The Last Spymaster (41 page)

Moses was an anonymous intel dealer whose reputation ran high during the last years of the Cold War. From the beginning, his modus operandi had been simple—he serviced favored clients on both sides of the Iron Curtain, in both government and private industry He charged a great deal of money, but inevitably his information had been well worth it. Some swore he must be Venezuelan and a former disciple of Abu Nidal. Others thought he was Sicilian with ties to La Cosa Nostra. Still, when anyone wanted Moses’s help, they did not care who or what he was.

“I’ve been here and there.” As always, Moses revealed nothing—unless he had a reason. “You seem glad to hear from me again.”

“That depends. What are you selling—and how much is it going to cost me?”

Litchfield had mixed emotions about the peddler. Although Moses’s tips had helped to propel his career, he hated paying for them, and he hated that the man had no loyalty. Plus he resented never being able to uncover Moses’s identity, despite assigning top technicians to track his calls. They always appeared to have originated in Bali or Cabo San Lucas or some other offshore haven, but the numbers inevitably turned out to be shams.

“The cost?” Moses repeated. “Cheap, when compared to how much you value your career and freedom. I know you’re looking for Jay Tice and Elaine Cunningham.”

“Of course. It’s on the news.”

“As well as Raina Manhardt.”

Litchfield tensed. “How in hell did you find that out!”

“I wouldn’t be any good to you and my other clients if I didn’t protect my sources. Now, here’s the real news, and why you need me—Tice and Cunningham escaped the thugs you sent to Ben Kuhnert’s place. At this
moment they’re driving to meet Manhardt. I can deliver that location, which means if you hustle, you can grab all three at the same time. I like the efficiency of that, don’t you? In fact, I like it so much that my fee just went up ten percent.”

Litchfield swore. If Moses knew Ghranditti’s men had been at Kuhn-ert’s, then he must be telling the truth that Tice and Cunningham had gotten away.

As if he were reading Litchfield’s mind, Moses laughed. “They’re all alive, Litchfield. Yes,
alive.
Do you want them—or not?”

Washington Dulles International Airport
Sterling, Virginia

Sheltered in the pack of deplaning passengers, Raina Manhardt moved out of the flight tunnel’s gate, still in her Gunnar Hamsun disguise. She carried her gym bag in one hand, and a guitar case she had bought at the Milan airport in the other.

Instantly she spotted the big CIA man from Geneva, Alec, hulking where he had a wide view. His shrewd eyes moved fractionally, studying faces in the crowd like a biometrics machine. He was holding a walkie-talkie and a flyer. At least one BND photo of her had to be on that sheet of paper. At the same time, she was sure her real name was not. The CIA would be as eager as the BND to keep that secret.

Chest tight, she lifted her bearded chin and slapped on her sunglasses. She could hear Jay’s voice:
Remember the power of distraction.
Annoyed, she swung the guitar case. She slouched Gunnar’s shoulders and moved Gunnar’s lips as Gunnar sang quietly to himself and did his own jive thing. The big CIA man focused on her face then shifted to the gym bag and the case. But then his mouth twitched, and his gaze snapped away to examine a woman wearing a chic turban.

She told herself to breathe as she kept pace with the flowing crowd, but her disquiet increased as she noted more security people, all holding flyers. All stationed at gates where flights from Europe were due. That was when she saw her old BND colleague Volker Rehwaldt. His arms were crossed, and anger showed in the thin slice of his mouth as he sorted passengers through slitted eyes. He had a walkie-talkie, too. She would pass much too near, within ten feet.

Volker caught sight of her. He frowned and stared. He and she were the same height. The exact height. They had always looked evenly into each other’s eyes, an oddly strong bond. He started toward her.

Her lungs contracted, and she angled away, desperately considering options for escape. But then Volker raised his walkie-talkie but not to talk—to listen. She glanced around. Other surveillants listened to their walkietalkies, too. She looked again for Volker, but he was striding off. The others on stakeout were leaving, too. She did not like it. Something had happened.

Washington, D.C.

The brown brick building was World War II vintage and ordinary-looking, set on a busy downtown street. The door’s single glass pane, which was opaque, showed only the street number. As pedestrians and traffic cruised past behind them, Elijah Helprin and Palmer Westwood raised their CIA IDs to the glass and waited.

The DHS had grown so huge—more than 180, 000 employees—that it was scattered in buildings similar to this one throughout the District, handling such myriad responsibilities as intelligence, warning, transportation security, domestic counterterrorism, and homeland defense.

A DHS guard opened the door and confirmed their IDs. With a polite nod, he let them pass. Elijah and Palmer marched twenty more feet across a weathered parquet floor and came to a clipped stop at a tall mahogany counter.

Elijah held up his ID again and announced his name. “We have an appointment in Room 222A. George Popescu.”

Slower, showing his impatience at last, Palmer displayed his identification, too.

“Sign in,” the uniformed clerk ordered. He checked their signatures against their IDs and handed them visitors’ badges. “Careful you don’t go into any room but 222A.”

Elijah gave a curt nod, and he led Palmer through a metal detector to an elevator that whisked them up to the second floor. Their quarry, George Popescu, looked up as they reached his cubicle. He was a retired CIA analyst called back to work with the rapidly expanding DHS.

“Eli! It’s been a while.” He stood up and shook Elijah’s hand.

Palmer had no time for small talk. “You have it for us, Popescu?”

George raised an eyebrow. “Hello to you, too, Palmer. A little nervy, are we?”

“It’s kind of important, George,” Elijah soothed.

“Sorry.” Palmer smiled his patented friendly smile. “Afraid I am a tad on edge.”

George nodded. “Aren’t we all. Okay, I’ve got it—a printout of our complete databank of missing national security–related material in the past month. Everything from fully confirmed thefts to disappeared computers that may never have existed in the first place. Checked, cross-checked, and rechecked according to every reference made during the investigations by anybody involved. As soon as I got your call, I ran your request through ForeTell and had it integrate everything new that’s come in over the past twenty-four hours. Took only five minutes.” He held out a massive printed document in a cardboard box. “Careful. It’s heavy. Could give you a hernia.”

Palmer grabbed it. “How’s it indexed?”

“By commonality. You said that’s what you wanted.”

Without another word, Palmer headed to one of the small soundproof reading rooms that lined a wall.

“Great work, George. Thanks.” Elijah hurried to catch up.

Once inside, Elijah took the first half of the alphabet, Palmer the second, and they checked the commonalities. The only sound was the turning of pages.

Elijah was the first to spot a hit. “Palmer! Here’s a category named ‘Jerry.’ No last name.” He flipped to the referenced pages, studying the entries. “Ten items, and each time Jerry was mentioned by someone involved in their disappearance. Our StarDusts and GyroBirds are among them. Guess your security guy and my business guy decided to come clean with Homeland Security after we twisted their arms.”

Palmer nodded. “Here’s another—a category labeled ‘Los Angeles voices.’ See, your ten are there plus another eight. One of them is the Retaliator key-chain gun. Search for a Ghranditti category. I’ll check Mr. G.”

Elijah thumbed rapidly, shook his head. “No ‘Ghranditti.’ ”

“But thirteen ‘Mr. Gs’—and only four appear on our other category
lists. The new ones include the Sky Sword missile and the Mirror-Me nanometrics fabric.”

They looked for ‘al-Hadi’ and ‘Majilis al-Sha’b.’ For ‘BMW’ and ‘limousine.’ For ‘bribe,’ ‘disgruntled,’ and ‘blackmail.’ In the end, they had a list of twenty-two incidents.

Palmer stared at the list, then swore. “Hell, this is worse than we thought!”

Elaine parked near the Maine Avenue Fish Wharf in Southwest Washington and watched as Jay checked his weapons. His motions were controlled, precise. Gazing into the small mirror in the sun visor, he adjusted his new aviator sunglasses and tugged the brim of his baseball cap low. His skin was now the color of café au lait. The dark makeup gave him a faintly Latin look, perhaps Carribean, definitely exotic. He was no longer the lily-white man from the upright Caucasian world of most CIA spies and spymasters.

“You’re excited, aren’t you?” She had also altered her appearance, with oversize sunglasses and a straw hat, her hair tucked up underneath.

He did not look at her. “I suppose so.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Jay. Smile. You want to see Raina so bad you’re like a kid with a hundred-dollar bill and an ice-cream truck only three steps away. Get out of the car. You’re going to be late.”

He shot her a million-watt grin. “She might be here already.”

As soon as they were out of the Jag, she rushed to him and slid her arms around him. For a moment, his arms waved indecisively at his sides, then held her, thick and warm.

“I know you didn’t do it, Jay,” she told him. With each word, he had stiffened more. “Don’t say anything. It’s okay. I just want you to know—really know—that I know, and I’ll always be your friend.” She pulled back and kissed his cheek.

He hesitated then brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Take care of yourself, Elaine.” His smile sent something lovely and tender through her. Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead.

He strode away. His broad back grew smaller. His tread became predatory.

As the moored fish barges nudged against the Maine Avenue wharf, the rhythmic
thunk
of steel against wood resounded eerily. The Potomac River’s brown tide was rising, while seagulls circled low, eyeing the fresh crabs and oysters and fish in dozens of varieties arrayed on shaved ice on the block-long marketplace. The late-afternoon sunshine washed the scene in an eerie lavender light.

In his tinted skin and baseball cap and sunglasses, Jay Tice strolled beside the flatboats, his body slumped and deliberately old-looking, his hands loose and free, as he stayed aware of his holstered weapons, aware he saw Raina nowhere. He repressed disappointment and worry.

A fishmonger’s voice suddenly sang out: “Loive crabs! Get your loive crabs!”

Jay resisted an impulse to turn. The accent was the real thing with the rich inflections of someone from one of the fishing outposts along the Chesapeake Bay.

Where was Raina? He turned and retraced his steps, pretending to study the modern restaurants that rimmed the river south of the barges. He scanned the marina’s houseboats and cruisers and trawlers. He surveyed the pier—busy but not overcrowded—worried something had happened to Raina.

He carried an image of her in his mind from that first dawn exchange at Glienicke Bridge. She had looked like a Prussian princess in the wintry light, so bundled was she against the cold. He smiled to himself as he recalled her rosy cheeks, her pink nose. With her fur hat squarely on her head, her blue eyes had seemed larger than ever. And at her side, her gloved fingers had flexed once, her only betrayal of nerves. There was humanity in that gesture, the ice princess come alive. It revealed the woman, real and honest, beneath the perfect sheath of steel. The Raina he loved.

The barrel of a gun rammed sharply into his back. “So, old man, why
shouldn’t I wipe you?” The woman’s voice was a hot, angry whisper beneath his right ear.

His lungs tightened. He controlled an automatic urge to swing back and jam his elbow into her throat. “Dammit, Raina.” He kept his voice low. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You bastard. Because of
you,
he’s dead. Where’s your car?”

This was not what he had planned. “It’s a block from here. Put that gun away. You’re going to get us noticed.”

“I’m better than that, for God’s sake. Don’t try anything. I
will
wipe you if you don’t do exactly what I say. Come to think of it, I may anyway. You’ve got one more job—we may have been burned, so keep an eye out. I said
walk
.”

As instructed, Elaine had been following at a distance, nearly a block away. But a young thug in Levi’s and a Harley-Davidson denim jacket had just moved in behind Jay and was so close they were almost in lockstep. Jay’s taut body language signaled a weapon was involved. Suddenly Jay relaxed, and the punk backed off a fraction. They turned, and Jay raised his head and gave an almost imperceptible nod in her direction. That was when she knew—it was Raina in disguise. And the reunion looked far from romantic.

Elaine stopped and surveyed the wharf, the customers lined up at glass cases of fish, couples sauntering, nannies out with babies in strollers. No one appeared threatening. She reversed direction, too, walking back to Maine Avenue. She glanced over her shoulder occasionally, checking on Jay and Raina.