Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  “I just dropped thirty thousand bucks in Jakarta. My own money. That cleans me out. And no, I didn’t get receipts.”

  “Write me a narrative of where it went; I’ll get it back for you.”

  “Just like that?”

  “If Li is what you say, I don’t think they’ll nickel-and-dime me.” He said “me” deliberately, so that Piat would understand that it was his operation. Piat looked skeptical, and, in truth, Dukas was skeptical, too, but he thought that with the CNO’s office behind him, he’d get the money. It would take shouting and paperwork and endless bullshit, but he’d get it.

  Especially if the comm plans in Chinese Checkers were the tradeoff.

  Seattle.

  Falkland Park was sunken below the level of the street, more on one end than the other, its trees pushing up so that in their maturity they shaded the sidewalks around the park. It was no bigger than half a football field, hardly more than a stretch of bright green grass surrounded by a walk and the belt of trees, with beds of cannas breaking the expanse of grass. A railing with stone balusters surrounded it at street level, above, broken by an entrance at each of the four corners.

  From the sidewalk above the park’s lower end, you could look through breaks in the trees and see three of the four flower beds, most of the walk, and the stone fountain at the far end, where a bare trickle of water ran from a grotesque mask down over algae-covered stones to a basin where, for some reason, people had thrown coins. A photographer had stationed himself at this point with his camera.

  He seemed to be photographing everything but the park. He turned his back to it and focused on the clouds, then on a 1930s art deco facade, then on the long vista of the street and the sound beyond it. Every now and then, however, he turned, resting the camera on the stone balustrade and glancing down into the park. He could see two men working at the flower beds and a jogger. None seemed worth photographing.

  After fifteen minutes of this, Alan Craik entered the far left corner of the park, as the photographer saw it. The photographer glanced at his watch. So did both of the gardeners. The jogger was gone, but as Alan came down to the park’s level, another jogger entered down the three steps to the photographer’s right and began to jog, with the slowness of a big man, up toward the fountain.

  The photographer got interested in the fountain. He picked up the camera and focused. The grotesque mask, eyes running black tears of pollution, stared back.

  A dark man, probably East Indian, leaned on the balustrade next to the photographer. He was wearing cross-training shoes and jeans and a Mariners T-shirt; he had dark-rimmed glasses that made him look like a computer geek. He smiled at the photographer. “Beautiful day, eh?” He sounded Canadian.

  “Great day,” the photographer said. He was watching a slender Asian man come down the steps opposite to those Craik had used. Craik was now standing by the fountain. The photographer raised the camera.

  The man next to him turned his hand over on the balustrade. “Look at my hand, please,” he said. The photographer’s eyes darted over the way they do when people have lived a long time in big cities and know how many crazies there are. He had his camera just below his chin, in both hands.

  “Look at my hand, please, sir,” the man said.

  The photographer glanced down. In the man’s hand was a small leather case, open to show a card and a badge.

  “Special Agent Mubarak, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Don’t do anything to signal to the others, please. Please. Just take your pictures. I have to warn you that anything you say from now on can be used against you; you may remain—”

  Special Agent Nagel entered the park from the southeast, at the end opposite the fountain, ten seconds after Craik had entered. He was wearing a pale gray summer suit and a button-down blue shirt and a tie, as if perhaps he were a businessman from the East who had time to kill. He carried a computer tote over his shoulder. When he came opposite the flower bed where one of the gardeners was working, he stopped to watch him. The man was on his knees, working with a trowel but with his eyes on the fountain. He was very fit-looking, quite young, his hair cut so short he looked as if he should be a Marine, not a gardener. Nagel said, “Those are canna lilies, aren’t they?”

  The gardener grunted something. Nagel took a step closer, right to the edge of the flower bed. “What do you feed them?” he said. The gardener didn’t seem to know, mumbled something. Nagel was bending over by then. He held the computer tote so that it hid his right hand from anybody at the fountain, where Al Craik had now been joined by a thin Asian. Nagel’s right hand held a dark blue leather case that he let fall open in front of the gardener.

  “Special Agent Nagel, Naval Criminal Investigative Service. You’re a material witness to a crime against the United States. Anything you say may be—”

  The jogger had the best view of everything, because he kept moving and so saw all the entrances in sequence. It didn’t take long to make a circuit, even at his pace. He didn’t see the arrest of the photographer, but he saw Nagel, and then he saw that there was a woman standing at the top of the steps of one entrance into the lower end, and a short, squat man at the other. He increased his speed, turning the corner and heading up toward the fountain end, aware that two other joggers were now coming toward him, running the opposite way and not looking as if they were going to give him any room—

  Alan felt the cool wafting off the algae-colored wall below the fountain’s spout. It looked slick and as green as a piece of plastic jewelry. He licked his lips, telling himself that it was stupid to be nervous but he wanted to be in an airplane, where he felt at home.

  He watched Mister Tashimaya come toward him. Mister Tashimaya was tall and a little stooped, wearing thick glasses that made him look clichéd. He was about sixty. He didn’t look happy.

  Tashimaya came within three feet of him. He stared at Alan. Alan was carrying a copy of Time. Tashimaya had on a blue baseball cap with his ratty dark suit and no tie.

  “There are rats and alligators in the subway here,” Tashimaya said in a surprisingly deep voice.

  Alan heard the two FBI agents who were impersonating joggers come down the steps behind him. He hurried through his part of the codes, not wanting Tashimaya to think something was up. “There are vultures on the high buildings,” he said.

  Tashimaya reached into his jacket. He was about to hand Alan something that would look incriminating in a photograph. Alan reached his left hand into his back pocket for his temporary NCIS badge.

  “Please take this as a gift,” Tashimaya said. He held out a business-sized envelope that was thick with whatever was inside. But Tashimaya’s attention was wandering: the two joggers had collided with another jogger coming this way, and somebody had shouted.

  Alan closed his right hand around Tashimaya’s thin wrist. “Don’t run off.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. The code phrases were so foolish that anything else he said sounded the same. He was holding up his badge and actually pulling the other man toward him; Alan was a former wrestler, most of his strength recovered since the shooting in Pakistan. “You’re under arrest,” he blurted.

  Tashimaya tried to pull away. One of the gardeners stood up and reached inside his coverall, and two voices shouted. The joggers were struggling and then one of them was down, arms behind his back, and Triffler was running down the far steps and heading toward them.

  Alan yanked Tashimaya’s wrist. The man came back toward him, stumbled and almost fell. Twisting the hand that still held the stuffed envelope, Alan said, “You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used—”

  But he was thinking, Well, hell, that’s half my job done.

  Patuxent River Naval Air Station.

  “Chinese Checkers,” Dukas said.

  But Piat had had some sleep, too, and had had time to focus, and his face was perfect for somebody who was confused by the words. “That mean?” he said.

  “Chinese Checkers. Tell me about it.”

>   “It’s a game, right?”

  “It sure is, and you’re playing it.”

  “You’re talking mysteries, Dukas. I’d rather talk money.”

  “You want your money, you talk to me about Chinese Checkers.”

  Piat spread his hands and did the things you supposedly did if you were confused and then irritated and then outraged. He was very good, in fact convincing, but Dukas knew he was lying. He got up. “That was swell, a real class act. Let me remind you that you’re on a Navy facility and you’re not going anywhere until I say you can. I’ll be back, and I want to talk about Chinese Checkers.”

  “You can’t keep me here, Dukas.”

  “Who says?” As the words left his mouth, Dukas thought of Nickie Groski and the NCIS lawyer who had told the CIA that they couldn’t hold an American citizen without legal counsel and without charge, no matter how loud they screamed national security. How was Nickie the Hacker different from Jerry Piat? Or Dukas different from the CIA OD people who had moved Groski around like a pea under the nutshells? He wanted to think that this was different, he was different, but he couldn’t convince himself.

  “I’ll give you something to think about,” Dukas said, “and then we can shorten the time you’re here and we can get you your money. One, you doctored a file called Sleeping Dog and put two booby traps in it for me—the meeting in Jakarta that went wrong, and stuff in Seattle. Two, your head was full of shit, because you thought George Shreed was a hero, so it never occurred to you that the comm plan you stole for Jakarta was in fact Shreed’s comm plan for meeting with his Chinese control, and it never occurred to you that Sleeping Dog was a case that Shreed had terminated because it was getting too close to something the Chinese were running in Seattle. That is, those things never occurred to you unless you’re also a Chinese spy yourself.”

  Piat allowed himself an angry glance at Dukas, who allowed himself a smile. “On the other hand, if you’re a straight arrow who got suckered and now realizes that Shreed was a traitor to everything you believe in, then you’ll tell me what I want to know and we’ll all go our merry ways.”

  Seattle FBI Office.

  Three-quarters of an hour after the bust in Falkland Park, Triffler was in the Seattle FBI office, facing an FBI agent who was smiling with relief but still worried about his own case.

  “We got four material witnesses,” Triffler said. “Three off-duty state cops and the photographer.”

  “It’s a good bust, but you came awful close to Helmer.”

  “The deal was, we stay away from the top man. We did.”

  “Yeah, and you scared him so shitless he’s left town! I’m not ready to arrest him yet.”

  “So, don’t.”

  “What if he doesn’t come back?”

  “Oh, lighten up. It’ll be great.” Triffler stretched and, for the first time since he’d got to Seattle, relaxed. He was thinking that he’d go for a nice, long run down by the water. He wasn’t happy about giving up Helmer, but in fact he didn’t care about the PR aspect or who got the public credit. They’d kept the FBI from taking over the case—indeed, there was chitchat now about folding the FBI case into Sleeping Dog, because Sleeping Dog was national security and the FBI case was white-collar crime. But Triffler knew that the FBI would never give up a case they were close to solving.

  Who cares? the relieved Triffler thought.

  Washington.

  After lunch, Dukas drove out to Pax River again, the news that Triffler and Al Craik had made arrests in Seattle buoying him along. It was a fine summer day, the humidity low for a rarity but the temperature climbing, and he put the windows down and enjoyed the illusion of coolness that the dry breeze gave. The rural landscape said that Washington didn’t exist, that there was life beyond agencies and offices and bureaus. He pulled over and looked at a bend in the river where there were grasses and cattails and a sweep on the other side across rolling farmland. He hadn’t called Sally Baranowski yet, and he realized that he’d forgotten her all last evening, which he’d spent setting up legal protection for Nickie Groski so the Agency couldn’t stick him down a hole again. There had been too much going on, but to say that that justified his forgetting Sally meant that she wasn’t really part of what was going on. What was she, then? Only something peripheral, accidental? A hell of a way to think of a woman you were sleeping with, if true. Dukas felt guilty and then felt tired of feeling guilty.

  He put the car in gear and drove to Pax River.

  He didn’t have Piat meet him in the interrogation room but instead waited for him in the car and, when he came out, said, “Let’s drive around.”

  Piat sat beside him and waited for him to talk. Dukas was in no hurry. He found a dirt road down to the river, still on Navy property, and he parked by a teetering dock where somebody in shorts and a T-shirt, probably a sailor with some free time, was fishing. Without looking at Piat, Dukas turned the engine off, leaned back, and said, “I know you borrowed Chinese Checkers and put the Jakarta comm plan into the Sleeping Dog file. I know you did it because you loved George Shreed and because other people were helping you. Internal Affairs at the Agency want to hang you for it, but I think I can hold them off. I want your help, Piat. I don’t want to interrogate you and I don’t want to keep you here. But I want your help.”

  “What makes you think I’d help you?”

  Dukas tapped the bow of his sunglasses on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. I guess basically I think you’re a good guy.” He smiled. “Strange, right?”

  But the words had made Piat frown. He looked out the window on his side. “Can we walk?”

  “Sure.”

  They left the car and strolled along the river, where a fisherman’s path took them close to the brown water. “How bad do they want me at the Agency?” Piat said.

  “You know Menzes?”

  Piat nodded. He, too, had put on sunglasses. He looked up and inhaled deeply. “What d’you want from me?” he said.

  “Truth. Like who else is in on the Seattle scam.”

  Piat leaned against a willow and looked out at the river. A fish made a plopping sound at the surface, sucking in an insect. “You going to give me cover?”

  “I have in mind something short-term.” He rested his backside on a fallen log.

  “Long-term?”

  Dukas shook his head.

  Jerry Piat looked at the brown water and sighed and began to tell him about the plan to get photographs of Alan Craik meeting with somebody who looked like a Chinese agent. He wouldn’t give any names, and Dukas figured that no matter how disenchanted Piat was about George Shreed, he kept the old Agency habit of loyalty. You didn’t rat on other people unless you had a personal reason. Piat started to go on and on, spinning out things that Dukas already knew, and Dukas cut him off by saying “Chinese Checkers.”

  “Yeah, I borrowed it.”

  “And set up Jakarta. What was the plan?”

  “Bobby Li was supposed to meet with you—we didn’t know you’d send Craik, but once he was there I gave the okay on him—and we’d get photos and pass them around with some gossip about a meeting with a Chinese agent.”

  “But the shooting started.”

  Piat hesitated. Dukas sensed that he was holding something back. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Piat plucked a stem of grass and put the end in his mouth. “Bobby’s a Chinese double. I had him there to impersonate the Chinese agent for the photo. His Chinese control had him there to see what was going on, because they’d seen the signal for the meeting, too.” He made a face. “That was the first inkling I had that Shreed had been something I never dreamed he could be—these other guys showed up at the meet, meaning somebody else had the comm plan. I tossed that around in my head, and I saw that Bobby was the likeliest weak link.” He chewed on the grass. “Bobby shot the Chinese intel officer who’d been sent, because it was the only way he could think of to get out of the bind of being there for both sides.” He chewed. “Bob
by isn’t very smart that way.”

  “Two of the three sides,” Dukas corrected. Piat shrugged. Dukas waited, because he thought that Piat was still holding back something about the Jakarta meeting; but nothing came. “So you grilled Bobby Li about it,” he prompted. Piat nodded. Again, Dukas waited, and again nothing came. He was thinking that Bobby Li’s control was probably Rathunter. “Who’s his control?” Piat shook his head. “He must have said something.”

  “All he talked about was two people; I think that’s all he’s had since he was recruited. The guy who sent him to cover the Jakarta meet he calls Prayer Wheel. His first control was an officer named Chen.” Piat seemed in despair. “Shreed sent him to Chen.”

  Dukas made some notes. “About Chinese Checkers,” Dukas said. Piat looked at him. “You used only one part of it in the plan to get Craik and me. Where’s the rest?”

  Piat looked back at the river. “I only needed one part.”

  “Where’s the rest?”

  “I only took what I needed.”

  Dukas put on his sunglasses but deliberately turned away from Piat, stretching, staring across the water at the fields on the far side. “Afraid this is a precondition, Jerry. I’ve got to have the rest of Chinese Checkers.”

  “Get it from the Agency.”

  “From you.”

  “No can do.”

  “It’s a precondition. Produce it, or you stay on this base until Menzes pries you out with a writ of habeas corpus, and then you’ll go straight to the L Street federal holding cell.” Dukas looked at him—sunglasses staring into sunglasses. “This is hardball. I need Chinese Checkers. Give it to me or I’ll make sure you go from here to a federal prison and don’t come out.”

  Piat wasn’t a whiner, at least not when he was sober. He didn’t say any of the things about You can’t or This wasn’t what you said or any of that. He leaned his head back against the rough bark of the willow and stared up through the narrow green leaves, and after some seconds, he said, “If I produce it, I walk?”