Truth in Hiding

by Matthew Frick

  “Why him?” Cohen asked.

  “Why not? If the tall guy didn’t show up in Giordano’s database, chances are he’s a nobody. And what business does State have at that office building?”

  “You said NCRI’s Washington office is in that building,” Cohen offered.

  “But what would a DSS watch officer have to do with that? Unless I’m wrong, watch officers—in any agency—just man a desk and watch their computer screens. Hence the term watch officer.”

  “They answer phones, too,” Andie said.

  “Okay. Point is, I’d bet your paycheck this guy was at Horus Rhind and that he’s in The Council,” Casey said. “And if he’s in The Council, getting notes from Raad, he’s gotta be the leak.”

  They sat in silence. Cohen thinking. Andie and Casey waiting for Cohen to speak.

  “So how do we confirm that? We don’t have time to surveil him, and if he is our man, and Raad has been in touch with him tonight, it’s possible he’s gone off the grid by now,” Cohen said.

  “Parker,” Casey said.

  “What?”

  “Scott Parker. If Korzen’s in The Council, I bet Parker knows him. Or at least knows who he is. And if Korzen’s the leak, Parker’s gonna want to know about it.”

  “So how do we find Parker?” Cohen asked. “Again, we don’t have any time to waste.”

  “I can get Jerry Blocksidge on it,” Andie said. “He found Parker pretty quick last time.”

  “Whoa. Hold on. I said Parker probably knows the guy, but what makes y’all think he’ll talk to us? I was thinking sending the guy an email or something. I got the impression from our last meeting, when I just showed up wanting to talk, that he didn’t like me much,” Casey said.

  “An email? You’re not serious, are you?” Andie asked.

  “You both have valid points,” Cohen said before a debate started. “We need to find another way to get Parker to meet us. Tonight.”

  “Well, what’s your idea?” Casey asked with a bit of frustration in his voice.

  “Miller,” Cohen said.

  “What? You said he was dead.” Casey turned his palms out, wanting an explanation.

  “He was alive when I left him. And yes, there’s a good chance he didn’t make it. But there is also chance that whatever he was stabbed with didn’t kill him before he got to the hospital.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Casey said to himself.

  “But we don’t know if he even made it to a hospital,” Andie said.

  “Correct. That’s what I need you to find out,” Cohen said.

  “I just ask if there was an ‘Adam Miller’ admitted this afternoon?”

  “He might not even be using that name,” Cohen said. “Just ask if they had someone brought in with a pen casing stuck in his neck.” He noted Andie’s quizzical look and sidestepped it with another request. “And then see if your friend can find Parker for us.”

  “So we are going to see Parker,” Casey said, not particularly keen on meeting him face-to-face again, though he had opened the door by bringing up the man’s name in the first place.

  “Yes, but after we go see Miller and have him convince Parker to talk to us.”

  “If Miller’s alive.”

  Cohen nodded. “That’s why we need to know where Parker is going to be. If Miller is dead, we will have to convince Parker to talk to us on our own.”

  Chapter 41

  It was almost 11:30 p.m. when Casey and Andie arrived at Scott Parker’s brick-front townhouse in McLean, Virginia. By all appearances, it was a modest dwelling for the middle-class D.C. suburbs, but Casey knew it cost close to a million dollars, given its proximity to the District proper. Just like New York, he thought. The closer you were to where the action was—in this case, running the government of the United States of America—the more it cost to live there.

  Andie had used her media credentials and a little white lie of trying to corroborate eyewitness statements to locate the hospital where Adam Miller was taken. Cohen was right, in a way. The nurse she talked to at the MedStar Georgetown University Hospital informed her that a “John Doe” with no identification and a plastic pen tube in his neck was brought in at 5:37 that evening.

  “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” the nurse said. “I mean, I’ve read about emergency tracheotomies and even seen pictures of ‘em in textbooks, but to see one for real—and one that actually saved that man’s life—that was something else.”

  Andie gave Cohen the good news, and he immediately took a cab to the hospital. He called her an hour later. Miller was alive and recovering. The emergency room doctors were able to stabilize him quick enough to run a battery of tests to determine what had caused the paralysis that closed his airway and nearly suffocated him. A corynebacterium and diptheriae bacteria cocktail with a neurotoxic venom of the kind found in a Mojave rattler had apparently been injected into Miller’s abdomen with a large-gauge needle. Cohen commented that the concoction was probably homemade by someone with a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry. Each ingredient, deadly enough in isolation, seemed to work against the other. The result was a slower-acting poison that gave the doctors enough time to administer their own combination of antidotes and life-saving medications.

  Miller was groggy and weak, but lucid enough to call Parker from a cell phone Cohen “borrowed” from a purse he commandeered in the female employees’ locker room. Miller didn’t say what Cohen’s friends wanted from Parker. Not over an open cell line. Especially from a phone with unknown pedigree. Parker agreed to meet with Andie and Casey as a favor to Miller, but without any information regarding the nature of the visit, he couldn’t guarantee he’d be any help.

  Parker answered the door in gray sweatpants and a purple Northwestern University sweatshirt. He led them into the study and motioned for Andie and Casey to sit in a brown leather setee by the wall. Parker turned an armchair in the middle of the room to face them.

  “So, Mr. Shenk, what is it you needed to talk to me about?”

  Andie fielded the question before Casey could answer. “We were outside the Rosslyn office building where Horus Rhind is located this afternoon, and we believe this man,” she handed Parker her phone, “Walter Korzen, is the one compromising Israel’s operations against Iranian scientists which The Council is helping facilitate.”

  “The Council is an urban myth,” Parker said, still examining the picture on the phone’s screen.

  “C’mon, man, just admit it. We know The Council exists. And we know you’re part of it,” Casey said. “I’ve been through too much shit and almost been killed on more than one occasion because y’all keep playing this game. So why don’t you cut the bullshit.”

  “Casey, stop it,” Andie said.

  Parker flipped the phone back to Andie, who caught it with one hand in mid-air. “I think we’re done here.”

  “You can’t hide the truth forever. Eventually it will come out, and y’all will be finished.”

  “Casey!” Andie barked. “Fucking drop it!” She leaned forward and held the phone out to Parker again. “Please,” she said softly. “Just take another look. Adam Miller wouldn’t have asked for this favor if he didn’t believe us. And we really need your help.”

  Parker looked for sincerity in the woman’s eyes. It was there.

  “Please.”

  Parker shot a warning glance to Casey, sitting quietly next to Andie, and took the phone.

  “That’s Walt Korzen,” Parker confirmed. “I don’t know who the others are.”

  “The woman is a magazine photographer,” Andie said. “And we don’t know who the other man is.”

  “But the guy in the leather jacket is one of Davood Raad’s people,” Casey added.

  “If you scroll through the pictures, you can see the man in the leather jacket with an envelope in his hand before he walks through the group. And in the last pictures, the envelope is gone. We think he slipped a note to Walter Korzen as they passed each other,” Andie said.

&nbs
p; Parked swiped back and forth through the pictures, zooming in and out to get different views. After a few minutes, he handed the phone back. “This is hardly conclusive,” he said. He held a hand up when he saw Casey about to speak and added, “But...I agree that it’s likely this man passed an envelope to one of these people.”

  “To Korzen,” Casey said.

  “Okay. To Korzen. He fits the profile.”

  “The profile?” Andie asked.

  “Insider threat. Maybe not everything that would raise flags with his co-workers and supervisors, but he’s definitely a disgruntled employee. I wouldn’t doubt that he’s been counseled for his attitude, but I don’t work with the man on a daily basis.”

  “Just at Council get-togethers,” Casey said.

  Parker ignored the comment. “How do you know the other man works for Raad?”

  “He was with Raad when he was killed tonight,” Casey said. He looked at Andie. “Along with the guy who put Miller in the hospital.”

  Parker noticed the looks exchanged between the two people in front of him. Miller hadn’t said much when he called earlier, but he did tell Parker he had been stabbed and poisoned, and that the man responsible was dead. What Casey Shenk was telling him did not contradict Miller’s story, and seemed to add substance to events he saw reported on News Channel 8 that evening. Reports with more questions than answers. Ms. Jackson and Mr. Shenk provided plausible, if only partial, answers.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll help you.”

  Casey let out a long breath and leaned back in the sofa.

  “Thank you,” Andie said. She pocketed her phone and folded her hands in her lap. “We think that after what happened tonight, Raad and Korzen may be preparing to disappear, if they haven’t already. We might be too late, but we had to try.”

  Parker shook his head. “Raad might be moving to get out of the country, but he has to land somewhere. I’ll make a phone call, and we’ll have people at every final destination and connection for every flight leaving the East Coast today and tomorrow. If he is still in the country, he’ll be in custody soon enough.”

  “And Korzen?” Casey asked.

  “Korzen’s not going anywhere,” Parker said.

  “You’re sure?”

  Parker nodded. “Korzen may want to be James Bond, but he’s not. If there’s one thing I know about Walt Korzen, it’s that he is afraid of disruptions to his routine. That’s part of what makes him so frustrated with his current position at State. So, no. Walt Korzen’s not going anywhere.”

  “So should we pick him up him up tonight?” Casey asked. “I mean, just in case? If you give us his address, we could go get him. Or Lev Cohen can.”

  “Cohen. The Mossad guy you and Miller worship?”

  “I don’t worship...”

  “No,” Parker interrupted. “I’ll take care of Korzen.” Parker stood up. The meeting was over.

  Parker unlocked the front door when they reached the foyer. Before he opened it, he said, “Thank you for your help in this matter. And I hope I never see or hear from you again.” He shook Andie’s hand. “It would be best if you forgot about all of this.”

  Parker took Casey’s hand and gripped it hard. He looked him in the eye. “Forget about all of it.”

  Chapter 42

  “No. I’ll be back tomorrow....Right, later today....I don’t blame him. I said I’d be back Wednesday, but some other stuff came up....Look, I’ll tell you about it when I get back....I’ll tell him at work....Well, he’ll just have to wait ‘til next week....Okay....Uh-huh....Goodnight.” Casey hit “end” on the phone and set it on the coffee table.

  Andie walked in with two glasses of water. She handed one to Casey and sat on the couch next to him. She had changed into pajama pants and a baggy t-shirt while Casey called Susan Williams. Casey received and ignored several emails from Susan over the previous two days. With things in D.C. now out of his hands, and given the ALL CAPS order for Casey to stop blowing her off, he dialed Susan’s number as soon as he and Andie got to her apartment.

  “How’d it go?” Andie asked.

  Casey shrugged. “About like I expected. Susan’s disappointed in me for leaving the rest of the office to pick up my slack. Jim wants to fire me, but not really. Susan said every time my name comes up, Jim rants about ‘broken trust,’ and how I deserve what I get.”

  “Is he going to fire you?”

  “I don’t know. I think he meant I deserve whatever happens to me down here, though.” Casey took a sip of water. “He warned me to stay away from Raad and The Council before I left. Guess he figured I’d get myself killed or something.”

  “Does Jim know Raad’s a spy?”

  “I doubt it. He would have told me. He just knows Raad was the guy who pointed me to The Council in the first place, and he knows firsthand that if you keep pushing them, and they think you’re a threat, The Council will disappear your ass in a heartbeat.”

  Andie sighed. “From what I’ve seen this week, I’d say he’s right.”

  “Yeah,” Casey said. “Guess I got lucky.”

  Andie pulled her legs up under her and turned to Casey. “So you’re heading back?”

  Casey leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. He let his vision blur as he stared at the center of the coffee table, his mind running through his options. “I’ll drive back mid-morning, I guess. Catch a few hours of sleep at the hotel, pack my stuff, grab a stale muffin from the ‘continental breakfast,’ and face reality again.”

  Andie put a hand on his shoulder. A gesture of comfort. And friendship. “If things don’t work out in New York....” She let the sentence hang.

  Casey looked at her and smiled. “You’re a good friend, Andie. I’m sorry I brought all this shit to your doorstep.”

  Andie returned the smile. “Anytime, Casey.”

  Casey stood and put his phone back in his pocket. Andie stood, and the two friends hugged. Casey put on his coat and opened the door. He turned and faced Andie one more time. “Thanks again for saving my life today. Thanks for everything.”

  Andie nodded with a smile. “Just do me a favor, and we’ll call it even.”

  “Anything.”

  “When you get back to New York, shitcan that welfare jacket you’re wearin’. World War II was over a long time ago.”

  Casey laughed and touched the brim of his Braves cap. “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Later, Ms. Jackson.”

  The door shut, and Andie stood smiling.

  “Later, Mr. Shenk.”

  Chapter 43

  Walter Korzen locked the door to his apartment and plodded down the stairs to his car. He received a message the day before from Davood Raad warning him that the Israeli sent to find whomever was compromising the Jewish state’s operations to assassinate Iran’s scientists was possibly narrowing his search to members of The Council. Raad admitted he had no hard evidence that this was the case, but whatever clues led him to that conclusion were solid enough for him to send Shahin with a note delivered in broad daylight. In a crowd of people.

  He didn’t know if Shahin was the man’s real name, and frankly, he didn’t care. He had met the man two months earlier in a hotel room where he gave Raad information on the planned assassination of a missile engineer in Dubai, and again on two other occasions. So when Walt saw him as he was leaving another meeting of The Council on Thursday, he was ready for the brush pass. Raad told him that method would only be used if he had urgent instructions that couldn’t wait for the normal dead drop or signal protocols that invariably had time lags as much as three days before the two could meet face-to-face.

  Korzen opened the envelope when he got home. Five one-hundred dollar bills and a handwritten note. Because of the new “threat,” Raad wanted Korzen to lay low, and they were to have no contact for a week. He suggested Korzen take some time off from work, and he was adamant about staying away from any Council meetings. The money was a show of good faith, meant to assure Ko
rzen that his services were valuable to Raad, and that the break was only temporary. Korzen had no problem with that. But the note was another confirmation of what Walt already believed—Raad was a pussy.

  Korzen didn’t question the man’s effectiveness. The reports he gave Raad were obviously getting to the right people, and the Quick Note program was a failure. Korzen had killed it. But Turnstile was different, and he knew next to nothing about it. After Thursday’s meeting, he learned that the intelligence he passed to Raad two weeks earlier had thwarted the first Turnstile operation, but the discussion around the room led him to conclude that luck may have played a factor.

  Tweaks were going to be made in the security surrounding Turnstile, and future meetings about those operations were going to be by invitation only. If Korzen stayed away from the office and skipped the open Council meetings, he was sure to be left off that list. The way he saw it, he needed to be more engaged than ever if he was going to be any use to Iran in thwarting Israel’s Mossad attacks. Raad was too scared to see that.

  But Walt wasn’t afraid. He knew before he started that he was taking a huge risk by talking to Raad. Some people—most actually—would consider him a traitor. Those were the people who didn’t see things as clearly as he did. Even members of The Council, who were doing what they thought was best for the country, didn’t understand they were doing just the opposite by helping Israel.

  The world needed a nuclear Iran. If for nothing else than to keep Saudi Arabia and rest of America’s “partners” in check. For a long time, Iraq served that purpose, keeping everyone on both sides of the Persian Gulf and in the Levant on their toes. Saddam Hussein had no use for friends, so he found himself surrounded by enemies. And he built one of the most powerful militaries in the region to keep those enemies at bay.

  When America removed Saddam in 2003, dismantling Iraq’s military and government for good measure, Iran was left as the only real threat to the Arab kings and princes who ruled with a collective boot on the neck of the underprivileged masses. The Islamic Republic’s conventional military might was tempered by the seemingly endless subsidization of everyone else’s militaries with American cash and defense exports. As a result, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were wasting money on useless construction projects, manipulating the world’s oil market, and evicting the very same U.S. troops that provided the protection they needed to continue their free-wheeling, free-spending, devil-may-care lifestyles—spoiled kids with overprotective parents afraid to discipline their children.