Quinn complied, releasing Kittredge’s wrist straps. Kittredge rose up to his hands and knees, wincing in pain as the ablated skin on his back contorted with his movement. He caught his breath, then moved to sit on his buttocks and peruse the immunity agreement, still feeling naked and vulnerable in addition to the pain.
Kittredge felt something jab his shoulder, and turned to see a fountain pen in Quinn’s hand. “Time to seal the deal,” Quinn said. “I’m sure you’ll come to recall this moment just as pleasantly as I recall my first wedding,” he added with a snort. “Only I don’t think you’ll have a divorce option in this particular arrangement.”
Kittredge signed without a word.
“Arturo Dibiaso,” Kittredge said. He was clothed, his raw and bleeding back encased in disinfectant and bandages. He sat in a chair flanked by a two-way interrogation mirror.
Bill Fredericks sat in a chair directly across from Kittredge, taking notes on a yellow legal pad, and Quinn lurked in the corner of the room at the perimeter of Kittredge’s vision, just to remind him that things could turn ugly again if he didn’t cooperate fully.
“One more time, a little louder, please,” Fredericks said. His voice had a grating, nasal quality. He was a fat, balding man with a vicious comb-over, in his late forties or early fifties, Kittredge figured, and he seemed to have a disagreeable sneer frozen permanently on his face.
Fredericks didn’t look like much, especially when he hiked his pants up to the middle of his ample belly, but Quinn clearly deferred to Fredericks. Everyone is someone’s bitch, Kittredge thought.
And now I’m theirs, he realized. “Arturo Dibiaso. My contact’s name is Arturo Dibiaso,” he repeated, somewhat less meekly than the first time.
“Spell that for me.” Fredericks didn’t bother to look up from his notepad, writing as Kittredge rattled off letters. Fredericks continued to scribble after Kittredge stopped talking.
After a while, Fredericks stopped writing and looked for a long time at Kittredge, who lost the tacit contest for social dominance by averting his eyes in deference. Fredericks noted the act of submissiveness, and also noted the subsequent flash of annoyance on Kittredge’s face. The fat case officer smiled inwardly. It appeared that Kittredge was in the right frame of mind for a very productive chat. “So, let’s talk about the first time you met Arturo Dibiaso,” he said.
“I never met Arturo Dibiaso,” Kittredge replied.
“I thought you said he was your contact in Venezuela.” Fredericks had a puzzled look on his face.
“I said that.”
“So now I’m a little confused.” Fredericks’ voice hardened. “Was Arturo Dibiaso your Venezuela contact, or not?”
“He was. But I never met him. Never even spoke to him, as a matter of fact.” Resolve had returned to Kittredge, and he held Fredericks’ gaze.
“Then how do you know he was actually your contact, or even a real person at all?”
“I don’t know that. I just know what they told me. I know the dead-drop locations, and I know where the payments showed up. I didn’t do any sleuthing.”
Fredericks frowned, looked sideways at Kittredge, and shook his head. He decided it was a natural opportunity to pursue a secondary purpose of the interrogation: testing Kittredge’s mettle.
“I’m inclined to think you’re full of shit,” Fredericks said. “I’m inclined to think you’re keeping something from me.” Then he turned to Quinn: “See. And you wanted to leave early. I told you you’d have more work to do on this guy.”
Quinn smirked.
Kittredge blanched. He felt his insides knot, and adrenaline crashed uncomfortably in his stomach.
Then he started to feel angry. “Listen,” he said, pitch elevated and words tumbling out quickly, “I don’t need any more torture. I agreed to help you. You agreed to immunity. We’re adults, talking like adults.”
“Are we, Pete?”
“Peter. My name is Peter.” Kittredge’s gaze didn’t waver this time.
Fredericks looked intently at him, then nodded. “Fair enough, Peter,” he finally said. “So if you never met Arturo Dibiaso, how did it come about that you began selling national security secrets to him?”
“I didn’t sell secrets to Arturo. I sold them to his boss. Arturo coordinated the logistics.”
“Aw, hell, Pete!”
“Peter.”
“Whatever!” Fredericks sat back in his chair and threw his hands in the air. “Are you being cute? What made you think I wanted the name of your lackey?”
Quinn took a silent step forward, and Kittredge stiffened. “Because that’s what you asked for. My contact. Arturo Dibiaso was—is—my contact.”
“Quibbling. You’re being cute, and you’re quibbling with me!” Fredericks said loudly. He was still testing Kittredge, trying to get a reaction out of his new asset.
Fredericks wasn’t disappointed. Kittredge sat up, leaned forward, and looked Fredericks square in the eye. “Actually, I answered your question exactly, just like you demanded.”
A little bit of spine, Fredericks thought. That was a good thing. “Fair enough,” he said. “Sorry I got a bit irritated there. These hemorrhoids are killing me.”
Kittredge relaxed, and Quinn suppressed a laugh in the corner.
“Let’s continue, now that I don’t have to ask Quinn to twist your nut sack,” Fredericks said. “Who, do you think, was your contact Arturo working for?”
“Exel Oil.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because that’s who approached me looking for the information,” Kittredge said.
“What information?”
“Oil policy information. Lobbying efforts. Exploration permit requests. Getting a feel for the other players in the oil landscape, how much they were spending on bribes, if they were making any progress breaking into the Venezuelan production market, if they had embassy support. That sort of thing.” Kittredge shifted in his seat, noting that Fredericks was studying him carefully.
“That sounds like bullshit.” Fredericks shook his head and dropped his pen on the notebook.
Kittredge sighed. Fredericks was highly unlikeable. “It very well may be, but that’s what I was doing,” he said quietly, exasperation sneaking into his voice. “Anyway, you know I’m telling you the truth, don’t you? Otherwise, if you didn’t know what I was doing, we wouldn’t be having this pleasant little chat in the wee hours of the morning, and I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of meeting your psychopath friend. Right?”
Fredericks shook his head. “No, Peter. We knew you were crooked. But we didn’t know what you were peddling.”
“But you knew I worked in energy and economic policy at the embassy, right? I mean, what else would I have been selling? Satellite drawings? Missiles? Nukes?”
“Are you saying I’m stupid?” Fredericks asked, testing Kittredge again.
“I don’t know. Are you stupid?” Kittredge instantly regretted the retort, and Fredericks flushed with anger.
Kittredge held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Sorry,” he said. “You were baiting me, and I bit. But I don’t know what you thought I was doing. I’m an economist, not a ninja.”
“Okay,” Fredericks said. “Fair enough. Maybe you did risk spending the rest of your life in jail to sell diplomatic secrets about the oil industry in Venezuela. I mean, I suppose that’s possible, and I suppose there’s a market for it. And maybe it jibes with the fact that you were a really shitty spy, which is why we sniffed you out and hauled you in.”
“Fair enough,” Kittredge said, irritated, imitating Fredericks’ annoying affectation. Fredericks pretended not to notice.
“So tell me, who is the guy at Exel that convinced you to sell your soul?”
Kittredge bristled. “Listen, my soul was never for sale,” he said. “I sold information, and not even the important kind. And I sold it to an American company. After which, you hauled me into a house in the United States of Fucking America and
tortured me, which makes you a little bit of a bastard yourself. So maybe you can spare me the moralizing.”
Fredericks put on a thoughtful look, then nodded. “Fair enough. But, technically, because it was a foreign-owned subsidiary of an American company, you’re still guilty of espionage. Which is a capital offense.”
“Maybe. But fortunately, we now have an agreement.”
“A contingent agreement,” Fredericks admonished. “If we decide you’re being uncooperative, we’ll leg-sweep you.”
“I’m not being uncooperative.”
“Okay. Fair enough.”
“Please stop saying that,” Kittredge said.
“What?”
“Fair enough.” Kittredge imitated Fredericks’ nasal tone and jowly expression. Quinn couldn’t hide his amusement.
“Listen, you little shit—“
Kittredge held up his hands again. “I’m sorry. You’ve caught me at something less than my best. You kidnapped me, pulled skin off my back with a belt sander, and poured salt on me. Do you have any idea how much that hurts? Forgive me if I’m a little less than cordial, but you can maybe see where I’m coming from.”
A long moment passed, then Fredericks smiled. “Fair enough.”
Kittredge cracked a smile and laughed in spite of himself.
Fredericks spoke again: “I think we’re going to get along just fine, Peter Kittredge.”
Then a thoughtful look crossed his face. “Listen, something’s bugging me. Why did you make so many trips back up to the States? I mean, you were up here almost twice as often as anyone else in your division, always with a diplomatic pouch. What gives?”
“Well, I actually did have State Department business up here.”
“Anything I could corroborate?” Fredericks asked.
“Not without arousing suspicion,” Kittredge replied. “But I’m on the courier rotation. It used to be a job all its own back in the old days, but after the budget cuts, now we rotate the duty between four embassy officers. I’m the only one in the economics division pulling courier duty, but there are three people from other divisions.”
“Convenient. It gave you plenty of opportunity for a little entrepreneurship, didn’t it?” Fredericks arched his eyebrows and gave Kittredge a sideways glance.
“It did. That’s how I met the Exel people,” Kittredge said.
“Which Exel people did you meet?”
“Lots of them. They’re really racking up the frequent flyer miles.”
“Who recruited you to sell information?”
“Charley Arlinghaus. He’s not in charge of the operation down there, but he works as an aide to the Exel wigs.”
“Arlinghaus, you say. Can you spell that?”
“You’re killing me with the gumshoe routine, you know that?”
“I’m a gumshoe. Spell the damn name.”
“H-A-U-S. Like house, but German,” Kittredge said.
“Tell me how you met Arlinghaus.”
“I just told you. On one of my courier trips.”
“Describe your relationship with him.”
“Intimate.”
“As in, you’re good friends?” Fredericks arched his eyebrows.
“As in, we have sex.”
“You’re gay?”
“You’re sharp.”
“How long?”
“My whole life.”
Fredericks grimaced. “I mean, how long have you and Charley Arlinghaus been, um, intimate?”
“Two years, give or take. Just fun at first, more serious later.”
“Serious as in relationship-serious?”
“Isn’t that what people usually mean?”
“I just didn’t know how it worked for, well, you know.”
“Humans?” Kittredge asked. “We have relationships, some of which become serious. Charley and I are somewhat serious.”
“So maybe one night after, um, intimacy, Charley suggests you start selling secrets?” Fredericks asked. “That must have been some interesting pillow talk.”
“It didn’t quite work like that,” Kittredge said. “It happened over time. We discussed our jobs a lot at home, and somewhere along the way I figured out that Exel was pretty interested in learning the kinds of things that I knew. So one thing led to another.”
“And that’s when you decided to seal the deal?”
“Sort of. Charley gave me Arturo’s name and number, and we negotiated it all by text. Untraceable, they said.”
Fredericks laughed. “Did they read that on a blog somewhere? Master spies passing secrets by text message?”
“Maybe it was a little naïve.”
“You think?”
“Is that how you figured it out?” Kittredge asked.
“No, but that’s how we confirmed it,” Fredericks said.
“Beautiful. I’m going to kill Arturo if I ever meet him.” Kittredge paused, then asked, “Can I go now?”
“Almost. But one more thing is confusing to me,” Fredericks said. “How did you get the information out of the embassy? Don’t they have a zero-transfer policy? No paper or magnetic media passes in or out without being searched and logged, right? And the diplomatic pouches are sealed up before they hand them to you, right?”
“Do you really want to know?” Kittredge asked.
“I really do.”
“Let’s just say that my sexual orientation makes me less averse than average to certain transportation methods,” Kittredge explained.
“Sort of wish I hadn’t asked,” Fredericks said, unable to disguise a look of disgust. “So to sum it up, you walked out of the embassy with oil industry information stuck in your tailpipe, and you dead-dropped it for Arturo to pick up?”
“Maybe,” Kittredge said. “I mean, everything you said is true, except, as you pointed out, I can’t actually verify the last part. I don’t actually know who picked the information up out of the dead-drops. But I do know that Arturo told me where to drop the information, and he acknowledged receipt, again by text. He also told me where and how to pick up the payments.”
“Could you get me a copy of the info you gave them?”
“No. I gave Exel real-time stuff that matched their criteria, but that kind of daily traffic piles up and has to be put in cold storage on the server. It’s all been archived, and I’d have to ask for it specifically, which would set off alarms like nobody’s business.”
“Fair enough.”
“You’re killing me.”
“You don’t say.”
“Can I go to a hospital now?”
“No. You’ll be fine. Quinn will take you home. You guys should get to know each other better. You’re going to be working together quite a bit,” Fredericks said. Quinn winked.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Fredericks. We’re two very different kinds of people,” Kittredge said.
“Maybe so. But you two have a very important thing in common. I own you both.”
7
Brock turned the lock on the heavy steel door of the basement panic room, hidden from view behind a bookcase mounted on a hinge, which itself opened and closed like a door. He and Sam were sealed in, protected first by concealment and then by three inches of solid steel.
He was pretty sure the room’s reinforced concrete walls and ceiling could survive another bomb attack, but he was also sure that the rest of the house would not.
Sam watched intently through the video monitors as the cop – at least he was dressed like a cop – walked up the entryway steps and toward the broken front door of her house. The man passed close by the video camera hidden in the porch light, and Sam got a good look at his face. It was definitely the same guy who had emerged from the bushes at the scene of John Abrams’ death.
Not a coincidence, she concluded.
She had just ended the call with her deputy, Dan Gable, charging him with figuring out where the DHS security detail had gone, and who the hell the “cop” walking into her house with a drawn weapon might be.
Her face tightened as she watched the video feed, and she subconsciously felt the grip of her holstered Kimber .45, wondering whether to charge out of the panic room and take matters into her own hands. She hated the idea of hiding in the basement shelter while some goon strolled through her home upstairs.
On the other hand, she didn’t want to get ambushed by an unseen accomplice. And she still wasn’t sure if the guy was a real cop or some sort of impostor. She stayed put, eyes glued to the video monitors as the man strode through her broken front door, his pistol drawn.
The man took three paces into the entryway, then stopped. His head turned as if he was summoned from outside, and Sam switched views to the driveway camera to see what the intruder in police garb might be responding to.
It didn’t take long for her to figure it out. The camera showed another police officer on her driveway, standing in the Weaver firing stance with his own service pistol trained in the direction of her front door. This could get interesting, she thought.
She commanded a split-screen view of both the entryway and driveway cameras, which gave her a ringside seat for what was beginning to look very much like a standoff between two uniformed police officers.
With his pistol pointed at the floor, the man in her house turned to face the policeman on her driveway. She saw them talking to each other, but cursed herself for not having installed audio surveillance equipment. She couldn’t read lips, so she had no idea what the conversation might be about, but their body language was decidedly unfriendly.
Brock voiced the obvious question, “What the hell are these guys doing?”
“No idea,” Sam replied, “but it’s safe to say that it’s not standard procedure for cops to point guns at each other.”
Out on the driveway, another man in a suit sidled up and also settled into a firing position, aiming what could only be described as a small cannon at the man standing in Sam’s entryway. “It’s a party now,” Brock observed.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 4