Capital Crimes

by Stuart Woods

  He looked at his wristwatch. “You will board the yacht in forty minutes, and we will sail in forty-five. At no time will more than three hands appear on deck in daylight, and only when I need more than one. The rest of the time you can all sit below with your filthy magazines and drink Bovril and cocoa, which you are all very good at.” There was a low chuckle from the group. “Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “Good. Take your seasick pills now, if you need them, and assemble on the dock in thirty-five minutes. Dismissed.”

  The group filed out, leaving Southby-Tailyour, Carpenter, and a young man from Carpenter’s firm called Roofer, who would do any required computer work.

  “They seem like a good lot,” Carpenter said.

  Sir Ewan sat down beside her. “They’re razor-sharp, all of them,” he said. “The creme de la creme.” He looked at the computer technician. “You ever been aboard a yacht, young fellow?”

  “No, sir,” the man said.

  Sir Ewan placed two small pills on the table. “Take these now,” he said, pushing a carafe and a glass toward him.

  “What are they?” he asked.

  “The pink one is phenergen, a child’s antihistamine, and the white one is ephedrine, a slight upper. Twenty-five milligrams of each prevents seasickness in nearly everyone. The Americans worked this out for their astronauts, to prevent motion sickness in space.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need them,” Roofer said.

  “Shut up and take them,” Carpenter said softly.

  He did. “Is there a bathroom nearby?” he asked.

  “Next door,” Sir Ewan said, jerking a thumb.

  Roofer left.

  “You ready for this?” Sir Ewan asked.

  Carpenter smiled. “Oh, yes. It’s been a while since I’ve been on this sort of jaunt. I’ve missed it.”

  “My boys are disappointed that they won’t get to throttle or knife anybody,” Sir Ewan said.

  “Poor babies.”

  “Quite,” Sir Ewan replied.

  33

  Kate watched Will as he tied his black bow tie in one smooth, continuous motion. It always came out perfectly.

  “I always meant to ask you: Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

  “Cary Grant movie,” he replied, slipping into his waistcoat.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I am not. I think it was Indiscreet, but I’m not sure. I finally got it right on about the two-hundredth attempt.”

  “And how old were you when you did this?”

  “Forty,” he replied.

  She pinched him sharply on his ass.

  “All right, nineteen.” He got into his dinner jacket, turned around, and slipped his arms around her waist. “Now tell me, how is it that you got ready before I did? This has never happened before.”

  “I had a head start,” she said. “When you were on the phone with the British PM.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I’m not sure I should share that with the director of Central Intelligence. Or are you asking as the first lady?”

  “Whatever will get you to cough it up.”

  “Well, somewhat to my astonishment, he’s sending in the Royal Marines at Sealand. It’s one of those outrageously flamboyant Brit military operations: The commander of the service is sailing a bunch of men over to the island in his yacht, and they’re taking a rubber dinghy ashore in the dead of night.”

  “If somebody gets hurt, this could boomerang,” she said. “I wish you’d asked me. We could have come up with something.”

  “Better to let the Brits do it. It’s on their soil, more or less, and they have the Official Secrets Act to cover their asses.”

  “I wish we had that,” she said.

  “No you don’t, and don’t you ever let anybody hear you say so. We’re for an open society and sunshine on government, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot. You be sure and preach those virtues to Georgi Majorov at dinner.”

  “Absolutely. You ready?”

  “Don’t I look ready?”

  After they had seen off the last of their dinner guests, the two presidents and their first ladies repaired to the family quarters of the White House for coffee and brandy. Not that the Russian president needed a brandy, Kate reflected. He had drunk at least half a bottle of vodka at dinner, not bothering with the wine.

  Ignoring his very pretty wife, Majorov took Kate’s arm and steered her toward a sofa. Will saw this and led Tatyana Majorov to the opposite sofa.

  Kate and Majorov practically fell onto the sofa, laughing, while Kate managed to put another six inches of space between them. She didn’t want him getting grabby. When the steward had served the coffee and brandy and departed, Majorov raised his glass to Kate and polished off the vintage cognac in a gulp.

  “So,” he said, in heavily accented but otherwise very serviceable English, “you are CIA.”

  “I am CIA,” she agreed.

  “I am KGB, you know. Pardon, I was KGB.”

  “I know. Did you like the work?”

  “I liked the travel,” he said. “Paris, Stockholm, Vienna. I had all the good posts. Nobody likes to live in the USSR.”

  “When were you in Stockholm?” she asked.

  He gave her a sly look. “I know what you are thinking.” He chuckled.

  “What am I thinking?” Kate asked.

  “You are thinking, ”Is this the Russian agent who turned my friend Rawls?“”

  Kate took a quick breath. That was exactly what she had been thinking. “You know about Rawls?”

  “I know all about Rawls,” he said. “Yes, I am the spy who turned him.”

  “Blackmailed him,” Kate corrected.

  “Blackmail? So what? I turned him, doesn’t matter how.” He reached for the brandy decanter and poured himself a double. He hadn’t touched the coffee.

  “How, exactly, did you do that?”

  “Easy,” Majorov replied. “What you call ‘Badger Game.”“

  “And what is that?” she asked, knowing full well what the Badger Game was.

  “You get your mark a girl. Rawls loved girls, the younger and prettier, the better.”

  “Go on.”

  “Then you photograph your mark and the girl in odd positions. Then you show your mark the photographs and offer him alternatives: Would he like to go home to Langley in disgrace, have wife take everything in divorce? Or would he prefer maybe to share a little bit information from time to time, maybe put some money in his pocket, maybe even continue to see the girl? Easy choice, eh?”

  “Rawls made the stupid choice,” she said.

  “Maybe, from your point of view. Not from my point of view.”

  Kate looked him in the eye and shot the question. “Did Rawls give you Lewis Moore and his wife?” She watched his eyebrows go up.

  “Ah,” Majorov said slyly, “this is state secret.”

  “The state doesn’t exist anymore, how could it be a state secret? Who cares?”

  Majorov shrugged. “You have the point,” he said. “USSR is no more. All my good work all those years for nothing.”

  “You fought the good fight,” Kate said. “Now tell me, did Rawls give you the Moores?”

  Majorov shook his head gravely. “No. Rawls didn’t give.”

  “Then how did your people know they would be where they were?”

  A wicked grin spread over Majorov’s face. “Because I know everything the Moores do,” he said.

  Kate looked at him closely. “You had them watched constantly?”

  Majorov tapped his ear. “I had them listened constantly,” he said.

  Kate gulped. “In the embassy?”

  “In their house,” he said. “For two years, almost, we hear everything—sex, fight, yelling, love—everything.”

  “And that’s how you knew they’d be there?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Not from Rawls?”
/>
  “Rawls never give me any American agent. Couple Hungarians, a Pole or two, no Americans.”

  “Why did you kill the Moores?”

  “Because they wished to kill me. Lewis got off two shots first.”

  “They weren’t supposed to be armed.”

  Majorov shrugged. “‘Supposed’ means nothing. They both had pistols.”

  “Rawls wasn’t there?”

  “No Rawls.”

  Kate sat back on the sofa with a big sigh.

  “This is surprise?” Majorov asked.

  “This is surprise,” Kate replied.

  34

  Carpenter leaned back in the navigator’s seat and sipped her Bovril. She had been sitting in the saloon of the forty-five-foot yacht, next to the Royal Marine sergeant with the blowpipe, but he had been too attentive, so she had moved to the navigation station, which she preferred anyway, since it held the charts, the radar repeater, and the chart plotter that combined all the inputs onto one screen, including the Global Positioning System readout.

  On the display the yacht was a little boat-shaped wedge, and Sealand was just appearing on the edge of the twenty-mile range screen. There were other dots here and there— fishing boats and buoys, the odd merchant ship or foreign naval vessel. It was a little after 11 p.m., and the GPS gave their time en route to Sealand as 3.2 hours. They were averaging about six knots.

  She polished off the Bovril, then poured a mug of steaming tea and added a large dollop of brandy to it. She slid back the hatch and stood on the companionway ladder. “Permission to come on deck?” she asked.

  “Permission granted,” Sir Ewan called back. He gave the wheel a slight turn to take a wave, then got back on course.

  Carpenter climbed the ladder, stepped into the cockpit, and closed the hatch behind her. She handed Sir Ewan the tea.

  “Many thanks,” he said, sipping from the mug. “Ah, that’s a fine recipe.”

  “Like me to take her for a while?” Carpenter asked.

  “Good idea,” he said, stepping aside and letting her take the wheel. “I need to concentrate on this tea.” He gave her the course.

  “We’re three point two hours out,” she said.

  “That should put you ashore at the right moment, I should think.”

  A dark form slithered from the foredeck into the cockpit. “All made fast, sir,” the marine said.

  “Good man. Go below and get something hot in you.”

  The man went below and closed the hatch.

  Carpenter let the yacht settle onto her course, then looked ahead, waiting to acquire some night vision after the shaft of light from the hatch. She could see the navigation lights of a large merchantman a couple of miles off their port bow, a ship that had already crossed their course and that was of no further danger to them. She couldn’t see anything else nearby.

  The night was pitch black, and all she could see around them was the foam from the short seas, illuminated by the nav lights. The North Sea was shallow and made short, steep waves. The anemometer was showing thirty to thirty-five knots, and the seas were a good five feet, making for an uncomfortable ride below. She was glad Roofer had taken the seasick pills; she didn’t want him lying useless in a bunk.

  “She’s a nice boat,” Carpenter said. “The coal stove below is a good thing for a night like this.”

  “Makes for a snug passage,” he replied. “You said it had been a while since you’d done a job like this. What was the last one?”

  “It was hardly like this. I had, with two others, to break into a building in the middle of the Arabian desert and photograph the unmanned radar installation inside. The installation turned out not to be unmanned, and we had a bit of a tussle, had to kill a man, and one of ours took a bullet in the foot during the struggle. It was a long walk back to our Land Rover, taking turns carrying him.”

  “Odd business for a woman,” he said.

  “Well, you’ve got women in the Royal Marines these days, though I don’t see any on this little jaunt.”

  “We’ve got some very good women. Pure accident that none came along. Best, ah, person for the job, and all that.”

  Whatever you say, she thought. “Just out of curiosity, who ordered you not to go ashore tonight?”

  “My wife,” he said. “Well, not really, it was more like the PM, who obviously thinks I’m too old for this sort of thing. He was happy for me to use my own yacht, though. If something should go wrong, he won’t lose a vessel, or have it identified as belonging to the government.”

  “You’re going ashore anyway, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Sir Ewan grinned. “I thought about it, but if anything should go wrong, my presence would greatly increase the embarrassment level for the government. I suppose I’ll stay aboard and let you and the men have all the fun!”

  A large wave slid under them with a hiss as it passed.

  Sir Ewan seemed to doze, with the mug held in both hands, so Carpenter stopped talking. She glanced at her watch. Three hours to go.

  Bob Kinney sat at his desk while various members of his team came and went.

  “What time are they going ashore?” Kerry Smith asked.

  “Dead of night,” Kinney replied. “I don’t have an hour.”

  “Dead of night is pretty soon,” Kinney said. “They’re five hours ahead of us.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish I were with them.” Smith sighed.

  “God, I don’t. There’s half a gale in the North Sea tonight, which makes it good for the operation, but I wouldn’t want to be out there in a small boat.”

  “You must be getting old, Bob,” Smith said, the first time he had ever been so familiar with his superior.

  Kinney looked at him sharply, then nodded. “Too old for that,” he said. “Not too old to kick your ass.”

  Smith held up his hands in surrender. “No argument there, boss.”

  “That’s better,” Kinney said.

  “I still can’t believe that we’re going to crack this thing because the president went to the prime minister, and the prime minister sent in the marines. Does this sort of thing happen often?”

  “Not often, but it happens.”

  “I wish we were following this thing by satellite,” the young agent said.

  “It’s a dark and stormy night. We’ll know soon enough, just relax.”

  “You’re not relaxed,” Smith said.

  “Oh, shut up, Kerry. Go get me some coffee and one of those awful doughnuts.”

  Smith got up and left the office.

  Will entered the situation room, and everyone present stood. “Be seated, please.” He looked around the room at the collection of military and National Security Council faces. “Any word about anything?”

  General Moore spoke up. “They’re due to go ashore any time now. Nobody knows how long this is going to take, but they’ll have to be off the island well before dawn.”

  “Well, unless you people actually want to stay up and wait for news, I suggest you leave a skeleton crew here and get some sleep. That’s what I’m going to do, and I don’t want to know what happened until I wake up in the morning. If they get a name and address, fax it directly to Kinney at the FBI. Good night.”

  They stood again as he left the room.

  Will got on the elevator, yawning.

  35

  They were less than a mile from the island before Carpenter saw it, briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning. Sealand was a low, black collection of rocks, with no vegetation visible in the lightning flashes.

  Sir Ewan opened the hatch and shouted, “Four men on deck to inflate the dinghy!”

  The lights below were extinguished; four men clambered into the cockpit and began unrolling the rubber boat, which had been lashed to the stern pulpit.

  “And switch off those nav lights!” Sir Ewan called down. “I want a man at the nav station to warn me of any vessel that comes within two miles of us!”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” so
meone called back.

  Sir Ewan turned and directed the men with the dinghy. “Plug the tube in right there,” he said, pointing to a port in the side of the cockpit. The tube was plugged in, a switch filled, and the electric pump began quickly inflating the rubber boat.