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

by Fritz Galt

  It was a perfect place to get lost, and that’s why Ferrar was there.

  After leaving the consulate, he had headed south through the organized streets of the Cantonment, then backtracked and loitered on a side street to see if he had aroused the suspicion of the marine guard. Ten minutes after he had left the guard booth, he watched a white consulate van loaded with marines in full battle gear veering out of the compound and heading south, the direction that he had initially taken. That was all he needed to know.

  His Most Wanted poster must have made the rounds already, and the marine guards were after him.

  He snaked his way eastward down an alley, and killed time walking past bakeries that were garage stall-sized enclosures with a round hole dug in the concrete floor. Each bakery seemed to employ half a dozen men squatting around the hole.

  One guy had a pile of hot fresh-baked flat bread, somewhat like pita, in front of him. Another two guys were rolling out globs of dough the size of a peach, and other guys were taking the flat, oval loaves and slapping them onto the smooth clay sides of the oven. The hair on their arms was singed from the hot fire at the bottom.

  Word began spreading down the street from man to man. Curious, several bakers left their posts and headed up the street into the posh part of town.

  His stomach growling, Ferrar quickly bought several warm pieces of bread and stuffed them in his mouth as he followed the crowd. They were heading in the general direction of the consulate, but stopped at a stone wall. It was the Pakistan Army’s main base in Peshawar.

  He shielded his eyes in the glare of halogen lights that bathed the main gate to the base. Troops were milling around with great excitement.

  Then from within the wall, engines rumbled closer.

  He heard the crunch of large tires rolling forward, and hurried up to the floodlit area to watch.

  Two olive-green trucks flying the green and white Pakistani flag pulled out of the base. Standing atop a container on the first truck, a sturdy figure barked out orders in clear and distinct Urdu.

  Then Ferrar caught a flash of blond hair.

  He tried to get a better look at the man confidently directing the convoy.

  As the trucks lurched toward him, several military police pushed him back, until he was pressed up against a house. Unmarked cars accompanied the trucks, the beefy men inside bearing all the hallmarks of Pakistan’s dreaded intelligence service, the Taliban-friendly ISI.

  Just as he passed Ferrar’s position, the man on the truck bent down to the driver on the right-hand side and issued an order in English: “Take these bombs to Karachi with all deliberate speed.”

  Ferrar tried to free himself from the crowd to get a better look.

  As the truck headed away, the man swiveled back his way and pointed a cautionary finger toward the throng.

  He was in clear view now. It was Tray Bolton.

  More guards swarmed against the bystanders, and Ferrar felt himself backpedaling once again.

  “So, you aren’t as dead as people think,” Ferrar muttered. What the hell was Bolton up to?

  He examined the trucks as they passed from view. Both carried one steel container, the kind of standard-sized shipping box used to transport goods by air, ship and rail.

  The hubbub at the base entrance settled into a mildly excited buzz, and then quieted down altogether within minutes, as if nothing had happened.

  But Ferrar knew differently. Something big had just gone down.

  Chapter 6

  Morning broke slowly over the bleak, wintry streets of Georgetown.

  Students walked briskly up Lester Friedman’s cobblestone lane toward class at Georgetown University. Lester’s foster son never had the privilege of attending the university as Lester had so dearly hoped. Nor had his foster son ever gotten to compete with the graduates for the great job opportunities in the workplace.

  Instead Tray Bolton had chosen a far nobler path, working abroad to defend a country he would never live to enjoy. The lack of justice in life was infuriating.

  And it seemed to be eating away at Becky, too.

  Rebecca Friedman also had made many sacrifices in her life, as she had made abundantly clear to him on many occasions. Intentionally kept in the dark as a submarine captain’s wife, then kept out of closed-door sessions as the spouse of a Washington insider, she had suffered through her share of tensions and fears. But government service had been his life’s calling, and, recognizing that, she had done everything in her power to advance his career.

  But her inconsolable weeping in the darkened living room stemmed from her ultimate frustration—her inability to control her own life.

  Lester wiped his sweating palms against his freshly pressed business suit. “My car will pick me up any minute now. Will you be able to manage alone today?”

  “I’m having some of the wives over to help me out,” she whimpered, drying her tears.

  “That’s smart.”

  “I just can’t stop thinking about that boy,” she admitted.

  “What boy? Tray?”

  “No. Not him. You know who I’m talking about. I hope you track him down and give him the death sentence. You know it’s a federal offense to kill a federal employee.”

  “Who’ve you been listening to?”

  “I think about these things.”

  He rolled his eyes and looked impatiently out the window.

  “You remember how he took that girl away from Tray?” she resumed.

  “I do, dear.”

  “She was a good soul. Straight as an arrow. She even joined the Coast Guard after college. He proposed to her and everything.”

  “Who? Tray?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “When?”

  “Senior year of college on the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. He even had a ring for her.”

  “You’re kidding. Tray never told me that.”

  “That’s because of what she told him,” she said sourly.

  “Well, what did she say?”

  “Something like, ‘I can’t respect you.’”

  There was silence for a long time while Lester absorbed the new information about his own son.

  At last he said, “And that’s when the phone calls resumed. We started hearing from his old drug connections.”

  “And he started borrowing from us again,” she added.

  “Stealing.”

  “Enough of this. I don’t want to think about it. It’s always been a battle for Tray. We could only be there for him. We couldn’t give him his self-respect. He had to earn it for himself. But when that George fellow stole her, it sent Tray over the edge.”

  “But he finally straightened himself out,” he countered. “He went to fight for our country.”

  He began to view his son’s courage with renewed admiration.

  “George Ferrar took away our son’s girl,” she said. “He stole Tray’s pride. And now he took our son’s life.” Once again, she dissolved into tears.

  “Our foster son,” he reminded her.

  “Nevertheless, he was our only child,” she shot back defensively.

  “For only three years,” he said.

  He had to be more patient. They had had that conversation many times before.

  “Stop it. We got him from that dreadful foster family,” she said reflectively.

  “He was already fourteen years old. He was a fully formed man. He was practically living in a juvenile detention center.”

  “We managed to turn him around,” she said with pride. “He’s been highly decorated.”

  “We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for years now.”

  She hesitated, breaking the cadence of their timeworn argument. When she spoke again, she was once again on the offensive. “Lester. He was our son, and you won’t let that boy get away with this.”

  “You know I won’t, dear,” he conceded.

  His cell phone rang. It was one of his bodyguards calling to say that they were just approaching th
e house. The call was a precursor to a carefully orchestrated sequence of events in which a bodyguard would escort him from his private residence into the official, bulletproof limousine.

  “Today they want me on Capitol Hill,” he said.

  Still in her bathrobe, she approached him out of the shadows with long, slow strides. Draping both arms around his neck, she stared soberly into his eyes.

  “I know I can count on you to do the right thing,” she said.

  “There he is. Ferrar!”

  The gruff shout carried through the heavily scented night air of Peshawar.

  Ferrar glanced over his shoulder. Two marines were racing toward him down the alley from which he had just emerged after having watched the Pakistani Army trucks.

  Young kids. The youngsters who protected his nation’s diplomatic facilities abroad were strong and fast, but still wet behind the ears.

  Sure they had found him, which was worthy detective work, but they needn’t have shouted out his name and alerted him.

  He lowered his head and scrambled briskly into the nearest cluster of pedestrians, where he scooted among the chapal sandals.

  Unfortunately, he was back in the Cantonment, where the wide streets and walled enclosures provided little cover. Nighttime and the crowd of people were his only friends for the moment.

  He sprinted ahead of the crowd and came to a major crossroad.

  Ahead, he saw two pairs of military boots passing quickly before the headlights of oncoming traffic. More marines were converging from in front.

  Okay, so they thought they had him cornered.

  He dodged sideways down the cross street, but the cover was meager—a lone burro pulling a cart, a small truck, a horse-drawn, two-wheeled tonga bearing a pair of lovers.

  Pounding footfalls kept pace behind him.

  A shot rang out.

  Was it a warning, or was it aimed at him? He didn’t have time to find out.

  A straight-backed young man in a white skullcap was leading an ill-treated, malnourished nag with open sores on her legs in his direction. That would have to do.

  Rushing up to the poor creature, he grabbed the reins, turned the beast in the opposite direction and jumped on her bare back. The young man protested and reached for the reins.

  Ferrar kicked the horse in the flanks, and before the young man could grab her, the mount accelerated quickly, even eagerly, leaving her owner immobile in the middle of the street.

  More shots rang out. The mare bucked under Ferrar, and he jabbed her even harder with his heels, bending low to keep his balance. In the end, the shots helped him. The poor pony’s stride was that of a veritable quarter horse and her hooves pounded down a good quarter mile of narrow city streets before she came limping to a halt.

  By then, Ferrar was exhausted and bruised and sore from the lack of a saddle. He was far enough away from his pursuers and the Cantonment area that he could jump down.

  He slapped the horse on her rear flank.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Now find yourself a new master.”

  He headed off in another direction. He was just half a block from his hotel.

  By the time he entered his room, locked the door behind him and strode over to the open window that was illuminated by storefronts and vendors below, he could see a handful of exhausted marines giving up the chase.

  He lowered himself into the thick Afghan rug and closed his eyes.

  While the marines were busy tracking him down, Tray Bolton was transporting bombs to the port city of Karachi.

  As soon as he could, Ferrar would also head south. But first, he had to visit a very special place.

  Joint hearings of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were rare, and as a rule were held in camera, behind closed doors. That day was no exception.

  Briefing Congress had become a bi-weekly exercise for CIA Director Lester Friedman. And Congress was due another briefing after the hiatus in which he attended his foster son’s memorial service and burial in absentia with honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

  Typically, the hearings were comprised of Lester keeping Capitol Hill up-to-date on events in Afghanistan and other terrorist battlegrounds around the world.

  Congressman Ralph W. Connors of Oklahoma, the committee co-chairman who was late for everything, still had not arrived. So, his Senatorial counterpart reached for the gavel and pounded it to open the hearing.

  “The committee will come to order. The chair will now call Director Friedman.”

  As the doors clicked shut in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and Capitol Hill police assumed their positions just outside, Lester felt a tide of warmth coming his way. The Senators and Congressmen began to individually express their sympathy to him across the two-tiered dais.

  He nodded in gratitude, but said nothing. He was beyond the initial shock, then the bewilderment, and finally grief. He was well on his way toward seeking retribution.

  Finally, the room turned to a junior congressman from New Jersey. “I can only barely contain my outrage at the events that led to your son’s death,” the young congressman said. “It was more than a major breach of national security to fail at such a valuable mission and to lose so many of our own federal officers. I see this as nothing short of a crime against humanity.”

  Lester had to smile. Okay, but there was no need to overstate the case.

  “I assure you,” he finally said, switching on his microphone. “This occurrence will not have long-term consequences. We will find bin Laden and his crones. And as far as the loss of my son’s life, I can only say that I am proud that it was my own family’s blood that was spilled on the frontlines of this war against terrorism.”

  Suddenly, shouting erupted from the corridor and the elected officials turned away from him as everyone listened to the jostling behind the door.

  The legislators looked wildly at each other. Was this another terrorist attack?

  At last the tension was broken when the door opened wide and an unkempt Congressman Connors stumbled into the room. As co-chairman of the joint hearing, he immediately took his place behind one of the two the central microphones.

  Composing himself, he turned on the mike and addressed Lester and the rest of the CIA staff seated beside him.

  “I apologize for my late arrival,” he said. “Now on to the business at hand. I understand that you are prepared to reveal to us the culprit behind this atrocity at Tora Bora.”

  Lester gathered his papers and cleared his throat. Then without referring to his notes, he proceeded to recount the entire failed assault on the Tora Bora cave.

  “And who was this sixth member of the unit that apparently killed his countrymen and sabotaged the mission?” Connors demanded.

  “His name is George Ferrar, sir.”

  “Ferrar?” Connors said, incredulous. “I know him. Hell, I’ve had him over for dinner on numerous occasions.”

  “Well,” Lester said, somewhat taken aback with the revelation. “Then you’ve been taken in by a con artist.”

  “In no way, shape, or form,” Connors retorted. “He saved my family’s life.”

  Again, Lester had to pause to absorb the information. “If you’ll pardon my putting it this way, Mr. Congressman. At this very moment, Ferrar is out to destroy life as we know it.”

  Connors thumped his desk. “I’m here to tell you, he’s a patriot through and through. If you only knew some of the things he did for me.”

  Lester frowned. He was unprepared for this broadside attack. He turned off his microphone, leaned toward his chief aide, a young egghead named Charles White, and whispered, “Get me the poop on Ferrar’s relations with Connors and his family.”

  “Right away, sir,” the aide said, and rose to leave the room.

  Lester switched his microphone back on. “My good friend, we’ll let our differences of opinion rest for now. I’ll just let the evidence speak for itself.” He reached for the reel-to-reel audio tape player sitting on the table in front of
him and switched it on.

  As the tape slithered through the machine, the room held still with mystified anticipation.

  They heard the voices of Bolton and Stevens shouting over the radio. Bolton then whispered distinctly, “George Ferrar has trapped all of us in this chamber…then he started firing…we’re all dead.” This was followed by gunshots and Bolton’s anguished scream. It was not only the scream of a man in agony, but of a soul facing his end. Ultimately, it was a cry of rage.

  By the time Lester clicked the tape off, the chamber was filled with irate voices and cries of condemnation toward the traitor, George Ferrar.

  The uproar was finally broken by Congressman Connors confiscating the gavel and pounding it against his desk.

  “We will take a short, fifteen-minute recess,” he announced, his face pale.

  Chapter 7

  The CIA listening post in Peshawar, Pakistan, was treated by the Agency no differently than any other listening post around the world.

  As George Ferrar stood in early morning shadows across the street from the small, vine-covered bungalow on Artillery Road, the lights turn off inside. Moments later, two Pakistani men emerged and locked the door behind them.

  Listening posts were inconspicuous by nature and didn’t draw attention to themselves. Consequently, they were often very poorly guarded.

  Ferrar had been to that particular listening post on one previous occasion. He was familiar with the entry procedure and remembered the general layout without having to turn on lights.

  Since he had waited up watching the building since midnight, he was sure that no other people were still inside. He moved swiftly and with precision. He could enter through a side window by jimmying the frame open.

  Indeed, a crowbar that he had borrowed from a mechanic’s shop worked nicely. Within seconds, he was standing inside, with the window shut and locked behind him.

  Since so many different people entered and left the house, the alarm key should still be in the alarm box. If not, he was in trouble.