by Gayle Lynds
Tice was believed to have been the actual target. He was offered compassionate leave but refused. A week later he asked for personal time, which was granted. He was gone four days. The bombers were never found, but there were rumors at the time—although there was no evidence—that Tice knew who they were and terminated them. He had a reputation for going after anyone who attacked him.
Note: Three weeks earlier, on November 23, Mrs. Tice reported a dependency on prescription drugs to government doctors and filed an application for custodial medical care. The application had just been approved at the time of her death.
Elaine lowered the report, trying to absorb the tragedy. Tice’s wife and two children. All of them. Gone. Dead.
She focused on the son’s name—Aaron. He might have been named for Tice’s brother, who was killed in the DMZ between North and South Korea. Maybe “Mariette” was chosen as a variation of “Marie.” Whatever differences Tice had with Marie, the savage murder of her and their children must have hit him hard.
She skimmed the rest but saw nothing more about the bombing. She returned to the report: “A week later he asked for personal time . . . Tice knew who they were and terminated them.” She would believe that now. From everything she had read and heard, Tice struck her as someone who did not forget who crossed him. He would do whatever it took to stop them—including wiping them.
But other sentences also stood out: “Jay Tice was late leaving that morning to go to the embassy. . . . He was offered compassionate leave but refused. . . . The bombers were never found . . .”
Had Marie known Tice was a KGB mole? If so, he might have feared she would reveal his treachery, or perhaps she had already threatened that. After his family’s murder, Tice betrayed at least a dozen U.S. moles. There was no way he would not have known what their fates would be. In effect, he murdered them, which made it seem possible he had asked the KGB to liquidate Marie, too. He might have delayed leaving so she would be the one to move his car. To him, the children might have been simply collateral damage.
Frowning, she jotted a reminder to check Marie’s family. She turned the page:
. . . Tice continued his work with his usual high degree of success, transferring back to Washington for a year in 1987, then returning to run the West Berlin station and the stations in Rome and London, then West Berlin again. After Ames’s arrest in 1994, he returned to Langley to take over the Directorate of Operations.
Among his duties was digging out moles who might have burrowed into U.S. security. The irony was that he was in charge of finding himself.
He never remarried. He was considered a gentleman spymaster of the old school, popular and respected among colleagues and government officials and in demand socially.
Despite his being “popular and respected” and “in demand socially,” he apparently had no real friends, since no one had stood by him after his arrest, although in other high-profile espionage cases, including Rick Ames’s and Bob Hanssen’s, at least a few friends had showed up to give moral support. Isolation was a contributing factor to turning against one’s own. The infamous MI6 turncoat Kim Philby once said, “To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged.”
And Tice was driven to excel, to exceed others’ expectations. He had done that in high school and in college and in the CIA. But when you reach the top, what else do you do, where else do you go? Tice had answered the question by taking on an even tougher challenge, one where the cost of failure was higher—working for first Soviet then Russian intelligence against the United States. A clear understanding of the inner forces that drove him would help her to know where he would go, what he would do, what he wanted now. He could be performing for someone or something again. But for whom or what? With that answer, she would know how to find him.
10
Washington, D.C.
The last golden rays of sunlight spread across the teeming capital city, showing it at its best just before the small death of nightfall. In the Reading Room, customers prowled the aisles of books and filled the chairs around the café’s tables. The rich aroma of coffee perfumed the air. In less than five minutes, the owner produced the back copy of the Herald Tribune that Elaine wanted.
Carrying a cup of steaming espresso, Elaine found a table, too impatient to wait until she reached Whippet to read. She swallowed espresso and checked the headlines—a contentious EU vote in Brussels, more terrorist attacks in Europe, more violent upheaval in the Middle East. . . .
She flipped through to the end and returned to the beginning, turning pages slowly, until:
RAINA MANHARDT’S SON DIES IN ALPINE SKIING ACCIDENT
She frowned. The illustrious Raina Manhardt again. She pored through the paper one more time, but nothing else seemed connected to Tice. She read the news story:
Berlin, Germany—Kristoph Maas, the 19-year-old son of Cold War heroine Raina Manhardt, died yesterday in a skiing accident outside Chaux de Mont, Switzerland.
According to a BND spokesman, Maas was a software programmer living and working in Geneva. Skiing with him was a childhood friend, Gerhard Shoutens, also a programmer originally from Berlin. Shoutens said he saw Maas’s skis strike something in the snow near the edge of a cliff. Maas lost his balance and plunged some 750 feet to his death.
The BND reports an autopsy showed he died from massive brain and internal injuries from the high-impact fall. . . .
Skiing was a high-risk sport in which accident and death happened more often than most people realized. Elaine suspected the prime reason the Herald Tribune had run the story was Manhardt’s celebrity. Odd that her son had a different last name.
As she finished her espresso, Elaine pulled out the abstracts of Tice’s missions, searching for Raina Manhardt’s name—as an enemy operative during the Cold War or on the other end of a CIA exchange as she had been when Dr. Pavel Abendroth was assassinated. Nothing. Still, Tice and Manhardt had lived in the Berlin area off and on for at least a decade, working for both sides, but because of security it was likely neither knew that about the other. After the Berlin Wall crumbled, it would have been inevitable that the two—since they were highly placed intelligence officers of friendly agencies—would see each other on official business and rub shoulders at embassy parties. By then Manhardt would have been serving only one master, the BND, while Tice continued to work for both the CIA and Russian intelligence.
Had this news piece triggered Tice to escape, or was it merely coincidence? She noted Kristoph’s age. He was born after the Abendroth exchange, after the murder of Tice’s family, after Raina Manhardt became a mole for the BND, after Jay Tice sold out to the KGB.
Elaine decided that when she returned to Whippet, she would ask Mark to isolate all mentions of Raina Manhardt in the CIA databank. She rolled the newspaper section and stuck it into her shoulder bag. Her mind was already back at Whippet, wondering what Mark had found about Tice.
Traffic was thick, and pedestrians mobbed the sidewalks, jackets off, striding along. The air was humid, smelling of engine exhaust and cooling concrete. As Elaine walked north on Fourteenth Street toward where her Jaguar was parked, she considered what she knew about Jay Tice—until she crossed H Street and the skin on the back of her neck tightened. She shook off a shiver, feeling more than knowing she was being followed. As a hunter, she was seldom prey. Who could it be?
She clamped her shoulder bag to her side and angled her head so her peripheral vision swept back. The number of pedestrians advancing through the gritty light had thinned. There were a couple dozen, but none she recognized.
She hurried onward. When she checked again, she thought she saw a tall man slip hastily into a doorway. Then she was almost sure a woman abruptly turned to stare into a store window. Sweat slid down her spine. She was not only nervous about her own welfare; more important, no one must follow her to Whippet’s secret Victorian.
On the other hand, if she handled the situation right, she might get a good look at her tail or tails and identify th
em.
At Eye Street, she peeled off into Franklin Square, frequent site of protests and rallies, hoping for a crowd. One advantage of her small size was she could lose herself more easily than most. The park was spacious and open, with shallow steps and sloping sidewalks—but no large gathering. An elderly couple walked a pair of leashed dachshunds. A woman dressed in Muslim hijab—veil, scarf, and long coat—held the hand of a little boy as they strolled toward Thirteenth. A teenage boy in baggy shorts and a skullcap soared past on Rollerblades. Homeless people lounged on benches.
In the glowing light of an old-fashioned lamppost, Elaine paused near the fountain, her nerves on fire as she remembered Hannah’s ominous warning about the group that had attacked Jay Tice and Palmer Westwood: “If they think you’re in their way, you could find yourself at a lethal ground zero.” Abruptly the bright area was deserted except for a woman in a business suit, gripping a fat briefcase, who had stopped at the fountain, apparently to enjoy the jetting spray, and another woman, this one wearing a blousy caftan, who was lying down on her side on a park bench, hugging a battered book bag as her eyelids lowered into sleep. A public park was an unlikely venue for a professional to try to snatch or kill her, although not unheard-of, especially if the perpetrators were rogue or amateur.
Her heart seemed to stop. There was a sound, faint but sharp, like a child’s hand slapping a leather cushion. Automatically, she dropped to the grass. Something slashed past, brushing her hair. Soundless. There and gone. Instantly, the muted sound sang again. As if by magic, a dart quivered in the KEEP OFF THE GRASS near her.
She rolled left, pulling the Walther PPK and sound suppressor from her bag. She abandoned the bag and switched course, rolling again as she screwed on the suppressor. As she crouched behind a tree, she surveyed the park. Facing her, the woman in the caftan slept. At the same time, the businesswoman with the briefcase remained in profile, still apparently enjoying the fountain. No one else was in sight. One of the women had to be the assassin.
Again the horrible sound. A dart sank into the bark above her head. As Elaine dodged left, wood fragments stung her cheek. But she had seen the book bag move. The shooter was the woman in the caftan. Again the sound, and a dart hissed past her temple. The book bag resettled high against the woman’s chest.
Heart thundering, Elaine threw herself forward onto her belly behind a bush and carefully aimed the Walther up from underneath. As the book bag adjusted once more, she squeezed the trigger. Pop. Almost simultaneously, a dart sliced into the grass near her elbow. She waited.
People ambled toward the fountain. A suit jacket slung over his shoulder, a man joined the businesswoman there. They embraced, while the woman in the caftan lay unmoving, still on her side. Elaine held her breath. Finally, the lower arm that gripped the bag slid off and dangled limply, the knuckles touching the sidewalk.
Elaine looked around then grabbed her purse. She ripped three pages from one of Tice’s printouts and rolled them into a funnel, bending the tip so nothing could slide through. Carefully she picked up one of the darts by its flight and dropped it inside. She did the same with the others. Killing with darts was almost impossible—unless the tips held poison. She folded the top and put the deadly package in one of her purse’s zippered pockets. Controlling her emotions, she sauntered toward the janitor, a casual smile on her face.
Scanning, Elaine pressed the woman over onto her back. Blood had soaked a corner of the book bag scarlet. The bullet had entered at an angle through the belly and apparently up through the heart. The carotid artery had no pulse. In the shadowy light, she studied the woman’s straight nose, round cheeks and chin, and wide mouth. Her hair was brown, cut in a simple bob. She looked as if she were in her early thirties, had no distinguishing characteristics, wore no rings, and carried no purse. Elaine did not recognize her.
She picked up the bag. Beneath was an air gun. She stuffed it inside and arranged the woman’s arms across her ample chest as if she really were asleep. Both arms were quickly bloody. She felt a little sick. This was not her kind of work. She did not do this kind of work. She was a hunter. The only reason she was still alive was she’d had a clear view of the killer, while the killer had not had one of her. No one in her right mind depended on that kind of good fortune.
As she walked away, she opened the book bag. Inside were not only the air gun and ammo but a silenced 9mm Beretta, a backup weapon. Plus there was a phone book, which had given the bag the heft that had made it appear legitimate—an old tradecraft trick. The woman was a pro.
Elaine inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled. Walked. And scrutinized the area. The killer had entered the park after her, so she was likely the tail Elaine had sensed. Still, there easily could be others, if only spotters.
At Fourteenth Street, red taillights and glowing headlights hurtled past, streams of garish light in the deepening dusk. Ahead her Jaguar was in sight now. She hurried toward it as she dialed Hannah. She wanted the janitor picked up as soon as possible. With luck, the woman could be identified.
But Hannah was not “available.” She considered, then left a message. Hannah had said she would be at Whippet HQ, waiting for her. She looked around once more then climbed into the Jag.
Smoking his Cohiba cigar, Martin Ghranditti relaxed in the rear seat of his limousine as it cruised U Street. As he savored the smooth taste of the fine tobacco, he studied the jiggling laughing fast-talking half-clothed hordes, attracted by the city’s nightlife, as mindless as moths to flames. He smoked and wondered what they wanted. In what did they believe? If they were any indication, the last standing superpower was well on its way to ruin. He nodded to himself, recognizing the destination and the path. And he would profit from it. Everyone had a talent; this was his.
The driver pulled to the curb, and a man in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, apparently drinking and partying, abruptly sobered and jumped in next to Ghranditti. The big limo immediately reentered traffic.
Without even the courtesy of a “good evening,” the man demanded, “You have it?” He had a ferret’s face and a restless, unpleasant gaze.
Ghranditti sighed and picked up a backpack from the floor. “Your fifty thousand dollars.”
“You said a hundred thousand!” The man opened it and saw the bundles of bills. “Those sat phones are worth seven and a half million retail!”
Ghranditti smiled coldly. “You were planning to stand on the Mall to sell them?”
“Never again. This is it!” The man shoved his hand deep inside to make certain all were greenbacks.
“For you, there is always a next time,” Ghranditti said knowingly. He tapped the glass that separated him from his driver, and the limo moved to the curb again. The man was a fool; he worked only for money.
“What does anyone want ten thousand cells for?” he complained. “I was almost caught when I set up—”
Ghranditti interrupted, “Being caught could be fatal. Get out.”
The man stared, seeing something in Ghranditti that made him turn away quickly. Gripping his loot, he scrambled from the limo and slammed the door and ran.
Ghranditti grimaced then inhaled his cigar. As he contemplated the baseness of Homo sapiens, his cell phone rang. Fortunately, it was Jerry Angelides. Angelides had two qualities Ghranditti prized—a cheerful nature and consistency. Angelides failed so seldom that Ghranditti considered him a platinum-plated member of his permanent staff. Unlike the slob who had just taken fifty thousand for a hundred-thousand-dollar job, Angelides had honest pride in his work.
“Well, I have to hand it to you, Mr. Ghranditti,” Angelides said. “You were right as usual. Good thing you told me to send somebody after that hunter, Elaine Cunningham. She almost got whacked by an operator from that organization you wanted me to keep tabs on.”
Ghranditti swore loudly. “Tell me!”
“The shooter used one of those dart guns. The way I figure it, why bother unless the darts were loaded with poison? But Cunningham did good. She had a gun and
a silencer. She whacked the shooter so quiet nobody noticed.”
Enraged, Ghranditti sat up straight. He had been deceived. No one lied to Martin Ghranditti. His big shoulders squared. He did not hesitate. “This is what I want you to do. . . .”
11
As Washington’s clogged traffic growled around her, Elaine drove the city’s boulevards, angling quickly onto side streets, rounding Logan Circle six times, and cruising over the hopscotch bridge behind the Amtrak station and back again. Several times she managed sudden U-turns. As she dry-cleaned, she continued to try to reach Hannah, with no success.
When she was certain she had no tail, Elaine sped the car to the Dupont area and found a place to park. Troubled that Hannah had not called back, she hurried into the alley, stopped at Whippet’s rear entrance, tapped in her code, and pressed her left thumb on the scanner. The door swung open, and she stepped inside, locked it, and listened. At last she ran lightly upstairs and through the broom closet.
She cracked open the door to the hall and listened again. The silence was profound, somehow even deeper than this morning. Something was wrong. She took out her Walther and pulled the door open wider. A thick draft rolled past, heavy with a raw, metallic stink. She recognized the primal odor immediately—fresh blood.
On high alert, she slipped soundlessly through the doorway and swallowed a gasp. Six men and a woman lay sprawled in the corridor a few feet away. Glazed eyes stared. Red flesh gaped. Blood shimmered in lakes on the floor. It dripped from the walls. The house emanated the hot stench of violent death.
