The Coldest Warrior

by The Coldest Warrior (retail) (epub)

  “I don’t have much time,” she said, sitting forward on the edge of the chair. “This transaction doesn’t require a name. It’s a numbered account, as you can see, and the authorization code is all you need. We don’t give names,” she said. “You can appreciate that matters of national security require complete confidentiality.” Claire was polite but irritated. She was aware that she had perspired through her blouse.

  Withers leaned forward, comparing an account file card to the wire transfer form. “The account, please?”

  “13-2020719-Q.” Nine digits and a letter. She repeated it more slowly, watching him match against the card.

  “This is a restricted account. Our tellers don’t have access to it. In the past customers making a transfer asked for me.”

  “That’s what I did.”

  Withers turned to the teller, who stood rebuked. “There are a few formalities I need to go through before we process a transfer of this size. Do you mind?”

  “Please.”

  “What is the account name?”

  “There is no account name. It’s a numbered account.”

  “The amount of the last transfer?”

  “Two million two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “From?”

  “Arab National Bank.”

  “The authorized signatory?”

  Gabriel hadn’t given her one. “There is none. It’s a numbered account.”

  “This says the money is going to BCCI. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Numbered account. Paris branch. 799DH128FT1.” Eleven digits and letters.

  “I’ll be just a moment.”

  Claire saw him take a walking cane from behind his desk and step out. Her eyes moved to the huge wall clock high in the cavernous space. The six-foot second hand jerked forward on the Roman numerals, slicing off a bit of the future. How long would she wait? Again she looked at the exit and stared at the guard by the bronze doors.

  “Hello, ma’am.”

  Claire saw a new man standing in the doorway. He was Withers’s physical opposite, older, thinner, sterner. He patted the air to insist she remain seated, and then he took the seat beside her, putting on a patronizing show of avuncular concern and offering an ingratiating smile.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t have your name.”

  “Ma’am will do.” She returned his gaze with prickly coldness. “This isn’t a social call. I am here on Agency business.”

  “Yes, yes. Let’s get to that. I am Mr. Leacock, branch manager. This is a very large sum of money. I’m sure you can appreciate that we have our internal controls.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No, no. Everything is in order, but you’re new to us. The account is usually accessed by someone else. That person is the only one we know, so I’d like to ask why you’re here and not her?”

  “That person is a man. Mr. Gabriel was called to the White House. He delegated this matter to me. Is there a problem?”

  “No. It’s a formality.”

  Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s get past the formalities, shall we? What do you want to know?”

  “Can Mr. Gabriel come in tomorrow?”

  “Will you be open tomorrow? Will you come into the office in the hurricane?”

  Leacock contemplated the answer but said nothing.

  “This transaction is urgent,” she said. “We established this account to serve the Agency’s needs. We brought our business here knowing you were a co-operative bank and your chairman understands our need for confidentiality.” She looked at Leacock. “Time is urgent, gentlemen.”

  She looked from one banker to the next, and when neither spoke, she stood to leave. At the door, she turned. “Transfers come from Adnan Khashoggi without question. We expected them to go out without question.” She was through the door, when she heard Leacock ask her to stop. She had her eyes on the guard, who had turned to the commotion.

  “Ma’am, please. Have a seat.”

  Claire’s heart raced, and she was desperate to reach her daughter. She turned on her heels and confronted the two men. She glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes had passed. “What?”

  “It will take a minute,” Leacock said. “There’s coffee. I’ll be right back.”

  Claire didn’t sit. She stood firmly in one spot and then glanced at the clock, and she stared at Withers with an indignant expression. Her mind’s eye saw Sara on the street, witness to her mother being escorted out of the bank in handcuffs. She turned suddenly and stopped. Leacock blocked the door.

  “The wire is complete,” he said, and handed her a slip with the transaction confirmation number. “Thank you for your patience.”

  Claire took it without reading it. She walked numbly across the vast atrium hall, eyes focused on the bronze doors, trying desperately not to let her eagerness quicken her stride and betray the fraud.

  She found Sara beside the bank’s massive stone columns, where she had been told to wait. Sara’s face paled with joyous relief when she saw Claire, and she rushed forward and embraced. “What took so long?”

  CLAIRE STOOD INSIDE a telephone booth a few blocks away and dialed the number Gabriel had written down. She listened to the ringing, and on the sixth ring she glanced at her wristwatch. The time was right. Her eyes drifted across the street as government workers left their offices early to escape the hurricane. So many normal people, she thought. She dialed again and recognized her husband’s voice.

  “It’s done. I’ll never do this again.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. It’s done. Now I know why you guys die of heart attacks.”

  EASTERN AIRLINES FLIGHT 67 from National Airport to San Juan pushed back from its gate at 4:05 p.m., an on-time departure. It was one of the last flights out of Washington that afternoon.

  Claire sat in a window seat near the rear of the Boeing 737 and gazed out at the approaching storm. A wrathful sky birthed nearby lightning, and thunder rattled the plane. Passengers nervously looked about or cinched seat belts tighter. Landing lights of arriving aircraft emerged from the low cloud cover that darkened the day and illuminated rain sweeping across the tarmac. The precision required for landing an aircraft had always fascinated her. It gave her a feeling of excitement to be on the verge of a journey—the leaving, the arrival, the open-ended adventure of going someplace different. There was none of that now.

  The pilot’s calm voice on the intercom did little to reassure passengers frightened by the violent weather. The aircraft nudged forward, gathering speed, as it positioned itself for take-off. Dim runway lights lined the tarmac. Claire felt the engines’ powerful thrust push the plane forward.

  She looked out the window. She was abandoning a comfortable life, a good career, friends, their home, and taking up an uncertain future. This wasn’t the life she had planned for or counted on.

  She smiled at Sara, patting her daughter’s hand.

  “What are you thinking?” Sara asked.

  “I’m thinking about my grandmother. She left Ireland as a young girl and never returned. She could have gone back, but she never did.”

  “But we’re coming back, aren’t we?”

  “Of course.” She looked out the window, unsure if they ever would.

  26

  Dupont Circle

  Hurricane Eloise followed a steady westward path across the Atlantic, becoming a tropical storm and, subsequently, a hurricane north of Puerto Rico. The eye of the hurricane moved over Cuba, then to the Gulf, and advanced on an evacuated Pensacola. Wind gusts of 140 miles per hour sheared telephone poles, stripped roofs from houses, upended cars, and overwhelmed emergency response teams. It made its way north overland, losing some energy, but moisture pulled from the Gulf was released in a slow-moving deluge that arrived at Washington, D.C., that night.

  GABRIEL STARED. His eyes were fixed but unfocused, gazing blindly into the swirling storm beyond the windshield. The wind howled with the lunacy of banshees, and the maddening sound m
ade it hard for him to think. He turned on the wipers, and for intermittent moments the landscape took on shape and dimension. The street was empty and rain lashed the nearby Metro station.

  It was time. Gabriel checked his 9mm Glock. He had kept up his marksmanship with weekend visits to a gun range in Virginia, and he knew from his time in Vietnam that it operated well in foul weather. The satin nickel pistol was heavy in his hand, and he didn’t allow himself to consider what it would mean to point the gun at a friend. He released the catch to confirm the bullets were inserted properly, and he chambered a round. He tucked the Glock under his belt.

  Pitiless rain pelted him when he stepped out of the car. He hop-stepped across the deserted street and entered the shelter of the Metro’s well-lit glass canopy. A waist-high construction barrier denied access to the gleaming new subway station that was set to open in a week’s time. All around the hurricane raged: Trees in Dupont Circle groaned against the wind, and a metal garbage can bounced down the street in a riot of sound. Fierce gusts drove sheeting rain sideways under the canopy, and temperatures had fallen. He was wet and cold, and he rubbed his hands together for warmth, but he could do nothing about rain that swept in sideways.

  Gabriel had seen one solitary man approach the station from Connecticut Avenue, but when he looked again the man was gone. Instinct told him that he had been spotted, but that was his plan, to place himself where he could be easily seen—alone and well-lit.

  The plan was dangerously simple. All it required was that he identify his adversaries before they inflicted harm. It was madness, he told himself—madness to deliberately do the wrong thing, but he was matched against dangerous men, and he’d never known a trap to succeed without the madness of putting oneself at risk.

  Gabriel suspected there were two men, possibly three. He didn’t know all their names, but he knew who to suspect, which led him to this conclusion. He had reviewed the omissions, redactions, and gaps in the documents to see where the missing information pointed within his understanding of the old Agency’s lax rules. And he had Weisenthal’s claim: Three men. He was confident about Treacher. Who were the other two?

  Now, like an audience seated in a darkened theater, he waited for actors to enter center stage. Their presence out in the storm would be indictment and verdict enough, and Gabriel would use his 9mm Glock to administer the punishment. He had come to terms with the terrible thing that he would do.

  Gabriel’s eyes moved slowly across the storefronts and then toward Dupont Circle and the dark tree line. A storm drain had backed up, and water spouted into the street. Flooding was everywhere, and water cascaded down the Metro station’s escalator. It was past the hour of rendezvous and coming to the time Ostroff said he would arrive. How much longer? Have they been scared off by the storm? His hand reflexively touched the clear plastic bag under his raincoat that held the bait—an empty envelope.

  Gabriel hadn’t found a way to warn off Ostroff. Any call to Ostroff risked alerting the men he sought, so he’d moved forward knowing he was putting Ostroff in danger. And then there he was across the street. Early. Eager for his scoop. Idiot. Ostroff stood in the shelter of a shop’s awning with his baseball cap and an umbrella, the ribs popped backward, making it useless. The two men were separated by thirty yards of storm, one yelling at the other, each trying to make himself heard. Gabriel waved for Ostroff to stay where he was, and in that moment Gabriel saw the Times reporter frantically wave back.

  Gabriel gauged the direction of Ostroff’s hand to calculate the location of the danger. Gabriel read caution on Ostroff’s face, yelling words that were swallowed by the howling wind. He turned where Ostroff had pointed, and he saw the solitary man again. He was in full rain gear, moving from the cover of one parked car to the next, hunched over, approaching the Metro station. The man held a pistol, and his hood shadowed his face.

  Gabriel saw Ostroff start to cross the avenue, walking into harm’s way. He aimed his Glock and fired one warning round at Ostroff that shattered the plate glass window behind him. Stunned, Ostroff stayed rooted in the open, and Gabriel emptied his pistol at targets all around the startled man, striking a lamppost, the pavement, and the store’s brick façade. Ostroff retreated in the face of the danger, and Gabriel loaded another clip, firing twice more, high into the dark where Ostroff had disappeared. Gabriel looked again, to confirm Ostroff had retreated, and thought it was just as well. Ostroff had played his part, and now he was gone.

  Gabriel had reduced his profile, dropping to his knees, and he again looked where Ostroff had pointed. A second man emerged from behind the marble fountain in the center of Dupont Circle. He moved across the plaza, running bent over to gain the cover of the tree line, advancing against the rain, forging forward. The skirt of his mackintosh snapped in the wind.

  Gabriel glanced from one man to the next, frustrated that he couldn’t identify them. He pressed close to the station’s bulwark and peered beyond the meager shelter. The hoods and the darkness denied him a view of their faces, but their guns were drawn, and seeing Gabriel, they saw each other. Gabriel watched them coordinate their assault and felt the danger he was in, but that was his plan. He moved toward the yawning mouth of the station’s escalator.

  Beneath Washington, the first sections of the city’s grandiose urban transportation project were being completed after years of construction inconvenience. Massive steel boring machines had cut through the hard schist and gneiss of a remnant mountain under Connecticut Avenue and the particularly hard bedrock had required pilot holes that were filled with dynamite and exploded, leaving mounds of shattered rock and volatile fumes that were evacuated through air tunnels onto the street, sickening residents. The big, incomplete engineering project left portions of downtown planked in cut-and-cover quarrying. Washington was fatigued by the endless project. And now, the first stations were opening as work on others continued, and deep escalators led into a new underworld.

  Gabriel took the steel treads of the unmoving escalator two at a time, entering the wide concrete arch that angled into the earth. He descended into subterranean darkness knowing that when his business was done, he would cross the station and escape through the exit at the other end. He looked over his shoulder, and in the keyhole of light at the top, he saw two hatted silhouettes in raincoats follow him down.

  Gabriel reached the bottom of the cavernous station and jumped the turnstile. It was a quiet place, removed from the hurricane’s fury. Dim lights illuminated the regular geometry of the vaulted ceiling, but the platform was dark and obscure. The lingering smell of volatile chemicals from freshly painted iridescent caution stripes hung in the air and the vague forms of kiosks were still wrapped in protective plastic. Tracks on either side were filled with rushing currents that crested at the platform’s edge. Water poured into the station from the tunnel with a violent babbling sound, frothy and swirling in eddies and waves. Branches torn from trees were carried along in the strong current and then disappeared in the tunnel at the other end of the station.

  Gabriel stood in the dark station that was now a tributary of Rock Creek, then ran toward a rolling work lamp that loomed over the last area of construction in the center of the platform. At the other end he saw the second escalator that would enable his escape, and then Gabriel saw a third man. He had emerged from behind a kiosk, so Gabriel saw only a dark shape, but when Gabriel’s pursuers yelled his name, the third man stepped back behind the kiosk.

  Again his name was called. The two pursuers had jumped the turnstile, and they now blocked Gabriel’s retreat. Gabriel looked where he’d planned to escape, and then he looked back where he’d entered the station—danger in both directions. They knew he was there, but he hadn’t been seen. Faint ceiling lights created vague shadows that frustrated alert eyes, and everywhere confusing shapes lurked in the darkness.

  Gabriel’s hand worked quickly to find the switch on the thousand-watt lamp that he’d positioned during an earlier trip to the station. A metal-halide bulb sat in
a large silver cone.

  “Jack.”

  Gabriel stood perfectly still. Dark human forms advanced on him, coming in range of the work lamp, and he removed the Glock from his belt. He gauged the danger and looked where the third man blocked his escape route, but he was gone. Gabriel glanced left and right at the dark, muddy water pouring past on either side, looking for alternatives. The current surged over branches lodged under the platform, producing an uncouth sound in the vaulted space. His eagerness to survive tempered his plan; his mind was divided by an urge for retribution and the jeopardy when he acted. His mind played a trick on his judgment, seeing what he wanted to see. He was tempted by the idea that he could finish his work and swim his escape.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Jack. You’d be pulled under.”

  The man who spoke was thirty feet away, a dark figure of average height, bulky in rain gear, a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Gabriel thought he knew the voice. When the beam found Gabriel, he quickly stepped back into the dark, and his hand went for the arc lamp’s switch. Brilliant light filled the vaulted space and illuminated two men standing center stage, stunned and blinded, deer in headlights.

  “So, it’s you.”

  “Are you disappointed? Shut that thing off.”

  Gabriel’s anger stirred as he observed the two men bathed in light. “Put your arms down. I want to see your faces.”

  Treacher lowered his forearm, squinting. “Surprised?” He held a Colt pistol at his side.

  Gabriel smiled confidently because they were now equally matched. “There are no surprises.”

  “Still the arrogant Jack Gabriel. Always thinking you’re the better man.” Treacher shielded his eyes with his hand.

  A gunshot rang out. The lamp sparked and then exploded, casting the station into darkness. Slowly the pitch black resolved to murkiness as the men’s eyes adjusted. In the darkness, Gabriel had moved a short distance, and now he was a few steps from Treacher, Glock at his side. Gabriel watched Treacher remove his hood and knock rain water from his baseball cap. His face was ghoulish in the shadow of his flashlight’s beam. Gabriel considered his old acquaintance, and everything began to fall into place—Treacher’s abrupt departure from the CIA, then his rise through the apparatus of government, always moving quickly upward, a man pushing himself to succeed. Gabriel was not shocked to see Treacher standing before him, but later he realized how angry he had been to discover it was Treacher.