She knew what she had to do next. And she wasn’t looking forward to it.
17
Wednesday, September 9, 1987
9:50 a.m.
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
“Excuse me?” Aaron Stallings said. His eyes were dark and his voice strained with the effort as he attempted—without much success—to control his anger. “I thought I made myself clear last night when I told you to forget about this goddamned notion you’ve fallen in love with that someone other than the Soviets is responsible for the kidnapping of J. Robert Humphries.”
“Sir, please,” she said. “If you’ll just give me a chance to explain.”
“Explain? There is no explanation! I gave you specific orders: follow the evidence and recover Secretary of State Humphries. Instead of doing as you were told, you go off on some wasteful and unwarranted wild goose chase.” He shook his head disgustedly. “Iraqi troop movements my ass. Every minute you spend on this fantasy is a minute colder the real trail gets. Before long Humphries will be dead, and you’ll still be worrying about Saddam goddamn Hussein.”
“Sir—” she repeated, but the CIA director cut her off, slamming his fist down on the surface of his desk. Pens jumped and papers shuffled, and a stapler that had been hanging half off the desk toppled to the floor, landing with a muffled thud on the thick carpet.
“Don’t ‘sir’ me,” he said, spitting the words out with an angry snarl. “We’ve started to receive body parts now. Before long we’ll have to piece J. Robert Humphries—a close personal friend of the president, in case you needed a reminder—back together like a goddamn jigsaw puzzle!”
Tracie shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you hadn’t heard?” he said, relishing her confusion, his expression icy. “The Department of State received a package this morning. Inside the package was a human finger, a finger that had been recently removed from its owner.”
“A finger? But there’s no reason to believe it belonged to Humphries. It could have come from anyone, as gruesome as that sounds. A cadaver, even.”
“No,” Stallings said abruptly. “The finger was accompanied by a photograph of Secretary Humphries. In the photograph his hand is displayed. The hand is covered by a bloody bandage, but the little finger is clearly missing.” He scowled at Tracie. “While you’ve been chasing fantasies, the Soviets have been dismembering our secretary of state.”
‘But…” Tracie said. “None of that makes sense from a tactical standpoint. If Humphries was taken by the Soviets, what do they have to gain by cutting off his finger, especially when they continue to deny their involvement in his disappearance? They have to know such an act of aggression would push us to the brink of war.”
“Those kinds of philosophical questions don’t concern you. Or at least they didn’t concern you,” Stallings corrected himself ominously. “Your job was not to analyze intelligence, or to look for logic where no logic was to be found. Your job was to locate and recover J. Robert Humphries. You know, to do what you were trained to do. I can see I grossly overrated your ability to carry out this mission, and now I’m left having to explain to the president of the United States why we’re sitting idly by while Mikhail Gorbachev mails our secretary of state to us in pieces.”
“Sir, I still believe—”
“Don’t interrupt me! I should have known better than to trust the operative who smeared the memory of Winston Andrews with unfounded charges of treason—and eventually drove him to take his own life—with an assignment this critically important. It was my error in judgment, and one for which I’ll surely pay dearly.
“But I’m nothing if not flexible,” Stallings continued, almost as if speaking to himself. “I’ll find another operative to do the job you were so unprepared to handle, and with any luck we can still get Humphries back before he’s killed or we go to war with the Soviets or both.
“In the meantime,” he said, glaring at Tracie, “you’re finished here at CIA. I’ve had it with your insubordination. You’ll never work in this agency again. Turn in your ID and weapon downstairs and then leave the property. Don’t try to return until you’re called back here for out-processing, because you’ll be arrested if you do. Now get the hell out of my sight.”
* * *
Tracie threaded her way around the partitions, moving quickly, knowing she had only a couple of minutes. Stallings would have notified the security agents of her termination the moment she stalked out of his office, and if too much time elapsed before she showed up to turn in her ID and weapon and be escorted out of the building, she knew they would come looking for her.
Once that happened, there would be no talking to Marshall Fulton.
She hoped to hell he had returned to his desk after their coffee break. When she had reached a point roughly halfway across the cavernous room, Tracie spotted the big man hunkered down at his desk, suit jacket off, writing diligently. She walked up behind Marshall and slid into the cubical.
He jumped in surprise and then smiled. “Well, isn’t this my lucky day,” he said. “I don’t see you for years, and then I hit the lottery twice in an hour and a half. It’s a lucky break, though, because there’s something I need to tell you.”
He glanced into her eyes and the smile froze on his face. “What’s wrong?” he asked, lowering his voice instinctively.
“Listen,” Tracie said urgently. She spoke quietly but quickly. “I don’t have much time. Here’s my home number.” She jotted it down on a slip of paper. “I’d really appreciate it if you call me as soon as you get out of work. We need to talk.”
“No problem,” he said, folding the paper and sliding it into the breast pocket of his dress shirt. “Like I said, I have some information you need, anyway. But what do you mean you don’t have much time? What’s going on?”
“I just lost my job,” she said.
18
Wednesday, September 9, 1987
5:35 p.m.
Washington, D.C.
“What in the world is going on?” Marshall asked. He had honored her request, calling the number she gave him at precisely five minutes after five. They had agreed to meet at a small diner-style restaurant off Macarthur Boulevard, not far from Battery Kemble Park, where Tracie had interrogated Anatoly Grinkov.
Thirty minutes later the CIA analyst slid into a booth across from Tracie, moving with the grace of an athlete. Concern was evident on his face as he eyed Tracie. “You said you lost your job? What is that supposed to mean?”
She shrugged. It didn’t seem like the sort of statement that could be easily misinterpreted. “Like I told you this morning, I got fired. Stallings tore me a new one and then had me escorted out of the building like a criminal. He said if I came back, I’d be arrested on the spot.”
“Wait a second, back up,” Marshall said, going silent when a young, bored-looking waitress came over to fill their coffee mugs. He continued after the waitress had walked away without taking their order. “Stallings fired you?”
Tracie nodded.
“Aaron Stallings himself? The big cheese?”
“The one and only. And I don’t think a very complimentary reference letter will be forthcoming should I need one.”
Marshall laughed. It came from deep inside his barrel chest and sounded to Tracie like a volcano preparing to blow. “As if.” The reality was that a reference letter for a former CIA covert field operative would never happen, no matter the circumstances of her dismissal. What could it say?
After taking a moment, letting their nervous laughter break the tension, Marshall said, “What have you gotten yourself into? It’s not like Aaron Stallings typically hires and fires the help. I’ve never even spoken to the man, and I’ve been at the agency longer than you.”
“Count yourself lucky,” she said. “Contrary to his jolly appearance, the director is not exactly soft and cuddly.”
“I’m serious, Tracie,” he said. “What have you gotten mixed up in?”
“First things first,” she answered. “Before I got booted out of Langley you said you needed to tell me something. Since you weren’t comfortable blurting it out at your desk, I assume it’s related to what we talked about at lunch.”
“It is. But now that you’re out of work, I suppose it’s irrelevant.”
“Not necessarily,” Tracie said. “Why don’t you tell me what it is and I’ll make that determination?”
Marshall leaned on his elbows, staring across the table at her uncomfortably. “Uh, listen,” he said. “If you don’t work for the company anymore, I probably shouldn’t say anything. I mean, I really shouldn’t have been passing along classified information anyway—”
“You could lose your job.”
“Exactly,” he agreed miserably. “And I was willing to take that risk for you. But now, with you out of work and all…”
“I understand,” she said gently, letting him off the hook. “And if I were in your position, I would feel exactly the same way.”
She knew she was going to have to fill him in on the situation with J. Robert Humphries’s kidnapping if she was going to have any chance of securing his cooperation. And at this point, she needed his cooperation. If he thinks sharing intel on troop movements in the Middle East is taking a risk, he’ll never go along with what I’m about to do.
After the bored waitress had returned and taken their dinner order, wandering off toward the kitchen afterward like she was in some kind of permanent semi-haze, Tracie started talking.
She didn’t stop until their food was gone and the dishes taken away.
She left nothing out.
She hoped she hadn’t made a grave mistake.
Marshall whistled softly when she finished her story. “This thing is a ticking time bomb,” he said. “A CIA op inside the United States? To recover a kidnapped cabinet official? Why in God’s name did you ever agree to do it?”
Tracie spread her hands. “I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to keep my job.”
Marshall snorted. “You see how well that worked out.”
“You know what I mean. The director of the fucking CIA personally gives you an assignment, and threatens your job, you have two options: do as he asks or look for work. Since I’m not qualified to do anything else, I did as he asked.”
“And now you’re out of work,” Marshall reminded her helpfully.
“Thanks. I haven’t forgotten.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“What can I do? I’m going to get J. Robert Humphries back. Nobody at Langley wants to hear about a Middle Eastern connection to his kidnapping. They’re going to ignore that possibility as long as they can. Eventually someone, either at the CIA or the FBI, will recognize what I already see clearly, but by then it will be too late. We’ll have a dead secretary of state on our hands and we’ll probably be at war with the Soviet Union.”
“You’re going to get Humphries back.”
“That’s right.”
“All by yourself.”
“You heard me.”
“But what are the odds Humphries is even still in the country? It’s been a couple of days now since he was taken. Don’t you think it’s much more likely he’s been moved somewhere?”
Tracie shook her head. “No, I don’t think that at all. In fact, my guess is he’s still relatively close by.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Put yourself in their shoes for a minute, Marshall. J. Robert Humphries is one of the most recognizable men in the world. He’s on the news regularly, he gives speeches on all continents, negotiates with America’s friends and enemies. Even people who don’t follow politics closely know his face.”
“So?”
“So, the farther his kidnappers try to move him, the greater the likelihood their plan falls apart because somebody recognizes him. The risks of trying to smuggle J. Robert Humphries out of the country are just too great, and if they’re not going to attempt that, why keep him out in the open any longer than they have to? My guess is that he’s within a couple of hours of D.C. right now, and that wherever he is he was stashed there the night he was taken, with no plans to move him again until the heat dies down.”
“I suppose,” Marshall said. “But even if that’s all true, how are you going to find him?”
“I’m not sure yet. But the first step is to hear what you were so anxious to tell me this afternoon, before I became persona non grata at the agency. You may be surprised to hear this, but I didn’t unburden myself to you because you’re such a great listener. I did it so you would know what I’m up against and so—hopefully—you would decide to pass along whatever intel you have.
“I don’t like to beg, Marshall. I’m the same person I was ten hours ago, with the same goal I had ten hours ago. I took a huge risk telling you about Humphries. Doing so could get me a life sentence in Fort Leavenworth. I’m in a real bind here, and I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need your help. Please, tell me what you know.”
Marshall Fulton sighed heavily.
He ran a hand through his closely cropped hair.
Straightened his tie.
Started talking.
“Okay, here’s the deal, and from what you’ve told me, it may be more important than even I realized. I’m sure you know that three years ago, the U.S. government officially reestablished diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein and the Republic of Iraq, correct?”
“Of course.”
“Well, during those three years the company has maintained a more or less continuous surveillance on the Iraqi embassy over on Massachusetts Avenue.”
“More or less?”
Marshall shrugged. “You know how it goes. Resources are finite—budgets get cut and then restored and then cut again. Sometimes we have the manpower to do it, sometimes we don’t.”
Tracie nodded. “Been there. But weren’t you the one who just a little while ago claimed to be so shocked about me running an agency op inside the boundaries of the United States? How is this any different?”
“Technically, the embassy of any nation is sovereign territory, so we’re not really operating inside the U.S.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation she found herself in, Tracie struggled to suppress a smile. “Kind of splitting hairs there, Sport, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” Marshall agreed readily. “But it’s not my call. That decision was made by someone far above my pay grade. All I do is analyze the data that come across my desk.”
“Understood,” Tracie said. “So, I’m assuming, since you mentioned this ‘technically legal’ surveillance operation, that it’s been active recently.”
“Right you are.”
“And that it turned up something that’s raised your suspicions.”
“You’re one sharp cookie. No wonder you’ve survived so long working in hostile environments.”
Tracie let the compliment go. Things were starting to get interesting. “And what did this on-again-off-again technically legal surveillance turn up?”
Marshall sighed again. “Remember, it might mean absolutely nothing.”
“I get it,” Tracie said, exasperated. “I’m willing to deal with a dead end, if that’s what it turns out to be, but I’ve got to start somewhere.”
“Okay,” Marshall said, lowering his voice as he had done inside the employee cafeteria at Langley. “The last few weeks, there’s been a significant uptick in embassy activity after hours.”
“After hours? What does that mean?”
“You know, like in the middle of the night. People coming and going at two, three, four a.m.”
“And where do these people come from and go to at that time of night?”
Marshall shrugged. “Who knows? The agents conducting the surveillance weren’t instructed to follow them. They did, however, make note of this activity as being extremely unusual.”
“Hmm.”
“Exactly. And the activity has increased even more in the
last three days.”
“Three days? That would be the day before Humphries disappeared.”
The data analyst nodded as Tracie digested the information. To his credit, Marshall remained quiet, not wanting to break her concentration. A minute stretched into two, and then five, and finally he said, “What do you think? Could the Iraqis possibly be holding J. Robert Humphries hostage inside their own embassy?”
Tracie shrugged and shook her head dubiously. “I don’t know. Granted, an embassy is sovereign territory as you said, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being that bold.”
“We are talking about Saddam Hussein here. He’s a loose cannon; there’s no telling from one minute to the next what that man is going to do.”
“Understood. But it still seems unlikely. Are the Iraqis really sophisticated enough to pull off something like the kidnapping of the U.S. secretary of state while at the same time framing the Soviets for the crime? And why would they go to such lengths? What’s their ultimate goal?”
“That I can’t tell you,” Marshall said. “But don’t sell them short. I’ve been working the Middle East for a long time, and although in some areas Iraq has barely risen out of the Stone Age, in others they are as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as any European nation.”
“I guess,” she said, still unconvinced.
“So what are you going to do?”
She thought for a moment. “I’m going to conduct a little surveillance of my own. When people start coming and going, I’m going to follow them. I want to know what the hell they’re up to, and whether it has anything to do with J. Robert Humphries.”
19
Wednesday, September 9, 1987
7:00 p.m.
Washington, D.C.
The Republic of Iraq’s embassy complex was located along Massachusetts Avenue, not far from Norway’s embassy and slightly north of the United States Naval Observatory. Immediately after her meeting with Marshall Fulton Tracie had driven to the neighborhood, which was largely residential once she exited busy Massachusetts Avenue. She wanted to get a feel for the area before night fell, specifically to nail down the number of potential embassy egress points besides the main entrance.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 36