The President’s Dossier

by James A. Scott

  Sherri reminded me, “You said you met Claudia at a party at Rodney’s house. Was anyone else there from her firm?”

  Rodney had introduced me to lots of people at the party. Under the watchful eyes of Sherri and Tony-D, I wrote down all the names I could remember, along with the name of Claudia’s firm. Sherri called my list in to the night man at her office—she had overseas clients—and gave him instructions. He went to work on Internet searches. We finished off the pizza and Tony-D broke out a pristine carton of tiramisu-flavored ice cream.

  By the time we finished our decaf Espresso—a culinary oxymoron—Tony-D’s fax machine was spitting out the Internet search results from Sherri’s night man. He had cross-tabbed Claudia and Rodney with all the names on my list and identified people connected to both.

  Sherri read us the relevant facts. “There’s only one person with a significant connection to both Rodney and your Claudia.” She gave me a tight smile. “He’s Lyle Palmer, the senior partner at Claudia’s law firm. Rodney and Palmer went to Princeton together. Palmer worked in the Office of the General Counsel at the CIA before moving on to private practice. He also represented Rodney during his divorce and Palmer’s wife is a partner at the firm. They could definitely influence Claudia’s career advancement.”

  “Bingo!” announced Tony-D.

  It wasn’t hard evidence that Claudia had sandbagged me to get a partnership, but it was close. I wanted her confession. A confrontation wasn’t going to work. Claudia was too good a lawyer to admit she engineered my firing.

  I checked my watch. It was half-past ten. Claudia would be up working for another hour. I announced, “I need to nail this down. Tony, crank up your tape recorder. I’m going to call my house.”

  Claudia was there, pretending—or not pretending—to be happy hearing my voice. That happiness vanished quickly. I gave her enough information to raise concerns and trigger a call to Rodney, which she made, as soon as I hung up.

  Rodney sounded drowsy. “Claudia, it’s late. Is anything wrong?”

  “Max called.”

  Sleep vanished from Rodney’s voice, replaced by alertness. “Where is he?”

  “In the D.C. area. He wasn’t specific.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said you fired him so you could hire him out to the Russians. Is that true?”

  Rodney ignored her question. “Was he angry at you?”

  “What? No. He was angry at you for setting him up and firing him.”

  “The setup wouldn’t have worked without you. If he knows I wanted him fired, he knows you were in on the plan.”

  “What plan!”

  Rodney was composed. “Did he have anything for me?”

  “Anger!”

  “Cute. Did he ask for anything from me?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly Rodney knew. “Damnit! He was playing you to get you to call me. Don’t call me again. Stay by the phone. If Max calls, keep him on the line. Find out where he’s staying.”

  Claudia was angry. “Rodney, I didn’t sign up for this spy versus spy shit! I agreed to work with you as a favor to Lyle.”

  Rodney’s response was cold. “You signed up to do a favor for your boss so I would tell him you did a good job on a national security matter. You wanted him to be impressed and recommend you for a partnership. In pursuit of that goal, you slept with Max. You baited him with your email and made it possible for me to fire him. You did whatever was required. Don’t go innocent on me now that a little light is seeping into your dark corner.”

  “You told me I was helping you make it look like Max was fired so he could go undercover. You didn’t say a damned thing about any Russians!”

  “You need to stop using that proper noun.”

  I could almost hear Claudia’s teeth clench. “I didn’t call you for a fucking English lesson! I want to know what kind of mess you’ve gotten me into.”

  “Calm down. Max is lying to you. He bungled his assignment and he’s looking for an out.”

  “I don’t care about any of this! I’m going to tell Lyle Palmer everything and I’m finished with you!”

  “That won’t get you a partnership. Lyle knows nothing about what we’re doing. You tell him you’re involved with Russians and you’ll be lucky if you’re not fired. In any event, a bad recommendation from me will probably torpedo your partnership hopes … and I would have to tell Lyle you’re lying if you mentioned Russians.”

  “You bastard!”

  “At your service. Now, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. If Max calls, keep him talking. We’ll trace the call, get Max, and all of this will go quietly away.”

  “You’ll trace the call! Is this line tapped!”

  Rodney ignored her again. “Just keep Max talking. Ask when he’s coming home. Tell him you miss him.” With sarcasm, he added, “I’m sure you do.”

  Tony-D shut off the tape recorder. I’m sure Rodney went back to sleep. Claudia probably stayed awake.

  Sherri was uncomfortable with the surveillance on her house. So, we all spent the night at Tony-D’s. It was the first night since we arrived in London weeks ago that we could sleep soundly without the fear of someone crashing through the door. I slept well.

  * * *

  The next morning, Sherri left for home before anyone else was awake. My first thought when I awakened was that any lead time Jill Rucker had given me was used up. I showered and dressed. Tony-D and I had breakfast. I nursed my anger and killed time until opening hour at Claudia’s firm. Then, I called her boss.

  “Stratton, Radcliff, and Bowles,” the receptionist announced. “May I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak to Lyle Palmer. I have an urgent message from Rodney.”

  “And you are … ?”

  “The urgent messenger.”

  “Just a moment.” Well trained. She didn’t hesitate. Maybe Stratton, Radcliff, and Bowles were used to urgent messages from anonymous sources.

  There was a thirty-second pause before a cultured voice came on the line. “This is Lyle Palmer. I understand you have a message from Rodney.”

  “I have a message about your friend Rodney and your employee Claudia Navarro. They are about to become embarrassments for your firm.”

  Palmer was impatient. “Who are you?”

  “If I wanted you to know my name, you would already have it. Do you want to shoot the messenger or hear the message? I can give it to the Washington Post if you’re not interested.”

  He said, “Proceed.”

  “Claudia is involved in Rodney’s operation to suppress information that would compromise the president”—to avoid confusion, I added—“of the United States. Rodney is working with Russian agents to make that happen.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “That’s the wrong question. The correct question is, ‘Do you have proof?’ If you had asked that question, my answer would have been, ‘Yes.’ I have a taped telephone conversation of Claudia and Rodney discussing how their plan went wrong and how Rodney intends to cover it up with a murder. Mine.”

  “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “No. I’m trying to do you a favor. Their scheme is going to be exposed. When that happens, Claudia Navarro’s only other claim to fame will be that she works for your firm … assuming she still works for your firm when the story hits the newspapers.”

  “What’s in this for you?” asked Palmer.

  “A favor for a favor. It seems everybody in Washington needs a lawyer these days. When my time comes, I might need your services. I’ll remind you of this favor.”

  “What happens to the tape?”

  “It’s my insurance. Maybe you’ll accept it as your fee, if I ever need your services.”

  * * *

  The mind is a funny thing. You have a question without an answer. You file it in your head, and while you’re doing something unrelated, the answer reveals itself. I called Sherri.

  “Sherri, I think I know why those guys are s
itting on your house.”

  “You said they were waiting for you to show.”

  “Yeah, but why at your house. Why not mine? I gave you my sat phone in Stockholm because I didn’t want to take it to Russia. What did you do with it?”

  “I was going to Russia, too. So, I gave it to one of my hackers to bring back to the States. He dropped it off at my house when he got back to D.C. You think it’s the sat phone.”

  “I’d bet on it. The phone is transmitting its location at your house and somebody’s waiting for me to show up there.”

  “What do they want?”

  “I’m going to find out. When you get home this evening, put the phone in a metal box to kill the signal and bring it to me at the Capital Yacht Club in Southwest D.C. Also, I need a clean piece with a silencer.”

  * * *

  CIA lock-picking skills are like typing skills—you can use them anywhere and for a lifetime. After Sherri dropped off the sat phone, I used the cover of darkness and my CIA-acquired skills to bypass the marina gate lock and gain entrance to the yacht I was looking for. It was a 42-foot, Grand Banks Heritage Classic named Envy. It was a long way down the price list from Viktor Lukovsky’s Wally moored at Canary Wharf in East London, but the name Envy served the purposes of the owner, who didn’t sail her often.

  Structure-wise, up the aft ladder from the entry deck, the boat had a spacious flybridge—cockpit to landlubbers like me. Down the aft hatch and below decks there was a plush lounge with a galley. A guest bedroom was forward and three steps down from the lounge. The master bedroom was three steps down from the lounge and aft. The craft was comfortable for sailing and perfect for an ambush. I took the sat phone out of the metal box, attached the silencer to my gun, and turned the lights off.

  Two men came to the Envy a little after three in the morning. Good timing. The marina party animals had sucked up the last of their Simi Valley Cabernet and crawled into their berths to await the arrival of midmorning and headaches. Apparently, I was the only one awake, as two men in soft shoes and tight, black ninja outfits tiptoed down the steps to the lounge-galley of the Envy. Their silhouettes were visible in reflected television light from the forward bedroom. Muted talk show conversation wafted up to the lounge. They were drawn to it, as I had planned.

  At the aft end of the yacht, the narrow entrance to the master bedroom was flanked on the port side by a shower. On the starboard side, there was a bathroom with a full-length mirror embedded in the door. I had propped the bathroom door open so I could view the lounge while I stood in the shower out of their view and line of fire.

  As they crept toward the forward bedroom, the trailing man must have caught a glimpse of reflected light in the bathroom door mirror. He whirled and put a bullet into the head of his reflection with his silenced pistol. As the mirror shattered, he realized what had happened and whispered a harsh, “Go! Go!” Both of them scampered down the steps toward the light in the guest bedroom. After they checked possible hiding places, one said, “He’s not here.”

  “He’s behind you,” I said. I was looking down from the lounge. They were standing in a small space between two beds, with no maneuver room. Fish in a barrel looking up three steps at me.

  “Drop your guns.”

  The guy closest to me said, “I’m putting it down.” He knelt, laid his gun on the carpet, and pushed it away. The move was a distraction to take my eyes off the man behind him. As the first man knelt, the second man raised his gun to shoot. His problem was that he had to raise his gun high to shoot up the steps. My gun was already pointing down at him. All I had to do was pull the trigger. My first shot nicked his chin and tore into his chest just below his neck. I put a second round in the same spot.

  The first man was kneeling on the deck, trying to unholster his ankle gun. I shot him twice in the chest. He was a big man and he just fell back against his dead partner and kept clawing at his ankle holster. I assumed he was wearing a protective vest. I shot him in the head.

  * * *

  Rodney’s Georgetown home had three levels. He lived on the second and third. The first level had been converted into a garage for his sixty-five-thousand-dollar Jaguar XF, with all the usual refinements, minus the 007 ejection seat, headlight-mounted machine guns, etcetera. Although, Rodney would have enjoyed showing them off had they been available. Having been a guest at Rodney’s several times, I knew there was no way to bypass his security systems. I waited low in the back seat of my curbside rental car. Rodney pulled into his garage. I made a dash for the door as it was coming down. When he got out of his car, he was staring at me and my gun.

  “You look surprised to see me, Rodney.”

  “I am. You don’t normally enter my home by sliding under the garage door with a gun in your hand.”

  “Special circumstances. Let’s talk upstairs.”

  Minutes later, I was sitting in Rodney’s home office. The walls were lined with books and photos of Rodney with presidents and members of Congress. There was a Chinese rug on the polished hardwood floor. He was at the liquor cabinet holding a bottle of my favorite scotch poised above a crystal shot glass. “Drink?”

  “I gave it up for Lent.”

  “You’re not Catholic. You’re a confirmed heathen.”

  “I want to be in good standing, if I convert.”

  Rodney looked at my gun and quit the banter. “Would you please put that away?”

  “I’m more comfortable pointing it at you.”

  Rodney shrugged and took his drink to the antique desk. He removed his coat and hung it on the chair back. Deliberately, he walked to the front of the desk, leaned back against it, gripped the overhang, and crossed his ankles. Since I was seated, his position of superiority was established. He took a sip of his drink and said, “You mentioned special circumstances.”

  “You ruined me and used me. You lied to Vanessa and had her reassigned. You conspired with Claudia to set me up so you could get me fired. The purpose of all that was to destroy my morale and my finances so I’d be vulnerable when Bowen came to recruit me to work for the Russians.”

  Rodney smiled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I couldn’t tell you, but you were involved in a legitimate operation. I grant you Bowen is shady, but he had money and we couldn’t use CIA assets to verify the Ironside Dossier because of the politics here in Washington. And there was our strained relationship with the Brits. The Agency had to have deniability if the Brits or Russians caught you with your hand in their cookie jars. Our plan was to let Bowen fund your activities. We would keep whatever you found and leave Bowen holding the bag with the Russians. That’s why we needed an Agency man leading Bowen’s search for compromising information about President Walldrum. It was an off-the-books operation, but sanctioned by the Seventh Floor.”

  Rodney was telling me that the CIA director approved what I had been doing.

  “The Agency,” Rodney continued, “was prepared to take you back when you completed the mission. So, did you complete the mission?”

  “Before I give anything to anyone, I want my status clarified. Pick up your phone and call the director. I want him to tell me he approved this operation.”

  Rodney didn’t budge from his leaning position. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know the director doesn’t get involved at that level. We run operations like this all the time.”

  “Okay. Call the director of operations. Let him tell me.”

  “No. The Seventh Floor can’t claim you, now. You caused one helluva stink in the U.K. and Russia. Christ, man, you left blood on the floor in London, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, and you robbed a bank. What the hell was that about? Couldn’t you find an ATM?”

  “I’m not a cowboy, Rodney. I did what was required to get what you wanted and get out. Which brings me to another issue—why did you give me a sat phone?”

  “So I could provide support if you needed it, of course.”

  “What was I going to do with a sat phone in Russia, call in air strikes? I thi
nk that phone had another purpose. It sends a signal that you were going to use to track me in the U.K. and Russia. You passed my U.K. locations to a Russian hit squad. Is that how the Russians found Bogdanovich in Scotland and Boris Kulik in London?”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “Maybe. I think your sat phone tracking fell apart when I didn’t take the phone to Russia. None of the Moscow sources died because you couldn’t track me there.”

  “That’s ridiculous on its face. What good would it do to kill sources after you got kompromat from them?”

  “Not much, unless you killed me, too, and took the kompromat. The men you sent to kill me have been trying to use your sat phone to find me since I got back to D.C.”

  Rodney dismissed the idea of his involvement. “Anyone with suitable technology could track that phone and you know it. After the mess you made in Europe, it’s probably MI6 or the Russians. In any case, I have no idea who might be tracking you.”

  “I think you do.” I carried a large envelope to his desk and dumped out the wallets of the two hit men from the Envy. “Take a look. Tell me if anything is familiar.”

  Rodney stood motionless, glaring at me for several seconds before he picked up the wallets and examined their contents. “I don’t know these men.”

  I shoved my gun into my belt, put on a pair of surgical gloves, returned the wallets to the envelope, and dropped the gloves in after them. Rodney understood the significance of my actions. His fingerprints—not mine—were on the wallets of a couple of dead men.

  I told him, “I took something from one of those wallets you would recognize, your private phone number.”

  The master spy had a ready response. “You promised me the Walldrum documents. I hadn’t heard from you since we met in Tallinn. Claudia told me you were in town. Didn’t you expect me to look for you? I sent those men to find you. They meant you no harm.”

  “Well, they tried to harm me. One of those guys was carrying a backpack with duct tape and some nasty-looking cutlery. I think you sent them to torture me for the location of the Walldrum documents and put a bullet in my head.”