The second perimeter

by Mike Lawson

  American submarines were occasionally used to launch Tomahawk missiles at Al Qaeda training camps and they provided protection for the giant American carriers, but the primary mission of American submarines was gathering intelligence. There was a book called Blind Man’s Bluff written in 1998; the book was required reading for her country’s intelligence agencies. The book told how in 1971, thirty-five years ago, an American submarine had snuck into the Sea of Okhotsk off the Russian coast and tapped into Russian military phone cables. In thirty-five years the Americans’ talent for intercepting satellite and radio signals and breaching communication systems had improved dramatically. For her country to collect intelligence as the Americans did, and to be able to compete with the American fleet if it ever came to war, they needed the acoustic technology of their enemy— and John Washburn, the man she had just made love to, was one of the keys to acquiring this technology.

  Washburn was an expert on noise— submarine noise. Sonar capabilities. Noise-quieting techniques. Acoustic detection systems. Her superiors wanted this man and the files he could obtain and everything inside his head— and she would give him to them. He knew the limits of the U.S. Navy’s current equipment and how to defeat it. With Washburn’s knowledge, they would find the American submarines lurking off their shores, and their submarines would be able to lie in silence off the American coast.

  She had met Washburn three months ago, at the same time she was setting up Carmody’s operation. She met him by rear-ending his car. He had gotten out of his vehicle, slamming his door, looking irate, but when he saw her— how lovely she was— he immediately asked if she was all right. When she had said that she needed a drink to calm her nerves, he quickly agreed to buy her one.

  She had drawn him slowly and carefully into her net using her beauty as a lure. It was something she’d done many times before, and compared to some past conquests, Washburn was an easy target. His wife was an overweight woman of fifty-six, the same age as Washburn. And according to Washburn, his wife was not only unattractive but bossy and bitchy and every other thing that men say about the women they are wed to but no longer desire. He also had two children, teenage girls, who were unmanageable and unlovable. For years he’d thought about divorcing his bloated hag of a wife but he knew that if he did, she’d take everything from him: his home, his savings, and half his pension. If that happened, he’d never be able to retire, he said. He’d have to work until he died.

  So she gave him the escape hatch he wanted.

  She had initially planned to blackmail him: have sex with him, take photographs, and threaten to expose him to both his wife and his government. But then she discovered a better weapon: obsession. Obsession was much more effective than blackmail.

  She understood obsession because she’d once been obsessed with a man. Obsession was when you couldn’t go five minutes without thinking of the one you loved. Obsession was when you would do anything, tell any lie, commit any transgression, to be with that person. Obsession was when a man’s heart— and his balls— overrode his brain. Obsession was what made an intelligent, rational man like John Washburn become reckless and irrational, throwing aside love of country and love of family to be with the one he thought he must have or he would die. John Washburn, after three months, was obsessed with her.

  And she had convinced him that the only way he could have her was to leave the country and take with him the information her superiors wanted. If he did that, he could have it all. He could have her, a home on a beautiful beach, and enough cash that they’d never have to work again.

  She admitted she was a spy, but she didn’t tell him who she worked for. She said she worked for a private consortium who sold intelligence to several countries, including America’s allies. She even told him of her original plan to blackmail him. Sometimes the truth could be effective for gaining trust. But she also lied to him: she told him she loved him. And he believed her.

  Washburn was not an unattractive man. He was tall and slender, with chiseled features and a fine head of gray hair. He’d had affairs in the past; women had fallen in love with him before. His ego convinced him that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  She said that she had devised a way for him to disappear, a way so he wouldn’t be pursued. And after he left the country she would meet him to begin their new life. The truth, of course, was that he would leave the country, but he would be met by agents from her division. Then her country’s scientists would take the files he had copied and they would grill him for months and pick his brain clean. He’d stay alive as long as he proved useful to them— but he wouldn’t be living like a king on waterfront property.

  But now Washburn was hesitating again, asking again if there wasn’t a different way. Couldn’t they just flee together? he whined. Couldn’t they just run away from everything, he from his wife, she from her employers? Did he have to betray his country? So again she explained to him the impracticality of what he was saying: if he didn’t do what she wanted, they would have no money. They would be poor and on the run forever. No, her way was the only way, she said gently. If he left and took the files her employers wanted, they would have money to burn and a grand place to live, but most important, they would have each other. She knew that for this particular man the promise of wealth had been a factor in turning him but that the money was not as important to him as being with her. He was obsessed— and she had to keep him that way.

  Washburn was still sitting on the bed. She let the towel drop slowly from her body and then knelt in front of him.

  She hated sex.

  28

  Bill Smith of the DIA, who had no jurisdiction whatsoever in capturing Carmody and his cohorts, had arranged for the meeting to be held. Smith was not in attendance at the meeting; he was the wizard behind the curtain. He was always behind the curtain.

  The attendees of the meeting were FBI agents Darren Thayer and Diane Carlucci; Emma and DeMarco; and the security officers for the four major naval installations in the Pacific Northwest: the shipyard in Bremerton, the Trident submarine base at Bangor, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Keyport, and the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. For Emma, there was something about the meeting that struck her as vaguely familiar, but she didn’t know what it was, and after a moment she disregarded the feeling as just a puzzling occurrence of déjà vu.

  A small amount of time was wasted before they got down to business because one of the security officers asked who Emma and DeMarco were. Agent Thayer clarified the issue by saying, “Uh, Bureau consultants.” Then he added, with a jerk of his head toward Emma, “She’s ex-DIA.” This made the security officers sit up a bit straighter.

  Thayer began the meeting with an update on Carmody. Carmody, Thayer said, was still eluding the FBI and had last been spotted near Spokane, Washington. As Emma had previously said, the ex-SEAL seemed to be going in a circle and it appeared he was still headed back to where he had started. In Spokane, he was caught on a surveillance camera stealing a motorcycle from a Harley-Davidson dealership. Idaho cops found the motorcycle abandoned in the driveway of an expensive home in Coeur d’Alene, thirty-five miles east of Spokane. Emma said she thought this was just another bit of misdirection on Carmody’s part. Her guess was that after he ditched the motorcycle in a place where it was sure to be noticed and reported, he had most likely stolen another vehicle and was once again headed west.

  “We think,” Thayer said to the security guys, “that a foreign government, we don’t know which one, has been running an espionage operation at the shipyard and—”

  “Hey, we don’t know that for a fact yet, sonny,” Richard Miller, the square-headed security chief at the shipyard, said. “We’ve looked around the area where Mulherin and Norton worked and we can’t find anything missing. So there’s no evidence our security was ever breached and you shouldn’t go around saying shit like that.”

  When young Agent Thayer started to sputter, Emma said, “Mr. Miller, the fact that nothing’s missing doesn�
�t mean they didn’t get something.” Miller started to protest again, but Emma raised her hand to silence him. “Look,” she said, “this meeting is not about what Carmody and his guys may or may not have taken from the shipyard, so you can calm down. What we’re worried about— I mean what the FBI is worried about— is that there may be another operation of some kind going on out here, and what Carmody is currently doing is distracting us from seeing that other operation.”

  “What kind of operation?” Miller said.

  “We don’t know,” Emma said, “but your bases— the operations at those bases, information stored at those bases— are all potential targets.”

  “Yeah, but what are we supposed to do?” the security officer from the Trident submarine base said. Before Emma could answer, the officer said, “I mean, we can increase gate checks, station people in sensitive areas, increase controls for checking out classified material. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Emma said. “If we’re right, this is an operation already in progress. This government, whichever one it is, has already penetrated you. What you need to do is look for anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary.”

  “But like what?” the Trident security officer said again.

  “For example,” Emma said, “has anyone reported any suspicious activity to you? This whole thing started with Dave Whitfield saying that Carmody’s supposed training study looked ‘funny.’ So have any of your people reported anything out of the norm, something you may have dismissed as being inconsequential? Has anything unusual happened at your bases related to security, such as an unexplainable security system malfunction? Has anybody in a critical position quit recently or suddenly become rich?”

  “No,” Miller said emphatically.

  The security officers from the Trident base and the naval air station just shook their heads, but the man from the Undersea Warfare Center said, “Uh, there is one thing I can think of.”

  “What’s that?” Emma said.

  “Well, we had a guy drown yesterday afternoon. The guy was a civilian scientist, an expert on submarine acoustic stuff— you know, noise-quieting technology, sonar systems, towed and fixed arrays. That sort of thing. Anyway, he went fishing yesterday afternoon, by himself, and they found his boat overturned. The guy’s missing, presumed dead.”

  “Any ideas what caused the boat to flip?” DeMarco asked.

  “Yeah. In case you didn’t notice yesterday, it was windier than shit. The Coast Guard had issued small-boat warnings for Puget Sound, but according to this guy’s wife— his name’s Washburn, by the way— he said to hell with it, that he was going fishing. His wife said he had a real bug up his ass about going, like he was gonna die if he didn’t catch a salmon.”

  “Is the Coast Guard looking for his body?” Emma said.

  “Sure. Ever since they found the boat last night.”

  Emma looked intently into the eyes of the Undersea Warfare Center security officer and said, “You need to search this man’s office and see if anything’s missing. Immediately.” Before the security officer could respond, Emma turned to Thayer and Carlucci. “This scientist may have died in a fishing accident but you can’t take the chance. This is too much of a coincidence, an expert like him disappearing at the same time Carmody is playing tag with us all over the country. You need to assume Washburn has been turned and is fleeing the country. Get his picture to every airport and train station and border crossing in the region as fast as possible. My guess is that while the Coast Guard is still searching for his body, he’ll fly out of one of the international airports in the area— Seattle, Portland, Vancouver— and he’ll have a passport with a false name. So you need to get his picture to the Transportation Security Administration fast and have them start looking at surveillance tapes and watching passengers.”

  “I dunno,” Thayer said. “I mean before we get everybody all stirred up, I think we should—”

  Diane Carlucci rose from her seat. “I’ll call TSA now and you,” she said to the Undersea Warfare Center security officer, “need to get me Washburn’s picture right away.”

  That’s my girl, DeMarco thought.

  29

  In a Ramada Inn located twenty minutes away from the Portland International Airport, John Washburn sat in a room, on the edge of the bed, looking mournfully over at her. She was going through his carry-on luggage for a second time, making sure he had nothing in it that would cause it to be opened by security. She had just tossed out a set of fingernail clippers, even though she knew such an item was not prohibited.

  “I just don’t understand why you can’t come with me,” he said.

  It was about the tenth time he’d said this, and she wanted to scream. Controlling her anger, she said, “I’ve told you why I can’t. There’s something I must do before I leave and it’s better if we travel separately.” She tried to make her voice sound loving when she added, “But in just two days, my dear, I’ll be with you in Manila. Only two days.”

  In two days she would be nowhere near Manila, but somebody would meet John Washburn there.

  Washburn put his head in his hands. “I still wonder if I’m doing the right thing,” he said. “I mean, you know how I feel about you, but—”

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “You’re committed! It’s too late to back out now. You’ve been reported missing. They’re looking for your body. You can’t go back. In two hours you’re getting on a plane and you’re flying out of here. Do you understand?”

  Washburn’s eyes grew wide. She’d never raised her voice to him before.

  She took a breath. She only needed to control him a little longer. She just needed to get him to the airport and on a plane. She walked over to him and took his face in her hands. “You love me, don’t you?” she said.

  It was so hard for her to feign looking tenderly into his face when what she really wanted to do was twist her hands and snap his neck.

  “You know I do,” he said.

  “Then be strong. And think about us. Think about us lying in bed, making love. Think about the home we’ll own, the cars we’ll drive, the places we’ll one day see together. Think about the years of bliss we have ahead of us.”

  Then she bent down and gently kissed his lips.

  She would be so glad when he was on that plane. She never wanted to touch him again.

  30

  DeMarco was sitting in the bar of the motel where he’d been staying ever since coming to Bremerton. His room was beginning to feel like a prison cell. He was watching a ball game on TV, and in the long intervals between pitches, he was flipping through a newspaper, looking at used car prices, trying to find out what BMW Z3s went for in this area. He had called the dealership in Arlington yesterday and the silver Z he’d been looking at was still on the lot. They had to be asking too much for the damn car.

  Emma was also in the bar, at a corner table talking to her daughter on her cell phone. Emma was an enigmatic cipher who skillfully avoided any attempt to penetrate her past, but one of the few things that DeMarco did know about her was that she had a child. Emma was gay and DeMarco didn’t know if her daughter was her biological offspring or adopted. He had no idea how she had managed motherhood during her high-powered career at the DIA. The one thing he did know was that she was fiercely protective of her child, something she had demonstrated with gusto last year when a man had been stalking her daughter. One of these days DeMarco was going to get her drunk enough to tell him how she came to be a mom.

  Currently, DeMarco and Emma had absolutely nothing to do but sit and wait for something to happen. The FBI was still chasing Phil Carmody and the scientist from the Undersea Warfare Center had not been found, either dead or alive. They still had no idea who was controlling Carmody nor any clues to lead them to that person. They still had no evidence that classified material had actually been taken from the shipyard. And they still had no idea as to who had really murdered Dave Whitfield. When you added up all those zeros, you got zero. So they were sitting
in a bar, killing time, waiting for something to break.

  In the fourth inning of the ball game, two things happened. The first was that a guy bunted and the Mariners’ catcher swooped up the ball and threw it to first— and hit the batter right in the back of the head. The Mariners needed a new catcher. The other thing that happened was that Bill Smith came into the bar.

  Smith walked over to the table where Emma was seated and waved an arm for DeMarco to join him there. Emma looked up at the two men in annoyance, said into her phone, “I love you and I’ll talk to you later,” then hung up.

  “Yes?” she said to Smith.

  “They got the bastard,” Smith said.

  “Which bastard?” Emma asked.

  “The noise guy, the scientist. He was trying to catch a plane in Portland. He was headed for Manila.”

  “What did he say?” DeMarco asked.

  “Zip,” Smith said. “He puked all over the floor when they put the cuffs on him and said all he was doing was ditching his wife and kids, but when they asked why he had a false passport, he asked for a lawyer.” Smith shook his head. “I’d like to go down there and attach a wire to his dick.”