by Gordon Kent
He almost walked into them. Alan must have taken his instruction to keep moving a little too seriously—that, or the mildly pornographic casts at the lower end of the ruins didn’t suit his mood. Either way, Harry had just started to climb the levels of the amphitheater for a view when he heard their voices below him. He looked back and saw them edging around an archeological dig toward the shade at the south end, and he was trapped in the open, along the top.
“This is perfect,” she said. The word “perfect” had a purr to it—purr-fect. She sat at the edge of the sun on the lowest stone bench. Alan looked behind him and moved on without pausing, and Harry thought that, all things considered, Alan deserved a pat on the back because they’d made eye contact and now Harry knew Alan had seen him.
Alan sat down next to her.
“What is it like, living in that metal monster in the bay?” she said.
“What do you know about Bonner?”
“I like to talk, to know you a little. It has taken me a long time to get to this place. Those men in Trieste, they were there to kill me, yes?”
She kept her eyes on his, a directness that was both feminine and cold. Harry felt that Alan was dealing with two people—a beautiful woman who wanted to be admired, and a cunning animal of no sex whatsoever. The breeze carried the next sentences away, but they both looked serious. Harry could hear only the tone. Then Alan’s voice was distinct again. “How did you find me?”
“Do you know the name Efremov?”
Harry knew that one. Bonner’s boss. A name from the past.
“Yes.”
“I was his—companion. In Iran.”
“What do you know about Bonner?”
“You are very brisk, Commander Bond. I had a small speech to make, and you have spoiled it.”
“Ma’am, I covered for you with the police, God knows why. Now I’m talking to you. I don’t know you, but I know you got me to a café where some guys shot at me. As far as I can see, no one shot at you. Pout all you want, but please answer my questions.”
Harry winced. Alan Craik all over. Mister Goaloriented.
“Are all Americans so rude?”
“Can we talk about Bonner, ma’am?”
“Would you care to ask my name? ‘Ma’am’ makes me feel quite old.”
She was playing with Alan. All Harry’s life, women had played this game with him, and he knew that Alan didn’t know how to respond. Other men did it with ease. She wanted something—some recognition of her presence, her magnetism, and Alan was not giving her
anything.
“Please call me Anna.”
“Anna, I shot a man in Trieste. Men may be hunting you. I don’t have much time.”
She watched him through her lashes, a feral cat in a fancy collar, and he almost flinched away.
“There is a mole in the CIA,” she said. “He is at a very high level.”
“A mole, in the CIA. Who, Aldrich Ames? Tell me another.”
“I can prove what I say. Names, dates, transfers of material.”
A cold hand seized Alan’s heart and squeezed.
“Efremov knew this? I’m supposed to trust him? Efremov ran the bastard?”
“Efremov was a professional intelligence officer. No, this was not one of ours—just something he stumbled over.”
Efremov stumbled over a high-level mole in the CIA.
“Where is Efremov now, Anna?”
“He is dead.” She gave off genuine emotion, and Harry, high above them, felt the surprise that showed on Alan’s face. Efremov had a lover who missed him?
“Who are you working for?” he asked.
“Myself!” She said it with bitter emphasis. “Only myself. I want one million American dollars for my files on the mole. I have other items as well. They will be sold separately.”
“We’ll have to meet again.”
“Ah, the gallantry! Do you even see me as human, Commander?”
“Okay, Anna, call me Alan. Is that better?”
“Oh, the progress I’m making! We have exchanged names! Does your wife tell you how handsome you are?”
Alan looked at her and smiled his second smile of the afternoon. “Mostly she tells me I’m a gomer.”
“Gomer?”
“She tells me I’m foolish for, well, various little things like leaving ice-cream in the refrigerator instead of the freezer.”
Anna laughed a different laugh, and Harry added a third person to her selves—the courtesan, the spy, and the woman with the real laugh. Harry thought he might like to know the last one.
“Gomer. Yes, men are like that. Blind. Alan, I have information that will prove there is a high-level spy in the CIA. I will provide it to the first buyer with one million dollars in a bank account in Switzerland with an automatic teller card and a letter from the bank.”
“I can’t get that kind of money.” Alan sounded as if he was repeating lines—as he was. Inside, he just kept imagining a high-level mole in the CIA.
“Find someone who can.”
“Can you meet me again in two days? Or meet somebody else?”
“I want to meet you.” She smiled at him. “You at least saved my life.”
“In two days, at the ticket kiosk outside Herculaneum.”
“Who wrote this script for you? It might be nice if we walked away from today with a little warmth, don’t you think? Or am I like a police informer? Just a piece of trash you wouldn’t associate with?”
The breeze came up again. Harry could hear only the intense murmur of their exchange.
Then she laughed out loud, the second peal of totally unaffected laughter she had made. Whatever Alan had said, his recoil suggested that laughter had not been the answer he expected.
“You were on one of Efremov’s lists, therefore I thought you were a case officer. That’s why I chose you—because I could find you through the Navy, you would know the business, you would know how to deal with me. Now I find that you are a military man who dislikes attractive women. You are no case officer, Commander.”
“No, I’m not. I take it you’ve already offered this information elsewhere?”
“Perhaps. Tell me, what woman do you like? Or are you homosexual?”
“My wife.”
That did it. Harry sighed. He’d never have given such an answer.
Harry knew she was going to take the second meeting: she wanted the money. Alan had all but promised it, in spy talk—the wrong move, but he had done okay otherwise. Harry didn’t relish dropping twenty feet from the top of the small amphitheater, but, short of walking past them, there was nothing else for it. He let himself over the edge carefully, looked down, made a face, and dropped.
Alan looked at her, her face, her lightly tanned skin, the Italian linen dress that fit like a four-digit price tag. Her physical perfection was so total that it was almost alien. She lacked Rose’s warm sexuality; she had her own, but there was no warmth to it. He didn’t trust her and he didn’t like her.
“Somebody will meet you at the kiosk.”
“If it isn’t you, how will I know whom to meet?”
Alan’s brain went into high gear, trying items of clothing, newspapers, umbrellas, all the things he’d read of in le Carré and Len Deighton. Nothing came to mind.
“Carry flowers,” she said and smiled, but all Alan saw was her teeth.
A telephone, Naples.
“Hey, babe.” Alan’s voice was tight with fatigue and excitement.
“You!” Rose laughed and gasped and sounded angry all in the same syllable.
“I haven’t forgotten you, babe. I should have called earlier.”
“You’ve got Mike worried sick! Is it over? The thing, I mean—this woman—” Dukas had told her something about Anna, he supposed. Bad move, Mike.
“It’s over for today, yeah.”
“You didn’t bother to tell me that you had shot a guy in Trieste, either!”
“I couldn’t.”
“You bastard!”
“I know you do.” Repenting a little. “And it sounds nice to hear it.” She laughed her throaty laugh. “Who is this woman? No one will tell me.”
“I can’t, either.”
“Is she beautiful?”
Alan had a guilty twinge from nowhere. He hadn’t done anything. “She’s, uh, quite something to look at, yup.”
“Well, the two-tacan rule does not apply in the Craik-Siciliano household, you hear me?”
“I miss you so much, Rose—”
“That’s better.” A whuff of released air from her end. A good sound. “I’d talk dirty to you, but Mikey’s here.”
“Somebody wants the phone. I really miss you. When this is over—”
“No, stay on the phone! Just a little while. Say it again—‘When this is over.’ I want to believe it’s going to be over. Soon!”
“We’re trying. God knows we’re trying.” He cleared his throat, found himself husky-voiced. “I love you. We’ll be together when this is over.”
He headed for the boat and a STU to call Dukas.
“Dukas.”
“Mike, it’s Alan.”
“How’d it go?”
“It’s not about Bonner, Mike. That was a throwaway to get me to meet.”
“What the fuck? What’s she want, then?”
Alan looked at the little screen on the phone to make sure it was secure.
“She says she can finger a high-level mole in the CIA. She wants—”
“What? Say that again.”
“She says she has computer files to prove that there’s a high-level mole in the CIA.”
Crackling and spitting noises from the secure line. “Anybody could say that.”
“She’s not anybody, Mike. She says she was Efremov’s companion.”
“Companion?”
“Mistress. Honey. Whatever. Mike, listen to me. A high-level mole in the CIA!”
“Holy shit.” Pause. “Yeah, I heard Efremov croaked. You believe her?”
Alan thought about Anna, with her looks and her feral arrogance. “I guess so, yeah.”
“What does she want?”
“One million dollars in a Swiss bank with an automatic teller card to access it.”
“Wow, that’s original. Al, any crank can come up with the CIA mole thing.”
“Mike, I can’t get over two things—that the accusations against Rose might be connected to the mole, and that this woman came to me. How would she know who I was, and the Bonner thing, if she didn’t have some access to Efremov?”
“Bonner was in the papers. So were you.”
“Was Efremov?”
“Fair enough. Yeah, we never mentioned him in our case. Okay. When are you meeting her again?”
“I’m not meeting her again.”
“You can’t not meet her! You just said there might be a link between the mole and the case of the woman who happens to be your wife!”
“I know, I know—but—Look, I promised the CAG I was out of this. I got a stack of fitreps to smooth, I’ve got to ride my maintenance guys, and I’m meeting the tech reps in an hour. Anybody could make this second meeting.”
“When?”
“Two days, just like you told me.”
“Who do you expect me to send to a meeting in Naples in forty-eight hours?”
“How about an NCIS agent?”
“Nobody with the training. They’re in Bosnia.”
“I don’t have any training, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, but I know you. Come on, it might help Rose. I don’t have anybody else.”
“Harry.”
“No. He’s doing too much as it is. Al—for Rose.”
Alan leaned his forehead on his free hand. He could argue to Rafe that they were in port, anyway, and he was entitled to some liberty—what if he had a meeting with a woman? So did half the guys on the ship. And it might help Rose: if Anna could really reveal the mole, and it was the mole who had framed Rose, then wouldn’t she be exonerated? He made the decision, realigned priorities. He’d have to work harder tomorrow to buy the time. “Okay.”
“Good. Meet Harry first. I’ll set that up from here. Just look for him.”
“How about he just waits for me on the pier?”
“That’s not how we do this, Al.”
“Meeting’s at two p.m. at Herculaneum.”
“Half-hour by train from Nap to Herc. Huh. I want you to come down the pier at 1230 local, okay? Look for Harry once you clear the pier. Once you see him, just follow him until he stops and let him initiate contact, got it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. If I have anything else, I’ll call Marty Stein, NCIS on the boat, and have him pass it, okay?”
“Roger. I gotta go, Mike.”
“You think I’m sitting here for my health? So get moving.”
“Love you too, Mike.”
Alan hung up the phone and went to his bank of safes in the intel area. This would have been the preserve of the intel officer, if his det had been large enough to rate one. Alan had to be his own intel officer. He spun through the combination to the big safe and extracted a set of files—system parameters on the MARI datalink, with yellow stickies and comments in his handwriting, plus a sheaf of briefing reports from his aircrew.
NCIS HQ.
Dukas had got Triffler a real desk and his own telephone, partly by bootlegging a line and partly by moonlightrequisitioning a phone and a STU from a warehouse at the Navy Yard. Triffler had then walled himself off from Dukas’s mess with a dozen new white plastic crates arranged into a kind of room divider—irregular, stair-step construction, spaces between crates filled with golf trophies, plants, a piece of ersatz sculpture from a museum shop, and an oversized plastic apple.
“Who’s your decorator?” Dukas had growled when he saw it. He had yet to pick up the crate that had fallen from his own desk, or its files. Still, he tried to be friendly. “Want a jelly doughnut?”
Then Triffler was gone, researching the history of Rose’s computer in the days it had been out of her sight. When he came back, Dukas was so eager for good news—any good news—that he greeted Triffler like an old friend, dragging his chair over to Triffler’s side of the crates and pouring himself a cup of Triffler’s coffee. Triffler was just telling him that Rose’s hard drive had been switched in an Arkansas transit warehouse—two fake NCIS agents had appeared there and waved a forged letter from a non-existent Mister Tremont in NCIS Security—when Dukas’s phone rang. Dukas groaned and tried to reach through a plastic crate to get it, knocked over a golf trophy, spilled his coffee, and groaned again. Triffler already had a roll of paper towels and was mopping the coffee as Dukas jumped past him and at last got to the phone. It was an encrypted call, so he had to hit the STU, and that really pissed him off. “Dukas!” he shouted. “I’m busy!”
“Jesus, Mike, take it easy.”
“Harry! Where the hell—? Listen, I’m in a meeting—”
“Mike, somebody just turned on George Shreed’s home computers. What I want you to do is—”
Dukas exploded. “How the fuck do you know what’s happening in Shreed’s house?”
“Don’t ask. The important thing is—”
“You’re hacking! You stupid sonofabitch! You could get us both in deep shit!”
“Mike, somebody has turned on George Shreed’s home computers. He’s at his office—Valdez already checked. Think!”
Dukas thought. “Menzes?” he said. “Menzes is surveilling him and not telling me?”
“Possible. Think again.”
“Somebody else is in Shreed’s house playing with his computers. So?”
“If it isn’t us, and it isn’t Menzes—Think wild card, Mike.”
Dukas hesitated only an instant. “I’m thinking. Bye!”
He grabbed Triffler by the arm and yanked him toward the door. “We’re outa here!”
“Hey—! My suit—!”
“You got
a car? Mine’s got a bad muffler, makes a hell of a noise—” Dukas was trotting, pulling Triffler along. “People remember it, right?—notice it—your car is better. I bet your car is better. Right? What d’you drive, Dick?”
“Where the hell are we going—?”
Dukas made Triffler drive. As he expected, Triffler’s Honda was less than a year old, unblemished. Dukas rode with a suburban Virginia map book spread on his lap.
“Where are we going?” Triffler demanded again.
“Shreed’s, I thought I told you that.”
“You didn’t!”
“Well, listen up when I talk to you!” He urged Triffler to more speed, and Triffler, who was a deft but cautious driver, pushed the car to within one mph of the posted speed limit. “We’re gonna do a drive-by of Shreed’s house and see is anybody there.”
“Why?”
“Somebody’s using his computers.”
“How do you know that?”
“A friend told me.”
Shreed’s street was tree-shaded and quiet. A few cars were parked along the curbs, but most of the residents were working. A young black man was walking two dogs; two white women pushed baby carriages; a lawn sprinkler threw dotted lines of water toward the pavement.
“It’s the white house,” Dukas said. “Go slow.”
“The Colonial?”
“Whatever—the white one.”
“They’re all white.”
“They’re all brick, for Christ’s sake; the white one! Yeah, that one—the one with the hatchback in the driveway. Oh, shit.” He said the last words because, as they came close, a thin white woman carrying a vacuum cleaner came out of Shreed’s house and began to remove the machine’s dust bag. She glanced up and then went back to her work. “Oh, shit, a cleaning lady!”
“A white cleaning lady, at that!” Triffler said.
“Read me the license number.”
“Of what?”
“The goddam car in the driveway. What d’you think, the fucking vacuum cleaner?”
Triffler read off the numbers as they cruised past. “Don’t look at her,” Dukas hissed. “Don’t look at her!”