The Paladin

by David Ignatius

  Dunne paused. His mind filled with images from the past, a little boy in the passenger seat next to an abusive, alcoholic father, the kid wanting to be the lady-killer tough guy that his father pretended to be. Dunne cleared his throat and continued.

  “My father told me what a stud he was, romancing all those women. Maybe that’s why I’m fucked up, because I had to listen to that shit from my dad. But let’s be honest, Adrian, this is on me, too. I was a weak man, and people like you knew how to use that, didn’t you, you prick?”

  Dunne paused again.

  “You know what my father used to tell me? He’d say: Son, if you’re not thinking about pussy, you’re just not concentrating. He thought that was funny.”

  Through the gag, Adrian offered a sympathetic choke of laughter. Dunne’s voice began again after another moment, low and bitter.

  “Shut up. I am going to kill you, motherfucker, if you don’t tell me everything I want to know. Just so you understand.”

  * * *

  The afternoon was giving way to dusk as they headed north toward Niagara Falls. The sun had emerged from amid the clouds in the west, and the lake had a velvety sheen after the earlier turbulence. Canada was on the other side of the water, sunlight shimmering off the big lake and illuminating the ponds that dotted the way west.

  Dunne drove just above the speed limit. Too careful looks suspicious, one of his mentors at the agency had told him years before.

  Niagara Falls was twenty miles above Buffalo. They reached it just as the light was dying. Plumes of spray rose from the two cascading falls, and the particles of water seemed suspended in the vanishing light. And then it was dark, and you could barely see the water but could hear the roar as it rushed over the lip.

  Dunne drove a few miles more and turned off the road to the rustic motel, back in the woods, where he had reserved a cabin. He parked in a secluded spot where nobody would hear the muffled sounds from his car. He put his pistol on the passenger seat and went to the main lodge, where he registered and got his key.

  Dunne paid in advance, in cash, for three nights. He asked for a secluded cabin, telling the desk clerk that a friend would be dropping by later for some beers.

  “Just don’t break anything,” said the clerk. “Any rowdy stuff, I’m calling the cops.”

  Dunne gave him a thumbs-up and returned to his car. He moved the Chevrolet to his cabin, parking it so that the back door opened just at the entrance.

  It was pitch-dark now; Dunne waited until the area was deserted, and then dragged White into the room and slumped him onto the lumpy green chair just inside the door. He went back and parked his car in his assigned lane and returned with his pack.

  He looked at his watch. With luck, his friend would arrive from Pittsburgh in an hour.

  * * *

  Dunne closed the shades tight. He turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink and the shower, too, so that the sound of the spurting water might fill the room. He pulled up a wooden desk chair next to White, who was still tightly bound and gagged. He laid the pistol on the floor nearby so he could reach it easily. From his pack he removed a long knife and withdrew it from its sheath. He put the tip of the blade against White’s neck, just behind the carotid artery.

  “Here’s the deal: I’ll take off the gag, if you don’t call for help,” said Dunne. “If you do, the knife goes in.”

  White nodded. With one hand, Dunne began unwrapping the gray tape, while the other held the blade. When the tape was unwrapped, he removed the handkerchief that gagged the mouth.

  “Help me!” screamed White as soon as the cloth was gone. It was a piercingly loud sound.

  Dunne pushed the knife till it broke the skin and drew blood. Not a gush of blood from the artery, but a sharp, painful stab.

  White stopped his plea for help as the knife went in. Dunne relaxed his pressure on the blade.

  “I will kill you if I have to, Adrian. I mean it. Don’t fuck with me again.”

  “Yes, sir,” said White.

  Dunne got disinfectant and a gauze bandage from the kit. He stopped the bleeding and wrapped the bandage tight. Then he sat back in his chair, facing his prisoner.

  “Talk to me, Adrian. If you tell me everything you know, I promise that you will survive. If you don’t, this will have a bad ending. I promise that, too.”

  White nodded. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about George Strafe and the Italians.”

  “Shit,” muttered White. He took a breath. “You know how it started. Ricci and his pals were doing things with technology. When Strafe sensed how good they were, he wanted in. That’s why he sent you, to find out.”

  White’s voice was hard to hear above the rush of water. Dunne went to the bathroom and turned off the shower; the basin faucet continued to run. He returned to White, who had stayed silent. Dunne patted him on the shoulder.

  “I already know that, Adrian. Keep talking, or I’ll bring back Mr. Knife. If you behave yourself, I’ll take off some of the tape on your arms and legs.”

  “It hurts,” protested White, but Dunne cut him off.

  “Was Strafe playing me from the beginning?”

  “Probably. He met me when I first joined your team, not on the seventh floor but somewhere in the basement where nobody would see, and he told me to keep an eye on you. He sent me messages through a separate channel when we were in Geneva.”

  “Why did he want me inside the Italian operation so badly?”

  “You were the recon man. He needed to know what they were doing. What technology they had. Remember, we weren’t supposed to spy on them until you agreed to do the job. It turned out they could do stuff we hadn’t tried, even the Russians hadn’t tried, nobody had. Once Strafe found out what they could do, he wanted a piece of it, quick. ‘Il Consorzio,’ they called it. The Consortium. You were in the way. You got caught in the churn.”

  “And you let him do it. You didn’t stop him.”

  “Hey, Mike. I’m like you. I follow orders. I asked him why he was stiffing you, and he just said: ‘Cost of doing business.’”

  “Why did he take me down so hard? He destroyed my family. Why do that?”

  “Because you were unreliable. He thought you were jerking him around after he brought you home. Not playing for the team anymore. Ratting him out. That’s what he told me, at least. It pissed him off. He wanted to make it look like the gearheads and Wiki-punks were trashing you, and you bought it.”

  Dunne nodded. He paused, but only for a moment.

  “Was Veronika a setup? Did you know she was going to be at that bar?”

  White nodded. “Yes. But you did the rest, brother.”

  “Yup.” Dunne bit his lip. “Was Veronika part of this Consortium thing from the beginning?”

  “No. But her mother was, I think.”

  Dunne thought of the face of the woman he’d seen entering the Cosmos in the harbor, who had been treated like royalty. Adele K. Hecht.

  “The mother ran a bank, and a lot of other stuff, too,” continued White. “Veronika went along. She didn’t know what was going to happen to you. She was so upset she was going to tell the Geneva cops about her mother, Strafe said. They put her in a hospital to keep the lid on.”

  Dunne put his head in his hands and rocked slowly for a few seconds. Then he leaned over White’s body and began unwrapping the duct tape from his torso a strand at a time. White’s hands were still cuffed, and his legs were both cuffed and bound, but he could now stretch his upper body.

  Dunne turned away from White for a moment. He took out his phone, out of sight of the other man. He clicked on the “Voice Notes” recorder app and laid the phone down.

  “I’m running out of time,” said Dunne. “These people are coming after me.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s a fact.”

  “What are they planning? What’s their big score? I hear the Italians were calling it ‘La Festa.’ The Party. What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a
con job that’s going to make everyone crazy rich. They’re going to create fake information that will crash the markets. They’re looking for a couple of partners who will do the trading for them.”

  “Like who?” Dunne looked at his watch. “Come on, time is running out.”

  “I don’t know details. I’m just a foot soldier here, bro.”

  Dunne took his pistol off the floor and held it in his hand, uncocked but ready. He pointed it at White.

  “Cut the ‘bro’ crap. You must know something.”

  “They only told me one name. There was a big hedge fund in Connecticut they wanted to use, but the fund said no. The CEO had his own disaster-prevention plan. I know about them because Strafe wanted me to visit them this week, before the Party went down, and remind them that if they said anything, they would end up dead. I was about to do that when you checked in.”

  “What’s the name of the fund? And who’s the guy you’re supposed to intimidate?”

  “Halcyon Capital Partners. They’re in Darien, Connecticut. The head guy is named Lewis Spoon.”

  Dunne wrote down the names. He looked at his watch again. His helper should be here soon.

  He looked Adrian White hard in the eyes, until he saw a flutter at the corner of the man’s lips.

  “I don’t think you’ve told me everything, my friend.” He raised the gun again and pointed it at Adrian’s temple. This time he cocked the hammer.

  “They’ll kill me if I tell you.”

  “I will kill you if you don’t. And I’m closer.”

  Dunne’s finger tightened around the trigger and he began to squeeze. White gagged a moment in fear and then sputtered the words.

  “Stop! I’ll tell you. Put down the gun. Please, for god’s sake.”

  Dunne uncocked the pistol, but kept it pointed at White’s head.

  “Talk,” said Dunne.

  “They’re planning a trial run. A demo, to convince the investors they can pull this off. They had invited Spoon. They’ll have a command post, a war room, so people can watch this shit go down.”

  “Where’s the command post? And when is this supposed to happen? Come on, don’t go stupid on me.”

  White was silent, and Dunne cocked the gun again.

  “It’s in Manhattan. Near the CIA base. I don’t know the address.”

  “When is it? Come on, goddamn it.”

  “Next week sometime. Monday or Tuesday, I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Dunne put the gun down. It was Thursday. He had four days.

  “Sit tight, Adrian. Your babysitter is coming.”

  Adrian looked at the gun, and the knife. “You are one crazy fucking white man, you know that?”

  Dunne took that as a compliment. While they waited, he picked up his phone and played back the “Voice Notes” of what Adrian had said, just so they were clear.

  42 Niagara Falls, New York – June 2018

  Just after eight, there was a knock on the door. Dunne opened it a crack and motioned the visitor inside. Into the cabin walked Richard Ellison, the African American from the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh who had been Dunne’s best friend in college. Ellison had gone on to become an assistant U.S. attorney and then general counsel for the biggest bank in Pittsburgh, but most important, he was the one man who had kept faith with Dunne, completely, while he was in prison, preserving for him the letter that contained the first threads of the string he had been following ever since.

  Ellison stepped into the room and stood before the big Jamaican-born CIA man, his knotted dreadlocks against the green upholstery of the chair, cuffed and half wrapped in duct tape. White looked almost as surprised to see that Dunne’s accomplice was a black man as Ellison was to see the mummified prisoner below him.

  “What the fuck?” said Ellison. “What kind of crazy shit is this?”

  “It’s what I told you on the phone. This is Adrian White. He used to work with me. He was part of the group that ran me out of the agency. Now his friends are getting ready to do something seriously illegal. Isn’t that right, Adrian? You tell my friend.”

  White stared at Dunne. “Your friend is a brother?”

  “Obviously. He’s also a former assistant U.S. attorney. Go on, tell him.”

  White turned to Ellison, who was still wearing a suit and tie from the office, where he had started the day.

  “It’s true,” said White. “Mike was set up. I need to talk to a lawyer before I do any confessing, but what Mike says about a conspiracy is true.”

  Ellison studied the bizarre scene and tried to make sense of it: His friend, a former CIA officer who had served a year in prison, had evidently kidnapped a man who was a serving CIA officer, and was holding him hostage – and counting on Ellison to be his accomplice.

  “Call the FBI,” said Ellison. “They’ll sort this out.”

  “Not now,” said Dunne. “Not yet. These people are powerful. If we move now, they’ll disappear. You saw what they did to me two years ago? They’ll do it again. They don’t care about the FBI. They have their own country.”

  “I could get disbarred. Lose my job.”

  “I know. It’s a big ask. It’s just, I’m on my own here. You’re the only normal friend I have who I can trust.”

  Ellison lowered his head. He was a normal friend, it was true.

  “I’m not agreeing. But what do you want me to do?”

  “Watch Adrian. Feed him. Take him to the toilet. Keep the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. If you want to move him somewhere else, that’s fine. Just make sure he doesn’t communicate with anyone until Monday noon. That’s all I need.”

  “But that’s illegal.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re an officer of the court. You’ve become aware that a crime is about to be committed. I have the evidence recorded right here on my phone. You’re protecting this witness from intimidation. Besides, he consents. Isn’t that right, Adrian?”

  Dunne picked up his pistol with one hand, and his phone with the other. He pointed the gun at White’s head as he clicked the record button.

  “Isn’t that right, Adrian? You consent to remaining here under Mr. Ellison’s protection voluntarily, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said White.

  “Louder, and say the whole thing, please, so we can hear you.”

  “Yes, I voluntarily consent to remain here under Mr. Ellison’s protection.”

  “Good. You two are going to be pals, I can tell. And the fact that you are cooperating with me and Mr. Ellison is going to help reduce the time you spend in jail later. Maybe you’ll be so cooperative you won’t spend any time in jail.”

  * * *

  Dunne took Ellison into the bathroom for a private conversation. He turned on the shower again so that the man trussed in the green chair in the other room couldn’t hear them. He explained more of what Adrian White had told him, and the seriousness of the financial chaos that could occur if they couldn’t stop the plan to disrupt the markets with false information.

  Dunne implored Ellison to give him enough time to reverse the flow of events, but he could see the doubt in his friend’s eyes.

  “This is wrong, Michael. I believe you, and I want to help you, but we need to do this legally.”

  Dunne thought a moment. He didn’t want to hurt his friend Ellison, even to save himself. He reached for his wallet and took one of his Paladin LLC cards, and wrote on the back the cell phone number and personal email of Rick Bogdanovich at the FBI’s Cyber-Forensics center in Pittsburgh.

  “You know Bogdanovich, right?”

  “Sure. He works for the Bureau. His office is in the tech park. He helped you get started.”

  “Call him tomorrow night. Tell him what’s happening. Not too much, but enough to satisfy your conscience. He won’t be able to scramble anyone until the weekend. Just give me twenty-four hours. Can you do that?”

  Ellison thought about it, weighed his loyalty to Dunne against his own potential liability.

  “Tw
enty-four hours. Yes, I can do that. Other than that, no promises.”

  “One last thing. Try to convince Adrian that no matter what, no matter who from the FBI or the CIA shows up, he shouldn’t tell them that he gave me any information. Tell him you’ll keep him out of jail, you’ll be his lawyer, get him a great job, buy his mom a new house. Whatever it takes, just keep him quiet.”

  “Okay,” said Ellison solemnly.

  “Can I trust you, man? This is everything, right here.”

  Ellison put his arm around Dunne’s shoulder. “Listen, brother: You can’t find out whether someone is trustworthy except by trusting them. You helped teach me that, a long time ago.”

  “Amen,” said Dunne.

  He gave Ellison his kit of supplies, including the pistol, sheath knife, duct tape, and a water bag with a tube so that White could stay hydrated even if Ellison had to put the gag back in his mouth. At the bottom of Dunne’s bag were two dozen power bars. He handed them to Ellison sheepishly.

  “Maybe you can order a pizza,” he said.

  On his way toward the door, Dunne stopped and said a last word to Adrian White. “My friend Richard will take care of you. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  White turned toward Dunne, pulling against his trusses. He cleared his throat. There was one more thing he had to say to Dunne, the one thing he had left out of his recitation, when the gun was pointed to his head. He offered it now not under compulsion, but out of remorse.

  “They’re going to come after your wife again,” said White.

  Dunne stopped suddenly and put down his pack. “What do you mean?” he asked. “How can they touch her? We’re divorced. She lives in California. She’s out of the picture.”

  “She’s your weakness. They know you’ll do anything to protect her. They talked about it. Before I went to meet you at that beach, they said if something went wrong, they would find her and squeeze her again, to get you off their back.”