by Tom Lowe
“I believe that one of the reason’s Mike Gates wants my head on a platter is because he knows I’m about to deliver his. I will call you back shortly. My phone will be on speaker, so don’t say a word. Feed the audio into your laptop, record an MP3 file. Make copies and hide them.”
“Why? What are you doing?”
“Just do it, Dave. If we’re lucky, it’ll be a confession that is long overdue.”
***
O’BRIEN DROVE AROUND THE perimeter of the Olde Club Condominiums in New Smyrna. The covered parking lot was filled with Mercedes, Jaguars, BMWs, and SUVs larger than some kitchens. He watched an older man and woman, both dressed in beach clothes, use a side entrance to enter the six-story building. The man had used a key, holding the door open for his wife.
O’Brien drove off the lot and headed to a grocery store across the street. His cell rang. It was Agent Lauren Miles. “Sean, I dug up a buried and still classified FBI report on the death of William Lawson, age twenty-one. Died May 19, 1945. Report reads that, I’m quoting here, ‘Lawson was shot and killed as he made an alcohol-induced telephone call to us wife. In an incoherent manner, he is reported to have told her he saw something strange on the beach. Subject, in a delirious state-of-mind, said German soldiers were invading the beach. Subject may have been suffering from a warfront related psychosis or paranoia. He died as a result of an armed robbery. Subject expired from a single .38 caliber gunshot wound to the chest. No suspects could be produced, and there is no indication his story of invading German soldiers was real. Until further notice, the case is closed and remains a homicide.’ The report was filed by Agent Robert Miller.”
“Excellent! Nice work. Tell Dave everything you told me.”
“Sean, Mike Gates has you in his cross-hairs. I believe his attack dog is Eric Hunter. They’re moving fast.”
“I’ll have to move faster.”
“Where will you be?”
“If you don’t know, they can’t force it out of you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
There was one outdoor guest parking spot left when O’Brien returned to the Olde Club Condos. He parked and waited. His cell rang. It was Dan Grant. “Bingo,” Dan said. “Joe says the two bullets found in Billy Lawson’s body and the one I shot in the tank were fired from the same pistol: the Luger.”
“Thanks, Dan. Gotta go.”
“Sean, wait a second—”
O’Brien disconnected. He could see the pool behind an ornate fence, the beach at the base of the seawall, the breakers less than fifty yards away. An older woman opened the pool gate and sauntered with a slight limp to her car. She opened the trunk and removed a straw handbag. O’Brien got out of his Jeep, lifted two paper bags of groceries, and headed toward the side-entrance door. He watched the woman out of the corner of his eye, adjusting the speed of his walk with her pace as she approached the same door. O’Brien fumbled with his keys, holding the bags.
“Let me help you,” the woman said, using her key to open the deadbolt.
“Thank you,” O’Brien said smiling.
“I haven’t seen you here before, new owner?”
“Just a weekend guest. But I could be in the market. Is your unit for sale?”
“Oh, no. Harry and I love it over here.” She entered the posh lobby with O’Brien following. “We keep our Orlando home, but it’s just a matter of time before we stay here permanently. I believe the salt air is healthy for you. At least it makes you feel better, and that’s half the battle.” They stopped at the twin elevators. She pressed the button, the doors opening. Then she touched the button to the third floor. “Which floor?”
“Sixth,” O’Brien said. “If I did purchase, I’d like to get on the very top floor, maybe I could see Spain from my balcony. Are any units for sale on the sixth floor?”
“Marge and Gene Jawarski have been talking of selling.” The woman lowered her voice. “Marge, poor thing, since her cancer returned, Gene’s been taking her to Jacksonville’s Mayo Clinic for chemo. They have a corner unit, 6024. It’s beautiful.”
On the third floor, the woman smiled and got out of the elevator. As the doors were closing, she said, “Some friends are meeting for cocktails by the pool in an hour. Come join us.”
“Thank you.” On the top floor, he got out of the elevator and called Dave. “Can you hear me?” O’Brien asked in a whisper.
“Yes.”
“Good. From here it’s all listening and recording on your part.”
“Be careful. Miller probably can still shoot your lights out.”
O’Brien was silent, clipping the phone back to his belt as he walked down the marbled hall to condo unit 6016. He tapped on the door, heard shuffling and sensed someone was looking out the security glass eye.
The voice said, “What do you want?”
“Grocery delivery for the Jawarski’s.”
“Not in this condo. Down the hall, 6024, I think.”
“I tried there. No answer. Their daughter in Orlando called, placed the order, and asked us to deliver these. Said her parents should be here by now. They were returning from the hospital in Jacksonville, and she wanted the groceries to be there for them. I believe Mrs. Jawarski is ill, chemo treatments, according to her daughter. I’d hate to leave the food outside their door. The steaks might spoil. Do you mind taking them? I’ll put a note on their door.”
“Just a minute.”
O’Brien could hear the locks turning then the door opened. Robert Miller didn’t look like a man in his mid-eighties. He was younger in appearance. Thick white hair, neatly combed. Few wrinkles on his tanned face. Trimmed alabaster moustache. Gray-blue eyes that looked like they were carved from ice. He wore a Tommy Bahama silk shirt, khaki shorts, and in his dock shoes he stood at least six-one.
O’Brien smiled. “May I set these in the kitchen?”
“Be quick.” Miller gestured with his head to the left. O’Brien stepped inside as Miller stood by the open door. “It’s to your left, toward the balcony.”
The condo smelled of money. Old World imported furniture. Crystal. French oil paintings that gave the place the intimacy of a private gallery. There were framed photographs of Robert Miller standing next to presidents from Truman to George Bush Senior. Fox News was on a fifty-inch flat screen mounted on the wall.
“Thank you,” O’Brien said. He could tell that Miller was a man used to giving orders. In the stylish kitchen, O’Brien set the groceries down and took his Glock out of one bag. He opened and closed the refrigerator door, then entered the living room and pointed the pistol directly at Miller’s head. “Close the door.”
“You’re making a very stupid mistake,” Miller said, his voice calm, like a man who just said he was taking his dog for a walk.
“You made a mistake in 1945 when you lied about how Billy Lawson died.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Miller’s eyes narrowed, icy gray now hard as medieval armor. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the ghost of Billy Lawson, you asshole. I just may be your worst nightmare coming to haunt you. But to be haunted you have to have a conscience—something you sold to the devil a long time ago.”
“Whoever you are, you have a choice. You can put that gun away and walk out of here and, maybe, you’ll live to be as old as me. Or you can stay, but be advised: you will be hunted down like a dog. Hunted by men who have a license to kill insurgents like you. And, I promise you, no one will ever find your body. What will it be? You have five seconds to decide.”
“Don’t need five seconds. Is that the spiel you used on Ethan Lyons when you blackmailed him, sold out our nation’s security, pocketed money, and used your cover and plausible denial to achieve the American dream by cheating?”
“You have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I have more than ideas. I have evidence and answers to your injustices and lies. You wrote that Billy Lawson died from a single .38 caliber gunshot wound. When, in fact, he was killed by thre
e gunshots, and the bullets were from a German Luger, an officer’s special edition. Bullets pulled out of Billy Lawson’s exhumed body matched the gun I found in that German sub. So we had a young man, back from fighting overseas, he calls in to report a U-boat sighting, and he’s killed by the enemy on U.S. soil—and it’s covered up. Why?”
Miller said nothing.
O’Brien aimed the Glock in the center of Miller’s forehead. “Tell me why!”
“You have nothing!”
“I have your lies on a sixty-seven-year-old FBI report. Tell me why!”
“National security.”
“Bullshit!”
“We were at war. If the general population knew the Germans had landed a sub on American shores, off-loaded two Japanese spies, and hidden enriched uranium somewhere, there would have been wide-spread panic.”
“The average American had never heard of enriched uranium. The bomb had yet to be developed or dropped. There would have been no reason for panic. The real reason you hid the truth is because you wanted it buried with Billy Lawson.”
“You’re insane!”
“Billy Lawson saw a third man that night. But this man didn’t get off a German sub. He got out of an American car, met with the Germans, and allowed two Japanese spies into this country. You left the HEU in the hole because you knew the man you sold it to, Russian agent Ivan Borshnik, would never live to get it. Why’d you leave the HEU in the hole? Why didn’t you go back and get it?”
Miller was silent. His lower jaw tightening, arms locked across his shirt. He said, “Russia had paid me, they simply never took delivery—those under Stalin, the regime I was working for, they were all killed. The war ended. Japan was in ruins. So was Russia and much of Europe. The commercial market for HEU today is far greater than it was in those days. Russia was my original buyer, and they got knocked out of the game. As time went by, I didn’t want to risk digging up the stuff, storing the canisters for God knows how long, and trying to fence the merchandise for sometime in the future. So I left them there. Besides, I’d made my money. Today, of course, Iran, Iraq and a dozen other countries would love to have it. But I grew too old to care one way of the other.”
O’Brien said, “Sit!”
“You don’t order me around.”
“Sit! Or they’ll smell your body before they find it.”
Miller sat back on his leather couch. “How much do you want?”
“Is that what you asked Mike Gates when he found out?”
Miller said nothing.
“He trained under you the last two years you were a field agent. While you recruited Ivan Borshnik, his son, Boris Borshnik, later recruited Gates … told him everything his father had told his mother before his death. And guess what, Miller? The damage you did in 1945 had its ugly scab knocked off. Borshnik’s son is here. He’s got the HEU, and believes he has ownership because the motherland paid for it. Paid you for it! You give the Russians the fucking recipe for nuclear disaster, and now they have the ingredients to make the bomb. You had the German sub bombed, men who probably were going to turn themselves in anyway, like their sister U-boat did ten days earlier. Germany had surrendered, but the Soviet Union was trying to arm itself with atomic bombs. Lucky for the U.S. the Russians couldn’t get their hands on it then. ”
Miller stared at the Atlantic Ocean beyond his sixth floor balcony, the fight gone from his face, eyes softer, shoulders rounded. Defeat opening sealed pores. He turned and looked at O’Brien like he would view a body in an open casket, eyes dispassionate. “I’m an old man. They found two spots on my lungs last month. I have one kidney left. There’s nothing you can do to me. You want money?”
“I want the truth!”
“You’re the type with illusions! I had to leave that kind of baggage at the door in a covert world. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have lived long.”
“Miller, the only difference between you and Stalin is you spoke English. At one time, you may have convinced yourself that being a double agent was about the distribution of power. Although delusional, as a young college kid, you could convince yourself it’s idealistic. So, then, you get a taste of the nicer things in life, and you justify selling out your country for the money. But, in reality, it’s always been about control—you’re nothing more than a power hungry asshole.”
“You mind if I pour myself a scotch?”
“Don’t move.”
“It’s right there on the bar, in the decanter. I don’t have a gun hidden in there.”
“I’ll get it.”
“While you’re at it, have one for yourself.”
O’Brien poured about an inch of scotch in a heavy lead crystal glass and handed it to Miller. He sipped, savoring the taste for a moment, exhaled like his lungs hurt, and said, “I used Borshnik like he tried to use me. Sure, I sold him secrets from the Manhattan Project. They would have acquired them anyway. The whole damn Manhattan Project was fueled, in part, by German HEU that Robert Oppenheimer took off the U-boats. America was crawling with Russian spies. Most of them had their aliases compromised when Meredith Gardner figured out their encryption during the Venona Project. He was one smart bastard.”
“Spell Venona.”
“What?”
“Just do it?”
“V-e-n-o-n-a.”
O’Brien stared hard at Miller. “How’d you know about the U-boat?”
“Navy knew another one was out there. They’d radioed us. We told them they could surrender at Mayport near Jacksonville, but when I heard they had two Japs aboard, two who would have committed suicide had the Germans formally surrendered, I instructed them to drop off the Japanese on a remote strip of beach. They had information I needed.”
“What happened to them?”
“They were eventually executed.”
“How convenient. What about the U-235?”
“We figured they were carrying some, just like the sub that we took in Portsmouth. German Admiral Otto Heinz spoke English. I told him to off-load his cargo with the Japanese south of Fort Matanzas. Bury the stuff, and we’d take it from there.”
“Why was a German shot and buried in the hole?”
“One of Heinz’s men protested. Said he couldn’t surrender. He was silenced.”
“Why was their sub hit with depth charges?”
“Because of Billy Lawson. He saw too much. We didn’t know who he had spoken to before he was killed, but he became, as they say today, collateral damage.”
O’Brien held back his anger as he watched the old, arrogant man sip the expensive liquor, eyelids half closed.
O’Brien said, “What I do know without a doubt is, it wasn’t about the war, the one in ‘45 or the approaching Cold War. Power was your drug of choice so that you and others like you could run amuck in the world. Did J. Edgar Hoover know, or was he in on it?”
“Hoover told President Truman what he wanted Truman to hear.”
“So you drift along three decades, about ready to retire until a young agent named Mike Gates trains under you. The poetic justice comes when Borshnik’s son manages to get in the game with Gates and tips him his cards. All Gates has to do, at that point, is blackmail you. Figures a guy like you—never married, no children, probably has stashed away enough of the motherland money to live well without raising suspicion. FBI fakes your death and obit. Knowing you’re off everyone’s radar, Gates taps you for hush money. He continues his pen pal relationship with Borshnik junior, and along comes the buried treasure, the HEU when my crew stumbles across it.”
Miller swirled the scotch in the bottom of the glass. “You never told me your name. I thought you were delivering groceries, but you just delivered a death sentence.”
“Six decades too late.”
“Your name?”
“O’Brien, Sean O’Brien.”
“Mr. O’Brien, I suppose you just caught the oldest spy in our nation’s history. And I was beginning to think I’d take it to my grave. All this time, no one really knew.”
“Gates knew.”
“But he didn’t learn it on his own. As you just said, he was tipped off. You managed to discover him, too. Gates would have gotten caught, sooner or later.” Miller sipped his drink. “When you’re not delivering groceries, what do you do?”
“I fish, but I’m not very good at it.”
“Let’s see how good you are at proving all this. I won’t live long enough to be brought to trial, not that you have anything tangible. I know you’re not wearing a wire. The T-shirt, shorts. No place for it. So what you heard was the hallucinogenic ramblings of an old man taking morphine washed down with very fine scotch. Maybe you’ll have better luck with Gates. Too bad I won’t be here to see that. He’s an incompetent idiot.”
O’Brien unclipped the cell phone from the back of his belt, adjusted the speaker phone button and asked, “Dave, did you get that?”
“Loud and clear. All recorded in digital sound.”
Robert Miller stared at the cell phone. The light flickered and faded from his eyes. They became hard, the cataracts like two diffused crescent moons floating just beneath the veiled surface of a turquoise sea.
“Dave,” O’Brien shouted. “If you spell Venona backwards you get a-n-o-n-e-v. Anonev.com is the website where we saw the hostiles holding a knife to Jason’s throat.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
It was almost ten when O’Brien returned to the marina. Nick Cronus, bottle of beer in one hand and a long fork in the other, was turning a steak over on his small grill perched in the cockpit. O’Brien could see him chatting with Max like she could understand every word.
Nick looked up though the thick smoke and poured some beer on the coals to douse flames. “Sean, where the hell you been? Man, you look like shit. When’s the last time you slept?”
Max barked and ran to where Sean was stepping from the dock into the cockpit. She danced around O’Brien’s legs, tail blurring. He bent down and lifted Max. She ran her tongue over his unshaven face. “Is Dave on his boat?”
“Saw him about an hour ago. He looks like somebody told him his ex-wife is in town. What’s gonna happen? We got no idea if Jason’s still on God’s earth.”