Countdown km-2

by David Hagberg

  Trotter had cut his teeth in this section in the early days and still maintained an interest in the case officers who were assigned OD duty.

  He made it a point to stop in on a regular basis to talk with them, get to know them on a personal basis. Besides, he was worried about McGarvey. Not so much for the man’s physical safety, he’d shown that he was capable of taking care of himself, but because of the kinds of hell McGarvey always seemed to leave in his wake. This time they were dealing with a sensitive ally. Tom Dunbar, the early shift OD, looked up from his console when Trotter came in. He was a no-nonsense Harvard graduate who at the age of thirty had already shown his mettle and finesse in two important foreign postings. He would be rotated to the Russian Desk within the next few months preparatory to an assignment in Moscow. The big one. “Slumming tonight, John” he asked. “I’m on my way home. Maybe put on a steak, have a couple of beers” Trotter said. He’d lived alone in a big house across the river since his wife had died several years ago. In actuality he intended to have a glass of wine and perhaps a sandwich and then go to bed. Sure, rub it in. I’m stuck here until midnight, and I’ve got to be back first thing in the morning for a physical”

  “No rest for the wicked” Trotter quipped. “Anything yet on Standhope”

  STANDHOPE was the computer-generated operational name for McGarvey’s assignment to Israel. But it was in the blind. Only a very few people within the Agency actually knew the details. This number did not extend to the OD, who merely worked from a short list. If anything at all came in he had a list of four people to call: the general, the Agency’s general counsel, the DDO, and of course Trotter. “Nothing in the last half hour” Dunbar said. “Was there anything from last night that I should know about” Trotter shook his head. “Probably not. It’s just getting started”

  “Your baby”

  “In a manner of speaking. Anyway, I’ll be home if any thing does come up. I’d appreciate a call no matter what”

  “Sure thing” Dunbar said. “Enjoy your steak”

  “Thanks, I will” Trotter said, and he left, taking the elevator down to the ground floor, turning in his security badge with the guards at the door and heading across the parking lot to his car. It was always like this, he thought, during the first critical hours of an operation. This time, however, it was worse because not only were they spying on a friendly nation, they were using a free lance to do it. The general had never really answered his direct question of what the Agency’s position would be if the operation were to fall apart. “We’ll see” was the best he’d been able to get. He had just reached his car when someone came running across the parking lot from the main entrance. “Mr. Trotter.

  Hold up, sir” the man called out. He was one of the security people from the front desk. Trotter automatically reached up to his lapel to see if he had forgotten to turn in his badge, but he remembered that he had.

  “It’s the general, sir” the guard puffed. “He wants you upstairs on the double” something clutched at Trotter’s gut, and he hurried back across the parking lot.

  “I just received a call from Lorraine Abbott” the DCI said when Trotter walked in. Howard Ryan, the Agency’s general counsel, was seated across the desk from Murphy. “Has McGarvey made contact with her” Trotter asked. The DCI motioned him to a seat next to Ryan. “Yes, and she sounded plenty upset”

  “It’s just two in the morning over there, what’s happened”

  “Possible big trouble for us” Ryan answered. “Evidently he’s on his way out to En Gedi” the general said. “Dr. Abbott told me that he arranged a little show for their Mossad tails and managed to break free.

  It sounded like Kirk. “And she hasn’t heard from him since”

  “That’s right” the general said. “He left several hours ago, and she thinks there is a very good possibility that he was arrested or even shot”

  “Surely she wasn’t calling from a hotel phone”

  “No. A public phone on the street. They might come up with the number, but they won’t get any further than that”

  “Well, we gave him the assignment” Trotter said. “It’s going to be up to us to get him out of there if he is in trouble” The general’s eyes narrowed. He was in one of his dangerous moods. “You explain it to him, Howard”

  “We’re going to have to deny him if he was actually arrested while on military property” the counsel said. “Goddamnit Trotter started, but Murphy held him off. “He’s armed, I assume” Ryan said. “We sent it over in the diplomatic bag. But remember what he did for us, and the Israelis, in Germany. Let’s just not forget that now. And we did send him on th’ after all. We owe him, sir” is assignment, “What do you suggest” the general asked coolly.

  “You’re personal friends with Isser Shamir. Call him” And tell him what”

  “That a mistake has been made and we’d like our man back, in one piece”

  “He’ll naturally ask what McGarvey was doing at En Gedi”

  “Lie to him” Trotter said with a straight face. The DCI and Ryan exchanged glances. “Short of that, John. Let’s say that there was some compelling reason that made such a call impossible. Then what” Trotter almost asked what could be so compelling, but he held the question in check. “Short of that, I would suggest that we take this over to the President. Immediately this evening. He can call the PM. They owe us.

  They started spying on us first” The general had been hunched forward over his desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up, exposing his thick forearms.

  He leaned back now, settling his bulk into the big leather chair. He nodded. “Let’s say we get him out of there, John. What’s next”

  “Knowing McGarvey, if he actually got into the facility, he will have found out what we asked him to find for us. If it’s positive, if he can confirm the existence of their weapons stockpile, then we go ahead with our original plan. It’s a safe bet that Baranov won’t back off” Again the general and Ryan exchanged glances. “You’re talking about bait here, aren’t you” Ryan said softly. It was the same thing McGarvey had said.

  And it was true, of course. But it was the business. “I’m talking about using a resource to its best advantage” he said without blinking. The DCI nodded again. “If he was identified in Germany, they’ll pull out all the stops to get him”

  “Yes, sir” Again the DCI glanced at Ryan. “I’ll see what can be done.

  But maybe we’ve made a mistake. Maybe we should have told the Israelis that the Pershing had been targeted on En Ciedi”

  “It would have tipped our hand” Ryan said. “Springing McGarvey isn’t going to do us, or him, much good either”

  TEL AVIV

  Lorraine Abbott sat in her darkened hotel room chain-smoking cigarettes and looking out across the dark Mediterranean. Although it was a clear night the horizon was an indistinct blackness. Way out at sea she thought she could see the lights of some slow-moving ship, but then it disappeared, her night vision destroyed as she lit another cigarette. For the tenth time she told herself that she had done the right thing by telephoning Murphy on the special number he had given her more than three years ago. He had sounded noncommittal-of course, it was an open line-but he had told her to return immediately to her hotel and sit tight. He would look into things and get back to her. California just now seemed like a long way off. Her first mistake had been sticking it out here in Tel Aviv. She had won points with Mark O’Sheay, the NPT Inspection Service operations director, but she hadn’t accomplished a thing by remaining. Her second mistake had been listening to McGarvey.

  He was an arrogant, conceited, macho sonofabitch. That had been her first impression, and nothing that had happened since had changed her mind. And he was a spy. Not her variety, not simply an eavesdropper or an observer, but a legitimate gun-carrying spy. A James Bond in Rambo warpaint. It made her sick to think that she had gone along with him.

  Not only had he seriously jeopardized her position here in Isra el, it was possible that she wou
ld be asked to resign from her NPT position, which, though it wasn’t crucial to her career, provided her with … what? She turned that thought over in her mind. Burnout, her department head called it. “You can jaunt off all over the world from time to time.

  It’s better than reading science fiction. Recharges your batteries”

  What if they had shot him, the same thought that had driven her to call the general invaded her consciousness again, and her hand shook as she stubbed out the cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. Someone was at the door. She thought she heard a key grating in the lock. She turned around at the same moment the door burst open, snapping the chain, and an instant later the room lights came on. Two men, guns drawn, were standing there. Lorraine had raised a hand to her mouth in shock, but she found that she couldn’t do anything else, not even cry for help.

  Two other men crowded into the room, one of them checking the bathroom, and the other looking in the closet, the chest of drawers, and even under the bed. “Dr. Lorraine Abbott” one of the gunmen asked in English.

  She nodded, finally finding her voice. “Who are you”

  “Military Intelligence, Doctor” the gunman said. “You are under arrest.

  ” Arrest? My God, on what charge”

  “Espionage.

  A pale blue Volkswagen camper van was parked at the edge of the beach across the street from the Uri Dan Hotel. Two young clerks from the Hungarian Embassy were in the front, making out, his hand beneath her sweater, cupping a breast. In the back, Arkady Kurshin was watching the hotel’s front entrance through binoculars. McGarvey was currently away from the hotel. He’d been seen leaving earlier in the company of a so far unidentified blond woman. The woman had returned soon afterward, had left once, and had come back again. “Who is she” he’d asked the man seated next to him. “I don’t know yet” Aleksei Piotrovsky, KGB’s number-two man in Israel, said. “But I do know those pricks who came up in that gray Mercedes”

  “Mossad”

  “No, AMAN. The question is, what the hell are they doing here at this hour of the morning” It could be because of McGarvey, Kurshin thought.

  The moment they’d been informed that he was here in Tel Aviv, he had flown directly from his hotel in Rome where he’d been waiting for further word from Baranov. “There can only be one reason for him to be in Israel at this point” Baranov had explained. “It’s because of the Pershing. They know we were going after En Gedi. He’s come to find out for himself”

  “Either that or tell the Israelis”

  “I don’t think so” Baranov had replied. “But it gives you the easy opportunity to take him out. Don’t miss”

  “Here they come” Piotrovsky said. Kurshin raised his binoculars in time to see the four AMAN plainclothes officers emerge from the hotel. They had brought the blond woman with them, her hands held curiously stiff behind her back. It took him several seconds to realize that she was handcuffed. They had arrested her. He lowered the binoculars again. What had they stumbled across here? And where was McGarvey? “I want to know who that woman is, within the hour” he said. Piotrovsky glanced over at him and swallowed.

  This was one man, he thought, who was to be placated at all costs. “Yes, Comrade” he said.

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Roland Murphy had been in plenty of tough spots in his life, but he’d never been known to walk away from a fight, or hang his head in submission no matter how he had conducted the battle. This was the day, however, when the shit was very likely to hit the fan. He had taken a calculated risk, and it was about to come back and bite him. It was just seven-thirty. The president had agreed to see him in his study.

  He rose from behind his desk when Murphy came in. He was a large man, who like the general preferred rolled-up shirtsleeves and loosened ties and had some years ago served a brief term as director of the CIA. He was a no-nonsense man. “Harry S told his people that the buck stopped at his desk. I tell mine that this is where the bullshit stops”

  “We have a developing problem on our hands, Mr. President, that could turn into something very political”

  “You wouldn’t be here at this hour of the evening if it wasn’t serious, General” the president said wryly. “Coffee”

  “I’d prefer something a little stronger this time” The president’s thick eyebrows rose. “This is serious” he said. He poured them both a good measure of Jack Daniel’s. Murphy knocked his back, set the glass down, and then extracted a group of satellite reconnaissance photographs from his briefcase and laid them out on the desk. The president set his whiskey aside, picked up a large magnifying glass, and hunched over the photographs, studying each one carefully. “En Gedi” he asked. Yes, sir.

  These were taken shortly after midnight, local time. They showed up on my desk an hour ago”

  “They’re having another alert over there”

  “Someone may have been injured. That’s an ambulance at the main gate in the first frames. It headed for the dispensary, but then made a turn and went back across the facility, entering what we have been identifying to this point as a warehouse”

  “To this point” the president asked. “We now believe that the building may contain something else. Something that might point to another purpose for the facility’s existence”

  “Namely as a weapons depot”

  “We now believe that is very likely”

  “The Russians know about it, as well, otherwise they wouldn’t have pulled that jackass missile stunt” the president said, shaking his head.

  “You know, General, I’ve been behind this desk for one hundred sixty-three days, but it only took half that long for me to lose my capacity for surprise” He glanced down at the photographs. “This ‘ is no coincidence.

  “No, sir, it is not” Murphy said. “But I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake that could cost us”

  “Welcome to the club” the president said not unkindly. “What sort of a mess have we gotten ourselves into this time”

  Murphy extracted a thin, buff-colored file folder from his briefcase. It was stamped top and bottom Top Secret, a pair of orange stripes diagonally across the cover, beneath which was stamped the legend: STANDHOPE. He passed it across to the president, who made no immediate move to open it. “We believe that the previous En Gedi incident may have involved a penetration of the facility by the Russians, which led them to hijack the Pershing”

  “Yes, we’ve gone over that”

  “We also have very good reason to believe that the Russians have a knowledgeable source within the Pentagon. Someone who would have had the data about the Pershing’s Radar Area Guidance system”

  “The one you are calling Feliks”

  “Yes, sir” Murphy said, girding himself. “But the impetus for our investigation is and always has been whether or not the Israelis are in actuality maintaining a stockpile of battleready nuclear weapons. At En Gedi, or anywhere else for that matter”

  “Your rationale for believing that Valentin Baranov is personally involved”

  “Yes, Mr. President”

  “He brought down your predecessor. Is this a vendetta”

  “No, Mr. President, it certainly is not” Murphy said, careful to keep his voice as inflectionless as possible, letting the meaning of his words convey his anger. “Sorry, Roland” the president said. “But get on with it”

  “We need to know what is going on at En Gedi. “You have sent someone there” the president asked sharply. “And you think he has been arrested”

  He glanced again at the photographs.

  “It’s most likely that he has been arrested, yes, Mr. President. The president stared long and hard at him. But when Murphy started to say something, the president shook his head. “Wait” He put on his glasses, opened the STANDHOPE file, and began reading. It took him less than five minutes; like Jack Kennedy, he was a speed reader. When he looked up and took off his glasses, there was an angry set to his mouth. “Yes, General” he said. “You definitely have made a m
istake. I would never have authorized this”

  “Then we would have been stopped in our tracks. Baranov is almost certainly going to try again” Murphy had decided that no matter what happened he was not going to back down. Presidents came and went, the problems remained. If he wanted the resignation of his DCI, he would have it, but Murphy was not going to cower. “I could have your ass for this” the president said coldly. “But I’m probably just as guilty. I should have telephoned Peres and told him about the Pershing. So you see, General, you are not the only one to make a mistake” No answer was expected. “What do we do about it, Roland”

  “I need your authority to call Isser Shamir and tell him what we know”

  Murphy said. “The timing is off, he’ll know that”

  “I’ll lie. We weren’t certain until this moment”

  “You want him to release McGarvey, a lone ranger who is in possession of Israel’s most vital state secret”

  “Yes, sir”

  “Why should he do that for us”

  “Because of Baranov’s continued threat.

  We mean to set McGarvey after Feliks with the hope that it will force Baranov’s hand and pull Arkady Kurshin out of hiding. At the very least it may delay another strike against En Gedi, possibly giving the Israelis enough time to move their weapons”

  “You’ll invite the Mossad to participate in this investigation” the president asked.

  “Naturally” Murphy said, although until this moment the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “We have our sensitive secrets as well, Roland” the president said with a dangerous edge to his voice. “It will be a tightly controlled operation” The president closed the STANDHOPE file and sat back in his chair. He finished his drink. “McGarvey was involved with Baranov the last time, wasn’t he”