by Stuart Woods
“Something I can do for you?”
“I just wanted to thank you for setting up what I needed for the co-op board application,” she said. “I moved in yesterday, and the place is great.”
“Glad to be of help,” Lance said. He went back to the pad in his lap, then looked up again. “Something else?”
“Well, yes. I wonder if it would be okay if I…got in touch with Stone Barrington. I mean, if it would be okay from a security standpoint.”
Lance seemed to suppress a smile. “Sure, why not? After all, he’s under contract to the Agency, so he’s one of us, in a way.”
“Thanks, Lance.” Holly turned and walked out of the room again, happy.
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and the director of Central Intelligence were sitting on the floor of the White House residence living room, eating pizza, drinking beer and watching The West Wing. A commercial break arrived.
“You know,” Will said, “Jed Bartlet has an easier time being president than I do.”
“What? With his getting shot in an assassination attempt and his daughter getting drugged by her boyfriend and kidnapped and having to let John Goodman be president and throw him out of the Oval Office? You think that’s easier?”
“Well, not that stuff, maybe, but he seems to have an easier time being right than I do. And Leo, his chief of staff, seems to do all the hard work, too. My chief of staff doesn’t do all the hard work.”
“You don’t have the slightest idea what she does when she’s out of your sight,” she said. “She probably works three times as hard as you do.”
“Are you questioning my work ethic?” Will asked. “You wound me.”
“Oh, horseshit! Sure, you work hard, well, pretty hard anyway. And anyway, there are compensations when you’re president.”
“What compensations?” Will demanded. “I don’t see any compensations. I mean, you could say I get driven everywhere, but I’d really rather drive myself, but the Secret Service won’t let me, except on the farm, and even then they get all nervous.”
“Poor baby,” she cooed, patting his knee.
“And why can’t I ever get a pizza through security while it’s still hot? I hate cold pizza, except at breakfast, and why won’t Domino’s leave the green peppers off the Extravaganza special, like I ask them to?”
“Well, maybe if they knew the Extravaganza was for the president instead of the guard at the main gate, they’d pay more attention.”
“I thought of that, but the Secret Service won’t let me tell them it’s for me; I guess they’re afraid there’s somebody at Domino’s who would poison me if they knew. And why can’t I own a Porsche instead of a Suburban? I always wanted a Porsche.”
“Then why didn’t you have one before you were president? I like Porsches.”
“Because I was a senator, and I had to drive a Suburban, because it was built in Georgia—at least, I think it was. And even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t be seen driving a foreign car. Can you imagine what the Republicans could make of that? ‘A white wine–drinking, quiche-eating, West Wing–watching, Porsche-driving president?’ They’d go nuts.”
“I think the American people might like a pizza-eating, beer-drinking, Porsche-driving president,” she said, handing him another beer. “Wouldn’t the NASCAR dads like that, if they knew?”
“A Heineken-drinking president who wouldn’t eat good American green peppers on his pizza? I doubt it. They’d barbecue me at a tailgate party, or something.”
“Poor baby,” she said, patting his knee again.
“And another thing: why can’t I just let Teddy Fay run amok? He’s doing a better job of killing America’s enemies than a certain intelligence agency I could name. Why do I have to sic the law on him?”
“Tell you what,” she said. “You give me a written authorization to kill America’s enemies, regardless of their diplomatic status or location, and I’ll run amok for you. I’d like nothing better than machine-gunning fake diplomats in sidewalk cafes in Paris or planting bombs in the cars of the terrorists’ Swiss bankers.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Will laughed. “You’d be out there shooting them yourself, wouldn’t you?”
“Damn straight, I would!”
“Would you settle for heating up this pizza? It’s getting pretty clammy.”
Kate got to her feet and grabbed the box. “Oh, all right. I guess heating pizza will have to do,” she said as she disappeared into the kitchen.
The commercials ended, and Will went back to watching The West Wing. He resolved to try to be more like Jed Bartlet.
THIRTY-NINE
TEDDY FAY TACKED THE PHOTOGRAPHS of five men and one woman on his bulletin board and sat back to read each of their files. For some reason—it may have been the man’s face—he strongly wanted to go after one Hadji Asaam who, under another name, was listed as a chauffeur at the Iranian embassy. Asaam was an assassin, pure and simple, and he had already been in the country for eight days. How long before he would be instructed to ply his real trade? Of course, there would be Agency or FBI surveillance on him, but he would find a way to lose them when he wanted to work. In the meantime, he was driving an attaché around New York, probably learning the streets.
His decision made, Teddy went to a newsstand and bought several newspapers. Back in his shop, he went carefully through the classifieds, until he found something that suited him in the Village Voice:
Vespa 180, only 1200 mi.,
pristine, $3K for quick sale.
He called the number. “I’m interested in your Vespa,” he said. “If it’s as described in the paper, I’ll buy it with cash today.”
“It’s exactly as I described it,” the young man said. “You’ll love it.”
“You have the registration and the insurance card?”
“Yep.”
“You have the title? It doesn’t have a loan on it, does it?”
“Nope, I have the title.”
“Can you meet me at the Twenty-third Street Lexington subway stop at two o’clock? We can do the deal right there; I’ll bring cash.”
“Sure, I’ll be there. What’s your name?”
“Jeff Snyder. Yours?”
“Bernie Taylor.”
“See you at two, Bernie.” Teddy hung up.
He went through his makeup kit and selected a prominent nose and a large mustache. Half an hour later he was somebody else. At one-thirty, he walked down the street to the subway stop at 63rd and Lex, and took the train downtown. At street level, Bernie was sitting on the scooter, waiting.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Teddy said, indicating that Bernie should take the passenger seat. Teddy hadn’t driven a Vespa for years, but how much could have changed? He drove quickly around the block; the engine ran as it should, and the gears shifted smoothly. Teddy stopped.
“You’ll throw in the helmet for three grand?”
“Sure,” Bernie said.
Teddy handed him an envelope containing thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. He waited while Bernie counted the money carefully without actually salivating.
“Here’s the registration and title,” he said. “And the insurance card, but you’ll have to change it to your name. Oh, and it has a full tank of gas.”
“A pleasure doing business with you,” Teddy said. He pocketed the papers and drove away. Back at his workshop, he parked the scooter in the downstairs hallway and went upstairs to start planning his surveillance, based on the daily schedule of the attaché Asaam would be driving. He would not have long to wait, since the attaché was picked up daily at precisely six p.m. and driven to his apartment twenty blocks away. Teddy liked the idea that it would be at rush hour.
At five o’clock, Teddy dressed in black coveralls over his clothes, checked his makeup and went downstairs for the scooter. With the helmet and goggles, plus the makeup, he would be unidentifiable. He wiped the scooter for prints, then put on his driving gloves and pushed it into the
street.
Twenty minutes later he was driving past the Iranian embassy to the UN and checking out the block. No doubt the embassy was under surveillance, and the second time around the block, he spotted two bored-looking men in a green Chevrolet sedan. They were dressed too neatly for NYPD detectives, so he reckoned they were FBI.
He went around the block again, then parked at the end of the street, some distance behind the surveillance vehicle, and waited. At five minutes before six, a black Lincoln with diplomatic plates drove up and double-parked in front of the embassy. At exactly six o’clock, the front door of the building opened and a middle-aged man in a pin-striped suit came down the front steps and got into the car. While the driver was holding open the door, Teddy checked his face against the photograph Irene had e-mailed him. A moment later, the driver was behind the wheel, and the car was moving. The FBI guys were moving, too.
Teddy stayed behind the two cars waiting for rush-hour traffic to do half his job for him. This took less than five minutes. Everything came to a halt because of some obstruction ahead. And Teddy saw the head of the diplomat’s driver come out the window, checking out the traffic.
Driving between lanes, Teddy accelerated around the FBI car and kept moving forward, his feet occasionally touching the pavement to help with his balance. The driver’s window was still open as he pulled alongside.
AT THE BARN, Holly and Ty were making their presentation to Lance and Kerry.
“There are a dozen candidates,” Holly said, “but we’ve narrowed the field to three for our purposes.”
“What criteria did you use for narrowing?” Kerry asked.
“Nothing more than a gut feeling,” Holly said, “because that’s what we think Teddy will use to make his choice.”
“Why?”
“We think this process is emotional for Teddy. He’s doing this out of hatred for people he believes are enemies of his country.”
“Okay, let’s hear the three candidates,” Kerry said.
“Two men and a woman,” Holly said. First there’s Ali Tarik, who is a thug whose specialty is tracking down Syrian defectors to the States and beating them up or killing them. Then there’s Carla Mujarik, who is in charge of buying materials for the Iranian nuclear weapons program. She buys what she can get, either in the U.S. or abroad. It’s a tough job, but she’s had some success. We haven’t cut her off yet, in the hope of catching some big rats among the sellers.” She held up another picture. “This is Hadji Asaam, an assassin, pure and simple, who’s only been in the country for a week or so, but who we think has been brought in to kill some specific person as yet unknown to us. As you know, we’ve got this heads-of-state meeting at the UN coming up, and that makes him worrysome to us.”
“Ugly bastard, isn’t he?” Lance said.
“That’s why he’s our number-one candidate,” Holly said. “We think Teddy will have the same reaction you did when he sees his picture.”
“You’re operating on the premise that Teddy still has access to Agency files?”
“Yes.”
“But all the codes have been changed, and there’s a big internal investigation run by Irene Foster in Hugh English’s office underway. How could he possibly get into the mainframe again?”
“We don’t know, but we have to operate on the premise that Teddy is smart enough to figure out a way to know what we know.”
Lance shook his head. “That’s a mighty big assumption,” he said.
“Why?” Holly asked. “He was at the Agency long enough to figure out ways into the computers, and he may even have inside help among the people he knew and worked with before he retired. Some of them may feel some sympathy with what he’s doing. To be perfectly frank, I feel some sympathy with what he’s doing. Don’t you?”
“I’m not answering that,” Lance said. “All right, let’s follow your hunch and see where it leads us.”
“God knows,” Kerry said, “we don’t have anything else to go on.” He opened a file and looked through it. “Looks like the New York field office of the Bureau has round-the-clock surveillance of Asaam.”
“How much surveillance?” Lance asked.
“Two men.”
“All right, let’s triple that,” Lance said. “Let’s put Holly and Ty on him, and we’ll assign another team, as well.”
A secretary knocked and opened the door. “Lance, there’s a Lieutenant Bacchetti on the phone for you; he says it’s important.”
Lance picked up the phone and pushed the blinking button. “Dino? What’s up?” He listened for a moment. “How long ago?” He listened again, then thanked the caller and hung up, shaking his head.
“What?” Kerry asked.
“A man on a motor scooter shot Hadji Asaam fifteen minutes ago, while your two agents watched. He got away in the rush-hour traffic.”
Holly and Ty exchanged a glance.
“Well, Holly,” Kerry said, “it looks like your theory of how Teddy chooses targets might be pretty good.”
Holly felt a warm glow inside. “If it is, then we’d better beef up surveillance on Ali Tarik and Carla Mujarik.”
“Done,” Kerry said.
FORTY
HOLLY STOOD AND WATCHED the young man through the one-way mirror of the interrogation room. He looked worried and baffled; the contents of his pockets lay on the table before him. She opened the door, walked into the room and sat down, opening a thin file folder and regarding it for half a minute before speaking.
“Your name is Bernard Taylor?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Bernard, you own a Vespa motor scooter with the New York State tag number 1059, is that correct?”
“Yeah, uh, or at least it was until earlier today.”
Holly tried to look disgusted. “Come on, Bernard, you’re not going to tell me it was stolen earlier today.”
“No. Uh, I sold it. Earlier today.”
Holly shook her head. “Let me put you straight, Bernard.”
“You can call me Bernie; everybody does.”
“Listen to me, Bernard. You’re about to be arrested as an accessory to a murder. Do you know what sentence you could get as an accessory?”
“No. Uh, I mean, I didn’t commit any murder.”
“We’re not saying you pulled the trigger, Bernard, just that you supplied the motor scooter. As an accessory, you get the same sentence the murderer does, and in New York, that’s the death penalty.”
“All I did was sell my motor scooter!” Bernie wailed.
Holly poked among the pile of his pocket contents on the table and her finger stopped on an envelope. “What does this envelope contain?” she asked, though she already knew.
“The money from the sale of the scooter,” Bernie replied.
Holly opened the envelope, removed the contents and quickly counted thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. “Three thousand dollars,” she said. “Bernard, is that your price for participation in a cold-blooded murder? You came cheap.”
“No, ma’am,” Bernie said, “It’s my price for my scooter. That’s what the guy paid me.”
“All right,” Holly sighed. “Tell me your story for the record. Just for your information, you’re being recorded.”
Bernie related the details of the sale of his motor scooter, while Holly took notes.
“His name was Jeff Snyder?” Holly asked.
“That’s what he said.”
“What ID did he show you?”
“Nothing. I didn’t ask for nothing. He had the money; that was all the ID I cared about.”
“Describe this Jeff Snyder.”
“About my height, with a big nose and a handlebar mustache. On the thin side.”
“The mustache?”
“No, that was thick. His build was on the thin side.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A kind of car coat and a cap, you know, like golfers wear? Like Ben Hogan?”
“Where did you meet?”
�
�At the entrance to the subway station at Twenty-third and Lex. He came out of the subway, I think.”
“What do you mean, you think?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly see him come out of the subway; I just assumed that’s how he got to the corner. I didn’t see him get out of a cab or a car.”
“And he paid you three thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills for your scooter?”
“It was a fair price; the scooter had only twelve hundred miles on it. Not a scratch. Pristine.”
“And you’re sticking to this story?”
“Lady, it’s the only story I got,” Bernie said heatedly. “It’s what happened.”
Holly got up and walked out the door. Lance and Kerry were waiting for her on the other side of the mirror.
“What do you think?” Lance asked.
“I think he’s telling the truth. It was a slick way for Teddy to get the scooter he needed without stealing it and running the risk of getting pulled over. Obviously, the big nose and the handlebar mustache were a disguise. A witness would concentrate on features like that. I’m surprised that Bernie, here, gave us as good a description as he did.”
“Cut him loose?” Lance asked Kerry.
“Sure,” Kerry replied. “We’ll know where to find him, if we need him again.”
“Oh,” Lance said, “the NYPD found the scooter, and they’re processing it for prints.”
“They won’t find any,” Holly said. “Where did they locate the scooter?”
“Parked between two cars on East Twenty-fourth Street, off Lexington.”
“It’s the subway,” Holly said.
“What?”
“Bernie said he met Teddy at the subway entrance at Twenty-third and Lex. That’s how Teddy got there, and it’s how he went home. I’ll bet you he lives within a block or two of the Lexington Avenue subway.”
“Possibly,” Lance said. “How is that going to help us?”
