Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  “Already did that. The Star of Seoul is making port in Singapore, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung in Taiwan and finally its home port of Incheon, Korea. The SS Bandana is calling at Penang, Klang terminal outside Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru and onward to Western Australia, starting with Broome and then south to Perth and east to Adelaide.”

  “Who owns the ships?”

  “K-Line’s holding company is Kawasaki out of Japan. So they ultimately own the Star of Seoul. The SS Bandana isn’t clear, but seems to be connected to a Geneva company called Consultants International. At least that’s the body that does their cargo bookings and owns the office in Adelaide Port where they’re registered.”

  “What! Consultants International was big in the 1960s. Cy Crowley used to run it as a CIA proprietary.” Nolan swiveled his chair around to stare at her, hands gripping the armrests.

  “Who is Cy Crowley and what is a proprietary?” Millie asked.

  “Never mind. I’ll tell you later. Call Travis. I’ll call Sam. Tell them what they’re looking for is on the SS Bandana. The Star of Seoul is a decoy.”

  Millie and Nolan dialed. Ryder was out of cell range, probably busting heads on the docks. Hecker answered, and Nolan told him to search every local-origin container on the SS Bandana while sequestering the crew and finding interrogators to bring to the port. Matthews’s house interrogators weren’t an option, but Hecker had an idea. One of Ryder’s old friends who’d flown in had interrogation expertise with a now-defunct government counterterrorism squad, and more recently with the CIA. He agreed to ask Agent Tony Johnson to find out who was lying, starting with the expats. Nolan closed with a word of caution: there was a CIA thread running through all this, and it stank.

  Nolan hung up and sat watching his hands quake. First Teller and now Cyrus Crowley, or at least the CIA proprietary he used to run. Cy had been dead over three years. Nolan remembered reading the obit in the International Herald Tribune, thinking the journalist had gotten right maybe twenty percent of the facts about Crowley’s extraordinary life.

  “Millie, let’s go to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee. I’ll tell you some stories about Cy Crowley, Consultants International, Kyle Leffkey, Paul Hattemer, Frank Coulter, Shane Redden and our old friend Robin Teller. What you’re going to hear will curl your hair.”

  “I was thinking of straightening it. Maybe let it grow out bit. What do you think?” she asked.

  He said nothing, but knew he had a problem that needed dealing with. Millie made a rapt audience once they’d exited the embassy and huddled in the basement parking lot of the hospital across the street. He spent a half hour giving her the highlights of 1960s and 1970s tales of CIA derring-do, matched only by the colossal miscalculations of their political masters.

  “Oh my God. So Teller is working with other old CIA officers and the hijacking is their doing? Or are they mercenaries working for someone we don’t know about?”

  “It may be our hijacking. I’m not certain if Teller is in or out of the CIA. Certainly Crowley claimed to be working undercover for the Company as a double agent in the 1970s, when he was sourcing arms for Gaddafi and feeding information back on Libya’s nuclear weapons program. Crowley was also the one who tipped off the CIA and French so they could entrap Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan who worked with Palestinian hijackers.”

  “But you said Crowley went to jail for treason, so maybe he was operating on his own, like Teller?”

  “Cy Crowley did twenty years in maximum security and never sold anyone out. Not Windham, not Redden, not Hattemer. Coulter told me once that Cy Crowley should have won the Distinguished Intelligence Cross for the sheer amount of incompetency he covered up by taking the blame. Crowley walked free in 2003 when a judge ruled that the government had lied about his no longer being in the CIA.

  “So what does this mean for our investigation? What do we do now?”

  “If there was anyone here I could trust, we could describe the Teller-Crowley connection and try to find out who they are working for. However, Constantine suspects me, especially after yesterday’s run-in with the SVR, and probably has tails on me around the clock. Matthews, based on what Hecker told me this morning plus the email traffic, is connected to Teller. You and I have to keep digging and find something solid before Matthews and his henchmen shut us down.”

  “Why don’t you phone Burns in Tokyo and explain everything?”

  “A phone call won’t do much more than start another round of he said, she said. Besides, Burns named Shook as the leader of the MH370 task force. If MH370’s disappearance was the CIA’s doing, he’s possibly part of the conspiracy. Even so, Burns and I go way back, and he does know I’ve had offbeat ideas that later panned out.”

  “Bob, you have to trust someone. Let’s work a couple more days gathering evidence, and then you should fly to Tokyo to speak with him.”

  “OK, you win. I’ll book an overnight flight on Thursday and arrange to see Burns on Friday morning. That gives us two-plus days to build a decent case.”

  “That should be plenty. And maybe give us some more time together?” She stepped up to him, expecting him to reciprocate. Nolan surprised himself by taking a step back, his lower back bumping into a steel railing.

  “What’s wrong? Did I do something?” she asked. A young couple with their toddler walked through the B1 fire door and squeezed past them on the landing. Millie was up against Nolan, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He gently placed his hands on her shoulders, but the signal was like a slap in her face.

  “So that’s it? A two-night fling with some new blood, then on to the next one? I thought you were different than Travis. Am I disposable, too?”

  “Hang on! I didn’t say or mean anything like that.” He had to extricate himself from this minefield without blowing up Millie. He spoke slowly with meaning. “I really care for you. The last two nights have been wonderful. I’m still married, though, and I want to stay married. Besides, I’m old enough to be your father. Shouldn’t we take a break and let things settle down? We’re close on MH370. I can’t crack it without you, but if we’re having a relationship at the same time, I’m afraid everything will end up in a shambles, including us.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but maybe that’s a bunch of bullshit to justify not seeing me again. I’m not very trusting of men, Bob. It goes a long way back. Further than you probably want to know. Of course, you don’t really want to know anything about me, do you? After all, we’re on a break, whatever that means. I heard the message, though. Loud and clear. Don’t worry about me. I won’t embarrass you in public or in front of your former girlfriend Melissa Shook. You thought I didn’t know? Come on, Bob, give me some credit. After all, I’m head of research for Rangoon station. But when I asked, you ducked the question. That makes you a coward.”

  Nolan was worried she might snap while he was still pinned against the hand railing. “Let’s continue this conversation some other time and place, but not in the stairwell of the Gleneagles Hospital parking garage.”

  “Fine! I’m headed back to the office. You can stay down here and rot for all I care.” And with that, she climbed the stairs and opened the exit door into brilliant sunshine.

  “That went really well,” Nolan said to himself as he followed Millie to the surface and cautiously exited, lest she be waiting behind the door swinging a tire iron. Unscathed, he walked over to the taxi stand and joined the queue, mindful of anyone looking even vaguely Russian . . . or female and Indian, for that matter.

  The situation called for comfort food, and there was no better value-for-money than the Singapore American Club. Within ten minutes of getting into a cab, Nolan was seated in the Union Bar waiting on a pulled pork sandwich and fries, and watching an NBA game on mute. Nolan’s eyes wandered around the room until he picked out the family’s college pennants among the hundreds that covered the dark wood paneled walls: Bert’s University of Washington, Mei Ling’s Pomona College and his own alma mater, Carnegie Mellon. Henry the ace b
arman kept his popcorn basket and water glass full.

  Twenty minutes later he was out the Scotts Road back entrance and headed to the office for his next magic trick. As he stepped out onto the sidewalk, he felt like he had left his last safe haven and was now at the mercy of the various parties surveilling the streets of an increasingly threatening Singapore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  REAL DEALS

  TUESDAY MARCH 11, MOSCOW, SINGAPORE, RANGOON

  Seldom did a senior officer of the FSB’s Surveillance Division choose to meet outside the head office. Unfriendly ears were everywhere. However, Director Anatoly Alkaevovitch Chumakov could speak freely in Mark Watermen’s small apartment, given that every room was tapped, filmed and swept for bugs daily when Watermen took his mandatory one-hour walk around his Tverskaya district neighborhood.

  “How was your father’s visit? Did you two have a good meeting under the bedspread?”

  “Just fine, Anatoly. He left yesterday, thanks to your office returning his passport just in time to make the flight. Did the Singaporeans release the two men you sent to kidnap Bob Nolan?”

  “No, in fact. This may prove to be inconvenient for all of us. So when you next communicate with Mr. Nolan, please inform him that he needs to convince the Singapore authorities to let them go. You see, Mark, they are not my staff, not even FSB staff. I borrowed them from the SVR and now have to explain why they’ve been incarcerated, interrogated and await expulsion without access to either counsel or embassy personnel. You can appreciate my predicament.”

  Chumakov’s English captured a perfect mid-Atlantic intonation. He was dressed like a lawyer delivering a closing argument: navy pinstriped suit, white Egyptian cotton shirt and purple designer tie. Watermen saw sterling silver cufflinks on French cuffs, plus an expensive watch, maybe a Cartier. Quite flashy for an ex-KGB agent finding his way in Putin’s revived Bear Republic, particularly one with an olive complexion that betrayed non-Russian ethnicity.

  “I have no influence over what Bob Nolan says or does, so I can’t help you.”

  “That leads to my next point. You wish to suggest an elaborate plan to trade the information you stole from the NSA for your freedom. Know that I am not inclined to believe anything you might say; think carefully upon that before you speak.”

  Playing with me. Always toying with me, trying to provoke a response. Coming to my apartment uninvited, as if he already knew what I was going to say. Was the Tor email and chat room he and Nolan shared truly secure, or had the FSB somehow tapped it? He knew from past sparring sessions that the FSB allowed him to access Tor from his apartment precisely because they were trying to hack into his conversations in real time. Watermen was a guinea pig in the FSB’s animal testing lab.

  He looked up and met the gaze of his adversary. Chumakov feigned indifference, but he was a keen student of facial expressions. Watermen adopted an impassive countenance. “Here’s the deal: I fly to Colombo to arrive no later than Friday, March 14 at 8 a.m. Nolan will then give me the directions to the encrypted files. I will hand the files to you, and in turn, you’ll undertake to leave me alone in Sri Lanka. Once I’ve been out of your custody for twenty-four hours, Nolan will supply the decryption sequence to allow you to read the files.”

  “That’s your proposal? Are you serious?” Chumakov dropped his cocky air.

  “Yes, that’s the deal.”

  “And if I decline?”

  “I’ll tell Nolan to stand in front of the Russian embassy in Singapore and destroy the files in view of the surveillance cameras.”

  “This of course means imprisonment or death for you,” Chumakov said.

  “Certainly, but where I am today is little better than prison. I’m better off finding out where I stand. Either lock me up for real and lose the public relations angle, or let me go.”

  “I assure you there’s a third option.” Chumakov’s dark eyes bored into him, daring him to say something clever.

  “Bob Nolan knows that if he double crosses the FSB, he’ll be killed. That’s his guarantee that he’ll hold up his end.”

  Chumakov measured his words. “You tell Bob Nolan that my guarantee of fair play is the lives of his two children. You make certain he knows that we won’t be coming for him or even his wife. If you two play any games, we will kill Mei Ling and Bert slowly and on camera before sending the DVD to Mrs. Nolan.”

  Watermen met his gaze with undisguised contempt. Chumakov always succeeded in irritating him. “I’ll pass on the message.”

  Chumakov broke into a broad smile and chuckled. “Excellent! Then it’s all settled. There’s an Etihad flight that leaves at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday and puts us in Colombo around 9 p.m. the same day. As you’ll be flying only one way, President Putin will pay for a first-class seat. You will sit next to me, but I get the window seat. Shall I book us into the Park Street Hotel? It’s a nice boutique property in a residential area. I’m told the Colombo duty-free liquor is quite cheap as well, with generous allowances. I’ll arrange for a visa. Be certain to indicate defector on the immigration form so that the authorities have you in the proper tourist category.”

  Watermen drew conclusions. Since the NSA hadn’t been able to penetrate that far into Tor, then the FSB hadn’t hacked it either. Chumakov’s goons must have read his screen despite his sitting under a blanket when he was online. But how? Either the blanket had fiber optic cameras in it, or he was bugged. Sonofabitch! He took off his glasses and stared intently at everything that faced forward. There it was. The FSB had installed a micro-camera in Watermen’s eyeglass frames. He resisted the temptation to crush them underfoot.

  Keeping a straight face, he replaced his glasses and said, “Yes, excellent. I was wondering how we handle the Sri Lankans. After I land, do you want to host a press conference and announce that I’ve been expelled and am now seeking asylum in Sri Lanka? What if the Americans try to take me off the plane when we land in transit?”

  “I’m afraid that you’ll need to make your own arrangements with the Sri Lankans. President Putin has tired of the novelty of your presence. He will release a statement on Friday that revokes your resident’s permit and announces that you are no longer in Russia. After that, my friend, you are on your own. If you try anything funny while we’re in transit in Abu Dhabi, or once we land in Colombo before we have the files, your sister, father and mother will meet with unhappy accidents.” Chumakov’s unctuous voice had Watermen itching to backhand him across his bulbous lips.

  “And for this trip to Sri Lanka, what passport will I use?”

  “We’ll arrange a single-use travel document by the end of the day. You will have your US passport back, although you’re still on Interpol’s ten most wanted list. I suppose you can auction it on eBay for pocket money.”

  Chumakov was humming as he walked down the two flights to the waiting Mercedes S-Class. The meeting went well. Nolan would hand over doctored files, or worse, a mixture of useful information and a variety of embedded traps that would take so long to sort through that the FSB would be better off without them.

  The best thing would be to trade the files right back to the Americans. Throw them the traitors Watermen and Nolan, and make it a package deal as an olive branch to help mend strained Russo-American ties. In return, why not ask for a hands-off in Crimea and Ukraine? President Putin would be most pleased. “Boris, stop at Starbucks next to the office. I’m in the mood for a Vanilla Bean Mocha Frappuccino. And wager one thousand rubles on Tottenham over Arsenal in the English Premier League. I’m feeling lucky.”

  Upstairs, Watermen watched the gunmetal-gray sedan slide away from the snowy curb. He took off his eyeglasses again and compared the forward-facing ends of the sidepieces for another thirty seconds. How had he missed it when there was a pencil point–sized dot on the right side? That had to be the camera. He poked a needle down in the hole and wiggled it about before soaking his glasses in eighty-proof vodka to short out any electronics. He had to assume that all of his dark web site
s were blown, too—certainly the passwords and anyone he’d been in contact with. It would take hours to alert his correspondents.

  He took a few breaths and reflected. Maybe it was a bluff. After all, Chumakov had been surprised at Nolan’s handover offer. The FSB wasn’t necessarily reading the computer screen. Maybe there wasn’t a camera in his glasses, just a hole. He knew plenty about the micro-technologies used in surveillance these days, and the US didn’t yet have cameras this small, so how could the ham-fisted Russians? More likely they’d succeeded in installing a mouse or key logger on his Mac that he wasn’t able to detect. So they knew what he was typing, but not necessarily what his correspondents were sending him. Then why had Chumakov tipped him off by telling him things about Sri Lanka he wouldn’t have known unless the FSB was tapping him?

  “Because he’s a haughty asshole and thinks he’s already won.” Watermen answered his own question aloud, a comment that was certain to be on Chumakov’s desk when he returned to the office. Good. Two could play the mind-fuck game. It struck him that even Chumakov didn’t have his head so far up his own ass he’d let that intelligence slip without another angle. Maybe there was a second camera aligned to capture every move to secure his Tor contacts and otherwise minimize damage? It would take more thought before he contemplated anything more ambitious than fishing his eyewear out of the glass of vodka.

  * * * * *

  “Well if it isn’t Big-Shot Bob,” crowed Gus Walsh as Nolan walked into Independent Programming Pte. Ltd.’s office. “I’ve got a buddy who works embassy security, and guess where he was for four hours last night? Sitting in a car outside your house while some young Agency researcher from out of town was inside. I figured her for Millie, but he wouldn’t say. Mind giving me a look in when you’re done? That kinky stuff would be a hoot.”

  Not only did Walsh not know his job, but he was also so dumb that he didn’t know what he didn’t know. Add to that his sexual braggadocio and incessant babbling, and one might be driven to violence. Fortunately, by Nolan’s reckoning, this was to be their last meeting. “We need to talk in my office,” he said to Walsh with disinterest.