Jack in the Box

by John Weisman

  “Closely, Sam? Every word? Over and over again?”

  Sam bit his lower lip.

  Charlotte turned away and adjusted her housedress. “I would have thought Don Kadick had taught you better.”

  “He did, Charlotte.”

  “Then he would have chastised you for forgetting the basics if you’d pulled a stunt like this. Obviously, you never read the reporting. Not closely, Sam. Because if you had, it would all have become clear. Crystal. You can’t ever forget the reporting, Sam. The basics never change. It’s like these matrices—the Romanoffs have computer programs that do the same thing these days. But what Romanoffs don’t understand is that doing the work by hand forces us to noodle the problem out for ourselves by dealing with the human element. Computers can’t factor human nature—its frailties, doubts, and passions. The ability to read human nature and manipulate it is what spying is all about. The Romanoffs don’t understand that—never did. Technical, that’s all they care about. Technical and liaison.” She looked at him, then laid her hand atop the charts. The skin on her wrist was translucent and delicate as a cobweb. “People, Sam. People see things; people sense things that machines cannot.”

  She looked at him with watery eyes. “You never went through all the transcripts, did you?”

  “I read most of them.”

  “But not all. Because of that, you missed the key, Sam.” She dug in the pocket of her housecoat and pulled out a half-inch-thick stack of three-by-five index cards held together by a blue rubber band. She slipped the band over her wrist, and started to deal out the cards atop the chart one by one, as if she was playing solitaire.

  Sam watched her. And then, as he realized what she had been able to glean by not making any assumptions, or allowing any biases to intervene, he began to understand what a fool he’d been. He’d screwed things up from the get-go. He’d been hooked and landed because he’d charged headlong into this mess without following the basic procedures he’d been taught at The Farm.

  Charlotte was right: Don Kadick would have kicked his butt into next week if he’d pulled this sort of greenhorn blunder in Bonn. He hadn’t done his homework. He hadn’t read every one of the transcripts—thoroughly—because he thought he’d known what to look for.

  But he hadn’t known. In fact, he’d missed almost every one of the signs. Big, obvious billboards sitting right in front of his nose.

  Charlotte hadn’t missed anything. She’d caught them all. She’d found a pattern. She’d gone back as far as Paris—and made sense of it all.

  She pulled off her glasses, set them on the kitchen table, and walked to the refrigerator. “Sun’s over the yardarm, Sam.”

  “You better make it vodka today, Charlotte.”

  “Oh?” She looked at him quizzically.

  Sam went to his book bag, pulled out the Order of Lenin medal he’d bought for Ginny Vacario, took it from its leather- and-velvet case, leaned over, pinned it on the lapel of Charlotte’s housedress, and kissed her on both cheeks. “For service above and beyond, Charlotte,” he said in his Moscow-accented Russian. “You don’t miss a trick.”

  “Oh, Sam.” She fingered the red ribbon and beamed. “At last,” she said in halting, British-tinged Russian, “I am a hero of the State. Spaciba, Sergei Anatoly vich.”

  “Whoa!” Sam went pie-eyed. Where the hell had she come up with that one. He’d only mentioned the alias to her once, very early on in their relationship at Purgatory. She grinned coyly at him. “My short-term memory may be on its way out, Sam—I feel as if I’m dropping my life into the shredder day to day. But I can tell you precisely what I was wearing the morning I met General Donovan and David Bruce at seventy Grosvenor.”50 Charlotte looked at him. Her eyes had teared up and her expression was almost mystical. “Thank you, Sam.”

  It was he who was grateful. “For what, Charlotte?”

  She tapped the spidery skin of her breastbone. “For reminding me, Sam Waterman, that Delphi still lives. Delphi still lives—in here.”

  CHAPTER 28

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2002

  10:32 A.M. Sam called John Forbes from a pay phone at Reagan National. The phone at JEH51 rang twice before the special agent picked up. “National Security, 6151.”

  Quickly, Sam said: “No names. We have to meet.”

  There was a three-second pause. Then: “What about the most recent venue?”

  “Too public.”

  “Can I pick you up?”

  “There are security problems.”

  There was a five-second pause. “Take a cab. Go where you like the soup.”

  Now it was Sam who had to think. Then he said “Gotcha” and hung up the receiver.

  Fifty-eight minutes later, he watched as Forbes pushed through the door of Nam Viet, scanned the joint, then made his way to the rear of the long, narrow restaurant to where Sam sat with his back against the wall.

  The two men liked this place. It was convenient to the Clarendon metro stop. The tables were clean, the beer was cold, the spring rolls perfect, and the bright red orange pepper-infused Hue-style soup so spicy that they sweat when they ate it. The owners were all former South Vietnamese police and military officers. The walls were bedecked with Vietnamese art, and pictures inscribed by notable Vietnam vets and POWs. It wasn’t yet noon, so the wait staff lounged in the pre-lunch-hour calm.

  Forbes took note of Sam’s disguise but didn’t comment. “Sorry I took so long, Elbridge.” The FBI man dropped into a chair, summoned a waiter, and pointed at Sam’s Tsingtao. “One of those, please?” He turned back to Sam once the waiter had left. “I took a cleaning route.”

  “Good idea.”

  Forbes wrinkled his forehead. “What’s up, Elbridge?”

  “Remember I told you you’d be the first call I’d make when I had my ducks in a row?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Sam looked at his friend. “Quack-quack, John.”

  3:29 P.M. “Elbridge, if this doesn’t come off, we’re going to be sharing a cell at Leavenworth for five or six decades.”

  “Good,” Sam said. “You can be the wife.”

  “Very funny.” Forbes’s expression was grim. “High risk, Sam. Very high risk.”

  “Can you think of anything better?”

  Forbes scratched behind his right ear. “Not really.”

  They were sitting in the living room of the Falls Church town house Forbes shared with Johanna Simeone. Sam had removed the prosthetics, then showered and changed clothes. Spread out on the low coffee table were Charlotte Wells’s matrices and the notecards she’d carefully lettered.

  There were other materials as well. Sam had waited at Nam Viet while Forbes drove to the Atrium. He’d used Sam’s pass to enter the garage. The G-man took the elevator to Sam’s apartment, carefully followed the written directions he’d been given, opened the safe, and removed the half-dozen items Sam had sent him to retrieve. Thirty-five minutes after he’d left, Forbes picked Sam up and drove him to Falls Church.

  The safe house was the key. Edward Lee Howard had screwed up. Charlotte had never really picked up on it, even though Sam had. Howard had given Sam a second detail he hadn’t been supposed to. He’d claimed SCARAB had been invited to the Primakov reception.

  Sam had tried to check out Howard’s story. He’d scanned the Washington Post archives for a guest list and come up dry. He’d even called the State Department, and been told that the protocol office had already turned over the documents in question to the National Archives. It was a dead end for the moment.

  Howard also claimed SCARAB rented the safe house from which the two “high-level moles” met with their control officer. And the lease was under SCARAB’s true name. That’s where Howard had screwed up. He’d obviously confused some disposables with the high-level agents SCARAB and SCEPTRE, realized his mistake, and then he’d done what all case officers are taught to do when they’re caught in a lie: deny, deny, deny. Charlotte had glossed over the anomaly. But Sam hadn’t.

  T
he photos and Forbes’s research confirmed that SCARAB had to be one of the Russian disposables—Barbara Steiner or Vernon Myles. Forbes had obtained home addresses for both. All Sam had to do was check to see which one of the two had rented a second residence, and they were home free.

  “Piece of cake,” Forbes said. He flipped his cell phone open and speed-dialed a number. “Yo, Kramer, this is Forbes. Whassup?” The G-man listened, his head bobbing up and down. “Cool, man. Love it.” He paused. “Listen—I need you to check two accounts for me. Sure I can wait while you blow the call off. This is important, Dick—hush-hush. National security and all that crap.” Forbes cupped his hand over the bottom of the cell phone. “This guy is Dick Kramer. Jarhead like us. Retired Secret Service. Head of security for Dominion Power. Can’t nobody have a house or an apartment that doesn’t have electricity, right?”

  Forbes slapped the phone back to his ear. “I’m here. You got a stick? First one is Steiner comma Barbara, Social Security 202-65-5201. Second is Myles comma Vernon, Social is 392-68-2748. No, four eight, numbskull.” Forbes tossed Sam an upturned thumb and stage-whispered, “He’s checking.”

  Fifty seconds later Forbes scratched some numbers on a legal pad, said “Thanks, Kramer, Semper Fi,” and snapped the cell phone shut. The FBI agent scratched his head. “Doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Steiner and Myles have only one account each—at the addresses we already have for ‘em.”

  “Did he check Maryland and the District as well as Virginia?”

  “He ran it as far south as North Carolina and as far north as Pennsylvania. Nothing.” Forbes looked at his old friend. “So what do we do?”

  Sam pursed his lips. “Call him back.”

  Forbes cocked his head in Sam’s direction. “Why?”

  “Ask him to pull up the accounts. And check the billing over the last two years.”

  “But—”

  “Just ask.”

  The FBI agent punched Kramer’s speed-dial number and waited. “Me again. Pull up those accounts, will ya?” Forbes’s fingers played air piano. “What’s your point, Elbridge?”

  “If I’m right, you’ll see my point.”

  “Yeah—I’m still here,” Forbes said. Then his eyes went wide, and he said, “Oh, really?” He turned to Sam and gave him an upturned thumb. He scribbled a list of dates and numbers on the legal pad in front of him and said “Thanks, guy. Hold on a sec.”

  Sam said, “So?”

  “So, if Vernon Myles actually lives at 3624 Idaho Avenue Northwest, he lives in the dark most of the time. Look at these bills.”

  Sam peered down at the list of figures. It was just as he’d thought: the bills were incredibly low. “What about the apartments on either side of him?” The Russians sometimes liked to install audio or video surveillance from an adjacent apartment.

  “I’ll ask.” Forbes waited while his friend checked the computer records. “Normal,” he said. “No anomalies—going back five years.”

  “Bingo.” Sam had done this once before, searching for a KGB safe house near Bonn. Don Kadick was certain that the opposition had bought a new one somewhere in a two-square-block complex of flats in Pulheim, just outside Köln. He’d assigned Sam to find the needle in the hundred-and-eighty-apartment haystack. Sam did it by recruiting an agent who worked for the Köln power department. The agent checked the apartment complex’s light bills. Which, being German light bills, were annotated not just by month, but by day.

  Sam crossed off all the vacant apartments—there were currently five. For all the others, the electricity bills were roughly the same—within twenty-five dollars or so. Except for one anomaly: flat number 4/08, where almost no power was consumed during most of the month. But once in a while—every second week or so—there was a spike. The KGB, being cheap, obviously didn’t want to pay a kopek more for power than it needed. Don Kadick congratulated Sam on his ingenuity, then summoned a team of technicians from Langley so they could install a series of microphones in the walls of Apartment 4/08.

  Forbes said, “So whaddya want to do, Elbridge?”

  In response, Sam picked up the phone and dialed Vernon Myles’s extension at the State Department. “Mr. Myles? This is Special Agent Forbes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Security Division. Do you have a few minutes to spare me this afternoon? It’s quite urgent.” Sam watched as Forbes shook his head in disbelief. “No,” Sam said, “of course not. This has to do with an investigation of one of your coworkers at PM. It concerns laptop computer security. If you could meet me, say, somewhere around six o’clock I’d appreciate it. Anyplace convenient for you would be just fine. Since you’re at Main State, what about Dundee’s, at Twenty-fourth and Penn? Great. Of course I’d like to keep everything confidential, so please don’t mention this to any of your colleagues.” Sam smiled devilishly. “Not at all. I’m at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Extension 6151. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Myles.”

  Forbes pulled the corner of his mustache. “I’m so charming I can’t stand myself. You even gave him my phone number.”

  “He’s a cautious bureaucrat,” Sam said. “He’ll call back to make sure you work there.”

  “So what’s next?”

  Next? That was simple: Provoke. Goad. Incite. “It’s time we shake the tree, Forbes.”

  “Sounds good, Elbridge. Beats the hell out of chasing down illegal Pakistanis.”

  “We’ll need a script. I’ll work on that.”

  “What can I do?”

  Sam rapped the table. “You could make me a G-man.”

  “You own panty hose to go with the dress?”

  “Bite me, Forbes.” Like most clandestine service officers, Sam had used a number of government IDs over his career. He’d taken language courses under State Department cover. At one time or another he had carried credentials that identified him as a Department of the Army civilian employee, a U.S. Department of Commerce trade official, and a deputy vice president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. One more forgery, he rationalized, wouldn’t make any difference.

  So Forbes used his digital camera to shoot a portrait of Sam in the Dale Miller disguise, and take a close-up of his own FBI credential. Then the G-man used his all-in-one color printer to scan both the photo and ID as jpg files. He altered the name and physical attributes on the duplicate then reproduced the document once more—this time on photo paper.

  Sam took the glossy four-by-six sheet and examined it, frowning. “This won’t fool anybody, John.”

  “Wanna bet?” Forbes snorted. “I badged my way onto a plane three weeks ago using my Gold’s Gym photo ID card. Truth is, nobody pays attention once they see the shield.”

  “But we’re at war, right? They just upped the threat level to ORANGE.”

  “What’s your point?” Forbes used a pair of scissors to trim Sam’s photo. “You know as well as I do how people’s minds work. The subconscious finishes the sentence for them. Here’s a guy with a badge, a gun, and handcuffs hanging off his belt. Therefore, he is a cop.” The FBI man pasted Sam’s picture atop the color copy of the FBI credential. “You are with me. I am an FBI agent. I will allow anyone to examine my credential as closely as they want to. And you, Sancho Panza, you get to follow in my footsteps. Think you’re gonna get the same scrutiny as me with the two of us bitch-and-moaning like the Bickersons?”

  Carefully, Forbes used a home lamination kit to seal the bogus credential behind cloudy plastic. “No way, Elbridge.” He slid the ID into a black leather wallet that held a gold federal special agent’s shield, examined his handiwork, then handed everything to Sam. “Welcome to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent Miller.”

  Forbes swept the scraps into a pile and dropped them all into a wastebasket shredder. “Johanna’s getting home about eight. No need for her to see what we’re doing.”

  He looked at Sam, who was examining the forged FBI creds, and cocked an eyebrow. “N
ow, if you ever try to use this on your own, I’ll bust you myself. But since I’m a willing accomplice for this particular caper …”

  Sam blushed as he slapped the wallet shut and slid the credential into his jacket pocket. “You have any good pictures around?”

  “ ‘Good pictures'?”

  “Murders. Bodies. Lots of blood.”

  “Hell yes, Elbridge. Us law enforcement types actually collect ‘em. The messier the better. Got this great digital last week from Los Angeles. Murder by roofing hammer.”

  “That one won’t work. But lemme check your files,” Sam said. “I’ll need about a dozen, including something that could pass for suicide by shotgun.”

  “Pass for? Heeey, I got the real thing, Dick Tracy.”

  6:05 P.M. The instant Vernon Myles pushed through the frosted glass door Sam knew everything he had to know. The stooped shoulders, the careless double Windsor slightly askew in the collar of the man’s blue button-down wash-and-wear shirt, the scuffed shoes, the baggy trousers, the smudged eyeglass lenses, and the hair-sprayed comb-over told Sam volumes about Myles’s character—and his vulnerabilities.

  Myles’s files—Edward Lee Howard’s material and the FBI’s sparse dossier—indicated to Sam that Myles had all the makings of a developmental. The man’s physical appearance cemented the verdict. By the very way Myles acted, from the manner in which he carried himself to his physical characteristics, this middle-aged State Department civil servant was the perfect espionage target: a bureaucrat in a sensitive position who probably hated his job, resented his superiors, and wanted to get even. The man was a bloody textbook for an EMSI recruitment. It didn’t even get this easy at the Farm during case-officer training, when a cadre of veteran case-officer role-players would come down to Williamsburg so the trainees could practice their novice recruiting skills.

  Sam watched as the man stood, arms at his sides, peering dumbly into the semidarkness of the bar, his pallid face radiating bewilderment. Sam slid off the bar stool and ambled toward his target.

  “Mr. Myles?” Sam gave the poor schlemiel a reassuring look. “I’m with John Forbes. We’re over there—” He pointed. “In the rear.”