by Gene Riehl
The AD’s voice rose. “You’re out of line, Monk. If you want to keep your job you’ll—”
William Smith raised his hand and Malone closed his mouth. Monk stared. He couldn’t remember ever seeing such a thing. A pretty good indication of who was really running this show.
“I know Monk very well,” William told Malone. “Too damned well.” He turned to Monk. “I’ve seen your act before, but this time it’s different. This time the White House is serious about controlling access. Not only can’t you and your partner be cut in, I’m ordering both of you to go home and forget all about it.”
Monk opened his mouth to argue before realizing he didn’t want to do that. William Smith might be running this show but Monk knew better than to rub the AD’s nose in it.
“Are those your orders, Mr. Malone?” he asked, then winced. Somehow it sounded even more insulting this way.
The AD glared directly into his eyes. “Get out,” he said. “Both of you. Get out of here while you still can.”
Two minutes later they were back out on M Street, standing on the broad sidewalk outside the pedestrian door. Monk had barely closed the door when Roger turned directly into his face.
“Jesus, Puller, have you gone completely mental? I thought you were going to take a swing at somebody in there.”
Monk’s voice rose, loud enough for the microphones installed outside the door to hear. “I lost it, Roger … I completely lost it.” His voice got even louder. “I don’t know what happened to me in there, but I ought to go back and apologize.”
Roger shook his head. “What you ought to do is exactly what the NSA guy said. Forget all about this and go home.”
“I got no problem with going home, it’s the forgetting part that’s tough. The way I acted upstairs is going to come back and bite me in the ass … you know it will.”
Roger stared at him. “Not this time,” he said quietly. “Trust me, Malone’s got bigger asses to bite than yours.”
Monk laughed. “You’re probably right.” He looked up the street, in the direction of the Saab. “You want to get a drink before I take you back to your car? Or a cup of coffee?”
“If we can’t work, I’d just as soon go to bed.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Right now, bed sounds pretty good to me, too.”
Monk started toward the car, but Roger’s voice stopped him. “If it makes you feel any better, I was just as angry as you were.” He paused. “What the hell just happened up there?”
“What difference does it make?” He was almost shouting now. “We got our orders, we follow them. End of story.”
“End of story? When did you start talking like—”
Roger’s voice died as Monk raised his finger to his lips, then grabbed his partner’s arm and pulled him up the sidewalk until they were at the corner of the building, safely out of reach of the mikes and TV cameras guarding the entrance. The listeners inside had heard all they needed to. They would report Monk’s words to Burt Malone. The AD would be satisfied with Monk’s groveling. It wouldn’t be five minutes before Malone forgot all about him.
On the way up M Street toward Thirty-fourth, where Monk had left the Saab, he thought for a moment about asking Roger to stick around and help, but only for a moment. Roger had a lot of career ahead of him, a brand-new wife, and plans for starting a family. Plans Monk had no right to jeopardize. A friendship he had no right to abuse.
SIX
Monk had to take Roger back to his own car in the parking lot at the Watergate, but he managed to get back to within half a block of the SOG just in time to see William Smith emerge on foot from the trolley barn, turn left and walk up M Street. Behind William, Monk slowed to a crawl and watched as the NSA man turned left at Thirty-fifth Street. Monk accelerated quietly, aware that the sound of his engine might alert William to his presence. As he passed the intersection at Thirty-fifth, he looked to his left and saw William pulling away from the curb in a Chevy sedan. Dark blue or green, it was hard to tell. Monk hit the gas, hurried to Thirty-fourth and turned left. Moments later he came to Prospect Street, where he sat at the stop sign until he saw William go by.
He gave the spook a block or so head start—easy to do at this time of night—then followed. He didn’t have to bumper-lock the guy. William was only going one of two places, both of them in Maryland. To his house in Cheverly, or up the highway to NSA Headquarters at Fort Meade. Monk could afford to hang back, and that’s exactly what he did.
But William surprised him.
He didn’t go home. He didn’t go to his office at Fort Meade, either.
Where he went was across town, up New York Avenue to the campus of Gallaudet University, where he made a right turn on Florida and continued a few blocks down to a nondescript two-story brick office building. Monk hung back as William parked the Chevy and walked toward the front door, then hit the gas and closed up fast, jumping out of the Saab and catching William just as he entered the building. Monk pushed through the door before William could shut it behind him. William’s eyes widened, then glittered with hostility as they stood together in the tiny lobby.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.
“What do you imagine I’m doing here?”
“A couple of things come to mind. How far back do you want to go?”
“Just as far as you like, but right now I’m only interested in one thing.”
“It’s classified, Monk. Even if you had a need to know, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“You’re running a FISA wire out of my office.” He was referring to the secret wiretap provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Services Act. “Which I’m guessing means you already know where the Madonna is, and who stole it. Which also means you don’t give a shit about the painting at all. It’s the woman you want. The thief who’s not a thief at all, but a—”
“Goddamit, Monk, shut up!” William’s eyes darted out toward the street. “For Christ’s sake, anybody could be listening!”
“So let’s go somewhere where nobody’s listening.”
William shook his head, then turned away and started back toward the door. Monk grabbed his arm and spun him back around before stepping up into his face. William tried to shove him back, but Monk held his ground.
“You are seriously out of bounds, Monk.” William’s voice was gravelly with fatigue. “I could have you arrested for following me here.”
Monk reached into his pocket for his cell phone, held it out. “Make the call. Let’s get somebody down here right now.”
William batted the phone away. “What the hell’s this to you, anyway? Why can’t you follow the rules for once in your life?”
“The bureau’s been working these art thefts for five years. Obviously you people know who’s doing them. You can’t possibly think I’m going to go away until I find out as well.”
“What about your partner, what about Forbes? He feel the same way?”
“It’s just me now. Roger’s got too much to lose.”
“And you don’t?”
Monk stared at him. “We used to be friends. I understand why we’re not anymore, but this is business. I want in. I have plenty of reason to be included. Malone won’t make it happen, but you can.”
But William’s eyes only got harder, as he took a took a half step toward Monk. “Go to hell, Puller,” he said. “I don’t ever want to see your face again.”
SEVEN
Sung Kim hated Paris.
For some reason her controller continued to insist on using Paris for their infrequent face-to-face meetings, but she’d never been able to get over the horror of the day the Americans slaughtered her parents. From the moment she landed at De Gaulle to the moment she left again, she had to shut down that part of her mind and pretend the murders had never happened. Today—in the tan cotton walking shorts and bright red silk blouse that made her fake ponytail look even more blond than usual—she couldn’t wait to get back to Washington.
It was close
to three o’clock in the afternoon when she joined the crowd of tourists on the Pont Neuf, careful not to give the slightest impression of looking around for a tail as she crossed the bridge. She knew the Paris protocol inside and out, and was far too well trained to slip up this close to a contact point. She was being watched, of course. Her controller would be tracking her every step. He wouldn’t approach for the meet until he was sure she was alone, that the Sûreté, the Paris Police Judiciare, the CIA, or anyone else, wasn’t following her into the Ile de la Cité. Her job was to keep walking, to keep meandering like a tourist until the coast was clear for a meeting he insisted was too critical to trust to their normal methods of communication. Which meant “wet” work. Despite knowing better than to speculate, she couldn’t help wondering who the target would be this time.
When she reached the steps leading down to the Ile de la Cité, Sung Kim descended to the Quai de l’Horloge. She stopped for a few moments to gaze at the Seine on her left, to watch a red and white bateau mouche glide under the bridge, tourists crawling all over the boat as they scrambled to take pictures. Satisfied her controller had her well in sight—that he hadn’t lost her in the crowd coming off the bridge—she continued with the throng moving down the quai.
When she got to the Rue de Harley she turned right and strolled along the Conciergerie with its sharply pointed turrets until she came to the Quai des Orfèvres. This time she turned left, continued along the quai on the south side of the massive Palais de Justice. She glanced up at the ancient sundial, set high above the street in the side of the building. Hora fugit, Sung Kim read, the first two words of the Latin inscription beneath the sundial. Time flies. It certainly does, she told herself, especially when you’ve crossed the Atlantic for a ten-minute meeting before jetting directly back to Washington.
Moments later she came around the corner into the Boulevard du Palais and passed the front of the Palais itself. She checked the ornate clock above her head. She had just under a half hour before the three-thirty rendezvous. There was a flower market just ahead in the Rue de Lutèce. She would stop there, Sung Kim decided, kill another few minutes, and give her controller a further chance to scour the vicinity for watchers.
As usual, the Marché aux Fleurs was packed with shoppers as Sung Kim strolled through. Her senses sharpened by the danger of her presence so close to the meet-point, the flowers were almost overpowering: the sweet scent of crimson roses and fire-engine red carnations, the white and yellow clumps of chrysanthemums, and the stately drooping poses of sunflowers as tall as her head.
Ten minutes later she left the market and idled her way toward the Rue de la Cité, and from there—walking even more slowly now—toward Notre Dame. If it was safe for them to meet, her controller would show up exactly five minutes after she entered the cathedral. If he didn’t, she would go directly to the Gare de Lyon, take the train back to De Gaulle, and return immediately to Washington. Sung Kim hurried now, striding toward the west facade of the cathedral, to the north door—the Virgin Portal—eager to get it over with and return to the anonymity of her life in America.
It was five minutes to the second when her controller showed up.
Sung Kim knew better than to look directly at the man, who was tall for a North Korean, a few inches taller than she was, with shiny black hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a jagged scar that ran from the corner of his right eye, through the edge of his lips, to the middle of his chin. She’d heard all about the wound from the other teachers in training school. About the CIA agent who’d cut him, the American thug her controller had killed with his bare hands even as blood and muscle spilled from his butchered face. Cho Hyun was a Division 39 legend. His facial damage kept him out of deep-cover field work, but there’d never been a better “wet” man. Just his proximity made Sung Kim sweat.
But his presence meant something else as well. That they hadn’t been followed. Still they stuck to protocol. To anyone watching, they were tourists, strangers to one another, just a man and a woman visiting the world’s most famous Gothic church. Cho closed the distance between them as they milled along with the others making their way under the vaulted arches of the nave arcade to the left of the rows of wooden pews. Sung Kim strolled from there to the side altar in the choir room. She was standing with a dozen other men and women near the base of the steps up to the altar itself, her eyes on the six huge candleholders that dominated the altar, when she heard his voice. As usual he spoke English, slightly slurred from the dead nerves at the corner of his mouth. It would not do to have anyone become interested in a blue-eyed blonde who spoke Korean.
“Follow me,” he said, before turning to his left and heading for one of the two massive stained-glass windows behind the altar.
Sung Kim strolled toward the same window and moments later they stood together in front of it. For the moment, they were alone.
“You have disappointed me,” he said softly. “Two million from the Madonna was not what you promised.”
Sung Kim’s scalp began to tingle. It was never a good idea to disappoint this man. “Franklin knew I couldn’t sell it anywhere else,” she said just as quietly. “Not without the risk of holding it for months.” She paused. “He’s getting tougher about these paintings.”
“You asked for more, of course.”
“Five million. I was lucky to get two.”
He stepped closer to the window, examining the lower right portion for a moment before moving back to her.
“I have a new assignment for you,” he said.
She waited for him to continue.
“We must use Franklin for something else,” he said. “For something more important than money.”
Sung Kim almost looked at him, but caught herself in time. “I’m not sure he’s ready yet.”
“We can’t wait longer.”
“Who’s the target?”
He told her, using the target’s code number. Sung Kim didn’t react. She’d been reading the papers, of course. Pyongyang no longer had any choice.
“We expect an opportunity soon,” Cho said. “An opportunity that necessitates our using Franklin.”
Sung Kim leaned toward him, uncertain she’d heard right. Use Thomas Franklin? Now, with all his potential still intact? This time she had to work harder to control her response, and even harder to change his mind.
“Franklin won’t …” That was too strong, she realized. “He might not agree to do it,” she told him instead. “Stolen paintings are one thing, but …” She glanced around to make sure they were still alone. “He could very well refuse to do it.”
“Of course he could. That’s why you’re not to tell him.”
“Not tell him? But how? How can I …” She didn’t bother to finish.
“He won’t know until it’s too late. He won’t know what he’s done until it’s all over.”
Sung Kim opened her mouth to repeat her question but she knew better, so she tried to go at him from a different direction. It was dangerous to argue, but as a professional she had to.
“We use him now, we’ll have lost him forever. And the millions he pays for the paintings, the billions his company funnels into Pyongyang. Along with his access in Washington.” She paused. “I might never develop anyone to replace him.” Again she hesitated, clearly overstepping her boundaries now. “Might there be another way? Might the job be done before the target visits America?”
His voice hardened. “The Division has decided. You will eliminate the target. You will use Franklin to do it.”
Sung Kim swallowed a response. Her chance to change his mind had passed. And she understood something else as well. Once Thomas Franklin was blown—when he was no longer of value to Pyongyang—she would become damaged goods herself. If she could do the job and walk away, good for her, but to her controllers it would be infinitely better to die trying than to fail.
“When will I know more?” she asked.
“Soon. The materials you’ll need are already on their way.”
>
EIGHT
“Pull!” Thomas Franklin shouted.
He snapped the Cogswell and Harrison twelve-gauge to his shoulder, leaned into the shot, pulled the front sight past the spinning clay pigeon and squeezed the trigger. The clay disintegrated as number-nine birdshot tore through it, the roar of the antique shotgun reverberating across Battle Valley Farm before dying in the Gettysburg forest.
Franklin spun to his left. “Mark!”
This time the target came out of the low house at the level of Franklin’s waist, climbing rapidly, but the result was the same. Another quick track of the barrel, another shattered pigeon. He brought the shotgun to his chest, broke the action to allow both barrels to swing away, removed the empty shell casings, then turned to the president of the United States.
“Clean through sixteen,” he told his best friend. “But don’t let the pressure get to you.”
The president stepped up to the firing line. He was sweating from the noontime heat, his broad chin dripping, but he wasn’t smiling. Franklin realized he hadn’t smiled since stepping out of his helicopter an hour ago. Normally the first to trade insults, the most powerful man in the world wasn’t having a whole lot of fun today. Maybe it was the heat, or the fact that it was Monday, and that he’d just returned from an exhausting trip to Japan and South Korea.
The president adjusted his yellow-lensed shooting glasses, snugged his ear protectors tightly over his ears. He stood with the Remington shotgun in his hands for a long moment, then shook his head. Stepping back to the gun rack, he put the gun away, pulled off his “ears” and dropped them to the ground.
“You win, Tom,” he said. “I’ve had enough for today.”
Franklin nodded. “It is hot out here, isn’t it? Why don’t we go inside and have a beer. I think Grace sent out some sandwiches.”
The president turned away without a word, strode directly toward the skeet house to their right. Franklin hurried after him, following the president through the door and into the gun room, the deliberately informal clubhouse where Franklin kept the weapons he furnished to a constant stream of guests who loved the sport as much as he did. About the size of a racketball court, the gun room was a far cry from the baroque splendor of the mansion, more like a hunting cabin in the woods of Maine than an air-conditioned retreat from the swelter of a Pennsylvania summer.