Spy Catcher: The J.J. McCall Novels (Books 1-3) (The FBI Espionage Series) (20 page)

Chapter 34

Wednesday Afternoon…

J
.J. waited anxiously for Dmitriyev to deliver the additional piece of information she hoped would help her break the case once and for all.

“The mole, he’s part of a joint operation that counterintelligence has been working with illegals support for at least the last six or seven years...maybe longer.”

“Counterintelligence working jointly with illegals support?” she said. It was an FBI agent’s nightmare. Tactically, they were the hardest targets to work against—one cunning and the other elusive, a tough combination. “Wait a minute. That’s why Aleksandr Mikhaylov is one of the handlers.” She stated her suspicions as fact to see whether Dmitriyev would confirm or deny. She’d believed he was dirty from the moment he came into the country and his ability to shake the Gs and operate almost entirely in the black confirmed her suspicions.

“Ahhhh, I’m impressed,” he said. “Yes, he is the primary handler and has been since day one. Apparently, the asset dropped a note in Mikhaylov’s car window to establish the first contact years ago. We’ve been working them jointly because the illegals support operational line is short on officers and Mikhaylov is nearing the end of his second and possibly last tour.”

“That’s odd,” she said. “The mole is FBI so he should’ve been passed off to your counterintelligence department…
to you
.”

“Correct,” he said. “These circumstances are very unusual indeed. The Center always has its reasons. I’m still unaware of what they are.”

When their call ended, J.J. questioned whether the mole had a specific reason for approaching Mikhaylov or happened across his open car window by coincidence. It seemed highly unlikely that the incident was mere happenstance, as might be the case with someone who doesn’t know Russian intelligence—but not with an experienced FBI agent. No, the mole
selected
Mikhaylov—the illegals support officer—for a reason.

Illegals, Russian intelligence officers under the deepest covers, came to the United States from friendly, benign foreign countries, such as Canada. They then sought U.S. citizenship and sensitive government positions, usually communicated with US-based Russian intelligence officers or the Center through the most covert means—dead drops, coded and encrypted communications transmissions. She questioned what would prompt the mole to place a letter in Mikhaylov’s car. Some kind of personal relationship? The notion, while far-fetched, was certainly worth considering.

Dmitriyev’s call had sparked more questions than it answered. But two things were certain: First—she and Tony needed to devise a plan to save Karat and Vorobyev’s hides if they wanted maintain access to Dmitriyev. Second—they needed to consider the possibility that the mole could be an illegal. And if indeed one of J.J.’s colleagues from the vault was involved, personnel files might contain critical answers. If J.J. and Tony could stop putting out fires long enough to ask Sunnie to review them, the information may tie one of the bigot listed personnel to a friendly foreign country. Then they could arrest the son of a bitch once and for all.

The pressure mounted, and the sky rained confusion, and J.J. began to fold emotionally. Tony couldn’t expect her to keep her promise under these circumstances.

She reached under the passenger seat, grabbed her flask, and checked to make sure the coast was clear before taking a long sip of her savior. She sat still and waited for that moment, the moment when it smoothed the edges on her crumpled nerves.

She slipped the container under the seat, pushed the key into the ignition and put the car into gear.
BAM!
She ran into the telephone pole ahead of her.

“Damn!”

She had meant to put the car in reverse, but put it in drive instead. She jolted her forward in her seat, slamming her knee against the lower edge of the dash. Nothing seemed broken except her front fender, no doubt, but her knee ached like hell. The ensuing adrenaline rush made her hand tremble like the oak leaf she spotted drifting in the strong fall wind.

As if her luck couldn’t get any worse, a Prince George’s County Police officer, on duty and in uniform, stepped out of the carry-out with a bag of Chinese just in time to witness the entire incident. He was headed for her car.

Shit!

•  •  •

Later at Headquarters

J.J. met Tony to devise a solution to their new problem—Vorobyev—as well as solve the lingering ones. He reserved a conference room in his old White Collar Crime unit on the fifth floor at her request. If her suspicions were correct, the mole had placed a listening device in the office, probably Jack’s office. No conversation was safe until they located and removed it.

When she limped into the cramped room, their Xerox copy of    Plotnikov’s real case files were sprawled across the table as Tony eyed her with concern.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“I, uhhh, put the car in drive when I meant to put it in reverse. P.G. cop saw the whole thing, but I played blond. He didn’t cite me.”

He jumped out of his seat and swept to J.J.’s side, pulling a chair out so she could sit down. Then he took the adjacent seat and waited for her eyes to meet his, but she avoided his gaze.

“J.J., you weren’t drinking, were you? If you get a DUI, they’ll snatch your badge, you know that, right?” he urged.

“I was fine, Tony. It was just a stupid mistake, one that I’ll never make again. I was distracted and lost focus. Now, can we please get down to business? We don’t have time for lectures.”

He nodded, eying her skeptically.

Without haste, J.J. brought him up to speed on the day’s events. Dmitriyev had given her an earful about Vorobyev and Karat, the mole’s next drop, and the potential illegals connection, which stumped them both.

“So, why’d you ask to meet here? I hadda pull a few strings to borrow this space,” he said.

“Well, if my suspicions are correct...”

“And they usually are,” he interjected.

“The mole planted a bug somewhere in our office, I suspect Jack’s office. That’s the only place where you and I discussed Dmitriyev without specifically mentioning his name.”

“A bug in headquarters?” Tony appeared dumbfounded by the accusation. He leaned forward, waiting for J.J.’s explanation.

“Remember the conversation we had in Jack’s office when I told you we’d have the answers to nail the bastard in three days?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s assume the mole overheard me, which I believe he did. I never mentioned Dmitriyev by name. I called him ‘our friend’ and mentioned that, in three days, he would have the information we needed to nail the mole.”

“Right. I’m with you.”

“Well, if the mole checked to see what was happening in the embassy within the next three days, he would’ve found out that Vorobyev was departing, then he wrongly assumed that I was referring to Vorobyev—not Dmitriyev.”

“Wow,” Tony said, his frustration obvious. “We’ve got to get in there later tonight and locate it. Only someone in the unit would’ve had access to Jack’s office.”

“Exactly.”

She grabbed an old photocopy Plotnikov’s real case files from the table and flipped it open. The page containing the list of operational locations in Rock Creek Park that she’d compiled over the years was located near the back. “So now we gotta figure out a way to clear Vorobyev and Karat, not only to save their lives but to ensure Dmitriyev will maintain contact with us. He’s too valuable a source to lose,” J.J. said.

“How the hell are we gonna pull that off? Walk up to the embassy and tell Golikov’s people they got the wrong guy because the FBI said so? I mean c’mon.”

“If only the answer were that simple,” J.J. nodded her head. She pushed her fingers through her hair, scratched the scalp as if doing so would stimulate her brain. “I got nothin’. I mean that idea’s about as crazy as getting the mole to say, ‘My bad! I made a mist—.”

She cut herself off, her eyes widened.

“What?”

“That’s it! That’s the solution! Even when you’re not brilliant, you’re brilliant.”

Chapter 35

J
.J. swept out of her chair and flounced around the room. Deep in thought, she tapped her finger against her lips.
But could this plan really work?
She shook her head no. It was too difficult, too many pieces had to fall in place, especially at a time when every step forward was always followed by two steps backward. Then again, what was the alternative? Let Vorobyev and Plotnikov die? Lose Dmitriyev? Probably wouldn’t work, but they had to try.

“What...what is it?”

“The drop. That’s the answer, don’t you see?” she said. “If the mole tells the Russians that the information implicating Vorobyev was part of a big set-up, an internal FBI investigation to flush out ICE Phantom, they’ll believe him, call off Golikov’s dogs, and Vorobyev will be cleared.”

“Keep going. I like the sound of your idea so far.” Tony folded his arms over his chest. “But I’m anticipatin’ one tiny little problem? How do you propose we get the mole, whom we haven’t actually identified yet, to confess all of this to the Russians…as if he ever would.”

“I’m getting to that part,” she said impatiently, rushing to make sense of her own thoughts. “We don’t. We switch the drop. And, in our package, we include a note from the mole clearing Vorobyev. They’re typewritten. We don’t have to worry about handwriting.”

“You mean the same drop that’s happening in the location we don’t know and at a time that we also don’t know?”

“Okay, Mr. Glass Half Empty.”

“J.J., it’s freakin’ empty. No other way to see it.”

“Yes, there is, if we get our shit together and speak to SAC McDonald, pronto!” J.J. said, referring to the Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office. “We’ll ask him for as many G teams as he’ll authorize to blanket that park.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Listen, all intelligence services pretty much use the same tradecraft and I’ve been through every square inch of the park. I’ve located all the best operational spots. We’ll post the Gs in those locations and pray we get the right one. Unless you have another idea?”

He shook his head no. “Not bad, not bad at all, McCall,” he said. “But what about Karat? And what are we going to use for passage material? They’re going to be expecting some valuable counterintelligence information not the crap we give up in double agent operations.”

“True,” J.J. said, moving about nervously. She sat down then stood up again and resumed pacing then blew out a long breath and threw up her hands in resignation. “We have no choice. Double agent passage material will have to do. It’s crap, but I don’t see any other—”

“What?”

“Wait a minute!” Her face beamed. “You ever play chess?”

“Yeah, what the hell’s ‘at got to do with anything?”

“It’s the last thing Cartwright said to me before he died. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the pawn to get the king.”

“Sacrifice the pawn?” Tony asked as he watched J.J. whir around the room. “The question is who’s the pawn in this scenario?”

“Karat,” she said.

“Wait! You’re suggesting we give up Karat…to save Karat?”

She nodded.

“Have you been drinking again?” he said. His face reddened. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, J.J. We’ve been jumping through our asses to save this man’s neck for years and now you want to rat him out to the Russians?”

“Yes…
and no
,” she said, a smile emerging on her face. “For drop material, we’re going to give the Russians his entire Top Secret operational file, from beginning to end.”

Tony ran his fingers through his hair. “You mean, you want to give up
this
file?”

“Hell, no,” she said, waiting to see light dawn on Marblehead.

“Then I don’t under—” His eyes widened.

“By George, I think he’s got it! Now, while I start mapping out the strategy, you call Sunnie and tell her to leave the file in your desk. She’s got vault access.” 

•  •  •

J.J. and Tony worked tirelessly through the evening. Their justification to conduct the op and request the G support had to be rock solid. They’d broken every rule and bypassed every Bureau regulation in the book. The bureaucratic red tape they hurdled was too long to be measured in miles. No time to get the proper authorizations. One boss was dead, another in jail, and one of their colleagues was spying for the Russians. She’d reasoned they had a pretty good case for taking the more circuitous route to solving this case.

A couple of hours later, J.J. and Tony collected their neatly organized material into a file and locked it in her briefcase for safe keeping. MacDonald, the man who held the collective fate of the operation in his hands, stayed in the office late and had been expecting their death by PowerPoint. So they said their Hail Marys and prepared to talk shit like they’d never talked it before—Tony’s specialization without question.

As J.J. and Tony headed toward his car, she couldn’t shake the eerie feeling she experienced every time she thought about Cartwright’s suicide and what it really meant. There was a reason he killed himself. He must’ve been entangled in activities so insidious that his only way out was death. The prospect of having to disentangle the web of lies and deceit he’d left behind was nothing short of daunting.

“So what do you think about this Cartwright business?” J.J. asked Tony.

He shrugged. “One way to get out of taking a polygraph, I guess.”

“Be serious, Tony. Do you think he did it because of his sexual preference or for some other reason?” She hoped Cartwright’s death had raised the same questions in his mind that it had in her own.

“Look J.J., you and me, we’re old school. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to go asking questions you didn’t want to know the answers to?” he asked rhetorically. “I remember one Christmas, my mother gave me this knit sweater with Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer on the front.”

She stopped in her tracks and glared at him. “Is this going somewhere?”

“Yeah. Be patient,” he snapped playfully. “As I was sayin’, I hated that ugly ass sweater but I was gonna wear the thing to make her happy. Anyway, there was this one little thread sticking out of the sleeve. I kept pulling and before I knew it, the whole sweater was nothing but a pile o’ yarn.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is, you and I keep pulling strings.”

She laughed and shot him a sideways glance. “Are we still talking about the case?”

His cheeks blushed red. “Of course. What else would I be talking about?” he asked. “That’s what this Cartwright business feels like to me. We’ve pulled the strings and now a bunch of shit is starting to unravel.” He turned to J.J. “What if we’ve uncovered a network? Given the intelligence in Plotnikov’s drop, there’s at least one more ICE Phantom. And he’s not inside the FBI.”

“A spy ring,
”
she said.
Speaking the words made her cringe.

Finding the mole had been task enough. She shuddered for the Agent who would be assigned to find the others.

“Well, we do have one last iron in the fire that might provide us with some added leverage,” J.J. said.

“What’s that?”

“Chris is supposed to take his polygraph first thing tomorrow morning, and I’m pretty sure he’ll show up to take it.”

“No doubt,” Tony said. “If the Russians value him as much as they should, they probably trained him to use countermeasures. He probably won’t beat it, but he’ll be just cocky enough to think he can.”

“He’ll make the drop early in the morning and we’ll get a confession sometime tomorrow. He may be able to tell us more about the ring, but the Russians are among the best at compartmenting their assets, so there are no guarantees.”

“Indeed. Now, let’s roll over to WFO and kiss MacDonald’s ass for twenty minutes so we can get the Gs. This entire op is riding on his thumbs up.”

His metaphor, pulling strings, could perfectly describe their case and relationship. They constantly pulled strings. And the more they pulled, the more their attraction for one another was revealed. But neither dared to face the connection between them—nor the rabbit hole they’d been chased into because of the case.

•  •  •

Later Wednesday Night...

“It’s on like popcorn!” J.J. said, bubbling with excitement. After presenting their case to SAC MacDonald, he authorized seven G teams for one day and one day only. Either they’d catch the son of a bitch on Thursday or Operation OVER.

After picking up the package of passage material to fill the drop, they set out to find the bug in Jack’s office. As they stepped off the elevator, they faced a new nightmare—one with the power to put the kibosh on their best-laid plans.

“Ahhhh, Ms. McCall and Mr. Donato. I just left your office. I’ve been looking for you two,” Director Freeman said. His scowl could slice through concrete. Neither he nor the members of the director’s security detail looked pleased to see them. J.J. braced herself for his wrath, fearing MacDonald had called and ratted them out. And a quick glance at Tony’s expression said he was doing the same. He’d come to fire them on the spot, snatch their badges and guns and march them out the front exit. The jig was up.

“Sir?” they said in unison. Tony and J.J. glanced at each other unable to gauge his disposition. J.J. was all but certain her career would end in T-minus thirty seconds. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, he waved off his security detail and told them he’d meet them at his office later.

“Mhm. Hmm. Yeah...I got a call from MacDonald. He said I might find you two here.”

“Sir...uhhh,” J.J. hemmed  and  hawed. “We...uhhh, uhhh. We  didn’t—”

“Apparently you didn’t realize that SAC MacDonald couldn’t authorize such a significant number of surveillance resources without my knowledge...and more importantly,
my approval
,” he said, gesturing his hand forward as he started toward their office. They humbly followed in tow. “What I’d like to know is why you didn’t come directly to me?”

J.J. looked at Tony and shrugged, gave him a blank stare, and offered nothing in the way of an excuse. After all, Tony was the better improviser of the two. “Well, see. What had happened was . . . Uh, sir, we were trying to keep the information as safe and as compartmented as possible. J.J. identified another problem and we had no idea how extensive the breach might be,” Tony said as they arrived at the office door. He unlocked the cipher and badged everyone in. “If you’ll give us a few minutes, we can show you exactly what we’re talking about. I think you’ll understand.”

“Yes, have a seat, sir,” J.J. said as she flipped on the light, confident Tony’s excuse would get them off the hook. No way Freeman could argue with a fear of bugs—the transmitting type.

Jack’s office had been left virtually undisturbed since their last meeting. They immediately dove into their sweep, ran their hands along the chairs, window sills, and the file safe, carefully inspecting each item on Jack’s desk. Tony crouched down behind the wooden mass and felt underneath. J.J. watched and winced. With Jack, anything could lie beneath.

Toward the back underside, Tony’s fingers brushed across two thin plastic-coated wires. Barely an inch away was a second small, flat object. “Bingo! I got it,” he yelled. “Son of a bitch!” spilled from his mouth before he remembered Freeman was sitting only a few feet away. “You nailed it, J.J.”

He yanked the small device from underneath the desk, held it out for J.J. to inspect. She shook her head and examined the wires. When Tony showed Director Freeman, his body stiffened before he propped his elbows on his knees. Then he tilted back in his seat, his face tired, drawn.

“You mean this bastard placed a bug in headquarters?”

“Yes, sir. That’s why we had to be careful,” J.J. said. “Karat’s been detained, and I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened to Vorobyev by now. The CIA probably can’t wait to get me off the streets.”

He nodded. “I’m supposed to deliver your head on a spike by Friday.”

She chuckled. “Well, we believe that’s how the mole got the information that falsely implicated Vorobyev, a discussion Tony and I had about Dmitriyev.”

“Dmitriyev? Why would you be discussing Dmitriyev? He’s not working with us.”

“Uhhhh...that’s inaccurate,” Tony interjected. “Not only did J.J. recruit him a few days ago, long story. But he’s slated to replace Vorobyev and had intended to identify the ICE Phantom when provided access to Vorobyev’s files on Friday.”

“The mole’s identity? He’s handing it over
this
Friday?” Director Freeman said, on the edge of elated relief.

“Well, he’d planned to. But that was before Golikov’s people detained Vorobyev,” Tony said. “Now he’s spooked. Apparently Golikov’s people are running security now and Vorobyev got roughed up pretty bad.”

Freeman cut his eyes at both. “And of course you couldn’t report this due to...”

“The bugs,” J.J. said, cutting her eyes at Tony. “We have no idea how extensive the breaches are or where else in the building he may have planted devices. So we had to be careful.”

“Shit, this is a sensitive compartmented facility,” Freeman said. “You do realize that for the transmitter to work inside a SCIFed area they had to listen from inside the office. No way they could pick up a signal from the street.”