get me Frank Coulter on the phone, but before doing that, pull up everything we have on Robin Teller, a.k.a. Jay Toffer, a.k.a. Alan Tellerman. I want to see the file first. Thanks.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SPINNING WHEELS

WEDNESDAY MARCH 12, SINGAPORE, TOKYO, RANGOON

It took Nolan forty-five minutes to withdraw his family’s life savings in US dollars at the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank branch just down the street from the American Club. This was after he’d called ahead and agreed to a surcharge to take his funds in US circulated hundreds. He went through the stacks and rejected every bill with excessive wear or a smurf mark. From here on out, he was playing by the rules of Asia cash business: nothing easily traced and US dollars only.

He caught a cab downtown, figuring it would be harder for pursuers to snatch him than if he used the subway. In Raffles Place, he took the high-rise elevator to the twenty-third floor of Republic Plaza II. He took a right out of the elevator and found the understated marble-clad entrance of Bank Suisse Privé
Asia. Inside he explained his needs to the receptionist and produced a Colorado driver’s license for Adam Birch, the name he’d used to make the booking. Within ten minutes, he was out the door lighter by $201,400, but with a receipt noting payment into Harcourt’s account.

Nolan had the remaining $178,000 and change in the backpack slung over his shoulder. He needed thirty minutes unobserved to hide the money. The easiest thing would be to take the subway, meaning only one man would be following him directly, while the other traced their route by car on the surface. Within two stops he’d spotted the trainee on his tail. He exited at the last second at the Orchard Road MRT station, waving to the kid from the platform as the train pulled out. That should give him the time he needed as long as the pursuit car wasn’t on top of him when popped out of the ground. The game clock was winding down.

*  *  *  *  *

“Frank, how the hell are you?” Chuck Burns put on his hale and hearty voice for an old comrade in arms, despite his rancorous departure.

“Ah, shucks. I’m gettin’ along alright for an old man. Ankle’s all swelled up and a little rheumatoid arthritis, but nothing that Vitamin Eye can’t handle.” Frank Coulter might sound like Deputy Dog, owing to his childhood in Muskogee, Oklahoma, but he owned a Harvard MBA to go with a career spent flip-flopping between Spec Ops and clandestine work. He’d been mustered out of the CIA in 2009 at age sixty-nine, well past ordinary retirement age. Then again, Frank Coulter had once held the title of Associate Deputy Director of Covert Operations, the Agency’s top job in clandestine affairs.

Burns didn’t recall all the details of the flap, but ADDCO Coulter had been aligned with Pentagon hawks who endorsed the Israelis’ desire to hit Iran’s nuclear weapons program preemptively. Presidents Bush and Obama had both opted for the nonviolent route, backing Stuxnet to try to achieve the same objectives without producing multiple propaganda opportunities for the international media. Burns agreed the networks were filled with bloodsuckers who would rather show grieving parents hugging lifeless children in rubble-strewn streets than provide a serious assessment of risk to the West posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. The ADDCO had gone down swinging and then disappeared.

“Where are you these days?” Burns inquired, his file indicating Weaverville, California, wherever the hell that was.

“Up in the Trinity Alps, northwest of Redding. Say, is this a social call, or can I help you with somethin’?”

“Always to the point, Frank. I like that about you. It seems Robin Teller of Double Llama Trading infamy may have turned up in Rangoon about seven years ago. You were his handling officer when we reprocessed his identity in the mid-eighties.”

“Well, hell’s bells. That was almost thirty years ago. We parked Rob in South Africa for a spell. He was restless and moved to South America, either Paraguay or Uruguay, as I recall. I lost touch when my responsibilities changed. I haven’t heard from Teller in at least twenty-five years. Are you sure it’s Teller? I figured him for dead.”

“I don’t think we’re sure of anything, which is why I’m calling. A person of interest using the name Jay Toffer runs security for Khun Sa’s children. Old Prince Prosperous left behind a savvy daughter who owns a conglomerate called Golden Elephant. Toffer/Teller supervised Golden Elephant’s construction of a two-mile-long runway for the army. Maybe Teller had a side business smuggling drugs off that airstrip prior to the army handover.”

“Sounds farfetched. Rob Teller was a decorated Ranger, not a drug smuggler. But even if he was runnin’ narcotics, surely that’s not an Agency matter?”

“Bob Nolan, one of your old colleagues, I believe, saw someone he swears was Teller out at the airstrip last weekend. Nolan retires at the end of the month. He banged a gong that MH370 landed on Golden Elephant’s runway; therefore, Toffer/Teller must be involved. Toffer/Teller went on a rampage that left several people dead. According to the DEA, a sniper employed by Teller attempted to assassinate the local DEA chief’s wife and little boy. There’s a major shit-storm in Rangoon right now. The army and police are in an uproar, and the DEA and Agency are at drawn daggers.”

Coulter let out a whistle. “Isn’t Lloyd Matthews the Rangoon COS?”

“Yes, since 2012.”

“Let Matthews sort it out; he’s a sneaky one. Look, I have to be somewhere and you’ve found me on my home phone. The cell reception isn’t worth a hoot up here. If you need anything else, send me an email and I’ll see if I can help.”

“Thanks, Frank. You’ve already helped a lot.” Burns hung up. How did Coulter know Matthews was COS? That appointment dated from three years after Coulter had left the Company. And what did he mean by suggesting that Burns tell Matthews to sort it out? At the very least, Coulter confirmed that Toffer was indeed Teller.

Across the Pacific, Frank Coulter called out to his second wife, Joanna, the one his mother referred to as Jezebel. “When did the car service say they would be here? My flight is at 2 a.m. You know the drive to SFO can take five hours, ’specially if thar’s a pileup or fog.”

“I told you it’ll be here at seven o’clock. You have time to finish your dinner.”

“Darlin’, there’s gonna be a lot better food on the plane than what’s on this plate. Trust me.” Coulter double-checked his travel documents. Everything was in order for the journey that would see him rightfully restored as the ADDCO and the history of the Middle East irrevocably reordered.

*  *  *  *  *

Hecker’s cell rang. “Sam? It’s Mary. You’ve had a remarkable last few days. How's the family?”

“Fine. Where are you?” Hecker didn’t hear much from his boss, as East Asia matters consumed most of her time. Hecker appreciated the loose reins, especially as Ms. Steinlager was a stickler for political correctness and adherence to every picayune rule.

“In the office in Hong Kong. Is this a bad time to speak?”

“I’m in the car on the way to a clinic where this big time smuggler Robin Teller may have sought treatment for radiation poisoning. Cell connections are spotty at best, so this call might drop.”

“I’ll be brief. Friday, fly to Tokyo to meet me. Together we’ll see Charles Burns and Lloyd Matthews. We’ll also conference in Curtis Llewellyn in DC.”

“Mary, the last thing I need now is a trip to Tokyo. We’re about ready to break this case and probably solve the disappearance of that Malaysia Airlines flight. There are a dozen US servicemen in-country helping us, but they leave this weekend. I’ve got to make the most of them while they’re here.”

“Yes, that’s another thing. On whose authority did you fly anyone into Rangoon, much less current and ex-Special Forces operatives? Or for these men to carry arms and fire—or threaten to fire—on Burma nationals in the name of the DEA? This has escalated well beyond us versus the CIA. The minister of home affairs is now asking Ambassador Martin these same questions. I’m getting heat from all sides.”

“Fine. We can talk, but there’s no way I’m meeting Matthews in Tokyo. I believe he’s been sheltering Teller for several years, and may even be involved in the hijacking of MH370. He’s completely untrustworthy and—”