by Tom Clancy
Qati and Ghosn returned the car to the rental agency and took the courtesy bus to the terminal, where they checked in their bags for the flight, then headed in to check their flight’s status. Here they learned that the American MD-80 for Dallas-Fort Worth was delayed. Weather in Texas, the clerk at the desk explained. There was ice on the runways from the storm that had just skirted past Denver the previous night.
“I must make my connection to Mexico. Can you book me through another city?” Ghosn asked.
“We have one leaving for Miami, same departure time as your flight to Dallas. I can book you a connecting flight in Miami.” The ticket agent tapped the data into her terminal. “There’s a one-hour layover. Oh, okay, it’s only a fifteen-minute difference into Mexico City.”
“Could you do that, please? I must make my connection.”
“Both tickets?”
“Yes, excuse me.”
“No problem.” The young lady smiled at her computer. Ghosn wondered if she’d survive the event. The huge glass windows faced the stadium, and even at this distance the blast wave ... maybe, he thought, if she ducked fast enough. But she’d already be blinded from the flash. Such pretty dark eyes, too. A pity. “Here you go. I’ll make sure they switch the bags over,” she promised him. That Ghosn took with a grain of salt.
“Thank you.”
“The gate is that way.” She pointed.
“Thank you once more.”
The ticket agent watched them head off. The young one was pretty cute, she thought, but his big brother—or boss? she wondered—looked like a sourpuss. Maybe he didn’t like to fly.
“Well?” Qati asked.
“The connecting flight roughly duplicates our schedule. We’ve lost a quarter hour buffer time in Mexico. The weather problem is localized. There should be no further difficulty.”
The terminal was very nearly empty. Those people who wished to leave Denver were evidently waiting for later flights so that they might watch the game on TV, and the same appeared to be true of arriving flights, Ibrahim saw. There were scarcely twenty people in the departure lounge.
“Okay, I can’t reconcile the schedules here either,” Goodley said. “In fact, I’d almost say we have a smoking gun.”
“How so?” Ryan asked.
“Narmonov was only in Moscow two days last week, Monday and Friday. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he was in Latvia, Lithuania, the Western Ukraine, and then a trip down to Volgograd for some local politicking. Friday’s out because of when the message came over, right? But Monday, our friend was in the Congress building practically all day. I don’t think they met last week, but the letter implies that they did. I think we got a lie here.”
“Show me,” Jack said.
Goodley spread his data out on Ryan’s desk. Together they went over the dates and itineraries.
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Jack said after a few minutes. “That son of a bitch.”
“Persuasive?” Goodley wanted to know.
“Completely?” The Deputy Director shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s possible that our data is incorrect. It’s possible that they met on the sly, maybe last Sunday when Andrey Il’ych was out at his dacha. One swallow doesn’t make a spring,” Jack said with a nod toward the snow outside. “We need to make a detailed check on this before it goes any farther, but what you’ve uncovered here is very, very interesting, Ben.”
“But, damn it—”
“Ben, you go slow on stuff like this,” Jack explained. “You don’t toss out the work of a valuable agent on the basis of equivocal data, and this is equivocal, isn’t it?”
“Technically, yes. You think he’s been turned?”
“Doubled, you mean?” Ryan grinned. “You’re picking up on the jargon, Dr. Goodley. You answer the question for me.”
“Well, if he’d been doubled on us, no, he wouldn’t send this sort of data. They wouldn’t want to send us this kind of signal unless elements within the KGB—”
“Think it through, Ben,” Jack cautioned.
“Oh, yeah. It compromises them, too, doesn’t it? You’re right, it’s not likely. If he’d been turned, the data should be different.”
“Exactly. If you’re right, and if he’s been misleading us, the most likely explanation is the one you came up with. He stands to profit from the political demise of Narmonov. It helps to think like a cop in this business. Who profits—who has motive, that’s the test you apply here. Best person to look at this is Mary Pat.”
“Call her in?” Goodley asked.
“Day like this?”
Qati and Ghosn boarded the flight on the first call, taking their first-class seats and strapping in. Ten minutes later the aircraft pulled back from the gate and taxied out to the end of the runway. They’d made a smart move, Ghosn thought. The flight to Dallas had still not been called. Two minutes after that, the airliner lifted off and soon turned southeast toward the warmer climes of Florida.
The maid was having a bad day already. Most of the guests had left late and she was way behind on her schedule. She clucked with disappointment at seeing the keep-out card on one doorknob, but it was not on the other, connecting room, and she thought it might be a mistake. The flip side of the card was the green Make Up Room NOW message, and guests often made that mistake. First she went into the unmarked one. It was easy. Only one of the beds had been used. She stripped off the linen and replaced it with the speed that came from doing the same job more than fifty times per day. Then she checked out the bathroom, replaced the soiled towels, put a new bar of soap in the holder, and emptied the trash can into the bag that hung from her cart. Then she had to make a decision—whether to make up the other room or not. The card on the knob said no, but if they didn’t want it, why didn’t they do the same thing for this room? It was worth a look at least. If anything obviously important was laid out, she’d stay clear. The maid looked through the open connecting door and saw two ordinarily messed-up beds. No clothing was on the floors. In fact, the room was as neat today as it had been the day before. She stuck her head through the door and looked back toward the wash area. Nothing remarkable there either. She decided to clean it, too. The maid got behind her cart and turned it to push through the door. Again she did the beds, then headed back to—
How had she missed that before? A man’s legs. What? She walked forward and—
It took the manager over a minute to calm her down enough to understand what she was saying. Thank God, he thought, that there were no guests on that side of the motel now; all were off to see the game. The young man took a deep breath and walked outside, past the coffee shop and around to the back side of the motel. The door had closed automatically, but his passkey fixed that.
“My God,” he said simply. At least he’d been prepared for it. The manager was no fool. He didn’t touch anything, but rather walked into the connecting room and out that door. The desk phone in his office had all the emergency numbers printed on a small card. He punched up the second one.
“Police.”
“I want to report a murder,” the manager said as calmly as he could manage.
President Fowler set the fax down on the corner table and shook his head. “It really is unbelievable that he’d try something so blatant.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Liz asked.
“Well, we have to verify it, of course, but I think we’ll be able to do that. Brent is flying back from the game tonight. I’ll want him in my office early for his advice, but I figure we’ll just confront him with it. If he doesn’t like it, that’s just too damned bad. This is Mafia stuff.”
“You really do have a thing about this, don’t you?”
Fowler opened a bottle of beer. “Once a prosecutor, always a prosecutor. A hood is a hood is a hood.”
The JAL 747 touched down at Dulles International Airport three minutes early. Out of deference to the weather, and with the approval of the Japanese Ambassador
, the arrival ceremony was abbreviated. Besides, the sign of a really important arrival in Washington was informality. It was one of the local folkways that the Ambassador had explained to the current Prime Minister’s predecessor. After a brief but sincere greeting from Deputy Secretary of State Scott Adler, the official party was loaded into all the four-wheel-drive vehicles that the embassy had been able to assemble on such short notice, and headed off to the Madison Hotel, a few blocks from the White House. The President, he learned, was at Camp David, and would be coming back to Washington the following morning. The Japanese Prime Minister, still suffering from the lingering effects of travel, decided to get a few more hours of sleep. He’d not yet taken off his coat when another cleanup crew boarded the aircraft yet again. One man retrieved the unused liquor, including one bottle with a cracked neck. Another emptied the wastebaskets of the various washrooms into a large trash bag. They were soon on their way to Langley. All of the chase aircraft except the first landed at Andrews Air Force Base, where the flight crews also began their mandated rest periods—in this case at the base officers’ club. The recordings started their trip to Langley by car, arriving later than the tape recorder from Dulles. It turned out that the machine off the 747 had the best sound quality, and the technicians started on that tape first.
The Gulfstream returned to Mexico City, also on time. The aircraft rolled out to the general-aviation terminal and the flight crew of three—it was an Air Force crew, though no one knew that—walked into the terminal for dinner. Since they were Air Force, it was time for some crew rest. Clark was still at the embassy, and planned to catch the first quarter at least before heading back to D.C. and all that damned snow.
“Be careful or you’re going to fall asleep during the game,” the National Security Advisor warned.
“It’s only my second beer, Elizabeth,” Fowler replied.
There was a cooler next to the sofa, and a large silver tray of munchies. Elliot still found it quite incredible. J. Robert Fowler, President of the United States, so intelligent and hard-minded in every possible way, but a rabid football fan, sitting here like Archie Bunker, waiting for the kickoff.
“I found one, but the other one’s a son of a bitch,” the crew chief reported. “Can’t seem to figure this one out, Colonel.”
“Come on inside and warm up,” the pilot said. “You’ve been out here too long anyway.”
“Some kind of drug deal, I’ll bet you,” the junior detective said.
“Then it’s amateurs,” his partner observed. The photographer had snapped his customary four rolls of film, and now the coroner’s men were lifting the body into the plastic bag for transport to the morgue. There could be little doubt on the cause of death. It was a particularly brutal murder. It seemed that the killers—there had to be two, the senior man already thought—had to have held the man’s arms down before they slashed his throat, and then they had watched him bleed out while using the towel to keep their clothes clean. Maybe they were paying off a debt somehow or other. Perhaps this guy had done a rip-off, or there was some old grudge that they had settled. This was clearly not a crime of passion; it was far too cruel and calculated for that.
The detectives noted their good luck, however. The victim’s wallet had still been in his pocket. They had all his ID, and better than that, they had two complete sets of other ID, all of which were now being checked out. The motel records had noted the license numbers of both vehicles associated with these rooms, and those also were being checked on the motor-vehicle-records computer.
“The guy’s an Indian,” the coroner’s rep said as they picked him up. “Native American, I mean.”
“I’ve seen the face somewhere before,” the junior detective thought. “Wait a minute.” Something caught his eye. He unbuttoned the man’s shirt, revealing the top of a tattoo.
“He’s done time,” the senior man said. The tattoo on the man’s chest was a crude one, spit-and-pencil, and it showed something that he’d seen before.... “Wait a minute ... this means something ...”
“Warrior Society!”
“You’re right. The Feds had something out on—oh, yeah, remember? The shooting up in North Dakota last year?” The senior man thought for a second. “When we get the information from the license, make sure they send it right off to Washington. Okay, you can take him out now.” The body was lifted and carried out. “Bring in the maid and the manager.”
Inspector Pat O’Day had the good luck of drawing watch duty in the FBI’s command center, Room 5005 of the Hoover Building. The room was oddly shaped, roughly triangular, with the desks of the command staff in the angle, and screens on the long wall. The quiet day they were having—there was adverse weather across half the country, and adverse weather is more of an obstacle to crime than any police agency—meant that one of the screens was showing the teams lining up for the coin toss in Denver. Just as the Vikings won the toss and elected to receive, a young lady from communications walked in with a couple of faxes from the Denver P.D.
“A murder case, sir. They think we might know who this is.”
The quality of photographs on driver’s licenses is not the sort to impress a professional anything, and blowing them up—then sending them via fax—didn’t improve matters very much. He had to stare at it for a few seconds, and almost decided that he didn’t know the face until he remembered some things from his time in Wyoming.
“I’ve seen this guy before ... Indian ... Marvin Russell?” He turned to another agent. “Stan, have you ever seen this guy?”
“Nope.”
O’Day looked over the rest of the faxes. Whoever he was, he was dead, with a slashed throat, the Denver cops said. “Probable drug-related killing” was the initial read from the Denver homicide guys. Well, that made sense, didn’t it? John Russell had been part of a drug deal. The other initial data was that there had been other IDs at the scene of the crime, but that the licenses had been fakes—very good ones, the notes said. However, they had a truck registered to the victim, and also a car at the scene was a rental that had been signed out to Robert Friend, which was the name on the victim’s license. The Denver P.D. was now looking for the vehicles, and he wanted to know if the Bureau had anything useful on the victim and any likely associates.
“Get back to ‘em, and tell ’em to fax us the photos from the other IDs they found.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pat watched the teams get onto the field for the kickoff, then lifted the phone. “Dan? Pat. You want to come on down here? I think an old friend of ours just might have turned up dead. ... No, not that kind of friend.”
Murray showed up just in time for the kickoff, which took precedence over the faxes. Minnesota got the ball out to the twenty-four-yard line, and their offense went to work. The network immediately had the screen covered with all sorts of useless information so that the fans couldn’t see the players.
“This look like Marvin Russell to you?” Pat asked.
“Sure as hell does. Where is he?”
O’Day waved at the TV screen. “Would you believe Denver? They found him about ninety minutes ago with his throat cut. Local P.D. thinks it’s drug-related.”
“Well, that’s what did his brother in. What else?” Murray took the faxes from O’Day’s hand.
Tony Wills got the first handoff, taking the ball five yards off tackle—almost breaking it for more. On second down, both men saw Wills catch a swing pass for twenty yards.
“That kid is really something,” Pat said. “I remember seeing a game where Jimmy Brown ...”
Bob Fowler had just started his third beer of the afternoon, wishing he’d been at the game instead of being stuck here. Of course, the Secret Service would have gone ape, and the security at the game would have to have been beefed up to the point that people would still be trying to get in. That was not a good political move, was it? Liz Elliot, sitting next to the President, flipped one of the other TVs to HBO to catch a movie. She donned a set of headphones so that
she could hear it without disturbing the Commander-in-Chief. It just made no sense at all, she thought, none. How this man could get so enthusiastic about something as dumb as a little-boys’ game....
Pete Dawkins finished his pre-game duties by pulling a chain across his gate. Anyone who wanted to get in now would have to use one of the two gates that were still open, but guarded. At the last Super Bowl a very clever gang of thieves had prowled the parking lot and come away with two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of goods from the parked cars—mainly tape decks and radios—and that was not going to happen in Denver. He started his patrol, along with three other officers. By agreement, they’d circulate all around the lot instead of sticking to specific areas. It was too cold for that. Moving around would at least keep them warm. Dawkins’ legs felt as stiff as cardboard, and moving would loosen them up. He didn’t really expect to stop any crimes. What car thief would be so dumb as to prowl around in zero-degree weather? Soon he found himself in the area the Minnesota fans had occupied. They were certainly well organized. The tailgate parties had all ended on time. The lawn chairs were all stowed away, and they’d done a very effective job of cleaning up the area. Except for a few puddles of frozen coffee, you could hardly tell that they had done something here. Maybe the Minnesota fans weren’t such idiots after all.
Dawkins had a radio plugged into his ear. Listening to a game on the radio was like having sex with your clothes on, but at least he knew what the cheers were about. Minnesota scored first. Wills took it in by sweeping left end from fifteen yards out. The Vikings’ first drive had taken only seven plays and four minutes fifty seconds. Minnesota sounded pretty tough today.
“God, Dennis must be sick,” Fowler observed. Liz didn’t hear him, concentrating instead on her movie. The Secretary of Defense immediately had cause to feel sicker. The kickoff was fielded at the five, and the reserve running back who handled that duty for the Chargers made it all the way to the forty—but there he fumbled and a Viking fell on the ball.