by Allan Topol
“But no radio,” David replied. “All they play around here is country music.”
The trucker laughed. “I don’t like that shit either.”
David reached into his wallet and extracted three hundred-dollar bills, part of the emergency cash he had brought back from Switzerland to hide in the kibbutz, then carried with him whenever he left the country. He handed the money to the trucker.
“All right. Get in.”
As they drove south and west—exactly the opposite of his ultimate destination—David embellished his wedding story, but the trucker still wasn’t buying, so they talked about high school football days. They talked about growing up in a small town. Finally, they talked about oil and how the price of gasoline was already killing trucking companies like Royal, which the driver’s brother in-law owned.
In Roanoke, David thanked the trucker and jumped out. It was late afternoon. He walked through a rundown area near the business center until he found what he was looking for—a seedy-looking used-car dealer. There was a fifteen-year-old Ford Tempo for sale on the lot, with a purchase price of six hundred dollars. For a thousand dollars in cash, the man never even asked David’s name, and he installed a set of plates that he had been keeping for a situation like this.
The clunker drove better than David had thought from the test ride. He drove it across the state of Virginia, avoiding Richmond, until he got to the Tidewater area. Then he crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and tunnel to the eastern shore. Near Crisfield, Maryland, he abandoned the car in a wooded area where no one paid attention to cars left that way.
It was one in the morning, and he checked into a Days Inn for a few hours’ sleep. At four a.m. he was up, walking toward the waterfront with the chilly, salty smell of the bay awakening all of his senses. Overhead, Canada geese were flying in formation, searching for a place to hunker down for the winter.
He went into a small café and nursed a cup of coffee—listening to watermen talk about their recent catches of oysters—now that crab season was winding down. One man in a black waterproof jacket, clearly a longtime waterman, was particularly down on his luck. He was paying off a new boat, his wife was pregnant with their third child, and he hadn’t even gathered enough oysters last month to make a mortgage payment. David waited until the man headed out to the dock, then followed him.
It was still dark. At his boat slip, David approached the waterman. “How about running me up to Oxford? I’ll pay you three hundred dollars in cash.”
The man eagerly took David on board.
It was just the two of them, swilling hot strong coffee to keep warm on the Chesapeake Bay. It was all so pure and clean that it made David glad to be alive and free, and he vowed to stay that way, regardless of what it took.
At Oxford, David hopped the ferryboat across to St. Michaels. He was now confident that no one could trail his steps. He was also relieved to find that no one was at the Donnellys’ house, which was on the water and totally isolated in the woods. It didn’t look like anyone had been there for days, maybe even weeks. Tim and Linda must be off traveling somewhere.
Tim’s boat was still tied up at the dock in back. David made certain it was ready to go on short notice, if he had to borrow it. Satisfied that he could be on the water in five minutes if necessary, he let himself into the guest house.
Exhausted, he collapsed on the bed, and into a deep sleep, with the telephone right next to him in case Sagit called.
Chapter 16
Trying not to look too smug, General Chambers walked into the Oval Office just in time for the noon meeting. The President was on the phone, seated behind his large green leather-topped desk. In front of him sat Joyner, Charles Frost, Ralph Laurence, Bill Hayes and Ed Simpson.
Speaking into the phone, the President sounded angry and shrill. “C’mon, Chip, you told me yesterday we had your vote on the tax cut package. You put me over the top in the Senate. Now you’re waffling. You can’t do that... If you force me to I’ll play hardball... I’ll close Thompson air force base. You know how many jobs that’ll cost your state... Atta boy... I knew we could do business.” He slammed the phone down. “That prick better not change his mind again.” He looked at Hayes “When we’re done here, you get hold of that Post reporter who covers the Pentagon—what the hell’s his name?”
“Jonathan Wilson.”
“Yeah, Wilson, and you leak to him that we’re considering closing Thompson air force Base. Tell him to run it tomorrow morning, quoting an unnamed Pentagon source. That’ll keep the pressure on Chip Parker. I don’t want to lose his vote.”
Now President Waltham was ready to shift gears mentally. He looked around the room. “Why this meeting of the Sanhedrin?” he asked quizzically.
“I called the meeting,” Margaret Joyner said. “A possible coup in Saudi Arabia is the subject.”
She hated raising the topic in such a large group without giving the President a private briefing first, but the tax cut bill and the reelection campaign had taken every minute of his time this morning, and he had made it clear to all of his aides that nothing short of an attack on the United States came ahead of these two items until twelve o’clock.
The President looked at Joyner quizzically. “I thought that Saudi Arabia coup business was all a fabrication by that fellow... what’s his name?”
“Greg Nielsen.”
“Yeah, Nielsen. Incidentally, have you caught him yet?”
The AG responded: “The FBI is leading the search. A picture of what he looks like now, the new Greg Nielsen, after plastic surgery, has been given to agents at every international airport. Jack Doyle’s directing the operation himself, but so far nothing.”
“So why are we meeting?”
Frost broke in before Joyner could respond. “Mr. President, what Ed’s report shows is that Nielsen fabricated this whole notion of an attack on the Saudi king and palace to frame General Chambers and to settle a personal score with him. Nielsen’s the only source of information about this so-called Saudi coup. So we’ve got nothing left to worry about. There is no reason for us to meet.”
“That’s not exactly what happened, Charles.” Joyner said.
“It’s pretty darn close. So why are we here?”
“Because my station chief in Saudi Arabia, who happened to be the key witness against Nielsen, also happened to have been killed in Saudi Arabia in a mysterious way a few hours after we received his affidavit and heard his testimony on the phone.”
Frost had lost countless battles to Joyner before the President in the past. He was delighted to be waging one he was confident he could win. “It wasn’t mysterious at all. Bill Fox was in an adulterous relationship with a Saudi princess. The prince caught them in bed and bumped them both off. What’s that have to do with a coup against the Saudi government?”
Joyner had been racking her brain to come up with an answer to this question, ever since she heard about Fox’s death. While she hadn’t been able to hit on a plausible answer, she knew deep down there had to be a connection. “The coincidence is too much for me. It’s like the same number popping up three times in a row on a roulette wheel. It could be coincidence, but personally I’d put my money on a crooked wheel.” She paused and looked at the president. The crooked-wheel analogy was one he had used himself a year ago with her. By trotting it out now, she hoped to garner a little more sympathy with him for her position. “I think we should talk to the Saudi king and warn him that there may be something coming down the road. At the same time, let’s follow up with the French government on the activities of PDF and its chairman, Madame Blanc. I think we can do those things quietly.”
Frost shot back, “Oh, c’mon, Margaret, if we do what you want, we might as well be putting the story on the front page of The New York Times. It’ll divert attention from the tax bill, where the President wants all of the focus to be.”
Joyner glanced around the room. No one else raised a voice in her support. Ed Simpson was looking concerned, staring h
ard at General Chambers. She turned hopefully to the President, but from his expression, she knew that his mind was on other matters. She was beaten.
“What was the date for this so-called coup?” the President asked, suddenly cutting back into the discussion.
“October 6,” Joyner responded.
“We’ll still have time after the Senate vote on the tax cut,” he decided. “Let’s leave it alone for now.”
“I think that makes sense,” Joyner responded, concluding that the promise of a fresh look in a couple of days was all that she could possibly come away with under the circumstances..
As the meeting broke up, she led Ed Simpson into a small empty office across the hall and closed the door softly. The AG locked his thumbs behind his blue polka-dot suspenders, deep in thought.
“You looked worried about something in the meeting with our leader,” Joyner said to the AG.
“Yeah, back in the days when I was the U.S. attorney in New York, before I went on the bench, I never liked it when one of my witnesses died right after he testified. I didn’t care what the cause of death was. I didn’t like it one bit. And Chambers was awfully quiet in there. He never keeps quiet in a meeting like this.”
“He didn’t have to talk. He gave Frostie the script.”
Troubled, Simpson thought about the meeting some more and what had happened to Bill Fox. “The whole thing doesn’t sit well in my gut, which has become sensitized to these things over the years. Then there’s the new development of Greg Nielsen’s disappearance. Where do you suppose he’s gone?”
“I’ve got no idea.”
“I bet that Israeli woman knows where he is.”
“I’m with you on that a hundred percent. I’ve already got twenty-four-hour surveillance on her with my own people.”
“Jack won’t be happy that you’re using CIA people for domestic work.”
“I unilaterally decided to make an exception here. Greg Nielsen used to be one of our own.”
He frowned. “You can have him. That guy’s trouble.”
* * *
Margaret Joyner wasn’t the only one who had set up surveillance on Sagit, hoping to find Nielsen. Once General Chambers learned from Jack Doyle, the FBI Director, that Sagit had checked into the Hilton Hotel on Connecticut Avenue, General Chambers called Captain Peter Carlton, who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, as it was known in the Washington alphabet soup. DIA was the Pentagon’s counterpart to the CIA. One major difference was that there was no civilian control of the DIA.
Three years ago, when Chambers had begun an affair with the wife of a freshman congressman from Oregon, he needed a driver who was totally discreet and could conduct effective surveillance in front of the Four Seasons in Georgetown. Carlton had done the job perfectly.
To Chamber’s disappointment, the congressman wasn’t reelected and the affair ended after a year and a half, but he never forgot what Carlton had done. Now he summoned the captain to his office at the Pentagon. Carlton had a closely cropped light brown crew cut and a nose that had been broken and set poorly when he played football at Texas A&M.
“This is top secret,” Chambers said, in a soft voice, just above a whisper.
“Yes, sir.”
“I want constant surveillance on an Israeli woman now in Washington, with frequent reports directly to me. She’s part of an intelligence operation of theirs to acquire information about American weapons programs that we don’t want to share with them. Am I making myself clear, captain?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Change into civilian clothes. I don’t want you to stand out, and I don’t want her to pick up the tail. So keep it as loose as you can.”
“We’ve gotten more sophisticated these days. We have electronic tracking devices that key to a person’s unique body odors. Even if she’s good, she’ll never know I’m there.”
Chambers picked up a cell phone on his desk and handed it to Carlton. “Keep it with you and power on at all times. Anywhere in the world she goes, I want you to follow her.”
When Carlton left the office, Chambers gave a large sigh of relief. There was no way that he would let Nielsen and this Israeli woman disrupt his plans.
* * *
From the time she had left the Hilltop yesterday, Sagit knew that she was being followed. There were two men and a woman—all CIA, she guessed—who kept switching off on the surveillance. So she went to the Mazza Galleria Mall on upper Wisconsin Avenue, wandering in and out of stores, pretending to be shopping, moving up and down stairs and finally ducking into a boiler room and hiding there until she lost them. Then she took a cab to the Israeli embassy on International Drive. The Mossad’s designated contact in the tan brick three-story building was an assistant cultural attaché by the name of Uri Baruch.
Without asking any questions, Uri placed Sagit in a room with a phone, hooked up to a secure line to Jerusalem. Moshe listened without a word to her report of what David had told her yesterday about the Zurich bank account.
“You still there?” she asked when she was finished.
“Of course I’m still here.”
“You’re so quiet.
“I’m thinking and looking at airplane schedules because I figure you’re about to ask me to authorize a trip for you to Zurich.”
“The trip’s not the problem. I’ll need some help at the bank.”
“And here I thought you were planning to break in yourself.”
“So what do I do?”
“Tell Uri to get you a reservation on Swissair flight 129 tonight out of Dulles, to Zurich. It’s the last flight, and it leaves at seven-forty-five. So you better get moving. They’ll give you a ticket at the embassy, and they’ll take you to the airport. Rivka from the embassy in Switzerland will meet your plane tomorrow morning. She’ll tell you everything then.”
Sagit climbed into the back of the embassy car with a first-class ticket in her purse, because Uri said that’s all he could get for a flight over tonight and back tomorrow. “It’ll break Moshe’s budget,” Uri had told her, “but I had no choice.”
She smiled, thinking about all the traveling she had done with David, and said, “I broke Moshe’s budget long ago.”
“It had started raining and a curtain of fog was settling over Washington. As the driver was struggling to make time in heavy traffic and poor visibility, Peter Carlton, too far back to be noticed, continued his relentless pursuit. Exhausted from a sleepless night and a tension filled day, Sagit wanted to doze, but she was worrying about Margaret Joyner and what she had done to her relationship with the CIA chief. It wasn’t just the professional relationship between the Mossad and the CIA that were at issue. The CIA chief had done so much for her and David. Regardless of what David thought, she had to trust Margaret. She couldn’t leave town, seeming to vanish into thin air, without telling the CIA chief.
She waited to call until she was at the gate.
“Where are you?” Margaret asked. “I’ve been worried sick about you. I was getting ready to send out a search party.”
Sagit was glad she had called. “I’m at Dulles Airport.”
“Going home for consultation?”
Sagit hesitated. It would be so easy to say yes and to end it there, but Sagit couldn’t do that. Not to Margaret. She didn’t care what David had said.
“No, actually I’m going to Zurich.”
“Why Zurich?”
“I’m afraid to explain it on the phone. Besides, it’s a real long shot.”
There was a pregnant pause. Finally Joyner said, “What about your friend, David? Where is he?”
Sagit answered truthfully: “I haven’t heard a word from him since he took off and ran.”
From the same gate area, Peter Carlton called General Chambers. “I’m at Dulles Airport. Target subject and I are on Swissair Flight 129. She’s in first-class and so am I, to stay close to her, but I couldn’t get the name she’s using.” Carlton was apologetic. “I was behind her i
n line at check-in, and she was speaking softly. I do know that her final destination is Zurich.”
When Chambers heard the word “Zurich,” he cringed. There could only be one reason for Sagit to go there. Calmly Chambers said, “Call me from the plane in two hours with her seat number.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Chambers put the phone down, he decided that Greg Nielsen was even smarter than he had thought. But it still wouldn’t do him any good. Once Chambers had her seat number, DIA could get her full name from the passenger manifest, and if she was traveling on a U.S. passport, the passport office could fax over her picture. There was no way that the Israeli woman would leave Switzerland alive with the information Nielsen needed.
Chambers picked up the phone and dialed Paris, waking Victor Foch in the middle of the night.
“This is Henri Napoleon,” he said. “We have a problem.” Victor rubbed the sleep from his eyes as the general continued. “But I think I know how we can solve it.”
* * *
While Chambers and Victor made their plans, Peter Carlton glanced around the plane to observe that the target subject was in seat 6B. He set the alarm on his watch for the time to call General Chambers. Then he proceeded to enjoy dinner and the movie. Regrettably, he couldn’t drink; he was working. Still the caviar and rack of lamb were pretty good, even with club soda.
When he called Chambers, he whispered into the air phone, “Subject is in 6B.”
“Listen carefully, captain. You did a great job, but as of now you’re off duty. I’ve got somebody else, who knows Zurich, to pick up surveillance when the plane lands. Why don’t you take a couple of days off: Go sightseeing in the Alps. Enjoy yourself. Submit all of the bills to me personally.”
* * *
Peter Carlton bounded off the plane at Kloten Airport in Zurich. Without any bags and a U.S. government passport, he whizzed through passport control and customs. As he emerged from the arrival hall into the terminal, he was surprised to see the familiar face of Hal Vernon, a former colleague and friend from the DIA, who had transferred to the CIA when his military duty had ended. He knew that the Company had stationed Vernon in Switzerland to focus on economic espionage.