The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  Together, they followed the police down the blackened staircase. The building’s sprinkler system had just shut off, leaving puddles of water on the office floor. The power was still on, and the last of the mob had scattered and were running from the building.

  The acrid scent of water on smoldering ashes permeated the air.

  Gomez was struggling against the restraint. “This is an outrage!”

  “You are an outrage,” Dean said to his former boss about to be thrown into prison for life.

  The police officer was about to lead Gomez away, but Carla Martino blocked their path. She was much shorter than Gomez, but confronted him anyway with a finger to his chest.

  “Why didn’t you trust the peace process?” she said with dispassionate, professional curiosity.

  Dean had to check if she was carrying a clipboard and had resumed her psychologist’s role.

  “Why did you find it necessary to shoot your way to peace? Didn’t you trust your own organization? Didn’t you trust your own man?” She gestured at Dean. “What is it about this part of the world that throws all reason out the window?”

  Gomez seemed taken aback by the verbal assault.

  “Have you developed some sort of phobia about the Middle East?”

  Gomez shook his head.

  “I wonder,” she went on. “Maybe you don’t trust your own experts in the region because you think there’s something inherently wrong with someone who is immersed in this part of the world.”

  “It’s them,” he finally fired back. “These people are primitive. They’re stuck in their own Middle Ages. They use barbaric methods. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Religious courts. Stoning people to death. They’re not civilized.”

  “And what was wrong with a peace agreement?”

  “They don’t live by laws or principles. They don’t operate like the rest of us.”

  Carla shook her head. “What ever gave you that impression?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Gomez said. “They don’t understand reason.”

  “I think that’s your problem, buddy,” she said, and relinquished the floor to the Israeli police. “Book him.”

  The police officer looked sympathetically at Dean. “I thought our part of the world was screwed up. You should look at yourselves.” And he led Gomez away to a cell.

  Dean was filled with admiration for Carla. Boy, had she nailed Gomez.

  Up ahead of them, the police captain led Dean’s look-alike into an interrogation room and pushed him into a chair. He attached the handcuffs to the chair as an extra precaution.

  The captain had some questions to ask, but Carla beat him to it.

  She strode over to the imposter and slapped him across the face.

  It must have hurt her hand as much as it hurt him.

  “You adulterer,” she said, for want of a better word. “You took advantage of me.”

  Then she turned to Dean.

  “And as for you?” She slapped him across the face as well, leaving a painful bruise on his cheekbone. “You’re even worse!”

  “What did I do?” Dean said.

  “You knew I was sleeping with that man!”

  “How would I know?” he said meekly. “This is embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing? How’s this for embarrassing?” She looked ready to strike him again, but clutched her hand as if she had broken a bone in it.

  She stormed out of the room.

  Through the thick pane of glass in the door, Dean saw Ari offer her a tissue.

  At last, Dean was alone with the man who was his doppelganger, and sat down beside him. A million questions raced through his mind.

  “Colin? Is that you?”

  It felt like he was communicating across a long expanse of time.

  Eyes averted, the man nodded.

  Dean was looking at his long-lost twin brother.

  “How did you survive the car crash?”

  The man looked up. “What car crash?”

  “New Jersey. Twenty years ago.”

  The guy smiled. “There was no car crash. That was a faked death. I never was in that car.”

  That explained a lot. It brought back memories of Dean’s youth. His twin always had an easy smile. It was one of the endearing features he had missed most after his brother’s “death.” What else had he missed in his brother’s life? “Married?”

  His brother smiled ruefully. “Not even close.”

  Dean had long felt the same way. Marriage in such a double life would be impossible to pull off. “What have you been doing all these years?”

  “Been at this job longer than you have.”

  Dean sized his brother up. He was ruggedly built, healthy looking, more morose than when they had last seen each other. “You’re not with the Agency. I doubt we’ve been singing from the same songbook.”

  “Didn’t you hear? Our agencies merged.”

  “What’s your agency?” Dean asked.

  “Defense Intelligence.”

  Of course. That explained a lot. Since 9/11, firewalls between agencies had been torn down. The Directorate of Operations was renamed the National Clandestine Service on October 13, 2005, and it absorbed the human intelligence resources of other intelligence agencies.

  But why had his brother disappeared for two decades? “If we’re working for the same government, why all the deception?”

  “At DIA it’s standard practice to scrub your past.”

  Dean could see that. It made sense in some arms of the clandestine service. “So why are you on this case?”

  “For the same reason you are.”

  “But we’ve been working at cross-purposes,” Dean said.

  “Not exactly. I’ve used you to accomplish my objectives.”

  “Wait a second,” Dean said. “You’ve been undermining me all along?”

  “And feeding your cat. You don’t give her half the care and attention she needs.” He was looking increasingly relaxed, just how Dean remembered him.

  “What else have you been doing behind my back?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Dean felt his cheekbone. He knew.

  “What I’d like to know,” Dean said, “is why you had to kill Omar.”

  “We have to send a strong message. If you deal with al-Qaeda, you die.”

  “But if we have means of coercion,” Dean said, “we should use them.”

  His brother shot him a look. “Is that what you were up to? Coercing him?”

  Dean nodded.

  “Makes sense. I thought you were a traitor.”

  Dean reflected on José Gomez’s role in the past few weeks. Gomez had managed to turn one brother against the other for his own purposes.

  “Now you’re up for murder,” Dean said.

  “I know. I’ll pay the price.”

  “Maybe not.” An idea was forming in Dean’s mind. “What if…”

  Several minutes later, after an intense negotiation between the twin brothers, the captain returned. He brought Ari and Carla, who was arguing with Greg Ferguson about secretly replacing Gomez’s bullets with blanks and other underhanded tactics.

  One question remained. What were the police going to do with Colin, Dean’s twin?

  “I have something to confess,” Dean said right off the bat.

  Ari turned to him with surprise.

  “My brother didn’t kill Omar al-Farak. I set the whole thing up. Who he actually killed was Rashid al-Qasimi, an al-Qaeda financier from Dubai who wanted to blow up the Shrine of the Book. Omar is alive and well and has gone underground.”

  Finally, Ari put the pieces together. “Then this is good news. Your brother assassinated a terrorist.”

  “…here on Israeli soil,” the captain reminded him. “We can’t let this crime go unpunished. Our people will not allow it.”

  Ari whirled around to confront him. “Who cares what our people think? We are much safer due to this man’s actions.” He looked at Dean’s brother
with newfound respect.

  “But our press will assume an Israeli extremist or the Mossad did it.”

  “This is more than a PR battle.”

  The captain faced Ari squarely. “It’s your call. I could charge him as a member of the CIA for the murder of Rashid al-Qasimi, or I could let our public believe Omar al-Farak was assassinated by Israelis.”

  Ari’s look shot over to Dean. The two men had been in an identical situation just the week before over a murder in Hebron.

  Dean said slowly. “Do the right thing.”

  Ari cleared his throat and straightened his back. “Let him go. We don’t punish our heroes.”

  “The Palestinian demonstrators will never know. The world will always blame us for killing Omar.”

  A vein nearly popped out of Ari’s neck. “You’re in the police. You should know better than anyone else. Anybody is capable of cheating, theft or murder. Israelis haven’t cornered the market on virtue. It’s about time we faced up to that fact, especially if it allows us to sit down with the Palestinians and talk like adults.”

  Reluctantly, the captain pulled out a key and removed the brother’s handcuffs.

  “If you don’t mind,” Dean said, “My brother will escort Omar to America where Omar will be given a new identity.”

  Greg nodded. “The FBI can do all that.”

  Carla looked abashed. “Where will you go?”

  “My dear,” Dean told her. “I’ll take you to my villa in Cyprus.”

  “What?”

  He took her by the hand and led her out of the interrogation room.

  Epilogue

  Carla Martino sat cross-legged facing eastward in a wicker chair on the veranda of the villa and absorbed all the news that Dean had to tell her. Night was falling fast and a warm summer breeze came off the Mediterranean.

  The Jerusalem Post had run a screaming headline the morning after the riots: “Aleppo Codex Discovered in Ashes.”

  Omar al-Farak, the late and dearly beloved Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority had been on his way to the Shrine of the Book to deliver long-lost pages of the ancient Hebrew text. His limousine was attacked by terrorists as it approached the shrine, killing all inside the car and two bystanders on the street.

  Collecting evidence after the incident, police discovered a black portfolio that contained five parchment pages of the codex. Apparently, it had been blown clear of the wreckage and survived.

  The President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem later told reporters, “It was only one more chapter in the miraculous story of the codex that has survived centuries of violence. It truly is a blessed document.”

  Plans were afoot to commemorate Omar’s final, selfless act by creating a special repository for the codex with his name, the Omar al-Farak Library. The Prime Minister of Israel released a statement that the library would be located at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the heart of the long-disputed Sinai Desert. He named newly married Mrs. Rachel Johnson, a relatively unknown linguist, to be curator of the library.

  Meanwhile, Dean had an accounting mess to clean up. He didn’t want to return to the U.S. with a warrant out for his arrest.

  After a conversation with his brother Colin, he learned that Colin, who had been the executor of their parents’ estate before Colin “died” in the automobile accident, had recently discovered an additional two million dollars in their parents’ accounts, half of which legally belonged to Dean. However, Colin had long since established his new identity. How could he get Dean his half of the inheritance without tipping Dean off that he was still alive?

  Colin had laundered the money through a Yemeni bank to preserve his anonymity. Then, impersonating Dean, Colin directed Herb Cohen to establish a savings account in Dean’s name, into which he deposited Dean’s half of the inheritance.

  Herb Cohen mistakenly assumed that the money was taxable and withdrew $134,000 to pay the IRS as inheritance tax. At tax preparation time, he realized that the money had been given to Dean after inheritance tax had been paid and that the IRS was obligated to return the $134,000 to Dean. So Herb Cohen and Dean filed for the refund.

  However, when Cohen learned through AIPAC contacts that Dean had missing pages of the Aleppo Codex, the account served as a convenient way to pressure Dean to turn the pages over to Israel. He tipped off the IRS, who launched an immediate probe into the suspicious nature of the million-dollar deposit from Yemen.

  “With the codex returned to Israel,” Dean explained to Carla, “Herb Cohen called the IRS yesterday and informed them that the money was simply my inheritance and that it was legally mine to keep. Based on that, the IRS dropped the investigation.”

  Profiled in the deepening twilight, Carla seemed to be calculating the implications. “So you’re a millionaire.”

  He poured ouzo into a small tumbler and handed it to her.

  “How about we go home and claim the money?” he suggested. He didn’t register any objection on her part.

  “Home?” she said.

  “How about we move into your place?” he suggested.

  That brought an ear-to-ear grin. “I hope you don’t mind Little League and farmers’ markets.”

  “Not at all,” he assured her. “In fact, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

  “A little respite from the dangerous, yet cosmopolitan life of a spy?”

  He looked out at the waves pushing against the shore. Their dark outlines were barely visible in the diminishing shadows cast by the sun. Across the water, a crescent moon had begun to dominate the horizon.

  “How about a short break from all this?” she suggested.

  He smiled. “How about forever?”

  Book Two

  China Gate

  Chapter 1

  Sean Cooper sat hunched over his office computer, his right index finger poised over his mouse. He had entered the amount of $50,000,000.00 and placed the mouse pointer on a button labeled “Transmit.” Should he transfer the money from China? It was a huge amount that would be easy to spot by American law enforcement agencies.

  He lifted his handsome face and glanced out his high-rise window. The streets of Beijing were purged of buses, cars and bicycles by the highly contagious and deadly SARS virus. Only the occasional pedestrian hurried past, features obscured by a surgical mask. A sweet breeze swayed trees with their buds and young blossoms, belying the dangerous germs that it bore.

  Behind him, his department was eerily empty, cleared of his smoothly efficient Chinese and American staff. His young family waited in the lobby twelve floors below. Their bags were loaded in a taxi, which stood ready to take them to the international airport.

  He checked his pocket for his airplane tickets. By noon, he and his wife Kate and two small children would be out of the disease-ravaged country and on their way to San Francisco.

  Everyone, from the President of the United States, to his company’s head honchos, to his loving family, depended on him to make the final transfer into the president’s bank account in the Cayman Islands.

  But it was a decision he knew he would regret for the rest of his life.

  He closed his eyes and pressed his index finger down. The mouse clicked, and fifty million dollars transferred instantly from China to a secret account halfway around the world. It was an illegal act that he prayed nobody would ever discover…

  Eight months later, the following article appeared in the Washington Post, touching off both the Chinagate investigation and the search for Sean Cooper.

  Prosecutor Probes President in Chinagate Kickbacks

  “Missing Person” Key Witness in Case

  Under mounting pressure from Congress, President Bernard White appointed attorney Stanley Polk as Special Prosecutor to investigate the brewing Chinagate controversy that may cost him his office.

  The story first broke last autumn when reports surfaced of the president receiving a large sum of money in his offshore bank account. This coincided with a U.S. Trade Representa
tive-brokered deal with China. In the deal, Washington voted in favor of granting China World Trade Organization (WTO) status, raising the possibility that the mysterious funds were a kickback to the president from the Chinese.

  According to a member of Stanley Polk’s team, a key witness named Sean Cooper, transferred funds from China into the president’s personal offshore bank account.

  “Unfortunately for the special prosecutor, Sean Cooper is missing and unable to provide the testimony that is most crucial to the case,” the source said. “We will be looking into cover-up attempts by the president, including efforts by the White House to prevent Sean Cooper from testifying.”

  Cooper would have to be living on the moon not to be aware of the controversy swirling around him. Many seeking him at the present time might pose a serious threat to h is life.

  Which raises the question: Is Sean Cooper still alive? And if so, does he know that he can single-handedly clear or sink the president?

  By mid-winter, Sean Cooper’ family was deceased, his job was a distant memory and he was vilified in the press by the White House. He was all alone, possibly abroad, and running scared, somewhere in the vast, unruly sea of humanity. Sean Cooper had become the world’s most wanted man.

  Chapter 2

  Hadi Ahmed crept through the bone-chilling cold over a pass in the Shakai Mountains in Pakistan’s Southern Waziristan region.

  He had memorized the footpath days before, and his feet, clad in grass boots, landed squarely with each step.

  He kept an eye out for lit cigarette tips, flashes of polished metal reflecting in the starlight, movement in the shadows of the mountains.

  He listened beyond the padding of his own boots on snow and loose stones. Was there someone else out there in the icy stillness? Someone waiting to kill him before he delivered his precious news?