by John Weisman
Sam walked into the second bedroom, which he’d furnished as a library-cum-office-cum-guest-room, and turned his computer on. He checked his e-mail for the first time in almost two weeks and noted with bemusement that more than eighty individuals whom he had never met nonetheless thought they knew him well enough to tell him his penis needed enlargement. Then he checked a phone number in his address book and used his cell phone to dial the number.
3:35P.M. Sam trudged up the escalator of the Metro Center station, crossed F Street, and headed east. At Ninth Street he walked into a coffee shop and joined a lanky man in a pinstripe suit, starched white shirt, and ancient madder tie who was stirring sugar substitute into a cup of coffee so weak that Sam could see the bottom of the cup through the steaming liquid. “Hey, Forbes.”
“Yo, Elbridge.” John Forbes had been LEGATT—the attaché for legal affairs, otherwise known as the FBI embassy slot—in Paris when Sam was deputy chief. Former Marines with a fondness for Guinness stout, the two had struck up a decadelong friendship buttressed by professional interests and similar histories. Both men were expat New Yorkers—Sam had grown up in Manhattan; Forbes in Bay Ridge. Both had attended Catholic schools. Both had seen combat in Vietnam. And both had an interest in spies. Indeed, until 9/11 Forbes had worked the counterintelligence beat for almost two decades. Now, like most of the FBI’s CI specialists, he’d been reassigned. These days, Forbes was the assistant deputy director of the FBI’s National Security Division, where he dealt with counterterrorism.
Sam shook his friend’s hand, slid into the booth, and ordered a Diet Coke. He watched as Forbes ripped open a second package of sugar substitute and dumped it into the coffee. “Careful not to get any of that stuff on your hands.”
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t be walking into JEH44 showing any white powder these days.”
“Nah.” Forbes laughed. “Anthrax task force is working out of Buzzard Point and the people I work with wouldn’t recognize anthrax if was sitting in an evidence bag.” He cast an appraising glance at Sam. “You’re looking better than your pictures.”
“Bite me, Assistant Director Forbes.”
“Just committing truth.” Forbes wiggled his thin mustache and graying eyebrows. “But I tell you what, Sam.”
“What?”
“If I was a Russkie, I wouldn’t go within twenty blocks of you. You is baaad luck for Russkies.”
“Is that your considered opinion?”
“Not my opinion—it’s a damn fact. I’m a trained professional. An expert witness. I could testify in court that being around you is bad for a Russkie’s health.” Forbes stirred, then sipped gingerly. “So, what’s up, Elbridge?”
“I need some help,” Sam said.
Forbes blinked. “Ask and it’s yours.” In Paris, Sam had clandestinely tasked one of the station’s agents—an Algerian national—to break into the Hotel Crillon suite of an American citizen—the CEO of a Fortune 500 company—Forbes was forbidden by American law from entering. Once inside, the Algerian was instructed to photograph certain documents in the American’s briefcase that proved the corporation was illegally paying kickbacks to a certain Russian oligarch.
Normally, the G-man would have approached his liaison at the French domestic security agency and asked the French to search the suite as a personal favor. But since the American had been blackmailed into spying on the Russian oligarch by DST in the first place, that particular solution was out of the question.
Because of Sam’s help, Forbes could swear to his nervous-Nellie bosses back at JEH that no FBI official had done anything untoward, and the information he’d acquired had been obtained through a third party with no affiliation whatsoever to the United States Department of Justice or any of its agencies.
Things often worked that way. When the National Security Agency wants to eavesdrop on American nationals—an act forbidden by law—NSA simply asks its friends at the Canadian, British, or Australian SIGINT45 agencies to do the job. The deals are reciprocal, allowing ministers of each govern- ment to deny—under oath when necessary—that there is no illegal eavesdropping directed against the citizenry.
When Ambassador Harriman discovered what Sam had done, she wrote a letter of reprimand and dispatched it to Langley, with a copies to the White House and the secretary of state. The American businessman had been both an intimate friend and a large contributor to the Democratic National Committee. But Sam didn’t care: the operation had resulted in a conviction (albeit with a suspended sentence). And over the past decade, the favor—and a few similar ones—had been returned twentyfold by a grateful John Forbes.
Sam slid an index card with three names on it under the special agent’s saucer. “I need to know if any of these people ever had a security problem at the White House.”
Forbes snorted derisively. “I thought this was gonna be something tough.” He pocketed the card. “When?”
“ASAP—with as much as you can assemble.”
“How’s tomorrow—five-thirty at the Dubliner?”
“Great.”
“Good—because you’re buying.”
“Works for me.” Sam thought for a minute. “John, when we were in Paris …”
“Ah, the City of Light. You. Me. All those jeunes filles. So many women, so little time.”
“Forget the jeunes filles. Did you ever surveil Ed Howard?”
Forbes blinked. “The defector?”
“Yup.”
The G-man shook his head. “Not on my watch.”
“Was it ever done? I’m talking full-court press. Video.”
“Maybe by the French,” Forbes said. “But definitely not us.”
“Can you check?”
“Sure. There’d be a record if we asked DST.” Forbes rose, flipping a five-dollar bill onto greasy Formica. “Don’t forget: Dubliner. Seventeen-thirty. Your tab.”
“It will be my pleasure.”
“It will indeed.” Forbes rapped his knuckles on the table. “Nice to see you and all that, Elbridge old chap, but I gotta get back to the grind. We’re about to ratchet up into THREATCON Orange and Director Mueller keeps sending me memos about how important it is to catch Tangos before they hit us again. Tangos, Elbridge, is LE46 talk for bad guys, just in case you missed it.”
“Remember to say hi to the guy in the dress for me, John.”
CHAPTER 25
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2002
6:03 P.M. Both of the Dubliner’s barrooms were jammed when Sam walked in, filled with a bustling crowd of congressional staffers, lobbyists, lawyers, and other assorted political hangers-on. It was not lost on Sam that every time he visited the venerable Capitol Hill hangout, the customers seemed to be getting younger.
He was more than half an hour late, but he’d felt uneasy coming up the metro escalator at Union Station. There had been a series of unmistakable pings all the way from Rosslyn. And so he’d taken a roundabout route to the saloon, trying to spot surveillance but unable to do so. Maybe, he decided, he was just on edge.
He shrugged out of his coat and elbowed his way to the back room, where the adults hung out. Forbes was sitting on a stool nursing the last inch of a pint glass of Guinness. A cigarette dangled from his lips and an attractive Alien in a black pantsuit nuzzled his ear.
The G-man saw Sam, stabbed the cigarette out, and waved him over. “Yo, Elbridge.” He swiveled and signaled for a new round of stout, then turned and shook Sam’s hand. “Elbridge, this is Johanna Simeone. You don’t want to get on her wrong side. She’s the only female currently on our hostage rescue team and she knows eighteen different ways to kill you. Johanna, this is Elbridge. He used to be a spook. You can get on his wrong side anytime.”
She had cool dark eyes that assessed Sam as he stuck his hand out. “Nice to meet you, although I feel compelled to say you have lousy taste in men.”
“I’m a masochist. I’m heavily into pain and suffering. Besides, he’s kind of cute and he carries handcuffs and a pistol.”
Her voice was as rich and smooth as Belgian chocolate. “Nice to meet you, too, Elbridge.” She shook his hand firmly, then turned back to the bar and topped her glass of mineral water off.
Sam reached across the bar, took his pint, and tipped his glass toward the FBI agents. “Good health.” He drank. “So, what are you doing in Washington? I thought you people were down in Quantico.”
“I pulled some strings—got her assigned to the director’s detail. The commuting was killing us.” He lifted his own glass off the bar and swallowed. “At eighteen hundred hours tomorrow, Johanna’s off to Europe with Director Mueller. They get back just before Thanksgiving. But when she does, she gets six days off.” He put the glass down and brushed his forehead languidly with the back of his hand. “Y’know, I’m starting to feel a little sickly. I think I may be coming down with something.”
“Lemme take your pulse.” Sam reached over and took Forbes’s wrist. “Hmm.” He looked at Johanna. “It’s serious. My diagnosis is that about a week from now he’s going to be one sick puppy.”
Forbes fluttered his eyelids. “What do I have?”
“Blue flu. It takes a week or so to incubate. And then six days to cure.”
“Blue flu.” Forbes guffawed. “That’s the thing about you, Elbridge—you’re insightful. Perceptive. A keen judge of human nature. You are mah bro-tha. We are bro-thas. To the end.”
Johanna Simeone shook her head. “I’m going to the head—gotta get back to work,” she said. “Director has a twenty-hundred dinner. Besides, all this male bonding makes me want to puke.”
“That’s me.” Forbes beamed. “I taught her that, Sam. And she can swear like a gunny, too.”
Johanna twisted Forbes’s ear, then kissed it as she slid off the bar stool, displaying the briefest flash of the pistol on her hip. “Don’t tempt me to discipline you in a public place, my sweet.” She turned toward Sam. “Y’know, every time I cuff him and walk him out of a restaurant, he gets embarrassed. I think he’s getting mellow in his old age.”
“Forbes is a very sensitive human being,” Sam said. “That’s why we all love him so much.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “I like you, Elbridge,” she said. “Forbes told me you were one of the good guys. How come I haven’t seen you until now?”
“I’ve been doing the hermit thing for a few months.”
“You don’t seem the hermit type.”
“It was a stage.” Sam hadn’t really thought about it until he’d just opened his mouth. But it had been a stage—and he was finally over it.
“You boys stay put.” She wiggled her fingers. “I’ll be back.”
Forbes watched self-contentedly as she sidled through the throng. “Oh, God, I love it when she talks like that.” He turned to face Sam. “Best thing ever happened to me, she is.”
“How long has this been going on?”
Forbes wrinkled his brow. “Haven’t seen you in what— seven, eight months. So it’s been six—maybe a little over.” He drank his Guinness down to the bottom. “We’re talking marriage, Sam.”
“Congratulations.”
“Never thought I’d do that again. But Johanna—” He slapped the glass on the bar and signaled for another round. “Great lady.” He paused. “And as long as she’s gone …” Forbes slid a thickly stuffed envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Sam. “Interesting material you asked for. Mind if I ask what the story is?”
Sam opened the envelope, took a quick peek at what was inside, and was delighted. “Don’t really know the story yet, John,” he said. “But I’ll make you a deal: when I get something concrete, you’re the first person I’m going to call.”
“I can live with that.” Forbes’s face grew serious. “In the meanwhile, you take care of what’s in the envelope. They can people for mishandling stuff like that these days.” He drained his Guinness. “Hell, Elbridge, I even wore rubber gloves when I pulled the files.”
“What does the Bureau issue these days? Last I remember it was those elbow-length yellow rubber things that were so thick they could have doubled as Russian prophylactics.”
“Very funny. You catch my drift.”
“I do, I do,” Sam said. “And I will.” He slapped two twenties down on the bar and took his coat from the back of the bar stool. “Gotta go,” he said. “Say good-bye to the lady for me.”
“Christ, Elbridge, whatever happened to romance? Whatever happened to commitment? This is our first date in months. I give it up, and next thing I know you put your clothes on and run for the door.”
“You know me—love ‘em and leave ‘em Waterman.” Sam tapped the breast pocket of his sport coat. “Thanks, John.”
“Nada.”
THE WEATHER had turned bitter—it felt like snow in the air—and Sam was glad he’d brought a coat. He started for the Union Station metro but stopped abruptly on Massachusetts Avenue, hailed a taxi, and jumped in. Tonight, he’d splurge. Although the G-man didn’t know it, Forbes had helped him break things wide open.
Sam was halfway to Rosslyn when he realized he’d forgotten to follow up with Forbes about the Howard surveillance. That was Johanna’s fault—she was damn impressive. Sam peered at the lights on M Street, wondering if he’d be able to salvage his relationship with Ginny. It had been years since he’d felt so intensely about a woman. The cabdriver ran a red light, swerved around oncoming traffic, fishtailed onto Key Bridge, and sped into Rosslyn.
Up the hill and to his right, Sam could just make out the illuminated exterior elevator of his apartment building. He scrunched back in the seat so he could pull the billfold out of his rear pocket and made a mental note to call Forbes in the morning.
SAM WAS UP at five. He stretched for ten minutes, working the soreness out of his shoulders and legs. Then he climbed into his foul-weather running gear: tights, turtle-neck, weatherproof nylon shell, knit cap, and Gore-Tex gloves. He locked the door behind him, secured the keys in a zippered pocket, and walked to the elevator. As he rode down, Sam saw the rain had turned to light snow overnight. He waved at the desk clerk, pushed out through the Atrium’s front entrance, and headed into the darkness.
Sam’s unvarying five-mile course took him out Wilson Boulevard to the DIA office building atop the Clarendon metro, then east, along Fairfax Drive to Route 50. From there, he looped around the Marine Memorial, cut through Fort Meyer, and then headed back into Rosslyn. In the summer, there were dozens of joggers out at this hour. But when the seasons changed, it was only a few hardy souls like Sam who kept up the routine. He gave his legs a final stretch on a streetlight pole just past the Atrium driveway, then headed down the hill toward Oak Street. The climb to Wilson and the following half mile uphill incline past Colonial Village got Sam’s heart pumping and he liked the strain it added.
Sam turned the corner. To his left, he could see the rear of Purgatory—an ugly, late-1970s glass-and-steel Seagram’s Building wannabe looming in the darkness on Nash Street. Even at this hour, there were lights on. Untouchables crafting legends. Or ruining them. It wasn’t just the Agency either. A couple of years back, Forbes had told him about an FBI penetration operation into a joint Russian Mafiya-Cali Cartel money-laundering scheme that had gone sour when the poor son of a bitch who’d been dropped undercover was given Joe Pistone’s Donny Brasco Social Security number.
Pistone was a now-retired FBI special agent who’d spent years infiltrating the New York Mob under the alias Donny Brasco. Pistone did enough damage that even now, more then twenty years after the operation had closed down, there was still an open half-million-dollar contract on his scalp. And yet, the FBI bean counters, knowing how frugal Director Freeh was when it came to funding undercover ops, hadn’t retired Pistone’s Donny Brasco legend—the Social Security number, the driver’s license, the bank accounts—the whole bloody Brasco identity.
And so, when Unsuspecting Special Agent Schlemazel’s Social Security number was checked out by the Colombian drogista and Russian vor whose money Schlemaz
el was allegedly about to launder, they came up with the name Donny Brasco. Hell, the Russian had even seen the movie. According to Forbes, if someone sharp hadn’t caught the mistake and yanked him the hell out of Cartagena right now; Agent Schlemazel would have been cut into bite-size pieces and fed to the Russkie’s pet tiger. And that would have been the painless part.
Sam checked behind for traffic—there was none—then turned onto Wilson, heading up the long slope to the Arlington Courthouse. God bless Forbes. The G-man had not only given Sam what he needed, he’d provided photos—copies of the trio’s White House, State Department, and Pentagon IDs. Sam had compared them with the clandestinely taken pictures from Ed Howard’s files, photos of two individuals meeting with an SVR officer. Pictures of money being exchanged for documents. Pictures of the individuals putting their thumbprints on the receipts.
And two of the individuals Sam had asked Forbes about—Barbara Steiner and Vernon Myles—were in the photos. So were two Russian intelligence officers whose faces Sam picked out from the FBI’s SVR flash book. 47