Stuart Woods Holly Barker Collection

by Stuart Woods

  “That’s correct, Mr. Chairman. Lieutenant was the highest rank I could hold and still conduct investigations, which I felt was my strong suit, so I did not seek promotion beyond that level. Captains and above are primarily concerned with administrative matters.”

  “I see,” the chairman muttered. “Please go on.”

  “I was recruited from the NYPD by the FBI twelve years ago, when the director at that time felt that the Bureau’s investigative techniques needed strengthening. In short, he needed new people who could actually solve crimes. I led investigations into criminal activity designated by the director as special, among them investigations into bank robbery, financial wrongdoing and serial killers. Four years ago I was appointed deputy director for investigations, and after that I oversaw all the criminal investigations conducted by the Bureau.”

  “Well, that’s fascinating, Mr. Kinney,” the chairman said dryly. “I understand that you and the most recent director had different opinions about one or two things.”

  “The most recent director and I disagreed about almost everything,” Kinney replied.

  “Can you think of any instance when you felt able to give your director your full support for his actions?”

  Kinney thought for a moment. “No, Mr. Chairman. I cannot.”

  There was a roar of laughter from the audience in the big hearing room, and the chairman angrily gaveled them into silence. “Did you mean to be funny, Mr. Kinney?”

  “No, sir, simply candid.”

  “Did you think that your disloyalty to your director made you a better FBI man?”

  “Mr. Chairman, my loyalty was to the quality of the investigations conducted by the Bureau. The director’s actions often infringed on that quality, and when that happened, I opposed him.”

  “That’s your opinion, is it not?”

  “It’s a fact, sir.”

  The chairman, looking thoroughly unhappy, passed the questioning on to another senator.

  “Mr. Kinney,” the senator began, “the president has proposed that the FBI be severed from the Justice Department and operate as an independent entity. Do you support this recommendation?”

  “Yes, Senator, I do, unreservedly.”

  “Why don’t you want the supervision of the attorney general?”

  “I think we have a fine attorney general, Senator, but I believe the Bureau can operate more effectively if it is independent. In the past, some attorneys general have used the Bureau for political ends, and that is not the Bureau’s purpose.”

  “Would you care to be specific about that?”

  “No, sir, I would not. I’m not here to criticize former officeholders.”

  “Except the former director.”

  Kinney simply shrugged. “I answered the questions I was asked.”

  “When you were with the New York City Police Department you worked in conjunction with the district attorney’s office, did you not? They prosecuted the cases you investigated. Is that so different from the way the Bureau has worked with the Justice Department in the past?”

  “Yes, Senator, it is. The NYPD is an independent police organization, and it does not report to the district attorney or follow his orders.”

  The questioning continued for another two hours. Kinney was, by turns, blunt and charming. Some committee members seemed miffed, but the audience loved him.

  When the hearing ended, Kinney was surrounded by reporters and cameras and besieged with questions, which he declined to answer.

  ON THE WAY BACK to the Hoover Building, Kinney called Kerry Smith. “Are you all set for tonight at the Met?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, we are,” Smith replied. “We’ve pulled everybody off everything else in order to saturate Lincoln Center with our people. If he shows, he’ll be ours.”

  “Don’t fuck it up,” Kinney said, then hung up.

  THIRTY-ONE

  HOLLY STOOD IN FRONT of the Metropolitan Opera House, shivering in the cold and occasionally stamping her feet to keep them warm. Her eyes raked the giant plaza of Lincoln Center, searching for Hyman Baum. All she saw were CIA and FBI agents. She hoped to God they were not as visible to Teddy Fay as they were to her.

  She stood near the door where she had met him on the previous Friday night and hoped he would arrive before she froze to death. She had spent the last four winters in Florida, and she had forgotten what cold weather was. New York was reminding her.

  A young man approached her. “Looking for opera tickets, ma’am?”

  “No, thanks. I already have mine.” She felt old, being called “ma’am.”

  “Want to sell them?”

  “No, thanks.” She watched him wade back into the crowd, then continued her search. Not even Teddy Fay could turn himself into a twenty-one-year-old black kid.

  Gradually, the crowd thinned, as people moved into the opera house and found their seats. She could now see every person left in the plaza, and not one of them could possibly be Teddy Fay. Her phone vibrated. “Yes?”

  “There’s an elderly man and woman sitting in seats H two and four,” Lance’s voice said. “Get inside and cover the entrance to that aisle.”

  She showed the pass she had been issued to the ticket taker and ran toward the door, stepping inside just as an usher was closing it and the first strains of the overture to Le Nozze de Figaro rose. She could see two agents standing in the aisle next to row H, hands in their coat pockets, talking to a man in the first seat. Gesticulating, he got out of his seat and started up the aisle.

  He was different, but he could be Teddy, she decided. Then, as the three men reached where she was standing, she decided he was not.

  “I’m telling you, I traded my tickets for these seats,” the man was saying.

  “Where were your original seats?” an agent asked.

  “At the rear of the parterre level,” he said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “One level up.” He pointed and gave the agents the seat numbers.

  Holly followed the two men, who were sprinting across the lobby for the stairs while one of them spoke into the microphone in his fist. They arrived at the entrance to the parterre level and brushed aside an usher who tried to stop them. They found the proper row and began wading down it, stepping on peoples’ toes, and a moment later they were back with a boy of about nineteen. They hustled him out the door.

  “What the fuck is going on?” the boy asked, clearly scared.

  “How did you get your seats?” an agent asked.

  “I traded some in the dress circle for them,” he said.

  A moment later the agents were running up more stairs, but Holly did not follow them. She called Lance. “We’ve been had; Teddy has traded seats at least twice. He’s probably not here.”

  She could hear Lance speaking into his radio. “Everybody hold your positions and check out anybody who leaves by any exit.” He came back to his phone. “Holly, wait in the lobby and keep an eye out for anybody who might be Teddy.”

  “Right,” she said, then started down the stairs.

  TEDDY SAT in a stolen 1988 Oldsmobile, parked halfway down the block from the Middle Eastern restaurant. Omar Said’s car was double-parked out front, its engine running to keep the driver warm. Teddy’s eyes ran up and down the block, building by building, looking for surveillance. For the life of him, he could not spot anybody.

  Suddenly, to his surprise, Said and a woman left the restaurant and got into his car. Apparently, urgent loins precluded dinner. Teddy waited until the Cadillac turned the corner, then drove to the end of the block and, just to throw off any undetected surveillance, turned in the opposite direction and drove around the block, before continuing. After all, he knew where they were going.

  He got there in time to see the door to the brownstone closing behind them. He had already cased the building, top to bottom. The downstairs door had not even required lock picking, just a credit card. Said’s Cadillac was idling outside, and the driver had settled in for the duratio
n. Teddy parked his stolen car in front of a fireplug and got out. No need to wipe anything down, since he had been wearing gloves all evening.

  He trotted up the front steps of the building and quickly let himself in. The apartment was two floors up, and he listened to be sure they were not still in the hallway, then walked slowly and silently up the stairs.

  He stood outside her apartment door and placed one end of a listening device of his own construction in an ear and the other, microphone end, on the door. The two pieces were connected by a wire. The first thing he heard was ice cubes striking glass; they were mixing drinks. There was a minimum of conversation, then they moved out of the living room. No doubt where they were headed.

  Teddy waited three minutes, leaning against the wall next to the door, then produced a set of lock picks from a little wallet and in thirty seconds had the door open. He pulled down the knitted cap he was wearing, and it became a ski mask. He took his little Agency Keltec .380 from his overcoat pocket and screwed the silencer into the barrel. Then he stepped inside and very quietly closed the door behind him.

  He could hear the bed squeaking, and he knew that it took two people to make the other noises he was hearing. As long as they were vocal, he need not worry about being detected. He stepped to the bedroom door.

  Omar Said was in the saddle, pumping away. The girl’s face was turned toward Teddy, and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Then, as he approached the bed, she opened them.

  Teddy pointed the pistol at her and brought a finger to his lips. She now had to decide whether to sacrifice her life for her lover’s. She made her decision; she closed her eyes again. Teddy took another step and put one round into the back of Said’s head.

  The Syrian rolled off the girl and onto the floor on the other side of the bed. Teddy walked around the bed and put another round through his forehead. He looked back at the girl, who lay rigid on the bed, her eyes screwed shut.

  “Wait ten minutes before you call anyone,” Teddy said in Arabic. He didn’t speak or understand the language, but he had memorized a number of handy phrases. The girl nodded.

  Teddy left the apartment, listened for others in the hallway, then, hearing no one, walked downstairs, rolling his ski mask back into a cap. He took a look through the glass of the front door and saw Said’s chauffeur’s head laid on the headrest of his seat. He was asleep; no need to kill him.

  Teddy left the building and checked the block for surveillance. Nothing. He walked three blocks, checking, before he took a cab back to his own neighborhood.

  HOLLY STOOD OUTSIDE the Metropolitan, watching the last of the operagoers leaving the building. Lance, elegant in a cashmere topcoat and soft hat, came over and stood beside her.

  “He didn’t show,” she said.

  “He showed, but not here,” Lance replied. “I just got a call from Dino Bacchetti at the nineteenth precinct. A Syrian diplomat named Omar Said, who is an intelligence operative, was shot twice in the head while in the throes of passion at his girlfriend’s apartment.”

  “I don’t think Teddy will go to the opera next Friday night, either,” Holly said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  WILL AND KATE LEE were in bed, reading, when her private line rang. “Yes? Say again? This doesn’t make any sense; how long have we been watching him? That’s what I thought. Fay had already left the Agency when we started watching him. All right, we’ll meet in the morning and talk about it then. Good night.” She hung up.

  Will looked at her sideways but said nothing. She looked back at him.

  “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you. Teddy Fay didn’t show up at the opera tonight. While all our agents were enjoying Le Nozze de Figaro…”

  “I love that overture,” Will said.

  “Don’t interrupt. While they had the opera house staked out, Teddy killed a Syrian spy named Omar Said, who we’ve been surveilling for about four months, ever since he arrived in New York. He is…was attached to the Syrian mission to the UN, and he had diplomatic immunity.”

  “Is Mr. Said a great loss to the UN, the Agency or the human race?” Will asked.

  “Certainly not; he was a goatish, murderous son of a bitch, and the planet Earth is a better place without him.”

  “Then I take it we have no complaints?”

  “It’s an embarrassment to the Agency that a diplomat who was under our constant surveillance was murdered while we were lured away.”

  “You weren’t providing him with any sort of protection, were you?”

  “No, we were trying to catch him hobnobbing with terrorists, so we could arrest them and kick him out of the country.”

  “Does anybody know you were surveilling him?”

  “Just the FBI. They were helping us.”

  “Then, if he wasn’t your charge and nobody knows you cared, why is it an embarrassment?”

  “It just is,” she said. She turned out her light, fluffed her pillow and turned away from him.

  “I suppose this terrible news means you’re not in the mood for…”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said, turning back to him.

  Late the following morning, Kate convened a meeting in her conference room. Attending were Hugh English, the DDO; his deputy, Irene Foster; Ian Thrush, the DDI; his deputy, George Weaver and, by television conference hookup from New York, Lance Cabot.

  “All right, Lance,” Kate said, “give us the whole thing.”

  “Good morning, Director,” Lance said.

  “Good morning from all of us.”

  “One of my officers, a new one named Holly Barker, while looking for Teddy Fay at the opera a week ago yesterday, found him, quite by accident. He walked up to her and invited her to join him for La Bohème. He was heavily disguised, and she didn’t recognize him, and she thought it might be a good idea to look around inside, so she accepted. He told her his name was Hyman Baum and that he was the retired owner of a dress business in the garment district.

  “After the opera, he invited her to join him. She declined, saying she would be traveling, and they said good night. Part of his disguise was a cane, ostensibly because he had had a recent knee replacement, but after they parted, Holly saw him sprinting for a cab. On the way home, she realized that she might have spent the evening with Teddy. Her suspicions were reinforced by the fact that our investigation determined that Mr. Baum did not exist.

  “He told her that he had the same seats every week; accordingly, last night we staked out the Met in large numbers, pulling people off other assignments. Teddy had exchanged his tickets three times with other operagoers, leading us on a wild goose chase around the hall. While we were chasing Teddy at the Met, he was dispatching Mr. Said, at the apartment of his girlfriend. We questioned her, and she said all she saw was a man in a ski mask with a small gun. She phoned the police, and one of our consultants, Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti, of the NYPD, called me. That’s it.”

  “There are two things that concern me here,” Kate said. “One: if Teddy didn’t show and went to the trouble of exchanging his tickets three times, he must have made Ms. Barker as one of us. How?”

  “Holly introduced herself, using her own name, but that would have meant nothing to Teddy, and she cannot think of any other reason he would know who she was. Neither can I or anybody else who has addressed the issue.”

  “Two,” Kate said. “Said has only been in the country for four months, and we have only been interested in him for that long. Since Teddy retired from the Agency more than a year ago, how would he have been aware of Said’s existence, let alone his presence in New York?”

  “I think that is an issue best addressed at your end of this hookup,” Lance said.

  Irene Foster half-raised a hand. “That information had to have come from inside,” she said, glad to be the one to point it out.

  “Or from someone on the New York task force,” Kate said. “Lance, question everyone there who knew about Said. While you’re at it, I want you to wring out Ms. Barker and figure out how he mad
e her.”

  “Will do,” Lance said.

  “Hugh,” she said, addressing her DDO, “I want your people to make a list of everyone in this building who knew we were surveilling Omar Said and put every one of them through the wringer—polygraphs, the works.”

  “Yes, Kate,” English said. He turned to his deputy. “Irene, this will be your baby; get on it as soon as we’re out of this meeting.”

  “Certainly, Hugh,” Irene replied.

  “Director,” Lance said from New York.

  “Yes, Lance?”

  “Holly Barker is with me, and she may have figured out how she was made.” Lance introduced an attractive woman to the group. “Tell them, please.”

  “Good morning,” Holly said. “A couple of days before I first met Teddy at the opera, my FBI partner and I checked out a record store called Aria, on the West Side, at Lance’s suggestion. My partner went in alone, and when he identified himself as an FBI agent, the clerk behind the counter refused to talk to him and told him to get out. The day after I met Teddy, I went back to the shop, looked around and bought a CD. I mentioned to the clerk that I had seen La Bohème the night before and that I wanted the recording, and she suggested a version.”

  “Did you identify yourself, Holly?” Kate asked.

  “No, ma’am, not in light of my partner’s experience. I thought I would go back after establishing myself as a customer and see what I could learn. My point is, at the opera I gave Teddy absolutely no reason to think I was Agency, and the only other point of contact could have been at the record shop.”

  “Do you think he might have been in the shop?”

  “No, I was the only customer, but I think it’s quite possible that he saw me either enter or leave the shop, or both.”

  “But why would seeing you there make him think you were Agency? You were just a woman buying a copy of La Bohème, for all he knew.”

  “Unless he followed me from the shop,” Holly said. “From there, I walked to Sixth Avenue and took a cab back to the Barn. If he followed me, he would know where the building is.”