Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  Furious and worried, Hammond had gone up the chain of command, loudly explaining and complaining. Colleagues had told him to quit rocking the Bureau's boat. What did it matter? The Cold War was over. Frustrated and disgusted, he had resigned in protest, with hard feelings felt by all.

  Or so it appeared. In fact, Bobby Kelsey had listened well to Hammond and agreed. He secretly arranged Hammond's resignation in order to hide a new assignment—to go undercover to keep tabs on all Soviet defectors who had remained in the area, while trying to get information about the mole who had riddled and weakened the Bureau. Over the years since, Hammond had uncovered essential evidence on various Americans who were spying for other countries—among them Harold Nicholson and Douglas Groat of the CIA, Earl Edwin Pitts of the FBI, and Robert Lipka of NSA—but he had never found anything directly related to the alleged Bureau mole or about his original suspects—Berianov, Yurimengri, and Ogust.

  For the past month, Hammond had been trying to locate Berianov, ostensibly to interview him for his newspaper series. But the former general seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet. Hammond had left messages on his phone machine, but there had been no reply. No other émigré admitted having seen him lately. And Hammond had checked Berianov's house a dozen times but found it deserted.

  Berianov, Yurimengri, and Ogust had remained close since their defection. They drank together, dined together, and helped each other in business. Hammond had lived and breathed the pasts and new lives of the three men. He knew them inside and out, or so he told himself. The other defectors and émigrés were interesting, but most had not only assimilated into the United States, they had shown few of the signs that would cause Hammond to suspect they were anything but relieved to be living here. Daily they worked hard and struggled to pay their bills. Many had already become citizens.

  Not so Berianov, Yurimengri, and Ogust. From the beginning, they spent money far above their government resettlement stipends. Their businesses were not only well capitalized but instantly successful. They maintained ties to the KGB's successor agency, the FSB, in Moscow. And there were rumors. . . the kind of elusive smokescreens that could mean the fires of long-ago patriotism were banked but not out.

  So Hammond had shadowed them for all these years, losing them at times, only to locate them again. Then, just last year, he had discovered the missing millions from the KGB slush fund and Mikhail Ogust's connection to it, and had gone after him. Ogust had agreed to talk, but before they could meet, Ogust was dead. At which point, Hammond had contacted his old friend Eli Kirkhart and wormed the name of Ivan Vok out of him in connection with the fund. Using Vok's name, he eventually got to Yurimengri, but now Yurimengri was dead, too. Which left only Alexei Berianov, whom Hammond had considered the brains of the trio from the start.

  Hammond wanted Berianov with all the obsessive desire of a thwarted lover. He hungered for him not only for reasons of national security, but also because in Berianov he hoped to confirm that he had not wasted the last ten years of his life. So when Beth Convey revealed to him that Colonel Yurimengri's dying words were of Stone Point, West Virginia, of course he flew there immediately.

  "Did you find out anything about Berianov in Stone Point?" Bobby Kelsey asked.

  "Nothing." Hammond shook his head angrily. "But my gut tells me he's down there, and he's up to something we're not going to like. Something big. Before I got there, I checked my sources in Moscow. They told me they hadn't seen him. Have you heard anything?"

  Kelsey was driving south on Eighteenth Street, a bustling corridor of wall-to-wall restaurants. "You're not going to like this, Jeff. So I'll give it to you straight—we've got confirmation that Berianov's dead."

  "Dead? How? Where? When? Incredible! All three are now dead?"

  "Word in Moscow is natural causes. They discovered Berianov's body just a couple of hours ago. He'd sneaked into the city a few weeks back on something hush-hush to do with his business interests. Didn't call any of his old pals at the Kremlin or any of his ex-wives. Then he had a heart attack that killed him. Died in a hotel bed. Too much food, vodka, and bimbos. He was closing some big deal with one of the new oligarchs that he didn't want to get out just yet, and they were partying him until he dropped to make sure they got all the American greenbacks they could. It was a lethal combination for Berianov."

  It took Hammond's breath away. "First Ogust. Then Yurimengri. Now Berianov." He thought hard then shook his head. "Ogust was killed in a traffic accident, and Yurimengri was shot dead. Maybe Berianov didn't die of natural causes." At least he knew now why Berianov's house had been deserted.

  "Could be. You can look into it later if you want. Right now, I've a much bigger problem. Huge. And you're going to help me with it. We just had a message from a man calling himself Perez. He claims some kind of anti-American terrorist action is about to happen. It came through one of our street contacts."

  Hammond tore his focus from Berianov. "And?"

  "The contact disappeared. This was two days ago. Wednesday. We haven't been able to find him."

  "Swell. What kind of terrorism? What's the target?"

  Kelsey's lips thinned. "We don't know. Could be anything. The Capitol. The Supreme Court. The Mint. Maybe it'll be in some other part of the country, like the Oklahoma City bombing. But it doesn't look that way to us. The Bureau thinks it's going to be in Washington. The contact has been reliable in the past, and we have to take him seriously. Perez's message said the action was imminent."

  They rode in silence until Hammond finally said, "It could still involve Berianov."

  "Why? He's hardly the only one who could be conspiring against us."

  "True. But I flew to Stone Point to inquire about Berianov, no one else. Instantly someone goes to a hell of a lot of trouble to take me out of action. Someone who might know I've been keeping tabs on the KGB defectors all these years. As soon as I started asking a lot of questions about Berianov, it could've seemed to them I was getting warm."

  "Okay, maybe it's a Russian. Maybe Berianov had a second-in-command in place to take over if anything happened to him."

  Hammond nodded thoughtfully. "Could be someone from Moscow. Somebody with a long memory and a huge grudge."

  "Possibly. Or maybe there's no relation at all between those events. We want you to stay in the area in case it goes down here. You've got the contacts, dig around. Find out what's going to happen. Unfortunately, this could make the World Trade Center bombing look like a teen prank." Kelsey's freckled face was worried. His hand dropped out of sight, and he handed a brown paper bag back over the seat. "For you. Just in case. The serial numbers are burned off."

  Hammond opened the sack and slid out a Beretta pistol in a canvas shoulder holster. It was the model 92C, compact and easy to conceal, but with a powerful 9mm Parabellum cartridge. He hefted it, felt the balance. A good, reliable weapon. "I'll check my other sources among the émigrés." He took off his herringbone jacket and fastened the canvas straps across his back and under his arms, where his jacket would hide them. He settled the holster into his left armpit.

  Kelsey agreed. "That's what we need. If you find something, let's have a signal to bring you in."

  As he shrugged back into his jacket, Hammond remembered Kelsey's remark about Icarus. "How about: 'The sky is coming down in flames.' "

  "Good enough. I'll pass the word to our street agents to keep an eye out for an anonymous undercover man who might be coming in. Behave yourself, Hammond. I'll do what I can to shift the heat off you, but if you get into any more trouble with the police now, I won't be able to do anything, considering what they've got on you." Kelsey stopped the car at an intersection. "I don't have to tell you this, because you already know, but let's both be clear: Once I bring you in, you'll never be able to do this kind of undercover work again. Too many people will know. When you come in, you're finished with the game. Good luck."

  Bobby Kelsey did not turn around. He was surveying the traffic and pedestrians.


  "Right." Hammond stepped out of the Cadillac.

  A part of him still thought Stone Point was the place to start. After all, he had been framed in that little burg. He must have been getting close to something, and he was convinced that the something had to do with Berianov or someone Berianov knew. But he had already said enough to his boss. Instead, he gazed casually around at the early-morning coffee seekers hurrying to their jobs, then quickly blended into the sidewalk crowd and walked away.

  From his rented car parked across the busy morning street in Adams Morgan, Eli Kirkhart had heard the shots and muffled shouts from behind the row of brick townhouses. He had started his engine, shoved the transmission into gear, and plunged into the traffic toward the closest corner.

  He had managed to follow Graham, his team, and Jeff Hammond from Stone Point, and he had seen the big Lincoln turn into the alley and enter what had to be a Bureau safe house. At that point, as he had settled back in his rented car to watch who went in and came out, he had put in a quick call to his team for someone to cover the other end of the alley. No one had arrived by the time the shots exploded.

  At the corner, he had skidded around just in time to watch Jeff Hammond tear out of the alley into the street and sprint alongside traffic. Brakes slammed. Horns honked. Caught behind a cursing driver in a stalled Buick, Kirkhart could only join the swearing and watch Hammond dive into the back seat of a waiting black Cadillac with tinted windows. Instantly, the Caddy had accelerated and vanished into the heavy traffic before Kirkhart could get a license-plate number.

  Still swearing, Kirkhart was trying to force a lane through the traffic to follow when Chuck Graham raced from the alley, his weapon out, his eyes searching frantically everywhere. Kirkhart told himself Graham should be frantic. Neither the director nor Kelsey liked to lose a prisoner. The veteran agent would be lucky not to be demoted to anything worse than a desk job in Sandpoint, Idaho.

  A sudden break in the congestion allowed Kirkhart to reach the next corner and make another skidding left. Traffic was lighter on the side street, and he accelerated to the next corner, turned left again, and right once more into the other end of the alley. He saw Graham running back toward the safe house and drove to meet him.

  He leaned out of the car window. "Did I see Jeff Hammond running out of this alley, Graham?"

  Chuck Graham hurried to him. "Kirkhart? What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Coming to scope out the safe house for a prisoner," Kirkhart lied glibly. Graham would never check. "What about it? Was that Hammond?"

  Graham nodded angrily. "Yeah. We had to pick him up for killing a couple of kids down in West Virginia."

  "West Virginia? What was he doing there? Why'd he kill some kids?"

  "Not a clue. He's working for the Post these days. Maybe some big story went bad." Graham shook his head. "We'll get the bastard back."

  "He escaped?"

  Graham was reluctant to discuss what had happened, but Kirkhart, in a smooth guise of helping out, explained, "I knew Jeff pretty well at one time." With persistence, he finally got the story of the escape from the bathroom and under the house to the hidden exit. Kirkhart could barely contain his interest. Still, he gave Graham a puzzled frown. "I don't understand. How did he know there was a way out of that bathroom? How did he know there was an escape route at all?"

  "Yeah." Graham nodded miserably. His career was crashing and burning. "How?"

  "Someone must've told him," Kirkhart decided. "The route had to be marked with some prearranged signal."

  Graham grasped at the straw. "The mole? You think the mole set up Hammond's escape route? It makes sense. A hell of a lot of sense. Hammond's working with the mole!"

  "It's logical," Kirkhart agreed. But he did not believe it. A mole as deep, highly placed, and successful as the one he was searching for would never have jeopardized his position with such a risk. No, he—or she—would have sacrificed Hammond in a heartbeat. His guess was that he was right—Jeff Hammond was still in the Bureau and working undercover. Which meant it was Hammond's Bureau handler who had somehow arranged the escape. And that brought him even closer to his second theory—that Jeff Hammond, himself, was the long-sought mole.

  21

  As the Friday-morning sun climbed above the quiet fields and wooded slopes in the countryside south of Gettysburg National Military Park, Alexei Berianov stood alone on the outdoor gallery of Caleb Bates's white, colonial mansion. Dressed in the gentlemanly tan slacks and open-neck shirt of an off-duty Bates, he admired the sweep of the rolling panorama while making certain he was alone on his second-floor gallery.

  In a completely altered, vicious nasal voice—neither Berianov's nor Bates's—he demanded into his cell phone, "Where are the damn invitations, huh?"

  His property spread among the hills southwest of the famous battlefield, and, like his place in West Virginia, it was surrounded by high-security fences topped by concertina wire. But unlike in West Virginia, his Pennsylvania grounds sported a cow barn, a prize dairy herd, bales of hay, the scent of freshly scythed grass, and Keepers with sunburned faces who looked and acted like regular farm hands, because that was what they used to be. Since the early hours of Wednesday, all of the Keepers had quietly filtered in here, but during daylight they were securely hidden. Nowhere was there a sign of the farm's real purpose nor of its principal activity over the past several weeks.

  "They were due in my hands by today, you drunk bastard!" Berianov roared.

  "It's not as easy as you think," the nervous voice on the other end of the line whined. This was White House aide Evans Olsen. Olsen knew Bates/Berianov only by the code name Yakel. With Berianov's ability at disguise and at hiding his tracks, Olsen would never know his true identity. "Look, there are all these steps. To get the invitations, I have to talk to the chief of staff, and he's been so busy preparing for the state visit. I mean, Putin arrives today. . . ."

  "Bullshit!" Berianov despised Olsen for his martini hangovers and sloth. The greed he understood. "You don't need his permission. You think I don't know you've got the authority? You trying to make me mad, huh?" When Ivan Vok reported the invitations had not been delivered, Berianov quickly located Olsen hiding out at home after another night lost to alcohol. This was the kind of day Olsen liked to call in sick anyway, since the White House would be busier than usual as it prepared for the Russian state visit. That would require a level of energy and commitment Olsen no longer could muster.

  "Hey, I got you the complete schedule. Count your blessings." Olsen's voice turned snotty, showing fragments of the promising young man who had once been a Fulbright scholar. "I'll get the invitations as soon as humanly possible. The White House has protocols. I have to account for everything, you know."

  "Don't try to throw attitude at me, you lousy little creep. Get off your butt and get me those invitations. Today, you hear!"

  "Now, see here!"

  Berianov's nasal voice cut like a razor. "You know what's going to happen if I make an anonymous call to the Justice department?" He had ordered $100,000 deposited in Olsen's name in a Mexico City bank. "You used to have a decent IQ. Use what's left to figure it out: You're a drunk with a long record of calling in sick. The wealthy branch of your family's disowned you. You've been in deep debt for years, but now all of a sudden you're flush with greenbacks." With satisfaction he heard heavy, worried breathing on the other end of the line. "If Justice finds the Mexico account, you'll not only be out of a job, you'll be under investigation, and they won't find just a few White House invitations missing, will they?"

  Berianov could almost hear the fear at the other end, and Olsen's pathetic collapse. " I . . . I'll have them tomorrow morning for sure."

  Berianov ground his teeth in frustration. The entire plan depended on those invitations. He had to have them. The problem was that Olsen could not be shamed into action. Only abject fear motivated him, but when Olsen had too much to drink, which was nearly every day, he would temporarily forget his fear, forge
t what could happen to him. It made him damned hard to manipulate. Still, he was vital.

  Berianov growled, "Tomorrow morning at seven A.M. If I don't have them, I contact the White House. That's it. End of story. End of you. I'm not messing with you anymore, boy. Seven A.M. tomorrow, or kiss your cushy ass good-bye."

  Berianov hung up, cutting off the aide's complaining protest. Damn Olsen. If Olsen were sufficiently afraid he would lose his soft life, he would come through even now. But in case he failed again, they were going to have to employ a more risky backup plan.

  Swearing to himself, Berianov slid his cell phone into his pocket and strode into the house through one of the tall French doors that lined the second-story gallery of the colonial manse. At each step his padded body and face became more and more Colonel Caleb Bates, staunch American patriot. When he entered what once had been a library but now was a conference room, the transformation was complete.

  The walls of the former library boasted historic Currier & Ives prints and bookcases loaded with leather-bound volumes by American authors. The Stars and Stripes hung from a sturdy wood flagpole in the center of the wall opposite the glass door. A spotlight was trained on it from overhead. Next to it stood a Bible stand with the King James version open to the Twenty-Third Psalm: The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. . . . An adjoining wall held a built-in, wide-screen television, its modernity a contrast to the classic furnishings

  But at the moment the activity in the room was focused at the oblong conference table, where Bates's three leading militiamen stood, leaning over maps and plans for Washington, D.C., the White House, and surrounding areas.

  "Colonel, sir!" Sergeant Austin came to attention as soon as he spotted Bates.

  Beside him, the two others straightened, but remained focused on what they had been doing. To the sergeant's immediate right was Max Bitsche, a soft-looking man with permanently hunched shoulders and a dour expression that reflected an obsession for detail. He was in charge of supplies and transportation. On the sergeant's other side stood Otis Odet, a computer wizard who had given up a high-paying job in Silicon Valley to return to his family's historic roots in the movement. He oversaw all communications. Odet broke the nerd stereotype with his California beach-boy physique, broad face, and thick-fingered hands that seemed more appropriate for a surfboard than a keyboard.