by Tom Clancy
The plane disappeared to the north.
Adara started walking again. She was still picking ants out of her clothing. “Do you think those were Venezuelans?”
Dom said, “Don’t know. At least it wasn’t the Russians.”
“Might have been another group,” said Adara.
“This shit is getting complicated. We kept Ross out of the hands of the Russians, but for all we know, whoever has him now is even worse.”
“What do we do now?”
Dom sighed. “We go home.”
40
SPECIAL AGENT DARREN ALBRIGHT returned empty-handed from Panama late in the afternoon. His FBI jet landed at Regan National, and the rest of his team, mostly Hostage Rescue Team members, left for their homes around the D.C. area, mostly in Maryland and Virginia.
Albright, however, climbed in his FBI-issued Yukon and drove into the District. He parked in a loading zone in front of a residential building near Logan Circle, tossed his FBI parking decal on the dashboard, and took the elevator to a condo on the fifth floor.
Dominic Caruso opened the door to his place. If he was surprised to see Albright, he didn’t show it. “You made it back fast. Come on in.”
Albright followed Caruso to his messy living room, then sat in the leather chair while Caruso plopped down on the sofa.
Albright said, “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
“Sorry about that. Lost my sat phone this morning.”
“You made it back quickly yourself.”
“Just got home. First plane out of Bocas. First plane out of Panama City.”
“You hurt?”
“’Bout a hundred fifty bug bites. Does that count?”
“Considering what went down? Not really.” Albright added, “I saw you tried to call me before the Russians hit the safe house.”
Dom nodded. “They dropped out of the damn sky.”
“We heard. Panamanian police interviewed witnesses. Sounds like there was quite a show this morning. I’d love for you to tell me what you saw.”
“When did you guys get there?”
“We were ninety minutes out when the shooting started. We arrived on scene after the Panamanian police. Didn’t go in. We found out through embassy channels that there were no Americans present. We had concerns Ross might have left his stolen documents behind but—”
“He didn’t.”
Albright cocked his head. “You know this how?”
“He had the scrape with him right before he left the house.” Albright raised an eyebrow, so Dom answered the next question before it was posed. “He told me.”
“Wait. You talked to Ross?”
“Briefly. I almost had him in hand.”
“But?”
“Shit happens. He got away.”
“No idea where he went?”
“Didn’t see the tail number of the floatplane. Don’t imagine they filed a flight plan. Did you learn anything from the Panamanians about the aircraft?”
Albright just shook his head. To Dom, the FBI senior special agent looked like a man at the end of his rope. He’d probably not slept three hours in a row since getting the case more than a week earlier, and now it looked like he’d hit a dead end. “Nothing.”
“So what happens next?”
“I keep hunting for him. I’ve got a criminal complaint with his name on it. Violation of U.S. Code Title Eighteen. Section 798. Theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person. He’s wanted for questioning in four murders as well. He’d go on the Ten Most Wanted List, but I am sure CIA will lobby to keep this somewhat quiet. The Bureau will push back because of Nolan and Beale, our two SSG guys. Interdepartmental bullshit aside, anyway you slice it, Ethan Ross is now America’s most wanted.”
He added, “I guess your uncle the President could just drone kill the son of a bitch, but we’d still have to find him first.” Dom dreaded the answer he might get, but he asked the next question anyway. “Why don’t you guys just offer him immunity for the breach if he returns the scrape and comes back to deal with the murder investigation?”
“I imagine the offer will be made if we can prove he hasn’t leaked the scrape to a foreign power.”
“Obviously he did leak it. You told me Venezuela is arresting agents en masse.”
“That’s small ball considering what’s in his possession.” Dom asked, “Do you really think they might extend immunity to him for giving it all back?”
“I’m a law and order guy, as you’ve mentioned before. I’d like to try him, convict him, and give him the needle for killing Nolan and Beale. Still, decisions like that are far above my pay grade. The CIA might press for immunity, depending on what he has.”
Caruso told himself that if Ross received immunity by the Justice Department, he’d find him and kill him himself. It was easy to say, but harder to do. The guy could be anywhere in the world right now.
Minutes after Albright left, Gerry Hendley called. Dom had been expecting a call all evening, because he knew Sherman would call Hendley as soon as she headed back to her place. Dom wasn’t bothered by this. Adara had kicked ass in Panama, and if his only price for all her help was that she was keeping their employer apprised of his mental state, then so be it.
And to Hendley’s credit, he did nothing to hide the fact that Sherman was his surrogate eyes and ears. “I spoke with Adara. She gave me a pretty detailed after-action report on your exploits in Panama.”
“I figured she would. I guess she told you I let Ross slip away.”
“She didn’t characterize it like that. She says the deck was stacked against you, and you did your best.”
“I am sick and tired of doing my best. It doesn’t matter. Ross is still out there somewhere.”
“I’ve been reaching out to my contacts in the intelligence community to find out just what level of threat his information poses.”
Dom asked, “How big is this? Has the CIA given you specifics yet?”
Hendley said, “It’s potentially ruinous. Over one hundred twenty gigs’ worth of docs. Most top-secret. Local agent information vacuumed from case officer reports. Front companies listed by name. Affiliate and liaison intelligence services.”
“Names of agents?”
“No, but plenty in there to ID them. If these files make it into the wrong hands, The entire U.S. intelligence community will take a devastating hit.”
Gerry continued. “We can’t say this is the biggest intelligence leak in U.S. history. That was a couple years back when the Chinese took forty terabytes of DoD files. But this is the intelligence leak that will get more people killed in the intelligence community than anything we’ve faced. Ever. Think about it. Virtually every agent on CIA’s payroll. That doesn’t just expose thousands of foreigners around the world. Anyone who has access to this intel can dig into those foreign agents and find out who they met with, and that will lead them to larger networks. It will also lead them back to their American case officers.”
Gerry exhaled into the phone. “If Ross’s leak makes it into the hands of a foreign power, the ramifications will reverberate for decades. The agency will have to bring in a new generation of case officers and recruit a new generation of foreign assets. That has never happened.
“The United States will suffer greatly in these down years. It will be devastating.”
Caruso rubbed his eyes. “We have to plug the leak. There is no other alternative.”
“The FBI, State, and the U.S. intelligence community are doing everything they can. Your uncle has made it the priority it needs to be to get attention.”
Dom said, “I’m not doing everything I can. I need to get back out there, Gerry.”
“You want to continue your involvement in this matter, don’t you?”
“Damn right I do. I want to see this all the way to the end.”
“There’s
probably some speech I could give you about not making this personal.”
Dom half rolled his eyes. “Yeah. If it will make you feel better, I’ll sit here while you give me that speech.”
“No need. But I do need to let you know the rest of The Campus is operational again.”
This surprised Caruso. “They are working on getting the data back?”
“Negative. It’s another situation. Potentially a flashpoint overseas. They are on their way to Asia right now.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No. You are deployed on your own operation. When you are ready to rejoin your team, I’ll read you into their op.”
“But—”
“Dominic, at this point you don’t have a need to know. You are running solo. Stay that way until you are ready to integrate back into The Campus fully.”
Dom grumbled out a “Yes, sir,” and the call ended a moment later.
Dom was both angry and frustrated, but he had the presence of mind to realize he did retain some control. If he could somehow affect the outcome of the Ross investigation, he could move on and rejoin his unit. To that end, he went back to his laptop and opened up his IBM i2 Analyst Notebook software. He began wading through the data findings of all the intel he recorded from Ethan Ross’s home. He’d loaded it in his computer days earlier, but the data points hadn’t led to any real pattern analysis conclusion. To find anything in the treasure trove he knew would need to add some more context, otherwise he would have to run down every lead, every name off every phone number, or every connection between all the disparate data points. That wasn’t a job for a man alone on his couch, that was a job for the FBI.
The only problem with this was the fact Dom knew Albright would throw him in jail if he somehow managed to produce hundreds of pieces of intel from Ross’s house. The FBI would have access to the same information that Dom now had, so he didn’t feel too bad about keeping it to himself.
As he looked through the data, more than eight thousand items in all, he focused on the handwritten addresses and phone numbers. He began highlighting numbers searching on a graph for any link analysis or trends with that number. He didn’t have the ability to trace any phones other than simple Internet searches, but this ruled out the vast majority of all numbers. Still, there several phone numbers that had no known relation to any other bits of data. They weren’t restaurants, NSC, or White House employees, or known friends or relatives of Ethan Ross.
Dom wondered if answers were staring him in the face, but all this information was more overwhelming than it was elucidating.
He decided to change his strategy. He pulled up the photographs of the three pill bottles he’d found in Ross’s kitchen. He enlarged the images, then enlarged them again, and soon he was on the Internet looking at PillID.com. He typed in the shape, color, and markings of each tablet, and within five minutes he had identified all three drugs.
Clonazepam, glycopyrrolate, and sertraline. He wasn’t familiar with any of the medications, but as soon as he started researching them, he realized these were the meds the polygraph examiner Finn had suspected Ross of taking.
If Ethan did not have a prescription of his own for these meds himself, it was reasonable to conclude someone had given them to him, and not beyond the realm of possibilities that person was aware of his need to defeat the FBI polygraph.
Dom realized he needed to find the doctor who had prescribed all three meds, somewhere in the forty-eight or so hours between Ross learning he would be polygraphed, and the actual exam.
These weren’t ironclad times, of course. Ethan could have had these pills for months or years, they could have been sitting around since his last routine poly, but Dom knew the fortyeight-hour parameter was the most likely.
Dom had no way to find the doctor on his own. He knew he could either contact Albright, and quite possibly get tossed in jail for breaking and entering, or reach out to David at the Mossad. The Israeli had shown his organization had the ability to get answers. Dom didn’t know how they were doing it, although he suspected they were getting help from key members of the U.S. intelligence community.
He decided on David, although he didn’t know if the Mossad man would be much help. The two men had not spoken since Dom went radio silent in Panama.
David answered his phone after several rings, and his greeting told Dom that all would not be forgiven easily. “You have demonstrated to me that you do not contact me to provide me with help, so I can only assume you need something.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“I thought we had an agreement about Panama.”
“Facts on the ground changed quickly.”
“We know about the digital breach Mr. Ross made.”
Dom assumed he would have heard about the scrape. He said, “I hope you understand that I wasn’t in a position to discuss that with you at the time.”
“That’s fair. But you handled the situation poorly. I am disinclined to help you now.”
Dom said, “I have a piece of evidence that might lead us to Ethan Ross.”
David chuckled, but there was coldness to it. “Us, Mr. Caruso?”
“Well . . . me. Look, I want to help U.S. intelligence get the files back. I’m not sure what you know about the scope of the breach, but I’m sure your organization can see that’s in Israel’s best interests as well.”
“Go on.”
“If I find Ross, I would love to kill him myself, but killing him won’t get the data back. I’ll bring in the FBI. I have no choice. I know you want vengeance—”
“We both want vengeance. But vengeance can wait. We agree with your assessment. Getting the data back is paramount. How can we help you?”
Dom told David about the pills, and his theory they were prescribed between and Wednesday of the previous week. David said he’d see what he could find.
The return call came in only thirty-five minutes. Dom was astonished how fast it had been. He answered with, “You have got to be kidding.”
He could hear David smiling when he talked. “Whoever obtained these medicines was very clever. They did not use the same doctor for all three.”
“How can we know the meds are related to Ross if they didn’t come from the same doctor?”
“The clonazepam and sertraline are very common antianxiety drugs, and they are often prescribed together. But in a one-hundred-mile radius of Washington, D.C., only three doctors prescribed glycopyrrolate between Monday and Wednesday of last week. It’s not a common medication.”
“Okay. Give me the three names. I’ll check them out.”
“No need. Two of the doctors are dermatologists. It is a medicine for excessive sweating, so that is quite understandable. The third doctor, however, is a heart surgeon in downtown D.C.”
“A heart surgeon? That sounds fishy.”
“Indeed.”
David gave the man’s name and number. Dom plugged the information into his Analyst’s Notebook, but was frustrated to see no connections to any data points there.
“Nothing,” he said.
David replied. “I can e-mail you his call logs for that time period.”
Dom’s eyebrows rose. “That might be helpful.”
Within minutes Caruso’s eight-thousand-point file on Ross had an additional three hundred twelve pieces of forensic evidence, all phone calls going to and from a cardiac surgeon in downtown D.C., both his office and his mobile phone. After loading it in to Analyst’s Notebook, Dom clicked on a visualization tool that would show him any interconnection between data in Ross’s home to the surgeon.
A graphic came up on his screen, and when he highlighted it he saw an image of a Post-it note, and on it a handwritten phone number that Ross had left sticking out of a magazine lying on a coffee table on the back porch.
David had been waiting on the other end of the line. “Anything?”
“One more number to trace.”
“Give it to me.”
Dom read i
t out, there was a pause of less than a minute, and then a reply. “That is the mobile phone belonging to Harlan R. Banfield of Washington, D.C. He is a reporter, used to work for the Post.”
“Bingo,” said Dom. A journalist had arranged for Ross to beat the FBI polygraph. Dom wondered what else the man had done.
41
HARLAN BANFIELD STEPPED OFF the elevator into his parking garage, tired from a full, stressful day. He walked to his Volkswagen in the corner, and while doing so, he told himself he was getting too old to work so late in the evening. The garage was four-fifths empty; he figured he was the only person in the building putting in twelve-hour days.
He’d taken a few steps toward the elevator when he noticed the shape of a man standing in the darkness between two cars off his right. He thought of Ethan; this was just a few feet away from where the NSC whistleblower had appeared from the dark the week before, starting this entire traumatic episode for the sixty-six-year-old journalist.
But where Ethan had merely stepped into the light, this figure stormed forward out of the dark, charging at Banfield.
The man grabbed Banfield by the coat and slammed him up against a cement support column, then yanked him around behind the column, hiding him from anyone else who might come out of the elevators.
Banfield was too breathless to scream, but when he saw the gun, just a squat black pistol his attacker produced from inside his coat, he managed a small cry of alarm that emanated from the back of his throat.
The man slammed Banfield again into the column, his head against the cold concrete by the attackers forearm, and the gun disappeared from view.
But Banfield knew where it went. He felt a hard metal object pressed against his crotch.
The attacker was face-to-face with him now. He wore a mask, and Banfield could see nothing of the man’s eyes even though they were just inches away from his, because the light was so bad here in the corner of the underground lot.
“Who are you?” Banfield tried to put power into his words, but they came out in a hollow vibrato.