by Fritz Galt
He glanced down at the name Herb Cohen had given him. The tax attorney was named Leon Pavel. He had several telephone numbers, a sure sign of an ambulance chaser. Would the guy be in his office?
Dean took out his cell phone and tried the office number. After several rings, he was directed to voice mail.
Like most attorneys, Pavel didn’t work on weekends.
But Dean was desperate. He tried the home number.
After a single ring, a woman answered. “Gut shabbos.”
That was weird. It meant Good Sabbath in Yiddish.
“I’m Dean Wells. Herb Cohen prepares my taxes and I’m in need of an attorney. He recommended Mr. Pavel.”
“You are who?” she said with a strong Eastern European accent.
“I gave you my name. I’m Dean Wells…”
He heard an angry man in the background. “Who is it?”
The voice came on again. “Who is it?”
Dean’s patience had reached its end. “I am a client.”
The woman’s voice became muffled. “He’s Mr. Clint.”
“Tell him I’m coming,” came the distant voice.
“Mr. Pavel is coming.”
“Dank,” he said in Yiddish. Thank you.
“You’re a lovely boy.”
“Hello, who is this?” The man sounded suspicious.
Dean started all over again. He gave his full name and explained why he was in trouble with the IRS.
“You call me on Shabbos?”
“It’s urgent. I’m leaving the country tomorrow.”
“You’d better think twice before going anywhere,” Pavel warned. “That’s called tax avoidance.”
“I’m not skipping town to avoid taxes. It’s a business trip.”
“Like they will care.”
“Don’t you believe me? Is that how you treat clients?”
“Clients who are skipping town.”
Dean paused to reconsider. Was this guy trying to threaten him? “So you advise me not to leave the country.”
“That’s right, Mr. Wells. Otherwise, you’ll only add fuel to the fire.”
“There is no fire.”
“Mr. Wells,” the voice intoned. “I must advise you to take this seriously. Don’t leave the country under any circumstances.”
Dean looked up from the middle of the crowd in which he was standing. He smelled pastries.
“There might be a solution to this,” Pavel said cryptically.
That was a relief. “Go ahead.”
“I understand part of a certain Hebrew document is at large and needs returning to its proper owner.”
“Huh?” Nothing in his taxes had to do with Hebrew documents. “Say that again?”
“A certain religious text needs to be returned to its proper owner.”
Only then did Dean understand. Pavel wasn’t talking about taxes. He wanted the parchment Dean was given in Aleppo. “Whom do you work for?”
“I could be your tax attorney. But you could avoid all that and a full-blown IRS investigation.”
“What if I told you that I don’t have The Crown in my possession?”
“Then there’s no hope for your taxes.”
The phone line went dead.
Those men, whoever they worked for, sure played hardball. How did they even know he was given the codex?
He looked up at the jet trails in the sky. April was being kind with a clear blue sky and a warm spell.
But he wouldn’t stick around to watch birds return to nest or trees grow out their leaves.
He had to get away from the cabal of tax preparers and the goons in the IRS to complete his mission in Egypt. He might not deliver the Aleppo Codex pages in time, even if they were his to hand over.
A pastry display stared at him.
He had to head for the airport and leave all this behind.
Chapter 41
Dean applied increasing pressure to the accelerator as he took the Dulles Access Road straight to Washington’s international airport. But a patrol car was positioned in the median.
Dean tapped the brake lightly and held his breath. He had just called ahead to book a flight out of the country. The last thing he needed was to tangle with the police. The best he could do on short notice was to take one of the commuter flights to London.
How had it come to that?
The IRS considered him a flight risk. They wanted to place something like an electronic bracelet on him and put him under house arrest.
He could seek assistance from his employers. The CIA and State Department might offer support. He was acting for the greater good of the country, trying to prevent al-Qaeda from establishing a foothold in Palestine.
But had he gone too far?
It wasn’t just the tax flub. Men had died in Aleppo and Hebron.
Was he more of a liability than an asset? Maybe the cop was the CIA’s way of putting the brakes on him. And maybe they were right to do so.
He checked his rearview mirror. The cop had pulled out of the grass and sped after him. He hadn’t gone to blue lights, but was definitely closing in.
Maybe Dean’s license number had triggered the pursuit. Was he already on a watch list?
It seemed like everybody in government, from the IRS to the cop to him was working too hard.
He thought back to his strained conversation with Leon Pavel, the tax attorney. Had Israeli agents really infiltrated the organs of government to the point where they could have him thrown in the slammer if he didn’t get the codex pages back to Israel?
He was perfectly willing to give it back. The loose pages belonged with the rest of the codex, all in one place. Jerusalem was as good a place as any. It was true that Israel had declared him persona non grata, but with a calling card like the codex, he just might be able to return. Yet it was a Saturday and Rachel Levy wouldn’t be at the office to unlock the safe.
The only thing he could do was to leave her a message.
With one hand on the wheel and the other holding his personal cell phone, he dialed Langley. An operator put him through to Ms. Levy’s desk. As he predicted, the number rang unanswered, then transferred him to voice mail.
Rachel’s recording sounded cool and abstract. “This is Rachel Levy, Linguistics Specialist in the Language Department. I’m not able to come to the phone. Please leave a message at the tone.”
Behind him, the police car was on his bumper and flashing his headlights.
The voice mail tone indicated he could record a message.
The police siren turned on with several short bursts. He had to talk fast.
“This is Dean.” He tried to exude calm. “I have a favor to ask.”
The siren changed to a prolonged high-low vacillation.
He continued more quickly. “You know the text I brought you? Could you get it to me in Sharm el-Sheikh? I need to return it to Israel as quickly as possible. My future is at stake.”
The siren pierced the air with yelping sounds. He had to slow down and pull over.
Before he hung up the phone, he whispered into the mouthpiece, “I wish I could explain, but Middle East peace rides on this.”
His tires crunched on the gravel just off the shoulder and he came to a halt.
The squad car eased up behind him.
Dean waited and hoped. He had a Palestinian foreign minister to blackmail. Would he ever get on that flight to London?
Chapter 42
José Gomez stood at the end of his driveway on Sunday morning and checked his watch. Hart Baxter, the Inspector General of the CIA, would pull up at any minute.
The weather was gusty and overcast. Winter wasn’t going to give up without a fight. As it was off-season for hunting, they would go to one of their favorite gun shows instead.
Baxter pulled up in a black pickup that the two used for all their trips. It had a gun rack in the back.
José jumped into the passenger seat and they drove off with barely a word exchanged.
Once Ba
xter merged onto the expressway and reached full speed heading toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, José broke out with a gleeful, “The Virginians ride again!”
The two had tracked game together so often that they called themselves the Virginia Hunting Club. The club was based on simple, unquestioned principles. Members had to be good men. Good men had the right to use force. Force was the final arbiter.
Half an hour later, Baxter gunned the engine and passed a semi. He had a preoccupied look. “As you know, my job is to police the agency, eliminate the bad apples.”
José nodded. What was he getting at?
“Just tell me this. What do you think of Dean Wells?”
José relaxed. So this was about Dean.
“Would we allow him into our club?” Baxter asked.
“Why not?” Dean was a member of the CIA, a force for good in the world. He had a license to kill the biggest game of all: his fellow man. And he did. “I don’t think much of him as a person,” José said, “but theoretically he would make the perfect member.”
Baxter looked unconvinced. “Even when killing someone reflects poorly on the agency?”
“Hey, he wouldn’t make our public relations team, but he stands for truth, justice and the American way.”
“I suppose.”
“What are you getting at?”
Baxter drove into a grassy field where hundreds of pickups and SUVs were parked in neat rows. “I’m worried that he’s a renegade, doesn’t follow Company rules.”
“You’ve got to trust the guy,” José said. “He’s one of us.”
They jumped out of the cab and pulled on their camouflage caps. A stiff breeze was rushing down the Shenandoah Valley. As they walked with purpose across the grass and approached the building, José could feel his testosterone level rising.
“Driver’s licenses, please,” a stern-faced woman said at the entrance.
José was eager to comply with the law. He whipped out his wallet and showed her his driver’s license.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “That will be $5.00 each.”
José forked over a ten-spot for the two of them, took the tickets and walked in.
Once inside, they paused a moment to admire the displays that competed for their attention. For a moment, they were masters of the universe.
The smell of gun oil and the click of weapons filled the air. There was a dull hum of men and women sizing up weapons and the shuffle of feet as people moved from table to table, admiring the wares. There was even the occasional cry of a baby and the excited voice of a juvenile admiring a gun.
The variety of exhibits was as diverse as the product offerings at any Sam’s Club. There were all manner of new hardware, antiques, classics and exotics. Products ranged from ammunition to handguns to rifles to semi-automatic weapons. The items appealed to the diverse nature of the users, who were collectors, hunters, marksmen, Second Amendment advocates, gang members, gunrunners and militiamen.
In general, they could be put into two groups: the buyers and the spectators. While their intentions might differ, all who trudged through the show shared the same awe and worship of guns.
José could tell the collectors by the clothes they wore. They had real money to spend. As did he.
Although they were ostensibly there to enhance their already impressive collections, José knew that his friend had something else on his mind that he needed to discuss. He suspected it had to do with Dean.
They passed up the folding tables with coins, ribbons and badges and rows of the same pistols, rifles and bayonets. Their favorite vendors were the experts who spent weeks tracking down quality guns. Despite the size of the show, José and Baxter only dealt with a handful, a known breed they could converse with in a kind of shorthand.
“Any PS90s today?” Baxter asked their favorite vendor, referring to the Belgian-designed semi-automatic rifle developed for NATO, but with a longer barrel for sport shooters.
The vendor shook his head.
“Got my Heckler & Koch MK23?” José asked, referring to the Special Ops .45 mm semiautomatic pistol that he had ordered.
The man smiled and produced a mean-looking handgun from under the table. “Finally tracked one down.”
José reached into his wallet and paid for the gun and several cartridges in cash.
“Intimidating looking thing,” Baxter said. “Got any particular use in mind?”
José only smiled and took the wrapped-up handgun.
When they had left the table, Baxter turned to him. “Assuming Dean killed the bookshop owner, how would he get his pistol into Syria?”
“I wasn’t aware that he was armed,” José responded. “But he could have picked up some sort of pistol in Syria. The country has plenty of weapons that they ship into Lebanon and Iraq.”
“But say he had his own gun.”
“Then I suspect he brought it in under diplomatic cover.”
“Thank you.”
Baxter had a far-off look. “Remember the gun show in Moscow?”
José knew instantly what he meant. They had travelled to Russia specifically to look for rare Eurasian rifles. Off-brand models laid out on blankets in a Moscow parking lot had attracted all sorts of customers from the muscular mobster to the ascetic Chechen supplier. There, José had found a WWII-era AK automatic rifle produced before it came into official Soviet use in 1947, the year for which the gun was later named. It could hold up to forty-five rounds, rather than the final version that handled only thirty. It was a real find for him and one of his prize possessions.
“Moscow was like the Wild West,” José said, nodding. The open-air, unmonitored exchange of weapons in Russia’s capital was a contrast to American gun shows. But in both places, the code of gun buyers prevailed and there was an air of reverence punctuated by the occasional gasp of delight.
After that particular show, José had moved away from historic pieces. He had already acquired hand-made weapons from the Afghan-Pakistan border and locally produced infantry rifles of the Burmese Army.
“I’m looking for futuristic designs today,” he said. “Something innovative.”
Most recently he had focused on the rarified world of the ultra modern. Not one-of-a-kind pieces, but rather the prototypes of guns such as those with laser guided bullets that could turn corners. He wanted to see the latest that manufacturers were developing.
On a recent trip to Scandinavia, the two had toured a Swedish rifle boring plant. The machinery was computerized for high precision and custom orders. Several manufacturers used the facility to create products, but designers also ran their latest ideas through the process, creating actual models they could test and refine. With all the new materials such as polymers and titanium, the future of gun making seemed unlimited.
José fingered a Singapore-built SAR 21 “bullpup” assault rifle. The action and magazine were positioned behind the trigger to shorten the length of the rifle. Baxter was drawn to a high-tech Corner Shot pistol with a hinged frame and video screen that could see around corners. The two became engrossed in their discoveries for nearly an hour and wandered in different directions.
They finally met up in the middle of the warehouse at a coffee bar. José felt serene and satisfied, but Baxter looked transported.
“Something catch your eye?” José asked.
Baxter slowly wagged his head. “I think I’m in love. It’s a rapid-fire, self-loading, pistol-grip rifle that you can break down to fit into a woman’s purse in under two minutes.”
“Just watch who you date.”
Baxter gave him a cautionary stare. “I’d date any woman who had one of those babies.”
José glanced at the female customers. In general, he didn’t go for the hunting type. “I prefer women as the hunted, not the hunter.”
Baxter seemed indifferent. “I like a woman who can defend herself.”
“Against you?”
Baxter gave a sly smile. “I’m packing the ultimate weapon.”
It was finally time for Baxter to get to the real reason for their meeting.
Baxter looked at him directly. “I want to resolve the issue with Dean Wells,” he said. “Why don’t you and I agree not to let him become a wedge between us.”
“Yeah. I don’t want any hard feelings.”
“You know that presumption of innocence doesn’t apply when it involves security violations. We can’t afford due process.”
José was aware that their boss, the Director of the CIA, had the discretion to fire any CIA employee in the interest of national security.
“So how about this,” Baxter said. “I’ll continue to investigate Dean for the murders, but I won’t press charges until the end of the week. That gives him a week to exonerate himself.”
José thought it over. As far as exoneration went, that didn’t matter much, as long as Dean had adequate time to accomplish everything he needed to do. Could Dean get to Egypt and entrap the Palestinian in that short amount of time? Knowing Dean, he could. “And what happens after a week?”
“We take him into custody.”
That seemed fair enough. “As long as we eventually enforce the law.”
“So do we have a deal?”
José reached over and shook his friend’s hand. “One week, then he’s all yours.”
“Ready for the firing range?” Baxter said.
“What do you have in mind? Your purse rifle?”
“Don’t call it that.”
The two eased off their stools and headed for the back door where they would test out the latest love of Baxter’s life.
Chapter 43
Carla drove Rachel to Langley at the start of the new week. It was a sign of progress that her new housemate didn’t ask to be escorted all the way to her lab.
A quiet Sunday at Carla’s house had proven therapeutic for Rachel. She was becoming bolder and less fearful. Despite the nasty weather, she had gone for a mid-day jog on the bike trail.
The afternoon and evening had passed uneventfully, with the highlight being tea and pastries at Natalia’s on Broad. There they had cleared the air about Dean. Rachel had assured her to her satisfaction that she wasn’t trying to defend or implicate him. Rachel insisted she had absolutely no feelings for him. It made the chocolate mousse taste so much better.
