The Last Spymaster

by Gayle Lynds

  The dog shook herself all over, metamorphosing from killer to pet.

  Watching, Palmer Westwood smiled, showing even white teeth. He turned and pumped Ben’s hand. “It’s even better to see you now, Ben.”

  “I agree.” Ben smiled back.

  The two men towered over the first one, who was grinning good-naturedly again. He shook Ben’s hand next.

  “Shalom, Elijah,” Ben said.

  “Salam yourself.” Elijah leaned toward the dog. “Hello, Houri. Shake.” She sat, tail wagging, for the greeting. He straightened and looked at Ben then Jay. “Palmer came by looking for you, Jay, and told me what he knew. We wondered whether we’d find you here. Ben never gave me a chance to ask.” Then he glared at Elaine and demanded, “Who’s she, Ben?”

  “Jay’s hunter—Elaine Cunningham. Elaine, meet Palmer Westwood and Elijah Helprin.”

  She shook their hands and exchanged pleasantries.

  Palmer slid off his jacket and adjusted the weapon at the small of his back. “Glad to see you’re still alive, Jay.”

  But Jay was frowning at Palmer. “I asked you to stay out of this.”

  Palmer straightened, hard and regal, and looked him in the eye. “I’ve been in the game long enough to know what I’m getting into. I smell caffeine. I’m going to have some.”

  As he marched to the percolator, Houri ran to Ben, her claws tapping a rapid tattoo on the linoleum. She silently nudged his arm.

  “Our last visitor is here,” he announced. “Stay in the kitchen, Elaine. I’ll handle him. Come on, Houri.”

  As he and the dog left, the noise of a well-timed automobile engine became audible, approaching the house. Elijah joined Palmer at the coffeepot and poured himself a large mug. When the front door opened, Ben’s commanding voice carried back, and another man responded angrily. Everyone watched the arch that led into the hall.

  Houri stalked through it, glancing warily over her shoulder. A stranger followed, Ben close behind. The new man was in his mid-sixties, second in age to Palmer. Of moderate height and weight, he had mousy hair and bland coloring and a boring face made more so by horn-rimmed bifocals. He wore a zippered jacket and cotton chinos. There was nothing distinctive about him, yet one had the sense there could be.

  When he saw Jay, the neutral facade shattered. “What are you doing here, you goddamned traitor!” Disgust and rage seethed from him.

  He whirled to leave but was stopped instantly by Ben’s raised M-16. At the same time, Houri showed her teeth, and a threatening growl rose from her throat.

  The man’s back stiffened. He glanced at the dog then stared at Ben.

  “You know the drill.” Ben’s tone was implacable.

  They stood that way a few seconds longer, then the man turned back into the kitchen, his body still rigid. Without a glance at Jay, he checked around then walked angrily to the table. He dropped a gold triangle and poked it into place. The medallion was now complete. When he raised his head, his furious glare fixed again on Jay.

  Before he could speak, Ben said, “Give Jay a chance. All of you have to hear what’s happened anyway. Then if you still want out, Frank, you can go. Any of you can go. No hard feelings. All we ask is you don’t say anything to anyone.”

  Frank tore his gaze from Jay but said nothing.

  Jay spoke across the room, his voice expressionless, almost a monotone, in the code of undercover professionals relating nothing but the facts, as he began the story again, alternating with Elaine. When he explained how Jerry had killed Billy in cold blood, Frank seemed to lose his edginess. When Elaine described the cars hurtling toward them, two from the front, two from the rear, and that Larry Litchfield had sent them, Frank heaved a sigh of resignation.

  As Jay finished the story, Frank stared down at the gold pieces. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen this whole thing put together.” He lifted his head, considering them where they sat and stood. Behind his horn-rimmed glasses, affection seeped into his sober eyes, then worry. “Okay, I’m in. Jay, I hope like hell you’re not as guilty as I think you are, but even if you are, we’ve got to find out what Larry’s up to. That arrogant SOB could fall into a cesspool and come up smelling like roses. I’ve got my BlackBerry with a list of contacts from the old days. My Uzi’s in the car. I’m wearing my Browning.” Then he swung around to study Elaine. “But what about her? Can we trust her? What do you really know about her?”

  The men stared. She banished emotion from her face and looked at each, one at a time. “Jay will vouch for me. And I may have more information for you, but before I hand it over, it’s your turn. Who are you? What’s your relationship? What do the pieces of that gold medallion mean?”

  “What information do you have?” Jay demanded.

  “I cleaned out the front seat and glove compartment of Jerry’s BMW after you drew them into the woods.”

  They looked at Jay for a decision. Their faces were wrinkled, the colors of their eyes dimming, but they exuded an informed electricity that was ageless.

  Finally, Jay nodded at Palmer. “You tell her. You were in charge.”

  29

  The atmosphere in Ben Kuhnert’s kitchen was tense. Houri circled restlessly beneath the heavy-timbered ceiling. Palmer pulled out a chair and sat at the table, not even touching his coffee. His profile was almost inanimate. Whatever the events were, Elaine decided, they must have been momentous.

  “It was 1985, the depths of the Cold War in West Berlin,” Palmer began, his voice low, commanding. “The city was a political island, completely surrounded by the Wall. We were so close to East Germany, we could hear the Communists piss. They’d made themselves into a sanctuary for terrorists—but they called them revolutionaries—and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. The Stasi trained them and sold them guns. They even booked that butcher Carlos into a luxury hotel with other hard-currency guests. Then in February, Jay got a tip that an unusual group of Islamic fanatics had landed in East Berlin to make a big arms buy.”

  Ben paced the kitchen, his large nose and opinionated chin leading. “ ‘Big’ and ‘unusual’ got our attention fast. Terrorist attacks were soaring. There were more in Europe than today even.”

  “Palmer wasted no time.” Jay was focused on his mentor. “He put together a black operation called DEADAIM to track the deal. There were nine of us NOCs.”

  “We bugged government supply offices and arms manufacturers,” Frank told her, his thick body stiff. “Did black-bag jobs, too.”

  “We acted as go-betweens and fixers and looked for people to turn.” Short and stocky, Elijah sat on the edge of a kitchen chair as if ready to spring into action. “We had the language skills, and we had Catholics and Muslims and Jews and Protestants and men and women, so we could talk the various talks and move in a lot of worlds.”

  “Then in March, Trent was kidnapped.” Palmer shook his white head with the bad memory. “It took us four months and a fifty thousand dollars cash ransom to get him back.”

  The room fell into silence. They avoided one another’s eyes.

  “And?” Elaine prompted.

  Palmer sighed. “By then, we’d been investigating five months. We knew the buyers were heads of a fledgling network of radical Islamic groups called al-Ahrar. Al-Ahrar means ‘freedom.’ They wanted a big deal to impress other extremist leaders to bring in their groups, too. It was a promising experiment for them—and could grow into a hell of a threat to our side. To finance it, they imported hash from the Bekaa Valley and sold it on the streets of Europe.”

  “Jay was sneaking into East Berlin and finally scored some photos.” Like the others, Elijah had not touched his coffee since Palmer began the story. “We were able to identify some. The mastermind was a kid—a Syrian named Faisal al-Hadi. They were all so damn young that we were shocked.”

  Elaine said nothing, but she remembered al-Hadi’s name. He was the other half of the exchange in which Jay had arranged Dr. Abendroth’s assassination.

  “Al
-Hadi was only twenty,” Jay told her from his post at the window, “but he was the oldest. They were the first wave of the diaper commandos we see heading terrorist cells now. But in those days, as my source said, it was highly unusual.”

  “This was when it got really obvious Jay was a hotshot.” Ben glanced at him.

  “He was going places,” Frank agreed. “I’ll bet half the intel came from his work.”

  “Then Linda disappeared,” Elijah said bitterly. “Cops found her body caught in reeds down the Havel, drowned. Sally was ‘accidentally’ killed by a hit-and-run driver on the Ku’damm. And Carlee died in her sleep of asphyxiation from a gas leak. It was all crap. Poor women. Three liquidations of our people in two days.”

  “At the same time, the six of us had near misses,” Palmer said somberly.

  “There had to be a leak, but it didn’t make sense,” Frank said. “Our security was tight, and we were close—handpicked for psychological makeup and expertise.”

  “Finally we got a break, but it was almost the end of us,” Frank said. “An intel broker nobody had ever heard of phoned the consul general and gave a code name—Moses. He said his product was free this one time to prove his bona fides. So the consul general listened then burned the phone lines getting the chief of station to set up a treff with Palmer. Right, Palmer?”

  The old spymaster’s voice was hollow: “Moses claimed Trent wasn’t Trent. He said the Stasi snatched our Trent and performed plastic surgery on a guy with Trent’s coloring and body build and taught him to be Trent. Then they erased Trent and sent the double to infiltrate DEADAIM, screw it up, and move on to other missions and do the same thing. The corker was the bastard bit into a poison pill before we could get a damn thing out of him!”

  Elaine inhaled. “How did the Stasi know about DEADAIM? You were black.”

  Frank grimaced. “Yeah, that was real bad. Our families and friends hadn’t seen us. The only people in the loop were at Berlin Operations Base and, of course, Langley.”

  “It must’ve been someone there,” she said. “So that’s why you cut up the medallion. You needed to make sure no other double slipped in.”

  “It was Palmer’s idea,” Jay told her. “He bought a medallion at a carnival, and Frank used a jeweler’s saw so no two pieces were the same. We added them to our pocket litter and went deeper undercover. No contact with the Berlin station or Langley at all. None. After that, we had no more problems.”

  “Not with that,” Palmer agreed. “But we still hadn’t identified the buyer, and it was September. There was enough money involved it could’ve been one of the big ones—Sarkis Soghanalian or Adnan Khashoggi or the Icelander, Loftur Johannesson.”

  “The street went silent,” Elijah told her. “But we knew the deal had to go down soon. We were starting to sweat missiles—then Jay vanished.”

  “We were worried he’d been kidnapped like Trent,” Frank rumbled. “Instead, he came home with a rabbit stuffed in his hat. You’ve got to understand about Jay. He never talked about his sources. He wouldn’t tell you jack shit. He wouldn’t tell Langley or Berlin, either. They’d get so mad they’d threaten to can him. But he wouldn’t tell. So when he got back with that satisfied look on his face, I knew he’d been to one of his secret rendezvous—and he had the time and location.”

  Palmer nodded. “With that, we were back in business. The goal was a major news incident, so our people passed the intel to the German authorities and the international press. When al-Ahrar showed at the warehouse, our people were hiding. As soon as the kids started loading their trucks, we tried to arrest them. Instead, the dummies opened fire. We shot back. They wouldn’t give up. Suddenly we had a bloodbath on our hands. In the end, most of their leaders died, which effectively killed the whole al-Ahrar network. A big win for us in that way alone.”

  Frank’s eyes shone through his horn-rimmed bifocals. “We got everything. They had some brand-new weapons straight out of Soviet factories that we’d never even heard of. When we told Ramstein what we were sending, they drooled on themselves.”

  “We also got a sack filled with nine million dollars in cash—al-Ahrar’s last payment to their dealer. Whoever he was, he must’ve choked on the loss.” Palmer’s leathery face spread in a grin. “The incident made headlines for a month. Langley was ecstatic.”

  “They promoted Palmer to ADDO,” Jay told her. “He thought he might like the job, and by God, Langley delivered.”

  “They did right by Jay, too,” Ben said. “A newspaper blew his cover by printing his photo, which meant his days as a NOC were over. So Langley made him Berlin chief. Then he shot up the food chain even higher than Palmer and became DDO.”

  “And the Commies got the big wet kiss-off.” Elijah chuckled.

  Around the room, the men broke into relieved laughter. They caught one another’s eyes and laughed harder. The kitchen rocked. It had been a terrifying time when they lost nearly half their team to treachery, and yet not only did they persevere, but they triumphed completely. They reveled in the impossible accomplishment.

  But then the laughter died. A chill seemed to settle over the room. They had crucial business to address. They stared at Elaine.

  Before Jay could say a word, Elaine picked up her shoulder bag. “Let’s see what I found in the BMW.”

  As Palmer, Elijah, and Frank leaned close, and Jay and Ben hovered, she dropped items onto the table—AAA maps, two books of Camel’s matches, a crushed paper cigar ring, a recent issue of Briare’s Military and Intelligence Magazine, sticky candy wrappers, a cracked plastic CD case without a label, three gel pens, assorted pencils, and a little Bubble Wrapped bundle. There was no car registration.

  The operatives pushed through the plunder. Looking for notes, Jay checked the paper cigar ring, and Palmer inspected the matchbooks. Frank picked up the magazine and turned pages.

  Elijah grabbed the Bubble Wrapped bundle. He ripped it open and dumped out little packets and peeled one open. “I’ll be damned.” His swarthy face darkened as he spilled out what appeared to be a fat grain of sand. “It’s a StarDust computer!”

  “A computer that miniaturized?” Jay said instantly. “What does it do?”

  “Submicrominiaturized,” Elijah corrected. “Shit! This is cutting-edge technology! How in hell did Jerry get it? The military’s been experimenting with StarDusts secretly. So have we. They’re not going to be on the market for years!” Worriedly, he glanced at Elaine. “I’m the only one here not retired. Still in the DO.” He opened another packet, his expression grim. “These little babies are amazing. Tiny solar batteries fuel them. You program them to record two or three simple jobs like monitoring motion and temperature. They talk to each other and send their intel to a central computer that coordinates all of it. StarDust networks are powerful—they can blanket miles!”

  “You say you’ve used them in operations?” Jay asked.

  “A month ago we dropped some from a plane into an Afghanistan canyon and were able to track Taliban on horseback where we’d always lost them. We found their hidden tunnel, and that led us to a cell of al-Qaeda dug into a cave complex. Hell, we’d been trying to break that cell for a year!”

  “Frank, you’ve got the Briare’s,” Jay said sharply. “Anything marked?”

  He shook his head. “Not a damn thing.”

  Jay grabbed the magazine. “Okay, everyone, we’re onto something. See what else you can find.”

  They examined the rest of the items closely for words, scribbles, numbers, anything. A new pile grew on the other end of the table where they tossed what they discarded.

  “I’ll be damned!” Jay flipped the magazine around and pointed to a dog-eared page. “Take a look at this.” It was a photo of a small winged drone.

  LETHAL GYROBIRD SOARS IN MILITARY’S ESTIMATION

  “How the hell did I miss that?” Frank frowned. “What’s a GyroBird?”

  “A brand-new miniature drone—state-of-the-art,” Jay told them. “Each weighs only sev
en ounces, and the wings fold back so soldiers can carry them in backpacks or hanging off their belts. The drones take still photos and stream live video day or night. That’s standard. But two things make these particularly useful—they use ducted fan propulsion so they fly not only like a fixed-wing aircraft but hover and land like a helicopter, and each is loaded with a special high-blast explosive that’ll take the top off a building.”

  Ben let out a long stream of air. “And this and the StarDusts are from the car Mr. G’s janitors are using!”

  “Neither’s available to the public.” Jay’s face was grim as he pointed out, “And the only customer for both is the U.S. government. That means Mr. G’s deal is not only big—it’s dangerous as hell. An illegal arms transaction of this size can only mean one thing—terrorists.”

  30

  Miami, Florida

  Whispering prayers to himself, Faisal al-Hadi carried his gym bag along the Miami sidewalk, while in his mind he was in the sacred Damascus of his boyhood. He could almost hear cymbals clanging and water sellers calling, “Atchan, taa Saubi!” If you thirst, come to me! He imagined slipping into the great Umayyad Mosque and kneeling amid the cool marble tiles. Thanks be to Allah.

  With a slow intake of breath, al-Hadi returned to the present and peered around. People strolled past without a second look, but then he appeared to be one of them, with his fashionable hair, smooth-shaved face, and Western clothes. As traffic flowed like a dirty river, he pushed in through Kinko’s door. The artificial lights made his eyes ache. Squinting, he sat at a computer and inserted a credit card under an assumed name.

  He retyped Martin Ghranditti’s printout, translating it into Arabic, then went online to PhotoHeat.com, an abomination of X-rated pictures. In the past, he had concealed text and photos and maps on Western sites promoting books, toys, cars, and sports. He had even penetrated eBay. But although spy agencies prowled the ether with detection software, they found only a fraction of the secret messages hidden in the Web’s billions of Web sites and images.