by Robert Cook
“We think it’s the Arabs and the Chinese, for starters,” Mac said. “Maybe someone else. We don’t know a lot yet. We got lucky on this one. A project leader PhD working on this effort developed a nasty coke habit that he was having trouble supporting. He was approached by his dealer to meet with his boss, with a little free nose candy as an inducement to do it. The meet was with a Latino guy, Colombian as it turns out, who said he was willing to deal him all the coke he could use for the rest of his life, in return for access to the stealth detection radar plans, two sets of the specialized circuits, and the software.
“This guy was smart enough to figure out what his life expectancy would be if he pulled this grab off, so he called his older brother to help him blow the whistle,” Mac continued. “His brother, who is also a PhD, works in the company as a Middle East analyst. I knew him a little from his briefings when I was there. Good guy. Anyhow, he goes to the DDO, the DDO hotfoots it to the director, and the director calls the president, all in the course of two hours, from what I was told. I got called in two days later, after they decided this kind of caper was likely to become a parade if they let the first one succeed. Almost as bad would be splashing this mess all over the papers and then having the bad guys at the top never get indicted or get off, if they do as usual.”
Alex nodded. “So it’s ours? Give it to the boys who skip newspapers, lawyers, and indictments, and just allow us to present the invoice to the piper?”
“Yeah, but we don’t know how much time we have. We have Lev Epstein setting up as much electronic surveillance as he can, as fast as he can. We have a little already, but they have damn good counter-measure gear, and they use it. They just don’t know Epstein like we know Epstein. NSA is working on the phone traffic, but there is a ton of Spanish language voice traffic out there, and the recognition software they use to sort out the Colombian accents is slow. NSA has the varsity on it, so we should know more in a week or so, and we should have more keywords for them to use for subsequent runs of the voice data. DEA gave us a voiceprint of the guy we think is their head honcho, but we haven’t gotten anything on it yet from NSA.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“We need more inside info than we have,” Mac said. “I need you out there as the access dangle to see if they’ll bring you in, at least a little, and I need you to have a decent cover. DEA is in on this only at the very top, and only because they have so much information on the druggies and their organizational structure. FBI, CIA, and everyone else is out; they haven’t even been briefed. I don’t want DEA or anyone else knowing who you are, where you’re from, or anything else about you.
“You should go in as a Hispanic and speak English with an accent, probably Puerto Rican, using your good friend Paco; he knows how to dress rough and play rough,” he went on. “When you shave, comb your hair, lose your accent, and slip into your Brioni, you should be invisible for our purposes. I have a full set of backup ID for you in the glove compartment. Can you adjust your schedule to make it fit?”
Alex nodded. “I always have a reason to be in Silicon Valley, with so many public companies there. Caitlin invited me to the benefit event soon; that’s a bonus.”
Mac slowed the car and pulled into the gravel parking lot of a white stucco, one-story restaurant. The small sign by the door read L’Auberge Chez Francois.
“Good. I’d like you to catch the buyers and the sellers together if you can, or at least let me know where they are. We want to send a message to the buyers’ governments, Arabs, Chinese, or whatever, that we know they were here, know what they were doing, and that diplomatic immunity is inoperative in this kind of situation. If you need some combat support setting things up, and you probably will, you should probably use Elliot and Jerome. You guys seem to live in one another’s heads during an operation. Elliot is coming down tomorrow to help me put the plan together. Page me if you need them sooner. Make sure you’re ready, on very short notice, to destroy at least the Colombian side and any goodies we find out they’ve received. The big lesson-teaching show would be nice, but we can’t take any chances on letting that stealth stuff get out of the country and sending our message to the bad guys.”
“You’ll get my goodies to me at my California hotel? I’m going to leave New York tomorrow right after work.”
Mac rested his big, battered hand on the steering wheel, allowing the car to idle into a parking space. “Yeah, we’ll get a box to you with the usual weapons, explosives, and another set of ID matching these. The Paco ID is already set. We’ll throw in some magazines and letters from San Juan too. We’ll update the computer files every four hours with anything we get, and encrypt it with the software Epstein wrote for us. You can pluck it off whenever you need it. Anything else you need?”
Cuchulain laughed and pushed open the door. “Probably, but I can’t think of it right now. Let’s eat. I’m starving. I love this place, and I have to get back to the city tonight. You’re buying.”
“The kid makes a zillion million a year, and I gotta buy every dammed time I see him,” Mac grumbled as he popped the trunk and tossed Alex’s suit coat to him. “You’d think he’d have a little more respect for our tax dollar.”
As they walked to the door, Mac slapped Alex on the back. “Jeez, kid, it’s great to see you!”
New York
CUCHULAIN’S car pulled up to a five-story brownstone on East Sixty-Eighth Street, just before eleven that evening. He told the driver he would catch a cab home. Alex went up the steps, tapped the doorbell twice, and ran an electronic card down a reader placed beside the door. The door buzzed and he pushed his way in.
“I’m in the den,” Brooks Elliot called from upstairs.
Alex took the steps two at a time and walked into the small, cluttered den. A large desk was covered with papers and two computers, a Dell PC and a Sun workstation, were standing on cabinets at either end. A fire blazed, and a bank of security monitors above it showed the front door and other sensitive spots. Alex flopped into one of the leather chairs in front of the desk, and threw a big leg over its arm.
“I’m going to California tomorrow. I’ll be in Palo Alto Tuesday and Wednesday night. I have decent cover.”
Elliot made a note, then looked up and said, “Great! I’ll spend another day with Mac to go over things, and I’m going to go through the DEA files. I think I found us a way to get a little ways into the big doper in San Jose—the one who is buying the plans—and I’ve identified most of the network they use. I think we should trash the whole network to maximize the hassle and expense for the big daddy in Columbia. You may get a shot at the local kahuna if things break right with you as a dangle. Mac is going to try to arrange a stronger message for the guys in Columbia. I talked to my father; he’s fine with things and will provide whatever cover he can on a screwup.”
Elliot’s father, Brooks F.T. Elliot III, was a senior member on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He had served briefly in the marine corps with MacMillan. Senator Elliot was a key member in a group that routinely subverted the laws of the United States, and elsewhere, to deal violently with national security problems not easily solved with legal means. His son, Brooks, was the chief planner, and Alex the chief operator. Mac originated and ran the missions.
With each change of administration, there was a period when the new president got oriented to the job; Mac was always introduced as the chief national security fixer, working for the national security advisor. When a need arose for the group’s services, it was strongly suggested to the president that he bring Mac in to help deal with the problem. When the problem went away, the president was told, “Don’t ask.”
It had only once been necessary for Senator Elliot to meet with a president to discuss his culpability in whatever “problem solving” was going on, and to mention that Senator Elliot had even more culpability, and thus would fight viciously to protect himself.
“Jerome is going out Sunday
to recon the area and provide a little support if you screw things up early,” Brooks said with a grin. “Screw it up later, and you’re on your own.
“Here’s what we have so far,” Brooks said. “And I got pizza.”
Two hours later Alex was standing on the corner of Second Avenue and East Sixty-Eighth, waving for a cab. Elliot was still hard at work, eating the last of the pizza.
John F. Kennedy
AirportQueens
THE following afternoon Alex was at JFK for his flight to San Francisco. As he walked from the Jetway into the first-class section, he was pleased to see he had gotten a Boeing 757 configured for overseas flight. The first-class seats were larger than the ones built for domestic flights, and very comfortable.
The flight attendant came to offer him a drink, then lingered to flirt when she noticed he wasn’t wearing a ring. He smiled and declined the drink, then talked to her for a few minutes. She was taking a break from college to see the world, using her vacation time and the free tickets the airline provided to her for her travel adventures, while earning tuition money. Alex thought she might be twenty-two years old—fresh, attractive, and full of zest for life. He leaned the seat back and smiled to himself as he closed his eyes and thought back through his somewhat different twenties and the financial preparation for his college years. He and Jerome had taken a rather less conventional approach to providing for their future.
The flight was uneventful, and the drive from SFO to Palo Alto, down US 101, slow, crowded, and boring.
On Wednesday morning Alex dialed into Mac’s secure line to review plans. He received a package from a delivery service, a box with a small battered duffle bag full of worn clothes, scuffed shoes, and a small package of semi-permanent tattoos. On Wednesday afternoon he took a two-hour nap.
Just after seven on Wednesday evening, Alex walked from his room at the Stanford Court hotel, wearing a Brioni tux and a conservatively ruffled Brioni dress shirt. He had spotted some Barbara Heinrich shirt studs and cufflinks several months before at Bergdorf’s and bought them; this was their virgin evening. He chuckled to himself at the memory of trying to rent a tux when he first got to New York. He had always been able to buy blazers and slacks with a minimum of tailoring. On a tip from Mac, he had semi-custom shirts from the Custom Shop. When he had walked into the rental store, the old man at the counter had glanced at him, and then looked back skeptically. “I hope you’re not looking to rent a tux, young man,” he said.
Alex had been puzzled. “That’s what I had in mind. Is there a problem?”
“Do you happen to know what size you are?” the old man had said.
“Sure. I wear a size fifty-six-long jacket, and a nineteen-and-a-half shirt with thirty-six-inch sleeves. My slacks are thirty-four waist and thirty-four-inch inseam.”
The old man had chuckled. “Except for the slacks, those aren’t what you’d call popular sizes, son, particularly in one package. My fifty-six coats have trousers with a forty-six-inch waist standard, and I don’t have a shirt in stock with more than an eighteen-inch neck.” He had looked at Alex for a second. “When is your big tux event, young fellow?”
“Next week,” Alex had said, looking a little concerned.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, son. I’ll mix and match from what I have to get you into a tux that looks like it’s all the same color and comes close to fitting, and I’ll order a new shirt for you. It’ll take three days, and that’ll be seventy-two fifty, in advance. Shoes aren’t a problem. As soon as you get some money put together, you go out and have a tux made, and some suits too. You can’t make it in the Big Apple in a sports coat and a pair of slacks. And you’re just too damned big in the upper body to wear off-the-rack clothes, if they have to match.”
Even though the “tux event” had been successful, Alex had taken the old man’s advice. After some expensive trial and error, he had found a combination of vendors that suited him.
Alex had hired a sedan from a limo service, and slid from its back seat in front of Caitlin’s small house on a side street in Palo Alto. As she opened her door, he handed her a dozen long-stemmed roses. “You’re such a sweetheart, Alex,” she said, stretching up to kiss him on the cheek. “Let me put these in a vase and put my jewelry on. I’ll get my coat.”
Alex stood in the foyer, gazing into Caitlin’s living room. She had done a spectacular job in its decoration. The professional low-voltage lighting highlighted a Chinese tapestry on the wall and several vases on small lacquered tables. The modern couch and two stuffed chairs were upholstered with soft, grey leather, and rested in muted light on a magnificent Oriental rug. At each end of the couch was a glass-topped table with red lacquered legs and a small lamp with an intricately patterned ceramic base.
Caitlin came into the room carrying her coat. She wore a floor-length sheath in black silk, with an open seam to mid-thigh on one side, allowing her leg to peek through. She wore an extraordinary diamond and pearl necklace with matching earrings. The necklace was made up of a number of different pearls of various sizes that were set into crescent moons that fell around her neck. Each small crescent was different, with small black pearls graduated around one, and small white pearls in the next; there was a fiery, white diamond at the center of each.
The earrings were dangles, with a single crescent falling an inch or so beneath each ear. The center diamond on each of the earrings was larger than those on the necklace, perhaps a carat or more, and brilliantly white.
“That’s absolutely marvelous jewelry! You must have hit the lottery. They are spectacular!” Alex exclaimed.
Caitlin spun around, holding her arms out. “My grandmother bought them for me when I got the MacArthur award. It’s quite handy to have at least one rich grandparent.”
“This executive life agrees with you. You look spectacular, Caitlin! No one will ever guess you had to pick up a guy by phone, in a deli named Sam’s, with only six days notice,” Cuchulain chuckled, holding her coat for her.
At the benefit Alex had a better time than he expected. Caitlin’s friends at her table were a combination of professors and business executives. Most were cordial and some of them interesting. He learned a little about university and high-tech things because he asked, and drinking people talk. The talk flowed around politics, university life, and deals. He was mildly amused to find that he knew, only recently, quite a bit more than most about the intricacies of international politics and the geopolitics of the South American drug dealers, which happened to be the current hot topic. Some of the women flirted mildly, and one asked him what he did. When he answered that he managed investments, she laughed. “That’s comforting. With those hands, I thought maybe you were a stonemason.”
Caitlin was light when she danced, making him feel more competent than he was, since the government had not chosen to provide him with ballroom dancing lessons. In heels, she was tall enough to rest her chin on his shoulder, and moved her pelvis to weld it against him. As they danced, her hips moved to the music. He enjoyed himself more than he had in quite some time.
Later, as they stood outside her front door, she leaned against him and said, “Well, Alex, you certainly pulled that one off. The folks at the table were puzzling it out tonight. First, I leave the office in a huff at one thirty on a Friday without a date, and then I show up at eight on Wednesday with a huge, good-looking guy who just charms everyone right off their feet.”
With a wicked grin she said, “From the looks you were getting, I’d say a few of those female barracuda would like to charm you right out of your pants too.” As Cuchulain smiled at her, she moved closer to murmur, “You are a wonderful dancer. Are you a good kisser too?”
She tangled her hands in his hair, then ran her tongue across his lips and kissed him. Her tongue darted into his mouth, teasing. She pulled away. “Would you like to come in for a drink, Alex?” she said. “You’d better say yes!”
Alex waved the car away and they walked into her little house. Caitlin too
k his coat, and waved him to the living room. “Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
After several minutes, he turned as he heard her say from the door, “Are you going to sit there all night, or would you like to have a drink with me?”
She was standing, nude, leaning against the doorway, wearing only the necklace and earrings. She had an open bottle of wine in her hand, and two glasses in the other, one a quarter full. The soft light kissed her body, hips flaring in a shadow under a tiny waist. She was almost hairless, with muscular legs—swimmer’s legs. She had large pointed breasts with tiny nipples budding from them, and a tight, flat stomach.
Alex stood and turned, studying her. “I’m overcome with thirst and hunger. Caitlin, you look good enough to eat.”
She took a sip of her wine and winked at him over the rim, then said with a throaty chuckle, “Don’t take me there.”
When he reached the door, he flexed his knees and picked her up. As he stood, one arm went around his neck, and she moved her face against his to suck on his lower lip, pulling a little of it between her teeth, gnawing gently.
Alex carried her into the bedroom. Small candles sat on the nightstands and the bed was turned back. Caitlin shifted in his arms, and he allowed her to swing her feet to the floor. She walked past the ice bucket on the nightstand, poured some wine into a glass, handed it to him, and then said, “You seem a little overdressed. Would you mind terribly if I worked on that?”
Alex couldn’t take his eyes from the impact of the spectacular jewelry on her nudity. He pulled his tux jacket from his shoulders and folded it over a chair. “Now that seems like a wonderful idea!” he said, and turned to her.
Caitlin stood in front of him, her breasts drawing his attention. She was concentrating, the tiny tip of her tongue sticking from the corner of her mouth. She pulled his bow tie open and began to work the studs from his dress shirt. When she had his shirt open, she pushed his braces aside and pulled the shirt from his waist. Caitlin was startled for a moment at his muscularity, his definition more like a gymnast than a money manager, and she marveled at the various puckers and zippers on his skin and fantasized about their origin.