The Girl Who Wrote The New York Times Bestseller: A Novel (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thrillers Book 8)

by John Ellsworth

  He stood up and looked over the top of the crowd, now crowding into the aisle and pushing each other, three hundred anxious passengers clamoring to de-plane.

  Thaddeus pushed through the nearest bunch and began moving forward, stepping around the two hijackers who were standing and submissive, free arms outstretched, allowing their pockets and bodies to be searched.

  "Tennyson," Thaddeus shouted through the uproar, "what happened to Ama?"

  The air marshal looked between the nearest passengers and located Thaddeus as the speaker. "Unknown. The big Russian took her off the plane. I've been a little bit distracted here."

  "What happens if I leave the plane and try to find her inside?"

  "Without a visa? You won't make it past the first cluster of ugly Russkies. I'd wait here until the civil authorities come aboard."

  Either he didn't hear or didn't care, but Thaddeus seemed oblivious to this last admonition as he pushed through to the jetway and turned right, headed for Russian soil. Nor did he notice that Angelina Sosa, intrepid reporter for the Chicago Tribune and wannabe New York Times bestselling author, was in hot pursuit.

  "Thaddeus!" she called to him.

  She was ignored. He was of one purpose: the status of Christine Susmann. His pace quickened as he imagined her in the grip of the Russians under an assumed name.

  That couldn't be good.

  16

  Angelina Sosa was twenty-three, a modest five-feet-six-inches, brown-skinned (Hispanic father and Italian mother) and possessed a thrice-tested IQ of 152. Her interests belied her off-the-charts IQ: she was a raging Pink fan, a constant checker and poster of and on Instagram, a Saturday-Sunday fitting clerk at the downtown Victoria's Secret, and a rookie reporter on the courthouse beat for the Chicago Tribune.

  She knew very little about law and criminal court processes. To say she was struggling with her profession would have been an understatement. Why, she found herself worrying over and over, were some criminal cases filed with indictments; and why were others filed only with what was called an "information"? And why were some filed only on a police officer's ticket?

  And then there was the matter of search warrants. She witnessed search warrants forever getting quashed and evidence banned from use in court on the oddest of technicalities—which always astonished her. The willingness of criminal court judges to turn loose obvious criminals guilty of obvious crimes itself seemed criminal. Cases where, for example, the police hadn't knocked before kicking down a door; or where crossing traffic lanes without a blinker wasn't serious enough cause to predicate a drug bust based on a traffic stop—how could the black robes live with themselves? So, she was learning, and her boss wasn't making it any easier.

  Her editor was a fiery mid-forties single woman named Carson McCutcheon. She was an iron-fisted martinet who demanded at least two unimpeachable sources on all stories before she would publish. In today's news environment where CNN anchors interview CNN reporters and call it news, the gluey, plodding news team, slowed by McCutcheon's bi-source requirement, was no competition for the "Breaking News" environment of cable. Which meant the Chicago Tribune, where Angelina labored, had become more an in-depth purveyor of news, suited more for the serious news consumer than was the drive-by flash reporting of cable.

  While this was the difference between Tribune reportage and cable news slash-and-burn reportage, there luckily remained a place in Chicago's environs for newsprint: the thousands of trains that trundled into and out of Chicago every twenty-four hours. More often than not, their passengers passed the miles with a newspaper in hand, buried nose-deep in the Pulitzer Prize stylings of Tribune reporters.

  Angelina's beat was the criminal court. Criminal court reporting under the Tribune umbrella was a tremulous tightrope for Angelina to mount each day as she looked for the truth in important cases. It was always a truth that lay just out of her grasp, because she had no law degree. Sometimes, however, she won the trip across the wire because she was the perennial student who just never gave up. In her spare time, she read books on criminal and civil procedure and studied law cases from the same hornbooks used in law schools. Her skill on the wire was gaining momentum and balance.

  Her editor, Carson McCutcheon, had early-on challenged Angelina:

  "Win a Pulitzer. Then I’ll have you over, and we'll swill Chateau-Rothschild and I'll cook scrumptious soufflés for you. Plus, I'll tell you all my secrets, even my shoe size."

  Always one for a challenge, Angelina had replied, "I'll win a Pulitzer, sure enough. I'll see that and raise you a New York Times Bestseller."

  "Why not? The one you can frame and hang, the other you can spend on Italian cars and Tommy Choos. Simultaneous would be an impossible coup for a cub, and I would be impressed."

  "Then get ready to be impressed. I'm like a jaguar, just waiting for my chance to spring, and drag my prey to the ground, and suffuse my soul with the most important story of the season. Lady, I'm on it."

  "I can hardly wait."

  "Any chance of getting me out of the criminal courts?"

  "Why? Aren't there Pulitzers enough for you there?"

  Angelina scoffed. "Truth be told, I wouldn't know a legal Pulitzer if it walked up and bit me on the ass."

  "Hang in there. You will."

  "Really, I would prefer the political beat."

  "Stick with it. One of these days the scales will fall away and you'll get it. Now you see but through a glass darkly, but then, etcetera, etcetera."

  "I'm trying."

  "There is one other way, Ms. Sosa."

  "Which is?"

  "Sometimes the Pulitzer stories fall out of the sky. They happen right before the reporters' eyes without behest or prayer."

  "Like Woodward and Bernstein. Watergate just fell into their laps."

  "Precisely. So keep your eyes open. You never know."

  Which was exactly what Angelina was doing the night her plane was hijacked.

  She decided Thaddeus Murfee would be the main character of her story—that she would see the event through his eyes—especially after he tackled one of the hijackers and brought him to the floor of the aircraft, pinning him there with a knee. With that development, she was sure she had her man.

  Now he had returned to his seat and was obviously searching the crowd for his friend, Ama Gloq. The woman with whom she had gotten off to a rocky start. She kicked herself for that childishness on her part and determined that it would not interfere with the story developing around her.

  She climbed to her feet in the confined space and joined Thaddeus in looking for his friend.

  "See her? I don't," she said, just as Thaddeus stepped into the aisle.

  He ignored her. Then he pushed forward and was gone.

  Angelina returned to videoing the scene and narrating into her smartphone. Like her, the phone was capable of multi-tasking; and she was giving it all she had.

  A New York Times bestseller had erupted all around her and damned if she was going to miss a second of it.

  Surely a Pulitzer wouldn't be far behind. But wait! Her quarry was getting away.

  She clambered into the aisle and began making her way in the direction Thaddeus had gone. He was her story. She would run him to the ground.

  She made her way out of the aircraft, into the jetway, and found herself calling to Thaddeus as he increased the distance between them. He was in a terrible hurry, so she stopped to remove her heels and stuff them inside her carry-on before running after him.

  The story was underway, and she had been promised a front row seat. Except Thaddeus Murfee didn't know it. He also didn't know she spoke Russian fluently, thanks to her college minors.

  He needed her.

  Just like she needed him.

  17

  Jacques Lemoneux knew his duty, and he also knew his limitations. While he was a CIA agent placed in the French Embassy under French cover, he, as he liked to say to his lover, was "more desky, less fieldy." Meaning he didn't carry guns and ordinar
ily wouldn’t be called on to terminate a target, with the exception of hand-to-hand, where he was a top-rated knife and razor man.

  His key expertise and usefulness to the CIA was micro-electronics: cameras, microphones, the latest in interior house paints that absorbed sound and translated it into audio that could be transmitted up to fifty miles away.

  So why did he suddenly feel he should follow after Christine? Because as far as he could tell, he was the only CIA agent aboard Swissair 3309 and it was his job. It was as simple as that. Jacques Lemoneux was a patriot. In the moments he watched first one, then the other of Christine's seat mates follow her off the plane to Russia and certain huge problems, his patriotism overwhelmed his good sense. He was suddenly transported up out of his seat and into the jetway. He caught a glimpse of Angelina Sosa—he didn't know her name, of course—disappearing into the terminal at the far end of the passageway.

  His step quickened, and a million thoughts flooded his mind; the most pressing of which was, how would he contact Langley?

  For a split second, his heart missed a beat; and he considered returning to the plane. What had come over him? What the hell, exactly what the hell, did he think he was doing?

  For one, if he didn't follow her and get some details he wouldn't have anything to report to Langley. So, there was that. For another—and this one was a bitch to admit—he had always wanted to operate in the field. Despite his best notions about his best fit within the agency, he had always wanted to know what it felt like to wear the raincoat, as the field operatives called it. Now, he was wearing that raincoat. Not literally, of course. Literally he was wearing soggy suit pants and a rumpled suit coat and a day's worth of beard. He felt somewhat like a fool and in equal parts he felt somewhat like a hero. Now to see which would top the other.

  He made the far end of the jetway and stepped across that invisible line dividing the no-man's land of the airplane-jetway configuration from Russia. He found himself swept down upon by four Russian operatives, front, back, left, right, and moved along in a new direction. There was a side door without lettering, and they were guiding him toward it. He drew a deep breath and gave himself over. It hadn't lasted long, his rogue state. In fact, it had lasted less than a minute before he, too, had been swarmed and taken into Russian custody.

  He suddenly had the loose-bowel feeling that he should have contacted Langley before swimming ashore, as it were. Shoulda-woulda-coulda, the pop-psych phrase bounced through his head.

  Last thought; then the door opened wide, and he was pushed inside.

  18

  Karli and Yuri couldn't have been more accommodating. The GRU had trained them well.

  Would she like tea, coffee, bottled water? Did she need to use the ladies'? Was she hungry? How, exactly, could they help?

  She refused all offers. She knew her cell phone and iPad were in Russian custody undergoing analysis, and she knew her passport identity was undergoing an intelligence autopsy of its own.

  The CIA was clever, of course. All personal data about Ama Gloq—address, date of birth, husband's name, kids' names, graduation dates, marriage dates—all of it was taken from Christine's actual yearbook. Try as they may, the agents couldn't ask her one innocuous question that wasn't instantly and correctly answered by Christine.

  Yes, Sonny was her husband, and Chad and Missy were the offspring of the union officially formed at the United Methodist Church on June 6, 2002 in Orbit, Illinois. Yes, there was military service in Afghanistan; and, yes, her father was Afghani; and yes, she was on her way to Afghanistan to visit family when the plane was hijacked. No, she had never wanted to come to Russia, had no reason to be there other than as the survivor of a crime, and wished to rejoin her group on the plane and leave immediately.

  An hour into the "interview," they said they would like to take a break. They left, locking the door behind them.

  Christine was left alone in a comfortable enough room: Danish furniture, minimalist abstract art on two walls, no windows, polite track lighting, bottled water unopened on the table, a small refrigerator which they said contained juices she could help herself to, and an insulated pitcher of black coffee surrounded by pink and white packets she could only assume were sweetener and creamer. A restroom was accessible in the third wall, and the fourth wall was the main entrance, beyond which lay a large room bulging with cubicles and workers speaking nonstop Russian into throat mikes.

  As she peered into the restroom, the main door to the interrogation room suddenly flew open; and a female worker wearing spike heels and silk slacks with silk shirt came flitting into the room. She opened the file cabinet and flipped through to the D's, where she found her file, pulled it free, and turned and left the room.

  This time, though, Christine listened for but did not hear the sound of the deadbolt sliding home. Had that woman actually left the door unlocked? Christine's pulse quickened.

  She stood and walked around the table. She was keeping her cool; she had attended the Army's SERE class and knew all about interrogation techniques and how to button up and wall off the enemy. For she did consider them enemy combatants, having grown up with the Cold War in recent memory and having witnessed Russia's Piotor Irunyaev’s ceaseless invasions of neighboring countries—especially Ukraine—and his despicable treatment of Chechens and their country. She had no use for anything Russian and could only hope her stay there would be brief.

  But it came down to one question: why me? She thought. Had they made her real identity that fast? Had something given her away? Did she look like CIA or give off some CIA vibe she didn't recognize in herself? Otherwise, how in the world had they picked her out of three-hundred-some Swissair passengers? Ama Gloq. I am a Glock. Had they seen right through the false moniker, picked up on the homophone?

  She plopped back down in her chair, sighed heavily, and helped herself to a mug of coffee, which was steaming and smelled friendly.

  She figured she was being watched by CCTV, so she made a small drama out of pulling the chair next to her away from the table, turning it ninety degrees, inserting her legs and feet into its seat, and sitting back and closing her eyes as if terribly sleepy. That was all they were going to get out of her; she decided with no small jolt of determination. That picture was it.

  At the other end of the airport, the militia quarters were housed. The two remaining hijackers had been taken there and were being introduced to Russian pain while Christine sipped the strong coffee and kept her eyes closed. Feigning sleep deprivation she slowly rose and crossed to the light switch. She flicked the lights off, setting the room in black-grey tones, and she resumed her semi-sleep position on the two chairs.

  Now she was free to look around and make a decision about cameras.

  Were they watching her or not?

  At first, she had figured they were.

  But then she found the door had indeed been left unlocked.

  * * *

  Why?

  Would Russian GRU officers actually leave a prisoner in a room with third party access? Truth be told, this was the airport, not GRU headquarters where every door came outfitted with a lock and every room had a coded keypad and glass eyes peered out of every crack. Yegeny Yeteshenko, the head of Russian intelligence, had lobbied long and hard for a separate building for GRU activities at the Moscow Airport. But government revenues had dropped into a black abyss with the recession of 2008 and Yeteshenko's request was ignored.

  So, they worked out of the interrogation room and two others just like it. Adjoining the three GRU lairs, the cubed room was filled with airport employees hard at work managing the business of the airport. J2 jet fuel was being ordered, 3000 roast beef dinners secured, workers for the third shift conveyer trucks rousted and confirmed, pilots and co-pilots managed from the other side of the globe. Commercial workers, not intelligence workers. Had she walked right through them they wouldn't have noticed, much less cared.

  Yuri and Karli were less than fifty feet away, on the other side of the wal
l. They were fully underway planning their assault on Ama Gloq.

  They sat side-by-side at a commandeered desk, laptop computer tuned up and networked to GRU/Moscow, where preliminary GRU abstracts of Ama Gloq's intelligence dossier were coming up on the monitor. Karli followed the display over Yuri's forearms.

  First, they had to rule out possible misidentifications. This would be the case where other people with the same name as a subject under scrutiny would be mistakenly intercepted.

  "Ama Gloq out of Finland," said Yuri as he scrolled down. "No."

  "No," agreed Karli. "Not even close."

  "Ama Gloq RSA," Yuri said with a hint of interest. "But what's South Africa doing on a crossover to Zurich? Doesn't compute."

  "Agree. Wait! There's one out of New Zealand. She bears some resemblance to our lady."

  "She does. But keep going down. She died in an automobile accident two years ago."

  They then scrolled through twenty or more "Ima's." But no other "Ama's."

  An aide brought hot coffee to the men.

  "She says she was accompanied by her friend, Thaddeus Murfee. He was traveling on business and would turn back in Zurich. She would then go on to visit relatives in Afghanistan."

  "What do we know of Murfee?"

  "The usual. American lawyer, based out of Chicago, four-attorney firm, nine assistants, primarily criminal and personal injury—birth defect cases."

  Karli pursed his lips. "Anything political or governmental?"

  "Says here he sued the State of Illinois. Wow, he made off with a truckload of rubles."

  Karli sipped his coffee and narrowed his eyes at the screen. "I'll say. Millions of American dollars."

  "But there's nothing in his history to indicate any connection to the government. Never worked for them, never clerked for them, has only sued them, and that was a territory—a state."

  "I say we contact the husband. Check out her name, for openers. See if he even exists. And if he does exist, what name he goes by."