by James Phelan
“A bunch of rotten apples,” Wallace said at the named faces that appeared on the screen.
“Rotten as they come. Some are wanted for war crimes,” Gammaldi added.
“So what’s the connection with the murders?” Faith asked.
“Lopin told me the motive for the murders was twofold,” Fox said. “Cleaning out the attendees of the conference who ideologically could not be relied on, and as a reprisal for the murder of her father.”
“Do you think Cassel knows who ordered the murder?” Wallace asked.
“I don’t think so,” Fox replied. “Lopin said Joseph Cassel was killed to stop him from executing his plan. He told me that Sianne survived a hit on the day of her father’s funeral, and that she’s been out of Paris in hiding and under protection ever since.”
“Do they suspect you are onto them?” Wallace asked.
“Apparently,” Fox said. “They may have identified me as being present at Cooper’s death, linked it with what I’ve written about. Shows we’ve been investigating the right path, though.”
“You’ve sold me there,” Wallace said. “This Pierre Lopin, what’s the information he was talking about?”
“He didn’t elaborate,” Fox said. “The full scale of the plans was not detailed at that meeting in Nice, that was more a final feeler to see who was coming for the ride. Seems this information angle is something that Sianne Cassel brought to the table to enact her father’s far-flung ambitions. They use information like that from their DGSE to finance their sympathisers, only on a grander scale.”
“Could be they have set up their own communications eavesdropping capabilities,” Gammaldi said.
“Easier just to tap into existing ones, pay off the right people,” Fox suggested. “Anyway, the ITS must have been a catalyst in this too, galvanising the far right in a more legitimate political arena. Lopin suspects there are some that know what is planned who can be questioned, people who have been in recent communication with Sianne Cassel.”
“How does he propose those people are questioned?” Faith asked. “You go over to Europe and grill them?”
“No, this gathering are far too cagey to let a journalist near them,” Fox said. “Lopin suggested we get word to someone we trust in the administration here. Someone, he stressed, outside of the CIA.”
“Why’s that, he thinks they are aiding elements of the group?” Wallace asked.
“Not the groups specifically but some of the nationals involved in this,” Fox admitted. “The CIA started up and have continued to aid and finance right-wing groups and parties in Europe since the fifties.”
“Operation Gladio being a case in point,” Wallace said. “I investigated some of their activities when I was working for the Times.”
“Absolutely. Operations like Gladio were set in motion to thwart the spread of communism after the Second World War. Now these networks are proving their value in the War on Terror, as they have in their employ members of the intelligence and security apparatus of most European countries,” Fox said. “They’re political and they’re of a military and intelligence angle. Rendering foreign nationals across borders in their War on Terror, making strikes in sovereign territories. The scale of these quasi-security outfits is quite staggering, and the fact that they are working outside their home government’s sight and control makes them indispensable assets.”
“A network that would be well-placed to make some moves in the EU when the time comes,” Wallace said. The room sat on that bit of info for a while.
“Okay, so we can get the word to McCorkell,” Wallace said. “Then what?”
“Well, whoever they use to pick up one of these guys for questioning, I can safely say they won’t be letting me sit in on the interview,” Fox said. “So the story, from our point of view, goes cold.”
“McCorkell will keep us in the loop,” Faith said.
“Not if it’s known in the administration that he was running the op and something got printed,” Wallace said. “He’d be made as the leak, and after the Valerie Plame scandal the White House is a tight, unforgiving ship.”
“Which is fair enough,” Fox said. “I don’t think we have a choice. This goes to McCorkell ASAP, while we work other angles.”
Wallace nodded. “I’m headed to DC tomorrow, I’ll tell him in person,” he said.
“We couldn’t go in with the GSR security team and pick up one of these guys?” Gammaldi asked. “They’ve got the skills to do it.”
“There’s only so far I’m prepared to go,” Wallace said. “Kidnapping and interrogation for a story is far too far.”
The room was silent for a few seconds, and then Fox stood and collected his papers.
“I’ll get back to it,” he said, Gammaldi following suit and packing up his briefing notes.
“As soon as Beasley is back I’ll get him to sweep all the offices here for bugs, but I’d say the place is clean,” Fox said.
“There’s been no unauthorised access into the GSR levels, I can vouch for that,” Faith responded.
“I’d hope not, this place is like a fortress,” Gammaldi put in.
“Your houseboat will be a different story, I’m sure, as that’s where they would have planted them on your clothes and wherever else,” Faith said. “I’d hate to think what they have already overheard.”
“Sefreid and Beasley are pulling my place apart right now,” Fox said, standing by the door to leave.
“You should stay in the sleeping quarters here until this blows over,” Wallace said. The lowest level that GSR leased, on level thirty-five, contained five rooms each set up like hotel suites.
“Thanks, I’ll think about it. I’ll wait to hear what the boys pick up,” Fox said. “And it would be a good idea to have Beasley set up electronic interferers to all our computers so they can’t read our screens.”
“Read our screens?” Wallace asked. “You mean over the net?”
“No. You can read the data off someone’s computer screen by the electronic resonance put out up to five hundred metres away,” Fox said. “So anyone in the surrounding buildings here could be picking up what you are seeing, typing, whatever.”
“Geez, this electronic eavesdropping investigation is opening up a whole new world to me,” Wallace said.
“It’s a big scary world out there,” Fox replied, leaving the room with Gammaldi in tow.
40
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Secher had a three-hour wait for the connecting flight to Los Angeles. He sat in the QANTAS lounge and enjoyed lunch and a beer, reading the paper. He was in fresh clothes, having bought a few things at the New Zealand airport and changing before his last departure.
A man sat down next to him, the act out of place as the café was largely deserted. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the man had an untouched coffee in front of him, and was looking about himself a little too quickly.
“Mr Secher?”
Cold gaze in reply.
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person,” Secher said.
“My mistake,” the agent said, biting his lip. He looked out the window to the busy tarmac. “Sir, there was a problem in New Zealand. It’s gone offline. And this.”
Secher said nothing, as the agent left a piece of paper on the table and walked away.
Secher read the note and finished his lunch, turning the page of the newspaper every now and then but his eyes registering nothing. His mind was racing.
Contact Apple, the note read. Telephone the consulate in New York, is how Secher transcribed that.
He picked up his new duffel bag, left the café and walked to a bank of payphones the furthest away from the food and beverage areas. A quiet, out-of-the-way area of the terminal.
He picked up a receiver, dialled a pager number in New York and hung up after the tone. A moment later the payphone rang.
“What is it?” Secher said.
“The man
you have had me following,” the New York agent replied. “Lachlan Fox. Investigative reporter with GSR, looking into Sianne Cassel. He made the private investigator I hired to watch him, tried to turn him.”
“Don’t let anything get traced back to you,” Secher said.
“It’s okay, it’s all taken care of. But this Fox, he is a capable man,” the agent said. “And there is something else…”
“Yes?”
“He and Kate Matthews … we have surveillance of them, together. It appears they are having a liaison.”
Secher’s knuckles turned white on the handset.
“Major?”
“Keep on him,” Secher said through his clenched teeth. “I’ll take care of him myself when I get to New York.” He hung up, then dialled a number in France.
“Call me back on this line.”
Exactly a minute passed then the phone rang.
“Get me Danton,” he said as he picked up.
A moment’s pause.
“Secher?”
“I got your message,” Secher said.
“Where are you?” Danton asked. “I was told you were not in New Zealand to wait for confirmation of the connection.”
“Never mind where I am,” Secher said. “That New Zealand connection was doomed to fail. And now you are hanging this whole operation on the second connection going ahead this afternoon?”
“Not ideal, I know, but—”
“First,” Secher cut in, “you nearly fuck everything up with your goons cleaning out members of your precious club in a reprisal for Joseph Cassel’s assassination. Now this failure. I told you the hardwired link was the weakness in the operation. In a way, I was wrong. You are the weakness.”
“Listen here—”
“No, you fucking listen to me!” Secher said in a staccato voice full of rage. “I will make another connection, alone—”
“Where?”
“Never mind!” Secher snapped. “I will make another connection, and if you want the key to it all it’s going to cost you.”
“What?”
“Twenty million Euros, into my account, and I hand you the remote access key on time and as planned. If not, no Sixth Republic for France, no fucking super EU…”
“We will still have the second connection in Greenland,” Danton said.
“That’s nothing without the key.” Secher was calmer now. “And I wouldn’t gamble everything on that connection going as planned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Greenland is a hostile environment,” Secher said. “Twenty million Euros. I’ll check my account when I’m in New York tomorrow. When the money is there, I’ll tell you where to pick the new connection from and then deliver the key as planned.”
“The connection has to be in range of one of our satellites, we don’t have time to re-task one.”
“I know, and there are nine possible locations where this can occur,” Secher said, his hand ready to hang up the phone. “Unlike some, I know what I’m doing.”
Secher hung up. Two more calls. A surge of adrenalin. He was liking this, finally he was in complete control. Kate had long been in the palm of his hand. Now Fox had to go.
“Global Syndicate of Reporters, how may I direct your call?”
Secher put on an American accent: “Tell Lachlan Fox that the answer to his investigation will be at the NSA station in Greenland, in approximately…” Secher checked his watch “… fourteen hours.”
“I’m sorry? Sir? Sir? Hello?”
He hung up.
Secher again picked up the handset, and made another call. The US Embassy in Australia, via the operator.
Again with a perfect accent: “Tell your resident spook to warn the NSA that their Greenland station will be attacked by an armed force in fourteen hours.”
He hung up, and wiped down the phone with a handkerchief.
He walked to the nearby bathroom, headed straight into a cubicle and locked the door behind him, then placed a small toiletry bag on the seat, and set a mirror on the cistern. Within two minutes he had sprayed his hair black, combing it through. Undressed, he wiped instant fake tan over his face, neck, chest, arms and hands. He got changed and put on a pair of rimmed spectacles. Another application of tan, starting to deepen to a dark bronze. He could pass for Middle Eastern or Hispanic. He pulled out a new ID sewn into the lining of his jacket, a passport and a licence, both Brazilian. Then he put all the old stuff and toiletry bag in a plastic bag, and turned his carry-on bag inside out, changing it from blue to red. He left the bathroom, and dropped the plastic bag in the bin in the food court.
He walked up to the QANTAS ticketing counter.
“I’d like to purchase a flight to Puerto Rico,” Secher said.
“We don’t fly direct but let me see what I can arrange,” the stewardess said, typing commands into the computer. “It will be direct to LA, then an American Airlines flight to Puerto Rico. Will you need a return flight, sir?”
“One way.”
41
NEW YORK CITY
Fox was hit in the face as soon as he opened his office door. The culprit was a stench the like of which he had never encountered in his Japanese-inspired minimalist work space, and he squinted his way through it to find the offending package on his desk. The paper bag with the big soggy Ruben sandwich had melted its half-kilo of pastrami, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut onto his desk. The real kicker was the Thousand Island dressing, which had congealed among the papers and files left on the desktop.
“Gee, thanks Al,” Fox said. He walked around and scraped the offending thing into his trash basket.
His desk phone rang.
“Lachlan Fox,” he said, shutting the bin away in a cupboard.
“Lachlan, it’s Emily. We had a caller leave a message for you
with switch. I just emailed through a digital recording, it may make more sense to you.”
“Okay, thanks Em.” He hung up the phone and clicked his computer from its sleep.
Fox opened the mpeg file of the recorded message. He played it through, stunned the first time, and then played it back at the full volume of his speakers. He picked up the phone.
“Emily—I need you to page Wallace, Sefreid and Gammaldi and have them meet me in the briefing room straight away.”
“But you stay here,” Wallace said, bushy grey eyebrows raised in Fox’s direction. “The security team can be in a Gulfstream over Greenland within hours.”
Fox looked to Sefreid and Gammaldi. They both nodded.
“Three days ago the FBI were following you, then the PI, who turns up dead, then you’re picked up by Lopin … it’s very likely that it could be a trap,” Sefreid said. “Here in New York, you can be protected.”
“Why so elaborate if it’s a trap?” Fox asked. “If someone wanted me dead, they’d do it here. Clearly they’ve had the opportunity, they’ve been in my house, for Christ’s sake.” Beasley had shown him the packet full of listening devices he’d uncovered doing his electronic sweep. A real medley too, from home-grown spook stuff to the latest European equipment.
“Maybe they want you somewhere quiet where they can question you,” Wallace said. “Whatever the case, this is too high a risk on something that can be avoided. Stay here and keep on the investigation from this end.”
“They may even want to frame you for something at the station. It’s a top-secret military installation, you’d be breaking several Federal laws setting foot there,” Sefreid said. “I’ll take some of the team as a safeguard, and Gammaldi.”
“Me?”
“You’re across what Fox is working on,” Sefreid said. “And clearly you’re not a target. I’ll leave Pepper and Goldsmith behind on Fox’s protective detail.”
“Great,” Fox said, pissed off at having to be babysat.
“If there’s something there to find, we’ll find it,” Sefreid said. “If there’s hostility, we’ll be pr
epared.”
Fox looked at Gammaldi, feeling as though he’d neglected his best pal for a while now. He could see the stocky little guy had something to say.
“You right with this, Al?” Fox asked.
“I don’t really like the cold.”
42
NSA HQ
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
Dunn walked the executive corridor to the director’s office, returning a salute from a visiting junior officer as he went. Base staff knew better. This entire base was a no-salute, no-cover area.
“He in?” Dunn asked, walking past the secretary to the closed door.
“He’s expecting you, Colonel.”
Dunn knocked on the door and opened it.
“Ira, take a seat,” the director said.
“Thanks, but this is a quick one,” Dunn said, standing just inside the open door.
The director waved him on.
“I need two op teams for forty-eight hours to respond to a threat,” Dunn said.
“From base detachment?”
“SF unit out of Bragg,” Dunn replied, referring to the heavy-firepower taskforce they could call on, a joint resource between the intelligence agencies and DoD.
“All right. Anything I need to know?” the director asked.
“No.”
“Other resources?”
“Air Force transport, nothing major,” Dunn said, moving back through the door.
“Go.”
43
FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA
The two sixteen-man Delta teams were in the air within fifteen minutes of Dunn’s order coming through. A pair of black Sikorsky H-92 Superhawks transported them to the nearby Pope Air Force Base, clicking over three hundred kilometres per hour on the short journey.