The second perimeter

by Mike Lawson

  By the time Diane reached the mouth of the alley, Harris and two other agents were standing at the back door of the Chinese restaurant. Diane sprinted toward Harris; she could see Harris yelling into his mic— she could see his mouth moving— but she didn’t hear what he was saying. She didn’t hear him because she was looking at the bodies of the two men who had been guarding the alley. One of them was Darren Thayer. He was lying behind a Dumpster, his body partially covered by black plastic trash bags. He and his Canadian partner had both been shot once in the forehead.

  “Morton,” Harris was screaming, “get squad cars here fast. Have them surround the block. Set up roadblocks. Seal off the buildings on both sides of the alley. You,” Harris said pointing at one of the agents, “you stay with me. You,” he said pointing to the second agent, “go help seal off these buildings. They have to be inside one of them.”

  The backs of two-story buildings lined the alley on both sides. As Carmody and the Asian woman had disappeared so quickly, Harris assumed they had to have entered one of the buildings and were now hiding inside. Or maybe they’d gone into one of the buildings and had already exited onto the street that ran parallel to East Pender.

  “Let’s go,” Harris said to the agent who remained with him. Harris and the agent began walking down the alley, guns in their hands, checking doors to see which ones were unlocked.

  Diane began to follow Harris, but he turned, his face livid, and said to her, “You just stay here and guard the scene. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Yes, sir,” Diane said. She tried to holster her weapon but it didn’t fit in her holster. Then she remembered she was holding Hunter’s gun.

  “Mr. Harris,” she yelled.

  “What!” Harris said.

  “Carmody’s got my weapon. He’s armed.”

  “Jesus Christ, Carlucci, did you do one damn thing right today?” Harris said, then began talking into his mic again as he proceeded down the alley.

  Diane, holding Hunter’s gun limply in her hand, walked over to the two cops lying by the Dumpster. She knew Harris had already verified that the men were dead, but she knelt anyway and felt for a pulse in their throats. There wasn’t one. Diane didn’t know the Canadian cop but she had worked with Darren Thayer for the last seven months. She knew he had two kids, the oldest one was seven. She knew his wife’s name was Janet. She looked down at his too young face, his funny ears, the freckles so stark against his dead, pale face.

  Diane Carlucci started to cry.

  * * *

  “THE FBI AND the Canadians, they’ve been running around for two hours now, trying to find Carmody and the shooter,” Smith said to DeMarco, “but they’re gone. Based on a statement from one witness, a Chinese lady who’s about a hundred years old, it looks like the woman took off on a motorbike. We think she drove the bike down the alley, parked her bike, and shot the two cops in the alley. Then she walked around the block, pretty as you please, entered the restaurant, and tried to kill Carmody.

  “Carmody, he disappeared like smoke. He had to have gone into one of the buildings off the alley, then God knows where he went. No one can believe it, this big damn white guy in a Chinese neighborhood, and somehow he manages to evaporate. We think Carmody—”

  “Never mind Carmody,” DeMarco said. “What happened to Emma?”

  “I was helping Harris and his guys look for the woman and Carmody, and I didn’t even think about Emma for a while. When I did think of her, I was wondering if maybe she’d followed the shooter or Carmody. I ran over to where her car had been parked and I see the car’s still there but Emma’s gone. Her purse was lying on the front seat and her cell phone was on the floor.”

  “Didn’t any of the FBI guys on the street see what happened to her?”

  “No. They were all watching the restaurant, not looking up the street where she was parked. Until you called, I was hoping she’d followed Carmody on foot, but if she had, she would have taken her cell phone. And now you tell me she’s been kidnapped. I need to hear that voice mail, DeMarco.”

  * * *

  WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES, one of Bill Smith’s associates from the DIA drove over to the Capitol and picked up DeMarco’s cell phone. DeMarco went home, packed a bag, and bought an airline ticket to Vancouver. He didn’t know if he’d need the ticket, but he wanted to be ready. Then he waited by his phone for a call from Smith. DeMarco had told Smith that if Smith cut him out of the investigation he was going to the press, the Speaker, and any other person he could think of to cause the DIA and the FBI the greatest embarrassment he possibly could. Smith told DeMarco to calm down, said that Emma was a friend and that he would do everything he could to find her. DeMarco just screamed at Smith that if he didn’t hear from him in an hour he was going to the press, the Speaker, and…

  While DeMarco was waiting, he found the cell-phone number that Diane Carlucci had given him.

  “I heard what happened in Vancouver today,” he said when she answered the phone. “How are you doing?”

  “Not good,” she said. “She killed a guy sitting a foot from me, Joe. I can still feel his blood on my face.” She hesitated, then said, “She would have killed me, too, if I hadn’t been wearing a vest. I’ve never seen anybody as fast as her.”

  “But you’re okay,” DeMarco said, “not hurt or anything?”

  “I have a bruise on my chest the size of a dinner plate, but I’m not hurt, not physically. But I can’t stop shaking.” And then she started crying, and said, “And I can’t stop crying, goddamnit.”

  “It’s okay,” DeMarco said, knowing that sounded stupid but not knowing what else to say.

  “It’s not okay! She killed Darren.”

  “Who?” DeMarco said.

  “Darren Thayer! My partner!”

  DeMarco had never known Thayer’s first name. And he couldn’t imagine the earnest-looking, jug-eared young guy dead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s not your fault, Diane.”

  “Yeah, well that shit Harris acts like it is. He’s trying to find somebody to blame for this mess and I’m the one in his sights. Said I should have stopped her from leaving the restaurant.”

  “Harris is dreaming if he thinks he’s gonna lay this off on you. He was the guy in charge.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know Glen Harris.”

  She was crying again, and DeMarco didn’t blame her. “Are you still being transferred out here?” DeMarco said.

  Diane gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, yeah. Maybe even sooner than I expected. Harris wants me off his team, says I can definitely use some training.”

  DeMarco couldn’t think of anything to say to make her feel any better. But if Harris tried to fuck up her career, he was gonna talk to Mahoney. “Well, I’m glad you’re moving back here,” he said. “Even if it’s only for a little while. Really glad.”

  “Me, too, Joe,” she said softly. “Me, too.”

  Half an hour after he spoke to Diane, he was summoned over to the Pentagon where he was taken to a small room on the C-ring. In the room was an Asian wearing an army uniform with a major’s insignia on the shoulders. On the table in front of the major was a telephone speaker box. Bill Smith was on the other end of the phone in Vancouver.

  “What did the tape say, the foreign part?” DeMarco asked.

  The major said, “It said: ‘Do it now. Quickly.’ ”

  Do what now? DeMarco wondered. “Emma called the woman Li Mei,” DeMarco said. “Who is she?”

  Smith hesitated. He hesitated too long.

  “Smith,” DeMarco said, “don’t you dare give me some bullshit about need to know. I’m not gonna tell you again: either you bring me in on this thing or you clowns can hold a press conference.”

  “Li Mei was a Chinese agent who Emma burned in Hawaii twenty years ago,” Smith said.

  38

  Honolulu, Hawaii— Twenty Years Ago

  Emma was the last person to arrive for the meeting. Already seated at the table was a navy captain, an army colonel, a
nd an air force major.

  At the head of the table was a middle-aged civilian. Emma knew him— and she didn’t like him. His name was Blake Hanover and he worked for the CIA. Emma could imagine how he’d looked when the cold warriors had recruited him: Harvard-crew burly, thick blond hair, chiseled chin— and that superior, the-world-is-my-oyster gleam in his eyes. Now, twenty-five years later, the golden good looks were gone and he was just another cynical, midlevel spy— a jaded, chain-smoking, alcoholic spy.

  “Nice you could make it,” Hanover said to Emma. Emma looked at her watch then back at Hanover. She was right on time and he knew it.

  “This lady works for the DIA,” Hanover said to the military officers, “our junior partners in this little venture.” Emma didn’t bother to respond to Hanover’s gibe and she avoided the hand-shaking ritual by placing her purse under the table and taking off her suit jacket as introductions were being made. The men in uniform all seemed uncomfortable when she assessed them with her pale blue eyes.

  “Okay, boys and girls,” Hanover said, “here’s what we’ve got. Two days ago a guy was getting on a plane to Hong Kong. The DEA had been watching him for a while because of all the trips he makes and the places he goes. Well the guy gets to the airport and the narcos pull his bag off the plane and search it, but as soon as they saw what was in it, they had the good sense to call the right people. This guy, this courier, may also be involved in drugs but what he had in his suitcase was a…a stew of military intelligence. He had a top-secret message to CINCPACFLT that gave the exact location of a sub stationed in the East China Sea. He had a maintenance manual for an F-15 fighter containing a complete description of the fighter’s electronic countermeasures system. The manual was marked as coming from Hickam Air Force Base. A photograph of the reactor plant control console for a nuclear submarine was also in the suitcase. The specific sub has been undergoing a refit at the sub base at Pearl Harbor for the last two months. And finally, there was a list of six army personnel above the rank of major who were recently transferred from the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks to Taiwan to train the Taiwanese army. In addition to these men’s names was a summary of their financial positions and outstanding loans. In other words, information to show which of these men might be most susceptible to being bribed.”

  The uniformed attendees all muttered various curses. Emma said nothing.

  “Jesus,” the army colonel said, “it’s a good thing we got this sumbitch before this stuff got out.”

  “It got out,” Hanover said. “We let it go.”

  “You what!” the navy captain said.

  “The most sensitive piece of information the courier had was the location of the sub off the Chinese coast and the sub’s CO was notified immediately. We replaced the photograph of the reactor plant control console with one belonging to a British boat.”

  “Bet the Brits’ll love that when they find out,” the navy captain muttered.

  “The air force countermeasures manual was almost a decade old and we decided to let them have it, except for two pages we razored out. And as for the names of the guys from Schofield Barracks, well we’ll just have a little talk with them.”

  “Why’d you let the courier go?” the army colonel asked.

  “Because, Colonel, we need to know who gave him this stuff and who he was delivering it to. When the courier arrived in Hong Kong— by the way, we got his bag there before he did; those F-15s are good for something— he eventually meets up with an agent from the Chinese embassy. So we know who’s running the operation: the Chinese. But what we don’t know is who in Hawaii is collecting this information. Do you all understand what I’m saying here?”

  Everybody nodded.

  “Tell them anyway,” Emma said. These men were too senior to admit they didn’t understand something.

  “What this means,” Hanover said, “is that there’s a Chinese spy here in Hawaii, or more likely a team of Chinese spies, and they’ve somehow managed to simultaneously penetrate four military commands on this island, including the headquarters of the fucking Pacific Fleet. And it means we either have Americans in four different commands giving classified material to the Chinese or we actually have Chinese agents embedded in these commands acquiring intelligence.”

  “Why didn’t you just arrest the courier and make him tell you who gave him the stuff?” the air force major said.

  “Because the information was most likely delivered to the courier by a cutout. In other words, it’s highly unlikely that he has any idea who the spies are. If we had arrested the courier, or if the package had never reached Hong Kong, then the Chinese would have known we were on to them and their guys here in Hawaii would have either disappeared or just gone underground for a while. Bottom line is, we need to find out who’s running this op in Hawaii, we need to know who they’ve turned, and we need to find out before too many more suitcases full of classified data leave this island.”

  “So what do you want us to do?” the navy captain said.

  “Nothing. That’s the whole point of this meeting, gentlemen. You are all responsible for security at your respective bases, but what I don’t want you to do is run home and start questioning people or changing security procedures. I want you to stay watchful and keep me informed, but that’s it. You are to take no action that is out of the ordinary. The main thing I want is for you to do whatever I tell you.”

  “Now wait just a goddamn minute, you arrogant prick,” the navy captain said. “I don’t work for you, and if there’s a spy on my base—”

  “Captain,” Hanover said, “my director has talked to the president and he in turn has talked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The military out here has been penetrated so badly— I mean, you people are leaking like a fucking sieve— that the president wants us running the show. Got it?”

  * * *

  “WHY ISN’T THE FBI involved in this?” Emma said.

  “Because we don’t want them involved,” Hanover said, lighting another cigarette. “The only reason you’re involved is the Joint Chiefs made a fuss, and to appease ’em, my boss agreed to include you. The other thing is we need a gal for part of this. You’re the gal.”

  Hanover and Emma were sitting at the beachside bar of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The pink-painted structure on Waikiki was Emma’s favorite hotel on Oahu. She loved the open-air corridors and faded Persian rugs and the tropical garden surrounding the place. She didn’t like being there with Hanover, but he had said that he needed a drink after the meeting and this was where he wanted to come. From where they sat, they could see brown-skinned surfboarders paddling out to catch the next wave, ever optimistic that the next wave would be the wave. Every time Hanover’s eyes followed the lithe body of a bikini-clad teenage girl walking by, Emma wanted to take his cigarette and put it out in one of his eyes.

  “We’ve got something I didn’t tell those guys,” Hanover said. “The message on the position of the sub, it was handled by only four people. One of those people is a warrant officer who works in the message center. She’s got two kids and her husband took off for the mainland six months ago. Three weeks ago this gal was about to have her car repossessed. Now she’s caught up on her payments and last week she bought a new TV.”

  “Are you sure she’s involved?”

  “No. But she’s the best possibility we’ve got. Anybody in two squadrons at Hickam could have snuck that countermeasures manual off the base. The photo of the reactor plant control console, there are at least fifty people at the sub base who could have taken it, not to mention half the crew of the sub itself. And that list of army guys being transferred to Taiwan, that could have come from anyone in personnel, housing, or payroll over at Schofield Barracks. Our best bet is the warrant officer.”

  Emma had to agree, although she was naturally skeptical of any conclusion arrived at by the CIA. They had a history of getting things wrong.

  “In…” Hanover stopped and looked at his watch, a navy diver’s watch. Emm
a wondered how he had gotten it. “In forty minutes the warrant officer and her two kids are gonna get killed in an accident on the Pali Highway. At least that’s what the papers will report tomorrow.”

  Emma knew what he was going to say next.

  “You’re the warrant officer’s replacement,” Hanover said. “Your uniform should be in your room by now. Tomorrow we’ll start making sure that everybody knows you’re a complete flake. We had to tell the lady in charge of the message center who you really are but she had a son who died in Vietnam and we’re sure she’s okay. She’s our head gossip-spreader. Two days from now everyone within half a mile of your new desk will know that you were recently in a drug rehab program and that at your last base you had creditors beating on your CO’s door because you didn’t pay your bills.” Hanover’s lips stretched and he added, “And we’re letting it out that you’re a slut, too.”