The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  But how much should he divulge of what they really wanted to know? He wasn’t associated with the terrorists in any way. In fact, he had personally killed the terrorist leader. But if they tried to wring a confession out of him about Chinagate, he might have to hold back. Did he really want to implicate their commander-in-chief?

  Suddenly it occurred to him why he was alone. The Army didn’t want information out of him. They wanted to prevent him from spilling the beans.

  The United States government was afraid of him.

  Chapter 25

  Harry Black awoke to the blare of a bugle playing reveille. He jumped out of bed and his feet landed on the crude wooden floor.

  Outside, soldiers would be raising the flag. It was another day at an American military base. And reveille in Georgia’s Ft. Gordon, Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base, and Camp Butler in Okinawa came back to Harry as fond memories.

  Of course, military duty at those camps was easier as the world was far less complicated to a young man. But at the current stage of his career, he was faced with far more painful decisions and thorny predicaments.

  He would trade it all in for a few days of cleaning engines, sentry duty and flight school!

  The air conditioner had been droning on all night. He thought he would give it a break. He turned it off and opened the door that faced the sea.

  Distant whitecaps replaced the constant drone of the air conditioner. The fresh morning breeze was cool enough for him.

  Pulling on a jersey and a pair of running shorts, he prepared for a jog along the beach. Maybe he could even get to the patrolled border with Cuba. How picturesque.

  He stepped outside and stretched for five minutes, unknotting the leg muscles that had grown cramped in airplane seats and relaxing the lungs and heart muscles that had tensed up as he entered Washington.

  There was no access to a beach from his location, so he needed to work his way past the sea huts. He took one last look at his building number to submit it to memory, then set out along the paved street. The morning sun at his back threw everything in sharp relief. He passed the flagpole where soldiers had already raised the stars and stripes. He ambled past the Seaside Galley, his legs stretching more freely. Soon he was past the last sea hut, and a marvelous beach stretched out to his left.

  He cut through bushes and ground his way across the powdery white sand toward the water. Far out at sea, waves formed in long breakers that rolled intact all the way to shore. Beyond the breakers, a handful of fishing boats rocked in the water. Ernest Hemingway might have been on one fifty years earlier.

  He was alone on the long strand of beach. Alone to the world and alone to his thoughts. He never forced himself to think very deeply while jogging. It was a time to commune with nature.

  In the back of his mind, he knew what he had to accomplish with Sean Cooper. Either spring him free, or get his voice heard.

  But what was his plan?

  He jogged a half mile before the question came back to haunt him more relentlessly.

  What was his plan?

  Nearing the end of the beach, he came to a halt. A bright pink conch lay in the sand. He picked it up and held it to his ear.

  The wind whipped up granules of sand that prickled his face, and the smell of the sea was even stronger in the large, spiral shell. The roar of waves seemed magnified as he held the opening over his ear, but he was actually hearing the flow of his own blood.

  Cuba was a far cry from icy Atlanta and snowy Washington. It was a timeless place, stuck in the late 1950s. If only the world were as simple as it was back then.

  But was it so simple then? Were the missile crisis and the threat of being obliterated by nuclear war any less complicated than a world awash with terrorists?

  He set the shell down and turned to face the sun. Its rays broke into millions of fragments across the sea’s surface and bore down directly in his eyes and hot against his face.

  It felt like Cuba was turning a giant spotlight on him. The return trip would not be so pleasant.

  And as his running shoes pounded against the wet sand, the same question returned, repeating itself with every stride.

  What was his plan? What was his plan?

  Halfway home along the beach, he broke his rhythm and slowed to a walk.

  That day, in his role as an interrogator, he would try to meet with Sean and take down his deposition.

  He imagined himself flying back to Washington with a piece of paper bearing Sean’s signature. That evidence alone would allow the special prosecutor to subpoena the witness and thus force the military to release him.

  Yes, a piece of paper with Sean’s testimony was all he needed to sink President White, who had lined his pockets at the expense of such dupes as Sean.

  The more he dwelled on the injustice done to Sean, the faster his heart pumped, and soon he found himself sprinting at full tilt down the beach and inland past the sea huts to his own place.

  He arrived as a total wreck, his clothing saturated with sweat but his manner demonstrating a new determination.

  Sandi did not need to set an alarm that evening. Her jet-lagged body turned over listlessly in her sheets all night. In the morning, she doubted if she had slept at all.

  Dawn was just breaking as she slipped into her workout attire. Her pink jogging outfit gave her a shiver of pleasure. The anticipation of streaking through the icy stillness of Rock Creek Parkway in the early morning appealed to her.

  Nonetheless, it was wintertime in Washington and a pity that she had to wear more. As she pulled on a loose Georgetown sweat suit, it felt like she was covering a bottle of wine with a paper bag.

  She folded her work clothes into a gym bag, grabbed her briefcase and wool-lined trench coat and locked the door behind her. She found her old, reliable Toyota still parked alongside the icy brick sidewalk, and piled everything in.

  Shuddering from the cold, she started up the engine and turned the heat on full blast. Waiting for the engine to warm up, she ran the windshield wipers to clear off the last traces of snow.

  Thank God she didn’t need to climb out of the car and chip away at the windshield by hand.

  Her breath was steaming up the windows, so she switched from Heat to Defrost. The warm flow of air blew over the windshield and against her face. She was ready to go.

  She couldn’t take the drive very quickly as the previous day’s slush had solidified overnight into frozen ridges of ice. Under gray skies, traffic crept along the expressway into the District. And the bridge was especially slick.

  Beyond the bridge railing, she noticed that the Potomac flowed freely out to sea. Perhaps winter was ebbing as well.

  Driving up the Parkway that early was still possible, but on her way, she passed a truckload of workmen heading south to place traffic cones behind her and shut off vehicular traffic from that direction.

  She pulled into the Pierce Mill parking lot precisely at 6:30. There were no other cars parked alongside the 18th Century gristmill.

  She had just begun stretching exercises beside her car when a middle-aged man, sleek and slim in his Lycra leggings and warm-up jacket jogged up.

  “You must be Sandi,” he said, his breath escaping from under a trim mustache and beard in a frosty plume of steam.

  “Ivan Nemroff?”

  He stuck out his gloved hand and she shook it. Her cold knuckles felt warmer under his touch. His dark brown eyes were full of self-confidence. She liked that.

  “Let’s head out first,” he suggested. “We can talk later.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Striding side by side with the lean athlete gave her an exhilarating thrill. They skirted the Mill and headed northeast past crystalline glades and through arched tunnels of white tree branches.

  Ivan was as fine a runner as his body promised. They laughed as they ducked under branches and alerted each other to upcoming icy patches.

  Her initial concern that she wasn’t adequately fit to keep up with him proved
unwarranted. He turned out to be more of a trotter than a quarter horse, keeping a steady gait that she had no trouble matching.

  They were in high spirits when they eventually drew to a halt and turned around to head back.

  “Let’s walk for a few minutes and catch our breath,” he suggested. “The rest is all downhill.”

  “I’ll have to be honest,” she said, hoping to capitalize on their bonding experience. “I feel frustrated under the rules in which you have incarcerated Sean Cooper. It denies me access to him, and denies him repatriation to the United States.”

  “He’s a very dangerous man.”

  “To whom? Only the president, as far as I can tell.”

  Ivan didn’t respond, letting her frustration dissipate. He seemed to be biding his time, but for what?

  She couldn’t be the only person who knew that Sean Cooper was being held on the island of Cuba. Was she? Who had told her? It was that voice on the military band in the Philippines. Perhaps only the U.S. military knew of his whereabouts, and her knowledge of his whereabouts made her a target of the Administration. She wished that she had told others in her office. Why was she keeping it all to herself? To garner all the glory when she produced the star witness?

  Suddenly she felt all alone in the vast, wintry park.

  She remembered recent newspaper stories of unsolved kidnappings in the park. Surely, he didn’t mean to abduct her.

  She studied him carefully. He wasn’t capable of murder, was he?

  She kept a lookout for escape routes off the winding path and into the woods. Maybe she should continue to ply him with questions, throw him off balance.

  “You have suspended Cooper’ Third, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights.”

  He was letting her pummel him left and right. But he was absorbing the blows without the slightest reaction. He was a good lawyer. He knew how to make his opponent reveal her case.

  What gave him the upper hand was that he was also the judge and jury.

  “But all those legal rights don’t matter to you, do they?” she said, rubbing her nose for warmth. “You do this all the time down in Guantánamo.”

  “Not for those who collaborate in embezzlement schemes,” he said.

  “Then on what charge are you holding him?”

  Ivan continued a few steps and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Terrorism.”

  Sandi erupted in laughter. “Sean, a terrorist? That’s too funny for words. No really, what are the charges?”

  “I told you, terrorism. We picked him up on the Pacific island nation of Purang while we were mopping up a terrorist operation there. He’s one of al-Qaeda’s chief financial officers. In fact, we have since uncovered evidence that in addition to trying to extort money from the White House, he has engaged in reflagging al-Qaeda-owned vessels and conspiring to topple the Purang government.”

  Sandi stopped dead in her tracks. “Sean? Do you mean to tell me that Sean is one of them?”

  She had to admit that the idea had never crossed her mind. First of all, was the special prosecutor Stanley Polk unwittingly playing into the hands of terrorists? After all, Chinagate could be no more than an elaborate scheme to put pressure on the White House, allowing terrorists to blackmail the president. Sean couldn’t be behind all that. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. On the contrary, he was upset by the corruption he discovered leading to the White House.

  “I have to state for the record,” she said carefully, “that I, for one, believe Sean Cooper is no terrorist.”

  Ivan spread out his hands. “We have ample evidence to the contrary. Do you want to see it?”

  She shuddered, becoming acutely aware of the cold morning. This Ivan the Terrible was a master at casting doubt. No wonder that he was the Pentagon’s top legal counsel. Suddenly all her spirit had been dashed from her. “No, I don’t need to see any evidence,” she said under her breath. “Let’s go.”

  Ivan’s smile was not unkind. “Race you home?”

  She didn’t know how to feel. Her fear for her own life had been immediately replaced by Ivan’s sledgehammering her plans to access and rescue Sean. He had Sean in custody for terrorism! This guy was creepy. Suddenly, all she wanted was to get away from him.

  Letting her legs carry her back to her car, she resolved not to talk business with Ivan for the rest of the run, and never to speak with him for the rest of her life.

  Maybe Ivan wasn’t out to get her, but she wouldn’t let him get what he did want, to skewer Sean Cooper. If she were ever to save Sean’s skin, it was now abundantly clear that she needed to skirt the Pentagon by a wide margin.

  She needed to find another means of accessing him.

  At midmorning, Harry found the Defense Intelligence Agency command post at Camp America where he had checked in the previous day.

  He squeezed into the sea hut and nodded to the yeoman he had met the day before. She thumbed him in the direction of the commander, not bothering to take him back there herself.

  Harry knocked first.

  “Enter,” the commander’s voice sounded behind his office door.

  Harry poked his head inside. The lanky commander didn’t bother to stand and greet him. “I thought I sent you to the Camp Delta command post.”

  “Yes, Commander, you did,” Harry said, taking a step inside. “But I’m wondering about the status of my team. They should have arrived by now. I’ve been expecting them all morning.”

  “Oh, them,” the young man said, and set down the report he was reading. “It seems that the Pentagon won’t be cutting their orders. They won’t be coming.”

  “They’re part of our contract to interrogate the prisoner.”

  “Well, I guess that just won’t be happening, will it.”

  Harry was floored.

  “Where are they now?”

  The commander regarded him as if he were lecturing a schoolboy. “I told you to set up your own office. Without an office, you don’t have a phone number, an email account, a mailing address. How can people get this information to you if you treat this place like a hotel? Now, I’m not the manager, I just work here. Go figure these things out for yourself.”

  Harry had never felt so belittled in his life, if he discounted boot camp. He was not used to being put in his place, and his first impulse was to pull the young man’s granny glasses off his nose and bash his fist into his face.

  But that would be a waste of fist.

  He stormed out of the office and through the hut door. Outside, he tried to get his racing heart under control. Someone was pulling the plug on his operation. He needed to act fast, before the Pentagon caught up with him and shipped him out of Guantánamo.

  He flipped out his satellite-equipped mobile phone and placed a call to Badger McGlade. Several satellite links later, Badger picked up in what sounded like a busy store.

  “Where the hell are you?” Harry shouted.

  “At Baskin Robbins,” Badger replied. “We’re stuck in Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, and the brass won’t put us on a plane to Gitmo.”

  “Yeah,” Harry concurred. “It sounds like they’re trying to prevent us from interviewing Cooper. You sit tight there, and I’ll try to get in to see Cooper right away.”

  “You haven’t seen him yet?”

  Once again, Harry felt himself being scolded, but this time for good cause. What had given him the impression that he had the luxury of time on his side?

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said and switched off the phone.

  He marched back to his sea hut where he rifled through his briefcase. He pulled out his orders and a pen and notepad and jogged out to the main road.

  A bus was just pulling up, and he climbed aboard. “You going to Delta?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Next stop.”

  The bus arrived at the traffic light and then entered the main gate at Camp Delta.

  Harry jumped out and showed the guard his orders.

  “You may proceed to the camp commander,
” the guard said. “You will find him located in the next office block down the road.”

  Harry strode past the trailer park of detention buildings. Some orange-clad prisoners were kicking a soccer ball in a small, enclosed field adjacent to their cells. He checked their faces. Cooper wasn’t one of them. Soldiers walked in pairs from building to building, their black boots padding softly on long rubber mats as they did their rounds.

  So these were unlawful combatants, a term that was undefined in the Geneva conventions. They were common criminals fighting for a stateless foe against the entire United States. That certainly gave them special status. Or no status at all.

  How could Sean Cooper be regarded as a foe of the United States?

  He burst into the camp’s office building, a single-story bungalow. “Show me to the camp commandant,” he barked at the staff sergeant at the reception desk.

  Apparently more accustomed to mealy-mouthed intelligence types, the sergeant jumped to his feet.

  “Yes, sir,” he said and threw a salute.

  Fresh off the boat from Nebraska.

  At that moment, a tall, broad-shouldered Hispanic lieutenant colonel strolled out of his office. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Harry Black, on orders from the DoD to interrogate Sean Cooper.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Rodriguez,” the officer introduced himself. He had a comfortable grip, but a standoffish smile.

  “I need to see Cooper right away,” Harry said.

  The lieutenant colonel glanced at his orders and grimaced.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” he said. “I can’t grant access to the prisoner until I’m given the go-ahead from the Pentagon.”

  “Who’s running this camp anyway? Sean Cooper has information that’s vital to our national security. I’ve come all the way from Washington, only to find that the Pentagon has thrown up roadblocks to the rest of my team.”

  “Sir,” the lieutenant colonel said, clearing his throat. “These orders state that you are to interrogate him on criminal matters. That would be fine, except that the Pentagon is undergoing a simultaneous investigation into his terrorist links. He’s being charged with treason.”