Support and Defend (21 page)

D
OMINIC SPENT
half an hour sitting at his kitchen table, loading data from his phone into software on his laptop that would analyze and categorize his find. It was more work for the computer than it was for Dom, so while everything was loading and crunching he opened his slap-on GPS receiving app on his computer and began tracking Ethan Ross’s Mercedes.

He saw from the map display that the vehicle had been parked in a lot in Washington Circle for more than fifty minutes. Just sitting there. Dom took this to mean whoever Ross rushed out to meet either lived or worked in the area. If Ross was indeed the traitor this was seriously bad news, as the options in the area for a man with classified U.S. intelligence and the will to share it with unsanctioned parties were plentiful. Embassy Row was within walking distance to the north, and other embassies and foreign organizations dotted the area. Dom guessed there were more state-actor enemies of America in a ten-square-block area around that parking lot than in any other place in the United States.

But he realized he was getting ahead of himself, making assumptions based on a lot of speculation. He fought the urge to continue with these assumptions without, at least, checking into some competing theories about just what Ross was doing.

He typed in “dentist offices” in a Google Maps search of the area, and he saw a half-dozen within a couple blocks of the parking lot where the Mercedes sat.

Shit.
For all he knew, Ross had simply gone to get his teeth cleaned.

“No.” He said it aloud. The bits of the phone conversation he’d picked up back in Georgetown made him near certain Ross was meeting with someone else. “Right the fuck now!” wasn’t something someone said to the receptionist at the dentist office. There was an emergency in Ethan Ross’s world, and Dom had to figure it involved the investigation into the SS
Ardahan
leak.

Dom knew this wasn’t enough evidence for Albright, he wouldn’t even reveal what he’d learned because it would only tip the FBI off that Dom was in play and inserting himself into the investigation. He thought about calling David, but he didn’t have anything for the Mossad to do at this point. He had a suspicious-acting character demanding a clandestine meeting with . . . someone.

It wasn’t much, but right now, it was enough for Dom. He decided he’d keep an eye on Ethan Ross to the best of his abilities. Dom was all alone, and couldn’t very well tail him effectively. But he decided he might as well try a soft mobile surveillance. He put his shoulder holster back on, checked the lay of his Smith & Wesson under his arm. He then put on a thick black leather jacket and grabbed his motorcycle helmet and his keys. He turned on his phone’s app for the slap-on tracker so he could follow Ross if he left the lot while Dom was en route, and then he headed down to his Suzuki TU250 street bike. . . .

D
OM ARRIVED
at the parking lot in Washington Circle just as Ethan Ross climbed out of a taxi just yards away from his vehicle.

To Caruso that looked fishy as hell. Why would he park his car and then cab it someplace else? Certainly he couldn’t imagine any scenario that involved a dentist.

Dom circled the block to give Ross time to get into his car, and by the time Dom made it back around he was pulling around the roundabout that served as the perimeter for Washington Circle Park. Dom expected him to head west on K Street back toward Georgetown, but instead Ross merged into traffic heading east on K.

Dom pulled into traffic several vehicles behind him. He kept himself shielded by the intervening cars and trucks, even though his smoked visor and the sheer distance would have made it impossible for Ross to identify his face even if he had been looking for surveillance.

Dom followed the bright red and easy-to-track vehicle all the way to Chinatown, where Ross pulled into a covered lot a block north of the Verizon Center, paying eleven dollars an hour for the privilege. Dom got lucky and found street parking a block to the south and he locked his bike while keeping an eye on the exit to the lot. Ross appeared a minute later, but instead of walking into Chinatown, he walked away from it, east on H Street. There were a number of office buildings here, but the NSC staffer just kept walking by entrance after entrance, continuing all the way to Massachusetts. Dom was well behind him and on the other side of the street, careful for any attempts by Ross to detect surveillance. This could have been an SDR; an attempt to see if anyone was on him, but Dom was playing it so soft he felt safe enough for the time being.

Finally, after fifteen minutes of walking through the cold, Caruso realized Ross was heading straight to Union Station. His first thought was that his target would descend into the Metro just outside of the station, which would have certainly made continued surveillance of him difficult if not impossible. But instead, Ross entered Union Station itself. He wasn’t carrying any luggage, just a leather messenger bag, so Dom doubted he would be skipping town this afternoon.

Dom assumed Ross was here to meet someone, either for a perfectly aboveboard late lunch or for a clandestine meet of some sort. If it turned out to be the former, Dom figured he would just go in and find a location to set up a static watch and keep tabs on the man, maybe see who he dined with. If the latter was the case, if he was here to interact with someone surreptitiously, well, Dom was a realist. Union Station was a huge area for one man to cover, with dozens of corridors, shops, restaurants, bathrooms, and trains.

Dom wasn’t going to stick so close that he would see anything too dramatic. That happened only in the movies.

As soon as Ross entered through the door near the Metro, Dom headed to the Massachusetts Avenue entrance, then entered into the huge cavernous main hall. It was after two p.m.—most people in D.C. took lunch between noon and one, so the area was far from crowded.

Ross entered from the West Hall into the Main Hall, passing forty feet from Dominic without even glancing his way. Dom watched him out of the corner of his eye as he walked around the circular Center Café in the middle of the marble floor, then he headed through a double doorway to the main level mall concourse of the station.

Dom stayed on him, far enough behind that he ran a significant risk of losing him if Ross tried any evasion tactics or “dry cleaning.” But he remained close enough to keep him in his sights as long as Ross kept things simple.

And Ross unwittingly cooperated. He entered a bookstore and browsed for a few minutes. Dom stayed across the hall in a clothing store with racks of suits high enough to hide himself if need be, and he found a mirror that just picked up the jacket of Ethan’s ski jacket while he stood at a book rack across the hall.

Ross didn’t buy anything, and soon he was climbing the stairs to the shops on the mezzanine level.

Dom let him go, deciding instead to wait it out down here on the main level and keep an eye on both stairwells that lead up to the mezzanine. If Ross had a meet planned on the second floor, then Dom would be out of luck, but surveillance was a tradeoff, and he absolutely did not want to spook this guy and cause him to raise his defenses.

Dom positioned himself between the two stairwells up to the mezzanine and pretended to make a phone call while he waited for his target to return. He spent his time watching others heading upstairs. Businessmen and businesswomen killing time while waiting for trains that would take them up to New York, Baltimore, Richmond, or Philly. Young mothers struggling with strollers on their way to the mezzanine-level shops. An elderly couple moving slowly up the staircase, who were quickly overtaken by two college-aged men wearing tracksuits and backpacks who climbed more quickly.

Ethan Ross came down the stairs at the opposite end of the shopping hall a few minutes later. Dom fell in behind him as he headed back up the length of the main floor, then passed by as Ross stepped into a clothing store, crossing a large mirrored wall near the front.

As he checked the mirror, Dom noticed for the first time that his target was wearing a Bluetooth headset in his right ear. He didn’t seem to be in conversation with anyone, but Dom could not be certain.

He also noticed that Ross wasn’t on any real surveillancedetection route, because at no point did he check for a tail, or even look into the mirrored wall for any easy indication someone was following him.

The pieces came together slowly for Dom, but they did come together. The idle wandering around, the utter lack of interest in his surroundings, the headset in his ear.

Ross
was
on an SDR, but he wasn’t the one doing the detection. Someone else was here, a confederate of his, watching him or, more accurately, watching for anyone on his tail.

The hairs stood up on Caruso’s forearms under his jacket as he thought about enemy eyes on him right now.

T
HE MORE
D
OM MENTALLY
retraced his own steps over the past half-hour, the more he convinced himself he’d played his surveillance correctly so far. He’d not followed Ross up the obvious choke point of the mezzanine stairs, he’d let the man come to him in the mall instead of just walking behind him. If Dom had been pinged by the opposition, whoever and wherever they were, then he was certain he’d just been pegged for closer scrutiny as one of many potential tails. He was sure he hadn’t tipped his hand definitively that he was a surveillant.

Ross walked out of the clothing store now—again, he hadn’t bought a thing—and he headed back to the staircase, this time descending to the food court in the basement.

Caruso’s first inclination was to back off, to get the hell out of Union Station before Ross’s fairy godmother, somewhere close by with eyes on right now, tipped him off that he was being followed by a guy in a black biker jacket. But as he started to walk, Dom decided his best move was to make it obvious he wasn’t a tail by blowing his coverage on purpose. So he walked to the staircase, caught up with Ross, and then passed him going down, nearly brushing against him as he descended. It was such an overt move that, Dom determined, he would be discounted as a potential watcher by anyone who saw him.

In the food court, Dom got in line at a gyro stand. For nearly three minutes he willed himself to look straight ahead, hoping that anyone suspicious of him was watching him the entire time, noting his complete disinterest in anything other than his lunch. He ordered a lamb kabob and a Coke and paid for them, then waited while his order was prepared. All the while he looked ahead at the gyro stand or down at his phone. Only when he had his food in hand and found a plastic chair and a little table by the center staircase did he glance up and out at the big room.

It was just a quick peek, and then he looked back down to his lunch, but Dom had been trained to use a single glance to take a still picture of his surroundings with the camera in his brain. As he began eating, he processed the photo he just took. There were the fifty or so tables in front of him, the food stalls going down the right-hand side, the hallway to the restrooms on the left, and there, facing away and heading toward the restrooms, was Ethan Ross.

Dom looked up again as he took a sip of his Coke, keeping his gaze relaxed and natural. Ethan disappeared down the hall to the men’s room. There was no way Dom would follow him, even if he didn’t suspect Ross had a spotter somewhere in this room watching his back. The hallway was another choke point the spotter would send Ross down to ID an overzealous tail.

Nope, Dom decided he’d let his target piss on his own.

Caruso ate another bite of food, but stopped chewing suddenly when he saw something curious in front of him. A man in his thirties and wearing a charcoal-gray suit and an overcoat walked toward the bathroom hall to the men’s room. There was nothing particularly interesting in that, but Dom noticed the man exchange a quick but unmistakable look with two young men sitting at a table eating pizza. On second glance, Dom realized these were the two college-aged men in the tracksuits he’d seen behind Ross heading up to the mezzanine ten minutes earlier.

Charcoal-suit man didn’t look like he was with the college boys, they certainly hadn’t been together earlier, but the glance was one of insecurity. Concern.

To Dom the look said, “Should I follow him in?”

After the look the man did, in fact, head down the hallway to the bathroom.

Dom had been on the passive lookout for Ross’s spotter, but he knew these guys weren’t working with Ross. The glance said something else.

They weren’t Ross’s fairy godmothers.

This was a tail.

Dom corrected himself. This was
another
tail. This had to be the FBI conducting surveillance on Ross, and this infuriated Caruso. He wanted to punch his fist into the wall next to him, but he fought the urge. He knew good and well that Ross’s spotter would have seen the man he’d funneled into the choke point, and this meant Ross would now spook and go to ground, making proving anything against him much more difficult.

Dom took out his phone and dialed a number he’d saved in the memory. After a few rings, a man answered.

“Albright.”

Caruso whispered, though there was no one around. “Damn it, Darren, your boys are fucking up.”

“My . . . boys?
What
boys?”

“Listen to me. The tail on Ross has got to pull back. He’s running an SDR, but he’s got a spotter. Your team is trying to stick too close to him. Shit, I’m ninety percent sure it’s already too late. One of them just got dragged through a choke point.”

“Where are you?”

Dom sighed. “I’m at Union Station. The food court.”

“You are following Ethan Ross?”

“A hell of a lot better than your team is following him.”

“I told you before, you are to stay out of the investigation. And you agreed to that. On top of that, he’s not even a subject of inquiry.”

“If he’s not a subject of inquiry why do you have a tail on—”

“We
don’t
have a tail on him!”

Dom watched the two young men at the table as they stood and headed for the stairs, drifting through the light crowd. Dom expected they would go up and find a static watch location for when Ross ascended.

Dom asked, “Then who the hell are these guys?”

Albright did not respond to the question. Instead, he said, “I want you to go home. I’ll come over later and talk to you about this.”

“This tail on him isn’t FBI? You’re one hundred percent certain?”

“I am disinclined to discuss any part of the investigation with you at this point, since you obviously haven’t held up your end of our bargain. But just so you will back off and not harass any civilians who are presumed innocent, I can positively confirm, on my mother’s grave, that I do not have any surveillance package
of any kind
on NSC staffer Ethan Ross.”

“What are you going to do about these guys?”

“I suggest you contact the NSC. If there is a security issue involving one of their employees,
they
need to take care of it.” Albright hung up the phone.

Dom rolled his eyes. Clearly, Albright didn’t believe Caruso’s concerns were valid.

The two young men were out of sight now, but Dom thought about their appearance. They both had dark hair and somewhat olive complexions, but they could have been from just about anywhere save Scandinavia. The man in the charcoal suit had salt-and-pepper hair and lighter skin, although he wasn’t exactly fair, either.

There were really no definitive conclusions he could draw about them from their appearance.

Ross appeared from the bathroom hallway, and Dominic looked down at his food. When he looked up again, thirty seconds later, Ross was gone. He’d apparently ascended the other staircase, on the far side of the basement from where Dom now sat.

Dom did not go after him. There was already too much going on around here for his taste, so he decided he’d just finish his lunch and go home.

He took a bite of the gyro, but realized he’d lost his appetite. Thinking about Ross, the fact he had confederates, the fact he now knew he was under suspicion and he would now act in a way that might well make him safer for it, churned Dominic’s stomach. He stood and dumped his leftovers in a nearby garbage can, then headed toward the stairs closest to him.

Just in front of him a thick-set older man in a camel-wool coat turned to take the stairs, and Dom had to slow to let him pass.

Dom had just taken his first step up when he looked above him, past the older man, and he noticed a pair of uniformed D.C. metro police officers descending. One spoke into the microphone attached to his epaulet, and both men moved purposefully, as if they were being dispatched downstairs on a mission.

Almost instinctively, Dom turned around and began walking away from the stairs.

He knew instantly that Darren Albright had called the local police.

Not to grab Ross. Not to grab the guy spotting for Ross. Not to grab the men following Ross.

But to grab Caruso.

“Fucking Albright,” he mumbled to himself.

He walked past the hallway to the restrooms on his left and he continued to the stairs at the west end of the basement. Just before he reached them he turned away quickly and pretended to use an ATM on his right, keeping his back to the stairs.

Two more Metro PD came down the west staircase and passed him unaware. After they moved on into the room, Dom spun away and shot up the stairs, then out of Union Station.