Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (34 page)

“As we’ve just heard, the Iranians have attempted to blackmail China. Let us set aside their methods, which serve only to reinforce the different levels of civilization attained by our respective cultures. I submit that enabling Iran to deploy short-range nuclear missiles is an acceptable price to pay for pushing the US Pacific Fleet out of China’s coastal waters.” The president’s emphatic slap on the table concluded debate.

The vote was unanimous, with Professor Lai among the first to raise—as well as lower—his hand.

There was one more off-the-record item to discuss. Yi knew his future on the PSC hung in the balance. He offered a silent prayer to his grandmother’s god.
For all my sins of omission and commission, Lord Buddha grant me grace the next ten minutes of my misspent, overreaching life
. It calmed him a little, despite his atheism. He waited for the president to adjourn the meeting. Standing up, Yi held up both palms in supplication and asked that the attendees remain seated. In a low voice, he explained to his colleagues that everyone on that ill-fated flight had perished. Therefore, it was no longer in China’s national interest to recover the remains of MH370, the cargo or the bodies of the passengers. The last thing they needed was evidence that China was helping Iran repair faulty nuclear weapons designs and triggers. As fissionable material had been aboard, any international investigation would leave China in an untenable position. Therefore, it was best for all concerned if the plane were never seen again.

There was a general mumbling of assent, and then Ren Biao raised his voice. “Just be damned certain that everyone on that plane did die.”

President Gao’s blasphemous “Amen” signaled that the meeting was over.

*  *  *  *  *

Nolan was surprised that the Agency guard let him through the checkpoint on basement four. His sleep deficit shuffled his mind from dull indifference to hyper-alert paranoia. He had to nap for a couple of hours this afternoon, come what may. Ducking into the first vacant small meeting room, he fished Ryder’s cell number off his phone and dialed on the landline. He wanted this call recorded for posterity.

“Travis? It’s Bob. Oh, hi, Hanny. Is Travis there? Yeah. Great. Thanks. Travis? How are you feeling, big guy?”

“Like I’ve been run over by a dump truck.”

“This won’t take long. Hecker and I talked, but I wanted to hear it straight from the big swinging dick himself. Can you tell me in as much detail as possible what was in that hot container last night?”

“Sure. I’m afraid I don’t have much to add beyond what I already told Sam. After Gunny clipped the lock, we waited two minutes to see if anyone inside wanted to come out to play. I sent the other three back behind the safety line and swung the door, shining a light and putting my Glock down the beam while I looked for movement, wires or explosives. There was a big forklift right at the entrance.”

“Any color or brand?”

“Yellow is all I remember.”

“Then what happened?”

“The next thing I saw was a wall of sandbags across the container that must have been almost six and a half feet high. Well over my head, and I’m five-nine. There was the top of a wooden crate, a big one, poking over the top. At the end of this box was a red-and-blue fish label on the wood.”

“Are you absolutely sure about the label?”

“Positive. Last night while some doctor was treating me, Sam showed me a bunch of Malaysia Airlines logos. The one I pointed to was their current version. So it wasn’t on some used crate that had been laying around empty for a couple of years until someone requisitioned it.”

“How big was the box?”

“The crate had to be over six feet wide. I don’t know how deep it was, but I’m tempted to say it was near enough a cube. That’s when I saw the Geiger counter was going ballistic, and I backed out of the container pronto. I called out the rad readings, the DOE tech yelled at me to get back and I ran down the dock.”

Millie opened the door and said, “I need to speak with you right away.” Gone was any hint of affection.

Nolan turned his attention back to Ryder. “Anything else come to mind?”

“No, nothing. Sorry about that. I’ve been pretty sick, but I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything you can use.”

“Well, look, you’ve been one of the heroes of the past few days. We need you healthy. So hang out in Hawaii for surfing therapy, and when you transit town through Singapore I’ll take you to Orchard Towers for the Fifth Floor Special.”

“I thought Orchard Towers had only four floors of whores. What’s the Fifth Floor Special?”

“Everyone needs a little mystery in their lives. And with Paradise Alley in your future, you have something to live for, my man.” Nolan hung up and turned to Millie. She was about to speak, but he wasn’t paying attention. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “U-235 hexafluoride gas and a big crate. There must be a nuclear weapons centrifuge in that box. Where in the hell did it come from, and why was it being shipped to China of all places?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

SECRETS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, SINGAPORE, RANGOON, MOSCOW, BEIRUT

“I think that does it,” said rat-faced Bob Collins as he replaced the earpiece on the receiver of the landline in Nolan’s home office.

Flynn said, “Let’s go down the list. You miked this room and the landline. The Singaporeans are tapping his cell as of about now. You installed key logging software on his desktop PC, and you swapped out the hard disk on his backup drive so you can examine it back at the embassy?”

“Yes to all. We’re done,” Collins said.

“Let’s get out of here before the maid comes back. If Constantine’s convinced Nolan’s dirty, why not arrest him now and search this house properly? All the incriminating evidence will be deeply encrypted on his desktop PC. He might not even have a copy on his backup drive.”

“You said it yourself on the way over. Nolan’s a small fry. They need him to get at the sponsors. What I don’t get is, why are Nolan's puppet masters having him make a big fuss over a supposed hijacking of MH370 and this Robin Teller character?” Collins had only been brought into the loop earlier in the morning.

“Misdirection, my friend. Distract people’s attention from what’s really happening. The first lesson at magic school.” In truth, Flynn had no idea what his old friend Nolan was up to, if anything. However, he was savvy enough to see the tide of in-house opinion flowing one way. Time to cut his losses: he had alimony and child support payments to make.

*  *  *  *  *

Millie was upset with Nolan, but she couldn’t contain her excitement either. “I don’t know what a centrifuge is, but let me tell you what I found out. The file entries on Robin Teller peter out in the late 1980s. A few unsubstantiated sightings in Canada, the US, Britain and South Africa. Then nothing until 1992, when Teller’s wife successfully petitioned a judge to have him declared legally dead so she could claim his life insurance.

“Next I did a search on Jay Toffer, but nothing came up. A dead end, right? But when I cross-referenced Double Llama Trading and Frank Coulter, a couple of interesting things surfaced. Coulter was definitely suspected of being part of an in-house group calling themselves the Secret Team. Ned Windham, the ex-CIA senior behind the Bay of Pigs and spirit guide to the Phoenix Program, led a cast of unsavory people including your old friend Cy Crowley. The Agency suspected Windham or his people diverted some or all of the twenty-five million dollars that went missing when Daniel Kranz died. It turns out that the Secret Team was the rebadged Task Force 157, a CIA-within-the-CIA created by Kissinger to handle the off-the-books dirty tricks. Substantial funds expropriated by the Secret Team ended up reimbursed to Khun Sa, with the remainder eventually traced to either BCCI or the Caribbean, and used for arms purchases or Iran-Contra. I found it hard to tell the criminals from the patriots at the end.”

Bob liked seeing her enthusiasm for work, hoping against hope that last night’s fireworks and the budding romance were now behind them. “Outstanding. Coulter was the likely bagman who returned Khun Sa’s missing funds, so it mostly jibes with what I recall from the time. I didn’t know about stolen DLT money being used for Windham’s Secret Team or Iran-Contra, though it’s certainly interesting given that Cy Crowley’s old company is behind the
SS Bandana
charter.”

“I’m not done. One of the Secret Team couriers in Africa is identified as Alan Tellerman. It seemed too obvious, but I pulled his file anyway. It was only half a page, but Tellerman went on the CIA payroll in 1987 and off in 1990. It listed his status as ‘contractor’ and said the Agency paid him one hundred thousand a year. Frank Coulter was listed as Tellerman’s case officer. Coulter’s entry is the last one in Tellerman’s file and he wrote ‘Relocated to Bolivia, 1990. Inactive
.
’ I know what you’re going to say: ‘1990 was a long time ago, and a lot of people inside the Agency could have been Tellerman’s handlers, yada, yada, yada and blah, blah, blah.’”

Nolan remained mute. He was thinking along very different lines.

“So I went back and cross-referenced Khun Sa and Frank Coulter. Those two first met in the 1970s. Did you know Coulter played golf in the 1990s with Khun Sa on his private golf course in Homong, Burma near the Thailand border? Coulter helped broker the deal in 1996 that led to Khun Sa’s surrender, coughing up a billion dollars to live out his days in Rangoon under house arrest with three Shan teenage mistresses and a second billion to have his children left alone.

“The files went quiet on Khun Sa until 2007. He was dying and afraid that his children’s businesses would be confiscated. He reached out to Coulter, who was by now running the Agency’s black ops. Coulter directed one of his staff to recommend that Khun Sa
‘
Consider employing Alan Tellerman, a South African living in South America, and already known to
you
.
’ Hah! How’s that for a smoking gun?” Millie was triumphant, eyes wide.

Nolan blinked rapidly in surprise, brain racing. “This is a real breakthrough. I thought you researched Khun Sa last week in Rangoon and didn’t come up with anything.”

“I didn’t have your secure token, laptop and password then, did I?” she said.

He blushed at the recollection of that mock-interrogation session he’d undergone in bed. Millie certainly had an imagination. It reminded him of the games he used to play with Nancy Watermen back in the day.

Millie’s voice snapped him back to the present. “I bet there will be plenty of surprised faces when I send in my report.”

“You
can’t
send in a report based on information classified beyond your security clearance. I’ll have to reproduce your research from scratch and leave you off those cc’d on the write-up, as it’s all sourced beyond
Secret
. If you file a report, Shook will see us fired for cause.

“Let’s get back to the Coulter-Teller links. Coulter put Teller into Golden Elephant in 2007, just when Teller said he joined. Coulter was one of the most powerful men in the CIA when that hiring took place. That means Frank Coulter has to be involved in the Airstrip One business. Did you find out his current address?” Nolan asked.

“No. Only that he retired in 2009. Seemed like a weird time to retire. In 2007 he received a congressional waiver to serve until he was seventy-five, but two years later he quit at sixty-nine. He took a couple million out in a lump-sum retirement settlement and dropped off the grid.”

“Coulter lost his job because of me,” Nolan confessed. “But that’s a story for another time.”

*  *  *  *  *

Tony Johnson stuck his head in the door of Hecker’s Hogwarts bedroom office. “I’m off to a new gig in Australia. I wanted to say thanks for the wild party, boss.” Hecker jumped out of his chair to pump Johnson’s hand. “You saved the day yesterday. I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“You won’t, but Travis will.” Johnson leered. And with that he hefted his olive duffel bag and headed for the stairs.

“Tony! Why don’t you fly with Ryder as far as Singapore? You can connect from there.”

“That’s the plan. Catch ya on the flip side.”

Johnson slipped his dark wraparounds down off his forehead and onto his nose. He looked like a venomous snake, thought Hecker. Strike that: Tony Johnson
was
a viper.

*  *  *  *  *

Mark Watermen was cold. It was now light enough that he could find his way without a flashlight around his power- and heat-free apartment. The landline was dead and he’d never had a cell phone in Moscow. He had cold running water and the toilet flushed, but that was all. He made a sandwich for breakfast and sucked on orange sections. Nolan would send him a message, of that he was certain. How would he do it? Watermen would buy the day’s
Wall Street Journal
when it came out at the newsstand, but surely Godpa couldn’t have placed an ad in the last few hours. The only thing he could do was to stick with his routine and keep his eyes and ears open.

*  *  *  *  *

In a city lacking quality housing, the Victoria condo complex was one of the few decent places even in Rangoon’s Golden Valley neighborhood. Less than ten years old, it was five stories of white-tiled, well-finished apartments. The sixteen-hundred-square-foot, three-bedroom condominiums wouldn’t have wowed many other ASEAN capital cities, but in Rangoon they were the epitome of expatriate luxury and priced accordingly. Little wonder that the US embassy staff, both legitimate and covert, comprised more than a quarter of the tenants. Hecker knew it well, having played poker before at Abrahams’s bachelor pad.

Apartment #03-04 differed from the others on the floor only in that it had less shoe clutter outside. The building superintendent opened the door after Hecker showed him a DEA ID and a five-thousand
kyat
note. It seemed no one was home, even the helper. The lights were out. A pair of ceiling fans orbited lazily in the living room.  

Hecker wandered from room to room until he found himself in the master bathroom where the doctor lay dead in a bloody bathtub half full of water. A white sock was stuffed far into Yap’s gaping mouth. Bruises at the base of his neck indicated where he’d been held down and there were a series of parallel deep cuts on his right biceps. Dried bloody splashes marred the porcelain. Ten seconds later, Chit’s scream had them both running toward the kitchen. She stood in the doorway of the maid’s quarters, hand over her mouth. The gagged helper was sprawled on the bed with her throat slit, a bloody spatter across the sheets. Flies buzzed.