The Washington Stratagem

by Adam LeBor

  Thanks to Beaker’s hacking of Cyrus Jones’s telephone, Yael, Joe-Don, and Braithwaite knew the outline of the plan to attack the Istanbul Summit. The two bombs in Istanbul were just a foretaste of the carnage to come. The plan was to kill as many global leaders as possible. The attacks on the summit would destabilize the West, trigger massive retaliation against Muslims around the world, and tip the Middle East into bloody chaos. The question was, how were they going to stop it? They had discussed simply going to the US mission to the UN, asking for an appointment with the ambassador, and telling him everything. But the Prometheus Group had lines into every US government department, especially the Pentagon and the intelligence services. Even if the ambassador believed them and red-flagged their information, Prometheus’s allies would surely dismiss it as fantasy. All they would achieve would be to draw more attention to themselves and drive the conspirators further underground with a new plan. Yael had agreed with Joe-Don that she would travel immediately to Istanbul. He and Braithwaite would follow the next day. It was not ideal, but Joe-Don wanted to visit a contact in Washington, DC, who, he said, had some useful information. And in Istanbul there was someone Yael could ask for help, someone with whom she had already worked. But could she trust him?

  The Turkish Airlines flight had departed on time, on Saturday evening at nine o’clock. It was supposed to be a direct flight, a journey of eleven hours, due to land at three o’clock in the afternoon local time. At first Yael had had two seats to herself. She went to sleep, but eight hours in, the captain had announced that the plane would be making an unscheduled stop in Frankfurt, for “technical reasons.” He assured the passengers there was nothing to worry about as a frisson of alarm ran through the cabin. Yael was an experienced traveler, attuned to the sequence of engine noises that marked an airplane journey. There had been no bumps, lurches, or grinding sounds. Nothing was on fire. The cabin staff, the best barometer of any danger, seemed completely relaxed, so she fell back to sleep. She woke up somewhere over Serbia to find she had a neighbor. A young woman had boarded in Frankfurt. She was in her early twenties, plump with olive skin, short-cropped brown hair, glasses, and a snub nose. Yael had glanced at her, wondering how a passenger was allowed to board during an unscheduled stop, but she was exhausted, still sore from her fight with Cyrus Jones, and soon fell back sleep.

  Yael had folded away the newspaper and was jamming it into the seat-back pocket, when she sensed movement on her right. Her neighbor was peering through the window, leaning so close that Yael could smell her almond-scented shampoo.

  “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” the young woman said, her voice full of enthusiasm.

  Yael stifled a yawn. “Very.”

  She turned to look at Yael. “First time in Istanbul?” She spoke English with an American accent, overlaid with the long, harmonious vowels of Turkish.

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky you. You have a treat awaiting,” she said, her right hand touching and smoothing her hair.

  “If we ever get off this plane,” said Yael, noting her nervous gesture.

  “I’m so sorry about that; it’s partly my fault,” said the young woman, before launching into a long, detailed explanation of how she had been traveling back to Istanbul from Hamburg in Germany, with a layover in Frankfurt, but her original flight was canceled, and then it turned out there were seats on this one, even though it was not supposed to stop at Frankfurt and was only there to get something checked in the engine and so on and so forth.

  She looked at Yael. Yael nodded, not especially sympathetically, and did not say anything as the young woman continued talking. She was not picking up Yael’s signals that she did not want to chat. Maybe she was a nervous flyer. Maybe she was just trying to be friendly. But Yael did not feel very friendly. After fourteen hours sitting in seat 8A she wanted to be left in peace, until she could get off the plane.

  “Do you mind?” her neighbor suddenly asked, leaning toward Yael, her iPhone in her hand.

  Before Yael had a chance to answer, the young woman moved sideways again, holding her phone against the cabin window. “It’s such a stunning view. I want to grab a quick video.”

  “Quick is fine,” said Yael, leaning back in her seat to make room.

  The young woman held her phone in three different positions against the window for about a minute, then stopped filming. She thanked Yael, apologized for the inconvenience, and placed it in her purse. She sat back and closed her eyes.

  Yael looked out the window once more. The plane began its direct approach to the airport and she felt the wings clunk as the landing gear came down. She checked her watch. It was now six o’clock. She could see the fishermen standing on the quay, tiny figures with their rods leaning against the rail, and the boat-restaurant bobbing in the tide that sold only one dish: fried mackerel sandwiches with salad and onions, the most delicious fish she had ever tasted. Just the thought of them made her hungry. Until she remembered a darker harvest.

  The policemen grimace as they drag the dead man into the boat. His back is crisscrossed by deep welts, their ruffled edges bleached white by the water.

  Yael picked up her newspaper again and found the item in the Metro section.

  MAN FOUND DEAD IN CAR IN MANHATTAN

  A man was found dead in a car yesterday on the Lower East Side, police said. Officers responded to a call at 4:20 a.m. and found the man dead apparently from a single gunshot wound to the head. The car, a blue Volkswagen Touareg, was parked under the Williamsburg Bridge by East River Park. The police said the victim appears to be in his thirties and may have committed suicide. He was holding a .22 Beretta fitted with a heavily scratched silencer. He was carrying no identification documents or credit cards. However, he had a distinguishing purple birthmark on the right-hand side of his neck. There was no sign of a struggle. Police have appealed for anyone with possible information to come forward.

  Yael felt no regret at the death of Cyrus Jones. Neither the news of his demise nor its manner was a surprise. But the murder weapon was. Yael slipped her hand inside her jeans pocket and took out a silver earring. It was a half loop, with a small turquoise stone set underneath, one of a pair her father had bought in the Jaffa flea market when she was a teenager. She had not worn the earrings for many years, and as far as she could remember, they were jumbled in a pile in her jewelry box. Since she’d found it she had searched for the other half of the pair, but it had disappeared. More to the point, why had the earring been on the floor of her apartment, next to the space where she had hidden Cyrus Jones’s gun? A space, she had discovered, that was now empty.

  Joe-Don sat back in the polished leather armchair and sipped his bourbon. It was too sweet for his taste, especially at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  “Does she know you are here?” asked the man sitting next to him in a matching armchair.

  “Of course not.”

  He picked up the bottle and offered it to Joe-Don, who declined. He topped up his own drink and swirled it around his glass, staring at the amber liquid as though it held the very secret of existence. He looked up before he spoke. “JD, we go back a long way.”

  Joe-Don returned his stare. The man’s eyes were red rimmed, the collar of his hand-tailored shirt stained with grime. He appeared to have been up all night. “Yes, we do.” Joe-Don gestured with his glass at the pictures on the wall. “And now look what impressive friends you have.”

  The man laughed, the sound catching in his throat and turning into a cough. “They aren’t my friends. They don’t know the first thing about me, except what they read in the newspaper and the number of zeros on the checks I write for their campaign funds. You are my friend. I owe you. If you hadn’t seen that sniper and taken him out, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  Joe-Don smiled. “You would have done the same. We looked out for each other.”

  “Yes, sir, I would have. Remember Cambodia?” A grin spread across his wide, doughy face. “The raid, when we busted out that colo
nel? The one held by the Khmer Rouge? They were one bunch of crazy motherfuckers. Shoot one down and three more little yellow men pop up out of nowhere, running at you, screaming and shouting. How old were you?”

  “Twenty. I was a kid. We weren’t even at war with the Khmer Rouge,” said Joe-Don. He raised his glass in tribute. “To Cambodia. And to Laos. Those Hmong camps, rows and rows of tents. They fought with us, believed in us, and we sold them down the river. But you got our guys out. Every last one.” He took a sip and put the bourbon down. “Could I get some coffee as well?”

  Clarence Clairborne stood up and walked over to his desk. “Sure.” He leaned over and pressed a button by his telephone. “Samantha, we need some coffee here. Can you rustle up a pot for us?”

  “Yes, sir,” said a bright female voice.

  Clairborne picked up his bourbon. He stood up and walked over to the photograph of him shaking hands with Eugene Packard on the wall, swaying slightly. “The Lord has taken away, JD. From both of us. But the Lord also giveth,” he said softly, almost to himself. “Rapture is coming, JD. Rapture. It just needs a little help.”

  Clairborne suddenly swiveled around to Joe-Don. “So, my friend, I guess you didn’t travel all the way to DC on a Sunday morning just for a social call. What can I do for you?” he asked, with the fierce concentration of someone who has drunk a little too much but has just remembered something vitally important.

  Joe-Don put his glass down. “You can save a lot of lives.”

  “Well now, that’s always a fine thing. And how would I do that, JD?”

  “Stop it.”

  Clairborne tipped his glass back and swallowed the rest of his bourbon. He walked back to his chair and sat down. “Stop what?” he said, his glass rattling on the table as he put it down.

  “Your plan to hit the Istanbul Summit.”

  Clairborne furrowed his brow. “And why in God’s good name would I want to blow up the world’s best chance for peace in decades?”

  “Chaos, Clarence. Chaos is good for your business. Chaos means profits. The more the Iranians destabilize the Middle East, the more we’ll need Prometheus to pick up the pieces.”

  Clairborne drummed his fingers on his glass. He picked up the bottle of bourbon, then put it back, exhaling loudly. A gust of rye fumes floated across the room. “That’s a theory, JD. An interesting one. But nothing more.”

  “It’s more than a theory and you know it. There are over two hundred journalists based in the UN headquarters in New York, Clarence, including almost every major American news organization. If this gets out, that Prometheus is planning to attack the summit to profit from the ensuing chaos, you are finished. However much you deny it, you will be all over the front page, the networks, and the Internet. Just the suspicion will be enough. Your share price will plunge. Your board will convene an emergency meeting and find a way to get rid of you. Your friends in Langley and the Pentagon will drop you straight into the waiting arms of the Justice Department and the district attorney’s office. Who are already interested in Prometheus.”

  Clairborne shrugged. “What’s new? Prometheus, the source of all evil. I can read that on a dozen blogs any day of the week. To make anything stick, the press needs evidence. There is no evidence because there is no plot by Prometheus to blow up the Istanbul Summit.”

  “We have evidence.”

  “Which is?”

  “The architectural blueprints of the Osman Convention Center; a schedule and diagrams of where the first wave of suicide bombers will hit; the names of the Prometheus personnel who will let the bombers through; blast wave and casualty projections; estimated response times of the Turkish emergency services; the plans for the second wave, to take out the first responders. It’s all there. Hidden on the darknet and encrypted but traceable back to an IP address in your office.”

  “Nice try, JD. I don’t know what that fantasy of yours is, but it’s certainly not evidence and you know it. Any fool can come up with diagrams and a schedule and stick our name on it. It means nothing. And every newspaper, website, and TV station in the land knows that if they threaten to link our name to a planned terrorist attack, our lawyers will sue their ass from here to kingdom come.”

  A knock at the door sounded. “Come in, honey!” shouted Clairborne.

  Samantha opened the door, carrying a tray with a pot of coffee, sugar, cream, and chocolate-chip cookies. She was perfectly made up, wearing pristine white Nike running shoes, a pale blue Armani AX jogging suit, her blond hair tied back with a navy band. Samantha looked at Clairborne, taking in his disheveled state. She shook her head, a tight, precise gesture of disapproval. She picked up the bottle of bourbon, three-quarters empty, and put it on the tray. Clairborne turned, about to protest, but then thought better of it. Samantha put the tray down poured two coffees, and handed one each to Joe-Don and Clairborne.

  “Samantha, you are a lifesaver,” said Clairborne.

  “Enjoy your coffee, sir. Perhaps it would be a good idea to eat something as well.” She gestured at the cookies. “I baked these myself.”

  “You see, JD,” said Clairborne, “I found the perfect woman. It’s too late for me, but she is going to make a lucky man very happy one day.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Samantha, smiling. She picked up the tray and left the room.

  Clairborne bit into a cookie. “Mmm, these are good,” he said, demolishing it in two bites and reaching for another one. “OK, JD. I’m not gonna BS you anymore. Like I said, I owe you. But no can do, JD. It’s out of my hands now. It’s gone way beyond my pay grade.” Clairborne looked over at the photographs of his children on his desk, suddenly thoughtful. “Way beyond. Which leaves us, my friend, at an impasse. And me with a problem. Operational security says you should not be allowed to leave this room.”

  Joe-Don opened his jacket to show his shoulder holster, which held a Glock 30 pistol. “Are you gonna shoot me, Clarence?”

  Clairborne smiled. “I don’t think so, JD. Not today. Apart from not shooting you, anything else I can do for you?”

  “The Jews have a saying. He who saves one life saves the world.”

  “The world is beyond my means. But I made some calls as soon as I heard you were coming. It took some hard bargaining. I had to call in serious favors.”

  He paused and leaned forward, reaching for his glass of bourbon. He looked at the inch of amber liquid inside for a second, sighed, then put it down and picked up his coffee. “If she’s not in the way, they won’t come after her again. That’s the best I can do. Send her on vacation, somewhere far away, preferably to another continent. Just keep her out of Istanbul. It’s nothing personal. And certainly not from me. She’s a firecracker. I offered her a job, you know.”

  “Did you? And what did she say?”

  “‘No thank you, Mr. Clairborne.’ Or words to that effect,” he said, briefly smiling at the memory. His voice turned serious. “JD, you need to understand this. The moment she steps foot in Istanbul, she becomes a target. They will find her, they will take her, and it won’t be pretty.”

  Clairborne paused as he reached inside the drawer of his desk. He took out a heavy, well-worn US Army .45 Colt pistol and placed it on the green leather surface.

  “And one more thing.” He looked straight at Joe-Don as he spoke, his eyes cold and flat. “Our account is clear now.”

  19

  Large banners draped across the airport terminal proclaimed “Welcome to Istanbul, City of Peace” in English and Turkish. But the reality, Yael immediately noticed as she clambered down the staircase onto the tarmac, was less hospitable. Security was much heavier than it had been on her last visit, just a few weeks before. Police commandos wearing bulletproof vests stood on the runway and at the door to the terminal, trigger fingers resting on the Heckler & Koch submachine guns strapped against their chests. Signs in a dozen languages, from Arabic to Swahili, exhorted passengers to be alert and report anything suspicious. More security personnel patrolled inside the buil
ding, holding German shepherds on short, double leashes, scanning the passengers with cold, hard stares.

  Yael made sure to fall back as the travelers disembarked from their bus and entered the terminal. The young woman who had sat next to her strode ahead and was soon separated from Yael by half a dozen others. Transit through immigration was also slower, with every arrival, including Turkish citizens, being questioned. After standing in line for thirty-five minutes, Yael eventually presented her passport at the immigration control. The policewoman in the glass booth had shoulder-length brown hair, thin pursed lips, and a severe expression. A sign on the glass announced that photography was forbidden and all conversations would be recorded.

  “Julia Albihari?” asked the policewoman, as she slipped the identification page of Yael’s passport into an electronic reader.

  Yael nodded. The recording was a new feature added since her last time through. It must have been introduced as part of the heightened security measures for the summit.

  “Please answer me, Ms. Albihari.”

  “Yes, that’s me,” said Yael. She was not traveling on her UN laissez-passer, but on an American passport.

  “The purpose of your visit?”

  “Tourism.”

  “What do you plan to see?”

  “The Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, maybe take a ferry to the Asian side. Is there anything you would recommend personally?”

  The policewoman ignored the question. She stared hard at Yael, looked at her passport, then at the computer screen in front of her. She entered a series of numbers and waited.

  Yael began to feel uneasy. The passport was real, issued by the State Department. It would survive the most rigorous background checks, as would the credit cards and driving license, all in the name of Julia Albihari, that Yael was carrying. Julia Albihari had black hair, as did Yael now, having dyed it on Saturday morning. Tradecraft rules were that aliases should be reasonably similar to the operative’s actual name, to make them easier to remember. Nevertheless, Yael was not Julia Albihari. She was traveling under a fake identity, a serious crime under any legal system. Her UN immunity, already fraying, would easily unravel if the Turkish authorities probed further.