Top Hook

by Gordon Kent

  “Is Dad okay?” he said.

  She patted his leg. On the other side of him, the black dog stretched and wagged his tail.

  “How’re you?” she said.

  “Fine.” He sounded wan.

  “How about a treat?”

  “I’d rather have Dad here.”

  She tried to laugh, couldn’t manage it, hugged him. “So would I,” she said. Then the telephone rang, and when she got up to answer it, Mikey followed her, to stand next to her and put one hand into hers as she listened.

  “Lieutenant-Commander Siciliano, please.”

  “Speaking.” She frowned—an official call. Was it about Alan?

  “This is Commander Ahlbein in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Stand by for the Chief, please—he wants to speak to you personally.”

  Her heart stopped. If anything has happened to Alan—

  “Lieutenant-Commander Siciliano?”

  “Sir.”

  “This is the Chief of Naval Operations. I had a talk with Admiral Pilchard a while ago, and I want to apologize to you personally for the shabby way you’ve been treated. I also want you to know I’m mad as hell about our part in it.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Relief flooded over her like a blush, turned to pleasure as she understood what he was really saying.

  “Commander, I want to assure you that we’re doing everything we can to make sure this ordeal you’ve gone through is over. Admiral Pilchard suggested, and I agree with him, that you need for us to show you some support. I can offer two things. One, immediate selection for full commander. Two, how’d you like to come TAD to me for a while?”

  “That’d be—”

  “Preparatory, I mean, to going to Houston for astronaut training.”

  “That’d be great!”

  “Only one thing: I have to ask you to clam up about this guy your lawyer thinks scapegoated you. That’s key, I’m afraid. We don’t know what he may have taken or where he took it to; if that word gets out, we’ll have every two-bit navy in the world testing us. And we’ll be wondering who knows things he shouldn’t know. So—if I give you my personal assurance that you’re going to Houston, can you put a lid on the story?”

  “If I have your word that it’s over—yes, sir.”

  “You have my word. You’re a damned fine officer.”

  He paused as if he was going to hang up, but he added, “You can put up those silver leaves as of 0600 hours tomorrow.” She heard the smile in his voice. “Subject to confirmation by Congress.”

  “Thank you—sir—” But he was gone. In his place, the younger voice of the commander who had first called came on, and he began to go through details of when she would like to report in Washington. And how soon could she leave West Virginia? If she was coming to DC TAD, would she need an advance? And if—?

  If he heard her weeping, he paid no attention.

  32

  Langley.

  In a room in the CIA building, eleven people sat around a conference table. Alone at one end, Carl Menzes was suffering the isolation of failure.

  At the far end of the table, an assistant to the Deputy Director presided. Clyde Partlow, Shreed’s nominal boss, sat next to him, already in the clear because he had argued successfully that Shreed was his equal, not his underling, and he hadn’t dared challenge him. Around the rest of the table sat people from Operations and Public Affairs, men and women in casual clothes who were trying on this Sunday to spin Shreed’s absence into an acceptable media presentation for Monday release.

  “Finding his car was conclusive for me,” Partlow said. Always a congenial man, he was today as warm and giving as a TV evangelist. “His canes in the trunk—that’s conclusive. And if the bloodstain checks with his DNA—well, it’s clear, isn’t it? Poor George is dead.”

  Far down the table, Menzes cleared his throat. The people nearest him leaned away as if he might be about to emit a communicable disease. “We don’t know that. His assistant, Ray Suter, told us—”

  The chair pointed a finger, the thumb cocked like a gun. “You fuck up, you shut up. You fucked up. Got me?”

  Menzes flushed a dark purply red and leaned back. Nobody looked at him.

  “Now,” the chairman said, “let’s explore this line of thinking that Clyde’s brought up. Suppose Shreed is dead? What does this do for us?”

  Nicosia.

  The wounded Turkish cop was in another room in the same Nicosia hospital. Unlike Khouri, the detective, he readily identified the photo of Shreed, but he stonewalled about what he had been doing that day. Gorzum, who seemed now to be on Dukas’s side, had shouted at him then, and Dukas, playing a card dealt him by the PLO man, Almasi, said, “What were you doing, sitting in the Topkapi Café with the American earlier in the day?” He felt like an actor reading lines, having no idea if the question had any basis in fact.

  Wahad had translated; the cop had looked terrified; Gorzum had shouted something that had to be a threat. After two lies and more shouting, the man in the bed had begun to babble. “He says okay, they were sitting with the American outside the café to protect him. He had hired them, their day off. Just earning some extra money because the police don’t pay well.”

  Dukas looked at Gorzum, but he was wondering how the Palestinian, Almasi, had known about the Topkapi Café. He asked what had happened at the café.

  “He says,” Wahad said, with one eye on Gorzum, “that the American met with a man. They talked. The other man left.”

  “What man?”

  “Now he says he remembers the American called the man ‘Colonel.’ Maybe a military man.”

  Gorzum said something in Turkish, and the wounded policeman muttered to Wahad.

  “Now he remembers there were other men with the Colonel. He just remembered it. Four men.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They looked around.”

  Counter-surveillance, Dukas thought. He could see pretty well what had happened—a clandestine meet. “What nationality were the men?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  Gorzum pushed Dukas toward the door. More rested, he might have tried to stay, but his will was mush. Gorzum went back in to scold the policeman some more, and Dukas wandered down the corridor and found himself facing Almasi, who stood there as if to say, I told you so. They looked at each other until Wahad joined them, and Dukas said, “Tell him that all the guy’d say is that Shreed met with a man he called ‘Colonel.’”

  “He says he knows. He says they were Israelis.”

  Dukas put together Israelis and Colonel. “Mossad?”

  “He says yes, Mossad.”

  “Is he sure?”

  A rapid exchange. “You think we don’t know when a Mossad officer flies in?” Wahad, too, looked tired, but he was speaking quickly. “He says his people saw a Mossad colonel with the American and the policemen at the café, but it meant nothing to them until the shooting. They hadn’t seen your wanted message at that time—it was Khouri who had seen it.”

  Dukas chewed it over. If Shreed had met with Mossad, then he was thinking of selling something—himself?—to Mossad. Had they set a second meeting? Had Mossad already picked Shreed up? “Ask him how I can get in touch with Mossad.”

  The two men spoke in Arabic. Wahad turned cynical eyes on Dukas. “He says, ‘Shoot a Jew.’”

  Almasi walked away from them and disappeared.

  After nine local time, Dukas made Wahad take him to a cyber-café. He didn’t want to talk on an open line; he didn’t have a STU; and he didn’t want to go to the embassy to use one—too many questions, too many CIA people. E-mail was, so far, fairly safe if you didn’t use words that could be keyed on.

  He sent Triffler an e-mail:

  “Hi Dick: my guy pos id here by two. He also met with King Solomon’s Minds and may now be their boy. Report upline urgent and direct to CNO and let him decide to tell Crystal Palace. DON’T YOU MAKE THIS DECISION YOURSELF. Having wonderful time, wish you were here. M
ike”

  Then, to Wahad’s relief, he had himself driven to his hotel, where he undressed and crawled between the clean sheets and closed his eyes.

  And the telephone rang.

  Dukas groaned. Nobody could possibly know he was there. Except NCIS, Naples. He picked up the telephone.

  “Mike Dukas, please.”

  “Who wants him?” His voice was so husky he could hardly speak.

  “Harold O’Neill of Ethos Security Services.”

  “Harry, Jesus Christ, I didn’t recognize you. How the hell—”

  “Cellphone, called NCIS, got no time. This is not a secure call. Here’s the dope, Mike: our guy made a meet in Dubai and just blew by us. You there?”

  “Dubai?” Yesterday, Shreed had been in Cyprus. Now he was in Dubai. Dukas was having trouble focussing. “I thought you were covering Al in Bahrain.”

  “This other came up. Valdez caught it.”

  “What about Al?”

  “He’s on his own.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus, Dukas thought. “Holy shit. Okay, I’ll catch up with Al. You stay after our friend there.”

  “Al won’t be there. He’s—He won’t be there.”

  “Leave messages at NCIS Bahrain, then. Better there than here.” Dukas rubbed his eyes. “You’re sure this was our guy in Dubai?” Because if it was, Mossad don’t have him.

  “Mike, I saw him. Pretty much saw him, anyway. Jesus, he killed one of my guys.”

  “Positive ID?”

  “Close. As good as.”

  Close is not as good as. “Shit,” Dukas said. He was not sure that Harry had ever seen George Shreed, in fact. “Double shit,” he growled.

  “That about sums it up.”

  Bahrain. Oh, God, another five hours in the air. Dukas lay back on the pillow. “I’m dying for sleep, man.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Okay. Okay.” He sat up. “I’m on my way.” He put the phone down and fell back, sound asleep. Within seconds, his eyes opened, and he groaned, halfway between sleep and waking, and the habit of a lifetime, the habit of duty, forced him to the surface of wakefulness. He reached for the telephone. “Call me a taxi,” he mumbled.

  Bahrain 1830 GMT (2130L).

  “I just want to know where the fuck we’re going!” Stevens whined.

  “I filed a flight plan for Muscat,” Alan said. “That’s all I know right now.”

  “Can I get JP-5 in Muscat?”

  “I’ll call the Jefferson when we’re in the air and get it.” In the clear, because we don’t have any trustworthy crypto.

  “How about a country clearance?”

  “Paul—”

  “Right. Shut up and drive the bus.” Stevens was back to giving him sullen looks.

  Over the Persian Gulf 1949 GMT (2249L).

  Alan had to shout into the cellphone to make himself heard above the roar of the engines, and Harry’s voice at the other end was fuzzy and indistinct.

  “He’s on a boat?” Alan shouted for the third time.

  “…hour ago!”

  “Is he on a boat?”

  “…boat!”

  Alan gnawed his upper lip in frustration and stared at the image on the screen. Dozens of small boats were in the Strait of Hormuz, and, without a second plane, they couldn’t use the off-axis MARI imaging to classify them. Targets smaller than fifteen meters tended to resolve as amorphous blobs on the screen.

  Alan switched to a datalink picture of the Indian Ocean and measured the distance to the Jefferson by eye. Then he put up a far-on circle to represent the best speed that Shreed’s boat could make, if Shreed had indeed taken a fast boat out of Muscat. Fifty knots in a cigarette boat? Maybe more. Call it fifty.

  “Harry, I’m going to land at Muscat in one hour, do you copy?”

  “…copy!”

  “Meet me.”

  “…ger.” Sounded like Roger, anyway.

  He cut the connection and tossed the cellphone on the other seat, where it rested atop the lead weights that balanced the plane when there was no one in the SENSO seat. Then he asked Soleck to get him an encrypted connection to the Jefferson.

  Rafe came through loud and clear, his voice only slightly distorted by the range and the encryption.

  “Rafe, I need the other MARI bird to rendezvous with me at 24N 060E. Do you copy?”

  “That’s two four North, zero six zero East. I copy. Launch in one five minutes.”

  “With a buddy store.”

  “Roger one buddy store.”

  “Rafe, he’s running in a small boat.”

  “What do you see us doing?”

  “We find him and blow him out of the water.”

  “I don’t think so, cowboy. We’ve got orders.”

  Alan thought about Rafe, who had overflown Algeria once against orders, to save gas. “Rafe, this might be our last chance.”

  “Where’s he headed?”

  “No idea.”

  “He ain’t going to China in a cigarette boat, buddy.”

  “He might go to Pakistan. By the time we find him, he’ll be well up the coast. Dawn, coastal traffic.”

  “Roger. I’ll talk to the admiral, but he’s not going to like it much. How will we know we have the right boat?”

  “Someone in Muscat saw him board. I think we may even have photos.”

  “Okay, cowboy. Keep it cool. I’ll get the birds in the air and get back to you.”

  And then Alan was alone with the night and his radar screen. He had an hour until they could get the photos from Harry in Muscat, and he spent some of his time putting vectors on traffic outbound from Muscat. Ten minutes winnowed the possibles down to fourteen. Alan entered them into the datalink in the hope that they would still be in the link after he took off from Muscat, saving him time on his search. If George Shreed was on one of those boats, he was five hours from the Pakistani coast.

  He tried to keep his mind off the meeting with Anna. He had failed to win her over, and, worse, he had failed to anticipate that she would simply walk away. He replayed the end of the meeting with Anna over and over, trying to choose the moment he should have acted. Force? Persuasion? When the chips were down, he had ignored Harry’s coaching and attempted…He hadn’t really attempted anything. She had run the meeting, reached a decision, and left.

  Had she reached a decision?

  He replayed the meeting again. He lacked Harry’s cynical view of her psyche, and the more he looked at it, the more he wondered.

  He had the CD she had given him. He had time and a laptop, so he unclipped his harness and moved around the tunnel until he had what he wanted, and then, with the tray locked across his knees, he fired up the laptop and put the black plastic disk into his drive and brought it up. It took a long time to load, long enough to worry that she had taken him on this as on everything else.

  The CD contained a set of files. When he accessed them, they all came up as cheap, grainy pornographic images.

  Washington.

  Ray Suter was terrified. He’d thought he knew what fear was when he’d killed Moscowic. That was nothing.

  Internal Investigations had kept him at Langley for five hours, going over and over the same questions: Did he know where Shreed was? Had Shreed been acting strangely? What did he make of Shreed’s absence on Friday? What were Shreed’s plans for the next week? the next month? On and on and on. Then they would leave him, then suddenly come back and start again. He’d told them the exact truth—except that he hadn’t told them the real truth.

  “Don’t leave town. Stay by your phone.” Somebody named Menzes had been in and out while they interrogated him, then was lecturing him. “We may want to polygraph you.”

  Ray Suter sat by his phone and agonized over what George Shreed was doing with what Suter thought of as his money right now, because if he could get at all that money he wouldn’t have to give a shit about what CIA Internal Investigations did or said.

  But if he didn’t get the money before he was poly
graphed, he was dead meat.

  Langley.

  The meeting to decide the public face of George Shreed’s disappearance had gone on and on. They were now in the phase where most of the participants, having got the chair’s signals that Partlow’s idea was a good one, were chiming in with their own views that the idea was in fact a great one: George Shreed was deader than General Franco, so how could any harm have been done, and how could his disappearance be the Agency’s fault? They went around the table in order (skipping Menzes), piping up with what they hoped were fresh takes on the greatness of the idea.

  Menzes sat silent. He rested his right cheekbone on the base of his right hand. He stared at each of them in turn, his expression morose. He managed not to look contemptuous: after all, he had screwed up—Dukas had told him he was moving too slowly on Shreed—and the people he was being forced to listen to were, at least on paper, his betters.

  When there were only four more enthusiasts to go, a hand touched Menzes’s left shoulder. He turned his head. A middle-aged security guard was beckoning to him. Menzes raised his eyebrows, then brought his left hand to his chest: me?

  The guard nodded.

  “Phone call. Urgent,” the guard whispered as Menzes brushed past him. As he left the conference room, Menzes looked back and saw the chairman scowling at him.

  The voices went on. They had been three hours figuring out exactly how George Shreed’s death was the best thing that could have happened, in the best of all possible worlds. Now, a silver-haired man who had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves was talking about TV news anchors who would listen favorably to CIA spin. “—Haseltine, prime time, dynamite anchor, has that cute co-anchor-person with the gap between her front teeth—a real friend of ours. I think that if I feed this to him tonight—I’ve got his private phone number—we can be assured that an important segment of the American public will hear our side of the story first, namely, that a patriotic American has met his death in the service of his country.”