"I've heard nothing about your plans to help our third friend reach his destination."
"I've got the itinerary finalized, Ambassador."
"Make sure his trip is uneventful," Terrell said, consulting his notes.
"Are you quite sure that the local police chief has nothing more than suppositions to go on?"
"At this point, yes. But that could change."
"Do you have reason to believe it will change?"
"He's much more resourceful than I was led to believe."
"Did the materials he reviewed give him an advantage?"
"Not really, but they did provide a connection we were hoping to avoid."
"If we manage the situation correctly from here on out, that shouldn't be a problem. Since truth, in this instance, is heavily mingled with falsehood, I doubt he'll be able to probe too deeply."
"Take no action?" Applewhite inquired.
"Let me see what I can learn about him that might be useful for future planning, if the situation warrants."
"And Agent Perry?"
"I know you wish to be rid of him, and you have my sympathy. But ask yourself this question: Where would you like the burden of guilt to fall if all does not go well?"
"I understand, sir."
"Henceforth, there are to be no more contingencies," Terrell said.
"Do I make myself clear?"
"Perfectly, sir."
Terrell disconnected and dialed a DOD number.
The phone rang once and a voice said, "Yes, Ambassador."
"Santa Fe, New Mexico, Police Chief Kevin Kerney. Best-case scenario for sanctioned removal. All particulars to me, eyes only, by twenty-three hundred hours."
"Under DOD regulations pertaining to the National Security Act, I am required to inform you that contemplated sanctioned removals require concurrence from the national security advisor, CIA, and the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence Agency."
"Particulars to me by twenty-three hundred," Terrell repeated.
"Aye-aye, sir."
Kerney left the county jail and did some shopping. He stopped at a discount chain store, bought cellular phones, and paid the activation fees. At a video store he bought a stack of used movies. He topped off his shopping spree at an electronics super store, where he purchased a small TV with a built-in VCR, a tape recorder, two privacy earphones, and a radio wave frequency detector.
He drove home, dressed to go running, and slipped a night vision scope in the pocket of his lightweight pullover parka. Outside he did a few stretching exercises and took off down the driveway past his landlord's house. Once he turned the corner of the block, he pulled up, and walked down the utility easement that ran behind his cottage. He climbed a lot wall and used an electric meter box as a stepping-stone to get to the roof of an old garage. He flattened out in a prone position and scanned with the scope looking for any evidence of a surveillance video camera.
He spotted it at the base of a TV satellite dish mounted on the porch roof of a neighboring house, angled to get a clear view of the front of his cottage. He looked around for more and found none.
He wondered if the uplink to the watchers and listeners was local or remote. He scrambled down, completed a circle around the block, and stopped in front of the house with the TV dish. No lights were on inside. He gauged the distance between the top of the porch railing and the roof line. If he stood tiptoe on the railing he could probably disable the camera. But why tell the watchers that he knew he was being watched?
At the cottage Kerney punched the playback on his answering machine, and carted in the Mitchell evidence he'd sneaked onto the back patio before parking in the driveway. He caught snatches of messages left by Sara, each one sounding a little more terse, as he brought in his new TV VCR and the other purchases. He dumped it all in the bedroom, stuck a movie in the living-room VCR, turned up the volume, and closed the bedroom door.
John Wayne kicked butt chasing Indians while Kerney hunted bugs in his bedroom and bath. On his first visual sweep he found three, one in a lamp, one in a wall outlet, and one in the bedroom telephone. He swept again, taking apart everything he could think of, searching every surface-bed frame, mattress, dresser, pictures, walls, ceiling. He found a third inside a doorknob, a fourth behind the toilet tank, and a fifth on the underside of a floor heating duct.
Except for the bathroom device he left everything else in place.
Using a handheld scanner Kerney made a grid-by-grid pass of the walls, floors, and ceiling in the bathroom, bedroom, and closet, and didn't find any more bugs. With what he'd bought, he could work in the bedroom without raising the suspicions of his listeners.
He carried everything he needed into the bedroom and closed the door.
Just before he plugged in the earphones and started listening to the audiotapes, the living room TV blared the notes of a bugler sounding a cavalry charge.
Unlike real cities with real morgues and coroners, the Santa Fe local-yokels stashed their stiffs at the regional hospital. That made scooping up the body, as Applewhite had so inelegantly put it, a relatively easy chore for Charlie Perry. He followed the rent-an ambulance to an HMO facility in Albuquerque near the air force base, within shouting distance of the VA hospital. Two white-coats and an armed uniformed security guard waited at the back door.
The white-coats transferred the corpse to the gurney and the guard led the way into the building. Perry tagged behind. The inside didn't look anything like an HMO clinic. There were laboratories, research suites, and communications rooms, offices identified by numbers only, contamination vaults and refrigerated storage lockers posted with radioactive warning signs, a video surveillance room, and finally a real morgue.
The white-coats dumped the body on a stainless-steel autopsy table and left. The guard remained in the room. Perry smiled at the guard. He got a tight nod back.
CIA, thought Charlie. Maybe something to do with the vast nuclear weapons stockpile stored in the mountains on the air force base. He thought human radiation exposure, epidemiology testing for rare forms of cancer, forensic pathology studies to determine unusual causes of death, psych testing to assess mental functioning.
Charlie decided it was smart to put the facility right next door to the base and close to the VA hospital so all the civilian and military worker bees could be easily examined, probed, and tested, to study the effects of exposure to plutonium, uranium, anthrax bacilli, Ebola, or whatever else the government was playing around with.
A man in a lab coat walked in. He flipped off the sheet covering the cadaver and did a visual head-to-toe inspection. Maybe on the early side of forty, he wore a Naval Academy class ring.
"Cause of death appears to be blunt trauma to the head, with some very interesting lacerations," the man said.
"Someone drew blood, did a mouth swab, and took a skin sample. What's that all about?"
Perry froze. That son of a bitch Kerney had all he needed to wash the Terrell homicide cover-up down the tubes. He didn't know whether to lie or tell the truth. He knew Applewhite wasn't FBI. But was she CIA?
Military intelligence?
State Department counterintelligence? He had every reason to believe she'd killed four, possibly five people. It was time to start covering his ass.
"Who took the samples?" the doctor asked.
"I had those done," Perry lied.
The doctor nodded.
"Want me to open him up?"
"If you think it's necessary."
"What do you need?"
"The local police are calling it a homicide," Perry replied.
"I doubt they're wrong. What do you want done?"
"It needs to become an accidental death," Perry said.
"Who gets the autopsy report?"
"The Red River town marshal."
Sal Molina's undercover vehicle was a minivan equipped with a radio, a pinpoint shielded privacy light, cell phone, 35mm camera, night-vision binoculars, video camera, and an array of weapons held
in a rack above his head. While it looked like an anonymous soccer mom car, a souped-up eight-cylinder engine powered the vehicle and a new suspension gave it a surefooted feel on the road. The van could top out at 140 mph and manage a high-speed emergency U turn without nipping over.
It had been used by a local real estate agent to transport crack cocaine to wealthy clients who divided their time between Santa Fe in the summer and trendy, upscale Colorado skiing destinations in the winter.
Sal had tailed Charlie Perry and the ambulance to Albuquerque. Watching Perry play body snatcher demolished the last of his doubts about Chief Kerney's plan.
He took snapshots, scribbled surveillance field notes, and followed Perry back to Santa Fe, expecting to spend the remainder of the night parked outside of Charlie's hotel. Instead, he waited and watched as Perry parked at the back of the federal courthouse two blocks from the plaza and went inside.
The FBI offices were next door in the post office building. What was Perry doing at the courthouse? Unless he had a late-night meeting with a judge or a federal prosecutor from the U. S. attorney's office in from Albuquerque, it made no sense. Other than Charlie's unit there were no cars in the spaces reserved for judges and staff. But behind the post office there were five nice, shiny new Ford sedans that screamed FBI.
Only one full-time resident agent, Frank Powers, worked out of Santa Fe.
Why the late-night caucus?
Sal reached for the Santa Fe telephone book, found a number, and dialed up a retired sheriff's captain who worked as a federal court security officer. Six years ago Molina had busted the man's youngest son for drug dealing, turned him into a snitch, and let him walk. After the kid cleaned up his act, Molina had cut him loose.
A sleepy voice answered on the second ring.
"Jake."
"Yeah."
"It's Sal Molina. Who's holding a late-night convention at the courthouse?"
"Man, I don't know what you're talking about. The courthouse is locked up at night."
"Wrong answer, Jake. I just watched an FBI agent go in the back door."
Sal heard Jake catch his breath.
"I don't know nothing about that," Jake said.
"I hear Joey's doing okay. Married. Kid on the way. Got a good job as an auto mechanic with the highway department."
"Jesus, don't do this to me, Sal." The words came out pinched.
"That's not a trade someone learns in the slammer," Sal said evenly.
"Okay, okay, I owe you. There's an off-limits suite of rooms in the basement.
People come and go. I don't know what they do down there."
"I need more than that, Jake."
"This has to stay off the record," Jake said.
"I'm not supposed to talk about it."
"You've got my word."
"You gotta pass through a retina- and palm-print-scan foyer that's behind a keypad access door on the first floor, just off the back entrance. That's all I know."
"You said you see those people come and go, Jake. Who do you think they are?"
"Some are FBI suits and Beltway types, but most of the current crew look like computer gee ks to me."
"Is the basement in constant use?" Sal asked.
"Staffed regularly?"
"The last group to use it was the Secret Service. They were here when the vice president came to Santa Fe."
"When did the computer gee ks set up shop?"
"About two months before the FBI task force came to town on the Terrell homicide."
Sal decided not to push it any further.
"Thanks, Jake. Give my best to Joey."
After sampling the Mitchell audiotapes to get the meat of each interview, Kerney worked up a set of questions he would use in the morning. He planned to call some of the people Mitchell had interviewed.
He figured it would be safe to use each of the new cell phones three or four times before the feds got on to it.
He stared at Mitchell's list of names and numbers. How did the priest make contact with these people? There was no phone in his room at the brothers' residence hall, and the two phones in the common areas where the brothers congregated weren't suitable for private conversations.
Kerney went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and used one of the cell phones to call the residence hall. Brother Jerome answered.
Kerney identified himself and jumped right to the point.
"Did Father Mitchell have access to a campus telephone?"
"None was assigned to him, but he did use my office telephone when he needed to make a call. He used a calling card when he was in the field that was billed to my number. He was very prompt about paying the college for the charges."
"Do you have a record of his calls?" Kerney asked.
"Of course. Every personal and long-distance call charged to the college must be logged on a special form. Each month we get a printout of all charges incurred from each office telephone. Every faculty and staff member is honor bound to identify non business calls and reimburse the college."
"Does that include local calls?" Kerney asked.
"I have my department faculty and staff log all calls, regardless of whether they're local or long distance. That policy applied to Father Mitchell."
"I need copies of those records, Brother Jerome. Can you have them ready for me in fifteen minutes?"
"Certainly. Come to my office."
Kerney got to the college in a hurry and gathered up the copies, thanked Brother Jerome, and left. Back at home he stuck a Steve Mcqueen movie in the VCR to entertain his unknown listeners, and started in on the log sheets. Each showed date, time, and number-called information. Using Mitchell's notes, Kerney matched a good two dozen names to numbers. In the morning he'd work all of Mitchell's most recent calls, starting with area residents.
Kerney switched his attention to the computer printouts and broke into a smile. Over the last three months Mitchell had made, eight-no, ten-phone calls to Phyllis Terrell in Santa Fe and Virginia. The connection was getting stronger and the proof more convincing.
Chapter 10
Fred Browning was on a natural high. The new job in Silicon Valley had turned into a very sweet deal. A company vice president had met him at the San Francisco Airport and chatted him up on the drive to the corporate headquarters.
He offered Fred a big bump in salary, the rent-free use of a town house for the first six months, and a stipend to pay all relocation expenses.
With Tim Ingram's promise of a job that would get him back to Albuquerque in a year, Fred jumped at the offer. Before catching an evening flight back to Albuquerque, he spent the day signing preemployment paperwork, touring the facility, and meeting with members of his new security staff. During the Phoenix layover he called Tim Ingram and gave him the news.
Tim proposed they should celebrate by heading down to the lake a day early instead of waiting until Saturday. Fred thought that was a fine idea. He downed a couple of self-congratulatory whiskeys in the airport bar, had another one on the short hop to Albuquerque, and rolled up the jetway with a bit of a buzz. Tim greeted him inside the terminal.
Fred grinned at his friend.
"Is it Friday already?" he asked.
"No," Tim said, grinning back.
"But knowing you, I figured you would have already started celebrating.
I bet you're a point or two over the blood alcohol legal limit."
"Maybe just barely."
"Come on, I'll give you a ride home."
"What about my car?" Fred asked.
"Leave it here. You can pick it up on Sunday when we get back from the lake."
Fred shrugged.
"Why not? Let me buy you a drink."
"Not necessary," Tim said.
"I've got a flask in my glove box
"That'll do."
Browning took two hits from the drug-laced flask and passed out on the short drive to the air force base. Ingram checked his carotid artery and found a strong pulse. As an intellig
ence operative Ingram had carried out a number of disagreeable assignments. But delivering a man to be killed, especially one he'd worked hard to keep alive and who wasn't a clear security threat, made Ingram feel like a sadist. At least he wouldn't have to watch Fred Browning get wasted.
He flashed his headlights as he approached the guard gate, and the air policeman waved him through. On the tarmac a car and a helicopter waited. Ingram rolled to a stop. Applewhite opened the passenger door, gave him a cold look, and jammed a syringe into Browning's neck.
Ingram wanted to shoot her, stomp her, slug her. Instead he counted seconds.
Browning convulsed and died in less than a minute. He got out of the car, sucked in some fresh, cold air, and watched the body get loaded into the helicopter.
Smiling, her eyes dancing, Applewhite came around the front of the car.
"You're a stone-cold bitch," Ingram said.
Applewhite laughed at her old West Point classmate.
"I didn't want to leave you out of the loop, Tim."
"You like killing people, don't you, Elaine?"
"This Bureau detail has made you soft," Applewhite said darkly.
Ingram watched the chopper take off. In two hours Browning's body would be fed into a high-temperature furnace at a primate research laboratory on a southern New Mexico air force base.
"Ashes to ashes," Applewhite said.
Ingram turned away, drove to his quarters, swallowed a quick double shot of single mash, and stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. It didn't matter that the hit had been sanctioned by the chain of command, an innocent man was dead. That made it capital murder. In a just world he would be arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced for the crime.
None of this should have happened. Not to Browning, Terjo, or Stewart.
He turned out the light, wondering what had become of the fresh-faced, idealistic kid from Iowa who'd wanted to be a career officer, a war-fighter, a kick-ass, gung-ho soldier? Could he ever put on the uniform again?
Bobby Sloan's undercover four-by-four Chevy Blazer came with all the customary surveillance goodies, plus the added bonus of a laptop computer linked to federal crime information computers and state motor vehicle data banks. After checking out the vehicle Bobby had clipped a wallet-size photograph of his wife to the visor, just like in his regular unit. Lucy had never been a babe in the Hollywood sense of the word, but she was his babe. The photo reminded Bobby that his first priority on the job was to survive and go home to Lucy when work was done.
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