Dwyer glanced at Matt, who shrugged his shoulders, then back at Garin, and finally to the monitor. He squinted at the image and tried to see what Garin saw. He scanned his memory for faces, playing them before his mind’s eye. Suddenly, a look—not so much of recognition but of realization—covered his face. The realization of a seeming impossibility becoming reality. A supposedly dead man whose return to life signaled an unimaginable breach of national security that could place the country in peril. “My God. We’re looking at Gates, aren’t we? Gates is Bor. Right?”
Matt whistled again. “Un-freaking-believable.”
“We have a file photo of Gates. Should we run it through facial recognition against this photo to be sure?” Dwyer asked. “The photo angles and lighting may be different, but the algorithm should give us a pretty good probability—”
“No need.” Garin shook his head, pointing to the photo. “See that scar? Unmistakable.” Garin stood and, staring down at the floor, tried to comprehend how Bor had penetrated a team whose very existence was known only to a handful of individuals in the US government. He ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck.
Dwyer gave voice to what everyone was now thinking. “How the hell is that even possible? How could he gain access to your team?”
Garin spoke slowly, thinking out loud. “I met Gates . . . Bor . . . more than two years ago when he qualified for the team. Backstory was that he was a good ole boy from Georgia, former Air Force Pararescue, and had also spent time in SAD. He passed every background check—FBI, DOD, CIA. He passed every evolution. He was an exceptional operator. Maybe the best on the team.” Garin shook his head again.
“This is real Cold War shit,” Dwyer declared. “Sleeper agents. Deep penetration. This is more impressive than Aldrich Ames, Robert Philip Hanssen. They didn’t have to air-drop those two into one of our units. They were ours. Already there.” Dwyer squinted at the monitor. “I thought that stuff ended a while ago. Turns out the closest Gates probably ever got to Georgia was the former Soviet republic.” He looked at Garin. “Did you have any clue whatsoever?”
“None. At least none that I can think of right now. As I look back, he played it just right. Nothing amiss. Fit right in. Duty, honor, country—but not mindlessly gung ho. A tough, smart, dedicated soldier. Apparently a lot smarter than the rest of us.” Garin looked up. “Certainly smarter than me. And now, all my men are dead because of it.”
“No sense beating yourself up, Mikey. You’re an operator, not a spook. The guy got vetted by the best in the business. That wasn’t your job.” Dwyer continued staring at the image on the monitor. “If he could somehow craft a résumé that includes Air Force PJ and the Special Activities Division without tripping any wires, no way would you be able to make him.”
Garin wasn’t persuaded. “They were my teams. We drank, hunted, and chewed dirt together. Gates and I weren’t particularly close, but if my family were in trouble, there wouldn’t be anyone I’d trust more to get them out of a jam. I liked the guy. Tanski even said in some ways, Gates and I were alike.”
Dwyer scrutinized one of the images at the bottom of the screen. He clicked to enlarge and then brought up the resolution. “Geez, Mikey, take a look at this.”
Garin saw Bor huddled in conversation with a shorter man. The photo appeared to have been taken in the winter. Both men wore heavy coats and scarves. The shorter man resembled a bullfrog.
“That,” Dwyer informed him, pointing at the shorter man in the photo, “is Yevgeny Torzov, Julian Day’s dinner date at the Mayflower last night.”
Matt stood from the couch, sensing that Garin was also about to move. “Now what?”
“Gates . . . Bor is at the center of everything that’s going on. I need to let Olivia know. She needs to let Brandt know. The Russians are driving everything. The Iranians may think this is all about them, but they’re just tools, puppets doing the Russians’ bidding.” Garin paused, formulating a plan.
“What else?” Dwyer asked.
“Dan, I need one of your vehicles. And I need to check an e-mail account.”
“Then what?” Dwyer asked, suspecting the answer but seeking confirmation.
He received no reply. Only a look he’d seen several times on his friend’s face before: Mayhem was about to ensue.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA
JULY 17 • 10:55 A.M. PDT
Ari Singer finished his tea and checked his watch. He was to meet Mansur in ten minutes in the middle of Chinatown. While waiting for Mansur, Singer had also tried unsuccessfully to reach his contact in the United States. In the past, he and Singer had exchanged several useful pieces of data. Singer hoped the Americans might be able to provide contextual information, something to confirm Mansur’s. Unable to reach the American, Singer had placed a series of messages in a draft folder in a shared e-mail account.
Singer’s waitress appeared at his table with a carafe of tea. “Anything else, sir?”
Singer smiled charmingly. “Thank you. No.”
She returned the smile, placed the check on the table, and left. Singer checked his watch again. It was time to meet Mansur. The location was just a short walk away.
Singer paid the bill and left the café. The light drizzle on his face felt good—warm, but refreshing. He walked briskly down East Pender Street. Mansur would meet him in a short alley between two restaurants four blocks south and two blocks east of the café. An alleyway in Vancouver. The old SAVAK agent was wedded to cloak-and-dagger.
Singer turned east. He could see the entrance to the alleyway ahead just past a small Thai restaurant. There were no pedestrians on the street and traffic was sparse.
Upon reaching the alley, Singer kept walking with his eyes forward. He continued for another block before dropping to one knee, pretending to tie his shoes. No one was following. In fact, there wasn’t another person anywhere in the vicinity.
He rose and doubled back. A few seconds later he was back at the entrance to the alley. It was a block long with a large Dumpster piled high with plastic trash bags at the midway point, near the rear service entrance of the Thai restaurant. Nothing else but brick and asphalt was in the alley. Mansur, nowhere to be seen, was probably on the other side of the Dumpster or perhaps hadn’t arrived yet.
Singer glanced about before cautiously entering the alley. As he approached the Dumpster he realized Mansur was already there. At least his body was, sandwiched among the trash bags in the Dumpster.
Singer’s training and instincts told him to leave. Immediately. With his hand on his weapon and his senses on a trip wire. But years of experience told him that he needed to stay, to inspect the body. This time the stakes were too high to let any information, however minor, go unretrieved.
So, in the last minutes of his life, Ari Singer climbed atop a stinking pile of refuse and rifled through the clothing of a man he considered a friend and patriot. What he found scrambled everything he and his superiors had believed about the threat to Israel’s existence.
Singer had found a thin scrap of hotel stationery bearing nine words—some English, some Hebrew—taped to the inside cuff of Mansur’s left pants leg. The instant he absorbed the message, Singer knew it was vital that it be relayed to Tel Aviv immediately. This one was different from all the other “urgent” messages he’d transmitted over the years. In barely more than twelve hours, the world would change.
He called his superiors, but the call dropped before connecting. He tried twice more and failed to get through.
His anxiety building, he decided to reach outside his own agency, an act that in ordinary circumstances could be career ending, or worse. At the moment, Singer didn’t have the luxury of patience or protocol.
He keyed the number for Mike Garin, with whom he’d worked several times before, just as a cab approached and slowed to pick him up. Singer cursed as th
e call automatically went to voice mail. Opening the rear door of the cab, he paused and then rapidly began to leave a message. As he climbed into the vehicle, the last thing the synapses in Ari Singer’s brain registered was the horrified look on the driver’s face just before the top of the old spy’s skull exploded across the length of the dark brown upholstery of the backseat.
—
Matt stood next to Dwyer’s desk and watched the confrontation, having no intention of getting between two forces of nature. Dwyer stood in front of the door of his office, blocking Garin’s egress. Garin stood barely two feet away from Dwyer.
“I don’t have to tell you that this is a spectacularly bad idea, Mikey. Spectacularly bad.” Dwyer turned to Matt. “Tell him. Tell him this is a bad idea.”
The Aussie raised his palms, indicating he wanted no part of the argument that had been going on since Garin had used Dwyer’s desktop to access an e-mail account shared by Garin and an Israeli agent and had then retrieved a voice-mail message from the same agent. The normally imperturbable Garin, seated at Dwyer’s desk, had shot to his feet, declaring that he needed to contact James Brandt and interrogate Julian Day immediately.
“Move aside, Dan.” Garin’s voice was even, but his body’s attitude bore the menace of a cobra. Dwyer, for his part, was unmoved.
“Mike, I’ll make the call. Hell, you make the call. But don’t go into the District,” Dwyer implored.
“I’m going to need you to move aside now, Dan.” It was not a request.
“What are you going to do? Go to Day’s office at Hart Senate? They’ll have you handcuffed before you even get to the metal detectors. Any headway Brandt may have made persuading the authorities that you’re not public enemy number one will be gone.”
“Last time, Dan.”
Dwyer looked to Matt standing next to the desk and nodded.
Matt slid his right hand under the right side of the desktop and pressed a panic button. An earsplitting klaxon sounded. The television monitors flickered, went blank for a moment, and then displayed a grid of six images of guards in the process of securing different sections of the DGT facility. The image in the upper left showed the cybersecurity division’s area immediately outside of Dwyer’s office. Four guards, MP5s trained on the office door, were stationed behind cabinets and desks within a radius of twenty feet.
Dwyer nodded toward the monitor. “Take a good look, Mike. Even you couldn’t make it out of here. Stand down and listen to reason.”
Garin glanced at the monitor as a voice came over a speaker set in the office ceiling. “Mr. Dwyer. Situation.”
Dwyer looked at Garin. “What should I tell them, Mike?”
Garin hesitated for a moment, coolly scanning the images on the monitor to confirm that any attempt to exit the building would result in significant casualties. Several guards were deployed at every exit. These weren’t rent-a-cop security guards, but DGT personnel—all of whom were former military. Garin looked at Dwyer and gave a barely perceptible nod. Matt, who had not dared escalate matters by reaching for the Glock under his shirt, exhaled audibly.
“Situation is Blue Zero,” Dwyer responded to the voice on the speaker.
“Say again.”
“Blue Zero.”
“Copy. Blue Zero. Thank you, sir. Could you please open your door?”
Dwyer opened the office door, permitting the guards to peer inside. Dwyer detected a look of recognition on one of the guards as he spotted Garin.
“Just giving Mr. Webster here a demonstration,” Dwyer said as he gestured toward Garin. “Make sure you put that in your reports. Tell everybody they did a good job.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Dwyer.” The guards retreated. Dwyer closed the door and turned to Garin.
“Okay. I’m back on your shit list for maybe the seventeenth time. And woe to anyone on that list. But now let’s talk about your wanting to rush off and commit suicide by going to see Day at his office.”
There were several moments of silence as Garin considered his response. Dwyer, despite his perpetual spring break demeanor, was able to assess the benefits and detriments of a course of action as well as anyone Garin had ever met. He sat on the edge of Dwyer’s desk and spoke calmly, as if the pandemonium of the last few minutes hadn’t occurred.
“Dan, hear me out. The Russians are working with the Iranians on a UN resolution that likely will lead to war between Israel and several of its neighbors. Bor infiltrated my WMD team and, with the help of the Iranians, killed everyone but me. Then I get a flurry of messages from an Israeli agent whom I’ve trusted for years asking me to contact him ASAP. A short time ago he leaves me a voice mail that says—ready for this? The US is going to be the target of an EMP strike. You know what that means. Armageddon. And Singer is as reliable as they get. If he says an EMP attack’s coming, it means he’s worked this to death, eliminating possibilities. But the voice mail is cut off. My bet is Quds Force got to him. So I don’t know where the strike’s coming from, when it’s coming, or how it’s going to happen.
“Now, we know the Iranians don’t have the capability of hitting us with an EMP strike. Even if they attempted to do so from a cargo ship or other vessel along our coast, we have countermeasures in place to thwart them. Besides, an EMP launch from a cargo ship wouldn’t get sufficient amplitude, so it would only affect a relatively small area. The Russians, on the other hand, could do it, but they’re not nuts.”
Dwyer made a rolling motion with his hand, urging Garin to move it along.
“So we’ve got Iranians who want to hit us but can’t, running around with Russians who wouldn’t dare hit us, and a Mossad agent saying we’re going to be hit.”
“And Bor, the guy in the middle of it all, is in a picture with a Russian SVR agent who just happens to be dining with Julian Day,” Dwyer finished.
“And that, my dear friend, is why I need to see Day.”
Dwyer understood immediately that Garin was right. If Day had any information about a possible EMP strike, it wasn’t going to be pried out over the phone. A personal visit from Mike Garin, however, was another matter entirely.
“I’ll concede the point,” Dwyer acknowledged. “But let me play devil’s advocate for a second. Why not just tell Brandt about Day? He can then tell the FBI and they can interrogate Day.” As soon as the question left his mouth, Dwyer knew Garin’s response—because Olivia Perry had provided a similar one just yesterday.
“Even if Brandt did go to the FBI, what’s he supposed to say? ‘Hey, you know that guy Garin the entire bureau’s been looking for? The threat to national security? Well, I thought you should know he told me the counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has been consorting with the Russians. Something about starting a world war.”
Dwyer sighed. “Well, what are you waiting for, Mikey? Go get ’em. Time’s a-wastin’, man.”
“Really? That fast? After hitting that buzzer and siccing half of the former special ops community on me, you’ve seen the light that quickly?”
“You knew I would all along, you stinking sack of shit,” Dwyer growled. “That’s why you backed down so fast when my guards showed up. You knew I’d agree with you.” He pointed to himself and Matt. “Now, what do you need us to do?”
Garin turned to the former SAS man. “Matt, keys to the SUV?”
Matt dug into his pocket and tossed the keys to Garin.
“Why don’t I have one of our helos take you instead?” Dwyer asked. “Save some time.”
“No. Too much attention. Besides, where I’m going, there’s no good place to land. Don’t worry. If I get stopped, I’ll say I stole your vehicle so you won’t get into trouble.”
“That ship’s sailed, buddy. They’re bound to find out eventually that we’ve been helping you. Just make sure you succeed. That’s our only ticket out of this mess,” Dwyer said. “What else do you need?”
“How do I reach Olivia?”
“Wherever she is, a half dozen of my men are close by. If she’s not in her office at the Old Executive Office Building, she’s at my place.”
“I need to use secure comms to talk to her right away.”
“I can only guarantee a secure line if she’s at my place,” Dwyer said.
“It’ll have to do.”
“You can use the phone on the desk. You know the number.”
“One last thing,” Garin added.
“What’s that?”
Garin cast a bemused look at his old friend. “Blue Zero? Seriously?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
NORTHERN VIRGINIA
JULY 17 • 1:45 P.M. EDT
The summer heat and humidity of Washington, D.C., weren’t as oppressive as the residents made them out to be, thought Taras Bor. Still, a nation as great as the United States could’ve selected a more temperate location for its capital city. No matter. His assignment was drawing to a close and he would be gone soon.
Nearly everything was in place. There were just a couple of loose ends to take care of, and he was on his way to taking care of them, the Beltway traffic being his only real impediment.
It seemed the only loose end Bor wouldn’t be able to eliminate was Michael Garin. From the very outset, Bor suspected that might be the case. He knew Garin to be smart and tough. Over the last few days he had also proved resilient.
It had been a mistake to delegate Garin’s elimination to the Iranians. But that had been Moscow’s call. The Iranians took offense at any slights, real or imagined, no matter how small. Giving them the task of taking out Garin was designed to keep them happy. Bad move. They were horribly overmatched.
Fortunately, the Iranians’ failure proved unimportant. It hadn’t been necessary to kill Garin. He was on the run, discredited. Even if he had seen anything of consequence in that tunnel in Pakistan, no one would believe him now. Besides, Bor had bought himself an insurance policy against Garin. Something to freeze him in place should he get too close. He wouldn’t be a problem. He would be no problem at all.
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