by Matthew Dunn
Her men, all burly and wearing matching dark suits and sidearms, stared at me, hostility and suspicion on their faces.
Marsha lowered her head, seemingly trying to make a decision. She looked at me, clapped her hands once, and said in an authoritarian tone, “On your head be it. Let’s go!”
There were of course problems with guns and dodgy Englishmen being allowed past the security gates of the Pentagon, but Marsha handled the affronts of the building’s security guards with an equal measure of aplomb and bullshit. She showed them her ID, cited national security and the authority of the attorney general, phoned the Bureau’s director and got him to call the Pentagon’s head of security, and paced back and forth while ranting that today was a good day because she could put away a lot of people for obstructing justice.
I called Admiral Mason and told him I was here with associates and would dearly like it if he could authorize us to enter the building and see him. The result was like a pin thrust into a balloon. With apologies from Pentagon staff, we were ushered through the security gates and guided to Mason’s office.
I thought about Admiral Thomas Cochrane, the tenth earl of Dundonald, as I entered Mason’s oak-paneled, nautical-themed office. I’d liked the fact that in our only face-to-face encounter, Mason had mentioned him, but honestly, it enhanced my sadness to be back here.
Mason was standing in the center of the room. The diminutive gray-haired commander was wearing a pin-striped suit whose jacket was buttoned, a navy blue tie, and black shoes that were gleaming with polish. He seemed like a general standing on a battlefield surveying the aftermath of a war that had gone wrong.
By comparison, the twenty-something man who was also in the room looked nonchalant and exuded contempt, as far as I could tell. Like Mason, he was well dressed in a suit, though he wore it like a spoiled rich kid. The thirty-something woman by his side was different. She repeatedly glanced at me, my associates, and the admiral, her expression alternating between worry and deference to Mason. No doubt she was loyal because he was her boss. Maybe there was a stronger bond in place.
Mason looked at me, rather than the FBI officials. There seemed to be a hint of disappointment in his eyes, yet also the stoicism common to most leaders. His back was ramrod straight; his intelligence was palpable. “A problem?”
“To be corrected.”
“By you?”
I gestured to Marsha and her men. “By people better than me.”
“You feel uncomfortable being here?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d hoped for something else.”
Mason gestured to his two colleagues. “Rob Tanner and Mae Bäcklund. They work for me, and are security cleared to the highest level. You did well to find the rifle.”
I responded, “French police found it, not me.”
“You directed them where to look. But you told me on the phone it isn’t enough.”
“No. Another strategy is in play. It’s beyond my control.”
The admiral placed his hands behind his back, looking every inch the quiet and calm officer. “Thales composed and conducted a symphony, but he was paid to do so. You think I tasked him?”
Marsha Gage stepped forward. “Sir, we have no proof of that.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because Cochrane doesn’t get things wrong.”
“Doesn’t he?” A slight smile emerged on Mason’s face as he kept his eyes locked on mine. “What haven’t you got wrong?”
I answered, “Alistair and Patrick knew I was going to be traveling under my Richard Oaks identity. They would have kept that secret. But the first time I came here to meet you, I was carrying my Oaks ID. I had to hand my passport and credit card to security, ready for me to collect it when I left the building.”
Mason’s smile vanished. “And you think I arranged to have your identity details copied while you were meeting me?”
I was silent as I stared at a man who I liked and respected.
Rob Tanner exclaimed, “You can’t just barge in here and accuse our boss of something this ludicrous!”
Mason gestured for him to be silent. He walked right up to me and quietly said, “If Thales is operating under instruction, then there will be a precise agenda behind that instruction. Israel goes to war. It makes enemies, but then it’s always going to have them. That isn’t the agenda. Renewing friendships and winning new friends is. I’m assuming you have the same thought?”
“I do.”
“And you think I’ve enacted a strategy to build new support for Israel by forcing its hand into war, and to hell with the consequences of how many Israeli and Arab soldiers and civilians die in the process?”
I was silent.
Mason walked to his desk and opened a diary. “I have the exact time and date that you came here.”
“I hoped you would.”
“Then you’ll support what I’m going to do next?”
I gestured toward his telephone. “Yes.”
Mason dialed an internal number, spoke for a minute, and concluded, “I want a name.” He waited, then said, “Nobody leaves the building without my permission to do so. Put the Pentagon in lockdown.” He replaced the handset in its cradle. No one spoke as he walked back to the center of the room and stood, deep in thought.
“Ordinarily, somebody from my office approaching the front security desk and checking the ID details of one of my visitors would be routine. But under these circumstances it is treason.”
Mae Bäcklund pointed at Tanner. “You! That would explain all your absences from work. Your behavior. Your . . . you accessed and copied Cochrane’s fake ID and relayed the data to Thales!”
Mason stood before her and Tanner. “Rob Tanner’s an employee of the CIA, planted here to keep an eye on me.”
Tanner’s face flushed. “Sir, that’s—”
“The truth, and I suspected it the moment your résumé landed on my desk. Recently, Patrick was able to confirm my suspicions. He found out about you and your handler. You’ve been telling your CIA handler everything that’s been going on in my office—meetings in hotel rooms with him, parks, phone calls from your car in the Pentagon parking lot. Did you honestly think you’d fool me? But that’s the worst of it. The Agency simply wanted to ensure that I was doing my job, so it put you in here deep cover.” Mason’s expression was cold as he added, “Get out of my sight, and when the building’s no longer in lockdown I want you to leave here and never come back.”
The ordinarily cocky young man looked bereft as he left the room. He was right to suspect that not only were his days in the Pentagon over, but soon he would be forced to leave the CIA as well.
Mason’s eyes moistened as he looked at Bäcklund. “But I have been a fool. My one blind spot. My goddaughter.”
Bäcklund looked incredulous. “You can’t be serious!”
“You copied Cochrane’s Oaks passport and credit card, and relayed their details to Thales. You are Thales’s employer.”
Bäcklund tried to object.
“The security desk has just confirmed to me that it was you who requested Cochrane’s ID!”
“I was just checking up on him. That was all. Please, my captain. This is a big mistake.”
“I’m no longer your captain! One of the reasons I hired you was because you had sufficient independent wealth not to worry about the pittance I paid you. If only I’d known that decision would turn out to be catastrophic.” Mason shook his head. “The other reason was because I thought I could trust you, of all people.”
Marsha Gage said, “We’ll take her away for questioning. But we’ll need a confession or more evidence. None of this is proof positive of guilt.”
Mason pointed at me while keeping his eyes on Bäcklund. “This man’s friends and colleagues are dead, leaving behind children who no doubt are distraught and afraid. Because of you, Mr. Cochrane was attacked and nearly killed. I urge you to make a confession. It’s the least you ca
n do.”
Bäcklund looked venomous. “You’re making a mistake!”
“No. The mistake is all yours.” He glanced at Gage. “Miss Bäcklund is gifted and capable, but I suspect she’s never dabbled in crime before, nor has she received expert training to cover her tracks as a criminal or spy. If you do a forensic analysis of her life during the last few weeks, what is your estimate of finding further evidence to prove her guilt?”
Agent Gage shrugged. “I’d say eighty—no, ninety percent likely.”
“Ninety percent.” Mason stared at Bäcklund. “Ninety percent. Agent Gage, do I have authority to offer a plea bargain?”
Gage took a moment to consider his question. “Providing you can swing authority from the attorney general and your bargain is reasonable in the eyes of the law, then yes, I don’t see why not.”
The admiral nodded. He said to me, “Such a plea would offer a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. But, in this case one might be slightly more preferable to the other. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Cochrane, you’ve suffered more than most. I won’t offer the plea if you understandably decide that Mae Bäcklund must face the devil.”
I looked at her and for some reason felt numb. “Offer her the plea.”
Mason asked, “Why?”
“Because it’s what I want and because it’s what my dead friends would have wanted.”
Mason stared at Bäcklund. “And therein is a reason why your duplicity and treachery should cause you endless shame. Mae—confess and you’ll get life imprisonment; maybe there’ll be the hope of parole in your later years. Keep your mouth shut, let the FBI unpick your life and find just one link to what’s happened, and it will be the death penalty.”
Bäcklund’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t do that to me!”
Mason placed his hand on her arm. “If I don’t intervene, you’ll certainly get the needle. But I promised your father I’d look after you. Please. A life in prison is better than no life at all.”
“And that is how you look after me, is it?!”
“At this stage, it’s all that I’m able to do.”
Bäcklund lowered her head while brushing Mason’s hand away. “I don’t want to die.”
“But you were very willing to allow others to die.”
“Not by my hand!”
“No. Your hand simply paid for their murders.”
“I . . . I didn’t know it was going to be like that. Not at first. It was all his idea. He did it.”
“He?”
“Thales.”
Mason’s voice was commanding when he said, “You must speak plainly and truthfully now. My offer to commute your death penalty will not stand if we have to force the truth out of you. If in five minutes I’m still standing here asking you not to lie, then there’ll be no phone call to the attorney general requesting clemency.”
Tears welled up in Bäcklund’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Tobias.”
“So am I. Why did you do it?”
Bäcklund hesitated. Then emotion and fear consumed her mind and body. Her legs buckled and she would have collapsed had Mason not grabbed her and held her upright.
“Why?”
Her lips trembled. “Me playing politics. Getting a taste of how it might feel if I make it big time one day in Capitol Hill. Giving Israel the friends it deserves.”
“And you did all of that knowing it could ruin the career of your captain?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know you’d set up Gray Site and would investigate what happened in there when things went wrong. I didn’t know you’d get involved, full stop.”
“And yet you kept going when I became involved. Far worse, you didn’t tell Thales to back down when people started dying.”
Bäcklund burst into tears. “It was escalating beyond my control. I couldn’t stop him.”
“He’s hired help! You could have told him to stop!” Mason felt incredulous that his goddaughter could have done this. “You were in direct communication with Thales?”
Bäcklund nodded.
“His name?”
“Monsieur de Guise was the only name I knew him by. And before you ask, I don’t know anything else about him. He approached me about a year ago”—she darted a guilty look at Mason—“to spy on you and what was going on in the Pentagon. I did precisely that. Then one day I asked Thales if he’d temporarily work for me.”
“Because you had the grand idea to play God and get Israel sitting at the top table.” Mason shook his head. “I employ two associates and both of them turn out to be spies. Thing is, though, one of them was just doing his job.” He nodded at Agent Gage, who told her men to put Bäcklund in cuffs and take her to the Bureau’s headquarters for in-depth questioning.
“Just one moment,” I said, and addressed Bäcklund, “Do you know what happened in Gray Site?”
She didn’t answer.
I stepped closer to her. “I’ll tell you what I think happened in Gray Site.”
I recited my theory to the room. On the day that the site’s personnel were killed, Thales and approximately seven of his men tailed one of the intelligence officers to work, knowing that the officer’s three colleagues were already in the station complex. The officer reached the locked steel door and sent his colleagues the correct security code for the day via text message, which told them that it was safe for them to unlock the door from the inside. They opened the door, whereupon Thales and his men stormed the complex, overpowered the four intelligence officers, and killed them with their own weapons. With the bodies carefully arranged, the scene was set to look as though the officers had turned on each other.
Thales ordered his men to leave. He locked the door behind them, knowing that Western intelligence agencies would send a search party to the site as soon as possible. He also knew that the only way they could force entry through the thick steel door was by using blowtorches. He ran a strip of flash paper from the inside of the door to a nearby sofa. He ran a second strip to a smoke incendiary device; perhaps one that comprised materials listed for me by the magic shop owner in Beirut—ingredients that included potassium nitrate, sugar, and baking soda. Both sofa and smoke bomb were only three feet from the door. He doused the sofa with flammable liquid and secreted himself in a cabinet in the corridor, opposite the sofa. The next day, the CIA rescue team torched the door. The heat ignited the flash papers, which burned to the sofa and smoke bomb, igniting both. Flash paper was used because it leaves no trace after it’s burned. Ordinarily, Thales knew at least one of the men in the rescue team would stand guard at the door. He had to move him farther into the complex; the fire achieved this, getting the guard away from the door and facing the burning sofa, with Thales’s cabinet behind him. Thales exited the cabinet, hidden from view by the smoke, and escaped.
The rescue team didn’t believe the smoke was suspicious because they thought it was from the sofa. In part they were right because cheap sofas, as this one was, can give off a very black smoke when on fire. They put out the fire and began sanitizing the station and making preparations to remove their dead colleagues to a safe extraction point for return home.
“Did I get anything wrong?” I asked Bäcklund.
Bäcklund now had a look of resignation on her face. “Thales was accompanied by nine men, not seven. But otherwise that’s exactly what happened. It was Thales’s idea when I told him about the telegram sent by Gray Site’s CIA officer. Thales had already warned a senior contact in Hamas that the organization needed to be careful because we might be listening in to their conversations. Damn idiot Hamas guy mentioned Thales’s code name during the site’s intercept of his call to a colleague.”
“There’s an Arab boy. He’s in the States. Where is he? What’s his target?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lie! Where is he?”
Bäcklund was imploring as she said, “Truly, I don’t know. This was Thales’s fail-safe. I knew about it in princi
ple but agreed with him when he said it was best I didn’t know details, in case”—Bäcklund swept an arm through the air—“something like this happened.”
Agent Gage stepped up to her. “You can forget the plea bargain if you can’t tell us where the boy is.”
Bäcklund had tears running down her face.
Gage said, “You’ve got a chance to live.”
Bäcklund was silent, a look of anguish on her face.
“She’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know where the boy is.” I looked at Mason, who nodded his agreement with my assessment.
Agent Gage and her men took Bäcklund out of the room.
“Admiral Mason, I want to apologize for thinking it was you behind all this.”
“No need to apologize, Mr. Cochrane.” Mason sighed. “You were right to suspect me. And, hopefully, glad to be wrong.”
“I am. But are you glad?”
Mason stared in the direction in which Bäcklund had been led away. “No, I’m not glad,” he replied in a near whisper.
“You can’t blame yourself for what she’s done.”
“I can. I gave her father my word I’d look after her. I failed him and I failed his daughter.”
“Admiral . . .”
“It’s a fact and one I must live with for the rest of my life.” Mason’s expression and demeanor returned to that of a quiet professional. “There’s no denying you did a superb job investigating Gray Site. I must admit I didn’t think you’d pull it off, you had so little to go on.”
“It’s irrelevant now. Are there any leads on possible targets for the Arab boy?”
“The Bureau, Homeland Security, NSA, CIA, and every police force in the country are cooperating on this,” Mason responded. “It’s a needle in a haystack. There are so many possible targets. We’ve put extra security around forthcoming public events, VIP addresses, rallies, government buildings including embassies, everything we can. But it’s not enough.”