by Fritz Galt
When Carla entered her office, she was buoyed by the sense of a mission accomplished. She didn’t have a paranoid young woman on her hands all day.
She was curious about the police investigation of the crime scene. What evidence had the Syrian and Israeli police found?
Not five minutes into her day, her boss Ron McAdam entered her office with a relieved smile.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Pollen count down?”
“I just got off the phone with the inspector general. Baxter informed me that Dean is off the hook in a week.”
“What does that mean? Guilty until Friday?”
Ron shook his head. “No. Baxter told me that his office would drop the investigation of Dean in one week if no new evidence arose to implicate him in the deaths overseas. Because I filed the referral, he wanted to assure me not to worry. It looks like Dean is totally in the clear.”
“But Barry Wiseman is having the Syrians and Mossad check for evidence at the crime scenes. I’m waiting to hear back from him.”
Ron slapped some folders on her desk. “New patients,” he said. “Time to go back to your day job. Baxter was clear: we should not spend any more time on the case.”
Carla twisted her lips. Maybe something had come up over the weekend. Whatever it was must have exonerated Dean.
She glanced at the names of the employees that she would counsel that morning. All were new patients. It would be a demanding day.
Ron waved good-bye, but she was too busy sifting through her in-box to wave back. In addition to looking over the new patients, there were inter-departmental memos, the results of surveys she was conducting and her copy of the Washington Post.
She gave the front page a quick glance. The latest issue on the Hill related to the economy, which didn’t interest her. She was faintly aware of the hypocrisy of not caring. Even though her job depended on a healthy economy, she couldn’t obsess over it.
Then a headline jumped off the page. “IRS Blows Cover of U.S. Spy in Tax Fraud Case.”
The article stated with the dry air of journalistic impartiality that the IRS had jeopardized national security by outing Dean Wells as a CIA employee in the course of accusing him of tax fraud.
Tax fraud? That didn’t sound right.
The article went on to state that Mr. Wells had claimed a $134,000 tax refund.
Apparently the size of the sum had prompted the IRS to go public and leak his name.
Reading further, she learned why Dean had claimed the refund. He had received a deposit from a foreign source amounting to $1,000,000, and tax had been automatically deducted. Claiming the refund had triggered the IRS audit and an investigation into his foreign ties.
The article made it clear that employees of the Central Intelligence Agency had to claim all foreign-earned income. Dean had failed to do so.
So this was how the CIA got rid of its employees, Carla thought. Why didn’t Baxter have the balls to come out and say it? And why did Dean have to face jail time for it?
The more she read, the worse the story became. According to a highly placed source within the IRS, Mr. Wells had received the payment from a Yemeni bank. The IRS was looking into the possibility of his being a double agent and leaking information to terrorist organizations.
She had to admit that it didn’t look good.
If the charges were true, he was neck deep in Yemeni money. Her amnesia defense of him no longer held. The newspaper article changed all that.
Dean was a wanted man, probably still at large.
For the first time, she began to worry about his safety. Something told her he was being unfairly targeted. And she felt it was only fair to tell him that the IRS was after him.
Had he made it to the airport in time?
What had Dean told her? That he would be in Sharm el-Sheikh by Monday. He must already be there.
How could she warn him? She didn’t have his phone number. José Gomez would know.
She picked up the phone and asked for the Near East and North Africa Bureau. “José Gomez, please.”
By the time José picked up the phone, she had decided to strike a conversational tone.
“Hello, José. Is Dean Wells there?”
“You asked to speak to me.”
So much for her deception. “Yes. I’m calling you to ask if Dean is planning to come in to the office today.”
“I believe he would be in Egypt by now.”
“I understand that the IG is dropping the investigation,” she said.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Baxter called Ron McAdam, who told me.”
José’s initial surprise turned to amusement and he let out a howl of laughter. “Baxter isn’t dropping the investigation. He’s merely going to withhold charges until the end of the week.”
That was different. Way different. The IG must be covering for a broader IRS investigation. She needed to track Dean down and warn him at once.
“Do you know how I can reach Dean?” she inquired.
“I have no idea. I’m sure the IG would like to know that, too.”
Carla hung up the phone confused.
How could nobody in the CIA or IRS know where to find Dean? How big could Sharm el-Sheikh be?
She broke out her world atlas. The index came in handy. Sharm el-Sheikh turned out to be a town of 35,000 at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. That was the little peninsula between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
The more she thought about Dean stranded in that tiny piece of desert, the more concerned she became for his well-being. If he didn’t know that the IRS had spilled his name and put out a warrant for his arrest, he might come home only to be thrown in jail again.
And that, she couldn’t bear.
How hard would it be to fly to Sharm el-Sheikh, find him and warn him?
Without further reflection, she dialed the travel office. A moment later, she was connected with an efficient-sounding travel assistant who identified herself as Mary.
“I need a visa for Egypt,” Carla said, “and a ticket for Sharm el-Sheikh.”
“And when are you departing?”
“Tonight.”
Chapter 44
Barry Wiseman entered the office of the inspector general exhausted. Weekends weren’t easy for him. He preferred the protective isolation of Langley to the mean streets of Washington. The District of Columbia was the setting for an endless cat-and-mouse game of strange people stalking individuals of influence and being stalked in turn.
The scuttlebutt at the synagogue was that the Internal Revenue Service was after Dean Wells for big time tax fraud. Barry had been up since the wee hours of the morning monitoring the fast-developing story.
His boss Hart Baxter was on the phone describing a tiny rifle he had just purchased.
When the conversation ended, Baxter turned to Barry. “Did the police find Dean yet?”
Barry shook his head. “I’m afraid he may have slipped through our fingers and skipped town.”
“How do you know?”
“The FBI raided his townhouse in McLean, and he was gone.”
“So where is he?”
“Don’t know for sure. The FBI found his name on police records in Fairfax County.”
“Police records?”
“He was heading to the airport late Saturday morning when he was cited for speeding. Apparently his name wasn’t on the watch list yet. So the FBI checked the airlines and found his name on the manifest of a flight bound for London.”
“So who leaked this to the papers?”
“The IRS,” Barry said.
“The IRS?”
“They have him on tax fraud. Apparently, he’s been paid off by the Yemenis for years. The IRS deemed him a flight risk and was about to subject him to house arrest when they discovered he was missing.”
Baxter slumped. “Good God. A CIA employee has gone completely off the reservation. This is not going to look good.”
“The tax fraud
or the counterespionage charge?”
Baxter stared at him. “The truth is, I’m skeptical. How could we have a renegade within our ranks for so long without our detecting him? It can’t be as bad as it looks. I want you to check with the IRS and see what they claim.”
Barry wrote on his notepad, “Call IRS about their claim.”
He was about to leave Baxter’s office when he remembered something else that he meant to tell his boss. “There’s more.”
“On Dean?”
Barry nodded. “It appears that news of our possessing part of the Aleppo Codex slipped out over the weekend.”
“What’s the Aleppo Codex?”
Barry thought that was strange. Hadn’t Baxter been briefed about Dean and the codex? “It’s an ancient book that belongs to Israel. And the Israeli government wants it back at once.”
“What does that have to do with Dean?”
“Dean is the one who brought us the codex. The New York Times reported that a ‘CIA employee’ obtained the codex in Syria.”
“So now we have the Israeli government involved?”
“Not just involved. They issued a demarche to our ambassador.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. The whole shebang is blowing up in our faces. What can we do about the codex?”
Barry shrugged. “Return it to Israel.”
“Fine by me. Just let’s keep a tight lid on this investigation. No contact with the press, on the record or off. If I wake up tomorrow morning and see my name in the Post, I’ll blame it on you.”
Barry wrote to himself, “Have Language Department hand over the codex.”
Chapter 45
Rachel began work refreshed from the weekend.
All was well until she entered her lab, turned on the light and checked her voice mail.
On the only message, she heard several short bursts of a police siren, then, “This is Dean. I have a favor to ask.”
sDean sounded preternaturally calm. It was the first time she had been confronted by him since he had tried to spray her body over Tyson’s Corner. And he had the nerve to ask a favor of her?
On the other hand, she had sold him out, too. She had blabbed to AIPAC about him and Aleppo and the codex. She had given a physical description to the FBI sketch artist. She had fingered him at the military brig. And Dr. Friedman had announced everything to the press.
Then the siren in the background of the voice message morphed into an undulating wail, and Dean continued. “You know the text I brought you? Could you bring it to me in Sharm el-Sheikh? I need to return it to Israel as quickly as possible. My future is at stake.”
She couldn’t go anywhere that day, much less to Egypt. That morning, she was expecting the art historian whose team was authenticating the age of the document. She might be able to mail the codex to Dean.
She had to hold the phone at a distance because the siren grew even louder, but Dean was whispering something. She winced and held the phone close to her ear.
“I wish I could explain, but Middle East peace rides on this.”
With that, her tormentor hung up the phone. It sounded like the cops were about to nab him. It would only be a matter of time before the whole episode was over and her life could return to normal.
But why did she still feel so tormented?
What if Dean wasn’t crazy? Suppose he was telling the truth. Maybe Middle East peace did depend on her getting the codex to him.
Then came a knock on her door. She put a loose strand of hair back in place and stood up. “Who’s there?”
Why was she so paranoid? Who was she expecting? The police?
“It’s me, Chester,” came an annoyed voice.
It was Chester Creech, the head of preservation and restoration at the National Archives.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, and let the man in.
He was wheezing and overweight and hauled a heavy wooden frame. She knew him by reputation only as a giant in the field of historical document conservation. She offered him a lab stool, which he gladly accepted.
She poured him coffee to put him at ease. At last the two of them faced each other over a lab table and cups of hot java that steamed the chilly air between them.
“My team performed a battery of tests over the weekend,” he began. “We used pigment spectroscopes, AMS radiocarbon dating, and amino acid racemization.”
His thoroughness impressed her. He had used a new method of amino acid dating whereby scientists measured how much amino acid in organic tissues like parchment flipped their carbon atom configuration, a natural process that occurred at a steady rate over time. It was a tricky way to date when the organism died, and thus when the parchment was created. “What did you determine?”
He wrinkled his forehead. “The specimen is more than a thousand years old.”
That settled it. The pages were from the original Aleppo Codex, which was written shortly after 920 ad.
“It’s amazing that the ink and parchment held up this long,” Chester went on. “It was clearly meant to survive the ages.”
Now that it was authenticated, she could bring it to Dean.
“Pardon my asking,” he said. “But you can’t hold onto the pages forever. Where will they go?”
She stared at the hefty box in which Chester had brought the codex pages and considered various responses. Dean wanted it immediately in Sharm el-Sheikh. But taking it as luggage seemed like a risky way to handle the pages. “What do you suggest?”
“Well, the curator of the Aleppo Codex is at the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem. I suggest you contact him.”
He was speaking strictly as a curator. But she knew there were larger legal and political implications. She would have to bring it up with her boss.
“Thanks so much for your hard work on our behalf,” she said.
He took his last swig of coffee and savored it. “You know, I’ve worked with American letters for several decades. And some date back two hundred and fifty years. That’s pushing the limits of preserving the written word. Then I’ve dealt with the Magna Carta. The one we have on display was issued in 1297. But this codex…” He shook his head. “One thousand years old! You just don’t see that every day.”
He accepted her grateful handshake and left the lab. Then she returned to her stool. America had a long and sometimes troubled history. But most of the conflicts had been resolved, sometimes by war and sometimes by political agreement. However, the history of Palestine and Zion was far longer and far more troubled. Would those ancient conflicts be resolved by war or agreement?
It gave her pride to consider that her agency was dedicated to resolving that conflict in a peaceful way. And the last words of Dean’s message gave her hope.
“Middle East peace rides on this.”
She was skeptical of anyone who made lofty claims. How could she trust him? On the other hand, she wanted to believe him. What he said was so in tune with her own aspirations for the world.
It was time to confer with her boss. She took one last look at the heavily packaged box. She had to assume nobody would steal it, but locked the door anyway and left for Sidney’s office.
Sidney Allen was buried in the pages of a Swahili newspaper. “Yes?”
All she could see was the bottom of his shoes as he rested his feet on the desk.
She wanted to explain Dean’s phone call and his need for the codex. But she decided to phrase the question in bureaucratic terms.
“An expert from Columbia University has verified that we have missing pages from the Aleppo Codex,” she said. “A curator from the National Archives has just authenticated the age of the document. So the question is, what do we do with it?”
He lowered the newspaper to his lap and refolded the pages carefully. “Where does the document properly belong?”
“The rest of the codex resides at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem,” she said.
“What a shame,” he said.
What a confusing response. “Why d
o you say that?”
“The manuscript is going nowhere.” He took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “I just heard from Barry Wiseman in our inspector general’s office. Part of the complication is that the Israelis have called our ambassador on the carpet and demanded the codex back.”
“The governments are involved?” That was news to her. “Are we going to honor their request?”
“If only it were that simple.”
Before she could respond, he dove into his file cabinet and produced a sheet of paper, which he handed her.
It took a moment to wade through all the legal jargon. But in the end, she got it. The U.S. Government used a special vetting process to determine the ownership of historic and cultural property.
“But it’s clearly not ours,” she said.
“I wouldn’t give it to anyone just yet,” Sidney said. “This is a case of cultural property rights, and it’s a thorny part of the world. First, I want you to check with our legal department.”
She left the office more conflicted than when she came.
Sure, she wanted to make certain they avoided an international incident by handling the codex properly. But Dean Wells said that Middle East peace rode on her getting the codex to him. Who was she going to listen to, a person in real time or a dusty legal process?
When she reached her lab, she locked the door and turned off all lights but the darkroom lights. Then she began to unpack the codex.
The pages were still there. She lifted the wrapping for a peek at the cause of all her troubles. The smell of accumulated dust and age filled her nostrils. It spoke of an earlier time, a time before spy agencies and religious strife.
As she peered at the text, red light fell on the words, “Isaac’s wife Rebekah became pregnant and the babies jostled each other within her. Then the Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated.’” She felt a shiver as darkness fell over the words.
