by Stuart Woods
“So we have nothing specific—a plate, a brand of RV?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Something occurs to me, though.”
“What?”
“Our man is running out of ways to kill. He’s repeated himself, now.”
“Thank God he didn’t use a bomb. The carnage at the church would have been horrific.”
“Yes, it would have.”
“Get our video people and an artist on that image right away,” Kinney said. “Call people at home and get them in here. I want to know what he looks like without the getup.”
26
Jeb Stuart Calhoun of South Carolina, newly that state’s senior senator, rose in the well of the Senate to address his colleagues.
“Mr. President,” he intoned, bowing slightly toward the senator who was presiding that day, “we have now reached a new low in the meanness of politics. The left in this country is now stooping, almost weekly, to actual political assassination!”
A dozen senators were on their feet, shouting “No!” and “Shame!” above a general uproar, as the presiding senator banged his gavel for order. Nearly ten minutes passed before quiet was restored.
“And,” Calhoun went on, “responsibility for these acts must be laid squarely at the feet of the president of the United States!”
This time the uproar was so loud and the epithets hurled so abusive, that the chair was unable to restore order. After all else had failed, he declared the Senate in adjournment, banged his gavel, and walked out of the chamber. Capitol guards were called in to protect Senator Calhoun and walk him back to his office, while other senators threw newspapers and other trash at him.
Will and Kate watched the scene together on the evening news. “I don’t believe it,” Will said. “I knew it was coming, but I still don’t believe it.”
“I think it might actually help,” Kate said.
“How?”
“Calhoun has disgraced himself by uttering those words, and that will make it more difficult for others to utter them. By the way, did you know that he and Dr. Don are first cousins?”
“No, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Their daddies are brothers. That kind of insanity must run in the family.”
“Dr. Don is recovering nicely after the injection of the British antidote,” Will said glumly. “But Kinney reports that the security camera tape from Atlanta wasn’t much help in identifying the suspect.”
“He has hairy wrists,” Kate said.
“What?”
“The suspect has thick, gray hair on his wrists, unless he was wearing a wrist wig, too. That was the only part of his body, except for his neck, that was of any help to the FBI. I read the report this afternoon.”
“His neck and his wrists?”
“He was wearing two wigs, a false mustache, maybe false ears, and heavy, horn-rimmed glasses. It’s surprising how the glasses helped conceal his face. They made it difficult to tell much about his nose, which is normally a major ID point. They could tell from the size of his neck and wrists that he wasn’t anywhere near as heavy as he had made himself look with the padding, so they put his weight at between one-fifty and one-eighty.”
“Such a big range?”
“His neck and wrists may be larger than natural from exercise, but then again, maybe not. Oh, his height is about six feet. They got that by comparing him to Dr. Don, who is also six feet. That’s if our guy wasn’t wearing lifts in his shoes, which he may well have been.”
“I don’t believe it. They got the guy on high-resolution videotape and all they can figure is his neck, his wrists, and his weight within thirty pounds?”
“And that’s just a guess. This guy is very smart, Will, and he’s not going to be easy to catch. I feel sorry for Kinney, because the whole thing rests on his shoulders, and he’s got almost nothing to work with. I think the profile he’s drawn up is good, but since he was unable to find a current or recent employee of federal law enforcement or intelligence who matches it, he’s at a dead end.”
“He’s still got this guy in Silver Spring—what’s his name?”
“Coulter. Coulter died this afternoon.”
“What?”
“He had a second stroke, died before the ambulance could get there. He was getting out of his car, with his wife’s help, when he collapsed. The two FBI agents who were watching his house called an ambulance and tried to help, but it was no use.”
“So now we have no suspects at all?”
“I’m afraid that’s the case.”
“Poor Kinney. And I had such hopes for him.”
Bob Kinney, drained of sexual energy, had kissed Nancy Kimble goodbye and put her in her car for the drive back to South Carolina. Now he was at his desk, staring straight ahead, when Agent Kerry Smith knocked and entered. “Good morning, sir.”
“Hmmm?”
“Sir, are you all right?”
“Just tired, Kerry.”
“You can’t let this get you down, Mr. Kinney. We’re going to get something on this guy soon, and when we do, he’ll be toast.”
“You know Coulter’s dead?”
“Yes, sir. I told you, remember?”
“Oh, yes.” Kinney made an effort to bring himself fully alert. “What have we failed to look at, Kerry? What have we failed to do?”
“I think we’ve looked at and done everything anyone could reasonably expect us to do, in the circumstances, sir.”
“There are two things wrong with your statement, Kerry: One, we are not expected to act reasonably, only effectively; two, nobody cares what the circumstances are, they just want results.”
“That’s unfair, sir. We have to work within the constraints of the evidence.”
“No we don’t. A prosecutor has to work within the constraints of the evidence; investigators have to be brilliant, even when there is no evidence.”
“Well, we have some, sir.”
“Oh, yes? Tell me.”
“He has hairy wrists and a strong neck.”
“That’s not going to look very good on a wanted poster. We can’t even put this guy on our list of top ten criminals, since we don’t have a name or a description. How do you organize a nationwide search for someone with hairy wrists and a strong neck?”
“Well, not nationwide, sir, just the Eastern seaboard, from Atlanta to New York. I-95, basically.”
“So we put out an APB to the state troopers along the route, telling them to look out for a suspect with hairy wrists and a strong neck, driving an RV?”
“Well, we’re not exactly sure about the RV, are we?” “All right, Kerry, put out a bulletin to all the state police units that patrol I-95. Anytime they stop an RV, they’re to pay particular attention to the wrists and neck of the driver and report any similarities to our description at once. And for Christ’s sake, don’t put this out to the press. It’ll make us sound like idiots.”
“And what’s wrong with our computer people? Why haven’t they tracked down the ACT NOW website?”
“It’s not as easy as it seems, sir. The guy keeps changing things, so that we have to contact it through different servers.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It’s as if we went to search a house for him and he’d moved to another house.”
“Oh.”
“They’re still working on it, though. We might get lucky.”
27
Kate had been at her desk in Langley for half the morning when the mail arrived. She had a personal mailbox at CIA headquarters, just as she did at the White House, but mail rarely arrived that way. This morning, though, there was one letter, and she recognized it immediately.
Kate,
How long does this have to go on? How many people have to die before you will address the issue at hand? I can help you take this guy out of circulation within a very short time, if only you will help me. I’m old, I’m ill, and I don’t want to spend my last days in this joint.
You ask, how could
a man in prison help to catch a rampaging murderer on the outside? The answer is, I once knew him, and I recognize his technique. I want to be a good citizen, but I want to die free, too. Help me help you.
Kate slid the letter and its envelope into the shredder, which, after shredding, reduced the paper to ashes. First of all, she didn’t believe Ed Rawls; second, she was still extremely angry with him because of his betrayal of the Agency. He had been her mentor for all of her early career, and a close, personal friend.
She thought about it some more, and decided that she did believe Ed. But if Ed knew this guy, it would have been through work. She might even have known him, too. Still, they had run all the records of former employees of the technical services department and had come up with nothing. She buzzed her secretary. “Please call Harold Broward in personnel and ask him to come up here soonest.”
Broward appeared within minutes. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Harold, I want you to do another personnel search—same time parameters, but I want you to expand it from technical services to the whole of operations. Some of our agents have had the training it would take to pull off these murders, and I want to isolate all possible candidates.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How long do you need?”
“We’re talking about more files, but I’ll try to have something for you by the end of the day.”
“Bring all the files to me, just like last time, and we’ll go through them together.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Broward went back to his office, and Kate called Bob Kinney.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning. It’s occurred to me that some of our operational people have the training it would take to pull off these murders, so I’m expanding our search to other areas of the Agency.”
“Excellent idea,” Kinney replied. “I’ll look forward to the results.”
“I suggest you do the same at the FBI and at the other agencies you’ve been looking at.”
“I’ll issue the instructions immediately, Ms. Rule, and I appreciate your suggesting this.”
Kate hung up and tried to think about something else.
Kinney was annoyed that he had not thought of this; it was simple enough. He called Kerry Smith in and issued the instructions.
“I’ll get on it, sir, and a man in computer operations has some information for you. Shall I send him up?”
“Right away, please.”
The man looked like no more than a boy. He had an awful haircut and a scraggly beard. The kid could not be an agent; he would never have made it through Quantico, Kinney thought. “What have you got for me? And skip the gobbledygook, because I won’t understand it.”
“Okay…” the kid began.
Kinney hated people who started sentences with “Okay…”
“Okay… this guy is very smart. He changes his setup daily, sometimes more often, which makes it harder for us to trace him back to his home server. But I’ve got it, now.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Have you ever heard of Sealand?”
“No. Sounds like a contradiction in terms.”
“It’s an island in the North Sea, off the coast of England.”
“What does this have to do with our suspect?”
“As I understand it, we don’t have a suspect, exactly, but let me finish.”
Kinney sighed.
“A few years ago a group of—I don’t know—anarchists, radicals, whatever…”
Kinney hated the use of “whatever.”
“… landed on this island, claimed it for themselves, and proclaimed it the Republic of Sealand. They waited for the Brits to come get them, so they could get on TV, but they didn’t bother, and they haven’t bothered since. So these people stayed on the island, and to support themselves, they set up an Internet support and cell phone service, offering confidential Internet access to individuals who didn’t Want to be traced. It’s sort of like the electronic equivalent of a Swiss bank. Our guy’s website is based there.”
“Can you hack into it and find out who he is?”
“Well.. not yet is the best answer I can give you. It involves more than hacking into his website. That doesn’t contain his identity. It involves breaking into the Sealand company records for the information, and they have very good and constantly updated security software in place.”
“And, I suppose, he could be registered under a false name.”
“Possible, but not likely.”
“Oh? Why would he use his own name when he could use an alias?”
“Because the Sealand people are punctilious about checking out their subscribers. They don’t want to be liable for, say, protecting a pedophile or, as in our case, a murderer.”
“But by concealing his identity, they are protecting him.”
“Of course, but the way they see it, as long as he’s registered under a real name, they’re not protecting him.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“I didn’t say these people were logical, though they’ve been smart enough to succeed at what they’re doing.”
“Can we get a court order through the British?”
“Since they consider themselves a separate nation, they would ignore a court order, and it would require a good-sized police or military operation on the part of the Brits to enforce it. The Brits regard Sealand as something less than a flea on a dog, and, since the island isn’t much more than a rock in the sea, with no harbor, it has no strategic or tactical significance for them. There’s a case on record of Interpol’s trying to track down one of their subscribers, and they hit a stone wall with the Brits.”
“So what you’re saying is, that if we want the name and address of this murderer, we’re going to have to launch a military invasion of Sealand?”
“That’s about the size of it. And although the Brits obviously care nothing about Sealand, they might take umbrage if a foreign nation invaded what is, after all, British soil.”
“An international incident,” Kinney muttered.
“Exactly.”
“How does one communicate with these people?”
“They started their own cellular phone company some time back, and they’re plugged into all the usual networks. You can call or fax them—I can get the numbers—or you can email them.”
“All right, give my secretary the fax number, and thanks for your help.”
“You bet,” the kid said, then left.
Kinney dictated a letter to the Sealand Company requesting the name and address of the operator of the website, and gave his reasons.
“Fax it,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.”
28
Kate closed the last of the stack of files and looked at Broward. “It’s surprising how mundane are the lives of people who used to be spies,” she said. “We’ve got a man running a filling station in Arlington. Another is an innkeeper in Lynchburg. Still another is working for the NRA.”
“And not a single one of the twenty-odd people who are candidates fit the profile,” Broward said, “or would seem to have the time, the politics, or the inclination to be the killer.”
“Send them over to Kinney at the FBI and let him make that determination for himself,” Kate said. “He’s not going to take our word for it.”
Bob Kinney closed the last of the files and handed it on to be passed around the table. “Has anybody seen anything in these files that he thinks would be worth investigating?”
His question was greeted with silence.
“I didn’t think so,” Kinney said glumly. “Anything of promise from any other agency?”
Smith spoke up. “The retired employees of the other agencies we’re canvassing are much less likely to have the kind of comprehensive training in multiple skills that the CIA employees have. All the other agencies, including the Bureau, rely on departmental units to supply the skills in things like explosives, and nearly all their attention is devoted to prevention
, rather than action. The Agency is the only one that trains its employees to shoot, explode, and poison.”
“What about Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?”
“Again, their emphasis is the defensive. The CIA operations department is the only offensive agency in government, outside the military, and we’ve checked with every special ops unit in every branch and checked out maybe a dozen likely candidates. We haven’t come up with a shred of evidence that could connect any of them to these crimes.”
