“I have no authority to grant such a privilege, but I will carry your request back to my government. I am authorized to inform you that the government of Iran will not go further than what we offer today until the criminal—Hunter Caulfield—is turned over to our representatives for trial in Iran.”
“We are not able to find the man, Mr. abu-Saab; and we don’t yet know if he is the so-called terrorist you deem him to be. Furthermore, we have no direct proof that he committed crimes on Iranian soil or upon Iranian officials or citizens elsewhere, or that he is the person whom you dub “The Shadow”. For that matter, we have no evidence that he is even alive. We have principles of due process here, and we will hold to them in the case of Captain Caulfield since he is an American citizen.”
“Proof of his death would suffice,” the stone faced Iranian said.
The Same Morning
Headquarters United States Marshal’s Office, 600 Army Navy Drive, Arlington, Virginia
Present: ATTORNEY GENERAL, DUSMS, DDUSMS, ADFBI
The twenty-five year old USMS headquarters building is located in the sprawling Arlington, Virginia federal area where there is a concentration of United States Federal office buildings situated on a handsome campus adorned with a few remaining highly ascetic red oak and copper beech tree stands of those which once covered the area. The USMS HQ building is a huge eleven story behemoth made of bronze glass windows and their frames causing the casual observer wonder how the whole thing stands up. It is one of four such office towers that fill a full block a mile down the Potomac from the Pentagon. The other towers house offices of the DEA, DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], ATF, IRS, and NSA, and a host of others that the public does not need to know about.
Four senior law enforcement officials occupied the plush chairs of the director’s office with its view of the heart of the capital city, its monuments, the Jefferson Davis Highway, and the Arlington Memorial Bridge by which everyone from D.C. finds his or her way to the USMS HQ. USMS Director Colin McPherson presented the evidence that he considered to be the first breakthrough in the manhunt for the fugitive, Captain Hunter Caulfield.
Memo Begins
Interagency Fugitive Notice
Date: 04 May
Source: British Columbia Provincial Police Airport Security Detail to Interagency Fugitive Operations Office, Brooklyn Court Street Federal Building.
See BOLO-CIA internal communication US9164-CT 4779, 0107TWEP
Subject: International fugitive, U.S. citizen, Captain Hunter Caulfield, has been positively identified by facial recognition technology, as having passed through the Vancouver, British Columbia, International Airport. He was in disguise, but the facial recognition technicians consider their ID to be 92% certain. He was traveling under what is presumed to be a false identity in the name of Hyrum Edgar Poindexter from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, a certified accountant. The name is that of a child who died forty-two years ago in Ontario, and the address—while genuine—was found to be that of an abandoned warehouse in a seedy section of Port Coquitlam. The owner lost the property to foreclosure five years ago and has since died. The Office of the RCMP for British Columbia has launched a quiet but extensive search and investigation. To this date, it has been established that the fugitive obtained a rental vehicle from the GMC Canada, airport outlet and returned it one week later. No evidence has been elucidated to indicate a travel route(s) or destination(s). He has been identified as having departed Canada via American Airlines flight 1432 the same day as the vehicle was returned. There is no videocam evidence of him having ever left that airplane and no surveillance data indicating that he—in fact—entered the United States.
Director McPherson played and replayed the remarkably clear surveillance footage. The subject made no effort to conceal his face, and no one in the room could convince himself or herself that they could tell that it was the fugitive.
“I suppose we’ll just have to go along with the facial recognition techs and move aggressively. Director, this is an FBI case, especially since it is currently isolated to foreign soil or to cross international boundary movements. Can you go along with that?” Attorney General Gertrude Heimel asked.
“I suppose so. The USMS is fully ready to cooperate. Let us know what we can do. We have a lot of takedown teams who are itching to get on this guy’s tail.”
“You have any problems with the Bureau taking charge, Mr. Zikordov?” AG Heimel asked the ADFBI.
“We’ll be on it as soon as I can get on my cell phone.”
By the time the interagency fugitive notice was disseminated, The Sheep Dog had been in the United States for eight days. He was—at the moment—milling about with several hundred flea-market aficionados in Memphis, Tennessee. He stopped at seven different gun sellers booths and found everything from left hand guns, to women’s small purse .22 “mouse guns”, to a Smith and Wesson Model 500 .50 caliber Magnum double action revolver—essentially a handgun that fired an elephant gun round. That massive, nearly useless gun for a man of action—weighs 4.5 pounds and has an 8.37 inch barrel. Hefting the huge revolver gave Sheep Dog a good laugh.
He moved quickly between booths and finally found the most ill-kempt, most alcoholic, most devious gun dealer he could come up with. He bought three guns from the same dealer for a total of $480. The first was a Smith & Wesson Model 640 stainless steel snubby that fired .357 magnum rounds. Its limitation was that it could only hold five rounds. Its advantage for Sheep Dog was that he would be able to conceal it in a sack or satchel or even in the leg pocket of a pair of cargo pants. The second was a Springfield XDN 9 mm Black 19X1 modified to hold 13 rounds. The third was an Armscor M1911A1 .45 from which the serial number had been removed He bought a stock of the dealer’s own wild cat—self-made—rounds, including a box of “cop-killers”—ammunition coated with polytetra-fluoroethylene [Teflon] for piercing Kevlar vests.
“You got any I-dee?” the sleepy bearded hillbilly asked.
“Nope,” Sheep Dog said and looked down at the man sitting in his folding chair.
Maybe it was the eyes that convinced him. Maybe he just didn’t care. The sale was concluded with cash and no paper.
There were things about the guns that Sheep Dog did not know and would not have learned had he even asked the right questions. Each of the weapons had been used in at least one murder; one was used in three separate murders. The three guns were first seized by the Memphis area sheriff’s office, then were sold by the Sheriff’s Department to a reputable gun dealer who sold them to a lawful concealed weapon holder who sold them to a friend of a friend at a flea market—all for a profit—and finally; they came into the possession of Emer Hadclif from Berryville, Arkansas, who was either drunk or did not care. Many states destroy such guns, but Tennessee and Kentucky—among a few others—sell or trade the guns for such things as Kevlar vests thanks to the lucrative efforts of the NRA. They can be resold legally in those states and are all but untraceable thereafter. Sheep Dog carried his guns and ammunition out of the flea market in a black canvas bag with a Lancome logo.
THE END-GAME
“If there’s not any endgame, we’re in quicksand. We take one more step, and we’re still there, and there’s no way out.”
—Richard Shelby
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
“Patience is the most valuable trait of the endgame player.”
—Pal Benko, speaking about chess
Yale senior Heather Prentissthe only daughter, the only child, of Oliver Prentiss—the assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency and his wife Natalie, had a part-time job as a dorm floor supervisor in Silliman College on Old Campus. During the evening when Sheep Dog came for her, she was conducting a discussion group on the diversity of American cultural life for VISA—Vietnamese Student Association—for which she volunteered as a mentor two evenings a week.
Heather was intelligent and excelled at Yale in her chosen major, art history. She was not particularly attractive and did not have a b
oy-friend, nor did she date very often. She poured her enthusiasms into causes, not unlike most of her Yale contemporaries. She had flirted with socialism and militant women’s lib which led her deep conviction of the value of activism to take Bella Abzug as her hero, to make sizable financial contributions to anti-war factions protesting the continuing involvement of the United States in Iraq well after the war was over, and to join a campus anti-gun coalition. She made friends with the leaders of SANE [National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy], the SPU [Student Peace Union], and especially VISA. She became interested in VISA when she attended an anti-U.S. seminar which focused on the atrocities committed by her country during the illegal Viet Nam invasion. She openly detested her father and his involvement with the CIA.
That Tuesday evening, the VISA discussion meeting was being held in the newer Georgian brick portion of the college in the Sillibrary—the college’s library—located in the third floor of Byers Hall. Silliman College is a residential college at Yale which opened formally in 1940, the last of the original ten residential colleges. Silliman occupies a full city block in New Haven.
Sheep Dog met the two Johannson brothers—the same ones who had poked their rifle muzzles into his chest and back during his recent visit to Nazko—in the baggage area of Bradley International Airport Distance, 52 miles from New Haven. The elder of the two brothers, Xe Johannson, had graduated from Yale the previous year and was altogether familiar with the Hartford, Connecticut—technically, Windsor Locks—airport and the route to mid New Haven and the university. The younger brother, Tran, was in training for a career in the RCMP and considering an intelligence service option.
The three men parked their rental car in an alley off Wall Street and headed across the college courtyard, which covers almost an entire city block—the largest enclosed courtyard at Yale. It was a warm evening, and the three men walking through the gloaming attracted no attention from the crowds of excited students engaged in intense games of whiffle ball, flag football, and Frisbee golf. There were several cause booths with student orators shouting to dwindling on-lookers. The three climbed the stairs to the third floor. Sheep Dog and Tran found soft chairs outside the library, and Xe was chosen to go into the library after Heather because of his thorough knowledge of the building and the library facilities. All three men were dressed in campus police uniforms.
Xe carried a set of photographs of the girl which Sheep Dog had obtained during the past week while he surveilled her. He was able to approach the VISA group because he heard raised voices speaking Vietnamese, his birth language. He wandered through the stacks nearby the group meeting area and kept himself as unobtrusive as possible. The informal meeting began to break up half an hour later, and the young Vietnamese students drifted away in groups of two and three leaving Heather to clean up the debris from their pre-meeting visit to The Buttery, a student-run eatery in the basement that serves highly popular greasy happiness and beer on weekday nights.
He approached Heather and greeted her in Vietnamese, “Chao co, Miss Prentiss.” She responded with, “Chao ba, officer. But, I’m sorry, I really don’t speak the language even though I lead the VISA group here.”
“I don’t mean to alarm you, Miss, but I have been sent by the campus police department to fetch you. It seems that the government feels that you are in danger from the federal fugitive, Hunter Caulfield. Maybe you have heard of him?”
“Who hasn’t. What has he to do with me?”
“There have been threats from the terrorist’s organization against your father and other officers of the CIA and their families. Your father, the CIA, and the FBI are taking these threats seriously. Please follow me to the campus police headquarters where you can call your parents, and they can tell you what measures have to be taken.”
“I have a cell phone.”
“Sorry, no cell phones; they are too easily traceable. We presume that Caulfield’s terrorist ring is very savvy electronically.”
That was sensible. Heather may have disliked her father and his profession, but she knew full well that it was a dangerous one. Despite her own opinion, she believed the young officer that she was in real danger from someone her father had offended or wronged. She left with him willingly. In the sitting area outside the library entrance, the two other officers stood and followed Heather and Xe out of the building. Xe led the party in the direction of the campus police HQ through what had become a dark, starless night. As they left the walled square and out onto the street, the three men looked carefully around for pedestrians; and seeing none at the moment, Sheep Dog produced a handkerchief soaked in chloroform and clapped it over the unsuspecting girl’s face. She struggled but could not scream, and within seconds slumped unconscious. Xe and Tran supported her in an upright posture back to the Wall Street alley with Sheep Dog walking closely in head of them to obscure what they were doing.
They loaded her inert sleeping body into the trunk of the car, handcuffed her hands and feet, and put duct tape over her mouth and a black hood over her head. Sheep Dog left the two young Canadians and the girl at that point and caught a taxi to the New Haven Hotel. The sons of Steffan Johannson knew the plan precisely and did not need any further instruction from him.
Sheep Dog found a rest room and switched out of his campus police uniform and into a charcoal grey business suit to wear on his flight to Reagan International Airport in Washington D.C. He had taken the precaution to mail his guns to a PostNet postal service box in Fredericksburg, Virginia that he had secured online the week before. The boys drove straight through all that night and the next day on I-95 to the border crossing at Houlton, Maine. Heather was very uncomfortable and very angry, but frightened enough to keep quiet and to remain cooperative with the young men who were pleasant and kind to her, allowing bathroom breaks and providing food. They did not, however, allow her out of the trunk or to have her hood off except for the bathroom breaks. They kept her purse in the back seat, but threw away her cell phone. They crossed the border without incident and found the helicopter where they left it in the small private airport hanger. They seated the hapless girl uncomfortably in the rear seat and took four days to fly a circuitous route to Quesnel, nearly 3,000 miles away, landing in wilderness clearings for breaks, food, and sleep.
Two Days Later
Oliver Prentiss had a long day. Being the assistant director was too much like when he was a naval ship’s executive officer. He had no direct control of anything, really; but he had to take the blame for all failures without whining—very really. It had been one of those days. He was to blame for the lack of intel on the new Greek financial crisis, for the intransigence of the Iranians who had delivered up only four of the bin Ladens to The Company; and—as on every other day—for not being able to capture his man, his protege—Hunter Caulfield. He gritted his teeth every time he thought about Hunter. He would see him arrested or dead this year and succeed Gerald Lang in the DCIA’s office, or he would have to take his pension and go plant posies for his wife and play golf with a bunch of bored duffers like himself.
Going up his driveway, he was wool-gathering about what he would do if he could just have the chance to meet Hunter face-to-face and have the drop on him. He put the Jag in the garage, picked up his briefcase and put it on his office desk, grabbed a Bud from the fridge, and headed upstairs to get a few winks before Natalie got on him about something that needed to be done.
The bedroom was dark. He flipped the light switch and did a double take at a scene that could not be real. Hunter Caulfield was sitting in the bedside easy chair. Hunter was aiming a .45 at his chest. It just did not fit into his world view. He took several seconds to take it all in.
When he had himself collected, he asked, “Hunter, what’s up with this. You broke into my house, my bedroom. Why on earth are you pointing a .45 at me, huh?”
“Because they don’t make .46s, Oliver. Sit down and shut up. I have news for you,” Sheep Dog said tersely.
Oliver found the second easy ch
air. It had been moved so that it faced Hunter directly. He waited without speaking.
“Surprised to see me?”
He held up his hand to command continuing silence. It was clear that he was in charge, and his questions he was about to ask would be rhetorical.
“Surprised to see me alive? It’s not any fault of yours that I am. It has been a difficult couple of years.”
Oliver got out a, “But…” and Sheep Dog’s uplifted hand shushed him.
The gun never wavered in its menace.
“Oliver, I want you to take out your guns, and your cell phone one at a time…verrrry carefully—and I mean delicately—like porcupines making love. I have no compunctions about finishing you right now. I think you want to live, and I want something you can do only if you are alive. You might just want to hear what I have to say.”
Oliver removed his Beretta from the shoulder holster, holding it by the trigger guard with his thumb and index finger and set it gingerly on the ground and kicked it towards Hunter. He did the same with his ankle weapon and his cell phone.
“Good. The next thing we are going to do is check out the hallway by your wife’s sewing room. After that, I will have something else to show you, and something to tell you. What you do after that is up to you; but, at least, you will have the facts to work with.”
Sheep Dog and the Wolf Page 43