Jack in the Box

by John Weisman

  Sam shrugged. But the Russian’s description rocked him. O’Neill’s tradecraft had always been acceptable, if not gifted. Of course, O’Neill hadn’t practiced tradecraft in almost nine years. “My colleague is a former diplomat,” Sam said, tossing a handful of chaff in Danilov’s direction. “He’s a lawyer.”

  “He must not have been very good as a diplomat,” Danilov snorted derisively. “He’s zalupa—a dickhead.”

  12:20 P.M. By the time the embassy contingent arrived, Sam had already negotiated O’Neill’s release from the cage. Danilov had seen to it straightaway. Then Sam browbeat the contrite O’Neill. The last thing they’d needed, he said, was to cause a flap. Phoning the embassy had been incredibly stupid and imprudent. Adverse publicity, he told O’Neill, would cause Rand Arthur, who’d been nervous about sending them to Moscow in the first place, to go ballistic. “It was bad enough for you to get yourself picked up doing something dumb like handling an icon without permission.” Sam spoke loud enough for Danilov to hear. “But once you were detained, it was imperative to keep this whole mess quiet.” Sam shook his head. “I was on the verge of straightening everything out, Michael. What on earth were you thinking?”

  O’Neill appeared to be on the verge of tears. “You disappeared for like an hour, Sam. I didn’t know what was happening. I was claustrophobic. I couldn’t breathe. Sam, they rushed me. They were all dressed in black. Wearing masks and carrying guns. They put a gun to my head. A machine gun. The muzzle, Sam, the muzzle was pressed against my head.” He touched his left temple with a finger. “See? They cut me with the front sight thingy.”

  Sam examined O’Neill’s forehead. “Michael—it’s just a scratch.”

  “It didn’t feel that way.” O’Neill’s eyes widened. “And they dragged me, Sam. Handcuffed my arms behind my back and dragged me by my hair.”

  “They thought you were a Chechen terrorist, Michael.” Sam exhaled. “And no matter what happened, you saw me arrive. You knew I’d get you out.”

  O’Neill hung his head. “I admit it. I panicked. I hadn’t heard a word from you in an hour and I just bloody panicked.”

  ‘That’s an understatement.” Sam eased his tone. He looked down at his friend and tried to sound reassuring. “Let’s hope for the best.”

  But Sam understood merde had really hit ventilateur when the embassy motorcade pulled up in front of the police station. He peeked outside. Mort Hazleton, Ginny Vacario, the vice consul, two junior political officers, and an FSN interpreter were riding in the DCM’s armored Caddie Brougham, the U.S. flag displayed on the right front fender. The limo was tailed by a Diplomatic Security war wagon flashing red-and-blue bar lights, complete with two junior consular officers armed with clipboards and pens, plus three ARSOs27 dressed in ninja black and toting submachine guns and sidearms.

  The DCM swept into the police station followed by the rest of the entourage from the limo.

  Sam didn’t like it. Danilov liked it even less.

  The Americans were immediately met by a line of Moscow policemen who blocked their way. When the DCM tried to push his way through the human wall, Danilov barked an order. The police drew their batons and raised them horizontally, creating a barrier. Then the line of cops moved forward, forcing the Americans back toward the doors.

  Sam caught Danilov’s eye. “Please …”

  The Russian’s arm went up. The police line stopped moving.

  Sam edged between the line of officers just as Mort Hazleton pushed his way forward, the interpreter at his shoulder. The DCM cocked his head in Danilov’s direction. “Ask if he is in charge.”

  Danilov didn’t bother waiting until the FSN finished. He answered in English, “Yes, Mr. Deputy Chief of Mission, I am Chief Inspector Danilov and I am in charge.”

  Hazleton waved his right index finger petulantly under Danilov’s nose. “How dare you chain a United States official in a cage like some animal. How dare you beat him. I am planning to send a démarche to the Foreign Ministry over the mistreatment of this important U.S. government official.”

  Danilov shrugged helplessly at Sam, turned toward Mort Hazleton, and switched into Russian. ‘Then there is nothing more to be discussed, sir. You and your invaders will leave this police station immediately or you will all be detained,” he said. He waited for the translator to finish. “Moreover, you should understand that your so-called official was caught using espionage equipment. If you choose to make an official protest, we will be forced to publicly identify him as a spy and demand his immediate expulsion from sovereign Russian territory.”

  Before the interpreter had finished, Sam stepped between the two men. He looked at Danilov. “Pazhalsta—please, Chief Inspector,” he said in rapid Russian, “let me try to work out something mutually agreeable?”

  Danilov cocked a thick eyebrow in Hazleton’s direction and answered Sam in Russian. “If that asshole can be made to see reason,” he said, watching as the translator suppressed a bemused look. “But I doubt it.”

  “At least let me try.” Sam beckoned Virginia Vacario over. Then he put his hand on the DCM’s shoulder. “Mort, let’s the three of us talk in the corner for a second, okay?”

  Hazleton opened his mouth to protest, but when he saw the look on Sam’s face and read Vacario’s concerned expression, he snapped his jaw shut. The diplomat scowled at Danilov, but also moved in the direction Sam was indicating.

  Sam herded the DCM and Vacario around the cage and across the stone floor to the far corner of the drab station. He made sure that the DCM had a clear view of Michael O’Neill, who was sitting on a bench behind the cage, sandwiched between two uniformed officers. “Take a look, Mort: Michael’s just fine. He panicked.” Then Sam pointed at the Russians and Americans, who were standing nose to nose. “Mort, this is overkill.”

  The DCM crossed his arms. “You should have heard his voice,” he said. “He reached me on my cell phone. He was screaming that he was chained in a cage and the police were beating him.”

  Vacario said, “Obviously, Mort, that’s not the case.”

  When the DCM nodded in agreement, Sam said, “Nobody wanted this situation.” He moved his head in Danilov’s direction. “Look—Michael was sightseeing. He picked up an icon. A priest thought he was a Chechen terrorist and called the cops. An OMON SWAT team responded, and they roughed O’Neill up a little bit. Then they brought him back here and the cops discovered who he was. Michael called me, I rushed over and met with Danilov. He realized the gravity of the mistake, and was willing to make the whole thing go away.”

  “He is?”

  “He was—until you showed up with machine guns and started making threats.”

  Hazleton blinked. “Michael said—”

  “I don’t give a damn what Michael said,” Sam interrupted. “Michael was obviously having the mother of all anxiety attacks.”

  Hazleton said, “What was that crack Danilov made about spying?”

  “O’Neill was wearing rubber gloves inside the church,” Sam said quickly. “It’s nothing.”

  “Rubber gloves?”

  “It’s an allergy thing—dust.”

  The DCM looked perplexed. “But—”

  Vacario caught the look on Sam’s face and broke in. “This is a complete disaster, y’know.” She shot the DCM a nasty glance. “It’s all your fault, Mort.”

  “All my fault?” Hazleton crossed his arms. “I’m not the one they took for a bomb-throwing Chechen. You insisted you wanted a strong response. You said—your exact words, Ms. Vacario—'I want a strong response, or the chairman will hear about this.’ ”

  “That was before we got here and discovered Sam had the situation under control.”

  “Nobody knew.” Hazleton looked accusingly at Sam. “You should have called and explained what was going on.”

  “Mort,” Sam said, “the whole idea was to solve this problem without involving the embassy.”

  “Well, the embassy has become involved.” The DCM removed his eyegl
asses, fogged them with his breath, and rubbed them clean with a pocket handkerchief. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Honestly? A tactical retreat,” Sam said. “Declare victory. Congratulate Danilov for taking O’Neill out of the cage as soon as he realized what was happening. Assure him there will be no démarche. Then take everybody back to the embassy and make sure nobody—nobody—writes anything down. You save face, and you allow Danilov to save face.”

  The DCM said, “Hmm.”

  “As soon as you’re gone, I’ll work things out. Then I’ll bring Michael straight back to the hotel so we can pack.” Sam gave Vacario a quick glance. “We’re going to have to cut our visit short.”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘There’s no way we can get the information the chair man’s looking for now,” Sam said. He turned to face Mort Hazleton. “Look, Mort: let me try to fix this my way. Once I get O’Neill released, I promise we’ll be out of your hair as soon as we can get seats.”

  The DCM looked hugely relieved. “I’ll do everything I can to help you leave quietly.”

  I’ll bet you will, Sam thought. But he stuck his hand out. “Thanks, Mort.”

  “My pleasure,” Hazleton nodded. “But no reports filed—by either side, right?” He stared at Sam. “That’s critical.”

  Sam understood only too well. If Danilov filed a report and Hazleton didn’t, the American would be put at a disadvantage in the bureaucratic paper wars.

  “I can’t guarantee anything,” Sam said. “But obviously, keeping this whole matter quiet is in everyone’s interest—theirs as well as ours.” He glanced over his shoulder. “So, shall I talk to Danilov?”

  The DCM straightened his glasses, and adjusted his French cuffs to better display his blue, white, and gold enamel White House cuff links. “Do it,” he sighed.

  EVEN WITH THE EMBASSY pulling strings, the earliest flight on which the three of them could get business-class seats was the next day’s Air France to Paris. That meant spending the night at Charles de Gaulle and taking a connecting Delta flight to Dulles the following morning. So they spent what was left of the afternoon sightseeing, driven about in an embassy station wagon and accompanied by an unhappy FSO Grade Four minder from the consul general’s office, who ushered them through Red Square, the Patriarchs’ Palace, the Cathedrals of the Assumption and the Annunciation, the tombs of the czars, the huge czar’s cannon, and the Kremlin Armory.

  The FSO kept up a constant mantra reminding O’Neill not to touch anything. Mort Hazleton was obviously taking no chances.

  The three of them had dinner in the Marriott’s rooftop restaurant, shadowed by an American minder and two Russian gumshoes. O’Neill was uncharacteristically glum, and his mood affected the other two. Sam understood the lawyer was feeling pretty guilty about his screwup.

  Well, he should. Sam had planned to slip outside Moscow and search Edward Howard’s dacha. That hunting trip was now out of the question.

  Ginny excused herself early. Her demeanor and body language told Sam loud and clear not to visit. So Sam and O’Neill drank Georgian brandy and smoked Cuban cigars, but hardly spoke. Just past ten-thirty, they left their Churchills half-finished and took the elevator, rode in silence to the eighth floor, and walked awkwardly in side-by-side lockstep to their rooms.

  Sam inserted his key card halfway into the reader and turned toward O’Neill’s back. “G’night, Michael.”

  The lawyer waved offhandedly and disappeared through his door without a word.

  Sam looked past O’Neill’s room toward Ginny’s door. Then the electronic latch opened, he turned the handle and went inside to spend the night alone.

  SAM SPENT the following morning walking the Arbat alone, too—alone, that is, except for the FSB surveillance team that picked him up as he came through the Marriott’s atrium. They were so obvious that he understood the Russians wanted him to know he was being followed. So he made things easy for them. He walked at a leisurely pace to the Pushkinskaya metro stop, then followed the underground passage to the No. 8 Line, rode one stop to Borovitskaya, took the escalator to the street, then strode along Znamenka Street until he came to the pedestrian underpass at the huge square leading to Ulitsa Arbat.

  He emerged near two armored personnel carriers with counterterrorist troops lounging in the morning sunlight, then elbowed his way along the crowded Arbat, past the fast-food joints and the old Peace Wall with its Cold War, anti-Reagan Star Wars tiles. He riffled through stacks of old prints, examined antique maps, and pawed over trays of Soviet-era military medals. He found one exquisite—and authentic—Order of Lenin decoration and bought it for Ginny. Fifty yards down the street he purchased a reproduction of an OMON SWAT-team patch for Michael O’Neill.

  At a matryoshka vendor just off Kalosin Lane, opposite the old Vakhtangov Theater, he bought two set of dolls. The first one chronicled the love life of William Jefferson Clinton; the second displayed the Bush-family political dynasty—with a camouflage-and-kaffiyah-clad Usama bin Laden as the final minidoll. He looked for, but could not find, a set of KGB matryoshkas like the ones Pavel Baranov had bought for him in Zagorsk.

  When Sam got back to the hotel just after one-thirty, he found a message from Mort Hazleton advising that an embassy car would pick them up at four, and that he, Ginny, and O’Neill would be given diplomatic courtesy at the airport. He also discovered that the subtle intrusion-alert devices he’d placed on his baggage and his briefcase had been tampered with. He conducted a thorough examination of his belongings, making piles of his stuff as if he was laying everything out prior to packing—which of course he was.

  The search had been professional. Every sheet of paper and news clip in his files had been replaced in exactly the order Sam had put them—although they’d probably been photographed. His shaving kit, a common venue for concealed items, had been gone through. Sam knew that because he’d set the jar and tube tops in a certain way and he could see they’d been opened and rescrewed. His tradecraft clothes had been examined. He wouldn’t be able to use them in Moscow again—not that he’d ever visit.

  He picked up his keys and examined the flag-themed plastic egg he’d removed from Ed Howard’s dead drop. The pen drive had been opened—the light film of dust he’d sprayed on a portion of its surface at6 A.M. was gone. But the USB tab hadn’t been inserted in a USB slot. Sam knew that because the eyelash hair he’d positioned just inside the slot opening with his tweezers was still in position. He snapped the egg closed, dropped the keys back into his book bag, and resumed packing.

  3:20. Sam finished and gave the room a once-over. He pulled his coat and scarf out of the closet, running his hand along the high shelf to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. He locked his suitcase, shoved the scarf through one of the overcoat’s arms, draped the coat over his one-suiter carry-on bag, then propped himself on the bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the blank TV screen across the room.

  Seventy-two hours ago, he’d come to Moscow all pumped up, excited to be back in the game. As they’d driven into the city from Sheremetevo, Sam had experienced a surge of self-validation he hadn’t experienced in some years. He’d been elated, energized, euphoric. Now he was leaving unfulfilled, depressed, and miserable, unsure of what he’d accomplished—if, that is, he’d accomplished anything at all.

  Irina Howard was dead—certainly in part because of him. He’d become involved with Ginny Vacario against his better judgment. O’Neill had volunteered to check Pavel Baranov’s mailbox in the Serebryaniki church in the Ukrainian quarter, and even that simplest of ops had gone terribly wrong. Sam ran his hand into his trouser pocket and jingled his house keys, fingering the pen drive. If that turned out to be worthless, then this whole trip had been for nothing, and a woman was dead.

  But the signs had all been clear—unmistakable. Messages that left no room for interpretation. And each one had been carefully constructed by Edward Lee Howard, as if he knew he would be murdered, and wanted to leave
a trail that could be followed. There are no coincidences.

  No coincidences indeed. And then, in an epiphany, Sam realized what had happened. He’d lost control. He was being moved to and fro like some damn chess piece on a board. Manipulated. Pushed. Directed.

  Don Kadick would have known how to deal with the problem. Sam wished he could call his old mentor for advice. But Kadick was long gone. Eaten alive by cancer. Sam cracked his knuckles.

  So, how would Don Kadick have dealt with this? He would, Sam quickly surmised, have found some way to go on the offensive.

  Russians are like submariners, he’d once told Sam. When Sam looked puzzled, Kadick had elaborated. “Russians make lists and operate off those lists. Look at their military doctrine: it’s inflexible; unyielding. They’re fighting in Afghanistan the same way they did in World War Two. What does that tell you, Sam? It tells you loud and clear that the Russian game plan is rigid. The KGB’s no different than the Red Army. It’s a huge, centralized bureaucracy. And Moscow Center doesn’t give its case officers the same operational flexibility we give you, because Moscow Center doesn’t trust its people to think for themselves. So, if you provoke, goad, incite—anything to disrupt Lubyanka’s game plan, you will prevail.”

  The phone rang, jolting him out of his reverie. It was the desk. The embassy car had arrived. He swung off the bed. It was time to move. Oh, yes it was.

  PART IV

  PARIS

  CHAPTER 20

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2002

  IT WAS RAINING when they arrived at de Gaulle; a steady, drenching downpour that could be felt even inside the concrete-and-glass terminal. Sam shifted his carry-on bag from his left to his right shoulder as they trudged along a damp carpet down the long, chilly passageway leading to the passport control barrier between the F and D Terminals.