HUNTER

by Bidinotto, Robert

  “You’re in no position to dictate terms!” Groat shouted. “This is FBI jurisdiction, not—”

  “Ricky, Ricky. You just don’t get it, do you? I am in a position to dictate terms. Uncle Sam very badly needs to know what I did. But if Uncle wants to hear it, he’s going to have to do things my way.”

  Nobody said a word. James Muller leaned forward and smiled.

  “Come on, now, people. Do I chat alone with Annie and Garrett? Or do I get lawyered up?”

  TWO

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Monday, March 17, 1:45 p.m.

  The man left the elevator and emerged into the underground garage. Traffic noise from above echoed faintly around the cavernous gray walls. Like all downtown parking facilities, it was crammed with vehicles this time of day. But he saw no one else around; only his shadow marched before him as he approached his SUV.

  He tossed his briefcase over onto the passenger seat as he settled in, snapped the belt across his corduroy jacket, and turned over the engine. The digital clock on the dash lit up, reassuring him that it was still before two o’clock. A relief that his meeting had ended so early; he’d beat the rush-hour traffic.

  Still, District streets were never predictable, what with unexpected road closures and VIP motorcades creating constant bottlenecks. He reached over and clicked on the radio, set to the local news station, to catch their traffic report.

  “...according to a CIA spokesperson. And the Washington Post is reporting on its website that the dramatic capture of this ‘mole’ within the Agency came after a nearly two-year investigation—”

  The seat beneath him seemed to be falling away.

  “—a Post source at Langley, the individual taken into custody caused, quote, ‘serious harm to national security, including the betrayal of numerous CIA assets and sensitive operations over a period of years.’”

  His hand, still extended to the volume control, fell to his thigh.

  “Meanwhile, the Agency spokesperson tells us that more information about the arrest of James Harold Muller today at Dulles Airport will be released at a joint CIA-FBI news conference, scheduled for 3:30 p.m. That’s it from here. Richard, back to you.”

  “Thanks, Mark. We’ll have a lot more on this breaking story at the top of the hour.... Now, let’s find out what’s happening on the area roadways—”

  Muller.

  For a moment, he couldn’t think of anything beyond that name. The rest of his mind was an empty hole.

  Then the man’s face floated up into his consciousness. Smooth, round, moon-like. Pale blue slits for eyes. The wispy hair. The little smirk.

  A blast of rage tore through him.

  Muller.

  Now it all made sense.

  He hammered the steering wheel with his fist, once. Twice.

  Then gripped the wheel. Hard. Squeezed his eyes shut. Took a slow, steady breath. Tried to impose order on the churning images in his brain.

  All right. What happens next? What do they do with him?

  Well, what would you do if you had just captured a traitor? Somebody who had—

  Immediately, he knew. Knew what they’d do.

  Guessed where they’d go.

  He turned to fasten his seat belt. Straightening, he noticed his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. Hard and glittering, like marbles.

  Then the anger melted away.

  His hands now rested lightly on the steering wheel. As always after he’d made a decision, he experienced a sense of icy physical tranquility and heightened mental clarity.

  He shut off the radio. Began to roll it around in his mind. Options. Details. Implications.

  It occurred to him that he should be concerned. After all, he might be about to wreck everything he’d been working so carefully to establish during the past two years. Yet that stray thought now seemed an irrelevant intrusion, like a scarecrow hanging impotently in some distant field.

  He would deal with any remote consequences, if and when. The only thing that mattered is that he could not let this go, here and now.

  Would not let this go.

  He sat in stillness for another minute, taking comfort in the low, reassuring purr of the engine. Then he shifted smoothly into reverse, backed from his parking space, and eased forward through the garage, prowling slowly toward the ramp that curved upward toward the exit.

  He would make a few calls, change some plans.

  He would not go home tonight.

  THREE

  EN ROUTE TO CIA SAFE HOUSE, VIRGINIA

  Tuesday, March 18, 9:30 a.m.

  The tall hills—as a Colorado native, she couldn’t think of the Blue Ridge chain as real mountains—rose and rolled around them as their trio of CIA vehicles sped west on Route 66. They’d been on the highway since the early-morning meeting on the seventh floor at Langley.

  “Nice briefing.”

  She lowered the copy of the Washington Post that she’d been reading and glanced at the man beside her in the rear seat of the armored Lincoln limo.

  Grant Garrett, the CIA’s deputy director of National Clandestine Services, wasn’t given to compliments. Nor had he looked at her as he said it; he was staring off at the hills. He was a study in gunmetal gray, from his close-cropped hair, to his well-tailored suit, to the pen he tapped idly against the slate-colored note pad on his lap.

  As always, Garrett looked morose. It wasn’t a matter of his mood, typically inscrutable. His flinty features exuded an unforgiving toughness. But the sagging skin beneath his pale blue eyes also suggested world-weary sadness, born of decades of ruthless victories and regretted losses.

  “Thanks,” she said tentatively, taking her cue from his terseness.

  Garrett glanced at her. “Boss didn’t rattle you.”

  “Not particularly.”

  He grunted. Looked back at the passing hills. She took that as another compliment.

  “Lucky that asshole didn’t get you killed,” he added.

  “Which one—Muller or Groat?”

  He grunted again. In Garrett, that passed for knee-slapping laughter. The grunt turned into a cough. The man was an incorrigible chain smoker. The only thing keeping him from lighting up here and now was gentlemanly courtesy.

  They were quiet while she finished reading the Post story about Muller’s arrest. The media frenzy about his chaotic airport takedown was to be expected. But a “high-level CIA source, speaking on condition of anonymity,” had leaked a few sensitive background details to a Post reporter, a guy to whom Agency higher-ups often fed self-serving propaganda. The most disturbing detail was that Muller was “being held for questioning by the Agency at an undisclosed location outside of Washington.” Garrett, who had scanned the paper first, circled that paragraph before he handed her the paper.

  She folded and dropped it on the seat, then pressed back into the soft black leather. She was physically drained. Her right shoulder throbbed. She needed sleep badly. She turned to the passing landscape. A power line running parallel to the highway rose and fell rhythmically between poles, like the soothing pulse of a cardiograph. She struggled to keep her eyes open.

  “You happy working for Randy, Ms. Woods?”

  She looked at him; his face was unreadable, eyes forward. She thought about her supervisor in the Office of Security. “He’s a good guy to work for,” she said carefully. “And I like investigations.”

  “You’re good at them. As everyone now knows.”

  More compliments?

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Please. Grant.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Grant.”

  A pause.

  “I spoke to Randy about you last night,” he continued. “Says you’ve maxed out, as far as promotions in OS.”

  “Yes. Unfortunately. Well, we don’t work at Langley to get rich.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Another pause.

  “Ever think of transferring?”

  Where is this going?

  “A
s I say, I like investigations. And, as you say, I’m good at them.”

  “Well, it’s clear to us that your investigative talents are being wasted on stuff like background clearances. NCS certainly could use your skill set. In counterintelligence.”

  It startled her. “That’s...very flattering, sir, but—”

  “Grant.”

  “Yes, sorry. Grant. Very flattering. But frankly, I don’t think I could stand working in CIC and having to suck up to Rick Groat every day.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the Counterintelligence Center. I meant working directly for me.”

  She shifted around to face him.

  “Here’s my problem,” he went on. “Yeah, Groat is a royal pain in the ass. But I can’t get the Bureau to replace him. Long as he’s their liaison at CIC, my people there are hog-tied. They spend more time justifying what they do than just doing it.”

  “Which is exactly why I wouldn’t want to be there.”

  “Which is exactly why I wouldn’t want you to be there, either. I need somebody to function independently from the Center. To help me run special CI ops directly. The old-fashioned way.”

  She knew exactly what he meant. Before ascending the food chain in National Clandestine Services—which veterans still called by its old name, the Directorate of Operations—Grant Garrett had been a legendary case officer, one of those “cowboys” that some congressmen despised and some Langley managers feared. But he survived because he got results, and he got results because he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.

  She wondered why Garrett bothered to stick it out in a bureaucracy that was risk-averse to the point of paralysis. She thought she knew how. Randy once hinted to her in an unguarded moment that Garrett “had stuff on some guys on the seventh floor.” That didn’t surprise her. Garrett was a bare-knuckles guy, heir to the operational style that prevailed in the CIA’s predecessor agency, the OSS of World War II, under its legendary founder, “Wild Bill” Donovan. These days, Garrett was the only reason that Langley still produced any valuable HUMINT at all. They relied way too much on satellites and drones.

  “Think of it this way, Ms. Woods—”

  “Annie.”

  He actually smiled. “Okay—Annie. Think of it this way. If we had a fully functioning counterintelligence section in NCS, we might have picked up something about Muller from the Russian side. But we don’t, and we didn’t. We were completely blindsided. That bastard has cost us dearly. Think of the officers and agents blown or killed. Strauss, Kilwalski, Sokolov, Malone, Ayyad. God knows who else.” He looked down at his hands, his expression even more dour. “I shudder to think what he’s fed to the SVR.”

  “Let’s hope he tells us today.”

  “Yes. Let’s hope. But over the longer haul, I still need to beef up our CI. And after this, I don’t know who I can trust anymore.” He lifted his eyes. Looked into hers. “Except somebody who’s proved her loyalty and competence.”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve already taken the liberty to get Randy and the Corner Office to sign off on this—but only if you want it. Look, I know that CI officers aren’t the most popular people at Langley. But what you’ve done has won you lots of respect. Anyway, it would be a promotion and a considerable jump in pay. Down the road, it might lead to some foreign travel. Young woman like you, that could— Oh, that’s right. You’re married. I forgot. But no kids yet, right?”

  She felt her lips tighten. “No. No kids. And no marriage anymore.”

  She saw that it caught him off-guard.

  “Sorry, Annie. That should’ve been in the file.”

  She looked away, out the tinted window. Recalled Frank’s heart-stopping admission of his affair. The months since—a smear of ugly, painful images involving lies, leaving, and lawyers. Nothing she’d wanted to share with colleagues.

  The Muller investigation had been a diversion, a blessed obsession that forced her to focus on betrayals less intimate. But the case was winding down. She’d no longer have the cushion of that distraction. She’d go home each night to the now-too-big Tudor in Falls Church. Lie alone in the now-too-big king bed.

  “It’s okay. The divorce went through only a couple of months ago. I didn’t broadcast it.”

  “I understand.... Well. Maybe you don’t need another major disruption so soon. How about you sleep on it?”

  She faced him again, forced a smile. “Thanks. I’m flattered. Really. I’ll think it over.”

  Maybe another major disruption is just what I need.

  FOUR

  CIA SAFE HOUSE, LINDEN, VIRGINIA

  Tuesday, March 18, 10:15 a.m.

  They turned off 66 at exit 13, just west of the small rural community of Linden, Virginia. Their limo followed close behind the lead car—a Grand Cherokee loaded with a security team and communications gear—onto Route 55, running parallel to 66. A short distance past the volunteer fire department and a bottling plant, they turned south onto a narrow side road posted “No Trespassing—U.S. Government Property.”

  The road took them into the wooded hills. Within a couple hundred yards, they approached a guy standing at the roadside in jeans and a denim jacket. He spoke into a walkie-talkie as they passed. After about a mile, the road curved left into a tiny valley—a flat depression, really, between a couple of thousand-foot-high hills.

  It dead-ended at the gate to a driveway that looped in front of a modern, three-story house. The gate was part of a white rail fence that surrounded the property, which looked to be about three or four acres. The house had multiple gables and was wrapped by a broad porch filled with scattered white wicker tables and chairs. A young woman in a green windbreaker and brown slacks sat in a rocker near the front door, a magazine on her lap. Not far from the house, a man in a plaid shirt was raking a patch of bare earth. Several smaller wooden structures stood not far from the main building. A gravel parking area held three vehicles; next to it rose a two-story, four-car garage.

  Fearing that the Russians might now come after him to shut him up, Muller had insisted that his debriefing take place somewhere both secret and secure, but also away from Langley. When told about the Linden site, he quickly agreed. Garrett explained to Annie that the Agency had established this covert safe house four years earlier, after left-wing “journalists”—he pronounced the word with disdain—had blown the locations of other CIA facilities much closer to HQ, even posting detailed satellite photos on the Internet. But this one remained secret. Any lost tourist or deer hunter who wandered near the property would see little to arouse his suspicions before politely being sent on his way. There were no signs of security obvious to an untrained observer, but Annie knew better. The innocuous rustic rail fence would be loaded with sensors. She also noticed small communications antennae and multiple satellite dishes on the house and garage roofs.

  Because of today’s special guest, security would be much tighter than usual. The woman on the porch and the man in the garden would be part of a detail of about twenty armed, highly trained members of the Office of Security. Most would remain hidden in the house, in the garage, and on the road leading to the residence. A sniper team would be perched on one of the hills overlooking the property. And their arriving convoy would add eight more officers to the protective detail.

  As their lead car pulled up to the gate, the young woman on the porch stood and moved her hand onto the porch railing. The gate section blocking the driveway slid aside electronically, allowing them to enter. The Cherokee and their chase car peeled off toward the parking area, while their driver pulled their limo around to the front door.

  “This,” said Grant Garrett, unfastening his seat belt, “should be interesting.”

  *

  “Why us?”

  At the question, James Muller looked up from his cup of coffee, which was steaming in the surprisingly chilly room. His soft, almost cherubic features flowed into a smile. His hands were no longer cuffed, but a security officer stood nearby.
<
br />   “Why me, anyway?” Garrett continued. “I know you’ve worked before with Ms. Woods. But you and I have never met. So, why do you want to talk only to her and me?”

  They sat on sofas and stuffed chairs in the spacious, maple-paneled den of the safe house. In addition to the cool temperature, the room seemed dreary and impersonal, as if the home’s occupants had not yet fully moved in. Annie noticed that the big stone fireplace was unused; no metal tools around it that might be employed as weapons. Nor were there candy dishes, ashtrays, photos on the walls. Even the built-in bookcases were empty. Thick, bark-colored curtains were drawn over what she knew would be bullet-resistant, laminated windows.