Nelson Demille - [John Corey 2]

by Lions Game(Lit)

  I gave the newspaper to Kate, who read the article. She said, "They must be having some doubts about this." She added, "And they don't want to play into the hands of Libyan Intelligence, if that's what this murder is about."

  "Right." Most of the homicides I've dealt with were committed by idiots. The international intelligence game is played by people who are so smart that they act like idiots. People like Ted Nash and his opponents. Their brilliant schemes get so convoluted that half of them must wake up every morning trying to remember whose side they're on that week and what lie was the truth disguised as a lie disguised as the truth. No wonder Nash didn't say much—he used most of his mental energy trying to resolve conflicting reality. My motto is—Keep it simple, stupid.

  Anyway, Kate reached for the telephone and said, "We need to call Jack."

  "It's six hours earlier in Frankfurt. He's asleep."

  "It's six hours later. He'll be in the field office."

  "Whatever. Let him call us."

  She hesitated, then put down the receiver.

  We both read the headline stories in the newspapers, commenting to each other about how the media didn't have to be manipulated—they managed to get most of the prepackaged news wrong anyway. Only the Times, to give the Gray Lady her due, got most of it right. But, as with my files, the important and interesting stuff was missing.

  There were photos of Khalil again in all the newspapers, and a few doctored shots had him wearing glasses, a beard, a mustache, and grayish hair parted differently. This, of course, was supposed to alert the public to the possibility that the fugitive had changed his appearance. What it accomplished, however, was to make the public suspicious of innocent people with glasses, mustaches, and beards. Also, as a cop, I knew that the thinnest of disguises were usually effective, and even I might not be able to spot this guy in a crowd if he was smiling and wearing a mustache.

  I perused the articles to see if anyone had taken my suggestions about making public the theory that Mrs. Khalil and Mr. Gadhafi were more than friends. But I didn't see any hint of that.

  Despite my motto of keeping it simple, there are times when psychological warfare is good stuff, but underused by the military and by law enforcement—except when the cops question a suspect and use the old "good cop/bad cop" routine. In any case, you have to plant seeds of doubt and deception through the media, and hope the fugitive reads it and believes it, and that the good guys remember that it's bullshit.

  On that subject, I was wondering if Mr. Khalil was reading about himself and seeing himself on TV. I tried to picture him somewhere, holed up in a cheap rooming house in an Arab neighborhood, eating canned goat meat, watching daytime TV, and reading the newspapers. But I couldn't picture that. I pictured him, instead, nattily dressed in his suit, out there in public, working on fucking us again.

  If this case had a name, it would be called "The Case of the Missing Information." Some of the stuff missing in the news was missing because they didn't know it. But what was also missing was stuff they should have known or concluded. The most glaring thing missing was any reference to April 15, 1986. Some hotshot reporter with half a brain, or half a memory, or a modem, should have made this connection. Even newspaper reporters weren't that stupid, so I had to figure that the news was being managed a little. The press will cooperate with the Feds for a few days or a week, if they can be convinced that national security is at stake. On the other hand, maybe I was reading too much into what I wasn't reading. I asked Kate, "Why didn't any of these stories mention the anniversary date of the Libyan raid?"

  She looked up from her desk and replied, "I guess someone asked them not to. It's not a good idea to give the other side the public relations it wants. They make a big deal of anniversary dates, but if we ignore it, they get frustrated."

  Sounded good to me. There were a lot of considerations regarding an event of this magnitude. The bad actors were putting on a tragedy, but we weren't going to give them free advertising.

  Anyway, there wasn't much new in the news, so I accessed my voice mail as Kate was now doing. I should have used the handset rather than the speaker because the first message was from Beth at 7:12 A.M. She said, "Hey, you. I called your place last night and this morning, but didn't leave a message. Where are you hiding? Call me at home until eight, then the office. Miss you. Big wet kiss. Bye."

  Kate continued listening to her own voice mail, pretending not to hear. I said, as if to myself, "Got to call Mom back," but I didn't think that was going to fly.

  Anyway, the next message was from Jack Koenig, who said, "Message for Corey and Mayfield. Call me." He gave a long phone number with lots of zeros and ones, and I guessed he wasn't back in his office down the hall.

  There was a similar message from Teddy Nash, which I deleted.

  There were no further messages, and I looked at new stuff on my desk.

  After a few minutes, Kate looked up and said, "Who was that?"

  "Jack and Ted."

  "I mean the other one."

  "Oh . . . Mom?"

  She said something that sounded like "wool shirt," but I may have misunderstood. She stood and walked away from her desk.

  So, I'm sitting there, sleep-deprived, the bullet hole in my abdomen aching, six under cooked brioches in my stomach, the last and final act of my career in trouble, and some crazed terrorist is drinking camel milk somewhere, staring at my picture in the papers. I could handle all of that. But did I need this? I mean, I thought I'd been up-front with Kate.

  Just when I was having second thoughts about Ms. Mayfield, she returned with two mugs of coffee and put one on my desk. "Dark, one sugar. Right?" "Right. No strychnine. Thanks."

  "I can run out and get you an Egg McMuffin if you'd like. With cheese and sausage." "No, thanks."

  "A man on the move needs solid food." "Actually, I'm just sitting here. Coffee is fine. Thanks." "I'll bet you didn't take your vitamins this morning. Let me run out and get you some vitamins."

  I was detecting a wee bit of taunting in Ms. Mayfield's tone, or maybe the word of the morning was baiting. Not only was I bait, I was being baited. I said, "Thanks, but coffee is all I need." I lowered my head and studied a memo in front of me.

  She sat opposite me and sipped her coffee. I felt her eyes on me. I looked up at her, but those blue eyes, which were heavenly a little while ago, had turned to ice cubes.

  We stared at each other, then finally she said, "Sorry," and went back to her paperwork. I said, "I'll take care of it." Without looking up, she replied, "You'd better." After a minute or two, we got back to the business of catching the world's most wanted terrorist. She said, "There's a combined report from various police departments regarding car rentals in the Metropolitan area . . . basically, thousands of cars are rented every day, but they're trying to isolate cars rented to people with Mideastern-sounding names. Sounds like a long shot."

  "A very long shot. For all we know, Khalil is driving a car borrowed from a compatriot. Even if it is a rental car, his accomplices could use the name Smith if they had the proper ID."

  "But the people renting it might not look like Smith."

  "True . . . but they could use a Smith-looking guy, then whack him. Forget the car rentals."

  "We got lucky with the Ryder van in the World Trade Center bombing. Solved the case."

  "Forget the fucking World Trade Center bombing."

  "Why?"

  "Because, like an Army general who tries to relive his past successes in a new battle, you'll find that the bad guys are not trying to relive their past defeats."

  "Is that what you tell your students at John Jay?" I

  "I sure do. It definitely applies to detective work. I've seen too many homicide cops try to solve Case B the way they solved Case A. Every case is unique. This one, especially."

  "Thank you, Professor."

  "Do what you want." I got surly and went back to my memos and reports. I hate paper.

  I came across a sealed Your Eyes Only envelo
pe without a routing note. I opened it and saw it was from Gabe. It said: I kept Fadi incommunicado yesterday, then went to the home of Gamal Jabbar and interviewed his wife, Cola. She claims no knowledge of her husband's activities, intentions, or his Saturday destination. But she did say that Jabbar had a visitor Friday night, that after the visitor left, Jabbar put a black canvas bag under their bed and instructed her not to touch it. She did not recognize the visitor, and heard nothing that was said. The next morning, her husband stayed home, which was unusual, as he normally worked on Saturdays. Jabbar left their Brooklyn apartment at 2:00 P.M., carrying the bag, and never returned. She characterizes his behavior as worried, nervous, sad, and distracted—as best I can translate from Arabic. Mrs. Jabbar seems resigned to the possibility that her husband is dead. I called homicide and gave them the go-ahead to break the news to her and released Fadifor the same purpose. Speak to you later.

  I folded the memo and put it in my breast pocket.

  Kate asked, "What was that?"

  "I'll show you later."

  "Why not now?"

  "You need some plausible deniability before we speak to Jack."

  "Jack is our boss. I trust Jack."

  "So do I. But he's too close to Teddy right now."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "There are two games being played on the same field—the Lion's game, and somebody else's game."

  "Whose game?"

  "I don't know. I just have this feeling that something is not right."

  "Well . . . if you mean that the CIA is in business for itself, that's not exactly news."

  "Right. Keep an eye on Ted."

  "Okay. Maybe I'll seduce him, and he'll confide in me."

  "Good idea. But I saw him naked once, and he has a teeny weenie."

  She looked at me and saw that I wasn't kidding. "When did you see him naked?"

  "Bachelor party. He got carried away with the music and the strippers and before anyone could stop him—"

  "Cut it out. When did you see him naked?"

  "On Plum Island. After we left the biocontainment lab, we all had to shower out. That's what they call it. Showering out."

  "Really?"

  "Really. I don't think he showered throughly because later that day, his dick fell off."

  She laughed, then thought a moment and observed, "I forgot you guys once worked a case together. George, too, right?"

  "Right. George has a normal dick. For the record."

  "Thank you for sharing." She mulled a bit, then said, "So, you came to distrust Ted on that case."

  "It wasn't an evolving process. I didn't trust him three seconds after I met him."

  "I see . . . so, you're a little suspicious of this coincidence of meeting him again."

  "Perhaps a little. By the way, he actually threatened me on the Plum Island case."

  "Threatened you in what way?"

  "In the only way that matters."

  "I don't believe that."

  I shrugged. I further revealed to Ms. Mayfield, "He was interested in Beth Penrose, for your information."

  "Oh! Cherchez la femme. Now it all makes sense. Case closed."

  It may have been unwise of me to share that. I didn't reply to her illogical deductive reasoning.

  She said, "So, here's a solution to both our problems. Ted and Beth. Let's get them together."

  Somehow I'd gone from an anti-terrorist agent to a soap opera character. I said, to end the conversation, "Sounds like a plan."

  "Good. Now give me the thing you just put in your pocket."

  "It says my eyes only."

  "Okay, read it to me."

  I took Gabe's memo out of my pocket and sailed it across her desk. She read it to herself and said to me, "There's nothing much new in here that I shouldn't see, and nothing that I have to deny seeing." She added, "You're trying to control information, John. Information is power. We don't work like that here." She further observed, "You and Gabe and some other NYPD here are playing a little game of hide-it-from-the-Feds. This is a dangerous game." And so on. I got a three-minute lecture, ending with, "We don't need what amounts to a sub-rosa organization within our task force."

  I replied, "I apologize for withholding the memo from you. I will share all future cop-to-cop memos with you. You can do whatever you want with them." I added, "I know that the FBI and the CIA share everything with me and with the other police detectives assigned to the ATTF. As J. Edgar Hoover said—"

  "Okay. Enough. I get the point. But don't be secretive with me."

  We made eye contact, and we both smiled. You see what happens when you get involved with a workmate? I said, "I promise."

  We both went back to our paperwork. Kate said, "Here's the preliminary forensic report on the taxi found in Perth Amboy . . . wow . . . wool fibers found on the back seat match fibers taken from Khalil's suit in Paris." I found the report quickly and read to myself as Kate read it aloud.

  She said, "Clear polyethylene terephthalate embedded in the driver's seat and in the body . . . what the hell does that mean?"

  "It means the gunman used a plastic bottle as a silencer."

  "Really?"

  "Really. I'm sure it's in one of those manuals on your shelves."

  "I never read that . . . what else . . . ? Okay, the spent rounds were definitely forty caliber . . . I guess that could mean he used . . . an agent's weapon."

  "Probably."

  "Fingerprints all over the car, but no match to Asad Khalil . . ."

  We both read the report, but there was no conclusive evidence that Khalil had been in that taxi, except for the wool fibers, and that by itself was not conclusive of his presence at the scene. It only meant his suit, or a similar suit, was present. That's what a defense lawyer said once in court.

  She thought awhile, then said, "He's in America."

  "That's what I said before we learned about the Perth Amboy murder."

  "The Frankfurt murder was a red herring."

  "Right. That's why we're not following that scent. In fact, we're not following any scent. We lost the scent in Perth Amboy."

  "Still, John, we know where he was Saturday night. What can we extrapolate from that?"

  "Nothing." In fact, good, solid clues and verifiable facts often led nowhere. When the Federal indictment was eventually drawn up on Asad Khalil, we could add the name of Gamal Jabbar to the list of over three hundred men, women, and children he was suspected of murdering. But that didn't bring us an inch closer to capturing him.

  We both went back to the papers on our desks. I started at the beginning, in Europe, and read what little was available on Khalil's suspected murders and other activities. Somewhere in Europe was a clue, but I wasn't seeing it.

  Someone, not me, had requested the Air Force personnel file of Colonel William Hambrecht, also known as a service record, and I had a copy of it on my desk in a sealed envelope. The file, like all military personnel files, was marked

  CONFIDENTIAL.

  I found it interesting that the file had been requested two days ago and had not been part of the original suspect file. In other words, Khalil turned himself in to the American Embassy in Paris on Thursday, and when they realized he was a suspect in Hambrecht's murder, then Hambrecht's Air Force file should have been here by Saturday—Monday latest. Here it was Tuesday, and this was the first I'd seen of the file. But maybe I was giving the Feds more credit than they deserved by thinking the file would have been one of their first priorities. Or, maybe somebody was trying to control information. As I had said to Kate, "Think about what's not on your desk." Someone had already done that, but I didn't know who, since there was no request tag attached to the Colonel Hambrecht file.

  I said to Kate, "See if you have the personnel file of Colonel William Hambrecht." I held up the first page. "Looks like this."

  Without glancing up, she said, "I know what it looks like. I requested it Friday, when I got the assignment to meet Khalil at the airport, and after I'd read h
is dossier. I read the file half an hour ago."

  "I'm impressed. Daddy must have taught you well." "Daddy taught me how to get ahead in my career. Mommy taught me how to be nosy."

  I smiled, then opened the file. The first page contained personal information, next of kin, home address of record, place and date of birth, and so on. I saw that William Hambrecht was married to Rose and had three children, he would have been fifty-five years old in March, had he lived, his religion was Lutheran, his blood type was A positive, and so forth.

  I flipped through the file pages. Most of it was written in a sort of cryptic military jargon and was basically a precis of a long and apparently distinguished career. I thought perhaps Colonel Hambrecht had been involved with Air Force Intelligence, which may have brought him into contact with extremist groups. But basically the guy had been a pilot, then a flight commander, a squadron commander, and a wing commander. He had distinguished himself in the Gulf War, had lots of awards, unit citations, and medals, lots of postings around the world, was attached to NATO in Brussels, then was assigned to the Royal Air Force Station Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, as a staff officer involved with training. Nothing unusual, except that he'd previously been stationed at Lakenheath in January 1984 until May 1986. Maybe he made an enemy there back then. Maybe he was screwing some local's wife, got reassigned, and when he came back over a decade later, the husband was still pissed. That would explain the ax. Maybe this murder had nothing to do with Asad Khalil.

  Anyway, I kept reading. Military stuff is hard to read, and they write in acronyms, such as "Return to CONUS," which I know means Continental United States, and "DEROS," which is Date of Estimated Return from Overseas, and so forth.

  I was getting a headache reading acronyms and abbreviations, but pressed on. There was nothing in here, and I was prepared to put the file aside, but on the last page was a line that read: "Deleted Info—REF DoD order 369215-25, Exec Order 279651-351-Purp. Nat. Sec. TOP SECRET." They never abbreviate Top or State Secret, and it's always capitalized just to make sure you understand.