Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  However, a second piece of intelligence from the Singaporeans suggested that Nolan was gone, although not yet out of their reach. Harcourt Aviation, a longstanding CIA supplier of crewed jets for clandestine purposes, put a plane down at Seletar Airport earlier today. That same plane took off a little over an hour ago. The flight plan gave Sri Lanka as the destination. Constantine then received confirmation from Langley that no one in the CIA had chartered that plane. Harcourt Aviation’s upstate New York office staff insisted it was an Agency booking and were kind enough to offer that an Adam Birch had deposited cash into Harcourt’s Singapore account.

  Constantine would bet his rank that Bob Nolan was Adam Birch. Once the Bank Suisse Privé Asia staff identified Nolan’s photo, he’d have enough evidence to get on the horn to Admiral Jonathan “Jon Boy” Cochran. The admiral was a golfing buddy and wouldn’t need nine pages of permissions before scrambling a pair of F-18 Super Hornets just in case Nolan had a gun on the pilots. Constantine fired off a self-congratulatory email to several nabobs that outlined these developments and predicted a satisfactory outcome shortly.

  His cell rang. It was Flynn. “Boss, bad news. Nolan’s long gone. So is the woman. Nothing left behind. I’ve just looked at the CCTV tape of his room. It seems unconventional for a straight sex hire, though the gal had her dress off within a minute of entering the room, he didn’t—”

  “Spare me the blow-by-blow.”

  “OK, but one thing you need to know is that he’s shaved his mustache, crew-cut his hair and dyed it black. He’s also wearing glasses. You wouldn’t know him on the street. We’re looking for the sharpest photo of him off the video, and we’ll circulate this to all local and international agencies. Do you want us to do the same with the woman? Looked to be an expensive mainland hooker if you ask me. Maybe he balked at the price.”

  “No, just focus on Nolan. Come back here. There have been developments.”

  “I want to interview the mama-san. She’s someone who probably knows Nolan as a customer. Maybe I can get something out of her.”

  “Let her go. She’s a whore, a pimp. Let the local police deal with her. Presumably they have grounds for an arrest?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Your labors have come to an end. Return to the embassy.” Constantine shook his head. He had to speak with the ambassador about having Orchard Towers declared off-limits to embassy personnel.

  The next call was from a Singapore Police detective inspector. Two of the bank staff had positively ID’d Birch as Nolan. He thanked the DI profusely, promising to host a big chili crab dinner for the team when the case had been put to bed.

  His direct line rang from Tokyo, which meant Chuck Burns was looking for an update. He picked up and started, “We’ve found Nolan. He’s en route to Sri Lanka and—”

  “And you are not to interdict or apprehend. Hands off. Repeat, do not interfere.” Burns was as serious as an undertaker.

  “I—I don’t understand. The man’s a traitor. He has Watermen’s NSA files. We can force the plane to return to Singapore in under ninety minutes.”

  “I don’t care if he’s carrying the British Crown Jewels. I’ve just had DCI Perkins on the phone. I don’t know why, but just do it.”

  “Got it, Chuck. Thanks for the call. Let me clean up some loose ends,” Constantine said and hung up. He thought for a long minute. Mary, Mother of God. Nolan was right about that radioactive container in Rangoon port, and Matthews’s lack of an explanation made the situation even fishier. Maybe Nolan was right and the CIA was behind a hijacking of MH370? What better way to stymie Nolan than to trump up espionage charges and lock him away? “Sarah, bring me printouts of all of Bob Nolan’s MH370 email correspondence.”

  Constantine needed only ten minutes, two phone calls and three emails to call off the dogs. Just enough time for Nolan’s MH370 transcripts to hit his desk.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  FLIGHTS OF FANCY

  WEDNESDAY MARCH 12, COLOMBO, RANGOON AND SINGAPORE

  As they finished their light meal, Nolan turned to Kaili and said, “I should tell you about MH370, since it involves so many China citizens. I think the CIA murdered everyone on board except for two or three people. I have no idea who or why or where they are now, but that plane is almost certainly at the bottom of the ocean. CNN had a report up a few days ago that an Australia-based mining company had repurposed a satellite transponder they’d leased and found a large intact aircraft in the Bay of Bengal. No one in the Agency wants to pursue this lead, but I think it’s MH370.”

  Kaili had no idea if Bob’s dramatic escape from Singapore was merely CIA theatrics to make the MH370 tale more believable, or if this peculiar spy was telling the truth. Making full eye contact she said, “I’m listening. Please continue.”

  Nolan gave her the medium-detail version. A hijacking by persons unknown. Certainly state-sponsored, as it was an expensive and complex operation. A forced landing in Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta on a custom-built runway masquerading as an unfinished toll road. All on board—except for two or three who deplaned—asphyxiated in flight before landing. And finally, the subsequent takeoff and disappearance of the plane, presumably deliberately crashed at sea but possibly on land. The local handler was a vigorous sixty-seven-year-old ex-US Special Forces officer from Vietnam in the early 1970s, the cofounder of a CIA-sponsored arms dealer in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and a ruthless killer to this day. His birth name was Robin Teller, but he’d been living as Jay Toffer. The CIA was complicit in sheltering Teller in Rangoon since 2007. Maybe the CIA—officially or otherwise—was behind the entire hijacking.

  One item in MH370’s hold was a centrifuge used to extract weapons-grade U-235. Teller’s people dropped the centrifuge when offloading it at the Irrawaddy airstrip. The broken containment vessel, which had an MAS logo on the crate, had been leaking unexpectedly high levels of radiation ever since. The company that chartered the ship that carried the radioactive container out of Myanmar to Penang was a CIA proprietary dating back to the 1960s called Consultants International. The centrifuge was in a container on board the SS Bandana bound for Penang. The ship’s crew already had dumped the container in mid-ocean based on satellite detection of radiation.

  The leadership of the CIA’s internal investigation into MH370’s disappearance was assigned to someone bitterly opposed to any idea Nolan might have—at this Kaili smiled—and, consequently, no one had taken him seriously to date.

  Frank Coulter, an Agency warhorse who would be well known to the MSS, had arranged for Teller to get his current job in Rangoon in 2007. Coulter was right now flying from his retirement home in California to a small town in remote Western Australia. The trip was likely to be connected in some way to MH370. The CIA wanted to arrest Nolan to keep him from digging further.

  Kaili was intrigued, but not convinced. “Isn’t it also possible that the CIA is trying to arrest you in conjunction with the theft of Watermen’s NSA files?”

  Nolan protested in his deadpan tone. “Nothing has happened in ten months. Why come after me now?” As soon as he said the words, two thoughts flashed through his mind: Watermen had set the FSB’s dogs loose when he’d given the Russians his name, and of course, he’d told Millie the Hawaii tale.

  For her part, Kaili was deep in thought about Watermen. Terminate with extreme prejudice. This was MSS doublespeak that authorized her to kill even if she stood a high probability of capture or exposure as an agent of China. The state would rather risk international condemnation than see the target escape. Kaili had no idea how she was supposed to kill Watermen.

  The cockpit door opened and Captain Nishimoto made his way to where they were seated. “I didn’t introduce myself before, ma’am,” he said, extending a giant paw to Kaili.

  “I’m Mimi Chan. Adam and I work together,” she replied, reciprocating with a delicate offer of fragile fingers. The captain chose a two-handed shake that preserved bone, tendon and muscle while emphasizing the disparity in h
and size despite them being nearly the same height.

  Turning to Nolan, he said, “My instructions say this charter is paid through 23:00 hours Thursday night Sri Lanka time. Right now I don’t have an onward destination or an ETD. I was hoping you could clarify.”

  “There’s been a delay in the original plan and we need to extend the charter. I’m now collecting a high-value person sometime Friday afternoon. I will fly Friday night to Western Australia. What’s the flying time from Colombo to somewhere between Broome and Darwin?”

  “We can make Darwin in, say, nine hours, unless we pick up a big headwind or divert due to weather. If we’re not flying until Friday afternoon, it sounds like you’ll need another twenty-four hours on the charter.”

  “That sounds right. Can I pay you in cash now?”

  “Cash? Why don’t you speak with Langley and have them wire the funds into a Harcourt Aviation account? And where’s your Terry Hogan letter?”

  “I’d prefer we keep this among ourselves. Even within the CIA there’s need-to-know. Not even President Obama is aware that on Friday, I’m picking up Mark Watermen to transport him to remote Australia for interrogation by Agency assets. This will be a tricky exfiltration. Once we reach the airport with Watermen, we’ll need to get in the air with minimal delay. I’ll supply Harcourt with a CYA State Department letter asking for ‘global support to US embassies worldwide.’ After all, I sign ‘Terry A. Hogan’ as well as the next man.” Nolan was relieved Millie’s research on rendition flights had unearthed the nugget that the air charter companies typically obtained State Department form letters signed by a Mr. Hogan, always in a different hand. This flimsy document allegedly kept the aircrew out of jail if a refueling stop went bad.

  Nishimoto smiled wryly, but he was impressed. “Watermen? We’ve flown some celebrity criminals—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was my favorite—but Mark Watermen would take the cake. OK, if you have about $130,000 cash, please pull it out. Jenkins will count it and then I’ll recount it. We’ll give you a receipt before you deplane. We’ll file a flight plan soon, especially if you want to get out of Colombo in a hurry. If Langley alerts my head office in upstate New York, I’ll land somewhere else, but only with prior internal authorization. HQ arranges third country overflight permissioning, and we don’t want Indonesia to shoot us down by mistake.”

  “How about Dili? It’s in the same direction.”

  “Can you tell me the ultimate destination?”

  “Truscott Field on the Mitchell Plateau in the Kimberley. It’s about—”

  “We know where Truscott Field is. We just came from there on Monday.”

  “Did you also happen to be in Burma last weekend?”

  “I can’t discuss that.” Nishimoto turned and walked back into the cockpit, closing the door.

  Nolan turned to Kaili and said, “What do you make of that?”

  She said, “It is interesting that he told you he was at Truscott Field, but wouldn’t talk about Burma.”

  “I feel the same. So that means—”

  “He thinks the client that chartered Harcourt to fly to Truscott Field was the CIA, but there was a different client for the Burma leg.”

  “Or they didn’t fly to Burma at all,” he said. “One other thing I didn’t mention: Nishimoto looks to be Teller’s vintage. If he’s working with Teller, he’s likely to either kill us before we get to Colombo or turn us over to the CIA when we land.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to sleep once I count out the money.”

  * * * * *

  Hecker hoped that maybe tonight he would enjoy seven hours of sleep. The small Hogwarts bedroom had a crappy single bed, but it would feel like the Four Seasons. An email scan before shutting down revealed that Damien had come back with something on Nishimoto. He clicked and read:

  Tetsu a.k.a. Jack Nishimoto, b. 5/15/46 in Monterrey CA. Graduate UC Santa Barbara, 1968. ROTC USAF. Vietnam 1972, assigned to the 211th Helicopter Squadron at Bien Hoa as a UH-1 Iroquois pilot. Completed military obligation stateside as a helicopter pilot instructor. Retired USAF with Captain’s rank. Joined Pan American Airways 1976-1981. Trans World Airlines 1982-1999. United Airlines 1999-2007. Harcourt Aviation 2008-Present. Lives in Long Beach, CA. Widower. Two adult children. No current CIA connections.”

  Barling’s email concluded, “Cross-referenced Nishimoto with Robin Teller. Nishimoto, Teller and six USAF-enlisted men involved in a brawl in The Moulin Rouge bar outside Bien Hoa Air Base, August 1972. Military police broke up the fight. When the MPs arrived, Nishimoto and Teller had drawn pistols pointed at one another. Both men were inebriated and voluntarily disarmed when confronted. No charges were preferred, but a notation was made on each man’s service record. Nishimoto left Vietnam shortly thereafter. No other interaction with Teller found.”

  Teller and Nishimoto knew each other and may have been enemies. Then again, in Indochina, even best friends could be at drawn daggers on any given night. Hecker turned his attention to a new item in his inbox, this one from Constantine:

  Understand that Travis Ryder took a photograph of MAS logo on crate containing radioactive materials. Essential to ongoing Nolan investigation that this photograph be provided ASAP. Equally urgent that all DEA personnel report all contacts from Nolan. Use this office as your touch point. Rgds, Richard Constantine, COS, Singapore.

  He didn’t know Constantine well. He’d heard from Damien that Constantine was a bluenose and quirky. A hairstyle pioneered by Nero and Wall Street suspenders weren’t to Hecker’s taste, but Constantine was said to be bright, effective and not shy of confrontation.

  As for photos, well, that sounded like old Bob was pulling Constantine’s leg. Ryder had seen the MAS logo, but he hadn’t taken a picture. Not with the radiation detectors chattering away. The decal was on the crate, but that crate was at the bottom of the Andaman Sea. He couldn’t release those transcripts of Johnson’s torture sessions, either. Without a photo or prisoners’ testimonies, there was no hard evidence of a Burma angle to the MAS disappearance.

  However, it should be possible to fake a photo of an MAS logo on a crate. Empty containers, sandbags and wooden crates were in abundant supply in Rangoon. And Ryder wouldn’t need any convincing. It was the least they could do for Nolan. Gonzalez was damned good at touching up evidence, too.

  * * * * *

  Constantine looked at Nolan’s email printouts and conversation transcripts. Nolan’s claim that MH370 was hijacked seemed incontrovertible. He’d forward these to Tokyo and Langley, along with Ryder’s photo of the crate bearing the MAS logo, if he ever got it. Whether or not Robin Teller’s involvement meant anything other than Matthews had been partaking in informal witness protection/Old Boy relocation activities, he couldn’t say.

  He picked up his phone. “Tell me why I can’t tap Hecker’s phones?”

  Flynn replied, “NSA doesn’t have master access in Myanmar. There’s no capability to fly drones and clone cell sites in Rangoon, either. It’s a hostile environment, and we have no physical wherewithal to tap Hecker other than from within the embassy infrastructure. And certainly not without Lloyd Matthews’s sign-off.”

  “Yes, and that greasy careerist would pin it on us if someone got caught. Here’s a new idea. I want a tap on Barling’s office and cell phones here, with the specific instructions that only recordings with Hecker are to be retained. I’ll review those and order destroyed any that don’t relate to Nolan.”

  “Boss, it’s illegal for one federal agency to tap another without the director of national intelligence signing off, and probably a FISC judge, too.”

  “Look, had I wanted a legal opinion, I’d have asked Shoenstein. Get Collins to do it. Got it?”

  “Yes, sure. Can we do this tomorrow? After he finished at Nolan’s house, Collins went home. I’d like to get some sleep, too.”

  “You can go home when the job’s done.” He hung up and shook his head. Flynn had devoted all o
f four hours to examining Nolan’s home office and bedroom. They’d found a well-concealed recess, but the single thumb drive had been shown to contain a mishmash of leaked files, plus some nasty malware that had tied the embassy IT professionals in knots. Otherwise, Flynn’s field report listed only fishing equipment and sports paraphernalia under “Others.” And nothing. There had to be something else. Flynn wasn’t seeing it because he wasn’t looking hard enough. Maybe Flynn was secretly helping Nolan. Constantine shook his head in dismay. This job could make you paranoid.

  The findings from the discussion with the maid were more enlightening. For one thing, Nolan’s wife had gone to China on short notice and hadn’t been heard from since Sunday. So it’s likely she walked out. That might explain Nolan’s behavior.

  Millicent Mukherjee was equally interesting. Her polygraph results showed she was convinced that MH370 was hijacked and the CIA was behind it. Presumably that was Nolan talking. She wasn’t persuasive on the Watermen NSA files angle, though her ambivalent feelings toward Nolan also had to be factored into consideration. Her personnel records showed a near-Mensa IQ and top marks in training. Using another employee’s credentials to access Agency databases was a prosecutable offence, yet it happened from time to time. Context was everything. Time to have a heart-to-heart with Ms. Mukherjee.