Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (43 page)

Rikki figured if they had video of Nolan and her together, she wouldn’t be on the phone right now. “I should hope so. Lying is a bad thing.”

“Yes, it is. Please let me know immediately if Robert contacts you. I will text you my direct line.” On cue, Rikki’s phone vibrated.

“Inspector, if we’re done, I’d like to go to bed.”

“Certainly, Ms. Lam. Don’t forget to lock your vehicle. Oh, and one other thing. You left your parking lights on.”

*  *  *  *  *

“We carried aeronautical charts, zip ties, a big roll of fiberglass-reinforced duct tape, and night-vision goggles through airport security and no one even looked in our bags.”

“I took care of that. Your shit smelled of roses in the Kuala Lumpur Airport.”

Mullen fixed him with a look of incredulity, but continued. “The fake passports worked like a charm, too. Damned if I could tell they were forgeries. On board, we were in the mostly empty business class. I was nervous but Vince was confident as always. Twenty minutes in, the flight leveled out and the seatbelt lights went off. Right away, Vince stood up and went to the galley. As per plan, one minute later I followed him. A steward pointed me to the big bathroom, so I gave the door a couple of taps. Vince opened it a crack and in I went. He had a pair of Sig Sauers.” Mullen pulled an automatic out of the carry-on bag sitting next to him on the chair.

Teller shot him a killer look and made a speed-up motion while he coughed.

Mullen shook his head and put the weapon back in his bag. “Anyway, Vince tucked the second Sig into his belt and untucked his shirt. I went up front and he strolled down the back. The same steward took me up to the cockpit door. He knocked and explained that I was a retired USAF colonel on a farewell Asia tour. I was flying business class, and had never seen the inside of a Boeing 777-200 Extended Range cockpit. Could I have a look? At least I think that was what he was saying as they spoke in Malay.”

“Hurry up,” intoned Teller. “I’m not planning on living to ninety.”

“Once I was inside, I confirmed the bird was on autopilot. I showed the Sig and moved the pilots to the adjacent jump seats while the steward closed the door on his way out. I had them pass across their cell phones. The pilot looked calm. The first officer wasn’t but a kid, and he was nervous. I watched him extra close. A few minutes went by, and Vince gave the prearranged knock.

I opened the door and in he came with two passengers. Up front was a scowling sixty-year-old Arab in a safari suit with a Saddam mustache. Behind him was a dapper Chinese businessman, around fifty I’d say. Not a line or crease on his tanned, superior face. This fellow was dressed in an expensive suit, but no tie. I could never figure that out. Why wear a nice shirt, belt, shoes and suit and not have on a good silk tie, too? Anyway, in good English the Chinese fellow introduced himself as Wong. Mr. Wong was on our side and all smiles, though I hadn’t known that beforehand.” He paused and looked at Teller questioningly.

“
Need to know
. Get on with it.”

“Vince gave his gun to Wong, who pointed it at the Arab. Vince muscled Saddam’s brother into the solo jump seat. It was cramped in the cockpit with the six of us. I moved into the pilot’s seat, but turned around so I could cover the prisoners. The Arab was mouthy and said he was a very important person in the Iranian government. Vince taped his yap shut, and then zip-tied his wrists and ankles, wrapping them in duct tape for good measure. Vince told Wong to shoot him in the knee if he moved a muscle. Wong found that amusing.

“The plane flew on autopilot another fifteen minutes. We had to get the pilot up twice to speak to air traffic control. The captain was composed, considering Vince had the Sig in the small of his back. After the handover from Malaysia to Vietnam ATC, Vince and Wong zip-tied and duct-taped the pilot and copilot.

As soon as we were off the air, I disabled the cockpit ATC transponder. Next I tripped the circuit breaker for the VHF and SATCOM channels. This also disabled the door lock override. It was a bitch to find it under the cockpit avionics deck, down where the pilots’ legs go. Flight MH370 was now invisible from a signals perspective.

“Vince took the pilot’s seat and I sat down in the first officer’s chair. Wong stood with his back to Vince, waving his pistol at those three. Vince put the plane in a long turn, doubling back west toward Penang, and started a gradual climb from 33,000 to 44,000 feet.

About this time, the cabin staff twigged it was a hijack and started hammering on the door. This pissed off Vince. So I took the controls while Wong and Vince opened the cockpit door, Sigs cocked and pointed. Vince said one more word or noise meant a pilot was taking one between the eyes. The way he said it, I believed him. Vince gave me his Sig and Wong knelt behind Vince with a waist-high weapon aimed through the door. I covered the three prisoners. Vince bunny-hopped the older pilot up to the door and pushed him out, telling him to have a nice meal.

The younger fellow, the first officer, wasn’t having any of it and fought like hell. He knew the game was up once he was out of the cockpit. Vince had to hit him in the temple with the Sig to get him outside. The moment Vince slammed and locked that cockpit door for the last time, I heard the senior pilot shout, ‘Suicide hijackers! Break into the cockpit!’ The crew began hammering a serving trolley into the armored door. With the door lock override out of commission, we knew no one was joining us on the flight deck. The noise was annoying and Vince was fuming when he sat back down. The 777 was now at 44,000 feet. Cool as anything, Vince deployed the four oxygen masks in the cockpit. No sooner had we put them in place than Vince depressurized the main cabin. May God have mercy on their souls. And mine, because I could have stopped it, but didn’t.” Mullen stared at his toes and the globules of bloody phlegm on the floor around Teller and his noxious handkerchief.

“Griggs did what he was supposed to do. That’s why I put him in charge even though you held a higher rank. I knew he’d carry out his orders like a true patriot. And he did.”

Mullen looked up and realized Teller was completely indifferent toward human life. He wasn’t a patriot, but a monster. “The cockpit has its own oxygen supply, but it’s not airtight. Everyone else on the plane was unconscious within a few minutes, and then suffocated. See, in the newer Boeings, the pilots can disable the emergency oxygen to the passenger cabin. The oxygen masks don’t deploy to prevent the rapid spread of a fire in the main cabin if there’s an electrical short in the ceiling—”

“I’m not taking a fucking aeronautical engineering exam tomorrow.”

“I thought you might be interested, as it was two hundred thirty-five lives we ended. After ten minutes, we brought the plane back down and re-pressurized the main cabin. I kept us below 10,000 feet for a while to stay under the longer-range regional radars. Wong moved the trolley and a pile of bodies away from the door, and shut all the window shades. Eventually, Wong brought up the Arab’s and his carry-on bags. The Arab smelled. I think he crapped himself. I went out and fetched Vince’s and my cases from the overhead bins. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep another night through without seeing those tortured faces.

“While I held the Sig on the Arab, Vince looked over and said, ‘Not bad for a terminal cancer patient, eh?’ You know how those Minnesotans are,
eh-
this and
eh-
that. Until then, I didn’t know there was anything wrong with him. I swear he could still do fifty push-ups and wasn’t an ounce overweight. He looked great. Heck, he was only sixty-eight. What was the diagnosis?”

“Inoperable brain tumor. Discovered four months ago and given six months tops. He was a crappy investor and didn’t have much savings.”

“We flew for another two and a half hours until we were close. Then we put on our night-vision goggles and landed on your new runway. It was lit up like the Fourth of July with all those infrared beacons and flashlights. Once we’d come to a halt, Vince kept the engines running just to be safe. Wong cut the Arab free so he could walk. The Arab didn’t utter a word, even when Wong ripped off the duct tape and took half his mustache along with it. The glare the Arab gave Wong was pure hatred. Anyway, we three stepped into the basket and the forklift lowered us down to the ground where you met us. Your men opened the cargo hatch, Vince rolled the 777 up the runway to where we were sitting in that SUV, and the ground crew refueled the plane. Vince took off solo a little after four o’clock. Since no one’s found a spare 777, I guess he ditched the plane over somewhere deep.”

Teller grunted in assertion. “Deep enough.”

“Now it’s your turn.”

“
My
turn?”

“Tell me why you chartered a C-130 to dump 33,000 pounds of bricks at sea, and how you made MH370 disappear off radar in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.”

“Consider those trade secrets for the time being.” Teller’s death rattle was becoming his trademark signoff.

*  *  *  *  *

A surveillance camera had spotted Nolan on a bicycle at the top of Orchard Road around 7:30 p.m. That was less than a half mile from the Shangri La, so all seemed primed for the 9:30 p.m. rendezvous with the Chinese woman. Constantine had arrayed his operatives to ensure Nolan had no chance of escape once he walked into the lobby. But Nolan was a no-show, and they’d learned nothing since then. Flynn was right: the hotel meeting had been a ruse all along.

Mukherjee’s interrogation didn’t yield anything specific enough to be actionable, either. She confirmed that Nolan had taken a short trip to Hawaii in May last year after Watermen had bolted to Hong Kong. There he’d slept with Watermen’s girlfriend and took a copy of the stolen NSA documents with him. Without Watermen’s thumb drive, that story wouldn’t hold up even in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court based on her dubious testimony.

The FBI reopened the Hawaii side of the Watermen case and agents combed through the files. By 11 p.m., Constantine’s foul mood meant his staffers were busy working leads, real or imagined, anywhere far from his office. However, several developments created an improvement in the chief of station’s demeanor. Friends in the Singapore intelligence community noted that Nolan closed out his personal and joint accounts earlier in the day, a sum of US$380,000 withdrawn in cash. Nolan was definitely planning to run. An NSA intercept provided a solid lead. At 19:45 Nolan called “Mimi Chan” and changed their meeting. They had Nolan’s new cell number, but he’d likely already trashed it. Flynn’s security team had found Nolan’s bicycle chained to a railing outside Orchard Towers. Flynn was leading a mixed detail of Agency and Singapore operatives against the fifth-floor bordello. With any luck, Nolan was holed up there.

However, a second piece of intelligence from the Singaporeans suggested that Nolan was gone, although not yet out of their reach. Harcourt Aviation, a longstanding CIA supplier of crewed jets for clandestine purposes, put a plane down at Seletar Airport earlier today. That same plane took off a little over an hour ago. The flight plan gave Sri Lanka as the destination. Constantine then received confirmation from Langley that no one in the CIA had chartered that plane. Harcourt Aviation’s upstate New York office staff insisted it was an Agency booking and were kind enough to offer that an Adam Birch had deposited cash into Harcourt’s Singapore account.

Constantine would bet his rank that Bob Nolan was Adam Birch. Once the Bank Suisse Privé Asia staff identified Nolan’s photo, he’d have enough evidence to get on the horn to Admiral Jonathan “Jon Boy” Cochran. The admiral was a golfing buddy and wouldn’t need nine pages of permissions before scrambling a pair of F-18 Super Hornets just in case Nolan had a gun on the pilots. Constantine fired off a self-congratulatory email to several nabobs that outlined these developments and predicted a satisfactory outcome shortly.

His cell rang. It was Flynn. “Boss, bad news. Nolan’s long gone. So is the woman. Nothing left behind. I’ve just looked at the CCTV tape of his room. It seems unconventional for a straight sex hire, though the gal had her dress off within a minute of entering the room, he didn’t—”

“Spare me the blow-by-blow.”

“OK, but one thing you need to know is that he’s shaved his mustache, crew-cut his hair and dyed it black. He’s also wearing glasses. You wouldn’t know him on the street. We’re looking for the sharpest photo of him off the video, and we’ll circulate this to all local and international agencies. Do you want us to do the same with the woman? Looked to be an expensive mainland hooker if you ask me. Maybe he balked at the price.”

“No, just focus on Nolan. Come back here. There have been developments.”

“I want to interview the mama-san. She’s someone who probably knows Nolan as a customer. Maybe I can get something out of her.”

“Let her go. She’s a whore, a pimp. Let the local police deal with her. Presumably they have grounds for an arrest?”

“Plenty.”

“Your labors have come to an end. Return to the embassy.” Constantine shook his head. He had to speak with the ambassador about having Orchard Towers declared off-limits to embassy personnel.

The next call was from a Singapore Police detective inspector. Two of the bank staff had positively ID’d Birch as Nolan. He thanked the DI profusely, promising to host a big chili crab dinner for the team when the case had been put to bed.

His direct line rang from Tokyo, which meant Chuck Burns was looking for an update. He picked up and started, “We’ve found Nolan. He’s en route to Sri Lanka and—”

“And you are not to interdict or apprehend. Hands off. Repeat, do not interfere.” Burns was as serious as an undertaker.

“I—I don’t understand. The man’s a traitor. He has Watermen’s NSA files. We can force the plane to return to Singapore in under ninety minutes.”

“I don’t care if he’s carrying the British Crown Jewels. I’ve just had DCI Perkins on the phone. I don’t know why, but just do it.”

“Got it, Chuck. Thanks for the call. Let me clean up some loose ends,” Constantine said and hung up. He thought for a long minute. Mary, Mother of God. Nolan was right about that radioactive container in Rangoon port, and Matthews’s lack of an explanation made the situation even fishier. Maybe Nolan was right and the CIA was behind a hijacking of MH370? What better way to stymie Nolan than to trump up espionage charges and lock him away? “Sarah, bring me printouts of all of Bob Nolan’s MH370 email correspondence.”