Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  “I didn’t set you up; that isn’t the way it was.”

  “Oh, yeah? What way was it?”

  Menzes began picking at the label again. Dukas leaned in and tapped the table. “This isn’t right, Menzes. You give a little to get a little. You’re not playing by the rules!”

  “The rules say I don’t share information!”

  “Yeah, and if we followed that rule, nothing would ever get done. Come on—you tell me what you’re investigating in Sleeping Dog, and I’ll tell you what’s what with the Jakarta thing. Come on!”

  Menzes shook his head. “Can’t. Tell me what the favor you want from me is—I swear I’ll do my best for you on that.”

  Dukas stared at him as if he were his worst enemy. He stood up. “Enjoy my beer,” he said, and walked out.

  Back at the NCIS offices, Leslie had a long telephone chat with the agent in Florida who had interviewed the maverick. In fact, the phone call plunged right through telephone flirtation and got on course for telephone sex, which Leslie saw coming and headed off. Still, the guy down there, who sounded at least forty and married, mentioned flying up some time and getting together, which Leslie greeted with wild laughter and a pretense that she hadn’t heard him right. He did, at any rate, fax her a report on the interview.

  The maverick was a Marine officer who apparently thought that his time at the Ranch had been a hoot, and his having been bounced even more of one. What came through the interview for Leslie was a kind of tougher Tom Cruise—she saw much of the world in terms of movies, the rest in terms of TV—with no tolerance for Mickey Mouse and a great love of problem-solving.

  A perfect intel officer, she told herself, although she knew almost nothing of intel officers. She began to script the movie version as she read the fax, seeing the handsome young Marine pissing off the ancient gasbags at the Ranch, being disgraced by being kicked out, then pursuing the source of the burst transmissions in Seattle on his own and, in the final shootout, killing the master spy who reported on American Navy ships—

  Because that was what the Marine officer had found. Navy ships. He had compared the burst transmissions with Navy sailings and got a better than fifty-percent correlation with submarines and carriers, and he had made a separate report of that and sent it through his instructors at the Ranch. And then he had got bounced.

  Poor guy. The injustice of it burned Leslie. More seriously, it clashed with her knowledge of the files, because she knew there was no report there on any correlation between the transmissions and ship-sailings in Sleeping Dog. Even so, she checked the index again. And then she thought about what Mike Dukas would want her to do. Dukas was gone for the day. Surely this was important. Surely the little lecture he’d given her about going by the book couldn’t apply to a situation like this.

  She called Dick Triffler in Seattle—on Dukas’s STU, guided only by her memory of watching him use it. Triffler was out, but she left a message that an important classified fax was coming. “Mister Triffler, this is Leslie Kultzke in Mister Dukas’s office. He’s away just now, but we have something I think you ought to see really quick. So I’m faxing it to you. Please pay attention. Thank you (which came out as Thann-kewwww.)”

  Then she had to go up the hall and ask Claire Sandow how to send a secure fax.

  Triffler tried to get Alan as soon as he read the fax. Alan was flying, so they didn’t talk until that evening. When Alan heard of the correlation between the transmissions and the sailings, he whooped. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

  “It’s only fifty percent, Alan—”

  “If the Navy wouldn’t let him in on classified sailings, we’re lucky it was that high. Dick, this is great! I see it—I really see it—there’s somebody monitoring sailings out of Bremerton, maybe by eye, maybe on a JOTS terminal. Jesus, do we have a spy in the Navy, too?—and he’s sending data on sailings in bursts—whoosh, they’re outta here.”

  “You think the Navy wouldn’t have caught that years ago?”

  “How do we know Shreed wasn’t the one who pulled the plug on it? Dick, we need to find out if Shreed was in this somehow.”

  “But sending the data where? That radio—”

  “Would reach deep water. Think deep water, Dick.”

  Triffler thought about Russian trawlers, passing cargo ships. Then he got it. “A sub?”

  Alan whooped again. “He got it—I think he really got it—!” Moments later, more soberly, Alan said, “We’ve got to catch him at it.”

  “Oh, yeah, great idea.”

  Alan cackled like a movie fiend. “I have a plan.”

  Triffler didn’t see what it all meant yet—submarines weren’t his line—but he knew that if something had been important enough to remove from the Sleeping Dog file, it was important enough for them to take seriously. He didn’t try to work out how burst transmissions and submarines correlated; that was Alan’s to do. What he was working on was suppressed information in a CIA file.

  He sent a fax back to Dukas: “Find out if George Shreed had control of Sleeping Dog.”

  17

  Jakarta.

  Bobby Li had gone to ground, probably ever since the mess at the Orchid House, Jerry thought. He was certainly hiding from somebody, maybe Jerry himself, maybe whoever else he worked for. He wasn’t in his office; he wasn’t in his apartment. He didn’t answer phone calls. Piat got him in the simplest way possible: He sent him a signal for an essential meeting, not just some casual meeting, but a make-or-break meeting, the kind an agent would pass up only if he intended never to make contact again.

  And Li showed up. Piat thought he might run, afraid of exactly what was about to happen, but he didn’t really expect it: Li wanted to be a good dog, not a renegade. Anyway, where would he run? His life was here, and part of that life was the stable, long-term relationship with his friend Andy. He’d gone to ground out of instinct, Jerry thought, but he wasn’t ready to break away from his friend. They went back.

  The meeting was in the Dreamland Park at Ancol, the times at twenty after eleven, one, and four, but Piat had never known Bobby Li to miss a first meeting time. He put Fred near the gate to the aquatic show and Bud across the way near a much-frequented toilet, and when Bobby Li appeared, strolling down toward them with a Philippine noodle cake in his hand, Piat nodded at them and made sure they knew who the target was. Just in case. Then he checked for surveillance, making doubly sure, because he really believed now that Bobby had another master, and then he stepped out of the shade of a banyan tree.

  Bobby saw him but didn’t acknowledge him and went on up the curving concrete walkway, taking big bites from the noodle cake and wiping sauce from his fingers on a paper napkin. When he got to a bright magenta trash container, he finished the noodle cake, licked his fingers, wiped them on the napkin, and dropped the napkin into the trash. Then he turned and grinned.

  “Nice day for Dreamland,” he said. “You American?”

  “Just visiting. Yeah, nice place.” He came closer. “Let’s walk.”

  “Okay, okay. Anybody sees us, I’m checking you out on the sights of Ancol. You looking good, Andy. Nice shirt, way cool. What’s up?”

  They walked along the waterfront, moving from shade-patch to shade-patch because it was already hot and muggy. Over his shoulder, Jerry saw Fred behind them. Bud pushed past like a man trying to find the john, then fell in a dozen paces in front of them. “Anybody following you these days, Bobby?” Piat was still spooked by the Orchid House mess.

  “Me? No. Why anybody want to follow me?”

  “We need to talk, Bobby. Good, long talk.”

  “Okay, sure. I can clear couple hours later this P.M.”

  “I want you to call your wife and tell her you’re going to be away for a couple of days.”

  He felt Bobby’s pace falter, as if he’d given a little skip; he actually turned his head and looked back, and Jerry knew that he’d made Fred and Bud, probably had as soon as they’d started walking. “I don’t get it,” Bobb
y said.

  “We’re going to talk. You know how it goes.”

  “Andy, I tole you everything about everything. If you pissed off with me about that time at the Orchid House, I tole you, I was as surprise as anybody. Honest to God, Andy.”

  “Don’t make it hard, Bobby. Okay?” Piat moved deeper into the shade of a ginkgo whose big leaves lay on the concrete like open hands. He leaned against the spotted gray bark, willing Bobby to follow him and to take out his cell phone. Ahead, Bud stopped, pretending to stare out to sea, and Fred had pulled into the shade, one tree back. Bobby flipped open his cell phone.

  “Keep it short,” Piat said. “Slowly, Bobby, so I can follow.” Bobby’s wife was Straits Chinese and they spoke a lot of Malay between themselves. Bobby called and said in Malay, “Tell lady-boss ‘Tiger shrimp are in the market.’ Just like that—’Tiger shrimp are in the market.’ Say it again. Good.” He put the cell phone in his shirt pocket.

  They walked on up the dockside avenue and went out by the eastern gate and Bud flagged down a taxi, and all four of them got in.

  Whidbey Island.

  With a few minutes to spare on Monday evening, Alan leaned forward over the JOTS terminal, one arm on either side of the screen. A few years ago these things had been two-color monitors with confusing graphics, and now this one repeater in the base intel center was a full-color guide to most of the operational units in the Navy and their current locations and activities.

  All over the world, ships and planes moved through their respective elements, scouting their surroundings with electronic widgets and human eyes, looking for potential adversaries. When they reported, the report was tagged and placed on this machine and repeated throughout the world to every other machine.

  Alan thought that they were like crystal balls, as long as the viewer only sought to see the Navy. He could watch the USS Carl Vinson conducting workups out in the local operational area, with pilots doing their qualification traps and launches. Someone out there was running an exercise to detect shipping, because a scattering of merchant ships had been entered as “white” or neutral contacts. He leaned back and took a sip of coffee. One of the planes on the terminal was Surfer’s, going out to the boat to run up some quick landings.

  He spun the roller ball idly, moving the cursor slowly across the Pacific, noting the movement of Seventh Fleet assets in the Pacific, watching BG12 while they were conducting an exercise in the Philippine Sea. He kept moving west around the world, looking at contacts in the Strait of Malacca that had been entered by a Canadian frigate bound for UN duty off East Timor. He sipped more coffee and flew west toward the Indian Ocean until he found the symbol he wanted, the USS Thomas Jefferson. He rested the cursor on her and read her course and speed, right down on the equator and steaming north at a solid twenty knots. He thought of his men and women, their detachment, about Paul Stevens and Soleck and the CAG, Rafe Rafehausen. The circle on the screen and the names were enough to cause a lump in his throat.

  He noticed that there was a neutral/hostile submarine symbol in the water a dozen miles aft of the carrier. His interest immediately piqued, he took an unconscious slug of coffee and clicked on the symbol to see it resolve into a three-hour-old possible contact. He started to dismiss it and then saw the contact assignment.

  Craw. Not a man to make mistakes.

  He sat bathed in the bright glow of the electronic Indian Ocean, and thought.

  Then he picked up the phone and called U.S. Submarine Forces Pacific.

  Jakarta.

  The house in Menteng scared Bobby Li. He told Jerry Piat it was a bad place and he didn’t want to go in. His face appealed to Piat to let him off. Bobby was a very clean man, and the house looked like shit even to Piat, who didn’t have Bobby’s standards, but he simply stood by the rusting gate and waited until Fred and Bud had herded Bobby inside, never touching him, but giving him nowhere else to go. Bobby looked around the jungle that had been the garden and darted a scared look at Jerry.

  “You know how this goes,” Piat said. He wondered if, in fact, Bobby did know how it went. If George Shreed had never really vetted him, and nobody else had later, maybe Bobby had never been through this particular mill. He almost said, It won’t be too bad, but he knew he mustn’t give comfort yet.

  Piat had put two chairs in the dining room with one of the cots. They sat Bobby Li in a chair, a straight wooden one with an elaborately carved, open back, probably one of the old dining set. His hands were trembling.

  “You want to pee?” Piat said. “Better do it now.”

  Fred led him out of the room, and a minute later Piat heard the only working toilet in the house flush. It didn’t work very well: You had to dump a bucket of water, brought from a tap in the yard, into the bowl. Bobby Li came back, wiping his hands on his pants. “This place is disgusting,” he said. For Bobby Li, that was open rebellion.

  “It grows on you.” Piat was standing by one of the tall windows that looked out on the jungle. “Sit down, Bobby.” He walked around behind him, and Bobby’s head followed like an owl’s, afraid that Piat was going to do something. Piat said, “Bobby, this is a friendly interrogation. I’m just clearing the air here. There’s been some confusion about some things, and we need to talk and clear the air.”

  “We still frands?” There was pathos in the voice. Bobby had always said that they were “best frands.”

  “Absolutely. But you have to tell me the truth, or—” Piat came around in front of him. “Tell me what happened in the Orchid House.”

  “I already tole you. It’s just like I tole you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  They went around it twice. Bobby had clearly been rehearsing his story. He had new details—the color jacket one of the shooters had worn, the size of the gun the American had used in shooting the dead man—“Big! Goddam big like a Colt, man!”

  “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  “I remember it at home. I wake up sweatin’, Andy, thinkin’ about it.”

  “The dead guy was shot with a .32, Bobby.”

  “No, big Colt or something.” Bobby’s eyes went dim and hopeless.

  “Cops took .32 slugs out of him.”

  Bobby was breathing shallowly. He tried to hold Jerry’s eyes but couldn’t. The early-afternoon sun was coming through the tall windows, right into Bobby’s eyes. He put up a hand and tried to see Piat. “The cops are wrong, Andy. Jakarta cops, they lie alla time. Anyways, Colt comes in .32.”

  Piat looked at him, let the look extend, grow heavy. “I’m really disappointed in you, man. There’s a photo of you shooting the guy, Bobby.”

  “No way!”

  “You’ve got the gun, and it’s firing, and the guy is turned back toward you. He’s wearing a gray suit and you’re wearing a maroon jacket and you’re shooting him.”

  Bobby licked his lips. “They fake photos alla time.” He licked his lips again, then again. “I saw a photo, Marilyn Monroe fucking George Washington, all fake. You saw a fake, Andy.” He licked his lips and then got up and ran once halfway around the room and threw up. Piat thought that this was as good a time as any, and he pushed a bell-button under his chair and—late, not right on cue; he’d been dozing off or something—Derek came through the big door and closed it behind him and stood there. That part he did well, Piat thought. Derek was something of an actor. He came through the door, saw Bobby still bent over, folded his arms, and stared at the small man. “What’s he said?” he demanded.

  “He’s getting to it.”

  “What has he said? I want results.”

  “It’s okay. He’s coming around to it.”

  “What’s the puke about?”

  “He’s scared.”

  “He goddam well better be.”

  Bobby Li was looking at Derek, then at Piat, then back at Derek. Derek paid no attention to him. It was as if Bobby weren’t there. Derek was really pretty good at this. “I told you, he ponies up or else.”

  “It’ll b
e fine, Jack. Just give us time, will you?”

  “I haven’t got time!”

  “This is very emotional for him, Jack. Back off, okay?”

  “Whose ass is it here? Who do you think gets reamed if he doesn’t talk? Get it from him and get it now, or else!”

  Derek, a.k.a. Jack, who had never left the doorway, yanked the door open and walked out, and the door slammed like a gunshot. Piat called Bill in from what had been a pantry, and he got a filthy plastic bucket and some rags and handed them to Bobby Li, who had to get on his knees and clean up his vomit. Piat waited by the window, looking out into the green heat, thinking that he was a manipulating shit and feeling sorry for the little man. But he wasn’t going to stop.

  When they were back in the chairs, Piat said, “See, I have my problems, too, Bobby.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I see. I understand, Andy. He your boss?”

  “Never mind him.”

  “What’s he mean, no time?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just focus on telling me the truth. Okay? Will you do that?”

  Bobby Li nodded.

  “Tell me what happened in the Orchid House. The truth.”

  Washington.

  Fourth Circuit Associate Justice Bryan Coll lived in Potomac, Maryland, out where the houses were big and the owners either had salaries to match or were putting up FOR SALE signs. Dukas and Pat Feisel, the NCIS lawyer, dragged themselves out there at eleven P.M. because Justice Coll had agreed to hear Dukas’s application on an expedited basis. Pat Feisel was not happy.

  “Coll’s a D.C. operator,” she said. “He wants to get on the Supreme Court and he likes to live high, which does not include letting riffraff into his house in the middle of the night. He’s conscientious; he’s hard-nosed; he can be very bad-tempered. He pals around with a lot of ultras who keep telling him he’s brilliant.”

  “Ultras?”

  “Conservatives. He’s the Scalia of the Fourth District. Don’t even hint at anything about affirmative action or abortion. No Clinton jokes, either—his sense of humor can’t keep up with his moral outrage. Stay with national security, which he treats with holy reverence. Don’t diss the Agency. Pray.”