Dark Ambition

by Allan Topol

  "Will do," Van Buren replied.

  "Oh, and one other thing. When you set the meeting with Donovan, I want Ben and Jennifer there. They've been working the Winthrop case. They'll be in the best position to decide whether that scumbag Donovan is telling the truth."

  * * *

  Gwen had regained consciousness over a period of several hours. She could move her toes. Her eyes fluttered. The room, which had been fuzzy and clouded, grew sharper, like a camera lens being focused. Along with her sight, her sense of smell and hearing returned. The odor, unmistakably a hospital, told her where she was even before she heard the announcements over the PA system that said, "Dr. Nielsen to surgery, stat. Dr. Goldberg to O.R., Dr...."

  As she looked around, her recollection of what had happened returned. She touched her face and nose, felt the large bandage, and thought about that little monster with her yellow metal lunch pail. "I'll kill her," she growled. She remembered the detective and the car. She could feel her entire rib cage aching. She had cuts and bruises over much of her body. She reached down, touching the IV tubes and monitors hooked up to her arms, then leaned up a little from her prone position in bed. How long have I been unconscious? she wondered.

  In the doorway she saw a guard in a blue police uniform sitting on a wooden chair. He had his back to Gwen, chatting with a nurse, who was holding blood samples in a metal tray.

  For the next hour, Gwen kept her eyes closed, pretending to be unresponsive as nurses went in and out of her room. She was waiting for the right time to make her move.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion in the corridor. She heard a nurse shout, "Code blue in room eight." Half a dozen medical personnel raced past Gwen's door.

  They won't be looking at the monitors, Gwen thought. I've got to move fast, before they know I'm awake. One by one, she disconnected the tubes and apparatus. With great effort, biting down on her lip to block out the excruciating pain, Gwen lowered her feet out of the bed.

  Spotting a couple of towels in a chest, she snatched one. Then, after twisting the towel around like a rope between her hands, she made her way across the floor on her toes, sneaking up on the guard.

  No one was in the corridor. In a single swift motion, she looped the towel over his head and around the front of his neck. Mustering all of her strength, she pulled him back into the room, chair and all, and kicked the door shut. He struggled, thrashing his arms, going for his gun, which was buttoned in the holster at his waist, as she tightened the noose. With his air cut off, his face turned red and then blue as she continued pulling. She waited for him to stop moving, then held on for another minute, making sure he was dead. As she let go of the towel, his body fell off the chair and onto the floor.

  Move fast, she told herself. A nurse could pop into the room any minute. She opened the door to the closet. Sure enough, her clothes and coat were hanging inside. Her personal things were in a brown shopping bag, including her cell phone. All that was missing was her gun. Fighting the pain, she stripped off her hospital gown and got dressed. She removed the guard's loaded gun and stuffed it into the pocket of her black leather jacket.

  Peeking from the edge of the door, she made sure the corridor outside her room was still deserted. Then she slipped out. She decided not to risk the elevator. Walking almost normally, she headed toward the exit stairway at the end of the corridor.

  Once inside, slowly walking downstairs, she felt better. But where could she go? In a matter of minutes there would be a huge manhunt under way to find her. Not only the neighborhood, but trains, planes, and highways. With the huge bandage on her face, she'd be easy to spot.

  Think, she told herself. You've been on the run before. If you make it back to Connecticut, you're safe. Paul will take care of you. Chip will never let them know where to find you. Then you can heal, come back, and even the score with Ben and that little monster of a kid. But first you have to get out of Washington.

  She cracked the staircase door on the first floor and took a quick look. A sign said George Washington University Hospital. She knew the hospital was in a crowded urban area, ironically only a few blocks from the late Robert Winthrop's office in the State Department. It was also filled with medical buildings, since doctors wanted to be close to the hospital. She could slip into one of those. She might even be able to take an elevator without anyone paying attention to her. Patients with bandages showed up in doctors' offices all the time. A plan was beginning to take shape in her mind.

  She walked into a nondescript glass-and-stone eight-story building on Pennsylvania Avenue and scanned the board listing the tenants. In 808 there was a general surgeon, Dr. Malcolm Herbert. A surgeon was perfect. He'd have nerves of steel.

  She rode the elevator to eight. Halfway down the corridor was the women's rest room. As she expected, it was locked. While she rummaged through her purse for a paper clip or some other object to pick the lock, the door opened from the inside. A very pregnant woman emerged. Trying to shield her face with one hand, Gwen used the other to hold the door for the woman and then entered when she was gone. She checked her watch. Three forty-five. She had a couple of hours to kill.

  She went to one of the toilet stalls, locked the door from the inside, and sat down gingerly, to minimize the pain. Anyone who came in would see her feet and nothing more. She was safe for now. Safe until it was time for her to make her next move.

  Chapter 31

  It took Donovan five minutes to clean out his office at the CIA. With great pleasure, he was getting the hell out of a building occupied by a bunch of wimps for the last time. At his insistence, the interview was set for four in the afternoon at his house on N Street in Georgetown, about a block from where John F. Kennedy had lived when he'd been a senator. Jennifer and Ben arrived first, but waited in front of the house until Joyner and Van Buren came.

  With a glass of single-malt scotch, straight up, in his hand, the last of America's Cold War superspies opened the door with The Marriage of Figaro filling the town house.

  "Hang up your coats and go into the living room," Donovan said, pointing to the closet. "I'll turn off the music. Anybody want a drink?"

  When they all declined, he disappeared. A minute later the music stopped. On his way to the living room, Donovan passed by the entrance hall, out of view of the others now in the living room. In a single swift motion he slipped into a pocket of Van Buren's coat a small black object that resembled a button.

  Donovan was still carrying his drink when he joined the others. "Show me the immunity agreement," he said.

  Handing him the document, Van Buren said, "The terms of this agreement are highly unusual."

  Donovan smiled. "If you want something good, you have to pay for it."

  Charming fellow, Jennifer thought.

  Once Donovan signed the agreement, Ben turned on his tape recorder. With a pen in hand, poised to take notes, he nodded to Joyner to begin the questioning.

  "I want to remind you, Chip, that under the agreement, if you make any false statements you lose your immunity."

  Donovan finished his drink and put down the glass. "Understood."

  "Now tell us what you know about Winthrop's murder."

  Donovan began in a soft voice. "About a week before his death, Winthrop found out from a Taiwan leader about, the operation I was planning to run in China, Operation Matchstick, to blow up a Chinese missile battery aimed at the island."

  "Do you know how he learned that information?" Joyner asked.

  "My guess is that Chen was shooting off his mouth. I haven't been able to determine that. Anyhow, Winthrop called me down to the State Department and began shouting at me as if I were a little kid. What was I doing setting up a hostile act that might provoke war? That kind of thing. He threatened to go to the President or to you, Margaret, unless I agreed to call it off."

  "What'd you say?" Joyner asked.

  "I told him he was being a hypocrite. He was advocating his arms package for Taiwan while jumping on my 'little adventure,' as h
e called it. He told me there was a big difference between permitting Taiwan to defend itself and attacking China. So I acted properly chastened and told him that I'd call off Operation Matchstick."

  "What'd you do then?" Joyner asked.

  "I wasn't sure what to do." Donovan took a deep breath. Well, here goes the fat into the fire. He spoke slowly, letting the words drop out of his mouth like jewels. "I went to see Jim Slater. I told him that Winthrop had found out about Operation Matchstick and Chen. That Winthrop was threatening me."

  Jennifer's head snapped back. From the corner of his eye, Ben noticed her extreme reaction. "Who, did you say?" Jennifer asked.

  "Jim Slater, the President's chief of staff," Donovan replied.

  "Had Slater been part of your Operation Match-stick?" Joyner asked.

  "Negative."

  "Then why'd you go to see him?"

  Donovan's eyes sparkled. "Slater was close to the President, without a lot of historical baggage with Brewster like Winthrop. I figured that he could give me a good fix on how Brewster might react if Winthrop told him about my little adventure. Also, he has a reputation of knowing how to solve problems."

  "What did Slater tell you?"

  "That Brewster would never approve Operation Matchstick. He said that if Winthrop and Cunningham were against something in the foreign policy area, it would never happen. I knew that Winthrop was opposed. Cunningham had to be a no for sure. Hell, he's practically in bed with the damn Chinese."

  "That's out of line," Joyner said.

  Donovan glared at her. "Well, regardless, Slater said that he had his own problems with Winthrop on lots of issues. Slater told me that he had learned from Cunningham about the Chinese blackmail of Winthrop for his whoring around and the London video, and so forth...." He paused and shifted in the chair, taking his time, wanting to select his words carefully.

  " 'Winthrop's a liability to the administration,' Slater told me. He said that we had to find a way to get Winthrop to resign because it didn't look like the Chinese blackmail was going to work. 'Perhaps a little helpful persuasion for Winthrop to step down coming from another source might help.' Those were his words."

  "Then what?" Ben asked in his crisp prosecutor's tone, taking over the questioning now that Donovan had moved into the Winthrop case.

  "Slater asked me if I had any ideas."

  "Did you?"

  "As a matter of fact, I told him that I didn't have any. Then he said that he had a kid on his staff who was smart and could 'think out of the box.' Those were Slater's words. Slater's notion was to put this kid on the project. He was a former marine."

  The pen fell out of Ben's hand. Holy moly, he thought, a former marine. It had to be.

  "Well, anyhow," Donovan continued, "this kid on Slater's staff came to see me."

  "Who was he?" Ben asked, knowing the answer.

  "Ed Fulton."

  Not having known about Fulton's marine background, Jennifer hadn't made the deduction. "Ed Fulton?" she blurted out. "Your cocounsel, Ben."

  He shot her a look to keep quiet.

  "So what happened then?"

  "Fulton came to see me. The kid was ready to do anything. Fulton asked if I could recommend a good-looking woman. Someone who had been trained by the CIA, but was no longer with the Agency. Someone who could be trusted."

  "How did you respond?"

  "I gave him the name of a woman who had worked for me at the Agency in an elite anti-terrorism unit. She's retired from the Agency." He shot Joyner a surly look. "I was forced to dismantle the operation."

  Joyner nodded to Ben, signaling that she had no intention of taking the bait.

  "What was the woman's name?" Ben asked.

  "Gwen."

  "Gwen what?"

  "Just Gwen. It was an operational name. No one in the unit had last names. They had half a dozen false names and IDs that they used from time to time."

  "She must have had a name at birth."

  Donovan suppressed a smile. This straitlaced lawyer had no idea how the shadowy world of undercover agents operated. "Janet Murphy. She was born in Boston. I recruited her as a teenager from a juvenile prison. Her mother was dead. She had no idea who her father was. No knowledge of any family members."

  "What's Gwen's address?"

  Donovan pursed his lips together. "Try G.W. Hospital. The ICU. She got there trying to kidnap your daughter."

  Ben tightened the grip on his pen. Everything was now falling into place.

  "What about before that? When you gave Fulton her name?"

  Donovan looked squarely at Ben and shrugged. He knew that the chances were slim that Gwen would ever escape and make her way back to Connecticut, but he'd be damned if he'd let them know where they could find her if she did. "I have no idea. All I had for her was a cell phone number, which I gave to Fulton." He gave it to Ben.

  "Washington, D.C., area code," Ben said, thinking aloud.

  "That means nothing for a cell phone number. I have no idea whether Gwen lives here in town or somewhere else. All I know is that once she left the Agency, she had extensive plastic surgery, including fingerprints. She started a new life in the private sector. Put the new identity together herself so nobody in the Agency could find and eliminate her if they became nervous about disclosure of one of her missions. That's all I can tell you about her."

  Ben felt Donovan was concealing something. "Then why did she give you her cell phone number?"

  "She called one day and said she might want to freelance from time to time to relieve the boredom of her new life. That's when she gave me her cell phone number. Told me I should feel free to pass it along to someone if I thought a project might appeal to her."

  Ben raised his hand and pointed a finger at Donovan. "I want to remind you," he said sternly, "that if we find out that you lied to us, you lose your immunity."

  Donovan cracked a smile. Did this lawyer really think he could intimidate him? "I haven't forgotten that, but I appreciate the reminder."

  Looking at Ben's face as he leafed through his notes, Jennifer knew he felt Donovan was hiding something about Gwen, a view that she shared. But how was he ever going to break this guy?

  "Let's go back to Fulton," Ben said.

  Donovan nodded.

  "So you gave him the name of the blond psychopath who's in G.W. Hospital."

  Donovan scowled. "Gwen's no psychopath."

  "All right. Pass that."

  "Yeah, as I told you, I gave him Gwen's cell phone number. He said he would call her. That's all I know."

  Ben locked eyes with Donovan. "So you and Slater set up Winthrop's murder this way?"

  An outraged expression appeared on Donovan's face. "We just thought Fulton would try to find a way to intimidate Winthrop. We had no idea Fulton planned to kill the guy."

  "Yeah, right, and I'm the tooth fairy," Ben said.

  Donovan stood up in protest. Red in the face, he said, "I resent that."

  "You can cut the act and sit down. What else was said at your meeting with Fulton?"

  Donovan paced around the room a couple of times, then sat back down. "Not a thing. You've got it."

  "That's it?" Jennifer said incredulously. "You expect us to believe that Jim... I mean, Slater was responsible for your getting Gwen involved, and then..." Her mind was a jumble. She lost the thread of her question.

  "That's all she wrote."

  "Didn't you check back with Slater?" Ben said.

  "Nope. That was it. I never talked to Slater about it again."

  Ben bored in on him. "So you're asking us to believe that you turned over the name of a trained killer in response to a request by someone you called a kid without talking to Slater or Mrs. Joyner."

  "As you may have noticed, Mrs. Joyner and I rarely see eye to eye. We don't talk much unless we have to. You may not believe it, Ben," he said, glancing at Joyner, "but then again you didn't have your nuts put in a cracker on six different occasions in the last decade by congressional committees who
have been tearing apart the agency for projects we initiated for the good of the country. As a result, with two more years left to go before retirement, whenever someone in the White House asks me to do something, I do it. If those things head south on us, which they usually do, I can point the finger, first or second, at Sixteen-hundred Pennsylvania Avenue and say, 'Talk to those boys.' In this case, Ed Fulton."

  "So you want us to believe that Ed Fulton masterminded Winthrop's murder?" Ben asked.

  "Yep, that's the story. I set up the operations I believe in, like Operation Matchstick. As for the rest, I don't give a shit. My wife died last year. I'm planning to sell this house and move to the mountains in North Carolina, home of the greatest fishing and golf in the world. Give me that and an annuity of single-malt scotch, and I'll be one happy country boy."

  Jennifer glanced at Ben, waiting for him to formulate the next question, hoping that he could break Donovan on this pack of lies.

  Donovan interjected, "Before you ask about documents, let me tell you that I've spent my whole career dealing with lawyers. I know what I need to protect myself. In the vault in my office at Langley, there's a written statement I made the day Fulton came to talk to me. It verifies my story. It was witnessed by my secretary and notarized. I didn't take it when I cleaned out my office today."

  "Did Ed Fulton ever come back to you for additional help after your initial referral of Gwen?" Ben asked.

  Donovan shook his head. "Negative," he said flatly. "We talked once. That was it."

  "Did you ever talk with Gwen yourself about any of this?"

  "Negative. I had no intention of getting in the middle of it."