The Spy's Little Zonbi (26 page)

***

“
Hi, Tylea.”

“
Daddy!” The phone crashed to the floor and Chase could hear her fumble with the long cord and then the click of the kitchen light switch. “Guess what just happened?”

“
Why are you still awake?” His current assignment for DB6 was to keep tabs on a ski racer and his technician, who were involved in another Iranian plot. The duo had been hopping back and forth from USSA Masters races in Colorado and Vermont.

“
Mommy fell asleep on the couch reading. When are you coming home?”

“
I'm flying home after the morning race.”

“
Is it a slalom?”

“
Yes, it's a slalom, honey.” Chase knew what was coming next.

“
Then you can come home after the first run,” she teased, meaning he wouldn't survive a full first run down the steep, icy course of single gate slalom poles. The slalom event was almost impossible for skiers still low on the learning curve. Chase had skied since he was a kid, but his only races had been in two dollar a run timed events set up on gentle intermediate slopes. Masters racing was open to anyone who purchased a license, and the competition was filled with entry-level racers all the way up to former national team members who weren't quite ready to give up their adrenaline addiction. Masters courses were set on expert slopes and had a seemingly endless number of gates that left legs burning, ready to give out before the finish was in sight.

Because these races were sanctioned by the International Ski Federation, the fastest skiers could earn a qualifying point ranking for the Olympics. Ski racing was dangerous enough that any person with desire and a bankroll couldn't simply declare residency in a country and compete in the Olympics. A racer had to earn admission.

“
That's not being very supportive.” Chase gave the expected response. He enjoyed this little comedy routine he had with his daughter. As her soccer coach, he teased her about skipping games and going to a movie instead of the soccer field. As his ski racing psychologist, she teased back hard. And midway through her first season on the Montage Mountain Development Race Team, she'd now had more formal race training than her father.

“
Try to look three gates ahead,” she'd advised, “and sing a fun song out loud. It relaxes you. And, Dad?”

“
Yes?”

Tylea's voice had turned serious. “You have to smile. Coach Steph says smiling makes you faster. It's very important.”

Coach Steph was the woman at Montage in charge of what was nicknamed the Skittle Patrol, a group of a dozen or so future ski racing stars she led across every inch of the mountain, often in a snake-like formation of follow-the-leader.

“
I'll try to smile,” he'd promised, “but I'm not as brave as you.”

Chase was also playing follow the leader, keeping tabs on former Austrian National racer Bernie Resch. Iranian President Ahmadinejad's people had hired Resch, funding his tune-ups in USSA Masters races for a crack at the Americans in the 2010 Games. No vest bomber martyrs needed, just a series of armed assassins, recruited from the growing radical Islamic population in Canada. Exporting a little Hezbollah-style terror—as he'd done in Syria and Lebanon—into the Olympic Games would showcase his enormous reach. Ahmadinejad's plan was to have a veteran skier in charge, with a technician as second in command.

CIA operatives in Tehran documented Ahmadinejad's obsessive following of al Qaeda plots, even the ones that had failed.

The plot to blow up Bode Miller in front of millions of television viewers had been unraveled by Italian police after it had fizzled on its own. They'd put the pieces together after being called to investigate what turned out to be an abandoned bomb vest with bad wiring and the body of a dead Saudi national who'd apparently committed suicide in a snow bank. Al Qaeda had easily infiltrated Bode's main sponsoring company by having their martyr fill out a job application for a flunky position, where for five Euros an hour he'd push a broom and get sandwiches and cold beer for the wax room guys.

Ahmadinejad vowed not to make the same mistake, repeatedly stating that the great flaw in al Qaeda's plan was to rely on a single untrained martyr. That Ahmadinejad finally chose former Austrian National Ski Team member Bernhard Resch to command the operation for the 2010 Games wasn't much of a surprise. Not to the CIA spies in Tehran, or to anyone receiving the report back home. Not after you'd read through Resch's bio, which was what Chase was doing in his hotel room once again the night before his slalom race in Copper Mountain, Colorado.

“
Smile,” was what Chase's little coach had instructed over the phone, her mom sleeping on the couch, a half-finished book no doubt lying open on her chest. With her dad away, it was a perfect chance for Tylea to catch up on late night cartoons, which she certainly deserved. Her teacher had suggested her for the gifted program and Tylea had loved the new attention. Outside of school or the library, she was shy and introverted. While in her element, she ruled with confidence. She'd become the library's unofficial mascot just as her mom had been the mascot of the science department at the University of Tehran. Every day Tylea carefully crossed the street from her elementary school to hang out among the narrow passageways between the tall book stacks. By the end of first grade, she was checking patrons in and out and reshelving returned books. By second grade, she was helping elderly patrons connect to the Internet on the public computers and showing them how to sign up and use a Hotmail address to keep in touch with distant family.

Chase once listened to their little girl explaining antipodal points to a woman at the copier machine. He'd overheard her quizzing a school board member as to why classrooms only had one computer and no Internet access. Didn't he know the encyclopedias were outdated and plenty of grants were available? She offered to help write the grant form, just as she'd helped her mom write them for the library. She backed up her request with items she'd learned while on the library computers.

“
Did you know that if you got on a spaceship and traveled near the speed of light to a distant star, then turned around and came back, you might only be one year older, but your goldfish might be two-hundred years old?” She clutched her favorite Einstein book she'd had her mom order from Amazon, tapping the cover for the board member to consider the possibilities. “You can't really go the speed of light, though. Know why not?”

It was also pretty common for a patron to stumble over the sleeping little girl if they weren't watching where they walked among the rows of book stacks.

And just as Mitra had taken to science, Tylea took to the books that surrounded her childhood. Her parents weren't sure if they should punish her for sneaking home a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's
Breakfast of Champions
to read to her favorite bear.

“
I wanted to show Brownz all the pictures,” she'd explained. “I didn't read him any of the bad words.”

They let it go, of course.

Chase smiled when he was on the race course because Tylea had told him to. She had been solemn in her belief and he couldn't have stopped smiling if he'd tried.

Chase had met Resch the night before the first Masters race. Though his file said the forty-one-year-old former Olympian hadn't been on skis in a decade, he immediately took his place at the top of this group. Everyone gravitated toward Bernie, both in the race start area and the restaurants and bars after events. Waiting for some advice that never came, Bernie simply recommended they ski faster. Most just wanted to be next to a guy who could do things they'd only dreamed of—from marching into a stadium during opening ceremonies of the Olympics, to having the balls to hit on every woman in the room.

Bernie was entertaining and bought rounds of drinks. Chase didn't particularly dislike the man, even though he planned to lead an Iranian mass murder plot at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. But the heavy Austrian accent made him difficult to understand, and Chase found his wry sense of humor off-putting.

“
There is a mostly undetectable poison in those sausages.” Bernie had pointed to the warming tray in the breakfast buffet line, and it didn't sound like he was kidding.

“
The blood has clotted in my right foot from these boots. I am beginning to fear the need to amputate my small toe,” Resch had complained to Chase while riding the lift, tapping a ski pole on his right boot. Were you supposed to empathize or laugh?

But the guy was so damn fast on skis. Not powerful through the turns. Not the brutal, American-style of trying to load and unload the ski's energy, blasting out and forward at the end of the arc. Bernie's style was grace. He had very little upper body movement and ever so slightly tipped his skis from turn to turn, always on the correct, high line. He skied with no wasted energy, had the handful of former U.S. Ski Team members shaking their heads in the finish corral. There was little doubt he could get his FIS points down to qualify for Vancouver.

Bernie Resch had spent most of his six-year Austrian race career crashing out of too many races. He'd had tremendous potential, but had a self-described problem with losing proper focus at critical moments. Namely, the parts of race courses where straight-aways became tight turns, as well as those tricky blind entries over steep headwalls.

Chase had read the files describing Resch's likely motives. What drove Resch to sign on with the Iranians to help murder Americans had a lot to do with what had occurred during his tenure on the World Cup. Skiing was a way of life in Austria, not just a sport. The world converged on places like Kitzbuhel for the running of the famous Hahnenkamm downhill, which was revered as the most dangerous and historic of the World Cup speed events. But during Resch's years on the Austrian team, it was an American who collected all of the fame and trophies.

While Austrian legend Franz Klammer was coming toward the end of his career, American Phil Mahre was dominating the world with three consecutive Overall titles. Mahre was from a country where next to nobody gave a damn about alpine ski racing, while the Austrian press hounded its young racers, who were getting shown up.

Resch had complained in interviews, and the CIA had collected many of the clippings to present to their profilers. Psychological studies were done to identify his strengths and weaknesses.

Books describing the once proud and invincible Austrians, and how they had been brought to their knees, had been written and published by just as many American sportswriters as Austrians. And while the American book versions had been filled with cheerful reflections on great moments in ski racing history, the Austrian versions were filled with dark indignation and angry speculation regarding the future of skiing as it was then known.

Resch had taken losing hard and had made no secret of his loathing of Phil Mahre, Bill Johnson, and everything else American. He had been vocal enough about his hatred to make a lasting impression on Iranian ski coach Issa Saveh Shemshaki, who would be approached nearly a quarter-century later by men from President Ahmadinejad's office in search of a suitable recruit. Shemshaki had eagerly offered up Resch's name in a transcript Chase had read of the meeting, recorded by a CIA operative in Tehran.

Resch was a short, skinny man, with a booming voice common among Austrians, especially former downhillers. Chase first saw him in person as he was drunkenly toasting the bartender in their hotel restaurant. The bartender didn't seem to mind, since Resch had been tipping twenty dollar bills.

“
To the most beautiful breasts in America!” Bernie drained his tall beer glass in a single gulp.

For a retired downhiller, Resch could bash Break-A-Way slalom gates like a pro. He could carve a giant slalom course like nobody else on the Masters circuit. Bernie did not lose one race—or even a single run—through the first eight events of his premier Masters season, outclassing his American counterparts while knocking the ten years of rust from his edges with ease.

Bernie was also fast to earn a reputation for his time spent with the female racers, as well as female family members of other skiers. When caught in compromising situations, he would escape by blaming cultural differences and the language barrier. There were rumors, but these paled in comparison to Bernie's descriptive storytelling. He was caught in a hot tub with the eighteen-year-old daughter of a woman in Bernie's age class, after a mid-season Super G. Sharing the Sheraton Hotel's fitness center hot tub would have been almost acceptable, had it not been for his growing reputation. It was also problematic that the young woman had been straddling Bernie's lap when her mother happened in.

“
The mother asked if I was wearing a bathing suit. Who wears a bathing suit to have sex in a hot tub?”

“
You're going to get shot,” one of the men at the bar had said.

“
There are worse ways to die,” said Bernie. “I told the mother I had seen her in a speed suit on the race course and that she had a fine big ass.”

“
No you didn't,” another guy said.

“
Yes, I said to her that I would like to make a sandwich with them. That's how you say it, right? It was very hot in the tub and I was very aroused. It was time for a sex sandwich.”

“
What'd she do?” Chase asked.