“Liza. Don’t say my name. Do you have a minute?” It’s Amanda, she realized.
“Sure.” Her morning had been off to a slow start since her boss was in Brussels. Paperwork, personnel issues, busy work.
“I need your help with something this morning. It’s time sensitive.”
“Okay,” she replied without hesitation. “Tell me.”
A pause. “I can’t give you details over the phone.”
Liza cocked her head, intrigued. “Are you in trouble?”
Silence again. Then, “We’re on our way in. We may be coming in hot.”
Amanda felt a flush of excitement. Coming in hot? “We? And what do you mean by coming in hot?”
“I’m not alone.” She heard a male voice in the background.
“Who are you with?”
“A friend. That’s all I can say.” She sounds serious, Liza decided. Besides, Amanda would never joke about something like this.
I’ll have to contact security, she thought, to clear the way. Like all US embassies around the world, security had been enhanced after 9/11 to prevent all manner of attacks on the embassy itself, with heavy concrete barriers, a dense maze of crowd-control gates, and a host of other less-visible security measures put in place to control access. A detachment of U.S. Marines with orders to kill guarded the gate.
“How hot exactly?” Her imagination was running wild.
“Take your worst case and double it.”
Liza froze, gripping the phone so hard her knuckles turned white. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking for?”
“I do.”
She grabbed a pen and a pad of paper. “What are you driving?” They passed the next few minutes exchanging details on the vehicle Amanda would be arriving in and the most direct route through the city. Liza briefed Amanda on the current transit strike, giving her tips on how to avoid the disrupted areas. Once these arrangements were complete, Liza tried to push the conversation back to the personal level, to get a feel for how much trouble her friend was really in.
Amanda resisted, telling her they would catch up when the dust settled. She gave up. She had preparations to make, wheels to set in motion. She moved to end the call.
“Be careful,” she intoned.
“I will.”
She terminated the connection and sprang into action.
Thirty-Three
With a harsh ring, Helen’s secure phone destroyed her train of thought. She checked the caller ID. NSA.
“Bartholomew here.”
“Helen, this is Patrick. I’ve got a hit on that name you gave me.” Helen sat up straighter. Patrick Morrison was a former CIA colleague who had transferred to the NSA two years earlier. An hour ago, on a hunch, she had called him and asked for a favor.
“A strange call came into the embassy in Paris six minutes ago. The caller, a woman, didn’t identify herself, but the receiver did.”
“Who was it?”
She heard papers shuffling. “Liza Barnett. It says here she’s the Deputy Chief. I ran her through the system, and it looks like she was roommates with the woman you’re been looking for, at Stanford.”
“You’re a dear, Patrick,” she gushed, a shit-eating grin spreading across her face.
“Just doing my job,” he replied with mock modesty. “And get this. The caller is coming into the embassy within the next hour. She asked the deputy for a welcoming party, said something about ‘coming in hot.’ I’m guessing you’re the one applying the heat?”
Avoiding his question, Helen asked one of her own. “What do you mean ‘a welcoming party’?”
She heard keys tapping, then he said, “The transcription is on the way.”
Her computer beeped, and she saw an email from Patrick sitting at the top of her inbox. She opened and scanned it. “Shit,” she said under her breath.
“I’m not sure what you want to do with this, Helen,” Patrick said, getting serious again. “We’re talking about the deputy ambassador here. There are some pretty serious political ramifications if you fuck with someone like that.”
She was done talking. “I’ve got to go now, Patrick.” She terminated the call before he could respond.
She forwarded the email to Jack. It didn’t solve the problem with Fish and the Chechens, but it could signal a quick end to their data problem. If she could get Mason in position to intercept Amanda before she reached the embassy, they stood a chance of stopping the leak in its tracks.
She started to dial Mason, but before she could finish, her phone rang.
“Good work, Helen,” Jack mumbled. His tone was entirely different from their previous conversation, less than a half hour ago. The scotch was talking now.
“We’ll have this thing shut down inside the hour, Jack.”
“Fine.” He hung up.
She got Mason on the line. “Okay. Our subjects are traveling from the north of the city into the US embassy. They are due to arrive in one hour.”
“Do you know their exact location?”
“Unfortunately, no. But we do know the time, and we know who they’re going to meet.”
“Do the original orders still stand?” Mason asked.
She rubbed her temples. “Yes. For the most part.”
“For the most part? What the hell does that mean?” Mason demanded.
“The target is meeting with the deputy ambassador. Evidently, they’re old friends…”
“So?”
“She requested a welcome party from the embassy Marines.”
Silence. Then, “You’re kidding?”
“Nope.” More silence. “Are you still there, Mason?”
“Yeah. I was thinking. I’ll have to take them before they reach the embassy, before they can request assistance.”
“Do whatever it takes.” She checked her screen. “I’m forwarding you their last known coordinates as well as their projected route.” She pressed Send.
“Looks like you’ve got a clear choice,” she muttered.
Mason grunted his acknowledgment. “I’ll let you know the outcome.”
The line went dead and Helen breathed a sigh of relief. One last thing to do. She opened up another program on her desk and started typing. A few seconds later, she was done, and she checked her spelling twice. Then she smiled.
The program was called TWANG, which stood for Terrorist Warning And Notification Grid. It was the government’s newest emergency warning mechanism, a sort of electronic air raid siren.
Constructed shortly after 9/11, it had initially been deemed a failure. Most of that was poor perception, however. Until proven otherwise, people always felt they were faster than machines when it came to communications. It wasn’t until two thwarted domestic terrorist attacks in late 2004 that the system gained wide acceptance.
Her message was simple:
US EMBASSY, PARIS, LIKELY TARGET OF ATTACK NEXT SIXTY MINUTES.
CONFIDENCE LEVEL: HIGH.
The message, while vague, would trigger an immediate lockdown at the embassy. Doors would be locked, windows would be shuttered, and all non-embassy personnel would be evacuated until the security staff had a chance to sweep the building and signal the all clear. Most importantly, it would ensure that Liza Barnett had no way to contact Kurt Vetter or Amanda Carter.
She read the message one more time, checking for typos, and then sent it into the ether. Satisfied, she got up from her chair and headed for the break room. She was looking forward to putting this all behind her, and getting back to the real mission.
Thirty-Four
Liza coughed into her hand, then glanced at her clock. It was almost time. “I think that’ll cover it,” she said to her chief of staff, dismissing him.
The earnest young man, a recent transfer from the Kabul embassy, gathered his papers and left without a word, leaving her alone for the first time since her discussion with Amanda. She took a deep breath and picked up her desk phone. The whole time the staffer had been speaking, Liza had been rehearsing h
ow she would alert the embassy to Amanda’s arrival. It was a delicate balance. She had gotten the distinct impression from her friend that coming to the embassy was an act of last resort, and as such, she needed to exercise discretion about every aspect of her arrival.
Alert the guards too soon, and whoever was pursuing Amanda, if they were on the inside, would have time to cause problems. Alert them too late, on the other hand, and Amanda wouldn’t even reach the front gate. This required a fine sense of balance.
She checked her watch again. It’s time. A red light flashed on her phone. A moment later, her Blackberry vibrated madly, skittering across her desk like an angry crab.
She grabbed it and turned it over. The customary Blackberry applications weren’t visible. In their place was a bright red screen filled with scrolling white text.
US EMBASSY, PARIS, LIKELY TARGET OF ATTACK NEXT SIXTY MINUTES.
CONFIDENCE LEVEL: HIGH.
LOCKDOWN IN PROGRESS.
Liza’s heart skipped a beat. Despite the air conditioner rattling away in the corner, she broke out in a heavy sweat. What the hell?
Her desk phone rang, startling her out of her paralysis. It was her boss, the ambassador.
“Rick,” she answered.
“Liza. My phone is going crazy. What’s going on down there?”
Liza and her boss, Richard Jensen, went back a long way. They had first been posted together in the embassy in Mexico City eight years earlier and had been tracking each other’s careers ever since. So far, at least for Liza, working for him had been a wise career decision. Rick got to handle all of the high-level, external political bullshit, leaving her to work more behind the scenes and get the real work done.
“I don’t know yet.” She stepped out of her office and looked up and down the hallway. Staffers were running in every direction with frightened looks on their faces.
As she was about to return to her desk, she was almost flattened by a squad of Marines hustling down the hall. They bristled with weapons and communications gear. The looks on their faces told her this was no drill. She recognized one of the soldiers, a young woman from her home state of California. Liza shot her a reassuring look, but the woman didn’t acknowledge her. The marines disappeared around the corner on their way to the front of the building. She was in a combat zone now.
“Lots of soldiers moving around here, Rick,” she said into the phone. “I think something big is about to happen.”
“Where are you?” Rick asked.
“My office.”
“Fuck,” Rick said, exasperated. “Be careful, Liza. And call me as soon as you learn anything. I’ll be on the next train.”
“Will do.” She ended the call.
Overhead, an alarm shrieked, a high pitched tone that warbled like a dying cat. Liza covered her ears and dashed down the hall, heading for the operations center. She had to find out what in the hell was going on, who was threatening the embassy, and what she could do about it. Then she had to make herself visible to reassure the troops.
It’s got to be Amanda, she realized as she ran. Someone, somehow, has learned of her arrival. They were shutting the embassy down, locking it tight so she couldn’t come in. She cursed, frustrated at how powerless she felt.
She ducked into the next office and picked up a phone. She pressed nine to get an outside line and waited. Nothing. She toggled the phone. Still nothing.
Shit! She smacked her forehead. Lock down. Outside communications were severed during the red alert. My Blackberry. It was sitting on her desk. She turned and raced for her office. She had to warn Amanda off before she drove into the gathering shit storm.
Another group of stone-faced soldiers jogged by as she turned the corner to her office. She went in, closed the door behind her, and thumbed the lock. A moment later, Amanda’s phone was ringing. “Please, please answer,” Liza pleaded as she watched her door.
Thirty-Five
With a frustrated sigh, Amanda snapped her laptop closed and stuffed it back into her bag. The search had been a bust. She and Kurt had been sitting in the hotel parking lot for the past half hour, leaching off of the free Wi-Fi signal. She had run through Nigel’s decrypted data, plugging various strings of text into Google, hoping for some kind of hit.
The only bit of interesting data had been a book published by Jack Carson in 1989. It was a long out-of-print political rebuttal of the Communist system. Useless.
She snuck a quick glance at Kurt. Something about him intrigued her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. He shifted in his seat, and she felt her face grow warm. She turned away, casting her gaze toward the hotel. Now is not the time for that, she scolded herself.
Her phone rang. She pulled it out and checked the display. “Liza,” she mouthed.
She answered, “Liza?”
“Yeah… Listen—you need to back off. Something is happening here---I think someone knows you’re coming in.”
Amanda felt as if she had been punched in the gut. Liza was her last hope. She shot Kurt a distressed glance. “What do you mean? Where else can we go? We’re out of options here!”
“I don’t—” She heard a knocking sound, then loud banging on the other end of the line, as if someone was trying to break down a door.
“I’ve got to go,” Liza choked out. “Be safe.”
Amanda pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at the screen in shock. She looked over at Kurt.
“Who was it?” he asked, his voice full of concern.
“The embassy is out.” Amanda stared off into the distance as she spoke, looking through Kurt, unable to meet his eyes.
“Out? What do you mean out?” He probed, obviously alarmed.
Amanda came back to the present. “I mean, I just spoke with Liza. Something is going down. She waved us off.”
“Fuck!” Kurt slammed his palm against the dashboard.
Amanda’s brow furrowed as she considered their options. There weren’t many left. The UK was out. France was out. There was nowhere to go. Well, maybe that isn’t true. “I’ve got an idea.”
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “I hope it’s better than this one.”
That stung, but she couldn’t blame him. Nothing was happening as she expected. “Well. Here’s how I see it. We’re out of options. Someone—the CIA, I assume—is at least one step ahead of us, maybe more.”
“Uh huh,” Kurt agreed, nodding.
“So far we’ve been depending on others for help, relying on the good will of the embassies. I think we need to readjust our expectations, our strategy. We need to take care of this ourselves.”
Kurt jerked his head. “Do you mean go to Russia?”
Amanda nodded, slowly at first, and then with more conviction. “Exactly.”
Kurt rolled his eyes. “Great idea, Amanda, except for one small detail; we’re in Paris. We have less than twenty-four hours according to those files, and someone is trying to kill us. How do you propose we get to Russia?”
“Hire a private plane, a charter.”
“Do you have—”
“Yeah. I have plenty of cash. And this way we’ll avoid customs and immigration as well. All we need to do is bribe the right people as we enter the country, and we’ll slip right through. Things may get a little dicey once we get on the ground, getting a car and all, but I’m sure we can figure it out.”
Kurt cracked his knuckles, studying the backs of his hands. “Okay.”
“You’re sure?”
“Let’s do it before I change my mind.”
Amanda fired up the car.
Thirty-Six
Kurt stretched and yawned, bumping Amanda in the process.
“Sorry,” he murmured. They were on final approach to the Sheremetyevo civil aviation field, on the outskirts of Moscow. They had been in the air for a little over four hours.
“Tired?” Amanda asked with a soft smile.
He nodded and swallowed another yawn.
“Me too.” Getting a spot on an unf
illed charter had been a stroke of pure genius, he had to admit. He thought back to the realization that they couldn’t enter the embassy, that they had been waved off, and grimaced. What a disaster. At the time, he had almost given up hope; it was the absolute worst thing he could have heard.
He checked his watch. Three hours. If Mike’s data was accurate, that was all the time they had left until the city beneath him became a radioactive crater. And he and Amanda were heading right for the center of it.
Kurt checked himself. Intellectually, he knew he should be running the opposite direction, putting as much distance between himself and Moscow as possible. Yet, here he was. In the end, it was a simple calculation. Mike had died to get this information to him. Millions, maybe even billions, would die as well if he didn’t act. That was the bottom line, regardless of whether he liked it or not. Of course, he thought, it would have been nice to have some help; some backup in case things went to shit. He sighed. Screw it.
The plane hit a patch of turbulence, and Kurt tightened his grip on his armrest. He didn’t like flying in general, and he hated small planes in particular. Amanda patted his hand, sending chills up his arm. He still didn’t know what to make of her. He was attracted to her, but now was not the time for that.
“Soon,” she said.
“It can’t be soon enough.”
The plane, a Cessna Citation, carried three other passengers, a group of German and Russian executives on their way to Moscow for a meeting. Kurt didn’t understand a word of their conversation, as he didn’t speak either language. Amanda, as he had guessed, spoke both.
She had come up with the idea of booking seats on a charter. Before entering the offices of Air Europa, a small executive charter company based out of Charles de Gaulle Airport, she had pulled a large wad of Euros from her backpack and stuffed them into her front pocket. They were mostly hundreds. He assumed they were to be used to bribe, or encourage, someone to get them a spot on the airplane and a subsequent free pass into the Russian Federation.
The Patriot Paradox Page 12