The Last Spymaster (3 page)

Instead of exploding, she nodded. Her expression was grim.

“You were one of our best hunters,” Litchfield said. “Right now I need the best.” As a hunter, her specialty was locating missing spies, assets gone to ground, “lost” foreign agents, anyone in the covert world of interest to Langley who had vanished—and doing it in such a way that the public never knew.

He watched a reflective look cross her face. It was time to change the subject: “Why do you think you were so successful?”

“Probably because I simply have a knack for it,” she said. “I steep myself in the psychology of my target until the physical evidence and clues take on new meaning. That’s all there is to it.”

For the first time, he smiled. “No, there’s far more than that.” She was modest, and she had not lost her temper. All things considered, she was clearly his best choice.

Eyeing him speculatively, she said, “When the DDO comes to call, I figure something important has happened. And when I’m on the verge of being fired and he still comes to call, I figure it could be crucial. So let me help you out—if you think I can do the job, tell me what it is, and I’ll tell you whether I can or want to take it on.”

He looked around. “Not here. The assignment is with one of our special units. And it’s M-classified.” “M” indicated an extraordinarily sensitive covert operation. Among the highest the United States bestowed, single-letter security clearances meant the information was so secret it could be referred to only by initials.

Her blue eyes snapped with excitement. It had been a long time since she’d had such an opportunity. “Give me back my resignation letter. As long as I don’t have to mommy fools, I’ll deliver.”

He handed it to her along with his envelope. “Here’s the address and the name of your contact, plus my phone number. It’s the usual protocol—you hunt, our regular people capture. Read, memorize, then shred everything, including my number. Good luck.”

The Catoctin Mountains, Maryland

Dense forests flowed dark and primeval down the ridged sides of the Maryland mountains to where a roadside stop had been built on a green basin of land off busy Highway 15. A cool breeze typical of the early hour at this time of year blew around the two-pump gas station and parking lot and café.

Jay Tice stood utterly still in shadows. His bloody clothes announced he should be considered dangerous, but there was something else about him that was perhaps even more sinister: It was in his aging face, where intelligence and violence warred just beneath the skin. His hair was short, the color of iron shavings. Two crevices curved down from either side of his nose to his mouth. His chin was as firm as ever, marked by the dramatic cleft.

He moved off through the trees. At the rear of the café, he dropped to his haunches. There were four windows on the back wall—one was opaque glass, two displayed customers eating, and the fourth, next to the doorway, showed a desk and file cabinets. That was the office, just where he remembered. The back door was open. From it drifted the greasy odors of fried sausage and bacon. Tice looked around then sprinted to the doorway. He peered cautiously inside.

“Two eggs, easy!” A voice yelled from the end of the cluttered hall. “Half stack!”

Within seconds he slipped unnoticed into the office. He locked the door and activated the computer and, while it booted up, opened the window. From somewhere inside the café, a newscast described a terrorist bombing by a group thought to be connected to al-Qaeda. He sat down at the computer and created a new Yahoo! e-mail account from which he opened a blank e-mail, addressed it, and typed into the message window:

Dog’s run away. Call home.

As soon as he hit SEND, he addressed another e-mail with a different message:

Unexpected storm forced evacuation. In touch soon.

Deleting all copies saved to the computer, he turned it off. He slid out the window, stifling a groan as his hip grazed the lip, furious that he was not as agile as he once was. He closed the window and seconds later was in the forest again, moving swiftly away.

Washington, D.C.

Controlling her excitement, Elaine Cunningham drove her Jaguar S-Type Sport 3.0—red, sleek, and sumptuous—across the Potomac River and into the District. As the beat of Headshear’s “Walking Tapestry” pounded from her speakers, she reveled in the Jag’s power and balance, the seventeen-inch Herakles alloy wheels, the bird’s-eye maple dashboard, and the softer-than-skin leather upholstery. She knew her love affair with this lump of luxury was shallow, and she did not care. It whispered when it cruised, and it growled when poked awake. Who could resist that?

Dupont Circle was just a mile northwest of the White House. As she drove around it, she maintained her usual second-stage alert, studying buildings, the mass of cars, the mobs of pedestrians. A towering water fountain sparkled in the center of the parklike circle, while beneath it people jogged, drank caffe lattes, and played chess. The world looked safe and innocent. But it was not, which was why she always carried a weapon since Rafe’s death.

She turned the Jag up a hilly street, its gears sweetly adjusting, and found the address of the special unit—an old two-story Victorian with a wide front porch. A brass plate proclaimed:

INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL CONCERNS

A THINK TANK FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

It was a busy neighborhood. People filled the sidewalks and cars lined the curbs. Dupont’s parking was nearly impossible; only Georgetown’s was worse. She rounded streets until she found a slot in which to wedge the Jag. Carrying her shoulder bag, she headed back, wondering again what was so vital that the DDO himself had personally interviewed her.

As she hurried up the Victorian’s brick walk, the front door opened,
and an old woman stepped out. She was slumped and lined. Silver hair wreathed her wrinkles. She wore a black dress, opaque support hose, and Hush Puppies.

“Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.” The woman’s voice carried easily, a tremor in it, convincing to anyone passing by.

“Thanks. Good to be here. I’m looking forward to working at the Institute.”

Cunningham climbed the steps to the porch, noting the woman’s hair was a wig and the cobweb of wrinkles only makeup, so finely done that only an expert would know. Passing the woman, she moved indoors and in a single, practiced sweep took in the needle-nose cameras embedded almost invisibly in the ceiling and the pinhead-size spots on the flocked wallpaper indicating motion detectors. As expected, the security was well cloaked and impressive. She felt herself relax, and yet her alertness increased.

She turned. “You’re Hannah Barculo?” According to her assignment letter from Litchfield, her contact was Barculo, chief of unit. The unit was code-named Whippet.

“I am. This hornet’s nest has been mine for five years.” The woman closed the door. A series of firm clicks sounded, indicating electronic locks had snapped into place. “Our gatekeeper’s on assignment. Sorry for the getup, but I’ve been working. Just got in. Let’s go to my office.”

As they strode through a long foyer decorated with fake antiques, Barculo’s posture straightened, and her movements grew fluid and athletic. She was a good thirty years younger than she first appeared, probably in her mid-forties.

“Litchfield says you’re good to go,” Barculo said. “That right?”

Cunningham felt her chest tighten. Then she shook it off. “Absolutely.”

“I’ll be frank. I didn’t want you.” Barculo’s expression was worried.

Cunningham had not expected to be greeted with open arms. “I’ll be frank, too. We both know the hunters considered first-tier are on assignment overseas. But now there’s some big emergency here. That means I’m the best choice of the lesser lot. If there were someone else without my checkered history, the DDO would’ve chosen him or her.”

Barculo nodded. “Litchfield said we needed someone who could think
without a book. In this case, that’s you. It’s also one of the qualities our quarry’s known for.”

They turned down a hall. All doors were shut, and no one was in sight. As their footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor, the old house creaked. Otherwise, it seemed eerily quiet, but safe headquarters were sometimes soundproofed completely.

Barculo opened an unmarked door. As she walked through, she sighed, peeled off her wig, and shook out her short walnut-brown hair. She sat behind a massive desk, where two steaming ceramic mugs waited. The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the office. It was spacious, with an elegant cove ceiling arching above. There were chairs, side tables, shelves of books, and a TV. In another era, it had probably been a sitting room.

As Cunningham closed the door, Barculo said, “Grab some caffeine and a seat.”

Cunningham took a mug and chose a weathered armchair. She dropped her shoulder bag. “Anytime you’re ready, I’d like to know what’s going on.”

Barculo stirred her coffee, gazing into it. When she looked up, she appeared to have reconciled something in her mind. “Did you ever meet Charles Jay Tice?”

“I heard him talk, but I was never close enough to be introduced. Does this have to do with one of his old operations?”

“Maybe. What do you remember?”

“He was a Cold War icon, of course. A legend in the Company. Supposed to have been a genius at running individuals and teams.”

“Right. One way or another, he had a hand in a lot of our most critical actions in Europe. You must’ve studied some of them at the Farm.”

“We never knew which were his. But I was told he was so devious he could outwit even Markus Wolf.” She asked curiously, “Is that true?”

“I have no direct knowledge, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I also heard that one of the moles Moscow executed had intel that might’ve stopped 9/11, but because of Tice’s betrayal, it died with him.” The words alone appalled her.

“True.”

Cunningham digested that. “I read about his million-dollar numbered account in Switzerland and the lie-detector tests he failed, but in my experience there’s always more. How was he really uncovered?”

“After we got Rick Ames in ’94, and the FBI arrested Bob Hanssen in ’01, there was a feeling we were safe from traitors, because we’d put away our top two. But Langley wanted to be certain. So we invited the FBI to help us create a computerized master grid of known and suspected leaks and breaches dating back into the early eighties. The grid’s deep black, by the way, its existence not to be repeated.”

“And the program turned up Tice?” Cunningham drank coffee.

“Exactly. Some of the worst violations couldn’t be attributed to either Ames or Hanssen or any of the ‘lesser’ traitors we’d uncovered. So we fed in the names of officers, assignments, and schedules. Tice’s name came up red-flagged. Remember that blank between 1991 and 1999 when Russian intelligence had no record of Hanssen spying for them at all? By then, Tice was selling out the store.”

Even after the Cold War and the intense ideological rivalry ended, the Kremlin’s primary espionage target remained the United States. As she sipped coffee, she thought about Jay Tice. When he was arrested in 2002, he was DDO—second in power only to the Director of Central Intelligence, the DCI. He had access to many of the nation’s most closely held secrets. His arrest had exploded in a spy scandal of global proportions, blaring from headlines around the world for a year.

Adrenaline shot through her. “Wait a minute. You need a hunter. It’s an emergency. For
Tice?
”

Barculo sighed worriedly and sat back. “He escaped from prison early today with an inmate named Frank Theosopholis. Because this is national security, the U.S. Marshals have no jurisdiction. The DCI cut a deal with the FBI so it still gets to conduct the prison investigation, but the CIA gets apprehension responsibility. The DCI handed it off to Laurence Litchfield, and Litchfield assigned it to us—Whippet. We have a high success rate in under-the-table missions, plus we’re so covert we’re not even listed in
Langley’s directories. We’ve got only two days—that’s it. If we fail, the FBI takes over. We
must
put Tice and Theosopholis back behind bars quickly and quietly.”

“Only two days!”

“God knows what damage Tice can do now that he’s out again. And Langley needs no more black eyes with the public or Congress.”

“Agreed.” Cunningham put confidence into her voice. “We’ll have to meet the deadline. Sooner would be better. What have you done so far?”

“I’ve sent people to surveil the Russian embassy and Tice’s old haunts. We’re watching airports and train stations and car rental agencies. We’ve staked out the storage locker he rented for the things he kept after he sold his house, and we’re monitoring his last remaining bank account. We’re following the same protocols for Theosopholis.”

“Theosopholis isn’t a familiar name. Someone Tice turned overseas?”

“He’s not in any of our active databases. I’ve sent a request for copies of the old discs. Theosopholis has been serving time for killing a DEA asset. As soon as we have a dossier on Theosopholis, you’ll get a copy. Here’s Jay Tice’s.” She slid a fat file folder across the desk.