Jack in the Box

by John Weisman

  8:55:16. He wiped off every surface he’d touched in the restroom, pocketed the paper towel, then made his way back to 211. There, he unfolded his lock pick, extracted the torque wrench, knelt, and stared at the face of the lock. It was a Schlage—a common commercial-grade pin-tumbler lock. Pin-tumbler locks were the most basic. You insert a key in the keyway of the lock’s plug. The key’s indentations fit protrusions on the side of the keyway. Those protrusions are called wards, and they prevent someone from using a key that hasn’t been made for a specific lock.

  Once the proper key is inserted, the cuts on the bottom edge of the key lift each pair of pins until the key pin and the driver pin both reach what is known as a sheer line. When all the pins are in that sheer line, the plug rotates, the bolt retracts, and voilà, the door opens.

  Sam concentrated on the face of the lock. The procedure wasn’t anything he hadn’t done hundreds of times before. Except those hundreds of times had been during training class, or overseas. Sam hadn’t touched a lock pick in more than half a decade.

  Well, it was probably like riding a bicycle. Some things you don’t forget. Like sniffing the lock to see if it had been lubricated recently. He flared his nostrils and inhaled. The answer was no. He grasped the pick, holding it in his right hand like a pencil, took the torque wrench in his left, then inserted both into the keyway of the plug.

  Using his right hand, Sam ran the pick over the pins in order to get some sense of how stiff the lock’s pin springs were. He manipulated the pick back and forth three times, and realized he had no idea how stiff the springs were.

  8:57:02. Okay—back to basics. He explored the interior of the plug to see if the pinholes were aligned. Some lock makers skewed their pinholes off center while others drilled randomly aligned holes, making picking exponentially more difficult.

  Sam made contact with the first pin, and then worked his way back. There were five pins in all—the normal number for a commercial-grade lock. And they were aligned. That would make the job marginally simpler.

  He applied a little pressure now, used his left hand to add torque, and then slid the lock pick back and forth quickly, in a motion that is known as scrubbing.

  He felt two of the pins—three and four—set on his first stroke. That was normal. A lock’s pins always tend to set in a particular order. He scrubbed once again, this time applying more torque.

  Nothing happened. He added pressure to the torque wrench. The pins slipped out of position.

  Dammit—he’d used too much torque. Sam lost all control. Feverishly, he moved the pick back and forth, vainly attempting to push the pins back where they belonged with the instrument’s flat side.

  Sam’s fingers began to get moist. This was going nowhere.

  He stopped completely, withdrew both pick and torque wrench, set them down, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and wiped his hands, his wrists, and his face until they were dry. His chest was heaving. He looked at the inside of his right wrist and watched his pulse race. Sam rubbed at his face with both hands. This was nothing at all like riding a damn bicycle. From off to his right he heard a sound and his head snapped back, wide-eyed, a deer caught in headlights. He remained motionless for some seconds, daring not even to breathe. It was nothing: normal nighttime office-building sounds.

  8:59:10. Sam forced himself to focus on the face of the lock once more. But this time he kept his breathing under control. “Zen and the art of lock picking” was how the instructors at the Farm had referred to the craft. And that’s what it was: the craft of lock picking. Lock picking was a skill that could be learned.

  Shut your eyes, the instructors had told the disbelieving spy trainees, and all things will become clear. They’d been right. And that’s what he’d do now. Sam closed his eyelids. It took a couple of seconds, but when he really concentrated, a three-dimensional holograph of the lock’s guts streamed into his brain. He saw everything: the hull, the pins, the springs, the alignment. Then, eyes wide shut, he inserted the pick, this time making sure that he used his wrist only to apply pressure. He scrubbed the pick backward and forward by manipulating his shoulder and elbow.

  8:59:16. As Sam scrubbed, he could sense the pins move. Then the number three and number four pins set—just … like … that. His mind’s eye saw them do so, clearly.

  8:59:19. Sam’s eyelids fluttered briefly. He adjusted the torque wrench to apply pressure and turn the plug slightly to hold the dropped pins in place. They held. Oh, goddamn, it was working.

  8:59:21. Sam shut his eyes so he could picture the tip of the pick. He shifted the torque wrench, which held the number three and number four pins in place. Quickly now he scrubbed the pick back and forth.

  8:59:25. Pin number one dropped—Sam heard the telltale rattle as the tip of the pick passed over it. He adjusted the torque wrench and rotated the plug just a hair, and scrubbed again. The other pins set. He had his sheer line.

  8:59:29. Crunch time. His hands moving as delicately as a neurosurgeon’s, Sam used the torque wrench to rotate the plug a hundred and eighty degrees. The plug rolled easily and the bolt retracted. Open sesame!

  Sam pulled himself to his feet, only then daring to exhale. The collar of his shirt was wet. Holding the handle of the steel door down to keep the lock open, he stowed the pick and torque wrench in his pocket, pulled the latex gloves back on, wiped the door handle clean with his handkerchief, then punched 4-2-4-2-8 into the electronic cipher lock. When he heard the faint click, he opened the door to 211 and eased inside.

  Sam closed the door behind him, then stood silent so his eyes would grow accustomed to the dark. He was carrying a flashlight, but wasn’t about to use it yet. There was a slight gap under the door, and a flashlight—even the small one in Sam’s pocket—could give him away.

  Besides, Sam’s night vision slowly started to kick in and he began to see faint outlines in the darkness. Moving cautiously, he made his way past the receptionist’s desk across the wide space to the door of Virginia Vacario’s office and the big safe inside—the safe that held Rand Arthur’s secrets in their padlocked box.

  He’d been able to copy down four of the five numbers Ginny had punched into her cipher lock. The sequence was 0, 8, 7, and 4. Sam ran his right hand up the outer edge of the door until his fingers touched the cool metal of the lock. Eyes closed, he touched the pad to make certain of the key placement. Then, without any hesitation, he punched a five number combination. There was an audible click. He eased the knurled handle counterclockwise, opening the bolt. Sam smiled. Piece of cake.

  Most people, he knew from experience, use familiar numbers as safe combinations and computer passwords. Telephone and Social Security numbers were common, as were street-address numbers, military IDs—and children’s birth dates. Ginny told him in Moscow that her daughter had been born the day Richard Nixon resigned from office. That day was August 4, 1974. So Sam had punched 4-0-8-7-4—and the sequence had worked. He was hugely satisfied with himself.

  CHAPTER 30

  9:01:22. Sam eased the heavy door open, slipped inside, and closed the door behind him. When the latch bolt clicked shut, he reached into his pocket to bring the small flashlight out.

  That’s when Sam sensed he wasn’t alone. He tensed. That’s when he felt the air around him shift—the same palpable change in pressure just before lightning strikes—and he caught the whiff of something vaguely familiar—a spicy, floral odor he’d smelled somewhere before.

  Instinctively, he stepped backward and ducked.

  Too late. “Unggh.” The blow caught him on the very ridge of his clavicle and drove him onto his knees. Sam rolled away from the smell. But obviously in the wrong direction. Because his assailant connected with a second shot. Sam’s arms went up reactively, but the son of a bitch caught him right on the point of his left elbow, sending a huge spasm of pain ricocheting all the way through his body.

  And in that split second Sam realized that he’d been set up one more time. Just the way he’d been set up
with Pavel Baranov, Irina Howard, and Alexei Semonov.

  His mind working at warp speed, the last few weeks flashed before his eyes. They were here to murder him. Get him out of the way for good. It was Rand Arthur’s killers—Red Jacket and Oakland Raider. They’d been waiting for him all along. Oh, Christ, that made Virginia Vacario part of the conspiracy. Or maybe she was Moscow Center’s mole—recruited in Germany, infiltrated onto Rand Arthur’s staff. Maybe Red Jacket and Oakland Raider worked for her, not Rand. That was it: she’d allowed him to see her cipher combination. She knew he’d figure it out—and break in to see what was in the goddamn safe. And so they’d been waiting for him. It was another bloody ambush.

  No—this time it would be different. They were really going to kill him tonight. They had to—couldn’t screw it up again.

  But he was so close to the end of the maze. So damn close. Far too close to die now.

  9:01:24. The latex glove on Sam’s right hand got caught up in the material of his jacket pocket and he ripped the cloth pulling it out. Just in time to take a third shot, which caught him in the kidneys.

  “Unh!” But he lunged forward, the pain offset by rage, tackled his assailant around the legs, and took him down onto the rug. The pistol came out of the holster on Sam’s hip and skittered across the floor, out of reach.

  Oh, goddamn, let there not be a second attacker. Let them not have night vision. Sam thought about going back for the gun. But he’d committed himself, and so he charged ahead.

  Sam was a sizable man—six feet one, two hundred pounds, and a grappler by nature. From his throat came the primeval growl he’d learned at Parris Island. “Aurrghh!”

  Like an attacking croc he wrapped his attacker up and took the son of a bitch into a death roll, right hand smacking hard upside the head, then grabbing a fistful of hair to yank his head back. Sam’s left hand chopped at his attacker’s face then went for the throat, his big hand squeezing the life out of the cocksucker’s windpipe, crushing his larynx.

  The pure, white-hot fury of his counterattack stunned his opponent. Teeth bared, Sam went in for the kill.

  Which is when his rampaging animal brain finally identified the spicy, floral-tinged odor of Chanel No. 5. He rolled away, horrified. “Ginny?”

  Breathing hard, Sam found his flashlight and switched it on.

  She was in a fetal position. Next to her lay the NYPD nightstick. He flung it across the office, rolled her onto her back, and examined her in the narrow beam of light. Her lip was cut. A trickle of blood oozed down her chin. Her cheek was bruised. He crawled as far as her shoulders and cradled her head. “Ginny, Ginny, Ginny.” He found his handkerchief and used it to wipe the blood. “Oh, my God. Hold on.”

  He scrambled to his feet, the flashlight probing until he found the light switch. The sudden brightness of the fluorescents made him cover his eyes for an instant.

  He returned to where she lay on the carpet. “I’m so sorry—”

  She shrank away from him, panic in here eyes. “Stay away from me—” And then, she saw past the latex gloves and the prosthetics and the mustache. “Sam? Sam Waterman?”

  “It’s me.” Sam bent down and daubed at her face. “Is there a fridge? Is there any ice?”

  She looked up at him blankly. ‘Thought you were a burglar … you’d come to kill me.”

  “Ice, Ginny,” Sam said. “Ice.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her head because she was having a hard time swallowing. He’d grabbed her throat pretty hard.

  She coughed phlegm then gurgled something unintelligible and pointed toward the outer office. Sam pulled himself to his feet. He spotted the pistol, scooped it up, adjusted the paddle holster on his belt, jammed the Glock home, then headed for the door. Half a minute later he was back, with a handful of cubes wrapped in a paper towel.

  She’d rolled onto her side, and was in the process of hauling herself into a sitting position when he came through the door. She gave him a quick glance, her hand pressed against the underside of her nose to staunch the blood.

  If looks could indeed kill, Sam would have been a dead man.

  He went to her side, knelt, and handed her the pitiful packet of ice cubes in their soggy wrapper. She pressed the cold bundle against her lip, wincing as she did. She looked daggers at him. “God, you sure know how to treat a girl.”

  “I—” Sam started to say something, then thought better of it and just shut up. He helped her to her feet, put his arm around her waist, and walked her to the couch, picking up the afghan where it had fallen onto the rug and slipping it over her pantsuit legs after she’d crumpled onto the brown leather.

  “Just lie there,” he said, slipping a bolster under the back of her neck. “Put the ice on your lip. Let the cold work. We’ll talk later.”

  9:32:00. “O’Neill said you’d become unbalanced—obsessive. But I never thought you’d try to kill me.”

  “I wasn’t. I wouldn’t. I swear. I thought you were the same people who tried to kill me last week.”

  “What?”

  He gave her the twopenny version, leaving out who Red Jacket and Oakland Raider actually were.

  Her expression softened, but only marginally. “Breaking in here. Sam, how could you do it? It’s a crime”

  “I thought—” he began.

  “Thinking is the one thing you obviously haven’t been doing,” she interrupted. “Look at you—gloves, flashlight. A gun, for chrissakes, Sam. What in God’s name are you doing carrying a gun?”

  “I told you—they were trying to kill me.”

  “And you thought carrying a gun would help. And how the hell did you get past the metal detectors?”

  “I took the Houdini course at the Farm.”

  “Very funny. C’mon—how?”

  Sam let the subject drop. Finally, he said, “Ginny, you don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I know enough.” The left side of Vacario’s face was puffy where Sam had smacked her. When she spoke it sounded like she had a mouthful of marbles.

  “Ed Howard was a plant. His whole defection was a plant.”

  “I figured that out,” she said. “I knew it after I read the transcript—the whole transcript. Carefully.” She gave him a spiteful look. “I took the notes, after all. And I know how to read a debriefing. I picked up on his inconsistencies. Believe me, I briefed the senator. He finally understands he was being set up by Howard.”

  Does he, now? Sam found her response interesting.

  But he didn’t say so. Instead, he parried. “Does he know there really are Russian agents cryptonymed SCEPTRE and SCARAB?”

  Her expression told him the answer was no. She dabbed at her cheek, then set the soggy paper towel on the rug. “Who?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Then why do you believe Howard wasn’t lying about SCARAB and SCEPTRE?”

  “Because he was mad at his boss.”

  “What?”

  “It was revenge—ego. That’s why he came back. Klimov had ostracized him. Put him in an office so small there was no desk or telephone. Shut him out. Howard decided to pay him back by defecting. But Klimov caught on. He used Howard.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s not. Once Klimov realized Howard was going to redefect, he made sure Howard learned about SCEPTRE and SCARAB.”

  “Who are …”

  “Who are, in reality, high-level Russian agents. That was the risky part for Klimov—embedding a tiny vein of gold in the lode of black information. But Klimov also made sure Howard got his hands on files that would focus us on disposables, not the real SCEPTRE and SCARAB.”

  “How do you know that, Sam?”

  “Because I found Howard’s files in Moscow, Ginny.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “For chrissakes, I thought you were involved. You could have been one of Klimov’s targets.”

  “You’re talking about Bonn?”

  He nodded.

  �
�Bonn was a NATO matter, Sam. It had to do with Soviet penetration of the German Foreign Ministry. I’d worked with several of the people involved on counterterrorism matters when I was at Justice. Langley asked me to take on a six-month assignment under DOJ52 cover. I had nothing to do with Klimov, or Putin, or Edward Lee Howard. That’s as much of the story as I feel obliged to tell you.” She pressed the ice to her cheek. “Back to Howard, Sam.”

  “Klimov made sure Howard got access to files—which, of course, are filled with misinformation. Howard never caught on. So after he defects he tries to impress me by passing his precious information to me—never knowing he’s a cog on Klimov’s wheel. But everything was a false trail—a black penetration op designed by Klimov and probably Putin to protect the real SCARAB and SCEPTRE. Okay: Howard defects, and he passes the information to me, and then something spooks him.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t know.” Sam scrubbed the false mustache with the edge of his gloved index finger. “But Howard gets spooked, and he goes back to Moscow—where Klimov kills him.”

  Her expression reflected how dubious she was. “So where does this all lead, Sam?”

  “I just told you: to more disposables.”

  “Disposables?”

  “Low-grade agents. Gofers. I have my hands on one of them.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” He examined her face. “Let me get you some more ice.”

  “I’m fine, Sam. I’ll survive.”

  His face darkened. “Then I’ll finish what I came here to do: look at Rand Arthur’s stuff in that safe.”

  Reactively, Vacario’s arms folded atop her chest. “No way.”

  “Have to, Ginny.”

  “You’re making the situation worse than it already is.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “But I can’t. What’s in that safe is lawyer-client stuff, Sam—not to mention classified materials that you have no business poking through. I will not open the safe for you—and I’ll call the police if you try to break in on your own.”