Top Hook (18 page)

O'Neill was serious about developing a computer-security capability, but what he really wanted from Valdez was for him to hack into George Shreed's home
computer. He was doing that on his own without telling Dukas, convinced that Dukas would wave him off because he was so sensitive to the Agency's desires; on the other hand, if Harry O'Neill's Ethos Security got caught hacking into Shreed's computer on its own, that was O'Neill's problem and he'd deal with it.

“Hack in how?” Valdez had said.

O'Neill was computer-literate but not a geek. “However you do it,” he had said.

“Oh, thanks. Just like that, huh? You ever hack into a desktop is sitting in somebody's house, Harry?”

“Uh—no.”

“Well, it ain't magic, you know—it's science. We don't got X-ray vision and we don't walk through walls. We need a way in, man, some data, a tap on a phone line—dig?”

“That's your area of expertise.”

“Oh, thanks. Can you do a break-in of his house?”

“Jesus, no! My God—get that idea out of your head! Dukas would kill me.”

Valdez had nodded gloomily. “Okay. What you mean is, you flew me here first class, you payin' me all this money, now I should get to work—right?”

Harry had grinned. “Right.” He gave Valdez his cellphone number. “If anything breaks, call me
at once.
Any time. Anywhere in the world. Don't let me get behind the curve on this, okay?” He had said it lightly, but Valdez had known what Harry meant: if Valdez let him get behind the curve, Valdez was toast.

So Valdez and his geeks had begun to exercise talents that were not strictly legal but that were part of their specialty, and in a long day of hacking they got two of George Shreed's three IPs, with Shreed's account numbers and the phone numbers from which he called.

The third provider was a cable operator, and they were having some trouble with that. But they'd get it—they'd get it.

By the next morning, they knew that Shreed worked at his computers in the evening and then at random times during the night. The program also followed Shreed to a couple of chat rooms, and Valdez wondered what he was doing there. He shared his curiosity with O'Neill.

He also learned that Shreed had remarkable firewalls around his computers. Remembering Harry's cautions, Valdez didn't try to break in.

Ray Suter had had to drive on another of Moscowic's wild-ass anti-surveillance routes, up and down and around and about, using cunning sharp corners and winding lanes, all of which annoyed Suter and made him wish even harder for the day Moscowic would be out of his life. Suter didn't understand what he called “spy stuff,” never having been a case officer or even an agent, and he thought Moscowic was jerking him around for the fun of it.
I keep seeing you lying face-down in the river someplace, Tony
, Suter thought with angry satisfaction. The idea perked him up a little. “Does this ever end?” he said.

“Now there's a nice kind of what they call your chicane coming up—see there, where the road got a kinda hula-hoop in it? What I want you should do—”

“Why the fuck don't you do your own driving?” Suter snarled.

“Hey, hey—temper, temper! This is all professional. You don't like it, Mister S., we can break off our business relationship, wha'd'you say to that?”

“I think you're playing games. How the fuck much farther have we got to go?”

“Wha'd I just say? This is
professional.
You get what you pay for, am I right? We're almost there.”

And so they were. In a ratty Korean restaurant, a kid who looked sixteen was eating some sort of beef dish and not looking up at them, even when Tony introduced Suter as The Man. The kid was the hacker who was going to get into Shreed's computer. He was actually eighteen and had just got out of two years in a juvenile facility for stealing via electronic means, and he wasn't supposed to touch a computer for five years or he'd go to adult prison for another three. Suter had been told all that.

“Call him Nickie,” Moscowic said.

Suter took the kid's greasy plate between thumb and finger and pulled it away toward him, forcing the kid to look up. He had raspberry-dyed hair and enough pimples for an entire graduating class, and eyes like old dishwater. “Do I have your attention?” Suter said.

“You gonna have my fist up your asshole if you ever touch anything of mine again. Give it back.”

“I want your attention, shithead.”

The dishwater eyes were not quite looking into Suter's but were fixed somewhere over his right shoulder. Like a dog, the kid didn't like eye contact. “Money and a computer,” he said. “Then you got my attention.”

Suter held on to the plate. “Can you do this job?”

The kid snorted. “Can you?” He snorted again, some substitute for laughter, and an unattractive quantity of mucus descended from his right nostril. “Shit, man. Come on! But I gotta get inside the house, download the files and connect.”

Moscowic detached Suter's fingers and pushed the
plate back under the kid's nose, and the head went down and he began to eat again. “He wants an apartment and two computers and five thousand bucks. He can
do
it, Mister S.”

Suter wiped his fingers on a napkin. “He better.” He walked out, thinking that now he would like to see two bodies face-down in the river someplace.

Things got better. The MARI system stayed up, and, as the aircrews got more data on the parameters of the fast movers, they began to spot them more quickly and more often. The problem remained the Italian surface ships, which weren't fast enough, but the effort counted and at least the det was in the game.

Alan had his talk with Stevens and put him back on the flight schedule. Stevens's part of the talk was bluster and resentment, Alan's part reason and firmness. They struck a deal: they would be Mister Stevens and Mister Craik, and Stevens would keep his private grudges to himself, or he'd be going home early.

Then the
Jefferson
made its turn away from the Yugoslav coast, and they were only a day out of Naples and the meeting with the woman named Anna. Calling from a STU in the intel spaces, Alan got a Special Agent Triffler at NCIS, and Triffler handed Mike over immediately.

“Mike! My God, I got you first try!”

“Al! Hey, jeez, at last.” Dukas sounded harried. “When you going ashore in
bella Nap'
?”

“The very thing I'm calling about. What the hell do I do?”

“The very thing I'm about to tell you, what do you think? Your buddy O'Neill is backing you up, but when
you see him, you don't know him, you never saw him before, he's just another Italian, right? A dark Italian. Anyway, he's scoped out a route and made the schedule, so you do as I tell you and everything will go down like a hot slider, get me?”

“Ha-ha.”

“Okay. One, don't go ashore until noon local. You know Naples, right? Okay. You hit fleet landing, walk down the pier all the way and walk up to the old castle on the left.”

Alan scribbled on his kneeboard. “What if she's waiting for me at fleet landing?”

“Walk the route I'm describing.
Don't get inspirations.
”

“Mike, after this I'm out of this thing. It's in the way of my job.”

“Now, from the castle, walk up the boulevard, past the roundabout, toward AVSOUTH, to the train station. You with me?”

“Pier, castle, train. Did you hear what I said about being out after this one?”

“If she hasn't met you, sit in the station and drink coffee for a while, then head back to the boat on the same route.”

“And if she does?”

“Then get on the train with her and go to Pompeii. When you get there, go straight into the ruins and keep moving around while you talk.”

“What if she doesn't want to go to Pompeii?”

Mike was silent. Static and STU-III noises on the line. Then: “Make it up, Al. But keep moving and keep away from fleet landing. Just in case.”

“Have you talked to the NCIS guys on the boat?”

“No need to know.”

“Damn it, Mike, I need them to know! I whacked a
guy in Trieste and the admiral still seems to think I'm

a risk!”

“Okay, okay! I'll call them and say something.”

“And after this I'm out.”

“One step at a time. First, you set another meeting—tell her where and when. Like in two days, at the train station in Herculaneum. Tell her she might be meeting somebody else, but don't give a description.”

“Two days, at the train station in Herculaneum.”

“Right. See what she has to say, but don't give anything away. Do I need to repeat that?”

“What is this, Spying 101? No, you don't have to repeat it. Christ.”

There was talk in the background, a different kind of static. Dukas said, “If Harry walks past you, real close, with a newspaper, then follow him. It means he wants to talk.”

“Oh, God. If he's real close, why doesn't he say ‘Follow me'?”

“Now repeat it all, from the top.”

Alan looked at the kneeboard in front of him.

“Go ashore at noon. Go up the pier to the castle, then past the roundabout to the station by AVSOUTH. If I've met her, take the train to Pompeii. If not, wait and drink coffee. Keep moving. Don't look at Harry. If Harry walks past with a newspaper, follow him. If I talk to her, don't give anything away, get a second meeting, make it for Herculaneum in two days.”

“You write all that down?”

“Yes.”

“Dumb. Shred it right now. I wanta hear the shredder. Okay, a word of wisdom: don't get heroic. Just do the routine.”

“And you'll call the NCIS office on the boat.”

“Be careful, Al—she could be trouble.”

“That's occurred to me, Mike.”

“Good. And, yeah, I'll make up something for the NCIS guys.”

Alan's throat tightened. “How's Rose?”

Even over the STU, Dukas sounded troubled. “Oh, she's—okay—I don't see much of her—”

Later, Dukas called the STU number for the NCIS office on the boat three times but didn't connect. Triffler dug up a cellphone number for one of the agents, and he got the man on the second try and asked him to call Dukas on the STU.

“This's Mike Dukas.”

“Yeah, Mike, this is Marty Stein on board the
Jefferson
.” The STU whistled and burped.

“Marty, I got a case here that's very sensitive. You know Al Craik? He's on your boat with a detachment of S-3s.”

Subdued rustling, as if leaves were blowing together at the other end of the STU.

“Yeah. Security risk, that's why it's sensitive?”

“Jesus, no! Where do you get this shit? I'm using Craik as a dangle in Naples, and I don't want anybody dicking it up, okay?”

“You don't have to shout. Christ. This the same guy who popped a Serb in Trieste?”

“And it's the same business, okay?”

“Mike, we've, uh, heard that this guy and his wife are, uh,
bad
.” “Bad” came across loaded with meaning.

Dukas thought it was funny that in the most complex business in the world, there was this tendency to want to simplify. Good and bad. Black and white.

“Well, they aren't. Got that?”

“We just keep getting these rumors. Plus the JAG says the admiral's leery of the guy. You sure you want to use him as a dangle?”

Dukas swallowed an angry retort. Instead, he said evenly, “Buddy, if Craik is a security risk, you and I are aliens from outer space. You do everything you can to spike those rumors, and for God's sake don't let my guy's operation get dicked!”

Harry O'Neill saw Anna before Al Craik had cleared the fleet landing. She was well back from the pier, almost to the castle, sitting outside a trattoria. First, he had noticed men watching her, and then he had seen her. He had continued to look around, but she had to be the target.

Now Harry watched Alan emerge from the shadow of the gate to the pier and start toward the castle, too, and he saw her leave a coin on her table, watch Alan for a moment, and then move toward the castle. They were on converging courses and Harry could watch them both from his Citroën. He had been there for two hours, going through the usual panics of surveillance:
The target went past and I missed her; the target isn't here; the whole thing is canceled
. Now he felt relief.

She was standing beside the metal railing that surrounded the bastion as Alan approached, her silhouette crisp against the sun-dazzled stone. There were a few men around, more interested in her than in the fortress, but their interest was so obvious that he knew they weren't her enemies or her anti-surveillance. Alan walked right up to her, and his shock was visible when she put her arms around his neck. She said something. Harry cursed not having wired Alan.

She took his hand and he led her up the hill toward the station.

They walked for several minutes, and it was clear that Alan didn't want to hold her hand. She kept looking at him and smiling—dazzling, sexy smiles meant to melt hearts. Harry could see that Alan was not melted; in fact, he seemed to be getting angry. Harry laughed a little and got out of his car to go up the steps to the station. Rose should see this, he thought. Picture of a loyal husband.

Harry beat them into the station by a clear minute and had his tickets in hand when they came to the kiosk. It was the first time he could hear them. Her voice was deep and foreign, a kind of dream voice that went with the rest of her.

“Where are we going?”

“Pompeii. I thought it would give us time to talk.”

She laughed. “I have never been to Pompeii. It is very sweet of you to turn this into an outing. A picnic, perhaps?”

Harry boarded two cars ahead of them. He didn't think that either of them had even looked at him yet. She seemed entirely focused on Alan. In fact, to Harry, she didn't seem like an agent at all. He watched them, two cars distant but visible through the doors. She touched him several times and made him laugh, finally. Good.

Loosen up, Al.

The station at Pompeii was the danger point. It had an open platform, and when he had looked it over yesterday at this time there had been no traffic at all. They might be the only three people getting off the train, and it sucked to be black in Italy.

She was laughing now, her head thrown back and her torso arched slightly, one perfect foot stretched across the aisle at Alan. Harry thought of Monty Python.
Let me try and resist the temptation!
Brave Sir Robin.

As he had feared, the station was empty. Harry knew that the train would stop for almost a minute; he counted to forty and walked off, going directly to the phone kiosk at the far end of the platform. He called no one, chatted for a minute to no one, and hung up. They were moving far ahead on the dusty road to the ruins, and he was clear.

Harry's principal role was making sure she hadn't brought any friends, and so far she seemed clean. She had moved through four groups of people so far, and no one had crossed from group to group. Harry picked his backpack off the urine-smelling floor of the kiosk and headed toward the amphitheater at the far end of the ruins.

He almost walked into them. Alan must have taken his instruction to keep moving a little too seriously—that, or the mildly pornographic casts at the lower end of the ruins didn't suit his mood. Either way, Harry had just started to climb the levels of the amphitheater for a view when he heard their voices below him. He looked back and saw them edging around an archeological dig toward the shade at the south end, and he was trapped in the open, along the top.

“This is perfect,” she said. The word “perfect” had a purr to it—
purr-fect
. She sat at the edge of the sun on the lowest stone bench. Alan looked behind him and moved on without pausing, and Harry thought that, all things considered, Alan deserved a pat on the back because they'd made eye contact and now Harry knew Alan had seen him.

Alan sat down next to her.

“What is it like, living in that metal monster in the bay?” she said.

“What do you know about Bonner?”

“I like to talk, to know you a little. It has taken me a long time to get to this place. Those men in Trieste, they were there to kill me, yes?”

She kept her eyes on his, a directness that was both feminine and cold. Harry felt that Alan was dealing with two people—a beautiful woman who wanted to be admired, and a cunning animal of no sex whatsoever. The breeze carried the next sentences away, but they both looked serious. Harry could hear only the tone. Then Alan's voice was distinct again. “How did you find me?”

“Do you know the name Efremov?”

Harry knew that one. Bonner's boss. A name from the past.

“Yes.”

“I was his—companion. In Iran.”

“What do you know about Bonner?”

“You are very brisk, Commander Bond. I had a small speech to make, and you have spoiled it.”

“Ma'am, I covered for you with the police, God knows why. Now I'm talking to you. I don't know you, but I know you got me to a café where some guys shot at me. As far as I can see, no one shot at you. Pout all you want, but please answer my questions.”

Harry winced. Alan Craik all over. Mister Goaloriented.

“Are all Americans so rude?”

“Can we talk about Bonner, ma'am?”

“Would you care to ask my name? ‘Ma'am' makes me feel quite old.”

She was playing with Alan. All Harry's life, women had played this game with him, and he knew that Alan didn't know how to respond. Other men did it with ease. She wanted something—some recognition of her
presence, her magnetism, and Alan was not giving her

anything.

“Please call me Anna.”

“Anna, I shot a man in Trieste. Men may be hunting you. I don't have much time.”

She watched him through her lashes, a feral cat in a fancy collar, and he almost flinched away.

“There is a mole in the CIA,” she said. “He is at a very high level.”

“A mole, in the CIA. Who, Aldrich Ames? Tell me another.”

“I can prove what I say. Names, dates, transfers of material.”

A cold hand seized Alan's heart and squeezed.

“Efremov knew this? I'm supposed to trust him? Efremov ran the bastard?”

“Efremov was a professional intelligence officer. No, this was not one of ours—just something he stumbled over.”

Efremov stumbled over a high-level mole in the CIA.

“Where is Efremov now, Anna?”

“He is dead.” She gave off genuine emotion, and Harry, high above them, felt the surprise that showed on Alan's face.
Efremov had a lover who missed him?

“Who are you working for?” he asked.

“Myself!” She said it with bitter emphasis. “Only myself. I want one million American dollars for my files on the mole. I have other items as well. They will be sold separately.”

“We'll have to meet again.”

“Ah, the gallantry! Do you even see me as human, Commander?”

“Okay, Anna, call me Alan. Is that better?”

“Oh, the progress I'm making! We have exchanged
names! Does your wife tell you how handsome you are?”

Alan looked at her and smiled his second smile of the afternoon. “Mostly she tells me I'm a gomer.”

“Gomer?”

“She tells me I'm foolish for, well, various little things like leaving ice-cream in the refrigerator instead of the freezer.”

Anna laughed a different laugh, and Harry added a third person to her selves—the courtesan, the spy, and the woman with the real laugh. Harry thought he might like to know the last one.

“Gomer. Yes, men are like that. Blind. Alan, I have information that will prove there is a high-level spy in the CIA. I will provide it to the first buyer with one million dollars in a bank account in Switzerland with an automatic teller card and a letter from the bank.”

“I can't get that kind of money.” Alan sounded as if he was repeating lines—as he was. Inside, he just kept imagining a high-level mole in the CIA.

“Find someone who can.”

“Can you meet me again in two days? Or meet somebody else?”

“I want to meet you.” She smiled at him. “You at least saved my life.”

“In two days, at the ticket kiosk outside Herculaneum.”

“Who wrote this script for you? It might be nice if we walked away from today with a little warmth, don't you think? Or am I like a police informer? Just a piece of trash you wouldn't associate with?”

The breeze came up again. Harry could hear only the intense murmur of their exchange.

Then she laughed out loud, the second peal of totally unaffected laughter she had made. Whatever Alan had
said, his recoil suggested that laughter had not been the answer he expected.

“You were on one of Efremov's lists, therefore I thought you were a case officer. That's why I chose you—because I could find you through the Navy, you would know the business, you would know how to deal with me. Now I find that you are a military man who dislikes attractive women. You are no case officer, Commander.”

“No, I'm not. I take it you've already offered this information elsewhere?”

“Perhaps. Tell me, what woman
do
you like? Or are you homosexual?”

“My wife.”

That did it. Harry sighed. He'd never have given such an answer.

Harry knew she was going to take the second meeting: she wanted the money. Alan had all but promised it, in spy talk—the wrong move, but he had done okay otherwise. Harry didn't relish dropping twenty feet from the top of the small amphitheater, but, short of walking past them, there was nothing else for it. He let himself over the edge carefully, looked down, made a face, and dropped.

Alan looked at her, her face, her lightly tanned skin, the Italian linen dress that fit like a four-digit price tag. Her physical perfection was so total that it was almost alien. She lacked Rose's warm sexuality; she had her own, but there was no warmth to it. He didn't trust her and he didn't like her.

“Somebody will meet you at the kiosk.”

“If it isn't you, how will I know whom to meet?”

Alan's brain went into high gear, trying items of
clothing, newspapers, umbrellas, all the things he'd read of in le Carré and Len Deighton. Nothing came to mind.

“Carry flowers,” she said and smiled, but all Alan saw was her teeth.

“Hey, babe.” Alan's voice was tight with fatigue and excitement.

“You!” Rose laughed and gasped and sounded angry all in the same syllable.

“I haven't forgotten you, babe. I should have called earlier.”

“You've got Mike worried sick! Is it over? The thing, I mean—this woman—” Dukas had told her something about Anna, he supposed.
Bad move, Mike.

“It's over for today, yeah.”

“You didn't bother to tell me that you had shot a guy in Trieste, either!”

“I couldn't.”

“You bastard!”

“I love you.”

“I know you do.” Repenting a little. “And it sounds nice to hear it.” She laughed her throaty laugh. “Who is this woman? No one will tell me.”

“I can't, either.”

“Is she beautiful?”

Alan had a guilty twinge from nowhere
. He hadn't done anything
. “She's, uh, quite something to look at, yup.”

“Well, the two-tacan rule does not apply in the Craik-Siciliano household, you hear me?”

“I miss you so much, Rose—”

“That's better.” A
whuff
of released air from her end. A good sound. “I'd talk dirty to you, but Mikey's here.”

“Somebody wants the phone. I really miss you. When this is over—”

“No, stay on the phone! Just a little while. Say it again—‘When this is over.' I want to believe it's going to be over. Soon!”

“We're trying. God knows we're trying.” He cleared his throat, found himself husky-voiced. “I love you. We'll be together when this is over.”

He headed for the boat and a STU to call Dukas.

“Dukas.”

“Mike, it's Alan.”

“How'd it go?”

“It's not about Bonner, Mike. That was a throwaway to get me to meet.”

“What the fuck? What's she want, then?”

Alan looked at the little screen on the phone to make sure it was secure.

“She says she can finger a high-level mole in the CIA. She wants—”

“What? Say that again.”

“She says she has computer files to prove that there's a high-level mole in the CIA.”

Crackling and spitting noises from the secure line. “Anybody could say that.”

“She's not anybody, Mike. She says she was Efremov's companion.”

“Companion?”

“Mistress. Honey. Whatever. Mike, listen to me. A high-level mole in the CIA!”

“Holy shit.” Pause. “Yeah, I heard Efremov croaked. You believe her?”

Alan thought about Anna, with her looks and her feral arrogance. “I guess so, yeah.”

“What does she want?”

“One million dollars in a Swiss bank with an automatic teller card to access it.”

“Wow, that's original. Al, any crank can come up with the CIA mole thing.”

“Mike, I can't get over two things—that the accusations against Rose might be connected to the mole, and that this woman came to me. How would she know who I was, and the Bonner thing, if she didn't have some access to Efremov?”