Threat Level Black

by Jim DeFelice

  Should he be happy? Their hands were tied; they’d had no choice but to respond. The fact that the plan had gone off so well—assuming the reports were true, assuming there weren’t other surprises—that was cause for celebration. Serious cause.

  And yet, it felt sacrilegious. He wasn’t a warmonger—the opposite in fact. He hated it. But ironically that made it necessary, at least in some circumstances.

  “Sir, did you want to send a message regarding Colonel Howe before you left for the White House?” asked an Army captain. The young man had been tapped as a liaison to keep Blitz up-to-date.

  “Just that I hope he’s all right,” Blitz told him. He turned to the defense secretary. “Myron, are you coming?”

  “Yes,” said the secretary of defense. “I don’t know how you manage it, Professor.”

  “ ‘Manage it?’”

  “To come out smelling like a rose when the rest of the world goes to shit.”

  Chapter

  2

  The Japanese doctor was speaking English, but Howe couldn’t understand a word.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Really. Except for my ego.”

  The doctor patted the back of his own skull and repeated what he said earlier: This time Howe caught the words concussion and rest and what he thought was observation. The man’s English was actually quite good, but between his accent and the pounding pain in Howe’s head he couldn’t process it.

  “I will rest,” he told the doctor, standing unsteadily. “Honest. I will.”

  The physician frowned and shook his head. Howe took a few steps from the bed, pulling back the white curtain that separated the area from the rest of the small emergency-room suite. The doctor told him to wait. Howe waved his hand no but then saw that the physician was holding out a small envelope of pills; Howe took them, though he didn’t know what they were.

  His eyes hurt with the hard white glare of the lights as he walked toward the double doors at the end of the curtained corridor. Howe had no idea where he was, either in the hospital or even Japan. He pushed through the door, wondering if he was supposed to sign some sort of form or other paperwork and maybe pay. He had a credit card in his wallet and wondered if that would be good enough—and even if it was, whether his credit line would cover whatever his treatment cost was.

  There was a desk just ahead, and beyond it a set of glass doors that led outside. He decided his best bet was to keep his head down and simply walk out and keep going until he was clearly beyond the hospital’s care, then try to find a taxi or something back to the airport where he’d landed. But before he reached the doors a group of men in business suits poured into the passage.

  “Colonel Howe, you’re all right?” asked a short, bald man.

  Howe stopped; the accent was American.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Pete McCormack. I’m with the embassy. We’d like to talk to you about what happened.”

  “I think I’m supposed to check in with someone,” said Howe.

  “That would be us,” said one of the others. Tall and thin, the man’s cheeks were so hollow, he looked more like a corpse than a live person.

  “We’re in touch with Dr. Blitz,” said the first man. “And General Jacobs.”

  Jacobs was the Air Force commander who had made the arrangements for refueling and looking after the S-37/B. On paper he would appear to be Howe’s boss, though he was actually working for USSOCCOM, the special operations command.

  “We want to debrief you,” added the man. “We want to know what happened.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Howe. “You guys got a car?”

  Chapter

  3

  In an inspired if somewhat misguided bid at camouflage, the task force’s chemical surveillance truck had been painted to look like an exterminator’s vehicle, complete with a giant mouse cowering from a man wearing a respirator. Fisher thought Kowalski had posed for both images, though the mask made it difficult to tell.

  “You’re a barrel of fucking laughs,” said the DIA agent, who was wearing a hazmat suit and standing in Mrs. DeGarmo’s kitchen. Two specially trained investigators were downstairs going over the basement with chemical detection gear. Two others were working upstairs in Faud Daraghmeh’s apartment.

  “Listen, if you’re not going to do anything, why don’t you go and start interviewing some of the neighbors,” suggested Kowalski.

  “Waste of time,” said Fisher. He got up and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  “How do you know it’s a waste of time?” asked Kowalski.

  Fisher shrugged.

  “You ought to be wearing a suit,” said Kowalski.

  “I am wearing a suit,” said Fisher.

  “You know what I mean.” He began fiddling with the respirator unit.

  “This is one hundred percent natural fibers,” said Fisher, pulling at his sleeve. “Protects against anything. I could pour this cup of coffee on the pants and never even feel it.”

  “Go right ahead,” said Kowalski.

  He was just pulling on the mask when one of the two men who’d been upstairs came down through the front hallway.

  “Nothin’,” said the expert.

  “Shit,” said Kowalski.

  “What’d you expect?” asked Fisher.

  “What’d I expect? You’re the one who called the team in. Jesus, Fisher.”

  Expecting Kowalski to process more than one piece of information at a time clearly violated the principle of chemical osmosis.

  “Well, let me take a look,” Fisher told him, starting for the hallway.

  “Don’t screw up the place. We need photos first,” said the DIA agent.

  “What for, a spread in House and Garden?”

  Fisher found the other investigator in the bathroom, where he was reinstalling the trap under the sink.

  “I’ll be out of here in a minute,” the man told Fisher.

  “Take your time,” the FBI agent told him. He went to the medicine cabinet. Mrs. DeGarmo’s tenant was a Gillette man and preferred Bayer over the generic brands. Faud Daraghmeh couldn’t seem to settle on an allergy medicine, however: He had a dozen, from generic store brands to Sudafed. No prescription medicines, though. And nothing more revealing.

  “They find anything in the basement?” the investigator asked as Fisher closed the medicine cabinet.

  “Not that I heard. How about you?”

  “Used ammonia to clean.”

  “That mean anything?”

  “Not particularly. I did think of one thing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Fisher.

  “He didn’t brush his teeth.”

  “Maybe he just took his toothbrush,” said Fisher. He went back to the medicine cabinet. “He shaved.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You found hairs around?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  The bedroom had a small, single bed with a pair of sheets and a thin blanket. A small desk and chair were the only other pieces of furniture; the drawers were empty except for a paperback dictionary. The closet had a few shirts and pants in it, and two suits that looked as if they’d come from a thrift shop. There were no papers that Fisher could find in any of them.

  “Damn it, Fisher. I told you we want to photograph the place,” said Kowalski. He was still wearing his suit but carried the respirator and face shield in his hand. “And we’re going to dust for fingerprints. Don’t touch anything.”

  Fisher resisted the temptation to smear the doorknobs and walked back out through the apartment. The living room furniture—it was included in the $1,093 a month rent, according to Mrs. DeGarmo—consisted of a pre–World War II couch, a marble coffee table that had once moved around on miniature wheels but was now propped off the floor with matchbooks, and a two-year-old thirty-two-inch Sony television. The lab people had taken the cushions off the sofa: The foam in them was so old it was degenerating into formaldehyde.

  A phone line ran along the front wall. It had been cut ope
n, slit as if for a splice, though Fisher couldn’t see any or a box for an outlet. He bent down to the floor, looking at the line.

  “What are you doing?” Kowalski asked.

  “Matchbooks,” said the agent, pointing to them.

  “Clues, huh?” Kowalski scowled. He went to the coffee table and lifted it. “Sucker’s heavy.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Fisher, standing up.

  “Jesus, Fisher, aren’t you grabbing the matchbooks?”

  “Nah.”

  “But you just said they were important.”

  “No, I just pointed them out. Once upon a time, the person who lived here smoked. Or had access to a smoker.”

  Kowalski pushed the coffee table a few inches from its spot and put it down with a thud. He picked up the matchbooks, which bore Marlboro logos.

  “So he was a smoker,” said the DIA agent triumphantly. “All scumbags are.”

  “Those are the landlady’s,” said Fisher. “And they’re at least five years old. Why do you think he shaved?”

  The men working in the basement had several possible hits on two small saucers that had been placed near the boiler.

  “Something like strychnine, probably,” one of the men told Fisher after they’d finished going over the place.

  “Like strychnine.”

  “We’re going to have to do tests back at the lab. But it makes sense. Rat poison. She had a rat problem, right? Or mice.”

  “So you don’t really know what it was?”

  “Not until the tests.”

  “And you checked the sink?” asked Fisher.

  “Cleaned thoroughly. Bleach.”

  “Bleach?”

  The expert pointed to a set of bottles under the large tub. “It all checks out. Clorox. We’ll double-check.”

  Fisher walked to the back of the long, narrow room; there was an outside door leading to a small garden courtyard. A crime scene technician was just setting up to see if he could get prints from the door and doorknob.

  “Mind if I go outside?”

  “Hang on a second,” said the man.

  Fisher stepped to the side, looking at the shelves of stacked flowerpots. There was a bag on the floor of potting soil.

  “You check the dirt?” he asked the chemical expert.

  “Yeah. It’s dirt.”

  Fisher looked at the bag. Unlike the pots, it was very new.

  “Could you use the dirt for lab work?” he asked the expert.

  “Nah.”

  Fisher took the bag with him outside. While there had obviously been a garden here once, it was now overgrown with weeds. He emptied the bag of dirt on the small strip of concrete once used as a patio next to the house.

  “Whatcha looking for?” Macklin asked, coming out from the basement.

  “Here he is, the Homeland Security commander himself,” said Fisher, “come to oversee the troops.”

  “So, what are you doing?”

  “I always like to find the dirt in a case,” said Fisher. He looked for something to sift through the soil with, but there was nothing nearby. He went back inside to the shelves where the pots were; an old watering can with tools sat on the floor. It was dark in the corner; he brought the tools out with him and sifted through the dirt with a small hand cultivator, a three-pronged tool that looked a bit like a cross between a miniature rake and a claw.

  “Something?” asked Macklin.

  “Nada,” said Fisher. He started to toss the cultivator back into the can, then got another idea and dumped it out on the ground.

  In the pile of shovels and sticks lay two new and loaded autoinjectors.

  “Now, those are worth dusting,” said Fisher, pointing to them. “And then we have to figure out what they are.”

  Chapter

  4

  Kuong asked himself the question over and over: Why had his second pistol misfired when he tried to kill the pilot in Japan?

  Kuong thought of the moment again and again as he traveled in the hold of the cargo plane to his next stop in the Philippines. It haunted him, as all his faults haunted him, mocking him again and again even as he vowed to correct it.

  Had he lost his nerve? He remembered pulling the trigger twice, then looking at the gun, then firing again.

  He remembered it but he couldn’t trust the memory. Why would his pistol misfire?

  If the American had not thought to make him get rid of his first gun, he would not have needed his backup weapon. That was cleverness on his enemy’s part. And yet, Kuong had foreseen that possibility, and prepared for it.

  Had Fate played a hand? Was it mere bad luck—or something beyond? He could think of no other pistol failing him, at least not a gun that he had cleaned and loaded himself. He had used the weapon a short time before to dispatch the traitor, Dr. Park. Surely it could not have broken or even fouled in the meantime.

  Fate, then. Luck: the other man’s. There was nothing to be done about that. Or rather, there was nothing that could have been done at that moment. The man himself would have to be dealt with. To leave a witness—even one who was in the dark about what had taken place—was very dangerous.

  Kuong knew the man’s name: Colonel William Howe. He could not be difficult to find, especially in Japan or South Korea. And there were friends in America who could find him as well.

  The Muslims could not be trusted with it. They were allies of convenience, and he could not even be sure if they would strike at the proper moment as planned in New York. Their strike would be welcome, but their real use was the money they had paid for the gas. He would not have dealt with them otherwise, and had risked much by simply allowing them to suggest a date and time.

  Kuong could take his time. Clearly, Howe did not suspect who he was, and it was unlikely that he had seen the shed or realized what was kept there. The hangar with the two craft would have been obliterated by now in any event, and from past experience Kuong knew that the Americans were too arrogant to decipher the many hints they had of the threat.

  He would be patient, as he had been with the traitor. He had been stunned two months before when his aides had brought the e-mail to his attention. The precautions against stealing information from the factory were many, and Kuong had to admit he thought it impossible at first; he did not know Dr. Park personally but it seemed inconceivable that anyone who worked at the factory would betray his country and the Dear Leader in such a way. Obviously the man had been tempted by sex and money, the great vices of the Americans.

  Kuong’s first impulse had been to kill the scientist with his own hands. But then his more contemplative nature took over: He realized he might be able to use the scientist to mislead the Americans. He might allow the scientist to pass more information to them that would make them think the weapon wouldn’t work.

  And then, with the government collapsing and his avenues of escape closing down, he had an even better idea—more brilliant, more delicious. He had sent Dr. Park to Moscow to add to his legitimacy, intending to have the kidnapping foiled exactly as it had been. Dr. Park—actually, the general himself, with the help of one of his security aides and another scientist—would then send new documents claiming he was angry and had no hope of defecting any longer. But the deteriorating situation in North Korea, and the Americans’ own lust for a traitor, had convinced him to take a chance on using them to get out. Ironically the Americans could accomplish what he could not; he was too well known and disliked by his own country’s army as well as the South Koreans to slip by them. Only the arrogant Americans would assume they were too clever to be fooled.

  Kuong had a packet of documents with him: the false ones prepared about the E-bomb, and a story that he was Dr. Park’s coworker prepared in case his identity had been challenged at the airstrip. But they weren’t necessary.

  The o-koan had predicted they wouldn’t be. The bones had told him that morning luck would come to him…if he could be patient.

  It had taken considerable time to punish the scientist for his
treachery, but Kuong’s patience had been richly rewarded, not merely with the moment of triumph he felt when he personally killed the pathetic little man, but with this escape. Kuong had used his enemies’ own cleverness against them for a rich triumph. Now he must be patient once more. He would have his revenge against the Americans for destroying his country. And he would remove Howe, the only man who remained alive who might be able to give him away.

  It would not be long to wait.

  Chapter

  5

  Howe settled his hands on the ends of the chair’s arms, intending to pull himself upright, but somehow he felt too exhausted even to move. He had now told the story of his trip in and out of Korea four times, most recently during a conference call with Dr. Blitz and the defense secretary. He was tired and his head hurt.

  But he also realized he was lucky. He could have been killed.

  Why hadn’t he?

  The CIA agents who had debriefed him had several theories. One was that his passenger felt grateful for his rescue. It was possible, too, that the approach of the small American team and the Japanese security people had scared the men on the ground, or at least encouraged them to move quickly.

  Or maybe he was just lucky.

  “Colonel, the ambassador wanted to talk with you,” said a young woman.

  Howe had been introduced to her earlier but couldn’t remember her name or position now, beyond the fact that she was a member of the embassy staff. Howe pushed out of the chair and her followed down the hallway, his feet sinking deep into the carpet as he walked.

  The ambassador was a holdover from the last administration, a political appointee who had turned out to be an extremely popular figure in Asia as well as Japan. A touch of gray at the temples gave his severe face a dignified air; his Montana accent had a slow, dignified beat. He came out from behind his desk as Howe was shown into his study. He clasped Howe’s hand firmly, then gestured for him to sit in one of the armchairs at the side of the room.