“May I wait for him?”
“Back here once you have turned in your visitor’s pass.”
On the way up the winding road the seven-story original headquarters building appeared through the woods. The parking lot in front was full this afternoon.
“I’ve never been out here before,” Lise said. “But it looks just like in the movies.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be, so there’s no need for you to wait.”
“Lenz told me to stick with you.”
“Well, you can’t come inside, so tell him that,” Wolf said. She was a sharp girl, but naïve. “Tell him I gave you a direct order.”
She pulled up in front. “Are you going to come to the embassy afterward?”
He had to laugh. “No, but don’t tell him that. He’ll probably have a heart attack.”
“I wish,” she said.
“Drop my bag off at the gatehouse, if you would,” Wolf said, and he went up the broad stairs and into the big marble lobby, the CIA’s logo in the floor.
A very attractive woman in her mid- to late thirties, short dark hair, blue eyes, and a voluptuous movie-star figure came across to him. She was dressed in khaki slacks, a white blouse, and a dark blue blazer. “I’m Pete Boylan. You must be Wolfhardt Weisse.”
“I am,” Wolf said and they shook hands. Hers was tiny compared to his, but it was cool and her grip was firm. High marks in his estimation.
She handed him a visitor’s pass on a lanyard. “You look like you could use some sleep.”
“I don’t get much on airplanes.”
“I’ll make this as brief as possible, but there might be someone else who wants to have a word with you.”
They went through the security arches, past the Starbucks and down the broad corridor that served as the agency’s museum, with displays of equipment starting with the OSS during World War II. Radios, weapons, explosives, hidden cameras, and miniature tape recorders, as well as insects about the size of a man’s thumb that were actually remote-controlled drones equipped with tiny cameras.
“Makes us think that we’re actually James Bonds around here,” she said.
They took an elevator up to the sixth floor and walked down to a small conference room pleasantly furnished with a table for a half dozen people, some pretty pictures on the walls of places like the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House, Niagara Falls.
Pete flipped a wall switch. “We’re recording audio and video—is that okay with you?”
“Fine.”
“You were involved in a shooting in Florida. Walk me through it.”
“We’ve been monitoring an organization that we think may be an assassination-for-hire operation specifically targeting high-profile people.”
“We have the summary from Colonel Mueller. But the thing in Fort Pierce doesn’t seem to fit the profile.”
“No. And the only way it makes even remote sense to me would be if the SEAL Team Six guy he took out had been on the bin Laden operation.”
“He was,” Pete said.
“Anything special about him?”
“Nothing except that he was one of the men up the stairs who actually fired shots to make sure of the kill. But the group the BND is investigating hardly seems the type to be working with al-Qaeda.”
“No,” Wolf said.
“But?”
“Something Zimmer said to me just before I shot him. I asked why the guy and his wife? He said I’d never guess the half of it.”
Pete picked up the phone and made a call. “Otto, I want to bring Captain Weisse down to have a chat. Are you decent?” She nodded. “We’re on our way.”
NINE
Pete’s key card wasn’t programmed for Otto Rencke’s security lock, so she had to buzz. Very few key cards other than the director’s and deputy director’s gained entrance to what most people on campus considered the holiest of computer inner sanctums. Fact was that most people who even knew about Otto and his “darlings,” as he called his search and analysis programs, were frightened out of their wits thinking what harm he could do to the entire U.S. cyberstructure if he had a mind to.
Wolf had heard stories about the CIA’s resident computer genius and the man’s long-term friendship with Kirk McGarvey, a former DCI and a legend in the intel business himself, but he was not prepared for the tall, somewhat ascetic-looking man who opened the door for them.
“Oh, wow, I’ve been working the problem all afternoon, and you guys aren’t going to believe what shit I’m coming up with.”
“Otto Rencke, Captain Wolfhardt Weisse, BND,” Pete said, and the two men shook hands.
Rencke’s long red hair was tied in a short pony tail. He was dressed in ragged jeans and an old KGB sweatshirt “Bad business down there, involving a man’s wife—believe me, I could write the book on shit like that—but what’d you think Zimmer was up to?”
They went into Rencke’s suite of offices, a space he shared with no one that was filled with wide-screen computer monitors, some of them as big as one hundred inches, hanging on the walls, other smaller ones at a dozen workstations, and in the middle of the innermost office a horizontal touch screen as long and as wide as a conference table for sixteen people.
“We had no idea,” Wolf admitted. “But I was assigned to keep track of him. Maybe he was meeting someone. We just didn’t know.”
“Not even a glimmer when you got to the SEAL museum?”
“It wasn’t making any sense to me, and whenever that happens I get nervous.”
“Good instincts,” Otto said.
Most of the monitors were blank, showing only colors: white, blue, red—even a couple of violets. Otto led Pete and Wolf to the tabletop, on which were displayed several dozen photographs of three men and one women.
“The name Pam Schlueter mean anything to you?”
“We think she may be either the director or the power broker for a group based in Munich that calls itself the Black October Revolution. Assassination for hire.”
Otto moved the two photographs of her to the center of the screen. One showed her sitting on a blanket on a beach, with what appeared to be an aircraft carrier in the distance.
“That’s her in Virginia about fifteen years ago. Photo was taken by her husband, Dick Cole, who is now a captain, acting chief of staff with JSOC—Joint Special Operations Command in Virginia.”
“We weren’t aware that she was married to an American naval officer.”
“Not now. They met twenty years ago in Munich when he was a youngish lieutenant commander and she was a poli-sci student at the Ludwig Maximilian University. She was doing a paper on military liaisons between Germany and other NATO countries, and at some point she ran into Cole, who even then was in JSOC. They apparently hit it off, because they got married within six months. A year after that he was rotated back to the Pentagon and she followed.”
“We knew none of this. Much of her background has been wiped clean.”
“In Germany,” Otto said. “But over here it’s easy. Anyway, their marriage went bad, and about the time they moved to Virginia Beach they got a divorce. She took her maiden name and moved back to Germany. I came across a couple of civilian police reports of domestic violence. From what I could piece together he wasn’t a very nice guy. Lots of physical violence, on both their parts. She broke his arm in one fight.”
“Tough lady,” Pete said.
“Apparently she’s developed a thing for Americans,” Otto said.
“SEALs in particular?” Wolf asked.
Otto smiled and shrugged. “If she was calling the orders on this one, it would seem so.”
“Revenge against an ex-husband? How likely is that?”
“More likely than you might think, Captain,” Pete said.
“Friends call me Wolf.”
The other photograph of her, dressed in plain desert camos, showed her coming out of a building. The shot had been taken from across a busy street. “Pakistan’s intelligence
service headquarters in Islamabad,” Otto said.
Wolf was taken aback. As far as he knew the BND had none of this. “When?”
“September fifteenth, three years ago. It’s the only shot of her, taken by chance because we were looking for someone else. We don’t know why she was there, who she spoke to, or the subject of their meeting.”
“But you came up with her ID.”
Otto gazed at the photograph. “It’s the stray bits that sometimes make the most sense.” He looked up. “I went searching for connections with SEAL Team Six after I was told about your shooter, and one of my darlings came up with her. And you know her name. Nails it, don’t you think?”
“Nails what?” Wolf asked.
“Her group’s target this time is the SEAL Team Six that took out bin Laden.”
“Al-Qaeda doesn’t have the money.”
“Pakistan does. The three guys are Pakistani intel—ISI.”
“Definitely makes it our problem,” Pete said.
“If I’m right,” Otto said.
“Have you ever not been right?” she asked. She picked up a phone and called Marty Bambridge, who was the deputy director of operations and told him that she and Otto were coming up to his office with the BND officer.
Wolf stepped closer to the table and stared at the two photographs of the woman. The one on the beach showed Pam Schlueter, somewhat reminiscent of a young Judi Dench, the British actor. She was smiling, apparently still happy with her husband, who had most likely taken the picture.
But in the second photograph, the determined, angry expression on her face, clear even though the photograph had been taken from a distance, was the same as in the photos the BND had managed to come up with.
In the first she was a happy young woman, but she had changed. Somehow in the past fifteen years she had become radicalized, and Wolf felt that it had taken more than an abusive husband to do it.
TEN
The DDO’s secretary announced them and Bambridge told her to send them in. He was an officious little man, with narrow shoulders and a nearly permanent look of surprise on his dark face. Backroom gossip was that despite his name, he behaved more like a Sicilian and therefore was probably connected with the Mob. His temper was legendary, but he was a good organizer, though almost always by the book.
He rose from his desk as they came in. “I’m sorry that your colonel’s courtesy call came too late; otherwise we might have been able to help out.”
“The captain was on a surveillance mission,” Pete said. “The assassination of a former SEAL came as a surprise.”
“I should have known better,” Wolf said.
“Yes,” Bambridge said, and they all sat down. “What brings you up here at this hour? I was getting set to finally go home.”
For as long as she could remember Pete had wanted to slap the officious bastard in the mouth. And a couple of years ago she’d said as much to McGarvey, who’d laughed.
“No one would blame you, but the man does a nice job pushing papers. Stay on his good side and you’ll get promoted. One of these days he’ll be gone.”
“Walt loves him, and he’s got a couple of intelligence oversight committee members on his side. Maybe he’ll end up as DDCI, or even DCI, God forbid.” Walter Page was the director of central intelligence.
“Won’t happen,” Mac had assured her.
That was last year, but now she wasn’t so sure. Rumor was that Page was considering him for the deputy directorship, which was only a heartbeat from the DCI’s chair, at least on a temporary basis.
“Otto has come up with a couple of interesting connections,” she said.
“No doubt interesting,” Bambridge said. He’d had a troubled relationship with McGarvey over the last few years. Otto and Mac were longtime friends, and therefore in Bambridge’s mind, Otto was also a wild card.
“The guy Captain Weisse was following shot and killed a former SEAL Team Six operator who was on the operation to take out bin Laden,” Otto said. “He’d written a memoir of his time in the navy and was bringing it to the UDT/SEAL museum.”
“How do we know that?”
“The police found it inside the museum,” Wolf said.
“Any of it in the media? Was he hyping for a book contract or something?”
“Not that we know of,” Otto said. “But the fact that the shooter knew that Barnes would be there at that exact time means the group that hired him has some damned good intel contacts here in the States.”
“Who, for instance?”
“I don’t know that part yet, but my guess would be somewhere within the Pentagon, or perhaps inside JSOC at Fort Bragg or down in Virginia. I’m digging into Barnes’s phone and travel records to see if he still has some buddies up there. Maybe someone with a grudge or someone in financial trouble.”
Bambridge turned back to Wolf. “Who did he work for?”
“A group calling itself the Black October Revolution, specializing, we think, in the assassinations of high-profile targets for some fairly serious money. It’s run by a woman who was actually married to an American naval officer.”
“Ended in divorce,” Otto said.
“The SEAL in Fort Pierce was hardly a high-profile target,” Bambridge said. “So why is it I have a funny feeling that you’re going to tell me this woman’s ex is or was a SEAL himself and this assassination was just for revenge.”
“He’s a captain now in JSOC—DEVGRU, Virginia Beach.”
“And the connection is what?”
“Not really a connection, not yet,” Otto said. “Let’s call it a coincidence, like having a photograph coming out of ISI headquarters in Islamabad a few years go—just after the bin Laden raid.”
Bambridge’s eyes narrowed, and he held up a hand. “This stops right now. Unless Captain Weisse has been buried underground in one of the old bunkers in Berlin, he, like you, should be perfectly aware that Pakistan is our chief ally fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Without them we’d be dead in the water, wide open for another nine-eleven.”
“Come on, Marty, Pakistan is no ally,” Pete said, her anger coming to the surface as she’d known it would even before she’d stepped into his office. But he was the DDO and he needed to know what was going on, even though he was an asshole. “Anyway most of those people were Saudis. Pakistan is helping us because they need our military aid, without which India would steamroller them.”
“That’s a good bit of analysis for an interrogator from housekeeping.”
“I have photographs of three ISI officers who were seen entering the ISI building at the same time she was inside,” Otto said.
“A lot of people work there. What’s your point? Another coincidence?”
“All three of those officers were very vocal at that time in their anger over the bin Laden raid right under their noses.”
“So were a lot of them,” Bambridge said. “So what?”
“The day after the woman was seen leaving, their complaints stopped,” Otto said. “Another coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“Coincidences do happen,” Bambridge said, and Pete started to object, but he held her off. “Any supposed link to the ISI or to any person in specific—any Pakistani—is a nonissue as of this moment. And that is a standing order from the top. In the meantime, several murders were committed on U.S. soil, two of which Captain Weisse has himself admitted to. The local police have already requested help from the FBI, and a team has been in place since late this afternoon.”
“I imagine they will want to interview me,” Weisse said.
“You have been ordered home. Your embassy has made the arrangements.”
“There’ll at least be a coroner’s inquest,” Pete said. “And Captain Weisse has told me that he is willing to share his file on the Schlueter woman.”
“The Black October Revolution and its aims are of no concern to this agency at this time.”
“For Christ’s sake, Marty, one of their people killed several U.S. citizens
, including a decorated war hero—and we’re not interested?”
“Naval intelligence has been notified, and they are on the case as well, though it’s my understanding that Barnes was no longer on active duty. Captain Weisse will be deposed at home, and that comes directly from his Colonel Mueller.”
Pete suddenly realized that Bambridge was frightened. She almost called him out but thought better of it. Someone above him, either the DCI himself or Robert Bensen, the deputy director, had given the order to back off, and Marty was a team player to the end. He followed orders even if they stank.
“Okay, Marty, you want us to drop it, we will.”
Otto was clearly surprised.
“The situation is being handled,” Bambridge. “Is there anything else that I need to know at this time?”
“No,” Pete said, and they all got up.
Bambridge shook hands with Weisse. “Give my regards to your colonel. I’m sorry for your agency’s sake that things didn’t work out as you might have hoped they would.”
“Thank you, sir,” Wolf said.
* * *
“What the hell was that all about?” Otto asked in the elevator on the way down to his office. “The silly bastard was lying out his ass.”
“You’re damned right he was,” Pete said. “Someone got to him, someone high enough up the food chain to scare him witless.”
“Someone from across the river? The White House?”
“Or the Pentagon. Someone on the SecDef’s staff.”
“Should I be hearing any of this?” Wolf said. “I’ll have to report it to my boss.”
“You might as well, because we’re not done with you and your investigation of the Schlueter woman and her group.”
“Isn’t the man we just talked with your boss?”
“Yup, but Otto’s going to let his computer programs loose while I go talk to an old friend, who’ll probably contact you at some point.”
“Off the grid?”
Pete and Otto laughed. “Definitely off the grid.”
“Who’s the old friend?”
“Kirk McGarvey. Can you delay going back? I think he’s going to want to talk to you?”
Retribution (9781429922593) Page 5