Threat Level Black

by Jim DeFelice

  “Maybe it’s a trick.”

  The minder looked at the European and laughed.

  If it was a trick, Dr. Park decided, the minder wasn’t in on it.

  “Go ahead and tell him,” said Chin Yop. “He’s harmless. A nicotine addict.”

  Dr. Park had trouble smiling, still unsure if he would be arrested for answering.

  “I have heard that you can get them near Kolomev Street,” said Dr. Park, naming the street where their hostel was located. He had to repeat it twice before the foreigner understood.

  “Oh.” The man nodded. “I heard there are shops in Arbatskaya.”

  Dr. Park felt the blood leave his head as he finally understood who the man was and what he was doing. The Americans were quite clever after all.

  Chapter

  15

  After the excitement of the Hawk flight, Howe found the rest of his week rather mundane. The girl in the aircraft was okay—physically, at least: Her father had had a heart attack and died as she watched. Howe, who had lost his own father when he was young, knew she would never truly get over that.

  He had missed lunch with Blitz and they kept missing each other as they tried to reschedule, but otherwise he got the full-court treatment, VIPs at every meal. He phoned home once and sometimes twice a day, talking to his mom and occasionally his younger sister, who lived nearby and stopped by the house every so often. They were terribly impressed.

  So was his friend Jimmy Bozzone, who kept calling him a big-shot muckety-muck and asking if he’d be able to get him tickets to all the sporting events now.

  “What would that do for you, Jimmy?” asked Howe as Jimmy ragged him that night after dinner.

  “Well, like, you know, you talk to the powers that be and get an executive box and I come along as your aidede-campo.”

  “Campo?”

  “Whatever. As long as I get a free beer. Listen, they’re having the Final Four down in New York City this month. Get us some tickets.”

  “Right.” Howe shook his head and lay back on the bed. He yawned.

  “Sorry if I’m keeping you up,” said Jimmy.

  “All this wining and dining is hard work.” Howe hadn’t told Jimmy how much money was involved. He knew if he did, Jimmy would yell at him, call him a fool for even hesitating.

  Would he, though? Jimmy valued his independence, and that was something you couldn’t really put a price tag on. As head of the NADT, Howe would be answering to all sorts of people at the Pentagon, the White House, Congress. He’d have to deal with contractors, blue suits, Navy people, the GAO—everyone in the world.

  That was why they would pay so much money.

  “You watching Syracuse?” asked Jimmy. “They’re ahead.”

  “I may turn on the TV just to see them get their asses kicked,” Howe told him.

  “Screw yourself. And don’t forget, I want tickets to the finals at Madison Square Garden.”

  They were having the Final Four championship games at the Garden this year, the first time ever. Jimmy had gone to Penn State but had inexplicably seized on Syracuse as a team to root for after moving to New York State a decade or so before. Howe had no doubt that he would try and scalp tickets at Madison Square Garden if the Orangemen somehow made it to the play-offs. Tickets would go for thousands, he thought; everybody was making a big deal out of the fact that they were at the Garden.

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” said Howe.

  “We’ll see,” said Jimmy.

  After he hung up, he flipped on the basketball game, a first rounder in the NCAA finals. Syracuse was comfortably ahead, but they were only playing Marist, which had managed somehow to draw the last bid of the tourney. With Syracuse up by twenty after one period, the game was pretty boring. He was just about to click off the set when the phone rang; thinking it was Jimmy calling back to rub in the game details, he hesitated but then picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Colonel Howe,” said a female voice, “stand by, please, for Dr. Blitz.”

  “Colonel,” said Blitz, coming on the line before Howe could even answer. “Sorry we’ve been missing each other. A lot of stuff going on over here. I know it’s getting late and I won’t keep you. How about we have dinner next Tuesday night?” suggested Blitz. “My wife loves to cook.”

  “I wasn’t planning on staying in town quite that long,” said Howe. “I was hoping to leave Saturday.”

  “I’m afraid I have to go to Camp David for the weekend with the President.” Blitz paused. “Why don’t you come along?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Howe.

  “No, no, you really should: A lot of the important people you’ll be working with will be there.”

  Howe smiled at the way Blitz had made it sound as if he’d decided to take the job.

  “I think I’ll pass on the weekend, if that’s okay. Thanks, though.”

  “Well, let’s set up that dinner, then. And I think the President will want to talk to you as well.”

  Howe sighed. They really did want him to take the goddamn job, didn’t they?

  Maybe he wanted it as well. Because really, if he didn’t, wouldn’t he have gone home already?

  “So I can mark you down for dinner Tuesday?” asked Blitz. “Come over to my office in the afternoon—four, say. This way the President can drop by and say hi.”

  Howe barely got “Well…” out of his mouth when Blitz started talking again.

  “I understand your hesitation,” said Blitz, in a voice that suggested the opposite. “At least let the board of directors make a formal offer,” insisted Blitz. “We’ll have lunch Monday. Come over to my office. In the meantime, use that limo. Go out. Have fun. Even if you don’t take the job.”

  The national security advisor paused and said something to someone else in his office. “Maybe you should have your mom come down from Pennsylvania. Show her Washington,” he said when he came back on the line.

  “My mother’s sixty-eight.”

  “Colonel, you really ought to relax for the next few days, just give yourself some time to think. Enjoy it—like a little minivacation. You’ve dedicated your life to your country, and you’ve made huge contributions. This is just a little bit of payback.”

  “I’ll see you for lunch. I have to be honest, though: I’m leaning against the job. Very much against.”

  “We’ll talk Monday,” said Blitz. “Wait until Monday.”

  Chapter

  16

  Fisher was now officially played and had to stay in the background as the operation proceeded. Unfortunately, he couldn’t just disappear; one more lecture on joules and he would stick his fingers into the nearest light socket. So he feigned gastric distress and made a show of heading quickly to the men’s room, where he hung out for a while, smoking the cigarettes he’d traded for and listening to the attendant harangue customers for greenbacks instead of rubles. A few strategic groans kept him from being bothered, and when he finally emerged, the attendant steered well clear of him. Fisher made his way back to his hotel three blocks away; Madison flagged him down in a small Toyota.

  “Nobody followed you,” the CIA officer told him. “You must’ve put on some act.”

  “Looking stupid just comes naturally to some of us.”

  They headed toward Arbatskaya, an area west of the Kremlin that once had a vaguely bohemian flavor and lately had become something of a tourist trap. Kung and the gnome were already en route, driven by a CIA operative disguised as a taxi driver; Madison would “deploy” them once Dr. Park arrived in the area.

  If he arrived in the area.

  “Your partner’s bugged, so we’ll hear what happens.”

  “Who’s my partner?” objected Fisher.

  “What’s-her-name—the short one. Mathers.”

  “The gnome is not my partner,” said Fisher.

  “Will he show up?” asked Madison.

  “Got me,” said Fisher. “His minder will, though. I just about cleaned him out of sm
okes.”

  Dr. Park walked past the shop, his heart thumping. Moscow was supposedly undergoing a very warm winter, but he felt like ice, even inside his warm parka. It had not been difficult to persuade Chin Yop to come here; he mentioned that he had eaten in the area during his one previous trip to Moscow and that it was very inexpensive. Chin Yop was undoubtedly being paid an allowance, and thus any savings on meals would go into his pocket.

  Were the Americans following? How would they approach him? When? What would they do to Chin Yop?

  Dr. Park tried to clear the questions from his mind. If they were following him—and they must be following him, he decided—then they would make contact at a time and place of their choosing, a time they felt was safe for everyone. He had to trust that they would handle the business appropriately: They had done well so far.

  Dr. Park let his companion choose the restaurant, a small basement café at the foot of a large brick building that held apartments. The man who greeted them at the door spoke English in such a heavy accent that Dr. Park could not make it out. They found a seat in toward the back and managed to pick out items that seemed benign from the menu. In truth, anything they ate here would be exotic; Dr. Park’s diet consisted mostly of rice and bits of vegetable or, on occasion, fish. From the looks of his thin wrists and neck, Chin Yop did not fare much better.

  “Oh, hello!” said a woman in English from across the room.

  Dr. Park looked up. Ms. Kung and another woman were making their way across the room. Chin Yop had a strained look on his face.

  “Mr. Chin,” said the shorter woman, bowing her head toward Dr. Park’s minder. “And your friend?”

  Dr. Park introduced himself. The short woman said that her name was Ms. Mathers and she remembered the pair from the conference. Chin Yop smiled faintly, then said to Dr. Park in Korean that the taller woman was quite beautiful.

  Dr. Park seized the chance to look directly at Ms. Kung. She was, he agreed, most beautiful.

  “Mine,” insisted Chin Yop.

  Dr. Park turned to him in surprise.

  “Don’t be a prude,” insisted the minder, pushing his chair back and insisting in his poor English that the two women join them.

  Dr. Park did not know what to do. His minder’s instructions would undoubtedly have been explicit: Such contacts should be kept to a minimum; certainly dinner would violate that edict.

  A test?

  Dr. Park could smell her perfume. What if the minder wanted to defect as well?

  Perhaps he had his own plan.

  Or perhaps he knew that Ms. Kung was here to contact him.

  “I think perhaps we might eat alone,” suggested Dr. Park in Korean. Chin ignored him, talking with the women, asking them about America.

  America!

  Surely this was a trap. Dr. Park sat silently as the others ordered. When the food arrived he tried to eat slowly, but he could not: He was too hungry. He quickly cleaned his plate, then sat while the others laughed and talked.

  “What the hell is she trying to do, pick up the security agent?” Madison asked Fisher. “She’s all giggly.”

  Fisher shrugged. “Probably she gets that way when she’s nervous.”

  “Why would she be nervous?”

  Not only could they hear the entire exchange via Mathers’s bug, but two of Madison’s team members had slipped in with a small video spy cam and were sitting at the next table. The cam was embedded in a brooch on the female op’s blouse and provided a fish-eyed view of the room, fed onto a laptop in Madison’s Toyota.

  The Koreans’own trail team sat in a Russian car half a block away, just barely in view of the entrance. A scan had shown that they were not using any bugging devices—probably, said Madison, because they couldn’t afford them. There didn’t appear to be any other minders or Russian agents nearby.

  Mathers suggested vodka. Fisher rued his decision not to object to her joining the operation.

  The four of them drank and ate for more than an hour. Dr. Park was clearly uncomfortable at the start; he became more so as the time went on. He looked the part of a defector: nervous and antsy. But he also looked like a typical North Korean scientist anxious because his minder was clearly breaking the rules. Paranoia was the one behavior in Korea that didn’t attract attention.

  Finally, Chin Yop got up to go to the restroom. Dr. Park said something to him as he pushed away the chair.

  “Don’t leave me alone with these women,” whispered the CIA translator from the team van, two blocks away.

  Chin Yop said something in return; Fisher assumed it was a lewd suggestion, because the translator, a woman, didn’t immediately supply the line.

  “All right,” said Madison, pointing to the screen. “Let’s do it.”

  “No. I think we ought to wait,” said Fisher.

  “What?”

  “I think we ought to wait.”

  “Screw that,” said Madison. He brought his arm to his mouth and spoke into his mike. “Go,” he told his people.

  Fisher shook his head.

  The CIA officer with the brooch said “Good evening” in Russian—the words sounded a bit like “Duh breeze there”—giving the signal to exit. Mathers jumped to her feet and grabbed Dr. Park. He pushed her away but got up, starting to walk toward the back. The other CIA agent inside the restaurant loomed at the left, corralling him. One of the patrons yelled something.

  Then both the audio and visual feeds died.

  “Shit,” said Fisher, jumping from the car.

  Dr. Park felt his head spin as the man pushed him toward the door.

  The Americans were trying to help him escape—surely they were trying to help him escape. But the woman and the man who had approached him had spoken Russian. Where were they taking him?

  Dr. Park took a step toward the back when the man from the other table grabbed him. He whispered something that Dr. Park didn’t understand.

  He thought it was Russian, yet it seemed almost Korean.

  Dr. Park was being pushed toward the front. He tried to grab Ms. Kung, but she was sliding away, running toward the exit.

  What was going on?

  The door flew open. Dr. Park tried to push against the large man but it was no use; he felt himself thrown out into the street.

  “Nyet,” he said, the only Russian he knew. “No! Help!” he shouted in Korean.

  Where were the Americans?

  “Come with us,” said the short woman, Mathers.

  She was speaking English.

  Suddenly, Dr. Park understood: They were all Americans. He started to run.

  A police car sped around the corner. Two men got out and began shouting, reaching for their weapons. Dr. Park threw himself to the ground.

  Fisher got to the corner just as a pair of Russian police cars, one marked, one unmarked, arrived. Two policemen were in the street, guns drawn.

  The American FBI agent pulled out the Beretta that Madison had supplied. As the Russian police grabbed at Kung, Fisher fired, making sure he hit the man square in the chest, where he was protected by his bulletproof vest.

  The other policeman fired back, missing. The CIA backup team finally got its act together, firing a barrage of tear-gas canisters that sent the policemen retreating across the street. Fisher, choking, grabbed Kung and dragged her away, then went back for Dr. Park. His eyes blurred with the gas; he grabbed a figure in front of him and pulled backward, his whole body burning with the thick gas. His eyes clamped themselves shut.

  “Go, let’s go!” Madison shouted.

  Fisher managed to crack open one eye and saw that he’d taken Mathers, not the Korean scientist. Cursing, he let go of her and started back toward the restaurant.

  Madison grabbed him. “No! The police are coming,” he shouted. “We have to leave. Now!”

  Fisher hesitated just long enough to hear a fresh hail of bullets hitting the concrete a few yards away.

  “All right,” he said, heading back around the corner where a van w
as waiting, eyes and nose raw with the gas.

  “You okay?” asked Madison as they sped away.

  “Yeah,” said Fisher. “But I really hate tearjerkers.”

  Part Two

  Tacit Ivan

  Chapter

  1

  Faud Daraghmeh closed the book and got up from the small table where he had been reading. He could hear his landlady’s television downstairs as he went to the kitchen. The old woman would be dozing in her chair by now, no doubt dreaming of the grandchildren she never saw. She talked of them often to him, with the fondness that he thought his great-aunt must use when she spoke of him.

  It was a weakness, one of many. Faud took the teapot from the stove and began to fill it. The imam had warned him; the worst temptations were the subtle ones, the almost silent callings of slothfulness and indecision.

  But his path was set. He had completed the most difficult job more than a month earlier. Now he only waited for the next set of instructions. Whatever they were, he would be ready. Faith must win out over temptation.

  He turned off the water and placed the teapot on the stove.

  Chapter

  2

  In the aftermath of an operation, there are always several perspectives on its conduct and outcome. Often there is an inverse relationship between proximity to the operation and the opinion thereof: While those who had been at the scene might consider that things had gone decently under the circumstances, those several times removed might opine that lousy was a more appropriate adjective.

  And then there was the opinion of Fisher’s boss.

  “A fiasco. Utter and complete.”

  “I wouldn’t call it utter,” said Fisher, speaking from the protection of the American embassy in Ukraine, where he’d been spirited after the fallout from the operation.

  “What would you call it?”

  “Something other than utter. I’ve never really understood what utter meant.”

  “You’re a screwup, Fisher. Whatever you touch screws up. You’re lucky the ambassador got you out of Moscow; I’d drop a dime on you myself.”