The Last Spymaster (6 page)

“Well done, Mr. Angelides,” Martin Ghranditti told him. “It’s good to work with a professional such as yourself. You’ll be heading east to help me on this end?”

“You bet. The jet’s waiting in Phoenix. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

New York City

As he said good-bye to Jerry Angelides, Martin Ghranditti paced across his Berber carpet. He was a large man of forty-nine, robust in health, well over six feet tall. Cosmopolitan by birth and inclination, he wore tailored ten-thousand-dollar suits—today’s was dark charcoal gray with 22-karat-gold pinstripes. With his perpetual tan and threads of silver in his ebony hair, he looked sophisticated and multicultural, easily passing as the high-powered financial investor and philanthropist he advertised himself to be.

In truth, he was far more: He moved seamlessly from the dirty underbelly of illegal weapons sales to glittering national politics, from business deals with Western tycoons to corporate arrangements with hard-core terrorists training in Oregon and the Sudan. Recently he was a guest at a summit of Islamic militants in Beirut that included al-Qaeda and a secret new umbrella group that was revolutionizing the way the religious fanatics operated. Soon he would attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington with lobbyists and senators and the president.

He had been on his cell phone an hour, closing the deal for an island in the South Pacific. It had been a headache of international red tape, but the transaction was finished now, and his wife would be pleased. Pleasing her was everything.

He dialed again. “Did you send your man after Theosopholis?” “Yes, but he’s missing, too.” There was worry in the voice. “So I sent a team to find both of them, but the GPS signal turned out to be in a tree. Then a bird flew off, and the signal went with it.”

Ghranditti frowned. “What does a bird have to do with Theosopholis and Tice?”

The voice hesitated. “We think Tice must’ve found the tracker and somehow attached it to the bird. Theosopholis isn’t that smart.”

“What!”

“We think Tice must’ve—”

“No, no!
Stop.
” Ghranditti grimaced, barely controlling his bitter hatred of Tice. “So you’re telling me that not only did Tice and Theosopholis break out, the man you sent to find them is gone, too. And you’ve wasted one hell of a lot of time chasing a goddamned bird!”

“It wasn’t like that—”

“Yes, it was! Tice is mocking you. Daring you.
Laughing
at you! I’ll tell you where your man is—he’s
dead
. Tice has
liquidated
him. Otherwise, you would’ve heard from him. I warned you, but you thought it’d be easy because of Theosopholis. Never underestimate Tice. Never! I don’t care what it costs, or how many people you need.
Find Tice!
”

Aloft, flying north to Pennsylvania

The air was dry and cool, the ventilation system breathy in the aging Gulf-stream II. Elaine Cunningham sat beside a window, the only passenger in the twelve-seat turbojet, waiting impatiently. The moment the plane was safely airborne, she opened her computer and checked for an e-mail from Mark Silliphant. There was one:

Am working fast, but this is going to take some time.

Not unexpected. She set the computer aside and picked up Jay Tice’s dossier—then stopped. He was no drunk or spendthrift like Rick Ames, no pious malcontent like Bob Hanssen. In fact, just the opposite. She opened the file folder and reread the top sheet—a short, unsigned analysis:

Jay Tice was known for doing it all. He was a brilliant strategist, tactician, and superspy. As a spymaster, he was one of the Cold War’s top recruiters and runners of networks of spies, agents, assets, and moles. The CIA awarded him six medals, and three presidents honored him with four covert citations. . . .

She remembered vividly how his arrest had shocked the intelligence community: If the best of the best was a traitor, whom could you trust? Maybe not your boss. Maybe not your partner. Morale plunged, and politicians, pundits, and the press closed in for the media kill, blasting the CIA as a stumbling mastodon, humiliatingly inept. There had been no place to hide, no salve.

What Tice had done to the country still enraged her, but a good hunter began with no preconceptions, no judgments. Nothing to inhibit seeing the smallest detail for what it was, uncolored by emotion or attitude. As the turbojet sliced through the azure sky, she calmed herself. Moscow had paid Tice some $2 million for his treachery, but in her experience, vanity or greed was usually too simple an answer to be useful.

She flipped through printouts, reading. Finding an old report written when Tice joined the CIA, she highlighted a section that struck her as important.

. . . born August 6, 1951. His father, George, owned a Ford dealership in Denver. His mother, Ruth, was a homemaker. He had one sibling, a younger brother, Aaron. The family lived in Cherry Creek, an expensive Denver suburb. The boys attended private schools.

Beginning in elementary school, Tice had increasingly low marks, finally failing his junior year in high school. But when he repeated it, he made straight A’s. That year, for the first time, he took up extracurricular activities. The next year his grades were again all A’s, and he led debate and track teams to state championships.

He served one tour in Vietnam in the Marine Corps, earning a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts, then was admitted to Stanford University but on academic probation because of his early low grades. Again he outperformed, graduating summa cum laude while debating, acting in plays, and running track. He set records in the 100 and 400.

His brother enlisted in the U.S. Army and was killed in the DMZ between North and South Korea. Tice’s parents died subsequently of natural causes.

Tice was recruited at Yale while studying for a master’s degree in international affairs.

Curious about Tice’s early low grades, she studied a health questionnaire he had filled out about his childhood. It included a list of broken bones and emergency trips to a variety of doctors and hospitals throughout Denver. Seldom did he see the same doctor twice. She wondered whether he had been abused, which would help to explain his problems in school. As it turned out, his first CIA interviewer had confronted Tice with the same question:

Tice:
My father had a temper, and he drank. It was the usual boring story. As I recall, Sophocles wrote in
Oedipus Rex
, “God keep you from the knowledge of who you are.” [Interviewer’s note: Quotation is accurate.] That was my father. He was a mean, little man who made a lot of money because it was the thing to do. But it didn’t make him happy. He took it out on my mother, my brother, and me. Mother thought Aaron and I could accomplish anything. She always said we were the hope of the family. Aaron and I got out as soon as we could. She didn’t live long after Aaron died.

Elaine put aside her sympathy for Tice’s troubled childhood. At the same time, the abuse had to be factored into his profile. CIA recruits who reported fearing for their lives in childhood because of trauma such as abuse, severe illness, or war often struggled with ordinary survival tests at the Farm. On the other hand, when life-or-death stakes or threats of torture were incorporated, their attitude tended to become “If I survive this, I can survive anything.” Ultimately, they often proved more resilient and higher-performing than other recruits and ended up being especially fine covert operatives.

She laid the printout on her lap and sat back, mulling. Jay Tice had translated his early difficulties into a drive to excel, which meant he shared characteristics with others who had the drive: When they failed at something
they felt crucial, they often set higher goals the next time, hoping to erase the past with telling, even inspiring success. They were realistic in crisis, not blindly optimistic. They analyzed their disasters and made changes. They searched for meaning in results. And they were usually the family’s nominee as the hope for the future. She reread: “we were the hope of the family.” And finally, not only could they act on what others had to teach—they looked for mentors.

She pulled out her cell and dialed Hannah Barculo. “Any progress, Hannah?”

“A few leads. We’re developing them. What about you?”

“I’m working through Tice’s file, building a profile in my mind. I’ve just run into something that might be useful. Did Tice have a mentor?”

“Palmer Westwood,” she said instantly. “He trained Jay in the field, and they stayed close. I don’t know of anyone else, at least not over the long term. I’ve already got Westwood’s house under surveillance. He lives in Chevy Chase, but he hasn’t showed up, and there’s been no sign of Tice, either. Westwood used to travel a lot. I’ll put extra people on finding him.”

“Good. How’s Mark doing?”

“Still at his keyboard. That was a lot of work you gave him.”

As she said good-bye, Cunningham wondered when Tice’s treachery began. She turned to the first abstract of the reports that detailed his activities as a mole:

November 16, 1985. The Exchange of Dr. Pavel Abendroth and Faisal al-Hadi at Glienicke Bridge, Germany.

 

The exchange was arranged by CIA officer Jay Tice and Stasi officer Raina Manhardt. . . .

Raina Manhardt? That was interesting. During the Cold War’s bleak 1980s, Manhardt had been a mole at the heart of the dreaded Stasi, spying for the BND—Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Federal Intelligence Agency—the CIA’s equivalent agency in West Germany. With a miniature camera hidden in a tube of lipstick, she had photographed so many secret Communist
documents that they had filled ten file drawers. Her intel had stopped assassinations and invasions, and if the Stasi had caught her, they would have shot her in the back of the head at close range, as they had a dozen other Western moles. Her daring story had been revealed after the Berlin Wall fell. The excited press had dubbed her the Cleopatra Spy.

Elaine thought about Manhardt, trying to imagine how difficult it must have been for her to be both Stasi spy and BND mole. Of course, Jay Tice had done the same thing, but not for democracy. With a frown, she resumed reading.

The U.S. and West Germany supported the exchange as a means to free Dr. Abendroth. They gave permission for al-Hadi to be swapped because he had behaved well in custody and had no previous record of arms activity.

East Germany wanted the exchange because its treasury was deeply in debt, and al-Hadi’s family offered to pay $1.5 million for his safe return.

The Soviet Union’s motive was to eliminate Dr. Abendroth, because Tice had a plan.

Background:
In those days, the Politburo’s top priority was halting ideological subversion and proving communism superior. So when an East Bloc dissident was mentioned as a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize, he or she was usually charged with espionage. This happened to Abendroth. After several years in Gulag Perm 35, international pressure built until he was transferred in 1985 to house arrest in East Berlin. But at the same time, Moscow secretly ordered the Stasi to find a way to eliminate him.

Tice arranged the exchange not only to assassinate Abendroth, but so that America would be blamed for it. When it proved successful, Moscow opened a numbered Swiss account for Tice and deposited $50, 000. This was his first active measure against America.

Elaine’s throat tightened. Anger surged through her.
Damn Tice.

A disembodied voice sounded from the turbojet’s speakers. “Ms. Cunningham, you asked to be alerted when we got close to landing. Figure ten minutes.”

Clutching the printout, she took a deep breath and peered down through the window at the rural Susquehanna Valley. Even from above, Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex gave off a grim, fortresslike air. Some four thousand prisoners were housed there in a minimum-security camp, a medium-security lockup, and the high-security penitentiary. Armed guards patrolled. Double rows of barbed wire topped by coils of razor wire secured the perimeter. Still, somehow, Jay Tice had escaped.

Along the North River, North Carolina

The Great Dismal Swamp spread dark and wild on either side of the raised road. The air was moist, thick with the peppery odors of relentless growth. Paved driveways sliced into the swamp, ending at modern houses on lush lawns. Jay Tice only glanced at them as he hurtled down the road, riding the motorcycle of the janitor sent to kill him.

The motorcycle, a Yamaha FJ1200, had yielded no clues, but at least it was new transportation. At the first shopping mall, he had stopped to switch license plates. At the second, he bought a full helmet to hide his face, then a waterproof zippered jacket that was tight at the waist and blousy around his chest to conceal his Browning and SIG Sauer. He could feel them now, substantial, reassuring. It had been a long time.