Blow the House Down

by Robert Baer

  CHAPTER 44

  THE RUSH-HOUR TRAFFIC had just about cleared downtown D.C. as I walked down 9th Street and turned east on D, just across from the FBI headquarters. I stood for a few minutes by the door of the Caucus Room, sizing up the situation. The Caucus was one of those clubby Washington steakhouses that try to give the impression that politics is left at the door when the truth is just the opposite. I was about ready to start across the street when a jovial party burst out the door beside me and fell into a waiting limo: lobbyists dining expensively on some industry group’s money. The guy with the chiseled face in the middle of the pack had to be a senator: They all look the same these days—at least all the first-term males do—but I couldn’t place him.

  By contrast, the agent waiting across the street seemed not to belong in Washington at all. With his sunken chin and off-the-rack green blazer, he reminded me of an H&R Block accountant from Norman, Oklahoma.

  “Chuck Appleton,” he said when I walked over to meet him. O’Neill was right: The FBI intended to slow-speed the meeting. We shook hands, and I followed him down D Street and around the corner to the RMS entrance.

  RMS was the Residences at Market Square, a high-priced block of the new Pennsylvania Avenue, diagonally across from the Justice Department and a half block east of the FBI headquarters on D Street. I knew about the apartment we were headed to, number 730. Everyone who was halfway inside the loop knew about it. Number 730 was occupied by a cheery homosexual who did dirty jobs for the Agency and the Bureau and got to live rent-free in return. (“Rent-free” but not inconvenience-free: When the condo got claimed for off-campus get-togethers such as this—which it frequently did—the occupant of record had to kill time someplace else.)

  I told Appleton that since we were early, I’d wait outside until everyone showed up. He shrugged his shoulders and went up. Probably figured I was going to have one last smoke.

  Five minutes later Don Sherley came rolling down the street, briefcase in hand. From the time he came into view until the time he got to where I was, he checked his watch twice: a man in a hurry.

  He didn’t see me as he turned into the building.

  “Don,” I said, grabbing his arm.

  He didn’t recognize me. It had been at least ten years since we’d last seen each other.

  “Max Waller,” I helped.

  “Of course.” He flashed me a pained smile. “Good to see you.”

  “I need a minute.” I still hadn’t released his arm.

  “I don’t know if we should be talking before the meeting.”

  “Just a minute,” I said, letting go of his arm.

  He relaxed.

  “I’m delighted you found the time to attend,” I said. “But maybe in the meeting you should let me talk—you know, give me my fifteen minutes and not say anything. In fact, why don’t you keep quiet the whole time.”

  “Excuse me?” He tried to back away a step, but I grabbed his arm again and held it tight.

  “I know about your accounts with the fiduciary agent.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The accounts you have with Michelle Zwanzig.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  I pulled out a transfer from UBS to the Institute for a Fair Peace and shoved it in his face.

  “Don, I have more. Think the IRS might like to take a look into your accounts?”

  In fact, I didn’t have anything on Sherley. It was another bluff. Still, I couldn’t help but think Channing had somehow, somewhere bought Sherley off. Channing would never trust anyone he didn’t own.

  I was right. The color faded from Sherley’s face. “How did—” He grabbed for the paper, but I pulled it away at the last moment and held it an inch from his grasp.

  “Don, a truce is all I’m asking for. Let me take the meeting where it needs to go, you keep your mouth shut, and the paper disappears. It really shouldn’t be a problem.”

  There were five people in the living room when I walked in. A man with a bad comb-over and a bulging stomach stuffed inside a summer-weight three-piece suit sat in a straight-backed dining-room chair, reading a magazine. Appleton was in an armchair in the corner of the room, his eyes half closed. Sitting on the sofa was Mary Beth Drew and a woman I recognized from the general counsel’s office. We’d crossed swords years ago, but I couldn’t remember why or her name. Sherley was standing at the window, looking out.

  Bad Comb-Over stood up, walked over to me, and extended his hand while simultaneously tucking his card into my shirt pocket. “Jeff Forrest, Department of Justice.” He seemed to be the only one happy to be there.

  I was looking around for someplace to sit when Mary Beth materialized at my elbow.

  “Max,” she whispered, pulling me halfway back out into the hall, “this better be good. I heard you have it papered.”

  “It is.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Didn’t bring it.”

  “Oh, fuck,” she said, loud enough to make a couple heads snap up. “He’s going to crucify you.”

  “Sherley?”

  “I don’t know who told him. It was out of the blue. He insisted. But he’s toast. Trust me.”

  “Who?”

  “We’ve got one chance,” she said, turning back into the room without answering my question. She sounded like O’Neill. “You’d better make it good.”

  I didn’t know how “I” had turned into “we,” but there was no time to figure that out, either.

  Officially, this was Chuck Appleton’s show. The FBI borrowed the condo we were meeting in, which meant they owned the chair, but it was clearly Forrest who’d come to listen.

  Forrest looked over at Sherley to get things going, but Sherley was absorbed examining the carpet. He motioned for Forrest to start. I sat down on an ottoman.

  Forrest cleared his throat. “All of us appreciate your coming here, Mr. Waller. We’re sure you’ve had a tiring several months. So let’s get under way.”

  “In 1984 I was assigned to Beirut when Bill Buckley…” I began, looking toward Sherley to make sure he hadn’t changed his mind about staying out of it.

  Across the room from me, Mary Beth made a tight, circular motion with her index finger: Speed it up.

  I ignored her. With or without the paper, I had to have history and context on my side. They had to know about my hunt for Murtaza Ali Mousavi, how he’d grown up in south Tehran, his hatred for the U.S., his capacity for slaughter, how the Quds Force was still in the terrorism business. I had to leave it all in, even the fact that Mousavi might or might not be dead. The meeting would mean nothing if they didn’t understand that Mousavi wasn’t a one-man act, that he represented a faction in Tehran that would stop at nothing. They had to understand how the whole business tied into Nabil, how the Middle East had turned into a grotesque carnival of violence, revenge, and slaughter. Only then could I get to Beckman and Channing. The paper was worthless until they bought off on the story line. Context was everything. It always is.

  I was as far as Bir Shiva prison when the DOJ attorney stopped me.

  “This is fascinating, but could we move on to financial aspects of the case?”

  It was then that I heard a noise and looked to my left to see Vince Webber walk in from a bedroom. Mary Beth’s “he.” Webber had been listening the whole time.

  “With your permission,” he said, nodding toward Forrest.

  “Of course.”

  “I believe that before we continue, we need to establish Mr. Waller’s bona fides. We need to know whom he represents before we are able to evaluate what Mr. Waller has to tell us.”

  Webber had been looking directly at Forrest. Now he turned his gaze to me. “I’m sure Mr. Waller will appreciate this. It is standard operating procedure at the Agency.”

  “Naturally.” The DOJ attorney was settling into the role of the Greek chorus.

  Webber opened an envelope and pulled out what looked like a cable.

  “Mr. Waller, m
aybe you could help us out here. From September second to September seventh of this year, you were a guest at the Beau Rivage Hotel in Geneva.”

  I nodded.

  “The Swiss cantonal police tell us you paid in cash, nearly five thousand dollars. Where did you get this money?”

  “You apparently already know where I got it.”

  “We do. Yuri Duplenski. What is his profession, if I may ask?”

  “A businessman.”

  “No, he’s not. He works for the marketing arm of the Russian Ministry of Defense. He’s a Russian official.”

  “So?”

  “So, it seems to me that you have some sort of financial tie to the Russian government. We believe this needs to be clarified before we proceed.”

  “We?”

  Webber waved his arm around the room. “Yes, we. The same people who are meant to believe you’ve uncovered some mysterious plot.”

  I caught Mary Beth out of the corner of my eye. She seemed to have rolled up into herself like a porcupine under attack.

  “Yuri Duplenski is a friend,” I said.

  “Ah, then when you were an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, did you report contact with him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wasn’t recruitable.”

  “Wasn’t the regulation then, as it is now, that you report all contact with suspect intelligence officers?”

  I thought about Oliver Wendell Channing and his thousands of unreported contacts, the ones his son was now making money off of. But it didn’t matter. Webber wasn’t waiting for an answer.

  “Let’s move to the Biqa’. Who did you see there?”

  “A member of the Kuwaiti royal family.”

  “We know. Were you aware that he has been soliciting funds for Hamas and Islamic Jihad?”

  “Half the Gulf is.”

  Webber nodded at the DOJ attorney, who chimed in on cue, “We’re considering an indictment against the party in question.”

  Good luck, I thought, but maybe I was the only one in the room who knew the prince was dead.

  “How were you introduced to the prince?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It all matters.” Again, he didn’t wait for an answer. “Back to Geneva. Is it not a fact that you misrepresented yourself to an Agency asset in order to procure materials to execute an unauthorized break-in at the office of a Swiss national?”

  Where did that come from? It was either India or the fence in Bon-en-Chablis. Sherley had come out of his pout. He was all but smirking.

  “It’s a complicated story.”

  “Dishonor always is.” Webber was opening a PowerBook G4 as he talked. “Unfortunately, as we’ve found time and again, it’s also contagious. I’d like everyone to take a look at this DVD.”

  He turned the PowerBook so everyone could see. A shaky image lighted up the screen: the interior of an airplane. I knew what was next. I appeared in the picture, carrying four small bottles of Dewar’s, two glasses, and a bottle of water. I watched myself shake my novel and yank open the overhead compartment. The resolution wasn’t good, but it was clear that in the next minute I’d be tumbling Patricia Hoag-Carrington’s carry-on.

  I stood up, feeling myself lose control, exactly what I had planned not to do.

  “Webber, it’s not going to work. You know what was inside that safe—”

  “Ah, yes, your safecracking. Well, Mr. Waller, this is a colorful part of the story I’ve been waiting for. Please go on.” Webber swept the room with his shark’s grin.

  “I need a moment with Agent Appleton,” I said.

  In the back bedroom, I grabbed him by the lapel: “Get me a one-on-one with Forrest.”

  “Well, gee, I’d have to—”

  “Just make it happen. You go back in there and tell them I’m not putting up with this shit anymore. I didn’t come here to be fucking prosecuted. If they don’t want to listen to what I have, fine, I’m out of here.”

  Before he could say anything, Mary Beth walked in. “What are you doing, Max? I knew this would be a hard sell, but Jesus…”

  “So go light a candle. What’s Webber doing here?”

  “We’re this close to nailing him—income taxes, everything.” She held her thumb and her forefinger a millimeter apart. “We know about his deal with Applied Science. He was featherbedding. There was an odd transfer into his checking account that made us suspicious. You wouldn’t believe the money—” She stopped herself. I’d built that particular tent, but I wasn’t going to say anything now. “We’re not ready to move on him right now. When he insisted on coming, I couldn’t say no. It would have alerted him.”

  “He’s in this with a guy named David Channing, and Beckman, too,” I said, a little too breathlessly.

  “Forget Beckman. It’s what these guys have their finger in that I care about right now. Goddammit, Max, you should have brought the paper. I would have made sure it got in the right hands.”

  “I got it. Don’t worry.”

  “Based on what I’ve seen, I’m worrying. Big time. Five,” she said, turning away.

  “Five what?” Her back was to me now.

  “Five P.M. tomorrow. Same place. Not the same people. I’ll keep Webber out if I have to bring a gun to do it. But you better deliver next time.”

  When I walked back in the room, Sherley and Webber were gone. Apparently they didn’t care that I wasn’t finished.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “You’re coming with me,” Appleton said, looking apologetic.

  “Thanks. I can find my own way home.”

  “No, we’ve been instructed to hold you on a material witness warrant.”

  The only thing I could think of was that Sherley had gotten on the phone and had my immunity withdrawn. Or maybe he’d been planning it all along. Channing had to get something for his money.

  “You’re not going to cuff me, are you?”

  “Nope. It’s not like we don’t know this is all bullshit,” he said, a cockeyed smile on his face.

  We walked out of the Residences at Market Square. A black Crown Vic was waiting for us, parked at the far end of D Street, in front of the 9th Street entrance to the Bureau parking garage.

  Appleton insisted I buckle my seat belt before he drove off.

  CHAPTER 45

  WE WERE FORTY BLOCKS EAST on Pennsylvania Avenue, tuned in to an Orioles game, heading through the far eastern reaches of D.C., when Chuck Appleton slapped his hand to his forehead, said, “I need to get some things,” and pulled up in front of a Superfresh market with half the bulbs burned out in its overhead sign.

  “Wanna come in with me?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Two black kids were leaning against the plate-glass window, eyeing us, undoubtedly trying to figure out what a couple of dead-on white guys were doing in their native terrain.

  “Yeah, you better stay with the car,” Appleton said. “It’s a—”

  “Questionable neighborhood?”

  He nodded, closed the driver’s-side door carefully behind him, and disappeared into the store. The O’s had men on first and third, none out. Appleton had left the engine running so I could listen to the radio without draining the battery and fill him in on what happened. For the a/c, too. He was nothing but thoughtful. The shopping list was short, but I knew he would be a while. Appleton was the kind of guy who did comparison shopping even when he was on an expense account.

  I gave him maybe three minutes, then got out of the car. Our two watchers hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “Yo, lost?” It was the shorter one, maybe all of thirteen, his warm-up pants two-thirds of the way down his butt.

  “Either of you know how to drive?”

  “Shit, yeah. What’s it to you?”

  “Want to take this baby for a spin?”

  “It’s a fucking Ford, man. Like ten years old. My granddaddy’s granddaddy’s car!”

  I went around to the driver’s
side, flipped down the visor, and pulled the government credit card out of the pocket on the back. Behind the kids, I could see my FBI keeper in the express lane. He was picking a deck of cards off a rack. Gin rummy till the cows came home.

  “Your granddaddy’s car come with its own credit card?”

  The kids seemed to fly across the sidewalk into the front seat. Fortunately, the taller one took the driver’s side. His spindly legs actually could reach the pedals.

  “Wait a minute,” I said to them.

  “Wha?”

  “The light.” I leaned in and put the gyro on the dash and flicked it on. “You got to go in style.”

  I took a half dozen quick steps back into the shadows and worked my way along the wall into the alley beside the store. The kids were a block down Pennsylvania Avenue, the light flashing, laying down rubber every inch of the way, when Appleton walked out of the Superfresh.

  “Shit,” I could hear him saying. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  If the kids could just keep from ramming the Ford into the side of a Metrobus, the FBI would be chasing me through the worst parts of D.C. all night long.

  CHAPTER 46

  I DUCKED DOWN AN ALLEY, in between two houses, past a caged, derelict liquor store until I came to a pay phone in front of a 7-Eleven. I tried O’Neill at work, then his apartment. No answer on either number. I found him at Elaine’s. Some things never change.

  “How’s your morning tomorrow, John?”

  “What? They didn’t give you the Congressional Medal of Honor?”

  “I need the stuff, now.”

  “I’m not in the office until three.”

  “It can’t wait. I gotta see you first thing tomorrow, pick it up, and be back here by five.”

  I could hear chatter in the background, what sounded like ice cubes tinkling in glasses. O’Neill was well into happy hour. Happy hours.

  “Sorry. There’s no way I can change my rendezvous.”

  “Listen. You have no idea the ambush I walked into. It got real nasty. They lifted the immunity.”